Captain Tom’s family personally benefited from charity they founded, report finds

Watchdog’s highly critical inquiry finds Hannah and Colin Ingram-Moore culpable of ‘serious and repeated’ misconduct

The family of the NHS charities fundraiser Captain Sir Tom Moore personally benefited from the charity set up in his name through a series of lucrative deals worth more than £1m, the charities watchdog has ruled in a highly critical report.

A Charity Commission inquiry concluded the late Captain Tom’s daughter Hannah Ingram-Moore and her husband, Colin Ingram-Moore, were culpable of “serious and repeated” instances of misconduct, mismanagement and failures of integrity.

Hannah Ingram-Moore “initiated the process to secure her appointment as chief executive” of the charity, suggesting she should be paid a salary of £150,000. The charity proposed paying her £100,000 but this was blocked by the commission and she was eventually hired on £85,000.

Hannah Ingram-Moore received £18,000 from Virgin Media in September 2021 to judge its Local Legends awards when she was chief executive of the foundation. This was unauthorised and a conflict of interest, and there was no evidence it was undertaken, as she claimed, in a personal capacity.

The Ingram-Moores used the charity’s name inappropriately and for their private benefit in a planning application to build a private spa pool in the grounds of their family home. The building was subsequently demolished.

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Backlash as San Francisco votes to transform stretch of highway into park

Opponents say closing Great Highway to cars will increase traffic as supporters argue it will mitigate coastal erosion

Californians have voted to close part of a nearly century-old highway in San Francisco to cars, transforming a two-mile section into a park for pedestrians and cyclists.

On election day, city residents voted to approve Proposition K, extending the ban on vehicles on a portion of the Upper Great Highway along the coastline. The measure has sparked intense debate over whether cars should have regular access to the area.

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Covid bereaved angered by Badenoch’s ‘insulting’ Partygate remarks

Families group calls Tory leader ‘deeply misguided’ after telling BBC that Boris Johnson-era scandal was ‘overblown’

Families bereaved by the Covid pandemic say they feel insulted by Kemi Badenoch’s claim that the Partygate scandal was “overblown”.

The new Conservative party leader also told the BBC that Boris Johnson had fallen into a “trap” of breaking lockdown rules that should never have been introduced.

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‘Will haunt me for life’: nurse suspended over Covid lockdown baby shower in Melbourne aged care home before deadly outbreak

Father-to-be was unaware of planned party at Epping Gardens aged care facility and stayed only five minutes, tribunal hears

An aged care nurse who attended a baby shower at a nursing home during a Covid lockdown has been suspended, telling a tribunal the mistake “will haunt me for the rest of my life”.

Staff at the Epping Gardens aged care held a surprise baby shower in July 2020 for registered nurse Denis Baniqued and his wife, who also worked at the facility.

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School starters born during pandemic lack communication skills, Ofsted says

English primary schools having to help infants catch up on speech and language to cope with lessons

Primary schools are having to teach infants how to communicate, as they struggle to make friends or cope with lessons because of speech and language difficulties, according to a report by Ofsted.

The research by Ofsted inspectors, based on visits to schools in England rated as good or outstanding, found that the Covid pandemic “is still having an impact on children’s behaviour and social skills”.

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Severe Covid infections can inflame brain’s ‘control centre’, research says

Scans of people hospitalised with Covid may explain the long-term breathlessness and fatigue some patients experience

Severe Covid infections can drive inflammation in the brain’s “control centre”, researchers say, leading to damage that may explain the long-term breathlessness, fatigue and anxiety some patients experience.

High-resolution MRI scans of 30 people hospitalised with Covid early in the pandemic, before the introduction of vaccines, found signs of inflammation in the brainstem, a small but critical structure that governs life-sustaining bodily functions such as breathing, heart rate and blood pressure.

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Al Pacino reveals he almost died of Covid – and delivers his verdict on the afterlife

The 84-year-old actor speaks about contracting the virus in 2020, saying he ‘didn’t have a pulse’ and came to with six paramedics in his house

Al Pacino has revealed he almost died from Covid-19 in 2020, saying he “didn’t have a pulse” for several minutes.

In interviews with the New York Times and People magazine published on the weekend, the 84-year-old Godfather and Scarface actor detailed his experience with the virus, which he contracted in 2020 before a vaccine was available.

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Kemi Badenoch faces backlash after comments on ‘excessive’ maternity pay – as it happened

Conservative leadership contenders Jenrick, Cleverly and Tugendhat reject rival’s comments, while Rosie Duffield criticises Keir Starmer

Q: Do you agree with Kemi Badenoch that some cultures are less valid than others?

Jenrick says culture matters. But he says he disagres with Badenoch on immigration numbers. He says he thinks you have to have a cap on numbers. And he also says he believes the UK has to leave the European convention on human rights. He says Badenoch is just talking about developing a plan in a few years time, and that’s “a recipe for infighting and for losing the public’s trust”.

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Senior Tories cast doubt over Boris Johnson’s plan to ‘invade the Netherlands’

Former prime minister’s claims about wanting to seize Covid vaccines being held in the EU ‘may have been a joke’

Senior Tories have cast doubt on Boris Johnson’s claim that he seriously considered invading the Netherlands to seize vaccines during the pandemic, saying the story had obviously been overblown and reheated to boost sales of his memoirs.

The former prime minister says in his new book, Unleashed, that he asked senior members of the armed forces about the possibility of conducting an “aquatic raid” on a warehouse in Leiden in March 2021 in order to get hold of 5m doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine which he believed the EU did not want to be exported to the UK.

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Boris Johnson: we considered ‘aquatic raid’ on Netherlands to seize Covid vaccine

Former prime minister admits in extract from forthcoming book that he discussed possible military operation at height of pandemic

Boris Johnson considered an “aquatic raid” on a Dutch warehouse to seize Covid vaccines during the height of the pandemic, he has revealed in his memoirs.

The former prime minister discussed plans with senior military officials in March 2021, according to an extract from his forthcoming book, Unleashed, published in the Daily Mail.

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Mental health overtakes cancer and obesity as Britons’ biggest health worry

Ipsos survey asked people in 31 countries what they thought of their health and healthcare

Mental health has overtaken cancer and obesity as the health problem most Britons worry about, a global survey has revealed.

Experts said the shift in the public’s perception reflected the sharp rise in recent years in mental ill-health caused by the Covid pandemic, the cost of living crisis and male violence against women.

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Only half of Americans plan to get Covid or flu vaccinations this year – study

Study also found that 37% who have gotten vaccines in the past do not plan on getting them this year

Less than half of Americans plan to get their Covid-19 vaccine this year, according to a new survey, and slightly more than half plan to get a flu shot.

In a new report released on Thursday, the Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center found that 37% of Americans have gotten vaccines in the past but do not plan to this year. The same percentage of respondents said they do not need any of the vaccines surveyed in the poll, including those against the flu, Covid-19, pneumococcal and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), the report stated.

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Tory health reforms left UK open to Covid calamity, says top doctor’s report

Britain’s pandemic response was among the worst and the NHS had been ‘seriously weakened’, says leading surgeon

Three reports lay bare scale of NHS malaise, but will Reeves fund a remedy?

Britain was hit far harder by the Covid-19 pandemic than other developed countries because the NHS had been “seriously weakened” by disastrous government policies over the preceding decade, a wide-ranging report will conclude this week.

An assessment of the NHS by the world-renowned surgeon Prof Ara Darzi, commissioned in July by the health secretary, Wes Streeting, will find that the health service reduced its “routine healthcare activity by a far greater percentage than other health systems” in many key areas during the Covid crisis.

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‘They’re about two years behind’: fears for children born during lockdown as they start at school

Covid’s world of masks and remote health visits has created a generation at risk of social and emotional difficulties

Babies born in 2020 started life in the strange world of lockdown in a small bubble of people with faces hidden behind masks. Social ­experiences, such as seeing extended family, trips to the playground or mother and baby groups, could not happen. And struggling public ­services meant infants were likely to miss out on face-to-face appointments with a health visitor who might have been able to spot developmental difficulties early.

Those babies are now four years old, and in England are arriving at school for the first time this week. Experts say teachers should be braced to encounter – and tackle – problems ranging from poor speech and language development to social and emotional difficulties.

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African nations hit by mpox still waiting for vaccines – despite promises by the west

Last week’s planned rollout of doses faces further delays as campaigners complain of greed and inequality

None of the African countries affected by the outbreak of a new variant of mpox have received any of the promised vaccine, pushing back a rollout that had been planned for last week.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been at the centre of an outbreak of the new clade 1b variant, with 18,000 suspected cases and 629 deaths this year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

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US repeating Covid mistakes with bird flu as spread raises alarm, experts say

Public health experts warn ‘overinflated view of abilities’ and restrictive laws could make next outbreak more lethal

The US is making the same mistakes with the H5N1 bird flu virus as with Covid, even as the highly pathogenic avian influenza continues spreading on American farms and raising alarms that it could mutate to become a pandemic, public health experts argue in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“We’re closing our eyes to both the Covid pandemic and to a potential nascent bird flu [pandemic] on the horizon,” said Gregg Gonsalves, associate professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health and co-author of the article. “Our ability to react swiftly and decisively is the big problem.”

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Fifty English secondary schools suspended more than a quarter of pupils after pandemic

Exclusive: Children in disadvantaged areas three times as likely to be sent away as pupils in wealthier places

Fifty secondary schools in England suspended more than a quarter of their students after the pandemic, with children at schools with the most disadvantaged pupils three times as likely to be suspended as those in wealthier areas, according to analysis by the Guardian.

The proportion of schools suspending large numbers of pupils has risen sharply since schools were closed to many children during Covid, and teachers have struggled with deteriorating behaviour since they reopened.

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Anthony Fauci recovering at home after hospitalization for West Nile virus

Former head of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease is expected to make a full recovery

Anthony Fauci is recovering at home from a West Nile virus infection, a spokesperson told news outlets on Saturday.

The former head of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease was hospitalized for six days with the virus. Fauci, 83, is expected to make a full recovery.

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Failure to deal with mpox outbreak ‘is risk not just to Africa but whole world’

Health leaders warn that global response to virus is test case for equity and preparation for future pandemics

A failure to show solidarity with African countries at the heart of the mpox outbreak will put the world at risk and harm preparations for future pandemics, health leaders have said.

The World Health Organization on Wednesday declared an international public health emergency in the face of rising cases that are spreading beyond the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where the virus is endemic.

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UK’s National Crime Agency says it is ‘not scared’ of PPE Medpro’s lawyers

Agency says long-running investigation into company run by Tory peer Michelle Mone’s husband will be concluded as quickly as possible

The National Crime Agency has said it is “not scared” of lawyers acting for PPE Medpro, the company led by the Conservative peer Michelle Mone’s husband, Doug Barrowman, and is progressing an investigation into it “as fast as we can”.

The NCA is conducting a long-running investigation into suspected criminal offences committed in the procurement by PPE Medpro of £203m of government contracts to supply personal protective equipment during the Covid pandemic.

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