Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
The speed at which effective Covid-19 vaccines have come through to authorisation has caused surprise. Compared with previous vaccines, the process has been very fast and so, naturally, people are asking how can it have happened without some kind of compromise on standards and care. Explaining it all as simply a result of the wonders of the latest scientific advances seems vague. So how has it actually come about? In reality, there are at least 10 reasons: some are about good planning, some good science and some just good luck.
New lockdowns are set to be introduced in Scotland and Northern Ireland, while restrictions that were eased for Christmas Day in Wales will be reimposed on Saturday.
Centre for Economics and Business Research says it expects this to happen half a decade sooner than it forecast a year ago
China will overtake the US as the world’s biggest economy before the end of the decade after outperforming its rival during the global Covid-19 pandemic, according to a report.
The Centre for Economics and Business Research said that it nowexpected the value of China’s economy when measured in dollars to exceed that of the US by 2028, half a decade sooner than it expected a year ago.
Experts across Europe, from Berlin to Paris and Rome, will now pore over the 1,246-page text, although much of it is well-known in the capitals and there is little doubt that the agreement will be signed off.
Five cases of the new coronavirus variant spreading fast across the UK have been found in Japan, and Russia has become the latest country to impose stricter quarantine on travellers from Britain.
Japan has avoided the huge infection numbers seen in countries from the US to Europe, but cases are rising sharply and daily numbers passed 3,000 for the first time this month.
Americans, Canadians and Britons among those lured by campaign to attract foreign tech workers
Finland has received more than 5,300 applications in a month for a groundbreaking scheme offering foreign tech workers and their families the chance to relocate to the Nordic country for 90 days to see if they want to make the move permanent.
“We’re not top of many relocation lists, but we know once people do come, they tend to stay,” said Johanna Huurre, of Helsinki Business Hub which devised the campaign. “There’s huge competition globally for talent, so we had to think creatively.”
Changes in composition and production of saliva as people grow older appears to intensify perception of aromas
Just as a bottle of wine improves with age, so may our ability to pick out the subtleties of its scent. Changes in the composition of our saliva and how much of it we produce appears to intensify our perception of smokey and peppery aromas in red wine, new research suggests.
The findings could lead to the development of wines that are more tailored toward specific groups of consumers. “We could diversify winemaking production to make more enjoyable wines based on consumers’ physiologies,” said Maria Ángeles del Pozo Bayón, of theSpanish Research Council’s Institute of Food Science and Research in Madrid, who led the research.
City’s murals of Maradona have become pilgrimage sites since footballer’s death in November
A month since the death of Diego Armando Maradona and the southern Italian city of Naples is looking more like a Maradonaland each day.
After renaming Napoli football club’s San Paolo Stadium and a train station in his honour this month, local authorities are planning a large museum, commissioning statues and dedicating an entire square to the Argentinian who took the city’s football team to glory and is regarded as one of the greatest players of all time.
Uganda has never acknowledged the sporting legacy of athlete ‘Sunlight’ Okiror. Almost 30 years after his death, his son hopes this might change
My father, Samson “Sunlight” Okiror, lived an extraordinary life. He was a soldier, a rebel and one of Uganda’s most famous sportsmen.
A wrestler and heavyweight lifter, he could lift a car off the ground. He could tie a rope to a Land Rover and stop it from moving when the engine was turned on. He could stretch steel chains and springs. He travelled across east Africa and to Europe to train and perform.
Last-minute agreement assessed as either a welcome economic boost or a bad move in a world that has become dominated by uncertainty
Britain should be congratulated for coming to a Brexit deal with the EU, but be wary of the very different world they are walking into, international analysts have said.
Outside Europe, politicians, experts, and media took a short break from Christmas and the pandemic to welcome the end of Britain’s long and torturous Brexit process, but there was little in the way of celebration.
Judge dismissed Depp’s libel claim last month but actor seeks new trial over assault allegations
Johnny Depp “did not receive a fair trial” and the high court ruling that stated he assaulted his ex-wife Amber Heard and put her in fear for her life is “plainly wrong”, lawyers for the Hollywood star have told the court of appeal.
The 57-year-old sued the Sun over a column by its executive editor, Dan Wootton, which referred to “overwhelming evidence” that he had attacked Heard, 34, during their relationship and described him as a “wife beater”.
Dhawan casts his son Varun in the role made famous in 1995 by Govinda, but little effort has been made to acknowledge the quarter-century since
It’s a tale of two Bollywoods this Christmas. Over at Netflix, Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane, representing Indian film’s modernising wing, have engineered the sharp and knowing meta-thriller AK vs AK. Here on Amazon Prime Video meanwhile, you can watch veteran comedy director David Dhawan renew his IP rights on Coolie No 1, previously a hit 1995 vehicle for the Sandwell-born funnyman Govinda. Even the latter’s most devout fans would probably concede the original left room for improvements, but that’s something Dhawan appears unfussed about. This Coolie updates a few reference points and replaces Govinda with latter-day hunk Varun Dhawan – the director’s son – then surrounds him with antiquated players and playing, part of a frenetic attempt to pretend the last 30 years never happened.
The plot – lowly railway porter (Dhawan) is hired to woo a society belle (Sara Ali Khan) as part of a conspiracy to disgrace her family – remains familiar and predictable. The most immediate contrast with the original is a result of the casting. Rather too obviously a handsome, cardio-trained leading man schlubbing down for (not many) easy laughs, Dhawan Jr bounds onscreen with boyish enthusiasm, but trails a lingering note of condescension – and Dhawan Sr was evidently too busy remembering how best to smash his supporting actors in the gonads to direct anyone. Khan, sadly, is stranded on balconies looking fetchingly concerned while the men below determine her character’s destiny. In this, Coolie 2020 really does seem so last century.
Reptiles often become immobile in chilly weather and can plummet from trees though they are still alive
With unexpectedly cold weather forecast and pandemic-related curfews in some places, Florida is about to have a Christmas unlike any other – and it may involve falling iguanas.
Donald Trump went to his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida on Thursday, after claiming to be “working tirelessly for the American people” with a schedule that included “many meetings and calls”. Back in Washington, a Democratic proposal to increase direct payments to Americans under the Covid relief bill, from $600 to $2,000, was blocked.
Mosque beset by difficulties finally to allow in worshippers thanks to relaxation of Greece’s Covid restrictions
Christmas has been greeted with enthusiasm by Muslim worshippers in Athens after the modern Greek capital’s first official mosque – forced to close only days after its inauguration in November – was told it could reopen for the holiday.
Relaxation of a national lockdown to enable Greek Orthodox faithful to attend mass on Christmas Day means the mosque will also be able to operate.
Boris Johnson is confident he can sell the trade deal to Brexiters, according to the FT (paywall).
Sebastian Payne and George Parker report that Downing Street has been preparing the ground for weeks with the ERG, ensuring that senior backbenchers were aware of the shape of things to come and compromises being made.
Senior members of the group have already welcomed Johnson’s imminent deal as the “Christmas Eve Agreement”, a reference to the 1998 Belfast Good Friday Agreement that secured peace in Northern Ireland.
Indications from senior figures within the ERG suggest that many of its members will accept the compromises negotiated by Johnson and Lord Frost.
If they want help from the party to stay in parliament, then they’ll back the deal.
In case you’re just joining us, the final stage of the negotiations for a post-Brexit trade deal has been delayed after it emerged that the European commission was using out-of-date figures to calculate the reduction in the amount of fish that member states can catch in British waters after 1 January.
A deal was due to be announced early this morning but the announcement had to be postponed when officials noticed a discrepancy between two sets of fishing figures and realised that the numbers used in the negotiation appeared to be out of date.
People urged to turn off TVs and make noise during address, after rough year for royal family
Anti-monarchists in Spain are calling for noisy protests to drown out the king’s annual Christmas speech, urging people to turn off their televisions, bang on pots and pans or blast republican tunes, as the Spanish royal family seeks to turn the page on one of its most tumultuous years in recent history.
“There will be all sorts of protests by various collectives,” José Manuel García, of the republican group Encuentro Estatal por la República, told the news site Diario Público.
Richard and Mayumi Heene claimed son had floated away to try to get reality TV show
The husband and wife who pleaded guilty to criminal charges for staging the 2009 “balloon boy” hoax, in which they created a global media sensation with a false report that their son had floated away in a makeshift dirigible, have been pardoned by Colorado’s governor.
In granting executive clemency to Richard and Mayumi Heene, Governor Jared Polis said the couple, now 59 and 56, had paid their debt to society for a “spectacle” that wasted law enforcement time and resources.
Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a suspect in US journalist’s 2002 killing, had conviction overturned this year
A court in Pakistan has ordered that a British-born Islamist militant charged with the 2002 kidnapping and murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl should be freed, his defence lawyer has said.
Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh was sentenced to death in 2002 for masterminding Pearl’s murder but the conviction was overturned this year. He has been in jail ever since awaiting the outcome of a series of appeals and legal arguments.