Category Archives: England

Five babies in England reported dead after developing whooping cough

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Fears of biggest UK outbreak in two decades as 2,793 cases confirmed in first quarter of 2024

The UK may be experiencing its biggest outbreak of whooping cough in two decades, with five deaths reported among infants who developed the disease in England between January and March.

According to the latest data published by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) on Thursday, cases of whooping cough continue to increase, with 1,319 confirmed in March. This brings the total number of confirmed cases during the first quarter of 2024 to 2,793. The true number of cases is likely to be much higher though, because mild cases are easily confused with other respiratory illnesses in the early stages when the infection can be tested for.

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Woman who caused cyclist to fall into car’s path has manslaughter conviction quashed

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Auriol Grey, who waved and shouted at Celia Ward, should never have been charged over Cambridgeshire incident, her lawyers said

A woman who shouted and waved at a cyclist, causing her to fall into the path of a moving car, has had her manslaughter conviction overturned.

Auriol Grey, 50, was seen on CCTV shouting at the 77-year-old cyclist, Celia Ward, to “get off the fucking pavement” as she approached her in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, in October 2020.

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Guernica-style battle of Orgreave painting stars in miners’ strikes exhibition

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Bob Olley’s unsettling vision of clash between miners and police is part of 40th anniversary show in Bishop Auckland

Bob Olley was there 40 years ago at the “battle of Orgreave”. “I saw the violence,” he said, shaking his head. “I thought I was in a foreign country when I saw what the police did. It is hard to believe it happened in this country.”

The brutality he and others witnessed on 18 June 1984 as striking miners met 6,000 police officers on horses or wielding batons on foot will stay in the memory. It was in his head as, some years later, he embarked on his response to one of the world’s greatest artworks, Picasso’s Guernica.

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Labour ‘working to get support back’ after losing votes over Gaza stance

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Analysis shows almost 18% drop in party’s vote in areas of England where more than a fifth are Muslim

A senior Labour official has insisted the party wants better lives for Palestinian people as it prepares to shift its campaigning to win back voters opposing its position on Gaza.

Pat McFadden, the party’s national election coordinator, said it would “work to get people’s support back” as analysis showed that despite huge gains in council seats, seizing the West Midlands mayoralty, and Sadiq Khan, the Muslim mayor of London, winning a third term, there was an almost 18% drop in the Labour vote in areas of England where more than a fifth of people identified as Muslim.

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Mains water begins returning to 32,500 East Sussex properties after pipe burst

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Southern Water says supplies coming back to St Leonards-on-Sea and Hastings now that rupture in woodland area has been fixed

Water has started to return to more than 30,000 homes in East Sussex after a main burst three days ago.

Southern Water said in an update on Sunday afternoon that supplies were “gradually being restored” to about 32,5000 properties in St Leonards-on-Sea and Hastings.

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‘Promising signs’: Greens dominate in Bristol election

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As party narrowly misses out on overall majority, co-leader says it has won spread of urban and rural seats

The Greens are celebrating a spectacular win in Bristol, where it became by far the largest party, as it headed for a record number of councillors in local elections across England.

Party officials said they believed they were on track to finish with more than 800 members on more than 170 councils.

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Key points as local election results show major Tory losses

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With almost all council elections declared, Conservatives are on course to lose up to 500 seats

At the start of a long weekend of election results, the first outcomes have been every bit as dire for the Conservatives and Rishi Sunak as analysts had predicted. Here is the state of play.

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Local elections 2024: full council results for England

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Results from more than 100 English councils, as well as for several mayors, are announced. So far the Conservatives have lost control of several key councils but have won the Tees Valley mayoral contest. Find out what happened in your area

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Dorset auction house withdraws Egyptian human skulls from sale

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MP says trade in remains is ‘gross violation of human dignity’, as skulls from Pitt Rivers collection removed

An auction house has withdrawn 18 ancient Egyptian human skulls from sale after an MP said selling them would perpetuate the atrocities of colonialism.

Bell Ribeiro-Addy, the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Afrikan reparations, believes the sale of human remains for any purposes should be outlawed, adding that the trade was “a gross violation of human dignity”.

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Man detained by Home Office told he is being sent to Rwanda, says NGO

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Sudanese man being held in Croydon after arriving for routine sign-in believed to be first potential deportation under new law

An asylum seeker who turned up for a routine Home Office appointment on Monday was detained and told that he was being sent to Rwanda, an NGO has said.

In what is believed to be the first potential deportation case under the Rwanda scheme since Rishi Sunak’s bill received royal assent, the Sudanese man was held in Croydon, south London, the organisation Soas Detainee Support (SDS) told the Guardian.

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Slow 999 response times forcing many more people to find own way to A&E

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Figures for England obtained by Lib Dems show that 500,000 people in ‘very urgent’ need travelled to hospital without ambulance in 2023

Growing numbers of seriously ill people are making their own way to A&E in what has been called an “Uber ambulance crisis”, because 999 response times are too slow.

A&E doctors said that while they understood that people are acting out of “desperation”, they are taking a serious risk with their health, especially if they are driving themselves.

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Admit women or we quit, Sting and Stephen Fry tell Garrick

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In letter ahead of vote, signatories including Mark Knopfler say relations with female colleagues have been damaged

The musicians Sting and Mark Knopfler have co-signed a letter with leading theatre producers and actors, warning that they will be obliged to resign their memberships of the men-only Garrick Club if members refuse to approve a decision to admit women in a vote next Tuesday.

The letter, seen by the Guardian, was also signed by the actor Stephen Fry, the West End and Broadway theatre producer Karl Sydow, and Matthew Byam Shaw, an executive producer on The Crown television series and co-founder of Playful West End theatre production company.

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Father pays tribute to ‘daddy’s girl’ found dead at school before detention

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Caitlyn Scott-Lee, 16, is thought to have taken her own life the day before she was due to have her first ever detention

The father of an autistic schoolgirl who is believed to have taken her own life the day before she was due to have her first ever detention has paid tribute to his “daddy’s girl” at the inquest into her death.

Caitlyn Scott-Lee, 16, was found dead at Wycombe Abbey, a private school in Buckinghamshire where she boarded, on 21 April last year.

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

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Four Vietnamese nationals arrested in London over people smuggling

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Joint UK-French investigation alleges group advertised small-boat crossings of Channel on social media

Four Vietnamese nationals have been arrested in London after an investigation into alleged people smugglers advertising small-boat crossings of the Channel on Facebook.

The joint UK-French investigation alleges the group shared posts aimed at the Vietnamese community and charged migrants thousands of pounds to make the crossing.

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Reading terror attack deaths were avoidable, inquest finds

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Judge coroner highlights failings that contributed to three victims being killed by Khairi Saadallah in 2020

The deaths of three people during a terror attack in Reading were avoidable, an inquest has determined.

A judge coroner sitting at the Old Bailey on Friday said failings in intelligence sharing and in providing psychiatric care contributed to the failure to prevent the attack that took the lives of James Furlong, Dr David Wails and Joseph Ritchie-Bennett in June 2020.

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Teaching assistants routinely cover lessons in England and Wales, survey finds

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Exclusive: Research shows extent to which schools are struggling to provide qualified teachers for every class

Hundreds of thousands of pupils in England and Wales are being educated “on the cheap” by low-paid teaching assistants (TAs) covering lessons for teachers who are off sick or have quit, according to new research.

A desperate teacher recruitment crisis, compounded by inadequate funding, means schools across the country are struggling to put a qualified teacher at the front of every class, unions say.

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CAA cancels counter-protest against London pro-Palestinian march

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Campaign Against Antisemitism, led by Gideon Falter, cites safety fears and promises more protests to come

Campaign Against Antisemitism has cancelled its planned counter-protest against a pro-Palestinian march through central London on Saturday.

The group, led by Gideon Falter, had said it wanted to use the “walk together” initiative to support its view that the area around the planned pro-Palestinian march was not safe for Jewish people.

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Nurses in England took an average of one week off sick for stress last year, data shows

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Chronic workforce shortages have put nursing staff under unbearable pressure, says union chief

Nurses in England took an average of a week off sick last year because of stress, anxiety or depression, NHS figures reveal.

The disclosure has prompted concern that the intense strains nurses face in their jobs, including low pay and understaffing, are damaging their mental health and causing many to quit.

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England childcare scheme may struggle to deliver places, finds ‘damning’ report

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Watchdog says only a third of local authorities are confident they will have enough places for September

The deployment of the government’s childcare scheme to tens of thousands more families is facing “significant uncertainties” and may struggle to meet its own targets, according to a report by Whitehall’s spending watchdog.

The National Audit Office revealed the Department for Education (DfE) had assessed the likelihood of being able to deliver the funded childcare places it promised for September 2024 and 2025 as “amber/red problematic”.

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Ethnic minorities in England ‘need more GP visits’ before cancer diagnosis

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One in five people on average need at least three interactions – but for ethnic minorities figure rises to one in three

Ethnic minorities and young people require more visits than other people to the GP before being diagnosed with cancer, according to new analysis.

On average, one in five people across England require three or more GP interactions before being diagnosed with cancer. But for people from ethnic minority backgrounds, the figure rises to one in three, according to analysis of the NHS cancer patient experience 2022 survey by QualityWatch, a joint programme from the Nuffield Trust and the Health Foundation.

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