Category Archives: England

England hit with stadium fan ban for Wembley disorder

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  • Uefa rules on ugly scenes at Euro 2020 final in July
  • No England fans to be allowed at Nations League game

England will be forced to play behind closed doors at Wembley after the Football Association was punished for a “lack of order and discipline” in and around the national stadium during the Euro 2020 final.

Alongside a two-match crowd ban, with the second suspended for a probationary period of two years, Uefa ordered the Football Association to pay a fine of €100,000 (£84,500). The ban will come into effect on England’s next competitive Uefa fixture, which is set to be the opening home game of their 2022-23 Nations League campaign.

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Psychosis cases soar in England as pandemic hits mental health

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75% rise in referrals for first suspected episode of psychosis between April 2019 and April 2021

Cases of psychosis have soared over the past two years in England as an increasing number of people experience hallucinations and delusional thinking amid the stresses of the Covid-19 pandemic.

There was a 75% increase in the number of people referred to mental health services for their first suspected episode of psychosis between April 2019 and April 2021, NHS data shows.

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Coronavirus live: 1.1m in UK estimated to have long Covid; Finland to pause Moderna jab for men under 30

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Official figures suggest 1.7% of the population have long-Covid symptoms, Finnish decision comes after similar moves in Sweden and Denmark

A quick snap from Reuters reports that Uzbekistan has started producing the Russian-developed Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine domestically in a joint project with Russia. The nation already manufactures the Chinese-developed ZF-UZ-VAC2001 vaccine on its territory.

Just a little more from the UK’s education secretary and former vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi here. As part of his media round this morning he told ITV’s Good Morning Britain “My pledge to your viewers and the country, as the prime minister pledged, is children will catch up by the end of this Parliament. By next month, I’ll have the first cut of the evaluation of the tutoring programme, but it already looks good.”

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England urged to step up vaccinations to avoid winter Covid surge

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Prof Neil Ferguson calls for booster rollout and teenagers’ second jabs to be accelerated to ease NHS pressure

The distribution of Covid boosters for the most vulnerable people and second shots of vaccine for teenagers should be accelerated to help prevent a winter surge of coronavirus overburdening the NHS, a senior scientist has said.

Prof Neil Ferguson, the head of the influential disease modelling group at Imperial College London, said England’s vaccine strategy had been “cautious” in recent months, with many teenagers having only one jab, and boosters for the most vulnerable people given no sooner than six months after their second dose.

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‘A bit of a mystery’: why hospital admissions for Covid in England are going down

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Analysis: Experts say it is first time since start of pandemic that sustained decline is recorded out of lockdown

In early September, outbreak modelling for the government’s Sage advisers showed Covid hospitalisations had the potential to soar. If people rushed back to work and resumed all the socialising they had put on hold, the number of daily admissions in England could peak at 7,000 within six weeks. It was, in effect, a worst-case scenario, barring a dramatic waning of immunity or a troublesome new variant.

The optimistic scenario looked very different. Assuming a more gradual return to normality, the modelling had daily Covid hospitalisations rising slowly and slightly, topping out at nearly 2,000, before falling again in November. Now, even that looks overly gloomy. Over the past fortnight, hospitalisations have fallen in England, even as schools and offices reopened.

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Male life expectancy in UK drops for first time in 40 years as Covid takes toll

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Estimates for women broadly unchanged, with a girl born in 2018-20 likely to live for 82.9 years

Life expectancy for men in the UK has fallen for the first time since current records began 40 years ago because of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, figures show.

A boy born between 2018 and 2020 is expected to live until he is 79 years old, down from 79.2 for the period of 2015-17, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

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England’s Covid travel rules spark outrage around the world

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Refusal to recognise vaccines given across Latin America, Africa and south Asia has been denounced as ‘discriminatory’

England’s Covid travel rules and refusal to recognise vaccines administered across huge swaths of the world have sparked outrage and bewilderment across Latin America, Africa and south Asia, with critics denouncing what they called an illogical and discriminatory policy.

The transport secretary, Grant Shapps, described England’s rules, unveiled last Friday, as “a new simplified system for international travel”. “The purpose is to make it easier for people to travel,” Shapps said.

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Holiday homes for disabled people face closure due to England’s vaccines mandate

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Charity says Covid policy is having ‘devastating consequences’ for sector already in crisis

Some of England’s only holiday homes for disabled people in care are facing closure due to the policy that means all staff must be fully vaccinated against coronavirus.

The charity, Revitalise, said England’s vaccines mandate for care homes was having “devastating consequences” for a sector already in crisis.

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Scientists investigate hundreds of guillemot deaths on UK coastline

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Seabird carcasses discovered along Northumberland, North Yorkshire and Scottish shores, with many more found emaciated

Several hundred seabirds have been found dead along the coasts of north-east England and Scotland, while many have been discovered emaciated.

The UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), which is investigating the cause of the deaths, said the majority of the birds were guillemots.

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Half-term holiday bookings expected to surge after England scraps amber list

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Traffic-light system replaced, with foreign countries now listed as either ‘red’ or OK for travel

Half-term holiday bookings are expected to surge after ministers unveiled a simplification of Covid foreign travel rules, replacing the traffic-light system with a single red list and bringing in a laxer regime for tests.

But while MPs and some travel groups welcomed the new system, airlines voiced anger that fully vaccinated travellers returning to England will still have to take a test after they return, even if this will be changed to a cheaper lateral flow version.

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Raheem Sterling on target as England rise above abuse to rout Hungary

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It was an evening when, yet again, England had more than mere footballing problems thrown at them. It started with a hail of plastic cups, first for Raheem Sterling and then Luke Shaw, from the diehard Hungary supporters behind one of the goals, and it escalated to a firework – which was hurled in the wake of Harry Maguire’s header for 3-0.

England’s players were celebrating as a group and it was a mighty relief that it missed its target, fizzing for a while before burning out. And then in the closing stages came the low point that everybody had dreaded.

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Take-up of second Covid jab in England levelling off

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Concern as scientists say vaccinating adults is more important than inoculating children or booster shots

Hundreds of thousands of people have failed to come forward for their second Covid jab, official data shows, as scientists warned that improving uptake among adults is more crucial than moving on to children’s vaccines or booster shots.

Experts have repeatedly emphasised the need to receive both doses of the coronavirus vaccines as the second jab greatly increases protection against Covid.

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Covid cases in England are 26 times higher than a year ago

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Pressure grows to begin booster jabs for the vulnerable and extend vaccinations to younger teenagers

Coronavirus infections in England are now 26 times the levels that were experienced this time last year, according to the Office for National Statistics. Scientists described the figures as “sobering”.

They warned that the reopening of schools in England this week was likely to trigger further rises in Covid cases – with more to follow when students return to universities and colleges. A fresh wave of infections could, in turn, lead to new social restrictions being imposed as winter approaches.

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Tom Cruise’s car stolen while filming in Birmingham

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Mission: Impossible star’s belongings reportedly missing from his BMW X7 when recovered in Smethwick

The Hollywood actor Tom Cruise’s BMW was stolen while he was filming in Birmingham.

The BMW X7 had been used to ferry around the star, who has been in the city filming scenes for the seventh instalment in the Mission: Impossible series.

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Gareth Southgate: I got more abuse for vaccine video than managing England

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  • Manager was abused for encouraging young people to get jab
  • Southgate says some players have ‘really suffered’ with Covid

Gareth Southgate has revealed that he received more abuse for recording a video urging young people to have a Covid-19 vaccination than he did for his management of England during their run to the final of Euro 2020.

England’s manager, who handed Leeds United’s Patrick Bamford his first call-up when he named his squad for next month’s World Cup qualifiers against Hungary, Poland and Andorra, admitted he is worried about misinformation on social media convincing some footballers not to have the jab.

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LED streetlights decimating moth numbers in England

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‘Eco-friendly’ lights found to be worse than sodium ones – but both contribute to insect decline, says study

“Eco-friendly” LED streetlights produce even worse light pollution for insects than the traditional sodium bulbs they are replacing, a study has found.

The abundance of moth caterpillars in hedgerows by rural roads in England was 52% lower under LED lights and 41% lower under sodium lights when compared with nearby unlit areas.

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Meat-rich diet of 14th-century monks caused digestive issues, research finds

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Change in papal law in 1336 to allow twice-weekly consumption caused problems at Muchelney Abbey

It may have seemed a good day for medieval monks when a papal decree allowed them to start eating meat including mutton, beef, pork and venison. It was not so good for their bowels.

Research by English Heritage sheds light on the day-to-day lives and digestive troubles of monks at Muchelney Abbey in Somerset – in particular the consequence of a change in papal law, in 1336, which permitted the twice-weekly consumption of meat from four-legged animals.

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Plymouth shooting: police urged to take misogyny more seriously

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Gunman who killed five regularly expressed hatred of women but had firearms licence reinstated in July

Police must start taking misogyny more seriously in order to prevent more tragedies such as that in Plymouth, a top prosecutor has said, after a man who had regularly expressed his hatred of women killed five people and wounded two more.

Nazir Afzal, who was previously chief crown prosecutor for north-west England, said Jake Davison should have been on a police watchlist.

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Banksy confirms he is behind British seaside ‘spraycation’ artworks

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Anonymous artist posts Instagram video charting his coastal tour in an ageing camper van

Banksy has confirmed that he is indeed the author of a number of works that have appeared recently in seaside towns on the UK east coast.

An Instagram video clip, just over three minutes long called “A Great British Spraycation”, shows the elusive artist taking a summer road trip in a beaten-up camper van with cans of spray paint stashed inside a cooler.

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Plymouth shooting: five killed named by police, including gunman’s mother Maxine Davison – latest updates

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Man suspected of killing five people, including a child, before turning a gun on himself named as Jake Davison

Jake Davison’s mother Maxine was in Plymouth and was from a large family.

Neighbours said Jake has a brother and a sister.

The prime minister, Boris Johnson, said the issue of how the Plymouth attacker, Jake Davison, came to legally own a gun should be “properly investigated”.

He described the shooting as an “absolutely appalling” incident.

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