Markus Andrews

Boris Johnson will lead a press conference today, amid growing fears about the spread of the Indian variant of Covid-19, particularly in ‘hotspots’ in the north west of England.He will be joined by Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, at 5pm – as calls are made for “surge vaccinations” of all younger adults in areas with the highest numbers of cases.The press conference comes just three days before England reaches step 3 of the roadmap for lifting the lockdown – when pubs and restaurants will be able to serve customers indoors and families allowed to hug.Mr Johnson’s spokesman hinted that surge vaccines are being planned in hotspots, saying: “I can’t get ahead of the prime minister, you will hear from him yourself later this afternoon.”On Monday’s go-ahead, he said: “We’ve announced the changes that are taking place on Monday and the prime minister said yesterday himself he expects they will go ahead.”The number of cases of the Indian variant in the UK has more than doubled in a week, from 520 to 1,313 – amid evidence it is more infectious.And it has now been revealed that four people have died in the UK after becoming infected with the variant, the first known deaths in this country.The government has said there is “no firm evidence yet to show this variant has any greater impact on severity of disease or evades the vaccine”.The public health director in Blackburn has protested after its attempt to vaccinate all over-18s from next week was blocked by the government.“I am furious, I cannot understand why JCVI [Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation] or the Department of Health and Social Care are stopping local directors of public health from taking the action they know will halt this surge,” said Professor Dominic Harrison.“At the moment, the government is tying one hand behind my back with responding to the clear risk we have got in our local authority area – but also the clear risk to the wider North West region. It seems entirely illogical.”Asked about the clash, and whether the JCVI was required to give the go-ahead to changing vaccination criteria, Downing Street said its job is to “advise”.“Throughout the vaccination programme, we have accepted their advice and we have rolled out the vaccinations accordingly,” the spokesman said.Earlier, a Covid expert said the final stage of lockdown easing – planned for 21 June – is “in doubt” because of the rising threat.Microbiologist Professor Paul Hunter said there could be a “huge number of cases by June” and warned a rise in infections and hospitalisations in the elderly and vulnerable might force plans to change.But Nadhim Zahawi, the vaccines minister, said so-called step 4 of the roadmap would go ahead, provided the government’s four tests have been met.They are; a successful vaccination programme, that jabs are reducing hospitalisations and deaths, that the NHS is not being overwhelmed and that new dangerous Covid variants are not taking root.Infection rates are at their lowest level since last September, although there are still around 2,000 new cases across the UK every day. More

A judge in Sicily has dismissed a case against right-wing leader Matteo Salvini for keeping rescued migrants on board a coast guard ship in 2019, saying no crime had been committed. Salvini had faced a possible indictment in the Sicilian port of Catania on charges of kidnapping for not allowing the migrants to disembark for five days that summer while he was interior minister.Prosecutors had earlier recommended against ordering a trial, saying Salvini was carrying out government policy. Salvini defended his actions, adamant that other European Union nations must accept migrants who are trying to reach Europe and brought to Italian shores by rescue ships, and not leave Italy to manage on its own. Salvini welcomed the decision, thanking supporters. “It is a beautiful day, not only for me and my family, but for all Italians who want a controlled, regulated and positive immigration, and not thousands of arrivals that in this post-COVID summer we cannot permit,” Salvini said on Italian private radio. While the Catania case was dismissed, the leader of the right-wing League will face trial in the Sicilian capital of Palermo on kidnapping charges for failure to let a Spanish migrant rescue ship dock in 2019. The rescue ship, Open Arms, was kept at sea for days with 147 people saved in the central Mediterranean Sea. Trial is set to begin Sept. 15. Italy this month is again seeing high numbers of arrivals on its southernmost island of Lampedusa. More than 2,100 people arrived over the weekend alone, as human traffickers took advantage of calm seas to launch often unseaworthy boats packed with migrants toward Italy.___Follow AP’s global migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration More

Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser Dominic Cummings has shared calls from scientists for the government to delay lockdown easing over the “surge” in Covid cases linked to the Indian variant.The ex-Downing Street strategist used social media to point to the warnings from independent experts that lifting curbs now risked a third wave taking hold in the UK.Prof Christina Pagel, a member of the Independent Sage group, said the alarming rate at which the variant was spreading should delay the next stage of lockdown easing on 17 May.Mr Cummings shared a separate message from an expert saying the “precautionary principle” should be heeded – even if there was only a small chance Prof Pagel was correct.Timothy Gowers, a director of research at the University of Cambridge, tweeted: “Even if there’s only a 20 per cent chance that Prof Pagel is right, the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the roadmap.”Mr Cummings is set to answer questions about his dealings with Mr Johnson – and internal clashes over lockdown policy – at a parliamentary inquiry into the handling of the Covid crisis on 26 May.The strategist is believed to have advised his boss last autumn to bring a “circuit breaker” lockdown to avoid a second wave taking hold in the winter.Mr Cummings launched a searing attack on the prime minister in a blog post last month – calling for an “urgent parliamentary inquiry into the government’s conduct over the Covid crisis”.He said he thought Mr Johnson had fallen “far below” the standards of “competence” that the country deserves.While Downing Street has rejected the idea that the lockdown easing scheduled for Monday would be postponed, ministers have suggested that the plan to lift more restrictions on 21 June could be delayed.Boris Johnson is due to give a Covid press conference at Downing Street on Friday evening. Earlier, vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi said new local lockdowns or even national restrictions were still possible.“We have got to break the cycle of infection, because one of those big tests was infection rates have to be suppressed, and the other big test is variants,” he told LBC on Friday.The minister added: “If those cause a problem, then the tests will fail. The four tests have to be met for June 21.”There are 1,313 confirmed cases of the B16172 variant, Public Health England confirmed on Thursday – with the number of infections almost tripling over the past week.Surge testing is taking place in hotspot areas, with the majority of cases in the north west, mainly in Bolton, Sefton in Merseyside, Blackburn in Lancashire, and London.Scientists have calling for “surge vaccinations” to be rolled out in pasts of England that have seen a spike in cases linked to the variant. Experts believed that widening the roll-out in certain areas could help to slow down rising transmission rates. More

Northern Ireland’s largest British unionist party was choosing a new leader Friday, in a contest with two candidates and only 36 voters.The Democratic Unionist Party senior partner in Northern Ireland’s Catholic-Protestant power-sharing government, was choosing a replacement for Arlene Foster who quit as leader and first minister last month amid recriminations over the impact of Brexit.Only the party’s eight lawmakers in the British Parliament and 26 Northern Ireland Assembly members can vote in the contest between Northern Ireland Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots and lawmaker Jeffrey Donaldson. The result is due late Friday afternoon.A party rooted in the fundamentalist Free Presbyterian Church, the DUP opposed Northern Ireland’s 1999 peace accord, but later became reconciled to it and agreed to share power with the Irish Republican Army-linked party Sinn Fein The power-sharing relationship has often been rocky, and the Belfast administration was suspended for almost three years from 2017 after it collapsed over a botched green energy project.Britain’s economic split from the European Union at the end of 2020 has further shaken the political balance in Northern Ireland, a part of the U.K. where some people identify as British and some as Irish. Post-Brexit trade rules have imposed customs and border checks on some goods moving between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K. The arrangement was designed to avoid checks between Northern Ireland and Ireland, an EU member, because an open Irish border has helped underpin the peace process that ended decades of violence in Northern Ireland.The new arrangements have angered Northern Ireland’s British unionists, who say the new checks amount to a border in the Irish Sea, weaken ties with the rest of the U.K. and could bolster calls for Irish reunification.Tensions over the new rules were a contributing factor to a week of street violence in Northern Ireland cities last month that saw youths pelt police with bricks, fireworks and firebombs.Foster faced the wrath of party members for backing the divorce agreement that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson struck with the EU. She quit amid a party push to oust her, saying she would remain as DUP leader until May 28 and as first minister until the end of June. Of the two contenders to replace her, Donaldson is considered a pragmatist. Poots is a Christian fundamentalist and believer in creationism whose conservative views on social issues echo those of the DUP’s founder, the late Rev. Ian Paisley, but are far outside the U.K. political mainstream. More

The BBC has been criticised for featuring a GB News presenter on Question Time before the news network has even launched.The former Brexit Party candidate and Apprentice winner Michelle Dewberry appeared on the public broadcaster’s flagship political programme on Thursday night.Many on social media questioned why the BBC was “platforming” GB News before it was even on air, while others questioned why Ms Dewberry appeared rather than a Lib Dem or Green Party figure.The author and journalist Michael Crick said: “I wonder what Ofcom will make of Michelle Dewberry, a new GB News presenter, speaking on BBC Question Time as if she was still a Brexit Party candidate.”Ms Dewberry clashed with Labour’s shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy over Brexit and Labour’s recent local election defeats on last night’s programme.Ms Nandy said: “Let me say this to you Michelle as well, I’ve been elected four times in the last decade by working class people in Wigan. How many times have you been elected?”The GB News presenter responded: “I have not been elected once but I tell you what if it wasn’t for people like me, the Brexit party at the last election, there would have been way fewer Labour MPs than there are now and this is one of the problems.”The former reality TV star also claimed: “[Labour] see a lot of Brexiteers as racist xenophobic idiots,” which Ms Nandy rejected as “absolutely not true”.Ms Dewberry, the unsuccessful candidate for Nigel Farage’s party in Hull in 2019, is set to appear five nights a week on a primetime GB News programme.GB News chiefs have warned against “false imagining” of the channel as a British version of the opinion-led, right-wing US network Fox News.However, a series of recent appointments suggest right-wing political voices will feature heavily at the soon-to-launch outlet, chaired by former BBC presenter Andrew Neil.Tom Harwood, senior reporter at the Guido Fawkes website, has joined the political team. Dan Wootton, Talk Radio presenter and former executive editor at The Sun, will be one of GB News’ on-air presenters.And Alex Phillips, a former Brexit Party MEP who is also a contributor to The Telegraph, will co-host a weekday programme on GB News.In February Mr Neil attacked a left-wing social media campaign, using the hashtag #DontFundGBNews, which targeted potential GB News advertisers and asked them not to partner with the channel.“The woke warriors trying to stir up an advertising boycott of GB News, a channel that hasn’t even started broadcasting, are hilarious,” the former BBC interviewer tweeted. More

Angela Rayner has warned Labour will be out of power “for a very long time” unless it ends its civil war and acknowledged the appeal of Boris Johnson’s “spicy authenticity” to voters.Days after a bitter clash with Keir Starmer over her role at the top of the party, the deputy leader admitted he does “cheese me off now and again”, but insisted: “The bond hasn’t been broken.”Ms Rayner said the Hartlepool by-election had been lost “before we even picked a candidate”, because voters’ mistrust of Labour runs so deep.And, in what will be seen as a swipe at Sir Keir’s cautious style, she warned that dull “magnolia politics” will never bring the party back to power.“I call it ‘magnolia politics’. Let’s not offend anyone, and have no opinion on anything. I think all parties were a bit [guilty] of that,” she told the Politico website. “And Boris just sort of cut through that.”Acknowledging the appeal of the prime minister’s “authenticity”, she added: “The Angie Rayner at 18 would have liked someone a bit spicy, and willing to throw a grenade in –that’s why we like soaps, isn’t it?“We like a bit of argy bargy, or someone who is going to upset what the norm is.”On Labour’s plight – after four successive general election defeats – Ms Rayner said the party had enjoyed some successes last week away from the by-election debacle. But she said: “There is a small group that get the headlines that are just in a power struggle. And that’s nonsense – because we’re not in power in Westminster!“And we won’t be in power in Westminster for a very long time, until we start realising that we look like bald men fighting over combs.”She added: “I think it’s an emotional shift away from Labour that takes time to get back.“We can’t just say, ‘OK, we’ve got a different leader – now vote for us’. It takes a lot longer to earn that respect back.”Ms Rayner also spoke about her poverty-stricken childhood and how the challenges she faced as a single mother at 16 have made her more resilient.“When these people are crying over a bad headline or something, I’m like – get a grip” she said.“Do you know how hard it is when your kid comes home and they say they need shoes, and you literally feel like your whole world has melted?”She added: “You’re absolutely bricking it, because you’re like – what I’m going to do? I can’t borrow anymore.…I already owe money there. Thatis real fear.“When it’s in your stomach, and it literally makes you feel sick, because you don’t know how you’re going to get to the end of the week. Not a bad headline: Get over yourselves!” More

Plans to further lift coronavirus in restrictions in June could be delayed by the spread of a new more virulent variant from India, the government has indicated.It comes as a leading viral disease expert raised doubts over whether restrictions could be eased in line with the government’s roadmap.Professor Paul Hunter from the University of East Anglia’s Norwich Medical School said step four was “in doubt” and there could be a “huge number of cases” by June at the current rate of increase.”I think the big question is how many of people who are getting the Indian variant will end up requiring hospitalisation,” he told BBC Radio 4.”And at the moment the hospitalisation rate doesn’t seem to be increasing yet, although if this becomes much more common we’ll almost certainly see some increase, so I think it’s certainly a concern.”I think the step four is in doubt in June now, but we really need to see what impact it has on severe disease before we can really be certain.”Under step four all legal restrictions on social contact would be removed – reopening nightclubs for the first time since the start of the pandemic, and lifting restrictions on live events and performances.Public Health England has recorded 1,313 UK cases of the India variant, with the Thursday figures more than double the 520 cases recorded up to 5 May.The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has said there is “no firm evidence yet to show this variant has any greater impact on severity of disease or evades the vaccine”.But ministers have suggested vaccinations could be brought forward and reallocated to the worst-hit areas to try to minimise the spread and impact of the variant.

I think the step four is in doubt in June now, but we really need to see what impact it has on severe disease before we can really be certainProfessor Paul Hunter, UEAAnd a minister on Friday morning said new local lockdowns or further national restrictions were on the table to control the situation.Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi on Friday morning told LBC radio: “We have got to break the cycle of infection, because one of those big tests was infection rates have to be suppressed, and the other big test is variants.“If those cause a problem, then the tests will fail. The four tests have to be met for June 21.”Asked why a delay in lifting restrictions could be necessary, Professor Hunter added: “Well, because if the epidemic continues to increase, if the Indian variant of the epidemic continues to increase at the same rate as it has over recent weeks, we’re going to have a huge number of cases by June.”The issue though is that because it seems to be spreading in unvaccinated younger people at the moment and not yet that much more active in older people maybe we’ll be able to weather it and we’ll still be able to have the step four in June.”But if that increases cases in elderly and starts to increase hospitalisations, and puts pressure on the NHS again then I think step four would be in doubt.”The disease expert cast doubt on whether reallocating vaccines would be effective, stating that the “downside” was “who do you take the vaccines from”. “It does take a couple of weeks to work, so if you’re moving vaccines away from areas where they currently don’t have much Indian variant and that is increasing, by the time you start getting round to vaccinating that group again when maybe the epidemic, the Indian variant, is increasing rapidly again, probably you might well have been able to stop that if you hadn’t diverted vaccine to surge areas,” he explained.Asked whether local lockdowns as seen last year were being considered, Mr Zahawi said “we will take nothing off the table”.He told BBC Breakfast: “Over a year of dealing with this pandemic suggests that the most effective way of dealing with this, because we have had such a successful vaccination programme, is the surge testing by postcode, the genome sequencing and isolation, so that is our focus, that is our priority.”But we will take nothing off the table, whether it is regional or national further measures that we would need to take, we will deal with this.” More

Ministers are taking action to cut the number of slaughterhouse animals killed without stunning, the animal-welfare minister says.Zac Goldsmith told The Independent the government was taking several steps to tackle the practice, which is condemned by the British Veterinary Association as causing needless suffering and distress.No-stun slaughter in abattoirs is done to meet requirements of Jewish and Muslim faiths, under which an animal’s blood is drained while it is still conscious.Some Muslims accept stunning if it renders the animal unconscious without killing it, but others refuse to accept stunning, so hundreds of thousands of animals a week have their throats cut while still awake.It’s estimated halal consumers account for about 20 per cent of all UK sheep meat consumption.But some meat from unstunned animals also goes into the food chain for non-religious consumers.Lord Goldsmith said: “There is a range of measures we are going to be taking.“We want to be respectful towards different religions and religious practices but we also want to tackle what is clearly an animal-welfare issue.“And we think we can do so and can do so quickly.”He said ministers were working with interested parties in the hope of reaching a consensus on action.He said an initiative launched by the NFU called the “demonstration of life” protocol could show the Muslim community it was possible to apply a stun so that the animal would recover if it was allowed to. “So far progress has been promising,” he said.Officials could also try to reduce excess numbers of sheep killed without stunning. “Nearly 30 per cent of sheep are killed without stunning, and that’s clearly not a reflection of domestic demand.“There are also issues around exports and around slaughter without stunning on spec that we can address,” he added.Animal-welfare experts and vets agree that for an animal’s throat to be cut while it is fully conscious causes extreme pain and distress. Stunning, if done correctly, should render an animal insensible to that pain and trauma.Around 94 million UK animals are slaughtered without stunning a year.Speaking to The Independent as the government launched proposals for a radical overhaul of animal-welfare laws, Lord Goldsmith also hailed as “revolutionary” government plans to pay farmers who go “over and above” the minimum standards required in an “animal-welfare pathway”.“I think it’s a world-first and it should have a very significant impact.”He said £3bn a year that used to go on the Common Agricultural Policy that “denuded Europe and the UK of wildlife and biodiversity” will now will put towards benefiting the environment.“We’re trying as president of Cop26 to build up a coalition of countries to commit to doing something similar … if we could get a chunk of them to do the same we could theoretically flip the market to sustainable land use for the first time since the industrial revolution. This is huge,” he said.Asked why the plan refers only to “exploring” bans on sales of real fur and foie gras – two of animal lovers’ most popular demands – rather than promising a definite ban, he said: “We have to look at the evidence whenever you bring in a rule that changes the value of a business, you have to consult. You can’t just unilaterally decide, otherwise the policy would be overturned.“The fur industry is extraordinarily litigious.”On the proposed ban on UK advertising of overseas attractions based on animal cruelty, he said he hoped to extend it from elephant rides to include whale and dolphin aquariums. More