Brexit: EU's Ursula von der Leyen says there is a 'path to an agreement'

There is a "path" to a Brexit trade deal being agreed before the end of the month, the president of the European Commission has said.

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  • EU demands AstraZeneca diverts 75m Covid jabs made in UK factories

    Brussels on Wednesday demanded that tens of millions of British-made coronavirus vaccines be diverted from the UK to make up a supply shortfall in the jabs in the EU. The European Commission said it was contractually entitled to doses from two UK plants making the AstraZeneca/Oxford University vaccine as its row with the British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant deepened. The British Government said it had a deal with AstraZeneca to supply 100 million doses of the vaccine with agreed delivery schedules. British sources said that, once the UK factories had fulfilled their commitment to Britain, AstraZeneca would be free to supply other countries – something the firm's CEO, Pascal Soriot, confirmed in an interview on Tuesday. But Stella Kyriakides, the EU's health commissioner, said: "We reject the logic of first come, first served. That might work at the neighbourhood butchers, but not on our contracts and not in our advanced purchase agreements." She said there was " no priority clause" in the EU contract between the four production plants in the agreement, two factories in the EU and the two in the UK. "In our contract it is not specified that any country or the UK has priority... This needs to be absolutely clear," Ms Kyriakides said.

  • Josh Hawley ridiculed for claiming he is being silenced while on country’s most-watched cable news channel

    ‘Can someone please unmuzzle the guy who appears on my TV every 30 minutes?’

  • Hotel quarantines: Full list of countries subject to new Covid-19 rules for UK arrivals

    The cost of staying in the hotels has still to be disclosed

  • Jill Biden spent her first week as First Lady reshaping the role. Melania Trump spent hers isolated in a tower

    New first lady signals she will be an active and constant presence in the White House - drawing stark contrasts to her predecessor

  • Grandmother ‘overjoyed’ to be outside after receiving Covid-19 vaccine killed in Portland vehicle attack

    Police have not released a motive in the attack

  • Elizabeth Hurley hits back at critics of snow photoshoot after Piers Morgan’s ‘creepy’ comment

    The 55-year-old hit back at suggestions her teenage son Damian had taken the photos.

  • Britons required to declare 'valid reason' for travel or face fines

    UK quarantine hotels: how would they work? Our blueprint for getting holidays back to normal Will vaccine passports open up our holidays? 'We can't control the virus with a travel ban' Sign up to the Telegraph Travel newsletter Anyone departing from the UK will be required to declare their reasons for travelling, as the Government today announces tighter border restrictions – including 'quarantine hotels' for arrivals from selected countries. Speaking in the House of Commons this afternoon, Home Secretary Priti Patel said that it "is clear that there are still too many people coming in and out of our country each day," and set out new measures to "reduce passenger flow so that only a small number of people for whom it is absolutely essential to travel are doing so." Transport providers will check passengers' reasons for travel on departure, police presence will be increased at ports and airports, and people will be directed to return home if they do not have a valid reason – and may face a fine. Patel added that police will carry out more checks at physical addresses, to ensure compliance with the restrictions. A new 'quarantine hotel' policy will also see arriving travellers being forced to self-isolate in hotels. The rule will apply to those returning from countries where international travel bans have already been imposed, including Portugal. "They will be required to isolate for 10 days, without exemption, and the Department of Health will set out further details on this approach next week," Patel said. "Despite the stay-at-home regulations, we are still seeing people not complying with these rules. The rules are clear – people should be staying at home, unless they have a valid reason to leave." Scroll down for more on this story, and other breaking travel news.

  • COVID-19: Breakthrough treatment claims to stop 100% of symptomatic infections

    The makers of an experimental drug, now being trialled by the NHS, say it is 100 per cent effective in protecting against symptomatic cases of the virus. US-based Regeneron Pharmaceuticals says its two-antibody cocktail called REGEN-COV also reduces overall coronavirus infection rates by about 50 per cent. The claims are based on interim results and the "confirmatory stage" of the trial will not be complete until the second quarter of this year, but the company has said it is hopeful it may "break the chain" of rising infections.

  • Mike Pence is homeless after leaving office and ‘couch-surfing’ with Indiana politicians, report says

    Mike Pence has been residing in public housing for the past eight years

  • Lockdown restrictions to stay in place until 8 March at the earliest, Boris Johnson announces

    The PM said schools won’t reopen and 'other economic and social restrictions' won’t be eased until then.

  • Biden’s new sign language interpreter runs a right-wing Facebook group and has been pictured in a MAGA hat

    One video featuring Heather Mewshaw is titled ‘Joe Biden is literally and legally not the President elect’

  • Latest weekly Covid-19 rates for local authority areas in England

    Around one in 16 local areas are currently recording a week-on-week rise.

  • ‘This was absolutely avoidable’: How the UK lost 100,000 lives to Covid-19

    A catalogue of costly errors, the refusal to heed scientific advice at crucial pinch-points and the absence of any real strategy set the UK on a collision course with tragedy, writes Samuel Lovett

  • Global coronavirus cases hit 100 million on same day UK reaches 100,000 deaths

    The number of coronavirus cases recorded around the world has passed 100 million, on the same day the UK reached the grim milestone of 100,000 deaths. The country with the most cases is the US, with more than 25 million, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. India has recorded more than 10 million cases and Brazil’s tally is over 8.8 million.

  • AstraZeneca boss speaks out as Boris Johnson appeals to EU not to restrict vaccine movements in supply row

    Company chief confirms UK will have first claim on jabs, as it got order in three months earlier than Brussels

  • Biden news: 200m more Covid vaccine doses on order as only 5 GOP senators back Trump impeachment trial

    Follow the latest updates

  • Winter Storm Brings Snow to Napa Valley

    Snow came to the hills around Napa Valley on January 26 as winter storms hit the Bay Area and central California.This footage shows the snow in Howell Mountain.The National Weather Service issued flash-flood and wind advisories as rainfall picked up and wind gusts reached up to 55 miles per hour in some areas. Credit: @CphilpottCraig via Storyful

  • Jennifer Aniston shows off blonder hair on set of The Morning Show

    "Aaand we're back."

  • Oxford vaccine factory evacuated after 'suspicious package' was sent to site

    A bomb disposal team has been called to the factory in which the Oxford vaccine is made after a suspicious package was reported. The Wockhardt factory on the Wrexham Industrial Estate was evacuated this morning after the package was sent to the site. It is here where the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is packaged into vials. In a statement, Wockhardt said: "Wockhardt UK in Wrexham this morning received a suspicious package to site. "All relevant authorities were immediately notified and engaged. Upon expert advice we have partially evacuated the site pending a full investigation. "The safety of our employees and business continuity remain of paramount importance." Downing Street is being kept up to date on developments, a Number 10 spokesman said. Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford tweeted: "We are working with local police and the military to find out more about this incident. "Thank you to the security personnel who are on-site to protect lives and ensure the safety of our vaccine supply. This highlights the vital role they play in keeping us all safe. Diolch." Last week, emergency teams were called out to protect supplies of the Oxford University and AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine following flooding at the industrial estate. All "necessary precautions" were taken to prevent disruption to the manufacture of the jab, a Wockhardt spokeswoman said at the time. North Wales Police said on Wednesday afternoon: "We are currently dealing with an ongoing incident on the Wrexham Industrial Estate. "The roads are currently closed and we would ask the public to avoid the area until further notice." What we know so far Suspicious package delivered this morning to Wockhardt factory, where vaccine is bottled into vials Factory partially evacuated Bomb disposal team called Police asking people to avoid area The 'ongoing incident', in pictures

  • French failure to develop home-made Covid-19 vaccine prompts questions

    The Pasteur Institute’s announcement that it is to stop further development of one of its potential Covid-19 vaccines, coming on the heels of Sanofi's announcement that its vaccine will be delayed, has raised questions about medical research in France. The Pasteur Institute, and the US pharmaceutical giant Merck Sharp & Dohme, which had bought the manufacturing license, announced Tuesday that they dropped the vaccine after disappointing trial results. They say say they are pursuing research on other Covid-19 vaccines.The announcement comes after French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi announced in late December that its Covid-19 jab would not likely be ready before the end of 2021, at best.There is dismay in France at the failure of home-grown efforts to find a vaccine, and questions are being asked about whether it is due to simple bad luck or the result of an inadequate research ecosystem.Slow research funding One could be that the ANR, the government’s research funding agency, seems slow to disburse funds.The Pasteur Institute, named after the man who created the first-ever vaccine in 1885, is a non-profit foundation, a leading research body, with about 2000 researchers. Yet Research Director, Camille Locht, told Le Figaro newspaper, that the Institute had to wait several months before the ANR finally released funding in June for the vaccine's costly clinical trials.A report last week for the French think tank Terra Nova by Anne Bucher, the European Commission's Director-General for Health, also concluded that public financial support for vaccine research and development was a problem.Bucher noted that US funding for vaccine research had increased dramatically since 2000, while European investment had fallen.The US government, under ex-president Donald Trump, mobilised ten billion dollars for its Operation Warp Speed initiative to support vaccine research, while the EU put together only three billion dollars.Job cutsSanofi, as a commercial company, has had different problems. It is still developing its vaccine in partnership with the British pharmaceutical company GSK Glaxo, and will begin new trials next month using a higher dose of antigens.But trade unions claim that Sanofi’s lack of progress on a Covid vaccine so far can be linked to a wave of job losses.The company disagrees, insisting that the 400 prospective redundancies announced last week in the Research and Development department do not include jobs in the field of Covid research.However, MP Francois Ruffin of the far-left France Unbowed party is not so sure. Sanofi, and successive governments are responsible, he says, for smashing a technological and healthcare asset."I want a French vaccine, with French technology," he told the BFM news channel in mid-January. "Why haven't we got one?"BiotechnologyEconomist Frédéric Bizard, who specialises in the field of medicine and health, told RFI that France lagged other major countries in the growing field of biotechnology.French research is often based on its strengths in older technologies, he said, "but these are no longer at the forefront… Biotechnology calls the shots now."One such biotech firm, France’s TheraVectys, is already working with the Pasteur Institute on another potential Covid-19 vaccine.Meanwhile, Sanofi has agreed to produce doses of the vaccine developed by the rival pharmaceutical company Pfizer with BioNTech.As of July the company will fill and pack 100 million doses at its German plant in Frankfurt."Since our main vaccine is a few months late, we asked ourselves how we could be of assistance now," CEO Paul Hudson said in an interview with Le Figaro on Tuesday.He said that Sanofi remains committed to its own vaccines projects.