British PM Boris Johnson is out of intensive care

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been released from an intensive care unit after being treated for his COVID-19 symptoms.

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  • Piers Morgan shocks Good Morning Britain viewers after host ‘admits’ he’s a ‘b***end’ on live TV

    “I just spat coffee in my cornflakes,’ one surprised viewer said

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  • Nicola Sturgeon backtracks over lockdown plan by suggesting lower tier of restrictions in April

    Nicola Sturgeon has backtracked over her controversial lockdown plan by conceding that parts of Scotland could move in April to a lower tier of restrictions that allows domestic travel and pubs to serve alcohol. The First Minister faced a barrage of criticism over her blueprint after stating that the entire mainland would initially move to Level 3 of her five-tier system when full lockdown formally ends on April 26. The beleaguered tourism and hospitality industries said many of their businesses would have to remain shut, with alcohol and travel outside council areas banned under the Level 3 restrictions that operated last year. Ms Sturgeon has conceded that parts or all of the country could instead speedily move to Level 2, which previously allowed restaurants and pubs to serve alcohol and open later. In a second about-turn, she said she hoped that travel restrictions within Scotland could be lifted from the end of April. The previous day she said they needed to continue "for some time yet" and her blueprint gave no indication of when they would be eased. Adopting a markedly more optimistic tone, after she was accused of failing to give people hope, she predicted that Scotland "could move to lower levels of restrictions fairly quickly over May and June."

  • Parents of child who died of Covid share the warning signs of the virus in kids

    Parents of Gigi Morse, 6, say she seemed fine except for a few unusual ailments.

  • EU 'catching up' with UK on coronavirus vaccinations, says Ursula von der Leyen

    The European Union is catching up with Britain on coronavirus vaccinations, Ursula von der Leyen said as she called the British strategy of delaying the second dose too risky. The European Commission president responded to criticism that the EU vaccination rollout was too slow by pointing out that 130 countries in the world had had no jabs at all. Mrs von der Leyen said more than twice the number of Italians than Britons had had both jabs, and the EU as a whole had given out more first doses. "We're catching up. Britain has administered 17 million first doses. There are 27 million in the EU. In Italy, with a population similar to that of Great Britain, twice as many citizens received full vaccination protection with the second dose as in the UK," she said. She told the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper: "I think it's risky to simply postpone the second vaccination. We should adhere to the specifications that the manufacturers determined in their extensive clinical tests." In the UK, 27.47 doses per 100 people have been administered compared to just 6.12 across the EU. In France, 5.7 jabs per 100 people have been given, with the figure 6.1 in Germany.

  • Britons 'will be told they can hug in May if they're willing to risk it’ under lockdown easing

    Advice will reportedly be updated to tell people to use their best judgement.

  • Vaccine passports to prove Covid immunity could be banned in some circumstances, Boris Johnson indicates

    Michael Gove to lead review of ‘complex ethical issues’, says PM

  • Piers Morgan's wife reveals they've had panic button installed after death threats

    The couple had a visit from the police and have beefed up their home security.

  • 1,500 Meter Lava Fountain Pours From Crater as Mount Etna Continues to Erupt

    Mount Etna’s explosions reached a peak on Monday as lava fountains reached 1,500 meters in height.Speaking to the Guardian, volcano expert Boris Behncke from the National Institute of Geophysics in Catania, said that Mount Etna’s latest explosion was “one of the most spectacular eruptions of recent decades.”Volcano enthusiastic Giuseppe Tonzuso filmed an explosion video just seven kilometers away from the mountain on late February 22 and into the early hours of February 23. The hot red lava brings up thousands of rock fragments into the sky, the video shows.“This is undoubtedly the most energetic event of the sequence,” Tonzuso told Storyful. Credit: Giuseppe Tonzuso via Storyful

  • Strictly’s Karen Hauer details jealousy and painful split from Kevin Clifton

    She said she wanted to fight for their relationship.

  • Emmanuel Macron challenged by fellow EU leaders over AstraZeneca vaccine criticism

    European Union leaders challenged Emmanuel Macron over his inaccurate claims that the AstraZeneca vaccine was “quasi-ineffectual”, it emerged on Wednesday. The French president said the jab did not appear to work on the over 65s in late January just hours before the EU’s medicines regulator approved it for use on all adults. A senior EU official revealed that Mr Macron was asked about his comments, which have been linked to a reluctance in some European countries to take the AstraZeneca jab. EU leaders have held regular video summits, including one on Thursday where they will call for coronavirus restrictions to continue, since the pandemic. “The point was raised by some leaders indeed. I cannot say who and when it was raised,” the official said. “There are in some countries some doubts and I think that the question was more to get clarification on if it was true or not and since then I think the commission has reacted to this." Ursula von der Leyen, the commission president, said on Tuesday she “would take the AstraZeneca vaccine without a second thought”. People in Europe are reluctant to have the jab after Mr Macron’s comments and inaccurate German reports about the vaccine. The EU was “catching up” with Britain on vaccinations, Mrs von der Leyen said, as she branded the British strategy of delaying the second dose as “risky”. She responded to criticism that the EU vaccination rollout was too slow by pointing out that 130 countries in the world had had no jabs at all. “We're catching up. Britain has administered 17 million first doses. There are 27 million in the EU. In Italy, with a population similar to that of Great Britain, twice as many citizens received full vaccination protection with the second dose as in the UK,” she said. Britain used faster emergency authorisation procedures to approve vaccines than the EU. The UK negotiated for doses alone after rejecting an offer from Brussels last year to join the EU joint procurement scheme.

  • Trump-appointed judge overturns Biden 100 day ban on deportations

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  • Children warned over hugging their grandparents – even if they've had the vaccine

    Dr Jenny Harries said children hugging grandparents should be avoided 'until we’re absolutely sure' about the effectiveness of COVID vaccines.

  • Myanmar's hardened Chinese population takes stand against Beijing

    The chorus of banging pots and pans begins in Chinatown at about 8pm. The district in Myanmar's commercial city of Yangon is normally festooned with bright red lanterns to celebrate Chinese New Year. But when the Year of the Ox arrived in mid-February, the usual festive atmosphere was gone - replaced by a tension in the air. Here, and across the country, swelling ranks of young ethnic Chinese protesters are joining mass rallies against the brutal junta that abruptly deposed Aung San Suu Kyi's government. Many are united by rumours, circulated widely among the protest movement, that China is helping the regime install a repressive new internet system akin to one across the border that severely restricts online freedoms behind a 'Great Firewall'.

  • Caroline Flack took overdose night before death, inquest told

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  • Teachers to run 'summer school camps' in £700m catch-up plan

    Ministers have announced new funding for summer schools targeting incoming Year Seven students. Headteachers will be given £200 million to run face-to-face teaching over the holidays as part of a major Government catch-up plan. The "summer camps" should initially target pupils who are between the end of primary school and the beginning of secondary school, the Department for Education (DfE) said. Another £200 million will be spent on tutoring, with £300 million on a "recovery premium" which schools can use to help the most disadvantaged pupils get up to speed. Sir Kevan Collins, appointed earlier this year to oversee catch-up plans, said: "We know that ensuring all children and young people can make up for lost learning will be a longer-term challenge, and the range of measures announced today are an important next step." Parents face further homeschooling woe as headteachers warn that it could be two weeks before secondary pupils are all tested and back in the classroom full-time. The mass testing of secondary pupils in the space of a week is "not going to happen", according to Jules White, the head of Tanbridge House School in Horsham, West Sussex, and the founder of Worth Less?, a network of around 2,000 school leaders. Mr White said headteachers around the country would be writing to parents this week to explain the arrangements for the return of pupils. While the DfE said secondaries could phase the return of pupils over a week to allow for the mass testing programme, Mr White said that the "reality" was that most would need a fortnight. Secondary school students will be asked to take four lateral flow tests during the first two weeks of term, three of which will take place at school and one at home. Students will be allowed to continue coming to school as long as their tests are negative, but will be asked to go home and isolate if they have a positive result. A DfE spokesman said: "We expect schools will follow our guidance."

  • Kevin McCarthy and Liz Cheney in awkward clash over Trump after top Republican claims ‘there is no civil war’

    Congresswoman was previously censured by Wyoming’s GOP for voting to impeach the former president

  • Threat to summer holidays as WHO says vaccines should not be condition of entry to countries

    Summer holidays face a new threat after the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned that Covid vaccinations should not be used to determine whether people can enter a country. The WHO said there were still "critical unknowns" about the efficacy of vaccinations in reducing transmission and preventing the virus even as governments work on vaccine certificates as a way to kickstart travel. It said that, as a result, national authorities, airlines and travel operators "should not introduce requirements of proof of Covid-19 vaccination for international travel as a condition for departure or entry". Vaccination should not exempt travellers from having to undergo other "travel risk-reduction measures", such as testing or quarantine, it added. Vaccination documents are seen as critical to enable holidaymakers to travel abroad this summer. In his roadmap out of lockdown, announced on Monday, Boris Johnson signalled that international travel could restart as early as May 17.

  • Nicola Sturgeon denies political influence behind censorship of explosive evidence in Salmond affair

    Former first minister expected to answer questions at inquiry hearing on Friday

  • The Simpsons creator Matt Groening ‘didn’t have a problem’ with white actors voicing non-white characters

    Cartoonist said casting was ‘never designed to exclude anyone’