Christopher Plummer, Award-Winning actor, dead at 91

According to Plummer's wife, the Canadian-born actor succumbed to a head injury caused by a recent fall.

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  • Blocking Shamima Begum's return will further terrorist threat against UK, senior Tories warn

    Refusing to repatriate Shamima Begum and other British Isil brides and families will further the terrorist threat against the UK, senior Tories have warned. In a letter to Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and Home Secretary Priti Patel, the four MPs – including three former ministers – said Britain should not “wash its hands” of the 40 Britons detained in camps for Isil fighters, jihadi brides and their children in northern Syria. The four – Andrew Mitchell, David Davis, Tom Tugendhat and Tobias Ellwood – warned that failure to take responsibility for them like other nations including the US under President Joe Biden would “necessarily create even more security risks for the UK in the future”. Their warning comes on the eve of tomorrow's Supreme Court judgement on whether Begum, who left London as a schoolgirl to join Isil in 2015, should be allowed back into the UK to challenge the removal of her British citizenship. Writing exclusively online for The Telegraph, Mr Mitchell, former international development secretary, said that irrespective of the judgement, leaving Begum, pictured below, and other Britons “swilling around in ungoverned space” had the potential to backfire not only in the region but on the streets of Britain.

  • Nicola Sturgeon’s husband should be ‘removed’ as SNP chief executive, says Salmond ally

    Peter Murrell ‘has to go’, says veteran SNP MP ahead of Alex Salmond’s inquiry appearance

  • UK COVID infections drop to a third of level seen at start of lockdown

    Estimates for the number of people with COVID-19 continue to fall, according to the latest data.

  • Vaccine rollout: People aged 40-49 to receive Covid jab next, rather than just teachers or police

    Government advisers conclude targeting of certain professions would be more complex to deliver and may slow UK’s campaign

  • Joe Biden speaks to Saudi king before Jamal Khashoggi report in sign US is freezing out Prince Salman

    US president Joe Biden spoke to Saudi Arabia's King Salman ahead of the release of a potentially explosive US intelligence report which is set to accuse his son Mohammed bin Salman of complicity in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Mr Biden, who has already seen the intelligence report, is said to have insisted that he speak to King Salman only - and not to Mohammed bin Salman, his son and Crown Prince. During the presidential election campaign, Mr Biden described Saudi Arabia as a “pariah” and claimed its government had “very little social redeeming value". Mr Biden's insistence in speaking to King Salman is seen as an attempt to sideline 35-year-old Mohammed bin Salman, who is regarded as the de facto ruler of the country. “The president’s intention, as is the intention of this government, is to recalibrate our engagement with Saudi Arabia,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said this week, signalling that the Crown Prince could become persona non grata under President Biden.

  • Meet the super-rich skipping the queue for a vaccine vacation

    The super-rich are skipping the queue and jetting abroad for their Covid jab. So are we heading for a vaccine apartheid? Kate Wills reports

  • In independence threat, Scotland's ex-first minister attacks government

    Scotland's former first minister Alex Salmond accused the nation's government on Friday of acting illegally and lacking leadership in a bitter row with his successor that threatens to damage the Scottish independence movement. The feud between Salmond and his successor Nicola Sturgeon, has reached fever pitch in recent weeks, pitting the former friends against each other in a sparring match that could eventually put pressure on her to resign. Sturgeon has denied his accusations.

  • Ursula von der Leyen issues Covid vaccine export warning at EU summit

    Ursula von der Leyen issues Covid vaccine export warning at EU summitCommission head reassures leaders she will ban vaccines leaving EU if suppliers fail to deliver againCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverage Ursula von der Leyen was put under pressure to speed up work on a common vaccination certificate. Photograph: Olivier Hoslet/AFP/Getty Images

  • London Covid cases by borough revealed as coronavirus infections fall but at slower rate

    Cases are down 25% in a week but public health chiefs want Londoners to drive rates down further

  • US dashes Boris Johnson’s hopes of quick post-Brexit trade deal by announcing ‘review’ of talks

    Brakes slammed on negotiations to reassess ‘developments’ and confront ‘pandemic reality’

  • English school leaders despair over new rules on Covid tests and masks

    English school leaders despair over new rules on Covid tests and masksTeachers concerned that measures are unenforceable and some parents may withhold consent for regular testing All schools in England are due to reopen fully on 8 March. Photograph: Nathan Stirk/Getty Images

  • SNP divisions grow as Sturgeon enrages former deputy leader by 'questioning Salmond trial verdict'

    Nicola Sturgeon was on Thursday struggling to contain a growing SNP rebellion after she was accused of using “weasel words” to question the innocence of Alex Salmond. Jim Sillars, a former deputy leader of the party, lodged a formal complaint that the First Minister had breached the ministerial code with comments she made in a press briefing on Wednesday. Ms Sturgeon launched an outspoken attack on her predecessor, claiming his conduct towards women, rather than the conspiracy he has alleged, were the "root" of claims against him She added that just because he had been cleared of criminality, “that doesn’t mean that the behaviour [women] complained of didn’t happen.”

  • AstraZeneca, Sputnik vaccines face hurdles if COVID shots become annual affair

    Vaccines from AstraZeneca, Russia's Gamaleya Institute and Johnson & Johnson fight the coronavirus with another virus, leaving scientists concerned the shots may lose potency if annual inoculations become necessary to fight new variants. Most vector-vaccine developers have opted to use an adenovirus, a harmless class of common-cold viruses."The experience with adenoviruses has been for many years that vectors can be intercepted by the immune system after repeat injections," said Bodo Plachter, deputy director of the Institute of Virology at Mainz University's teaching hospital.

  • Hundreds of schoolgirls missing after armed bandits storm Nigerian school in Zamfara

    A total of 317 girls were kidnapped from a boarding school in northern Nigeria on Friday in the second mass abduction in the region in just over a week. Local reports described how unidentified gunmen invaded Jangebe, a town in the northern state of Zamfara at around 2 am and snatched the girls, aged 12-17. School kidnappings are becoming endemic in the region. Last week at least 40 people, including 27 students, were abducted in the state of Niger, 300 miles to the south. They are yet to be released. "The Zamfara State Police Command in collaboration with the military have commenced a joint search and rescue operation with a view to rescuing the 317 students kidnapped by the armed bandits in Government Girls Science Secondary School Jangebe," police said in a statement. School officials say the gunmen invaded the town "in their hundreds" at around 2am Friday and "shot sporadically in the air to scare the residents". The attackers then stormed the school. "It is possible some of them managed to escape, but we are not sure," a teacher said. A man whose two daughters attend the school corroborated the incident. Sadi Kawaye said he had been told that the school was "invaded by bandits". Another parent said his daughters, aged 10 and 13, were among those missing.

  • Why is Joe Manchin really causing trouble for Joe Biden? Not for the obvious reasons

    While the left wing of the party is asking who he thinks made him president and vowing revenge, veterans of the upper chamber aren’t so surprised by the Democratic Senator’s announcement that he won’t vote to confirm Neera Tanden

  • The walls are closing in on Trump. Soon he’ll be a prisoner of Mar a Lago

    Florida Governor DeSantis will be loyal to the president — but that doesn’t necessarily leave Trump in a good position

  • Scotland 'never close' to eliminating Covid-19 despite Sturgeon claims, says her own adviser

    Nicola Sturgeon’s claim that Scotland was “close” to eliminating Covid-19 last summer has been contradicted by one of her handpicked advisers. Mark Woolhouse, chairman of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, told MSPs that "Scotland was not close to elimination at any stage" during the pandemic and also questioned whether the First Minister’s strategy for tackling the virus was achievable. The First Minister has repeatedly insisted that Covid-19 was “almost eliminated” in Scotland last summer but that it was “reseeded” after being brought back into the country mainly from both UK and overseas travel. She has used the claim to justify her harsh stance on international and internal travel and her cautious approach to easing restrictions. However, Prof Woolhouse, who also sits on Ms Sturgeon’s Covid-19 advisory group, said that it is a “misinterpretation” to suggest that the virus was close to elimination during the summer when only a handful of cases per day were being reported because a large number of infected people were not getting tested at the time.

  • One dose Pfizer coronavirus vaccine wards off asymptomatic transmission

    A single dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine reduces the risk of asymptomatic infections, helping to stem transmission, research suggests.The UK has approved three coronavirus jabs – Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca-University of Oxford and Moderna – after studies demonstrated they significantly ward off severe disease.With not everyone able to be immunised, or producing a strong immune response as a result of their vaccination, questions lingered as to whether the jabs prevented the infection itself.Asymptomatic infections are particularly important amid the pandemic, given these individuals do not know to isolate and may unwittingly transmit the coronavirus even when they speak.To learn more, medics from the Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH) swabbed the site's vaccinated and unvaccinated healthcare workers over two weeks.Results suggest the risk of an asymptomatic infection decreases by four times more than 12 days after a worker received the Pfizer-BioNTech jab.

  • EU leaders pave way for vaccine passports ‘by the summer’ to allow people to travel in Europe

    EU leaders have paved way for the introduction of coronavirus vaccine passports by the summer. “Everyone agreed that we need a digital vaccination certificate,” Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, told reporters after an EU virtual summit. Greece already has digital vaccination certificates.

  • Revealed: The areas being left behind in the race to vaccinate the vulnerable

    A substantial amount of England has now offered a vaccine to all people aged over 70.