This guy fell immediately after successfully attempting a flip off a ramp while surfing. The guy came surfing and came racing up a ramp while heli-surfing. He successfully pulled off a flip but as soon as he began celebrating the stunt win, he fell right into the water.
Nicola Sturgeon should thank Boris Johnson for ignoring SNP demands to sign up to the EU's disastrous vaccine programme when she gets her first Covid jab on Thursday, the Scottish Tory leader has said. Douglas Ross said the First Minister would have faced a much longer wait to be vaccinated if Mr Johnson had heeded her party's demands for the UK to join the European scheme last year. The SNP confirmed that Ms Sturgeon, 50, is scheduled to receive her first jab after she launches her party's election manifesto on Thursday morning. A spokesman said: "These remarks from Douglas Ross are utterly pathetic but entirely in keeping with his petulant, puerile tone." A series of Ms Sturgeon's ministers demanded that the UK sign up to the EU's vaccine procurement plan last year and expressed outrage when Mr Johnson refused. Mike Russell, the Constitution Secretary, warned at the time: "This idiotic refusal is all about Brexit and nothing to do with the pandemic. It will cost lives." The decision was publicly opposed by a series of SNP MPs.
Seven-seat plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) are few and far between. Normally, when a manufacturer adds a battery to its petrol SUV to turn it into a PHEV, it is located beneath the boot floor – right where the extra row of seats would usually fold down. So, more often than not, SUV PHEVs tend to be five-seat affairs. Indeed, until now, there was only one option if you wanted a seven-seat PHEV, and it was an expensive one: the Volvo XC90 Recharge. Happily, there’s now another, in the form of this Kia Sorento PHEV – and it comes at a more attainable price. We already like the latest iteration of Kia’s big, friendly giant. We’ve already tried the self-charging hybrid and diesel versions last year, and we found them to be pretty accomplished. So we have high hopes for the plug-in model Kia has just added to the range. Time to find out whether it lives up to them. Pros Full seven-seater with plenty of space for all Bristling with equipment Long warranty Cons No proper electric-only mode Clunky to drive Thumpy ride quality Hybrid theory The petrol engine in the plug-in Sorento is the same as you’ll find in the standard car; a 1.6-litre four-cylinder turbo that, on its own, produces a healthy 178bhp. But while in the non-plug-in hybrid, this is allied to a 1.49kWh battery and a 59bhp electric motor, the plug-in gets a 90bhp electric motor that’s fed by a 13.8kWh battery. The result is a combined maximum output of 261bhp, a surfeit of 35bhp and 62bhp over the hybrid and diesel versions respectively.
The Royal Family has released new photographs of the Duke of Edinburgh following his death at the age of 99. The previously unseen photo shows Prince Louis cradled in the arms of the Queen, a rare image of the monarch holding one of her 10 great-grandchildren. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's other children Prince George and Princess Charlotte are on either side of the monarch.
The ex-husband of an ITV weather presenter has been jailed after a nine-year campaign of controlling behaviour, harassment and stalking against her during their marriage. Jonathan Wignall, 54, set alerts for Ruth Dodsworth’s television appearances, used her fingerprint to access her phone while she was asleep, and fitted a tracking device to her car. On Wednesday a court heard Wignall was an “unrepentant, possessive bully” with a “fragile ego” who repeatedly accused Ms Dodsworth, 45, of being unfaithful.
The situation at the border is becoming ‘untenable’, an executive at the west London airport said.
Nicola Sturgeon has been accused of attempting to “dupe” voters over her drive for independence after the SNP scrapped plans to include a reference to a second referendum on ballot papers. The SNP had sought approval for two slogans making reference to “IndyRef2” to appear alongside the party name on voting slips for the Holyrood election, suggesting that Ms Sturgeon planned to make her push for a new referendum the central message of her election campaign. However, when the first postal ballots arrived on Wednesday, the IndyRef2 references had been dumped and replaced with “Nicola Sturgeon for SNP First Minister”. The Scottish Tories said the move to abandon the IndyRef2 description was a tacit admission that the SNP's independence policy is a turn-off for voters and amounted to an attempt to hide it from the public. Ms Sturgeon will on Thursday unveil the SNP manifesto, which will include a commitment to holding another referendum on independence if there is a pro-independence majority at Holyrood after May’s election. However, in a major announcement ahead of the launch event, the party chose to highlight a commitment to boost NHS spending by £2.5 billion within five years rather than focus on the constitution. The commitment came after the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that health spending in England has increased more than three times faster than in Scotland over the past decade.
The proposed takeover of Newcastle United by a Saudi Arabian-backed consortium collapsed last year after the group declined to take up the Premier League's offer of independent arbitration to decide who would own the club. The group, which included Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund PIF, PCP Capital Partners and Reuben Brothers, said last year they were ending their interest in the deal, which had been delayed by the Premier League's owners and directors test.
Mixing vaccines could improve protection against coronavirus, a senior government scientific adviser has said. Prof Anthony Harnden, deputy chairman of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, said different vaccine types could coalesce to boost the immune system and provide a longer-lasting response. He also said a "mix and match" approach could make future rollouts more flexible. It comes after planners were forced to rethink phase 2 of the rollout, which started on Tuesday, after the JCVI recommended people aged 18 to 29 have an alternative to the AstraZeneca jab due to blood clotting concerns. Currently only two other vaccines - Pfizer and Moderna - have received regulatory approval in the UK. The promise of 30 million one-jab Johnson & Johnson doses in the summer suffered a setback this week after US regulators suspended its use, also due to fears over clotting. Prof Harnden said: "If we can mix and match, we'll get much better flexibility - we will be able to potentially use different vaccine booster campaigns in the autumn. And, in fact, mixed schedules may - and this is a big may - but they may give better longer-term protection, and that will be very interesting to see."
The company’s revenue has tripled since the change was implemented
‘Clear pattern’ between Covid vaccinations and antibody positivity across UK, says Office for National Statistics
Britain has agreed with the European Union that it will respond to the bloc's legal action over how it has introduced new trading rules for Northern Ireland by mid-May, a spokeswoman for the government said on Wednesday. The EU launched legal action against Britain in March for unilaterally changing trading arrangements for Northern Ireland that Brussels says are in breach of the Brexit divorce deal agreed with London last year. Britain has denied that the move undermines the part of the Brexit deal that governs trade to the British province, saying it extended the grace period for checks on goods moving to Northern Ireland to ease their passage.
Israel became the first country in the world to test vaccine passports when it announced the 'green pass' scheme in February. The passes allow people who have had two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine to return to restaurants, theatres and sport events. With many countries planning to reopen after their vaccination campaigns, the Guardian's Jerusalem correspondent, Oliver Holmes, examines the lessons that could be learned from Israel's rollout.
Boris Johnson raised eyebrows on Tuesday when he suggested that the reduction in Covid infections, hospital admissions and deaths had not been achieved by the vaccination programme, with the lockdown doing "the bulk of the work". Thankfully, less than 24 hours later, science had proved the Prime Minister wrong. New research from NHS England and the University of Manchester showed the stark difference in cases, admissions and deaths for elderly people who had been vaccinated compared to those who had not. In a large study involving more than 170,000 people, researchers had scrupulously case-matched participants to make sure the results were not skewed by underlying conditions, sex or geographical location. The results show that far from having little impact, the rate of Covid-related hospital admissions fell by 75 per cent in vaccinated 80 to 83-year-olds within 35 to 41 days of their first dose of the Pfizer jab. The rate of people getting Covid dropped by 70 per cent, with the number of positive tests falling from 15.3 per 100,000 people to 4.6. The authors conclude: "The nationwide vaccination of older adults in England with the [Pfizer] vaccine reduced the burden of Covid-19."
Police are investigating the tragic death of Jaida Peterson, who’s been named as the latest Black trans woman to be violently killed in 2021.
Moderna’s early trials of a vaccine targeting the South African Covid variant has produced antibodies in mice, raising hopes of its effectiveness for humans. The company is the first to produce a vaccine designed specifically for the variant and last night said its pre-clinical trials for both jabs “improved neutralising titers”, meaning that antibodies detected in the blood increased. Moderna is also developing a multivalent vaccine that combines its original vaccination with the South Africa-specific jab, which the firm says will provide the broadest level of immunity, The Times reported.
Oliver Carroll travelled towards the Russian-Ukrainian border to assess claims Moscow is readying itself for a major surge in fighting
The last time the entire country recorded rates below 100 was at the start of September.
After months of disruption, Vincent Wood reports, a minority of the nation’s pubs are getting back to business – weather permitting
Gareth Sell, 36, won a two-year battle to overturn more than 50 tickets.
Top intelligence officers from India and Pakistan held secret talks in Dubai in January in a new effort to calm military tension over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, people with close knowledge of the matter told Reuters in Delhi. Ties between the nuclear-armed rivals have been on ice since a suicide bombing of an Indian military convoy in Kashmir in 2019 traced to Pakistan-based militants that led to India sending warplanes to Pakistan. Later that year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi withdrew Indian-ruled Kashmir's autonomy in order to tighten his grip over the territory, provoking outrage in Pakistan and the downgrading of diplomatic ties and suspension of bilateral trade.
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