This 'Houndini' dog is a real escape artist
A family have been forced to turn their door handles upside down - as their Houdini hound learned to copy them by unlocking the baby gate and opening the door to escape the kitchen.
The servicemen in charge of the specially modified Land Rover carrying the body of the Duke of Edinburgh spent the past week making sure they could drive “at the correct speed”. And, no wonder, as leading the vehicle on its way to the steps of St George’s Chapel, Windsor, on foot were the most senior members of the Armed Forces and the Band of the Grenadier Guards. Corporal Louis Murray was behind the wheel, with Corporal Craig French, as Land Rover Commander for the Royal Hearse, both 29 years old, alongside him. The two staff instructors from the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers had been picked “on a coin-toss” from a group of four who had been training for the purpose and were described by officials as a “trusted pair of hands”. Cpl French said it was his job to “ensure that the driver puts the vehicle in the right place at the right time and whether to speed up or slow down.” “We have done a lot of practice over the last few days and you get to feel what the correct speed is, and we know what pace we have to be at. It’s now like second nature.
Myah Richards, who has cerebral palsy, said doing the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award increased her confidence and spurred her on to do new things.
MHRA algorithms missed signals of blood clot link to AstraZeneca jab Only eight countries would make green list for safe travel Why the Queen sat alone at Prince Philip's funeral Air ducts swabbed to monitor Covid after snooker matches Subscribe to The Telegraph for a month-long free trial Imported coronavirus variants are unlikely to set lockdown easing back to "square one" because immunity from vaccines "won't just disappear", according to a key figure on the UK's immunisation committee. Professor Adam Finn, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, said he expected a "gradual erosion" of vaccine protection as the virus evolved, but not enough to "scupper" the Prime Minister's road map, as one leading scientist had predicted. On Friday, Imperial College's Danny Altmann said "we should be terribly concerned" after 77 cases of a potentially vaccine-busting Covid-19 mutation first discovered in India were identified in Britain. "They (variants of concern) are things that can most scupper our escape plan at the moment and give us a third wave. They are a worry," Professor Altmann said. Prof Finn said he thought the immunology expert had been "a bit pessimistic" with his assessment. Follow the latest updates below.
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The Government said a further 35 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Saturday, bringing the UK total to 127,260. Separate figures published by the UK’s statistics agencies show there have now been 151,000 deaths registered in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate. The Government also said that, as of 9am on Saturday, there had been a further 2,206 lab-confirmed cases in the UK. It brings the total to 4,385,938.
Kate has never attended a royal funeral until she accompanied her husband to Prince Philip's.
Everything you need to know ahead of tonight’s WBO world title bout
2020 Games have already been postponed by a year due to the coronavirus pandemic
Family of three contract Covid from infected neighbours in hotel quarantine in Sydney. NSW Health reclassifies three coronavirus cases to locally-acquired after testing showed they shared same viral sequence as infected family next door
Alexei Navalny's doctor has said the Russian opposition leader is on the verge of death as he continues his hunger strike in prison. Yaroslav Ashikhmin claims Mr Navalny's latest test results show extremely high potassium levels, which put him at risk of cardiac arrest. Mr Navalny, Vladimir Putin's most vocal critic, went on hunger strike after he was refused access to medical care, despite experiencing severe back pain and loss of feeling in his legs.
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The Royals have not been able to "say goodbye in the way they'd hope or planned" like millions this year, the Archbishop of Canterbury has lamented. The Most Rev Justin Welby, who will deliver a blessing at the Duke of Edinburgh's funeral, said members of the Royal Family were united in grief with Britons who had lost their loved-ones during the pandemic. He praised the household for sticking to the Covid-19 social restrictions and said this means it "represents all funerals" in the last year - which have been characterised by the "burden" of not being able to have ideal send-offs for relatives. "My first thought when I heard the news was for the family," he said. "This is like every other funeral and distinct from every other funeral. It's like every other funeral because the family is the family is the family. But it's distinct because they're having to bear this loss and sorrow in the glare of goodness knows how many people watching them around the world. "The Royal Family has behaved superbly, they've just kept to the rules. That means that they're going through what between six and eight million other people have gone through in this country alone over the last year - not really being able to say goodbye in the way they'd hoped or planned. And that's an extra burden. "But as people around the world watch them tomorrow, I think they can identify with this and feel that here is a funeral that represents all funerals in a wonderful way."
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My night out in New York took me across the latest Covid dividing lineAs restrictions ease, tensions linger about what you should and shouldn’t do. So booking a babysitter felt outlandishly exciting ‘Stepping out of the cab was like being dropped into Ayia Napa after spending a year in a monastery.’ New Yorkers wander among reopened restaurants, March 2021. Photograph: Eduardo Muñoz/Reuters
A beach town seized a Black couple’s land in the 1920s. Now their family could get it backLos Angeles officials have announced an effort to return the valuable Manhattan Beach property to the descendants of Willa and Charles Bruce Chief Duane Yellow Feather Shepard is a relative of the Bruce family. Photograph: Damon Casarez/The Guardian
The historic family ties that prompted The Queen to invite German royalty Follow live updates from Prince Philip's funeral The Duke of Edinburgh's great niece, whose brother is in Windsor for his funeral on Saturday, has remembered Prince Philip as an "idol" for the younger generation of their family. Speaking from Munich, Princess Xenia of Hohenlohe-Langenburg said the Duke was a powerful role model to her and his "selflessness, lack of ego and sense of humour" will never be forgotten. Her tribute comes as the Queen prepares to say farewell to her husband of 73 years at Windsor Castle. "To all of us, he was an idol, he was somebody to look up to, we had enormous respect for him and it was always very exciting when he came to visit, and he came often," said Princess Xenia of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. "And this has become clear to me in the week since he's died - the way he lived his life, his motto, which was an unwritten motto for us, this discipline, this selflessness, this lack of ego, but also his sense of humour always underlying all of that.
The deployment is aimed at showing solidarity with Ukraine and Britain's NATO allies, the newspaper reported https://bit.ly/32pc4BK. One Type 45 destroyer armed with anti-aircraft missiles and an anti-submarine Type 23 frigate will leave the Royal Navy's carrier task group in the Mediterranean and head through the Bosphorus into the Black Sea, according to the report. RAF F-35B Lightning stealth jets and Merlin submarine-hunting helicopters will stand ready on the task group's flag ship, the carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, to support the warships in the Black Sea, the report added.
The Capital FM presenter is no stranger to celebrity nightlife.
France's Academy of Medicine has called for the delay between doses of the Covid-19 vaccine to be extended from six weeks to six months, in the case of the Pfizer and Moderna injections, in order to allow more people to get the first jab. Pushing the second injection back in the under-55 age bracket would "accelerate the vaccination campaign...and achieve herd immunity much faster with the same number of doses, while ensuring satisfactory individual protection", the National Academy of Medicine said in a statement on Thursday.The academy has no decision-making power in France, unlike the High Authority for Health (HAS), which can make such recommendations with the backing of the government. On Wednesday, the delay between the first two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, which use new messenger RNA technology, was extended from 4 to six weeks."This will allow us to speed up the vaccination campaign without compromising public protection," Health Minister Olivier Véran explained to French weekly Journal du Dimanche.High-risk professionsThe Academy of Medicine said that, based on recent studies in the United States and United Kingdom, a single dose of the mRNA vaccine had been shown to provide very high level of protection against the coronavirus. With the more contagious British variant now the dominant strain in France, the academy said it made sense to delay second injections for those aged under 55 years with no history of immune deficiency, to allow more people in high-risk professions, such as teachers, to receive their first dose.In France, the only under-55s currently eligible for the vaccination are frontline priority workers (health workers, home care workers, firefighters) or those with pre-existing health conditions.Some scientists are reluctant to extend the delay between doses, fearing incomplete protection provided by the first injection may favour the emergence of new variants.The academy also called for the first injection to be postponed in the case of patients who had tested positive for the coronavirus within the preceding six months.
More than 1,000 vicars have indicated they will defy vaccine passport rules if they are implemented in churches, describing them as a “fundamental betrayal” of Christian belief. In an open letter to the Prime Minister concerning vaccine passport proposals, the church leaders said: “To deny people entry to hear this life-giving message and to receive this life-giving ministry would be a fundamental betrayal of Christ and the Gospel. “Sincere Christian churches and organisations could not do this, and as Christian leaders we would be compelled to resist any such Act of Parliament vigorously.” “For the Church of Jesus Christ to shut out those deemed by the state to be social undesirables would be anathema to us and a denial of the truth of the Gospel,” it added. The letter, which is signed by a mix of vicars, reverends, pastors and elders from a range of Christian denominations, also said: “There is also a legitimate fear that this scheme would be the thin end of the wedge leading to a permanent state of affairs in which Covid vaccine status could be expanded to encompass other forms of medical treatment and perhaps even other criteria beyond that. “This scheme has the potential to bring about the end of liberal democracy as we know it and to create a surveillance state in which the government uses technology to control certain aspects of citizens’ lives. “As such, this constitutes one of the most dangerous policy proposals ever to be made in the history of British politics... “We agree with those members of Parliament who have already voiced opposition to this proposal: that it would be divisive, discriminatory and destructive to introduce any such mandatory health certification into British society. “We call on the Government to assert strongly and clearly that it will not contemplate this illiberal and dangerous plan, not now and not ever.” Signatories to the letter include Christian leaders from Baptist, evangelical, free church, Church of England, presbyterian and a range of independent churches from across the UK. The call, backed by more than 1,100 clergy, is being led by Rev Dr William Philip, senior minister at the Tron Church in Glasgow, who led the successful Scottish church leaders’ judicial review last month. Unlike in England, the Court of Session heard that a ban on church services in Scotland was unconstitutional and breached human rights. It marked the first legal victory against Covid laws. The open letter, which has also been signed by Rev David Hathaway, founder and president of Eurovision Mission to Europe, comes as last week the Government was warned by its own equalities watchdog that Covid-status certificate schemes or “vaccine passports” could be discriminatory.