NEWS OF THE WEEK: Olivia Wilde gushes over Harry Styles as they wrap new movie

Olivia Wilde has praised rumoured boyfriend Harry Styles' performance in her new film Don't Worry Darling in a gushing Instagram post.

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  • Angela Merkel refuses Oxford jab amid calls to 'lead by example'

    Angela Merkel dismissed suggestions she should ignore her government's guidelines and take the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. There had been calls for Mrs Merkel to "lead by example" and be vaccinated on camera in order to dispel German public fears over the jab. "I do not belong to the recommended age group for AstraZeneca," Mrs Merkel told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper. The AstraZeneca vaccine is currently only approved for under-65s in Germany, and Mrs Merkel is 66. Germany is one of a number of European countries where the AstraZeneca vaccine is not currently approved for the over-65s because regulators said there was not enough clinical data on its effectiveness in older people. Emmanuel Macron, who claimed the AstraZeneca vaccine was only "quasi-effectual" in the over-65s, said at a press conference on Thursday night he would take the jab if he was offered it. Germany has a large anti-vaxxer movement and a recent poll found 34 per cent of its citizens do not want to take any vaccine against the Covid.

  • Teachers and police officers won’t be prioritised as next phase of COVID vaccinations revealed

    The JCVI has revealed the priority list for phase two of the coronavirus vaccine rollout.

  • ‘Hellish days await us’: European country facing 'catastrophe’ amid one of world’s worst COVID spikes

    Restrictions are set to be tightened to prevent a 'catastrophe' in hospitals, PM Andrej Babis said.

  • Exporters hit by new red tape are paying price for Boris Johnson’s hard Brexit, says David Cameron

    ‘Bureaucracy’ at the borders is ‘because we chose to leave the single market’ says former prime minister

  • Trumps accused of treating White House staff like ‘concierge’

    Employees also claim that Barack Obama and his family craved privacy while in executive mansion

  • 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.

  • 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

  • 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.”

  • 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

  • Iran threatens to end deal with IAEA over U.S.-led push to criticize it

    Iran is threatening to end a deal struck with the U.N. nuclear watchdog last weekend temporarily salvaging much monitoring of its activities if the agency's board endorses a U.S.-led push to criticise Tehran next week, an Iranian position paper shows. Tehran this week scaled back cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, ending extra inspection measures introduced by its 2015 nuclear accord with major powers. Iran and U.S. President Joe Biden's administration are now locked in a standoff over who should move first to save the unravelling 2015 deal.

  • 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.

  • Gwyneth Paltrow urged by NHS boss to stop spreading 'misinformation' over long Covid

    Gwyneth Paltrow has been urged by NHS boss Professor Stephen Powis to stop spreading "misinformation" over treatments for long Covid.

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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.

  • 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

  • Tory Brexit hardliners call on Boris Johnson to tear up Northern Ireland arrangements

    European Resarch Group call for new rules on exports after weeks of disruption

  • EU summer holidays uncertain as member states clash over coronavirus passports

    British minds are understandably already straying to the possibility of a sun-kissed summer holiday in Europe. Unfortunately, European Union leaders won’t be in a position to guarantee British holidaymakers will be able to travel to the bloc in the near future. The 27 prime ministers and presidents are holding a video summit on coronavirus this evening, Thursday. With the bloc still lagging far behind Britain, the US, Israel and even Serbia and Turkey, there is no prospect of them lifting the ban on non-essential travel into the region. Instead, leaders will reiterate the need for restrictions to stay in place and for vaccinations to rapidly increase. There is a desire on behalf of the EU institutions to do whatever is possible to save the coming tourist season, which is vital for the economies of southern member states such as Greece and Spain. That desire extends to allowing travel from non-EU countries such as Britain, but member states are at odds, to the extent that tonight’s summit will dodge tackling the issue of coronavirus passports head on. Britain is still not on the EU’s list of non-EU countries that are exempt from the non-essential travel restrictions, which is updated every fortnight. The chances of it being taken off in the near future are slim. Greek and Spanish ministers have been vocal in their demands for accelerated work towards the passports, which would smooth the influx of tourists. But tourism-dependent countries face opposition from, among others, France and Germany, which are the two most influential EU member states. Berlin and Paris don’t believe now, with so few EU citizens vaccinated, is the time to talk about coronavirus passports. There are anxieties about the threat of new variants and concerns over the lack of data on whether vaccinated people can transmit Covid-19 or not. One senior EU official said the leaders wanted to do all they could to avoid a new “death season”. France, which has a significant anti-vax movement, is concerned about the risk of discrimination between vaccinated and unvaccinated tourists

  • 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.

  • Coronavirus latest news: Failure to prioritise officers for vaccine a ‘damaging betrayal,’ says Police Federation

    Teachers, police and BAME will not get vaccine priority Analysis: Queen shows personal commitment in a time of crisis Merkel refuses Oxford jab amid calls to 'lead by example' Age remains the key factor that determines each person’s level of risk Subscribe to The Telegraph for a month-long free trial The national chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales has called the decision not to prioritise officers in the next phase of the coronavirus vaccination programme a "deep and damaging betrayal" which "will not be forgotten". The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has recommended Covid-19 vaccine prioritisation should continue down the age ranges rather than by occupation, with people in their 40s invited for a vaccinenext once all the over-50s and most vulnerable have had their jabs. John Apter, chairman of the Police Federation, said: "There's real palpable anger from all levels within policing about how we have been completely disregarded and ignored in this phase. "My colleagues have been on the frontline since the first national lockdown last March, risking infection and even death to keep the public safe." A headteachers' union has said it is "disappointed" the JCVI had decided against prioritising education staff. Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: "The Government needs to make a policy decision on this matter having insisted that education is a national priority and having announced a 'big bang' return to the classroom in England." Follow the latest updates below.