Card spending on travel and eating out hit a new post-pandemic high during the half-term holiday while job adverts in the hospitality sector have surged, according to latest data. The figures were published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) as part of a regular series of real-time indicators showing the impact of COVID-19 on
Pope Francis has rejected the resignation of German Cardinal Reinhard Marx over the Catholic Church’s sex abuse crisis. Cardinal Marx wrote a letter to the Pope last week offering to resign as the archbishop of Munich and Freising over the Church’s mishandling of abuse cases. He is not under investigation himself, either for abuse or
Andromeda Galaxy’s vastness is captured perfectly in a zoom-out video that was shared by World and Science, a Twitter handle that frequently shares interesting stories from the world of science. The video of Andromeda Galaxy, also known as Messier 31 or M31, has left users on the micro-blogging site awestruck. The sharp zoom0out clip shows
India has recorded the world’s highest number of coronavirus-related deaths in a single day. It announced a further 6,148 fatalities on Thursday – after the state of Bihar discovered 3,929 unreported deaths. Bihar, one of India’s poorest states, revised its death toll after being directed to by Patna High Court. Live COVID updates from the
A 25-year-old woman has died after being struck by a police car responding to an emergency call. The fatal collision happened on Stockwell Road in Lambeth, south London, at around 11.20pm on Wednesday. The Metropolitan Police said the marked car was responding to a 999 call at the time of the incident. The pedestrian was
A woman whose employment contract was not renewed after expressing views that sex cannot be changed and transgender women are “not women” has won an appeal against an employment tribunal. In 2018, Maya Forstater posted a number of tweets expressing her beliefs about sex and gender, including her opposition to proposed reform of the Gender
3:13 AM BST A Wallabies debut for ex-NRL star Suliasi Vunivalu will have to wait with the winger to miss the upcoming Tests against France with a hamstring injury. Vunivalu hobbled off the field in Queensland’s 31-24 Super Rugby Trans-Tasman loss to the Blues last weekend and Wallabies coach Dave Rennie says the injury is
Noel Gallagher has said he sympathises with Prince William over Prince Harry’s criticism of the Royal Family – as he knows what it’s like having a younger brother “shooting his mouth off”, according to a new interview. The Oasis and High Flying Birds star called Harry a “f****** woke snowflake” and said he comes across
In a first for India, Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy, a type of gene therapy for blood cancer treatment, was successfully conducted last Friday at the Bone Marrow Transplant unit at the Advanced Centre for Treatment, Research and Education in Cancer (ACTREC), Tata Memorial Hostpital in Mumbai in collaboration with IIT Bombay. The Central
Matt Hancock has denied claims he lied to the prime minister over the COVID care homes crisis and said “you can’t respond to a pandemic by pointing fingers”. The health secretary is being questioned by MPs two weeks after Dominic Cummings, the PM’s former chief aide, claimed he “should have been fired for at least
Transport operator Go-Ahead said more people are taking its buses and trains than at any time since the start of the pandemic as COVID restrictions ease. It said its regional bus network was seeing passenger numbers at 65-70% of typical levels on most days and at 80% in some regions – up from around 20%
The number of people waiting for routine hospital treatment has topped five million – the highest number ever recorded. In total 5,122,017 million people were waiting to begin treatment at the end of April, 2021, NHS England figures show – the highest number since records began in August 2007. The figure has increased every month
A healthcare assistant working on a COVID ward has been convicted of using a dead patient’s bank card to buy crisps, fizzy drinks and sweets from a hospital vending machine. Ayesha Basharat, 23, took the card from an 83-year-old woman who had recently passed away at Heartlands Hospital in Birmingham. A doctor recorded her time
Lily Allen is to make her West End debut in a new supernatural thriller play launching in the summer. The 36-year-old singer will star as Jenny in 2:22 – A Ghost Story, appearing alongside EastEnders actor Jake Wood, City Of Angels’ Hadley Fraser, and Julia Chan of Silent House. Written by Danny Robins – best
This year’s first solar eclipse will occur on June 10. It will be an annular or partial solar eclipse, meaning the Moon will not cover the sun entirely and position itself in a way that the outer edges of the sun will be visible from the Earth. This will create a spectacular “ring of fire”
A delay to the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions later this month would “materially” hamper Britain’s economic recovery, a leading business group has warned. The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) has predicted that a consumer spending surge will see GDP grow by 6.8% this year – but said it would reassess the forecast if restrictions are
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced earlier this week that he will be flying to space aboard his space company Blue Origin’s New Shephard vehicle on July 20, accompanied by his brother Mark Bezos. This was supposed to make senior Bezos the first ‘space billionaire’ to actually go into space. But it now seems that another ‘space
In this article GOOGL FB AAPL AMZN U.S. House Impeachment manager David Cicilline (D-RI) speaks on the second day of former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial at the U.S. Capitol on February 10, 2021 in Washington, DC. congress.gov via Getty Images A group of House Democrats is circulating discussion drafts of antitrust bills that
Originally published on Transport & Environment.By Eoin Bannon More than 90 environmental and consumer groups have today appealed to the European Parliament not to accept sustainable finance rules that would allow logging and the burning of trees to be counted as green investments. In a public letter, groups such as Transport & Environment (T&E), WWF, Greenpeace, and
Boris Johnson has scored an early diplomatic win with the UK becoming the first foreign destination for Joe Biden since he became US president. But it is more thanks to good timing than the special relationship – a term the prime minister reportedly doesn’t like anyway because he thinks it sounds weak and needy. As