Millions of people in Shanghai will continue to live under lockdown rules after officials reversed plans to ease COVID restrictions. A two-stage lockdown was imposed last week in China‘s financial centre after the city’s largest coronavirus outbreak. Officials had planned to lift a lockdown in the city’s western districts today, but the restrictions have now
Month: April 2022
Britney Spears has announced she is writing a new tell-all memoir, saying the process has been “healing and therapeutic”. The pop star, who was freed from a controversial 13-year conservatorship arrangement in November 2020, says the experience has confronted her with memories of her early life, and experiences under the court order. It comes after
Sir Paul McCartney and his brother Mike are opening the doors of their childhood home to undiscovered musicians to write, perform and gain inspiration. 20 Forthlin Road in Liverpool is where Sir Paul and John Lennon wrote hits such as I Saw Her Standing There and When I’m 64. The house which is now owned
Wearing plastic gloves and a face mask, Serhij Matuyk has seen horror beyond description over the past month. His job is to retrieve and bury bodies in the Ukrainian town of Bucha where evidence has emerged of possible war crimes by Russian forces. “They are b******s,” he said, standing by a large white van, waiting
Cancer survival rates in England risk going into reverse as the health service faces specialist staff shortages and the prolonged impact of the pandemic, MPs have warned. A report by the health and social care committee pointed to staff having to ration treatment and said factors including reluctance of patients to come forward and late
Sacramento Police have said they have made an arrest after a mass shooting in California’s state capital during the early hours of Sunday morning. Police said that more than 100 shots were fired in the Sacramento mass shooting, which killed six people and left 12 wounded. 26-year-old Dandre Martin, 26, has been arrested as a
The government has decided to push ahead with plans to privatise Channel 4. Ministers have concluded, following a consultation, that while the broadcaster is “currently performing well” its public ownership is “holding it back in the face of a rapidly-changing and competitive media landscape”, a government source said. A spokesperson for Channel 4 said it
The government is considering whether it can go ahead with a landmark global LGBT conference this summer after more than 100 groups pulled out over changes to plans to ban conversion therapy. Organisations including Stonewall said they would no longer support the Safe To Be Me event due to take place on London following the
Chancellor Rishi Sunak is to launch a non-fungible token (NFT) – a type of cryptocurrency asset – through the Royal Mint as part of a drive to make the UK a “global cryptoasset hub”. The government plans to introduce a range of measures for the notoriously unregulated cryptocurrency sector, which features incredibly volatile currencies such
The government’s former ethics chief has apologised for an “error of judgement” after being fined by the Met Police for going to a lockdown-breaking party in Westminster. Helen MacNamara said she has paid the fine she was handed in connection with a leaving party held in the Cabinet Office on June 18 2020 to mark
June Brown, the actress who played Dot Cotton in EastEnders, has died at the age of 95, the BBC has announced. She died at her home in Surrey on Sunday with her family by her side. Image: Brown was awarded an MBE for services to Drama and Charity in 2008 An EastEnders spokeswoman said: “We
Police have been warned against using live facial recognition technology to identify potential witnesses and not just suspects. Fraser Sampson, the biometrics and surveillance camera commissioner, has described the proposal by the College of Policing as a “somewhat sinister development”. It “treats everyone like walk-on extras on a police film set rather than as individual
Shares in social media giant Twitter have surged by a quarter after it was revealed that Tesla billionaire Elon Musk had bought a 9.2% stake. A regulatory filing showed the tycoon had snapped up 73,486,938 Twitter shares. The stake is worth $2.89bn (£2.2bn), based on Twitter’s closing price on Friday. Musk is a frequent user
A hunt continues for at least two gunmen who opened fire in Sacramento’s entertainment district on Sunday, killing six people and wounding 12. The streets were full of crowds leaving bars and nightclubs in California’s capital city when the sound of rapid-fire gunshots sent people running in terror. Sacramento police have confirmed they are looking
Russian soldiers have been accused of carrying out “genocide” in the Ukrainian town of Bucha amid harrowing evidence of mass graves, torture and bodies lying in the streets as Kremlin forces pull back from Kyiv. Ukraine officials say some victims were shot in the head with their hands tied behind their back and there has been
NASA has cancelled an important “wet test” of the Artemis 1 Space Launch System (SLS) due to safety concerns with its $1bn launch platform. The wet test for the next-generation moon rocket was essentially a dress rehearsal, featuring everything necessary for preparing an actual launch – including filling it with fuel – without actually taking