Jane Deith

The UK has reached a new daily record for coronavirus cases with more than 50,000 people testing positive in the last 24 hours.

Millions more people in England are now living under the strictest, Tier 4 coronavirus restrictions. Household mixing is banned while all non-essential shops are closed. Mainland Scotland and Northern Ireland have also begun new lockdowns with similar measures reimposed in Wales.

Investigative group Bellingcat has said Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny tricked a Russian FSB state agent into revealing details of an attack on him with the nerve agent Novichok.

Just four days ago the Prime Minister had said it would be “inhuman” to cancel Christmas. But in his latest press conference, warning of a rapid spread of a new strain of the virus, in effect he did just that for London and the South East of England putting them into a new Tier 4.…

More than 300 Nigerian schoolboys kidnapped last week are being reunited with their families – apparently safe and well.

Senior Conservatives have condemned the threat as “irresponsible”

Authorities in many countries are split over how to let families meet up over Christmas – if at all.

The same sticking points remain over issues like fishing rights and governance.

The West Yorkshire chief constable said the language used about his victims at the time – some of whom were sex workers – was “as wrong then as it is now”. 

The Children’s Commissioner for England says that thousands of vulnerable children are being “betrayed by the state” in sometimes dirty, dangerous care homes. Anne Longfield has published a trio of reports today, accusing the government of “deep-rooted institutional ambivalence” towards children in care, who she says are too often “dumped” in areas they have never…

First they refused to carry on funding free school meals in England over the school holidays – now the Government has made another U-turn – as ministers announced a package of more than £400 million to support low income households, into next year.

The Mayor of Greater Manchester and Number 10 still can’t agree on whether the region should be put under tighter Tier 3 rules.

More than twenty eight million people in England are now living under tighter Covid restrictions after a rise in the number of cases.

So-called ‘Long Covid’, describing symptoms lasting three weeks or more, can range from organ damage to post viral fatigue. 

There have been fierce clashes on the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan with at least one helicopter shot down.