Month: May 2022

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Boris Johnson revealed the figure, saying he expected a lot of legal opposition but insisted the government would “dig in for the fight”.

Under a new deal, people judged to have entered the UK illegally now face being flown to Rwanda for resettlement.

The policy has been widely criticised.

Among its critics are more than 160 charities, the Archbishop of Canterbury, opposition parties and senior Conservative Party backbenchers, including former Prime Minister Theresa May.

Together they have raised questions about the ethics, legality, cost and efficacy of the policy.

Aid agencies have reported several asylum seekers in the UK going into hiding because of fears they would be sent to Rwanda.

The threat of removal has also prompted some to self-harm, with one attempting suicide, the Red Cross and the Refugee Council said.

Small boat crossings have continued, however. The latest available government figures show 792 migrants arrived in small boats in the week from 2 to 8 May.

Earlier this week, the Home Office said it planned to start informing the first migrants whom it wanted to remove to Rwanda. Among them would be people who had crossed the Channel, the department said.

In his interview, Mr Johnson said 50 “notices of intent” have now been issued. This marks the first stage of the process.

Those people will have between seven and 14 days to lodge objections.

It is widely expected there will be legal challenges to the plans. Home Secretary Priti Patel has said that would mean the process would “take time” but insisted she would not be deterred.

Mr Johnson told the Mail: “There’s going to be a lot of legal opposition from the types of firms that for a long time have been taking taxpayers’ money to mount these sort of cases, and to thwart the will of the people, the will of Parliament. We’re ready for that.

“We will dig in for the fight and we will make it work,” he added. “We’ve got a huge flowchart of things we have to do to deal with it, with the Leftie lawyers.”

The new policy follows a drastic rise in the number of small boat crossings across the English Channel, with more than 6,000 people crossing so far this year.

Home Office figures suggest 28,526 people made the crossing in 2021, up from 8,466 the year before.The government says the new scheme will be a major blow to people smugglers and will stop people dying on dangerous routes to the UK.

Ms Patel insists the critics of the policy have “no answers” themselves to the problem of dangerous small boat crossings.

The Department of Health said the plans will be deferred for a year while officials assess the impact on household finances.

It said curbs on junk food placement in stores would still go ahead in October.

But health campaigners have accused the PM of “playing politics” with children’s health.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said the planned ban on “buy one get one free” (Bogof) deals for food and drinks high in fat, salt or sugar (HFSS) as well as free refills for soft drinks, would be put on hold for 12 months, until October 2023.

Plans to restrict TV advertising of junk foods before the 21:00 GMT watershed and paid-for online adverts are also being paused for a year and will not come into force until January 2024, the department added.

Laws requiring large restaurants, cafes and takeaways to list calories on their menus came into force last month.

Public health minister Maggie Throup insisted that the government remained committed to tackling the issue of childhood obesity.

“Pausing restrictions on deals like ‘buy one get one free’ will allow us to understand its impact on consumers in light of an unprecedented global economic situation,” she added.

However, health campaigners have criticised delays to the plans, and accused Boris Johnson’s government of failing to tackle childhood obesity.

Prof Graham MacGregor, a cardiologist at Queen Mary University of London and chairman of Action on Sugar, said the delays contradicted the government’s “levelling up” agenda.

“Boris Johnson could have left a legacy of being the first prime minister to address obesity in a meaningful way, particularly in restricting advertising and promotion of unhealthy food which were his flagship policies,” he said.

“Instead, he has given in to his own MPs, and an aggressive food industry, who, ironically, were starting to comply with these new policies.”

Meanwhile, Barbara Crowther, of the Children’s Food Campaign, said ministers should be urgently curbing multi-buy offers instead of “delaying and dithering”.

“Obesity is spiking and millions of families can’t afford to put proper food on the table. Multi-buy offers make people spend more on junk, and less on healthy food,” she said.

“This delay threatens the UK target to halve childhood obesity by 2030. Boris is playing politics with our children’s health.”

Labour’s shadow health minister Andrew Gwynne said: “Instead of cutting childhood obesity, preventing ill-health and easing pressure on the NHS, this chaotic government is performing another U-turn.”

But industry body the Food and Drink Federation (FDF) argues that it “makes sense” to delay restrictions on multi-buy deals as families and manufacturers struggle with “high inflation”.

Kate Halliwell, the FDF’s chief scientific officer, also welcomed the delay to the advertising ban, saying it would give the industry time to prepare for a change in the law.

When the government unveiled the planned curbs, some of the UK’s biggest food companies, including Britvic, Kellogg’s and Mars, criticised them as “disproportionate” and lacking evidence.

Last month, Kellogg’s said it would take the government to court over the curbs preventing some cereals from being placed in key locations in stores due to their high sugar content.

The Coastal fire in Orange County, south of Los Angeles, has grown to 199 acres since it began on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the largest wildfire in the US has burned around 170 homes in New Mexico, and continues to threaten communities and businesses.

Fire season is off to an early start, partly due to a decades-long drought.

The Coastal fire is not contained, officials said in an update on Thursday, although the winds that have fuelled the blaze are forecast to die down later.

Around 900 homes were still under mandatory evacuation order in the hills around the city of Laguna Beach by Thursday morning.

“We will repopulate when it is safe to do so,” Orange County Sheriff’s Department Captain Virgil Asuncion said in a morning news conference.

More than 500 firefighters have been deployed to fight the blaze. A spokesman said one firefighter was injured and has been taken to hospital.

Aircrafts were seen dumping fire retardant around the neighbourhoods of Laguna Niguel and Coronado Pointe, where the multi-million dollar mansions had burned overnight.

Officials say that hot embers travelling ahead of the main fire are what set many of the homes ablaze. Some homes not touched by embers were spared.

Local man Phil Charlton told the Orange County Register newspaper that he understands the danger of fires while living in “the best place in the world”.

“You see a fire like this and it goes through the brown brush and green brush,” he said, adding: “People who live in brown canyons can’t complain about fire.”

Tim Wheaton told Reuters the evacuation orders created traffic congestion in the hilly region. He described seeing “people crying and hugging one another and cars full of, I assume, their most precious items from their homes”.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation. Southern California Edison, the utility company that provides electricity to much of southern California, said that there was “circuit activity occurring close in time to the reported time of the fire”.

Utility companies in California are required by law to disclose if their equipment could have been involved in wildfires.

Several previous wildfires, including the largest in the state’s history, have been traced back to California’s Pacific Gas and Electric, which paid a multi-billion dollar settlement in 2019.

Across the western US and Canada, firefighters are gearing up for a particularly fierce wildfire season. Experts say a lack of winter moisture, combined with warmer temperatures, is causing vegetation to dry out earlier each spring, making it more susceptible to fire.

The US Forest Service says that the concept of a “fire season” is now antiquated, since climate change has led to the possibility of wildfires being sparked throughout the entire “fire year”.

“Fires in the winter months are becoming part of the norm,” the agency said in a report last summer.

The New Mexico blaze, dubbed the Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak fire, has already burned over 250,000 acres.

And in central Colorado, mandatory evacuation orders were issued for residents of Colorado Springs amid reports that grass fires had hit a local trailer park community.

Climate change increases the risk of the hot, dry weather that is likely to fuel wildfires.

The world has already warmed by about 1.2C since the industrial era began and temperatures will keep rising unless governments around the world make steep cuts to emissions.

More than a dozen warnings were issued on Friday, telling residents in several regions to prepare their homes and evacuate if needed.

One person died in flooding in the state’s north earlier this week.

The storm system has now moved south towards Queensland’s heavily populated southeast, which includes Brisbane.

In February, Queensland was devastated by floods that killed 13 people and inundated more than 20,000 homes. Another nine people were killed in floods in neighbouring New South Wales.

Major flooding was forecast for several rivers on Friday. Residents in Gympie, north of the state capital, were warned to expect flooding for the second time in recent months.

In the February disaster, 800 homes and businesses in the town were affected when the river peaked at 23m.

Mayor Glen Hartwig said they were anxious to see how high the local Mary River would rise this time. If it reaches a peak of 15m, businesses – but not homes – will be affected.

“At 16m, it’s snorkels or nothing,” he told the ABC.

Floods also inundated some towns on Friday in the Lockyer Valley, west of Brisbane, and cut off a major highway.

About 300 homes in the region were expected to be affected, after 68 were inundated in February.

“It is soul destroying – it’s absolutely crushing,” Lockyer Valley Mayor Tanya Milligan told the ABC.

A warning siren sounded in the town of Grantham on Friday, with residents in low-lying areas urged to move to higher ground.

In 2011, the town was devastated by a major flooding event that killed 12 people and was likened to an “inland tsunami”.

The Bureau of Meteorology has warned further heavy rainfall on Friday could also lead to life-threatening flash floods and potential landslides. The system will begin easing over the weekend.

Australians will vote in a federal election on 21 May in which climate change is a key issue.

In recent years the country has suffered severe drought, historic bushfires and mass bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef.

Six people died after suffering a fever with one testing positive for Omicron, state media reported on Friday.

It said 187,000 people with a fever were being “isolated and treated”.

While experts believe the virus has been present in the country for some time, the authorities only announced the first cases on Thursday.

They said there had been an outbreak of the Omicron variant in the capital, Pyongyang, and announced lockdown measures. They did not give precise case numbers.

But in an update on Friday, the official KCNA news agency reported that the outbreak extended beyond the capital. “A fever whose cause couldn’t be identified spread explosively nationwide from late April,” it said.

Around 350,000 people had shown signs of that fever, it added, without specifying how many had tested positive for Covid.

Analysts suggest the latest figures from state media, including the acknowledgement that the unspecified fever had spread nationwide, may indicate the country is experiencing an outbreak unlike any it has seen so far.

Its population of 25 million is vulnerable due to the lack of a vaccination programme and poor healthcare, experts say.

North Korea rejected offers from the international community to supply millions of AstraZeneca and Chinese-made jabs last year. Instead, it claimed it had controlled Covid by sealing its borders early in January 2020.

The country shares land borders with South Korea and China, which have both battled outbreaks. China is now struggling to contain an Omicron wave with lockdowns in its biggest cities.

On Friday, KCNA reported that the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had visited a healthcare centre and “learned about the nationwide spread of Covid-19”.

It described the situation as an “immediate public health crisis”.

These numbers give us the first indication that the virus has spread rapidly around the country, far beyond the capital Pyongyang.

This puts the entire population of 25 million at risk. No-one is vaccinated, many are malnourished, and the health care system is poor.

But the virus itself may not present the biggest danger. The lockdown could have devastating consequences for people.

Food and medicine are already in short supply, thanks to efforts by authorities to keep the virus out – they’ve sealed the country’s borders for more than two years, cutting off virtually all trade.

We don’t know yet how aggressive these lockdowns will be, and whether people will be confined to their homes.

Kim Jong-un wants some work to continue. But it is very possible that the markets, where many earn a living, will be closed. It will also be more difficult for people to move around the country. This in turn will make it even harder for them to get hold of the food and supplies they need to survive.

By publishing these figures today, some say North Korea is showing it might finally be willing to accept outside help.

At a meeting outlining new Covid rules on Thursday, Mr Kim was seen wearing a face mask on television for what was believed to be the first time.

He ordered “maximum emergency” virus controls, which appeared to include orders for local lockdowns and gathering restrictions in workplaces.

There are fears a major outbreak could make it even more difficult for essential supplies to enter the country, worsening food shortages and a faltering economy.

South Korea has said it offered humanitarian aid after Thursday’s announcement, but Pyongyang is yet to respond.

Despite North Korea’s earlier claims that it had “shining success” in keeping out Covid, there have been signs throughout the pandemic of its possible presence in the country, including unconfirmed reports of cases and workers wearing hazmat suits.