Storm Clouds Loom Over Central Illinois After Tornado Warning Issued – Yahoo News UK

Reuters

UK on course to ditch social distancing rule in June – PM Johnson

LONDON (Reuters) -Britain is on course to ditch the COVID-19 social distancing rule requiring people to stay at least one metre apart towards the end of next month, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday. Johnson’s government has set out a roadmap to end lockdown restrictions in stages as widespread vaccinations help to suppress infections. June 21 has been set as a date when social distancing could end.

The Telegraph

Letters: A period of self-funding would show Scots the reality of independence

SIR – According to government figures, in the current financial year Scotland will be spending £129 per person for every £100 spent in England. The Barnett formula will result in about £38 billion going from English taxpayers to the Scottish government. It is difficult to see how promises of billions of pounds of investment to provide a faster rail link from Glasgow to London (report, May 2) will sway Scottish voters. Such money might be better spent providing free social care at home and undergraduate tuition in England – benefits Scots already enjoy. Rather than wooing Scotland with money we cannot afford, perhaps Boris Johnson could offer the SNP, should it win the coming elections, a trial period of self-funding. How long would Scots wait before deciding they were better off in the Union? Julia Leith Crewe, Cheshire SIR – Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP want another referendum on Scottish independence, which would affect the entire UK population. The PM shouldn’t waste his time negotiating handouts, but should instead tell the SNP leader: “Yes, provided the referendum covers the whole of the UK, including dependencies and ex-pats, that results are binding and that the SNP foots the bill, including incidentals such as publicity, for the whole exercise.” This should settle the argument as to whether the Scots need the English or vice versa. Norman Baust Fareham, Hampshire SIR – Surely there are enough good reasons to keep the Union without resorting to bribery? Janet Stukins Blencogo, Cumbria SIR – Nicola Sturgeon seems to take it for granted that Scotland would leave the United Kingdom and immediately join the European Union, without any intervening period of independence. What has Ms Sturgeon been told by the EU about a probationary period, for example, or using the euro? What about border controls with England? Surely we need some answers before the elections. Judith Beeley Keighley, West Yorkshire

The Telegraph

Government has ‘washed its hands’ of teacher who showed Mohammed pictures

The Government has “washed its hands” of the Batley Grammar School teacher who was suspended after showing pictures of the Prophet Mohammed in class, it has been claimed. Ministers are not doing enough to ensure that Batley Multi Academy Trust’s investigation is “unduly influenced” by local imams, according to the National Secular Society (NSS). Officials at the Department for Education (DfE) are also accused of failing to ensure that the probe will examine the school’s reaction to the incident and whether it was appropriate to immediately suspend the teacher. “This is a bit of a test case for how these things are handled, that’s why it is important,” said Stephen Evans, chief executive of the NSS. “Here we have a teacher in fear of his life, in hiding and suspended from his job – yet there is nothing to indicate the materials were not handled correctly. “We are concerned that the Department for Education doesn’t seem interested enough given that the outcome of this will have national implications. They have washed their hands of it.”

The Telegraph

Alex Salmond claims he could have ‘destroyed’ Nicola Sturgeon’s career

Alex Salmond has claimed that he could have “destroyed” Nicola Sturgeon’s political career if he had wanted to during their long-running feud over sexual harassment allegations against him. The former First Minister told an American magazine that “if I wanted to destroy her, that could have been done”. The New Yorker reported that Mr Salmond, who has set up a rival party to the SNP and has repeatedly criticised the First Minister’s independence strategy, chuckled for several seconds before making the remark. Meanwhile, Ms Sturgeon said that her political opponents – and potentially Mr Salmond himself – had attempted to “break her” during the controversy into whether she had broken the ministerial code over her dealings with her predecessor while a Scottish Government probe into complaints against him was ongoing. Ms Sturgeon’s political career was in jeopardy after Mr Salmond publicly accused her allies, including her own husband, of conspiring to put him in jail. He also claimed Ms Sturgeon misled parliament over when she became aware of the allegations against him.

The Telegraph

2021 Toyota Mirai review: hydrogen-fuelled electric car is quiet, comfortable – and so much more

It’s raining in West Sussex, which seems appropriate. Water, you see, gives life – especially to the Toyota Mirai which sits beneath the grey skies in a car park on the outskirts of Crawley. This is our first chance to drive the Mirai in undisguised, production-ready form. This second-generation car, Toyota hopes, will start to make hydrogen a very real part of our automotive future, moving the Mirai from an automotive curio to a genuine option for a much wider group of buyers. To that end, this new car is lower and wider than the old one, with swooping four-door coupé lines that fit far more readily into the mould of a futuristic executive saloon with a premium bent. It’s also more affordable and, crucially, has a longer range thanks to the addition of a third hydrogen tank. But is all that enough to bring the Mirai into the mainstream – especially when there are only 11 places to fill it in the UK? It’s a big ask. Pros Effortless to drive The most affordable hydrogen car yet Electric power with five-minute fill-ups Cons Small boot Cramped rear seats Relatively few places to fill it up… for now. Cell mates How does it work? Well, without wanting to get too technical, the fuel cell at the heart of the Mirai uses an electrochemical reaction to convert hydrogen to water, the by-product of which is electricity that powers the electric motor. In other words, the Mirai is an electric car which uses hydrogen and its own little on-board power station to generate its own electricity.

The Telegraph

Michel Barnier admits UK vaccine success shows it is easier to act alone than under EU ‘bureaucracy’

Michel Barnier on Monday conceded that Britain’s vaccine success proved that individual states could act faster than the unwieldy European Union, which displayed an “ideological mistrust of public-private partnerships” and had “not yet learned to take risks”. The former Brexit negotiator, 70, who is bringing out a book on more than four years in the job called La Grande Illusion (The Grand Illusion) this week, also refused to describe Boris Johnson as a “statesman”, saying it was too early to use such a term for Britain’s “head of government”. In an interview ahead of the book’s launch with France Inter, he was asked whether Britain’s vaccine success was an “extraordinary advert” for Brexit. The UK is streets ahead of the rest of the bloc in terms of vaccination but the continent is now slowly catching up after a sluggish start. More than half of the UK’s total population of 66.8 million has received a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine. NHS data up to May 2 shows that of the 49,834,997 jabs given in the UK so far, 34,505, 380 were first doses.

Storyful

Baby Chimpanzees Play and Frolic at Maryland Zoo

Three baby chimpanzees played together at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore, romping around with a yellow blanket.Footage released by the Maryland Zoo on May 1 shows chimps Lola, Violet, and Maisie playing and occasionally getting tangled in the blanket.“Who knew a simple yellow blanket could provide so much enrichment for three silly baby chimpanzees?” wrote the zoo on the post. Credit: Maryland Zoo via Storyful

The Guardian

How could a vote on the unification of Ireland play out?

How could a vote on the unification of Ireland play out?How a referendum would be triggered and the options offered to voters are fraught with difficulty Sinn Féin activists calling for a border poll in January 2020. Photograph: Paul Faith/AFP via Getty Images

Reuters

U.S. and Britain tell China and Russia: the West is not over yet

LONDON (Reuters) -The Group of Seven western democracies aims to court new allies to counter challenges from China and Russia without holding Beijing down and while pursuing more stable ties with the Kremlin, two of its top diplomats said on Monday. Ahead of the first in-person G7 foreign ministers meeting since 2019, U.S. President Joe Biden’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken, sought to foster a message of multilateralism after four years of Twitter-diplomacy under Donald Trump variously shocked, bewildered and alarmed many Western allies. Founded in 1975 as a forum for the West’s richest nations to discuss crises such as the OPEC oil embargo, the G7 this week is discussing China and Russia as well as battling the COVID-19 pandemic and the spread of climate change.

France 24

France rejects UK’s post-Brexit provisional changes to fishing licences

France has called on the European Commission to intervene after rejecting Britain’s provisional changes to fishing licences under the Brexit agreement, which would affect fishing rights in the Channel Islands. France’s ministry for maritime affairs said Monday that it considered the new requirements put forth by the UK as “null and void” and called for a strict compliance on fisheries as negotiated under the Brexit agreement.”If the UK wants to introduce new provisions then it must submit these to the European Commission, who then notifies us, which enables us to engage in a dialogue. At this stage, we find that these new technical measures are not applicable to our fishermen as they stand,” the ministry told AFP.The new provisions concern new fishing zones, particularly around the waters of Jersey Island, “where vessels can and cannot go”, while specifying the “number of days” fishermen can spend at sea and “with what gear”, the department said.On Friday, the UK published a list of 41 fishing vessels equipped with Vessel Monitoring Systems (VMS) and authorised to fish in waters around Jersey Island since Saturday.The European Commission had been informed of the new provisions and was expected to “enter into a dialogue with the United Kingdom to understand what the changes mean and to provide us with some clarifications”, the ministry said. “It is clear that there will need to be a response to what the Jersey authorities have done in relation to fishing authorisations. We hope that the state will take retaliatory measures,” said Dimitri Rogoff, president of the Normandy regional fisheries committee.The regional fisheries committees of Brittany and Normandy have threatened “a suspension of all economic relations with Jersey, including the ferry link between Jersey and the Continent”, in a joint statement sent to AFP.(FRANCE 24 with AFP)