News Round-Up

• “U.K. health agency to cut 800 jobs and halt routine Covid testing” – The public health body set up by Boris Johnson to combat the pandemic is in turmoil, with plans looming to cut jobs by up to 40% and suspend routine Covid testing in hospitals and care homes to save money, reports the Guardian.
• “Daily Covid admissions hit two-month low, deaths plunge 40% in a week and just 17,500 Brits test positive” – Latest Government dashboard data show there were 1,186 admissions for the virus across the U.K. on April 23rd, the Mail reports.
• “WHO chief warns that the world is ‘increasingly blind’ to Covid” – WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is warning that it is too early to pull back on some Covid testing and surveillance as it would leave the world blind, the Mail reports.
• “Bill Gates: how to prevent the next pandemic” – Writing in the Times with an excerpt from his new book, the billionaire proposes that next time we should do lockdowns “right away” and find treatments faster.
• “Lockdown drove 60,000 more secondary school children into clinical depression” – Symptoms such as low mood, loss of pleasure and poor concentration increased by 6% after Covid struck, a study finds, according to the Telegraph.
• “Passport Office boss ‘working from home’ as backlog of 700,000 threatens holiday chaos” – Abi Tierney is under pressure to return to the London base permanently as delayed applications could scupper Britons’ summer holidays, the Telegraph reports.
• “New Zealand’s hotel quarantine ‘lottery’ infringed on citizens’ right to return home, High Court rules” – Report from SBS News that Grounded Kiwis, a lobby group founded to protest New Zealand’s tough COVID-19 border restrictions, has won a court case against the Government.
• “The dark side of the ‘protect the NHS’ slogan” – The High Court’s ruling that the Government broke the law on the discharge of patients to care homes in the early days of the pandemic further undermines the claim by the then Health Secretary Matt Hancock that ministers had thrown a ‘protective ring’ around the sector, writes Isabel Hardman in the Spectator.
• “We must learn the lessons of Covid so we are equipped to cope with future pandemics” – Matt Hancock responds in the Telegraph to the High Court ruling that he acted unlawfully in approving the discharge of untested patients into care homes, arguing that the advice he received at the time was that asymptomatic transmission was not a risk.
• “Evidence from the CDC and IDSA that N95 masks work” – Many people think that N95 masks work; Steve Kirsch summarises for them the evidence that supports their position (spoiler: there isn’t any).
• “We’ve asked that the Bangladesh mask study either be corrected or withdrawn” – If there was any protection at all, it was too small to measure in the study that was done, writes Steve Kirsch. “The authors need to do the right thing and correct or retract the study ASAP.”
• “Coal power set for stay of execution as ministers scramble to keep lights on” – Drax is asked to extend its coal operations beyond September, the Telegraph reports.
• “Face masks for cows could help save the planet one burp at a time” – Methane-catching devices, an invention backed by the Prince of Wales, could be fitted to herds to reduce carbon hoofprint of British beef, reports the Telegraph.
• “A death sentence for freedom online” – The Online Safety Bill won’t make us the “safest country to be online” – just the most boring, says Andrew Tettenborn in the Critic.
• “Prisoners aren’t ‘residents’ in ‘rooms’, says Dominic Raab as he bars woke terms in jails” – The Justice Secretary urges governors not to use “wishy-washy” language for fear of undermining public confidence in the penal system, reports the Telegraph.
• “European gas prices surge 24% after Putin ‘blackmails’ Poland and Bulgaria by cutting off their supplies as Moscow says ‘unfriendly’ nations only have themselves to blame” – Poland and Bulgaria are the first countries to have their gas cut off by Europe’s main supplier since Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, the Mail reports.
• “Gas embargoes will hurt Europe (much) more than Russia” – The suspension of gas exports to Poland and Bulgaria is a worrying sign, writes Philip Pilkington in UnHerd.
• “Four European Gas Buyers Made Rouble Payments to Russia” – Four European gas buyers have already paid for supplies in roubles as President Vladimir Putin demanded, according to a person close to Russian gas giant Gazprom PJSC, Bloomberg Quint reports.
• “Putin’s main assault is still to come” – Lieutenant-General Jonathon Riley in TCW Defending Freedom on what Putin has in store next and his prospects of success.
• “‘Victory’ for Ukraine means denying Russia any territorial gains from war, says Western intelligence” – Officials say no changes to Ukrainian borders without Government agreement would equate to Vladimir Putin being “seen to fail”, according to the Telegraph.
• “Putin suggests he will use nukes against anyone who ‘interferes’ in Ukraine, saying: ‘We have tools no-one else can boast of. We don’t want to brag about them, we will use them’” – Vladimir Putin has vowed that Russia will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons against any country that tries to interfere in the war in Ukraine or threaten Russia itself, the Mail reports.
• “What makes Boris Johnson so sure Vladimir Putin is bluffing over his nuclear threats to U.K.? I fear they’re real” – If NATO insists on bringing about the defeat of Russia on the most humiliating terms, it risks making a second error that could be calamitous for the West – in threatening nuclear retaliation, Putin and Lavrov almost certainly mean what they say, writes Stephen Glover in the Mail.

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