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World

Macron: Britain’s resolution to fishing disagreement a test of country’s credibility

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French President Emmanuel MacronEmmanuel Jean-Michel MacronOvernight Defense & National Security — Biden discusses Afghanistan, submarine deals in Europe The Hill’s 12:30 Report – Presented by Facebook – Biden doesn’t discuss abortion with Pope Francis Biden lauds ally France, calls handling of sub deal ‘clumsy’ MORE said that Britain’s resolution to a fishing disagreement between the two nations would be a test of the United Kingdom’s credibility.

The two European countries are embroiled in a dispute over French fishing boats and permits, The Associated Press reported. The dispute, tied to a trade agreement between Britain and the European Union, requires permits for EU nations to fish in the U.K.’s surrounding waters, according to Euronews.

While many permits have been given to French fishing boats, a number of French boats are still without permits — an issue that Britain says is related to paperwork that has not yet been provided to its government.

In retaliation, France has said that trucks and boats would undergo more rigorous checks and U.K. boats seeking to pass through the English Channel would be barred if permits are not given to the remaining fishing boats by Tuesday, the AP reported. 

“Make no mistake, it is not just for the Europeans but all of their partners,” Macron told the Financial Times in an interview, according to the AP. “Because when you spend years negotiating a treaty and then a few months later you do the opposite of what was decided on the aspects that suit you the least, it is not a big sign of your credibility.”

“If there is a breach of the treaty or we think there is a breach of the treaty then we will do what is necessary to protect British interests,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told British news outlets, the AP noted.

President and chairman of the northern French ports of Calais and Boulogne-sur-Mer Jean-Marc Puissesseau estimated in an interview with BBC radio that roughly 40 boats had yet to receive their permits.

This marks the latest dispute that the two countries have found themselves in; earlier this year, a deal between France and Australia was nixed after Australia, the U.K. and the United States announced that they would be helping Australia acquire nuclear submarines. In retaliation, the French ambassador to the U.S. was temporarily recalled.

On Friday, President BidenJoe BidenOvernight Energy & Environment — American Clean Power — Supreme Court to review power plant rule case Harris makes a final pitch for McAuliffe Overnight Health Care — Presented by Altria — Young children one step closer to vaccine MORE stressed that France is an ally and called the submarine deal between the two other nations “clumsy.”



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Health

Rise in Cases and Deaths Tests Britain’s Gamble on Few Virus Restrictions

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LONDON — For the last four months, Britain has run a grand epidemiological experiment, lifting virtually all coronavirus restrictions, even in the face of a high daily rate of infections. Its leaders justified the approach on the grounds that the country’s rapid rollout of vaccines had weakened the link between infection and serious illness.

Now, with cases, hospital admissions and deaths all rising again; the effect of vaccines beginning to wear off; and winter looming, Britain’s strategy of learning to live with the virus is coming under its stiffest test yet.

New cases surpassed 50,000 on Thursday, an 18 percent increase over the last week and the second time cases have broken that psychological barrier since July. The number of people admitted to hospitals rose 15.4 percent over the same period, reaching 959, while 115 people died of Covid-19, an increase of almost 11 percent.

“Everything is hitting us at once,” said Tim Spector, a professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London who has been leading a major study of Covid-19 symptoms. “My view is that we’re in a no man’s land.”

The sudden resurgence of the virus is a rude jolt for a country that believed it had put the worst of the pandemic behind it. After a remarkably successful vaccine deployment and a characteristically British resolve to get on with it, Britons have been brought up short, vexed by a virus that isn’t ready to relinquish its grip.

At issue is the core trade off British officials made last summer: They decided they could tolerate a widely circulating virus as the price of reopening the economy, so long as only a small fraction of infected people ended up in the hospital.

That laissez-faire approach has been watched by the United States and other European countries as a possible model for how to plot a way out of the pandemic. Britons have enjoyed a return to normalcy unseen in the rest of Europe, packing nightclubs, theaters, and sports stadiums — with face masks few and far between.

The percentage of infected people who are later hospitalized is still much lower now than it was during the last peak of the pandemic in January, about 2 percent compared with 9 percent. But the National Health Service is already feeling the strain, and with fears of a virulent flu season, hospitals face the prospect of a double-whammy this winter.

There is also evidence that more vaccinated people are getting infected, a shift from a few weeks ago, when the bulk of infections occurred in schoolchildren, according to Professor Spector’s Zoe Covid Study. The government sent students back to school in September largely unvaccinated and without requiring them to wear face masks.

“This problem, which was mainly confined to students, is now moving up the generations,” Professor Spector said. “The makeup of the infected is a mix of young, unvaccinated people and older, vaccinated people.”

That, he said, mostly reflects the waning efficacy of the vaccines, which were rolled out earlier in Britain than in most other large countries and so are wearing off earlier. Nearly 80 percent of people 12 and older in Britain have received two shots of a vaccine, but most older people got their shots six months ago or earlier.

The protection from two shots of AstraZeneca, the most widely used vaccine in Britain, drops from 88 percent after one month to 74 percent after four to five months, according to an analysis by the Zoe study.

So far, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has rejected calls to reimpose measures, like making masks compulsory in indoor spaces, or to impose new measures, like vaccine passports for mass gatherings — a practice that France and other European countries have adopted.

Instead, the government is urging those eligible for booster shots, particularly the elderly and other vulnerable groups, to sign up for them, trying to jump-start a rollout that has had little of the speed or urgency of the vaccine deployment last winter.

On Thursday Mr. Johnson said that “the numbers of infections are high but we are within the parameters of what the predictions were,” adding, “we are sticking with our plan.”

A day earlier, Mr. Johnson’s health minister, Sajid Javid, warned that the number of cases could soar to 100,000 a day in coming weeks, repeating a warning that he first issued in July when the government lifted most of the social-distancing restrictions in a heavily promoted move that Britain’s tabloids named “Freedom Day.”

When cases dropped rather than rose in the days after the measures were lifted, to the surprise of many epidemiologists, it appeared to vindicate the government’s strategy. That was during the summer, however, when the weather was warmer, schools were not in session and vaccine protection was higher.

Britain’s daily number of infections is now triple that of Germany, France and Spain combined. These countries have caught up to, and in some cases, surpassed Britain, in the proportion of people vaccinated. That has prompted many public health experts to urge the government to reconsider its aversion to restrictions.

“We’re running way ahead of Europe,” said Devi Sridhar, head of the global public health program at the University of Edinburgh. “We should be moving to Plan B, which is where much of Europe already is.”

What to Know About Covid-19 Booster Shots

The F.D.A. has authorized booster shots for millions of recipients of the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. Pfizer and Moderna recipients who are eligible for a booster include people 65 and older, and younger adults at high risk of severe Covid-19 because of medical conditions or where they work. Eligible Pfizer and Moderna recipients can get a booster at least six months after their second dose. All Johnson & Johnson recipients will be eligible for a second shot at least two months after the first.

Yes. The F.D.A. has updated its authorizations to allow medical providers to boost people with a different vaccine than the one they initially received, a strategy known as “mix and match.” Whether you received Moderna, Johnson & Johnson or Pfizer-BioNTech, you may receive a booster of any other vaccine. Regulators have not recommended any one vaccine over another as a booster. They have also remained silent on whether it is preferable to stick with the same vaccine when possible.

The C.D.C. has said the conditions that qualify a person for a booster shot include: hypertension and heart disease; diabetes or obesity; cancer or blood disorders; weakened immune system; chronic lung, kidney or liver disease; dementia and certain disabilities. Pregnant women and current and former smokers are also eligible.

The F.D.A. authorized boosters for workers whose jobs put them at high risk of exposure to potentially infectious people. The C.D.C. says that group includes: emergency medical workers; education workers; food and agriculture workers; manufacturing workers; corrections workers; U.S. Postal Service workers; public transit workers; grocery store workers.

Yes. The C.D.C. says the Covid vaccine may be administered without regard to the timing of other vaccines, and many pharmacy sites are allowing people to schedule a flu shot at the same time as a booster dose.

The government’s Plan B remains on the back burner for now. From the start of the pandemic, Mr. Johnson has been reluctant to impose restrictions. His stance is reinforced by pressure from a group of influential lawmakers in his Conservative Party, known as the Covid Recovery Group, who argue that there are wider costs to society from draconian limits on economic or social activity.

Though the government still recommends wearing masks in crowded spaces, lawmakers have reinforced the impression that normal life has returned by discarding them. At the Conservative Party’s conference earlier this month, almost nobody wore a mask, and they are rarely spotted in the House of Commons.

After Mr. Javid was challenged on the issue at a news conference on Wednesday, some of his colleagues put on masks the next day. But on London’s subway and other public places, they are less and less in evidence.

Having taken credit for normalizing life, Mr. Johnson has found it hard to reverse course. Downing Street now hopes that a midterm school vacation will drive down infection rates. It also plans a publicity campaign, using the slogan, “Get vaccinated, get boosted, get protected,” to urge people to get booster shots and to remind them of the continuing dangers of the virus.

“The rollout of the boosters has been very disappointing,” said David King, a former chief scientific adviser to the government. “What the British government has done is to sit back and say, ‘We can’t control this, so let’s just let this spread.’”

With he and other experts calling for tougher measures, many expect Mr. Johnson will soon yield and implement his Plan B for the winter. That would mean making masks mandatory in some settings, urging people to work from home where possible and requiring them to show proof of their vaccination status to enter nightclubs and other public gatherings (Scotland and Wales have already imposed similar measures).

Critics say that this conforms to a familiar pattern. “The government is doing what the government has done all along: dithered and delayed and not really confronted the issues,” said Gabriel Scally, a visiting professor of public health at the University of Bristol and a former regional director of public health.

The government, he said, had failed to produce a convincing strategy to curb infections. There had been little effort to equip office buildings with better ventilation or to urge the public to wear face coverings in crowded spaces and use higher quality masks.

“They don’t have a strategy to get the virus under control and take the pressure off the N.H.S.,” Mr. Scally said, referring to Britain’s National Health Service. “They have put all their eggs in the vaccine basket and those eggs are not hatching.”

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World

For Britain’s chicken farmers, Brexit and COVID brew a perfect storm

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DRIFFIELD, England, Oct 18 (Reuters) – When Nigel Upson checks the plucked chicken carcasses dangling from a rotating line at his poultry plant in England, he sees cash haemorrhaging out of his business from a collision of events that has distressed every part of the farm-to-fork supply chain.

Like food manufacturers across Britain, Upson was hit this year by an exodus of eastern European workers who, deterred by Brexit paperwork, left en masse when COVID restrictions lifted, compounding his already soaring cost of feed and fuel.

Such is the scale of the hit, he cut output by 10% and hiked wages by 11%, a rise that was immediately matched or bettered by neighbouring employers in the northeast of England.

Increases in the cost of food will surely follow.

“We’re being hit from all sides,” Upson told Reuters in front of four vast, spotless sheds that house 33,000 chickens apiece. “It is, to use the phrase, a perfect storm. Something will have to give.”

The deepening problems at Upson’s Soanes Poultry plant in east Yorkshire are a microcosm of the pressures building on businesses across the world’s fifth largest economy as they emerge from COVID to confront the post-Brexit trade barriers erected with Europe.

In the broader food sector, operators have increased wages by as much as 30% in some cases just to retain staff, likely forcing an end to an economic model that led supermarkets such as Tesco (TSCO.L) to offer some of the lowest prices in Europe.

Following the departure of European workers who often did the jobs that British workers didn’t want, retailers may have to import more.

While all major economies have been hit by supply chain problems and a labour shortage after the pandemic, Britain’s tough new immigration rules have made it harder to recover, businesses say.

Already a driver shortage has led to a lack of fuel at gas stations and gaps on supermarket shelves, while chicken restaurant chain Nandos ran out of chicken.

The Bank of England is weighing up how much of a recent jump in inflation will prove long-lasting, requiring it to push up interest rates from their all-time low.

MOUNTING PRESSURE

For the rural businesses situated near the flat, open fields of Yorkshire, Upson says the situation is dire.

Although he says he needs 138 workers for his plant, he recently had to operate with under 100. Staff turnover is high.

Richard Griffiths, head of the British Poultry Council, says that with Europeans making up about 60% of the sector, the industry has lost more than 15% of its staff.

When numbers are particularly tight Upson gets his sales, marketing and finance staff to don the long white coats and hairnets that are needed on the processing line.

“Three weeks ago the offices were empty, everyone was in the factory,” he said, of a business that supplies high-end birds for butchers, farm shops and restaurants. For the run-up to Christmas, he may look to students.

On difficult days Soanes can only deliver the absolute basics – chickens piled into boxes. They do not have time to truss the birds for retail or put them into separate, Soanes-labelled packaging that commands a higher selling price.

Around 3 tonnes of offal that is normally sold each week is going in the skip due to the lack of staff to process it.

The sudden rise in wages and the drop in output also come on top of spikes in the cost of animal feed, energy and fuel, carbon dioxide, cardboard and plastic packaging.

A worker processes chickens on the production line at the Soanes Poultry factory near Driffield, Britain, October 12, 2021. REUTERS/Phil Noble

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“We’ve just had to say to our customers, sorry, the price is going up,” Upson said, shaking his head. “We’re losing money, big style.” The poorest consumers would be hardest hit, he said.

Business owners have urged the government to temporarily ease visa rules while they do the staff training and automation of processes needed to help close Britain’s 20-year, 20% productivity gap with the United States, Germany and France.

But far from changing course, Prime Minister Boris Johnson says businesses need to cut their addiction to cheap foreign labour now, invest in technology and offer well-paid jobs to some of the 1.5 million unemployed people in Britain.

Upson says there is a shortage of workers in rural communities and with some 1.1 million job vacancies in the country, people can be choosy about which they pick. “Working in a chicken factory isn’t everybody’s idea of a career,” he said.

While 5,500 foreign poultry workers will be allowed to work in Britain before Christmas, and the UK will offer emergency visas to 800 foreign butchers to avoid a mass pig cull sparked by a shortage in abattoirs, the industry says it needs more.

As for automation, the production of whole birds is already highly mechanised, and while it could be used more for boneless meat and convenience cuts, the cost is prohibitive for a small operator.

The National Farmers’ Union and other food bodies said in a recent report that parts of the UK’s food and drink supply chain were “precariously close to market failure”, limiting the ability to invest in automation.

Soanes has an annual turnover of around 25 million pounds ($34 million). In the last three years its owners have spent 5 million on expansion. Now output must fit the size of the workforce.

TOO CHEAP

According to “Chicken King” Ranjit Singh Boparan, founder of the UK’s biggest producer, 2 Sisters, food prices must now rise.

“Food is too cheap,” he said. “In relative terms, a chicken today is cheaper to buy than it was 20 years ago. How can it be right that a whole chicken costs less than a pint of beer?”

Upson says he can get a higher price selling bones for pet food than he can for a leg of chicken.

For major producers, the main barrier to higher prices is often the purchasing power of the biggest supermarkets, which have since the 2008 financial crash battled to keep prices down for key items such as fruit, vegetables, bread, meat, fish and poultry.

Sentinel Management Consultants’ CEO David Sables, who coaches suppliers on how to negotiate with British supermarkets, said desperate food producers had already pushed through some price rises, and he expects another round to come in early next year.

With chicken a so-called “known value item”, of which shoppers instinctively know the cost, he said supermarkets would likely push the price rises on to other goods. He described the chicken sector as an “absolute horror show”.

One senior executive at a major supermarket group, who asked not to be named, said retailers were under pressure to “hold the line” on key prices, and that they all watch each other.

“If you see one of the big six move (on price), you can bet your damnedest others will take about 12 hours to follow,” he said.

Back in Yorkshire, Upson and others are praying they do. While he acknowledges Johnson’s desire to move to a “high-wage, high-skills” economy, he said not all jobs fit that bill.

“What skill do you need to put chicken in a box?” he asks. “We can put wages up, but prices will go up.” He is starting to despair. “Normally you can just be pragmatic and say, it will sort itself out. But I’m not sure where this one ends.”

($1 = 0.7277 pounds)

Writing by Kate Holton; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Jan Harvey

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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World

Covid-19 global updates: Britain’s daily infections could reach 100000 this summer, health secretary says – The Washington Post

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  1. Covid-19 global updates: Britain’s daily infections could reach 100000 this summer, health secretary says The Washington Post
  2. Coming up: Sajid Javid announces changes to self-isolation rules for double-jabbed | Covid-19 The Telegraph
  3. Sajid Javid: We can’t only think about Covid amid ‘shocking’ health backlog The Telegraph
  4. The proposed relaxing of Covid restrictions in England has sparked a social media meltdown from ‘new abnormal’ enthusiasts RT
  5. There could be 15000 unnecessary Covid deaths by January – and Boris Johnson will blame you | Sean O’Grady The Independent
  6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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Business

Britain’s Morrisons agrees $8.7 bln offer from Fortress-led group

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A Morrisons store is pictured in St Albans, Britain, September 10, 2020. REUTERS/Peter Cziborra//File Photo

  • Fortress-led group offers 254 pence a share
  • Tops CD&R’s proposal of 230 pence
  • Some investors want 270 pence
  • Morrisons says Fortress would be suitable owner
  • Fortress says it will be ‘good steward’

LONDON, July 3 (Reuters) – Morrisons has agreed to a takeover led by SoftBank (9984.T) owned Fortress Investment Group, valuing Britain’s fourth largest supermarket chain at 6.3 billion pounds ($8.7 billion) and topping a rival proposal from a U.S. private equity firm.

The offer from Fortress, along with Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Koch Real Estate Investments, exceeds a 5.52 billion pound unsolicited proposal from Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R), which Morrisons (MRW.L) rejected on June 19. read more

Including Morrisons’ net debt of 3.2 billion pounds, Fortress’ offer gives the group an enterprise value of 9.5 billion pounds.

“We have looked very carefully at Fortress’ approach, their plans for the business and their overall suitability as an owner of a unique British food-maker and shopkeeper with over 110,000 colleagues and an important role in British food production and farming,” said Morrisons Chairman Andrew Higginson.

“It’s clear to us that Fortress has a full understanding and appreciation of the fundamental character of Morrisons.”

The Fortress deal underlines the growing appetite from private funds for British supermarket groups, seen as attractive because of their cash generation and freehold assets.

Fortress, an independently-operated subsidiary of Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp, is a global investment manager with about $53 billion in assets under management as of March. It purchased British wine seller Majestic Wine in 2019.

“We are committed to being good stewards of Morrisons to best serve its stakeholder groups, and the wider British public, for the long term,” said managing partner, Joshua A. Pack.

Fortress intends to retain Morrisons’ existing management team led by CEO David Potts and execute its existing strategy. It said it was not planning any material store sale and leaseback transactions.

RECOMMENDATION

Under the terms of the deal, which Morrisons’ board is recommending to shareholders, investors would receive 254 pence a share, comprising 252 pence in cash and a 2 pence special cash dividend. CD&R’s proposal was 230 pence a share, worth 5.52 billion pounds.

Last week JO Hambro, a top ten shareholder in Morrisons, said any suitor for the group should offer about 270 pence a share or 6.5 billion pounds. read more

Morrisons, based in Bradford, northern England, started out as an egg and butter merchant in 1899. It now only trails market leader Tesco (TSCO.L), Sainsbury’s (SBRY.L) and Asda in annual sales.

Morrisons owns 85% of its nearly 500 stores and has 19 mostly freehold manufacturing sites. It is unique among British supermarkets in making over half of the fresh food it sells.

It said the Fortress offer represented a premium of 42% to its closing share price of 178 pence on June 18 – the day before CD&R’s proposal. The stock closed at 243 pence on Friday.

Morrisons’ directors, who own 0.23% of the group’s equity, would make 14.3 million pounds from selling their shares to Fortress.

CD&R, which under British takeover rules has until July 17 to come back with a firm offer, had no immediate comment.

Morrisons has a partnership agreement with Amazon (AMZN.O) and there has been speculation it too could emerge as a possible bidder.

FIVE PROPOSALS

Morrisons said an initial unsolicited proposal was received from Fortress on May 4 at 220 pence a share. This offer was not made public. Fortress then made four subsequent proposals before it offered a total value of 254 a share on June 5.

The bids for Morrisons follow February’s purchase by Zuber and Mohsin Issa and private equity firm TDR Capital of a majority stake in Asda from Walmart (WMT.N). The deal valued Asda at 6.8 billion pounds. read more

That transaction followed Sainsbury’s failure to take over Asda after an agreed deal was blocked by Britain’s competition regulator in 2019.

In April, Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky raised his stake in Sainsbury’s to almost 10%, igniting bid speculation.

read more

($1 = 0.7235 pounds)

Reporting by James Davey; Editing by Jane Merriman

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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World

Boris Johnson’s latest gaffe could threaten Britain’s vaccine rollout

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During the weekly “1922 Committee” meeting of Conservative backbenchers, Johnson made an unguarded comment in which he claimed that the UK’s successful vaccine rollout was “because of capitalism, because of greed, my friends,” multiple sources who were on the call have confirmed to CNN.

Realizing how controversial his comments could be if made public, Johnson then retracted them almost immediately, according to the sources, saying “actually I regret saying it … forget I said that.”

Johnson’s spokespeople have declined to provide CNN with a comment on the matter.

A spokesperson for the opposition Labour party told CNN: “The idea that acts of selfishness … have got us through this crisis seems very odd: It’s hard to work out where the Prime Minister is coming from there.”

The timing of these comments could be troubling for the Prime Minister, as the European Commission prepares to lay out its plans for tougher export controls on Covid-19 vaccines produced within the bloc.

Brussels’ vaccine plan has been hindered by supply and distribution problems.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is expected to target companies within the EU that the Commission believes are not honoring the contracts signed with Brussels when it negotiated deals for vaccines on behalf of the 27 member states.

The plans are also expected to include new powers allowing the EU to withhold deliveries to countries that do not reciprocally export vaccines back to the EU.

Leaders from the EU’s 27 member states will meet virtually on Thursday to discuss the Commission’s recommendations.

Leaders from Germany and Ireland have already urged caution over export measures that would target countries.

The UK, which opted not to take part in the EU’s vaccine strategy, has been rolling out its program to immunize citizens notably faster than the rest of the continent. Domestically, this has been framed by many as an upshot of Brexit and an example of what can be done now the country is free of the EU’s bureaucratic yoke.

The European Medicines Agency has been criticized for being slow to approve vaccines, so other EU nations have turned to Russia and China to plug the gaps in vaccine supply through unilateral procurement deals.

The UK’s relative success has been embarrassing for the EU. Any complaints that the UK is not playing fairly or suggestions of retroactive measures are easy to frame as petulance from Brussels, an attempt to blame others for its own failures.

However, Johnson’s greed comments could prove useful for a Commission trying to unite member states and paint the UK as the bad guy.

Which raises the key question: Why did Johnson say this?

Those present at the meeting have offered up theories that the Prime Minister was “clearly joking” to a room of friends, as he’d spent the whole meeting “praising AstraZeneca for not seeking profit,” to suggestions he was “speaking in a typical Boris rambly way” and stumbled into discussing how the left-wing opposition Labour party opposes any private investment in the National Health Service.

“He was talking off the cuff, I think, then suddenly remembered he was Prime Minister,” one lawmaker present at the meeting told CNN.

There is no denying, though, that the timing of his remarks is poor.

The vaccine rollout has been a rare success in Johnson’s response to the pandemic.

The UK still has the highest death toll from coronavirus in Europe.

Anything that dents the vaccination program and delays his plans to take Britons out of lockdown could severely damage the Prime Minister and his government at a time they can ill afford a serious knock — least of all one delivered by the European Union.

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World

They can only hold hands, but for Britain’s elderly, first touch with a relative ‘means everything’

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“Hello my darling,” he says. “Do you know who I am? I’m David.”

Before even putting down his bags, David sits on Sheila’s bed, next to her armchair, and holds her hand — for only the second time since the pandemic came to Britain.

The response from Sheila, his wife of 55 years, is impossible to read. She has advanced dementia and she rarely speaks.

“It’s a long time since I’ve seen you,” he tells her. “That’s because of this Covid thing.”

Throughout the pandemic, Sheila was cut off from everyone who loved her because Britain’s nursing and care homes have largely remained closed to visitors. Now the UK’s vaccine rollout has made an incremental but significant change possible. Each resident in England is allowed one designated, indoor visitor.

CNN received permission to observe some of the first moments where people in care were reunited with loved ones.

David gives Sheila daffodils from their garden. He inspects her fingernails to see if they need to be trimmed. He tells her that their three sons love and miss her. Often, he just looks at her silently while stroking her forearm with a gloved hand.

They met when they were both teachers at neighboring schools. Sheila is now 81.

“She was always very sociable,” David recalls. “Outgoing and happy and fulfilled with home and her family.”

David is satisfied there is no obvious decline in her condition but says he cannot know what she was thinking and feeling during their long time apart.

Visitors must record a negative Covid-19 test result immediately before entering the home and wear personal protective equipment (PPE) throughout the visit. Hugging and kissing are forbidden.

David says just being able to hold hands is a huge improvement for Sheila’s quality of life.

“One of the few ways that she can show her feelings, really,” he says. “I think you’ve got to be grateful for what you’ve got.”

One town over in Bexhill, in one of the many care homes along this stretch of England’s southern coast, Renee Dolan, 86, waits anxiously for her granddaughter.

Suddenly Sara Agliata rounds the corner and two big smiles light up the room.

“Nan! Ahhh!” cries Sara.

“Oh, thank you darling,” Renee says, receiving a bouquet of flowers. “You’ve had to come in all this plastic.”

“I know, I know,” Sara laughs. “You can hear me coming.”

Her grandmother grips her hand tightly. With the other, she places a kiss on her cheek.

“Oh, you’re not allowed to kiss me,” Sara says gently.

For the next half hour their hands stay locked together, and a lively conversation flows from great grandkids to Harry and Meghan’s recent interview.

At times, Renee is overwhelmed with emotion and struggles to explain how important this moment is. “It’s so nice seeing you. It’s [been] a long time,” she says, sobbing.

Her granddaughter assures her: “I’m going to come back next week as well.”

Renee’s husband died at 47. She spent decades living alone in central London and is now experiencing early dementia.

“She’s an extremely independent person that does love her family, and likes to be around them,” Sara says. “She likes to be around people.”

Renee is grateful for the comfort of holding hands — “it means everything to me, everything” — but she hopes for more.

“It’s just a shame we can’t hug yet,” she says. “But it won’t be long, will it?”

Outside Eastbourne’s Manor Hall Nursing Home, a group of residents is slowly but excitedly boarding a mini bus. This is the first time they are allowed to leave the building and its small courtyard since last summer.

The excursion opens with a drive through the rolling, green hills of the South Downs National Park.

“We’ve waited a long time for this, haven’t we? Beautiful,” says George Baulch, 87, smiling out of the window.

The bus soon stops at a public garden by the seaside. The residents decamp to benches. Their carers hand out blankets, cups of tea and snacks.

There are smiles and laughter and much grousing about the early spring chill. Someone makes a saucy joke about the size of a banana. This is the most freedom they’ve experienced in a long time.

“You come here and you realize how big England is,” George says with a laugh.

The elderly have sacrificed more freedoms than most during the pandemic, and more than half of Covid-19 deaths in England and Wales last year were from those over 80. They were prioritized in the UK’s vaccine rollout from December and first doses have now been delivered to 99.9% of England’s nursing and care homes, according to the country’s National Health Service.

Around 23 million people in total across the UK have now received a first vaccine shot. That protection is allowing modest changes, the possibility of hope and glimpses of a post-Covid future.

“We’ve been locked up for weeks and weeks and weeks,” George says. “[I] never thought it was going to happen again for us. And now we’re here.”

CNN’s Darren Bull and Matt Brealey contributed to this report.

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World

Why Britain’s anti-immigration politicians are opening the doors to thousands of Hong Kongers

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Full of bravado and often clad in black, the 21-year-old oversaw a group of 60 combative front-liners who embraced confrontational tactics against the police while demanding greater democracy in the former British colony.

Today, he is applying for asylum in the United Kingdom, and separated from his family in Hong Kong where he feels he can longer visit. Malcom believes if he returns to the Chinese city he could be arrested under a sweeping national security law imposed by Beijing on Hong Kong last June, which scaled up penalties against dissent to include punishments as severe as life imprisonment.

Since then, nearly 100 activists have been arrested under the new law. When Hong Kong police apprehended a protester friend of Malcolm’s in October, he booked a red-eye flight to London. Malcolm asked CNN not to use his real name, for fear that his family — who remain in Hong Kong — could face repercussions.

The visa does not account for the most vulnerable Hong Kongers: young pro-democracy protesters, like Malcolm, who were born after 1997 and are therefore not eligible. But it is nonetheless remarkable in its scope — in a city of 7.5 million people, 5.2 million Hong Kongers and their dependents are eligible for it.

It’s also remarkable for another reason: it has been pioneered by the same British politicians who engineered the UK’s break from the European Union, in part, to curb immigration.

It sets a markedly different tone for the Conservative government, and its cheerleaders in the British press, who have spent the past decade pushing anti-immigrant policies. And critics say it is predicated on a flawed idea of Hong Kongers as a “model minority” who will need no support to settle into a new life in the UK.

A different tone

The UK voted to leave the European Union in 2016 following a campaign dominated by anti-immigration rhetoric — much of it emanating from the same politicians who are now running the government.

In one campaign missive, pro-Brexit lawmakers Boris Johnson, Priti Patel, and Michael Gove stoked fears that rising numbers of southern European immigrants would “put further strain on schools and hospitals,” and that “class sizes will rise and waiting lists will lengthen if we don’t tackle free movement.”
Yet last June, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the visa pathway for millions of Hong Kongers, describing the offer as being “one of the biggest changes in our visa system in history.” The same politicians and media houses that warned darkly of an influx of foreigners during the Brexit campaign raised few objections this time around.
Last month, Priti Patel, now the Home Secretary, said she looked forward to welcoming Hong Kongers “to our great country.” Yet in 2016, Patel campaigned against what she described as “uncontrolled migration” from the EU, and last year she is reported to have considered plans to send those seeking asylum in the UK to two Atlantic islands more than 4,000 miles away.
Welcoming Hong Kongers has become one of the few issues in British politics that commands bipartisan support, uniting opposition Labour, Green Party and Scottish National Party members with the hawkish, anti-China wing of the Conservative party.
The British government’s shift in attitude could echo a change in public opinion — migration concerns in the UK appear to have softened considerably in recent years. The jury is out as to why public attitudes have shifted, but it has coincided with immigration dropping off the agenda as a political issue in the past few years.

There is also a feeling of colonial “indebtedness” to the people of Hong Kong, says Jonathan Portes, a Professor of Economics and Public Policy at King’s College London.

Some of Brexit’s biggest backers are championing the scheme “in a pretty explicit break with the approach of [Margaret] Thatcher in the run up to 1997,” Portes said, explaining that the late UK Prime Minister “wanted to limit, as much as possible, the number of Hong Kong Chinese who came here, because of her wider anti-immigration views.”

Defending Hong Kong against the creep of authoritarianism has also become a moral issue in the UK, which has hardened its attitude towards China in the past year. The UK has barred Chinese telecoms giant Huawei from playing a part in the country’s 5G network, and has been vocal in its criticism of Beijing for human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other minorities in the Xinjiang region.

Model minority

Perhaps one of the reasons the Hong Kong visa scheme has been so lauded is that its recipients are also being sold to the British public by hardline Brexiteers as a caricatured model minority, say critics.

Hong Kong nationals “wouldn’t cost our taxpayers a penny… [they] would bring their own wealth,” Conservative peer Daniel Hannan wrote in the right-wing Daily Telegraph newspaper. “And once they arrived, they would generate economic activity for the surrounding region, just as they did in their home city.”

The Home Office estimates that up to 153,700 BN(O) holders will arrive in the country this year — and estimates they could bring £2.9 billion ($4.1 bn) into the economy over five years.

Yet the reality might not be so clear cut.

Hong Kong has one of the highest GDPs per capita in the world, but it is also one of the most economically unequal places on the planet, where one in five people are estimated to be living in poverty.
A family of two adults and two children will have to pay as much as £12,000 ($16,600) in immigration-related fees and have more than £3,100 in the bank in savings, according to the UK Home Office, and that doesn’t include flights.

The language barrier (forms will need to be completed in English), and having to demonstrate the ability to accommodate and support themselves for at least six months, are also likely to put some off.

“60% of the people in Hong Kong live in public housing estates and they would find it harder [compared to Hong Kong’s white-collar workers] to settle in a foreign country,” Chan added.

Nor is it straightforward for those who are able to scrape the funds together, campaigners say. A study by civil society group Hong Kongers in Britain found that the majority of people planning to take up the visa are highly educated and financially able to support themselves through the move. Yet their main concerns about the move are finding accommodation, living costs, finding a job, and integrating into British society. More than a quarter of those surveyed worried about having trouble communicating in English.

Another challenge is the support that awaits them when they arrive in the UK.

The UK does not have a formal national integration program for immigrants. And there is no nationwide integration plan for the Hong Kongers who emigrate under the new scheme, according to Fred Wong, who works with Hong Kong ARC, a civil society group which offers Hong Kongers legal and mental health support. Wong asked CNN not to use his real name because he still has family in Hong Kong and fears for their safety.

Some of the 40 Hong Kongers who Wong is currently helping in the UK have yet to finish university or high school, while around half have never held down a job before and are struggling to get on the ladder in the UK. The UK government has no provisions to help them find jobs, set up bank accounts, or access mental health support, Wong said.

“Most of them suffer from PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder], which could be a reason or excuse [to why] they are not progressing,” Wong said. His group has been organizing free psychological consultations and talks on how to overcome insomnia, nightmares and stress, as many of the Hong Kongers Fred helps have had trouble sleeping since fleeing the territory.

The model minority narrative means that the UK government is “unprepared, and maybe a bit oblivious to the amount of support that’s needed,” Wong said.

“The UK government is working alongside civil society groups, local authorities and others to support the effective integration of BN(O) status holders and their families who choose to make our United Kingdom their home,” UKs Minister for Future Borders and Immigration, Kevin Foster, told CNN in a statement.

Support could shift

Polls show that the majority of British voters support the BN(O) scheme, but attitudes could shift as an estimated 300,000 BN(O) holders arrive in the next five years, Tanja Bueltmann, a professor of migration and diaspora at the University of Strathclyde, told CNN.

“The [ BN(O) scheme] is genuinely well meaning, but the provision around it is not very good,” she explained — something that raises questions over how many Hong Kongers will make the move in the end.

The other worry is Hong Kongers will face racially aggravated violence at a time of increasing xenophobia against people of East Asian appearance in the UK. Figures from London’s Metropolitan Police showed that people who self-identified as Chinese, and whose ethnic appearance was recorded as “Oriental,” experienced a five-fold increase in racist crimes between January 2020 and March 2020. Polling done in June found that three quarters of people of Chinese ethnicity in the UK had experienced being called a racial slur.
During an October debate on racism against the Chinese and East Asian community in Parliament, Scottish National Party lawmaker David Linden said some of his constituents “described the attacks against them, with restaurants and take-outs being vandalized and boycotted and victims being punched, spat at and coughed on in the street and even verbally abused and blamed for the coronavirus pandemic.”

London-based Hong Kong Watch and 10 other civil society groups wrote to the government in January expressing concern about the lack of a “meaningful plan in place to ensure that the new arrivals properly integrate … local authorities do not have specific policies, strategies or the creative bandwidth to welcome and integrate Hong Kong arrivals into their communities.”

“The government must learn the lessons from past failures and take pre-emptive action now,” their letter read.

‘In limbo’

In the meantime, up to 350 Hong Kong dissidents between the ages of 18 and 24 are believed to be currently “stuck in limbo” in the UK, according to Wong from Hong Kong ARC. Being born after 1997, they are not eligible for the BN(O) scheme.

Some are in the country on tourist visas, biding their time until the UK government creates a policy that considers them, or until Canada begins its planned work-visa pathway for young Hong Kong dissidents. Australia has offered a pathway for permanent residency for Hong Kong students and skilled workers currently in the country.

But pandemic-related travel restrictions, as well as a lack of funds, mean many have had to rely on the generosity of civil society groups for a stipend, food and even accommodation.

Others, like Malcolm, have already applied for political asylum in the UK. The process can take more than a year. Asylum seekers are not allowed to work or open a bank account while their claim is being processed; they will be charged higher international fees if they attend a UK university.
And campaigners say there is no guarantee that pleas for asylum will be granted. According to the Refugee Council, in the year to September 2020, only 49% of initial decisions by the Home Office resulted in a grant of asylum or other form of protection.

Many asylum-seekers instead have to rely on asylum appeals through the courts to provide them with refugee status.

“The pro-democracy protests would not have existed without them [young activists], and without the protests there would not have been the BN(O) scheme — but they’re the ones who are being left behind,” said Chan.

Malcolm says he is luckier than most, having a sizeable inheritance to survive on, and a network of contacts that helped find him accommodation outside London. He hopes to apply for college once he gains asylum, but in the meantime has started to financially support around 20 dissidents in the UK and Hong Kong. He says that the British government has not done enough to help his generation.

‘Practice makes perfect’

Hong Konger Sze, who asked CNN not to use her full name because her family still lives in Hong Kong, quit her job as a high school geography teacher and came to the UK in October on holiday to visit some friends.

At the end of her two-week trip, Sze decided to stay. She told CNN she plans to apply for BN(O) visa at the end of this month and is living off her savings in a flat she rents with a friend in North London in the meantime. Sze has been looking into roles as a geography teaching assistant or tutor as her Hong Kong teaching qualifications are recognized in the UK. When asked if her halting English will be a liability, Sze says “practice makes perfect.”

The 28-year-old said China’s incursion into everyday life in Hong Kong had influenced her decision to stay, as had the fact that being in the UK means she has the “freedom to do what I want and even protest every week,” without fear of political retribution.

It would be intolerable to live in Hong Kong now, especially since teachers have been compelled to “teach students about the [national] security law,” she said.

Sze has settled into London life: She already has strong opinions on the snail’s pace of London buses and is counting the days to when lockdown ends and she can go shopping on Oxford Street.

While it can be hard to find the authentic Cantonese cuisine she grew up eating in Hong Kong, Sze marvels at how much cheaper food is at British supermarkets.

“The food quality is better, the price is cheaper and the rent is cheaper,” she told CNN.

Sze cannot get a job until her BN(O) visa is approved, but she is optimistic that the UK’s coronavirus-induced economic slump will not get in the way of her finding work. “I am open to any [job] option — it really depends on how much savings I have,” she said.

But her biggest concern is the fate of fellow dissidents going through the asylum process, and whether her compatriots who move to the UK will give up the fight for independence back home.

“Hong Kongers should never give up, no matter if they’ve left Hong Kong or not,” she said.



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Britain’s ‘forgotten’ battle that changed the course of WWII

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View of the Garrison Hill battlefield with the British and Japanese positions shown. Garrison Hill was the key to the British defences at Kohima.

Captain Robin Rowland was 22 when his regiment was deployed to the north-eastern Indian town of Kohima. It was May 1944, and a small group of British-Indian soldiers was under assault by an entire division of Japanese forces.

Capt Rowland, now 99, vividly remembers approaching the town, following a trail of devastation to the front line.

“We saw abandoned trenches and destroyed villages, and as we moved forward the smell of death was everywhere,” he said.

The young captain was a member of the Punjab regiment of the British Indian army, on his way to help relieve 1,500 of his fellow soldiers who had spent weeks resisting 10 times their number in Japanese forces.

Cut off by the Japanese, the allied forces were depending solely on supplies by air, and very few believed they could sustain the relentless onslaught. Japan’s soldiers had marched to Kohima through what was then Burma – their aim to invade India.

The Japanese had already routed the British in Burma, but no-one expected them to successfully negotiate the mosquito-infested jungle hills and fast-flowing streams en route to Kohima, the capital of Nagaland, and Imphal, the capital of Manipur state in India.

BBC map

When they did, the British-Indian troops tasked with defending the two towns were surrounded by more than 15,000 Japanese soldiers. They fought for weeks to prevent the Japanese moving through and capturing the strategic city of Dimapur, which could have opened the routes to the plains of Assam. Few believed the defenders could prevail.

The Japanese soldiers came in “wave after wave, night after night”, recalled Capt Rowland.

The fighting was brutal and the British-Indian forces were confined to Garrison Hill, which overlooked Kohima. At one point the fighting descended into hand-to-hand combat, with only a tennis court separating the two sides dug in on the hill.

The tennis court on Garrison Hill was all that divided the two armies

The besieged British-Indian soldiers held on until the reinforcements arrived. After three months, by June 1944, with more than 7,000 casualties and almost no food supplies left, the Japanese division retreated and returned to Burma, despite orders from above to stay and fight.

“It was a terrific resistance by 1,500 British-Indian troops,” Capt Rowland said. “If the Japanese had taken Garrison Hill, they would have gone to Dimapur.”

The British-Indian forces were ordered to pursue the retreating Japanese and Robin Rowland was among the pursuers. Some of the Japanese soldiers died of cholera, typhoid and malaria, but by far the greater number perished due to starvation as they ran out of supplies.

Men of the Royal West Kent Regiment pay silent tribute to comrades who fell in the Battle for Kohima, in November 1945

According to military historian Robert Lyman, the battle of Kohima and Imphal “changed the course of the Second World War in Asia”.

“For the first time the Japanese were defeated in a battle and they never recovered from it,” he told the BBC.

But, although it was a turning point, the battle in north-east India never captured the public imagination in the way that D-Day, Waterloo or other battles in Europe and North Africa had.

It has often been described as “the forgotten war”.

People in Britain were simply too far away for it to register as much, according to Bob Cook, the head of the Kohima Museum in the city of York.

“The Germans were just across 22 miles of water from Britain,” he said. “The thing that most concerned people of this country was the imminent threat of German invasion.”

But there have been some attempts to teach people about the Battle of Kohima and Imphal. In 2013, it was voted as Britain’s greatest battle after a debate at the Imperial War Museum in London, a surprise winner over the likes of D-Day and Waterloo.

Robert Lyman made the case for Kohima. “Great things were at stake in a war with the toughest enemy any British army has had to fight,” he said in his speech.

But there has hardly been any attempt in the sub-continent to highlight the importance of the battle, in which thousands of Commonwealth and Indian soldiers – including men from modern-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh – lost their lives.

One reason was the British partition of India soon after, according to Charles Chasie, a historian based in Kohima in Nagaland.

“One of the reasons I think was that India’s leaders were too busy dealing with the effects of transition and partition initially,” he said. “The British had decided to leave in a hurry before things got too complicated and out of hand on the sub-continent.”

The battle of Kohima was seen more as a colonial war, while the post-war discourse focused more on the Indian independence struggle led by the Indian leader, Mahatma Gandhi.

In addition to the regular British-Indian army, thousands of people from the Naga ethnic community fought alongside the British and provided valuable intelligence in the conflict. Their in-depth knowledge of the mountainous territory was of great help to the British.

Today, only a dozen or so Naga veterans of the battle of Kohima are still alive. Sosangtemba Ao, 98, is one of them.

Sosangtemba Ao said the Japanese soldiers did not fear death

“The Japanese bombers were flying every day dropping explosives. The sound was deafening and there was smoke after each attack. It was distressing,” recalled Mr Ao.

He worked alongside the British for two months for pay of one rupee per day. He still has a lot of admiration for the fighting ability of the Japanese soldiers, he said.

The memorial to the dead at Kohima War Cemetery

“The Japanese army was highly motivated. Their soldiers did not fear death. For them, fighting for the emperor was divine. When they were asked to surrender, they would become suicide attackers.”

A documentary about the battle, Memories of a Forgotten War, was released online recently to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the Japanese surrender. Several years ago producer Subimal Bhattacharjee and the crew travelled to Japan for a commemoration.

“When the Japanese and the British veterans of Kohima met, they hugged each other and started crying,” he said. “These were the soldiers who had fired at each other, but still they showed a special bond. It was spontaneous and we didn’t expect it.”

For the Japanese, it was a humiliating defeat, and Japanese veterans rarely talk about their experience in Kohima.

“None of the Japanese food was left,” said one, Wajima Koichiro, who was interviewed for the documentary. “It was a losing game and then we withdrew.”

The ethnic Nagas, who aided the British and suffered huge casualties, also continued to suffer. They had hoped that the British would recognise them as a separate Naga nation during the handover of power, and not as part of India. But they were “sorely disappointed”, said historian Charles Chasie, and many blamed them for the thousands of Nagas who were killed in subsequent conflicts with the Indian government and army.

Over the years, the families of those killed at Kohima and Imphal, especially from Britain and Japan, have travelled to the two war cemeteries there to pay respects to their ancestors.

Capt Rowland went back to Kohima with his son in 2002 at the invitation of the Indian Punjab regiment. He stood in front of Garrison Hill, where he and his fellow soldiers had resisted the waves of Japanese fighters 58 years earlier.

“It brought back many memories,” said Capt Rowland, remembering how a group of 1,500 men had stood against the might of the entire Japanese 31st division. “It was a great military achievement.”

Before leaving Kohima, Capt Rowland and his son stopped to lay a wreath at the base of the rough stone war memorial on Garrison Hill. As he put the wreath in place, he remembered eight fellow soldiers he had known who were lost.

He knew the battle had not entered the public imagination in the way more famous battles had, but those who were there would never forget.

“It was a great tribute to the resilience of human nature,” he said.

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