The invitation from Modi is tactical and timely as the transition period for Brexit ends on December 31 and it’s almost certain that the UK will go for a ‘hard Brexit’ – a clean break from Europe. If confirmed, it will be after a gap of 27 years that a UK Prime Minister will be the chief guest at India’s 70th Republic Day next month…reports Asian Lite Newsdesk
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has formally invited UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to be the chief guest for the Republic Day celebrations on January 26, 2021.
The invitation was extended by Modi to Johnson during their phone conversation on November 27, sources said. It is after a gap of 27 years that a UK Prime Minister will be the chief guest at India’s 70th Republic Day next month. John Major was the last British Prime Minister to attend the Republic Day parade in New Delhi in 1993.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi
The government is yet to confirm Johnson’s visit. However, Prime Minister Modi hinted in a tweet on November 27 that India-UK are embarking on an ambitious partnership. “We agreed to work towards a quantum leap in our cooperation in all areas – trade and investments, defence and security, climate change and fighting Covid-19,” Modi had tweeted.
The invitation from Modi is tactical and timely as the transition period for Brexit ends on December 31 and it’s almost certain that the UK will go for a ‘hard Brexit’ – a clean break from Europe which will entail Britain giving up membership of the EU’s single market, allowing it to to trade freely with EU members without restrictions.
The hard Brexit is likely to disrupt UK’s economy, which even after four years of the Brexit vote, is for most practical purposes still functioning as part of the EU. To reduce the adverse effects of the economic disruption, the UK has been looking for trading opportunities elsewhere. Prime Minister Johnson has offered a free trade agreement with India, given its huge market.
Johnson’s visit to New Delhi next month will be significant for trade negotiations between the two countries.
In a significant achievement, a Maharashtra government school academician from Solapur has bagged the Varkey Foundation’s top Global Teacher Prize-2020 worth $1 million (Rs 7.40 crore), according to an official announcement made in London.
The winner of the prestigious awrd is Ranjitsinh Disale, who teaches at the Zilla Parishad School in Paritewadi, Solapur district. Disale is credited with transforming education by using QR codes and other innovations to impart lessons, which helped reduce dropout rates drastically, especially among the girl students.
Credits: Varkey Foundation
Starting his academic career in a ramshackle building in a remote tribal-dominated village, Disale was among the 10 global teachers shortlisted in October for the top global honour and was proclaimed the winner on Wednesday evening at a ceremony in London.
“The impact of Ranjitsinh (Disale’s) interventions has been extraordinary: There are now no teenage marriages in the village and 100 per cent attendance by girls at the school. The school was also recently awarded the best school in the district with 85 per cent of his students achieving A grades in annual exams. One girl from the village has now graduated from University, something seen as an impossible dream before Ranjitsinh arrived,” said the official citation on the GTP website.
In an earlier statement, Disale had explained that after the school implemented QR coded textbooks in 2016, the Maharashtra government sent a proposal to the Centre about the usefulness of the technology.
A central team visited the school, studied the system, submitted its report in 2018 and finally the National Council of Educational Research & Training (NCERT) decided to adopt the QR codes in its textbooks.
A majority of the girl students were from tribal backgrounds which did not prioritise education and teenage marriages were a common practice in the region.
Moreover, the Marathi-medium school had multi-language courses in Kannada or Telugu owing to which many students were not able to perform well.
With great pains, Disale decided to learn Kannada himself (the state language of adjoining Karnataka) after which he redesigned all the textbooks of primary school from Class I-IV, for easier understanding of the young students.
Along with unique QR codes, he also embedded audio poems, video lectures, stories and assignments in Kannada which proved to be a boon for the young learners.
Incidentally, Disale once aspired to be an IT engineer, but later followed his father’s advice to consider teaching as a career option, and reluctantly took it up.
He found his stint in a teachers’ training college as ‘life-changing’ and the 2020 Global Teacher Prize proved him correct.
Earlier, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had recognised Disale’s work in his book, ‘Hit Refresh’, while the Indian government had honured him with the Innovative Researcher of the Year-2016 and the National Innovation Foundation’s Innovator of the Year-2018 awards.
Another 16,170 people in Britain have tested positive for Covid-19, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases in the country to 1,659,256, according to official figures released on Wednesday.
The coronavirus-related deaths in Britain rose by 648 to 59,699, the data showed, Xinhua news agency reported.
The figures came as a new tier system of coronavirus restrictions replaced the month-long national lockdown in England which ended on Wednesday.
Under the new system, shops will be allowed to re-open across England, giving a Christmas bonanza to the struggling retail sector, but all bars and restaurants in the toughest Tier 3 areas will remain closed.
Helen Dickinson, chief executive of British Retail Consortium, said as billions of pounds were lost in sales during the lockdown, businesses were looking forward to welcoming back customers.
“Every purchase we make is a retailer helped, a job protected and a local community supported,” Dickinson told the BBC.
Putting about 98 per cent of England into Tier 2 and 3 restrictions, the new tier system was backed Tuesday by 291 votes to 78 in the House of Commons (lower house of the British Parliament).
Boris Johnson
Under Tier 1, people in the areas will be urged to work from home wherever possible.
In Tier 2 areas, pubs and bars must close unless they are serving substantial meals along with alcoholic drinks.
In Tier 3 areas, all pubs, bars and restaurants must close except for delivery, takeaway and drive-through. Hotels and indoor entertainment venues must also close in these areas.
To bring life back to normal, countries such as Britain, China, Germany, Russia and the US are racing against time to develop coronavirus vaccines.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson holds a vial of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine Covid-19 candidate vaccine, known as AZD1222, at Wockhardt's pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Wrexham, North Wales. Picture by Andrew Parsons / No 10 Downing Street
UK Ready to Rollout C-Vaccine; Sadiq urges every European Londoner to apply for settled status; Tanden recounts her journey; PDM’s 5th power show calls for Imran to quit – all in Asian Lite Daily Digital UK – please click here to read.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson holds a vial of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine Covid-19 candidate vaccine, known as AZD1222, at Wockhardt's pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Wrexham, North Wales. Picture by Andrew Parsons / No 10 Downing Street
The vaccine will be rolled out to the priority groups including care home residents and staff, people over 80 and health and care workers, then to the rest of the population in order of age and risk, including those who are clinically extremely vulnerable.
Tens of thousands of people will receive an effective and high-quality Covid-19 vaccine from next week, as the UK becomes the first country in the western world to authorise a vaccine.
Following rigorous clinical trials involving thousands of people and extensive analysis of the vaccine’s safety, quality and effectiveness by experts from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine has been authorised for use in the UK, the Department of Health and Social Care said in a press release.
In making the recommendation to authorise supply, the MHRA will decide what additional quality assurance checks may be required before a vaccine can be made available. Pfizer will then deliver the vaccines to the UK as soon as possible.
The NHS has decades of experience in rolling out successful widespread vaccination programmes and has put in place extensive deployment plans.
In line with the recommendations of the independent Joint Committee for Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), the vaccine will be rolled out to the priority groups including care home residents and staff, people over 80 and health and care workers, then to the rest of the population in order of age and risk, including those who are clinically extremely vulnerable.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson holds a vial of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine Covid-19 candidate vaccine, known as AZD1222, at Wockhardt’s pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Wrexham, North Wales. Picture by Andrew Parsons / No 10 Downing Street
The vaccine is given in two doses – three weeks apart – and data from clinical trials showed the vaccine is 94 percent effective in protecting people over the age of 65 from coronavirus, with trials suggesting it works equally well in people of all ages, races and ethnicities. There were also no serious safety concerns reported in the trials.
The UK was the first country to pre-order supplies of the vaccine from Pfizer/BioNTech, with 800,000 doses being made available next week and 40 million doses ordered overall – enough to vaccinate up to a third of the population, and the majority of doses anticipated in the first half of next year.
The full prioritisation list for vaccine rollout is as follows (in order of priority):
1. Residents in a care home for older adults and their carers
2. All those 80 years of age and over and frontline health and social care workers
3. All those 75 years of age and over
4. All those 70 years of age and over and clinically extremely vulnerable individuals
5. All those 65 years of age and over.
6. All individuals aged 16 years to 64 years with underlying health conditions which put them at higher risk of serious disease and mortality
7. All those 60 years of age and over
8. All those 55 years of age and over
9. All those 50 years of age and over
UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock chairs a Covid-19 press conference with General Sir Gordon Messenger, Head of Operations for the Community Testing Programme and NHS National Medical Director, Professor Stephen Powis inside No10 Downing Street. Picture by Freddie Mitchell / No 10 Downing Street
Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock said:
“This is a momentous occasion and provides fresh hope that we can beat this pandemic, with the UK at the forefront of this revolutionary breakthrough.
“I can’t thank enough every single person who has contributed to this triumph – from the thousands of volunteers who took part in clinical trials, to the teams of expert scientists and clinicians at the MHRA who carefully analysed reams of data.
“This vaccine, when combined with effective treatments, will form a vital part in making Covid-19 a manageable disease, hopefully allowing us to return to normality in the future.
“This work will take time so for now we must all play our part and abide by the local restrictions to suppress the virus and protect the NHS as they start this vital work.”
Business Secretary Alok Sharma said:
“Since the start of the pandemic, every single person has made an immense sacrifice to protect themselves, their loved ones and the health of our nation. Through it all, we have remained united to defeat a virus that has taken too many before their time.
“As a nation we owe every scientist, clinician and trial volunteer an enormous debt of gratitude for their victory won against odds that at times seemed impossible. It is thanks to their efforts, and of our Vaccine Taskforce, that the UK was the first country to sign a deal with Pfizer/BioNTech and will now be the first to deploy their vaccine.
UK Business Secretary Alok Sharma holds a Covid-19 Press Conference with NHS Medical Director, Professor Stephen Powis, in 10 Downing Street. Picture by Pippa Fowles / No 10 Downing Street.
“While today’s breakthrough is a positive one, we will not end the pandemic overnight. But in years to come, we will look back and remember this moment as the day the United Kingdom led humanity’s charge against this terrible disease.”
The MHRA started the rolling review of Pfizer/BioNTech’s data in October and the Government asked the regulator to assess the vaccine for its suitability for authorisation under Regulation 174 of the Human Medicines Regulations, enabling the temporary supply of medicines to be authorised in response to a public health need, which the regulator has recommended.
NHS England will outline further details on deployment shortly, but the plans will include:
• Hospital hubs for NHS and care staff and older patients to get vaccinated;
• Local community services with local teams and GPs already signing up to take part in the programme;
• Vaccination centres across the country, ensuring people can access a vaccine regardless of where they live.
The global deployment of the vaccine will require a huge logistical exercise over land, air and sea.
Pfizer has years of proven experience in cold supply chain management and delivering temperature-controlled vaccines to locations across the world. It has developed packaging and storage innovations for the vaccine, including specifically designed, temperature-controlled thermal shippers to maintain conditions of ultra-low temperatures.
People sit on the lawn at Potters Fields Park in front of Tower Bridge in London, Britain. (Photo by Tim Ireland/Xinhua/IANS)
Deputy Chief Medical Officer for England Professor Jonathan Van-Tam:
“This is a remarkable day – congratulations to Pfizer/BioNTech and their researchers, and to all my colleagues in the Vaccine Taskforce for their tremendous work to get us to this point, and I want to thank the MHRA experts, including the experts at the Commission on Human Medicines, who have tirelessly and rigorously assessed the safety, effectiveness and quality of the vaccine.
“This vaccine has now passed all of the extensive checks needed for authorisation to supply and will soon be ready to be delivered to the NHS.
“To all those who are eligible – this is the start of vaccine supply for the UK. In time, you will be invited to book your appointments to get your vaccinations. I urge you to be ready, and to help make the process as smooth as possible. For now, stay patient, and keep yourselves safe by continuing to follow the rules and maintaining social distancing.”
As the JCVI have made clear, there will need to be flexibility in terms of operational challenges around delivery of the vaccine to those in care homes. In line with the advice, every effort will be made to supply vaccine and offer vaccinations to care home residents and we will deliver the vaccine according to clinical prioritisation and operational necessity.
The vaccine will be available for free across the UK and the Government is working with the devolved administrations to ensure it is deployed fairly across the UK under the Barnett formula.
Through the Vaccines Taskforce, the UK has secured early access to 357 million doses of seven of the most promising vaccine candidates so far. To date, the government has invested over £230 million into manufacturing a successful vaccine. In the Chancellor’s Spending Review, published on 25 November, it was announced that the Government has made more than £6 billion available to develop and procure successful vaccines.
Vaccine Deployment Minister Nadhim Zahawi said:
“The NHS has decades of experience in delivering highly successful vaccination programmes and has put in an enormous amount of work to get ready to roll out a Covid-19 vaccine to those most in need as quickly as possible.
“Once extensive quality checks have taken place, it can be transported to vaccination sites across the UK and carefully unpacked ready for vaccinations to begin this month, with large-scale vaccination happening in the new year.”
Chair of the government’s Vaccines Taskforce Kate Bingham said:
“Today is a momentous occasion and the UK will go down in history as the country that led the world in one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs of our time.
“I am incredibly proud of my team in the government’s Vaccines Taskforce who have worked tirelessly over the last six months to negotiate agreements with vaccine developers around the world and step up the UK’s vaccine manufacturing and logistics capabilities, so any potential candidate can be rolled out as soon as possible.
“The work does not stop here. The Taskforce will continue to monitor vaccines being developed around the world so that we have a diverse mix available, as well as ensure the UK is able to respond quickly to any future health crises.”
Britain on Wednesday approved the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine on independent advice of its medicines regulator.
The vaccine will be made available across the UK from next week.
“The Government has today accepted the recommendation from the independent Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to approve Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine for use,” a UK Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said in a statement.
Experts at the MHRA have concluded that the vaccine has met its strict standards of safety, quality and effectiveness after months of rigorous clinical trials and a thorough analysis of the data.
Care home residents, health and care staff, the elderly and the clinically extremely vulnerable will receive the vaccine on priority basis.
“The Joint Committee on Vaccinations and Immunisations (JCVI) will shortly publish its final advice for the priority groups to receive the vaccine,” the spokesperson said.
Monir Ali LBIPPof St Albans, Hertfordshire has just been voted Regional Chair of the South East Region of the British Institute of Professional Photography by the BIPP Members.
The BIPP isrecognised across the world as a benchmark of excellence, with the Institute’s tiered qualification structure offering photographers continual professional development.
Monir will work alongside the head office organising events, workshops and meetings to help train, educate, support and qualify professional photographers in the region.
“It’s a great honour to be able to represent a long-standing institution like this, at a regional level, and to be responsible for the development of professional photography in the region is humbling ” Says Monir who has been a full time photographer for 12 years, and a qualified member of the BIPP for some time.
He adds “for over 100 years the British Institute of Professional Photography has been supporting and providing a voice of the photographers, and to be added to that voice fills me with pride. I know its not easy for our industry now, but that’s what the BIPP is there for, to support, nurture and provide a voice to photographers. I look forward to working with the current members as well as welcoming new members to the British Institute of Professional Photography”
To find out more about British Institute of Professional Photography and to become a member or to find a qualified professional photographer visit www.bipp.com
Spice Business, the country’s only independent magazine for the Asian restaurant sector, has announced the inaugural British Curry Day on Thursday 3rd December. ‘Back The Bhaji’ is an initiative to celebrate the end of lockdown and to support the curry industry, by commemorating curry pioneers.
The theme of this year’s British Curry Day is ‘Back the Bhaji’, with many restaurants donating to charities for each one sold.
“Tragically we are losing many of the country’s first curry restaurateurs, who are now elderly with severe underlying health issues, to the pandemic. These people came to a strange foreign land at the invitation of the British government and through their own endeavours and willingness to work anti-social hours – often enduring blatant racism from post-pub closing time drunks – built a special industry, which is now an integral part of British society, says Enam Ali, publisher of Spice Business.
Alternatively, curry lovers are encouraged to stay home and meet friends and family they have not been able to see for weeks and months, to celebrate the end of lockdown, with a socially responsible meal. The British Curry Day website www.britishcurryday.org has suggested recipes from top chefs and celebrity cooks.
The day, which is set to become an annual fixture in the culinary calendar, is expected to raise many thousands of pounds for good causes – locally, nationally and abroad.
Enam Ali founded the prestigious British Curry Awards and was awarded the MBE for services to the sector in 2009. He has already raised more than half a million pounds for charities in his career, including £40,000 on a single night in his Le Raj restaurant in Epsom, Surrey.
“We have chosen ‘Back The Bhaji’ as this year’s theme because this humble starter, eaten by the million in Britain each week, with its origins in our native onion rings, is symbolic of our unique curry culture,” said Ali.
“The onion bhaji is one of numerous items on British curry house menus not found on the Indian subcontinent,” said Ali, who eschews the debate of what constitutes “authentic” cuisine.
Enam maintains that India has a rich and diverse culinary heritage which has developed over the centuries, absorbing foreign influences from the Greeks, Persians, French, Portuguese, Dutch, Chinese and British.
“Recipes and cooking techniques aren’t frozen in time – they evolve – British Curry Day is about celebrating our contribution to the British way of life,” he said.
For those wishing to be involved with British Curry Day, details are available online. Participants are encouraged to share their contributions on social media using the #BritishCurryDay and #BackTheBhaji hashtags, with competition prizes for the most innovative.
On November 27, Fakhrizadeh, dubbed the “father of the Iranian bomb”, was assassinated near the capital city on Friday by “armed terrorists”…reports Asian Lite News
Dominic Raab
UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab have expressed concerns over the situation in Iran, as well as the Middle Eastern region, in the wake of the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Tehran’s top nuclear scientist.
“We do want to see de-escalation of tensions,” Xinhua news agency quoted Raab as saying on Sky News on Sunday.
“We’re still waiting to see the full facts of what’s happened in Iran, but I would say that we stick to the rule of international humanitarian law, which is very clear against targeting civilians,” the Foreign Secretary added.
On November 27, Fakhrizadeh, dubbed the “father of the Iranian bomb”, was assassinated near the capital city on Friday by “armed terrorists”.
The country’s Ministry of Defence said that Fakhrizadeh, a also professor of physics at Imam Hussein University of Tehran, “was severely wounded in the course of clashes between his security team and terrorists, and was transferred to hospital”, where he succumbed to his injuries.
Fakhrizadeh also headed theMinistry’s Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (SPND).
The Iranian government suspects that the assassination was conducted by Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, though Tel Aviv has neither confirmed nor denied the allegation, according to media reports.
The European Union has strongly condemning the attack and called it a “criminal act”.
The UK government announced on Monday that the Chinese telecom giant Huawei will not be able to install its 5G equipments in the country from September 2021.
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said that as per its earlier decision, the UK carriers will no longer be able to install Huawei equipment beginning September 2021.
The UK government has laid out a roadmap for removing all telecoms equipment made by “high risk vendors,” including Huawei, from the country’s 5G network by 2027, reports CNET.
In July this year, the UK government had announced a ban on the purchase of new Huawei kits for 5G from next year and said that the Chinese telecom giant’s equipment will be completely removed from 5G networks by the end of 2027.
The telecoms operators have seven years to remove its existing technology from their 5G infrastructure at an expected cost of 2 billion pounds.
The decision came following new advice produced by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) on the impact of US sanctions against the telecommunications vendor.
The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) designated Chinese telecom companies, Huawei and ZTE, as national security risks to America’s communications networks.
In a U-turn, the UK government that earlier allowed Huawei to sell its 5G technology in the country, signalled a tougher stand against the Chinese telecom giant.
Huawei called the decision “bad news for anyone in the UK with a mobile phone”.
Struggling to keep its consumer business afloat in the wake of the US sanctions, Huawei this month announced to sell off its Honor smartphone business assets to China-based Shenzhen Zhixin New Information Technology Co Ltd.
The company said that the sale — which could be around $15 billion according to multiple reports — will help Honor’s channel sellers and suppliers make it through this difficult time.
Honor smartphones have been hit by US sanctions that prevent Huawei from doing business with the US companies.
