Hugging is back (Ts&Cs apply)

Hugs and holidays are back as Covid restrictions are partially lifted across the UK, in the penultimate step of the long journey out of lockdown.

In England, up to six people can now meet inside and up to 30 outside, as pubs, museums, art galleries, cafes and cinemas welcome punters in from the cold. Foreign travel has resumed, though only a handful of countries are exempt from quarantine upon return.

Ministers are urging caution, and while the message is still that a full unlocking on 21 June is likely, they are managing expectations. The government line is that there are two causes for concern: vaccine hesitancy and the B.1.617.2 (or Indian) variant. Cases of the variant have been surging in pockets of the UK, including in Bolton where health officials have fast-tracked youngsters for vaccines to try to avoid a local lockdown, defying No 10’s rollout timetable.

But UK vaccine uptake has been astonishing – around 95 per cent. A 100 per cent vaccination rate isn’t needed to curb Covid. It’s also impossible in practice. See Alex Starling below on why scapegoating “refuseniks” will backfire.

The government’s anxiety over B.1.617.2 stems in part from the delay in adding India to the UK red list, which would put ministers firmly in the firing line if the variant derails the unlocking. 

But the evidence we have so far suggests fears are overblown; while the Indian variant spreads faster than others, vaccines work well against it. The bulk of those hospitalised in Bolton have not been vaccinated.

Despite these jitters, the plan remains on track and one more step has been taken towards some sort of normality. Yet as Adam Wagner, a human rights lawyer and Covid rules expert points out, the emergency powers that allow ministers to exert complete control over citizens’ lives with a swish of a pen remain firmly in place.

“MPs must take back control of law-making” he says. “When the government is appointed, they don’t just get to create laws, the executive doesn’t have carte blanche, it doesn’t have the power to do whatever it wants – democracy doesn’t work like that.”

It’s a reminder that things won’t really be back to normal until the freedoms gradually being fed back to us can’t just be taken away again at a moment’s notice.

Record rocket fire from Gaza

The conflict in Gaza entered its second week this morning, with a mounting death toll and some of the heaviest aerial bombardments since fighting began.

In a 20-minute pre-dawn airstrike, Israeli forces targeted what they said were facilities and residences belonging to the militant group Hamas but main roads, homes and power lines in Gaza were also damaged.

Over the weekend, Israeli airstrikes destroyed a Gaza tower housing the media outlets Al Jazeera and Associated Press. Israel alleges these buildings contained Hamas military infrastructure but media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said the attacks may constitute war crimes.

In response, Hamas militants have continued to fire rockets into southern Israel. According to the Israeli Defence Force, 3,100 rockets have been fired from Gaza towards Israel in the past seven days – the highest concentration of rocket fire in the country’s history.

A grim total of at least 192 Palestinians have now been killed in the conflict, including 58 children and 34 women. In Israel, eight people have been killed including a five-year-old boy and a soldier.

While international calls for a ceasefire are mounting, Benjamin Netanyahu’s increasingly violent rhetoric gives no hope of a resolution. The Israeli prime minister said yesterday that the attacks were continuing at full force and would take time, adding that his country wants to levy a heavy price on Hamas.

See Bruce Anderson and Walter Ellis below on the intractable cycle of violence between Israelis and Palestinians, and how it might be resolved.

Shark-dar hunch confirmed

Scientists in Florida have concluded that sharks use an internal GPS-like system to navigate the world’s oceans.

Researchers exposed 20 bonnethead sharks to magnetic cues in a room-sized pool surrounded by copper wire, replicating geographical locations hundreds of miles away from where they were captured. They found that the animals used the Earth’s magnetic field like a map to head towards home.

It helps explain how sharks can travel 20,000 km across vast oceans and return to exactly the same location each year to feed, breed and give birth.

Scientists were left puzzled in 2005 after a great white was tagged and monitored on its journey from South Africa to Australia and back again. It travelled in an almost perfectly straight line, leading some to suspect that sharks were capable of magnetoreception, similar to birds, bees, sea turtles and lobsters. 

While all other major senses have been well-described and  understood, the mechanisms underpinning this magnetic sense remain a mystery. 

Mattie Brignal,
News Editor