EU 

Express
JACOB Rees-Mogg insisted the EU must not at any stretch think they can “annex” Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom as he set about a furious defence of Great Britain’s interests.
Speaking to Nigel Farage on GB News, the House of Commons leader made it clear that the UK will not be pushed around by the EU over Northern Ireland insisting it is “just as much part of our country as Somerset”. His comments come as Nigel Farage suggested Northern Ireland has been effectively “annexed” by the bloc following the Northern Ireland protocol chaos which followed Brexit. But Mr Rees-Mogg furiously dispelled the idea.
Mr Farage asked: “It’s been effectively annexed! What are we going to do Jacob to sort that out? Is the will there?”
But Mr Rees Mogg furiously hit back: “Northern Ireland is a fundamental part of our country.
“Northern Ireland is as much a part of our country as Somerset!”
Farage jumped in joking “it was” suggesting the EU have already taken it as their own. 

Scotland 

Express
NICOLA STURGEON’S SNP Government has announced “dangerous” plans to make some emergency Covid powers permanent and more wide-ranging.
Deputy First Minister John Swinney has unveiled a public consultation on removing the March 2022 expiry date for a host of extraordinary powers. These include the ability to impose lockdowns, close schools and require people to wear face coverings.
Other controversial rules include more prisoners being granted early release, as well as the wider use of fines instead of prosecutions.
The SNP politician argued that while many of the emergency measures would be redundant, those with a “demonstrable benefit to the people of Scotland” should be retained.
He said the consultation was “an opportunity to maintain changes that have been welcomed by people who now don’t want to lose transformations that have been innovative”.
But the Scottish Tories and parents groups have slammed the news, insisting the SNP-led Holyrood Government should not retain the unprecedented powers handed to it during the pandemic. 

Similar stories can be read in the Telegraph, Independent 

Trade 

Guardian
Exports from Ireland to Great Britain soared in the first six months after Brexit as imports sent in the opposite direction declined, according to Irish government figures.
In a sign of post-Brexit imbalances in trade, the Irish Central Statistics Office (CSO) said goods exports to Great Britain (excluding Northern Ireland) rose by 20% to €6.7bn (£5.7bn) in the first six months of 2021, an increase of more than €1.1bn compared with the same period in 2020.
However, imports from Great Britain fell by more than €2.5bn, or 32%, to stand at €5.3bn in the same period.
According to the CSO, exports from Great Britain to Ireland decreased by 16% in June compared with the same month in 2020, with food, live animals and manufactured goods hit hardest.
British exporters have been hit harder by Brexit because they faced border checks from 1 January on shipments to the EU, while Irish and EU exporters to Britain have benefited from a phased in approach the UK government opted for over a 12-month transition period.
It means while all food and plant exports to the EU have been subject to sanitary and phytosanitary checks since January, countries including Ireland selling into the UK are not being subject to the complete panoply of red tape until January 2022. 

Illegal immigrants 

Mail
A Conservative MP has slammed the Home Office’s plan to spend £2million on a permanent migrant reception centre in Dover, saying they should instead focus on ‘closing the small boats route’.
The centre is being developed at the Dover docks to process the record numbers of migrants crossing the Channel, and will allow Border Force officials to test, check, interview and feed migrants on-site.
The £2million Intake Unit, which will be converted from a disused welding site, will be ready next May, according to Home Secretary Priti Patel.
But some MPs slammed the plans and said it sends the wrong signal by suggesting that illegal cross-Channel migration cannot be prevented, The Telegraph reported.
Tory MP for Dover Natalie Elphicke, 50, instead argued that the Home Office should spend the money on trying to stop arrivals from crossing the Channel.
She told the publication: ‘I would rather we focused our efforts on closing the small boats route than investing more and more millions of pounds in permanent structures.’
When the multi-million pound facility was announced earlier this month, the politician said it was time to bring an end to ‘illegal and dangerous journeys’ across the Channel.
Speaking about the permanent centre, she told The Sun: ‘This sends the wrong message entirely.’ 

A similar story can be read in Breitbart 

Refugees 

Telegraph
European governments were locked in urgent talks on Tuesday on how to avoid a new wave of refugees into Europe as thousands of Afghans flee a Taliban takeover.
Even as they send military aircraft to rescue their own citizens and former Afghan staff, Europe’s leaders want to avoid a new flood of refugees like that seen in 2015.
The United Nations Refugee Agency estimated that about 550,000 Afghans had already been driven from their homes so far this year, and there are fears thousands more may follow.
France and Germany called for asylum seekers to be given shelter in neighbouring countries, as well as in countries on the route to Europe.
“Europe alone cannot bear the consequences of the current situation,” Emmanuel Macron, the French president, told his countrymen in a televised address on Monday evening.
“We must anticipate and protect ourselves against significant irregular migration that would endanger the migrants themselves and risk encouraging trafficking of all kinds.” 

Similar stories can be read in Breitbart. Times, Evening Standard, ITV News, BBC News, iNews, Breitbart, GB News 

Pingdemic 

Telegraph
Tens of thousands of people may have been needlessly sent into self-isolation because of an error with the NHS Covid app, it has emerged.
Ministers were reportedly warned months ago that the app had been wrongly programmed to trawl through five days of “close contacts” when a person tested positive for Covid.
The technology was tweaked earlier this month to alert fewer people after more than 600,000 people were “pinged” in a single week. It now only alerts those who were in contact with an infected person 48 hours prior to their positive test. 
But Whitehall whistleblowers have claimed that the app should only ever have looked as far back as two days, in line with official guidance and NHS Test and Trace rules.
The disclosure means that many thousands of people who came into contact with an infected person between three and five days before their positive test may have been needlessly pinged and told to self-isolate.
According to reports, Matt Hancock, then health secretary, was made aware of the problem shortly before his forced resignation in June, but no decision was made. Around a month later, Sajid Javid, Mr Hancock’s replacement, announced the app would be updated “based on public health advice”. 

A similar story can be read in the Sun 

Vaccine 

Independent 
The G7 nations will have accumulated close to a billion spare vaccine doses by the end of 2021, analysis suggests, as campaigners warn that unequal access to the Covid jabs will prolong the pandemic and endanger millions of lives across the globe.
A billion vaccines would be enough to fully immunise the 30 least-vaccinated countries, the majority of which are in Africa.
Scientific advisers to the UK government have urged ministers to take more action in supporting overseas vaccination efforts to combat rising global infections and to prevent the emergence of new variants, while the World Health Organisation (WHO) has condemned international leaders for stockpiling doses and making them unavailable to the rest of the world.
Yet analysis from science analytics company Airfinity suggests that, by the end of the year, Britain and its fellow G7 nations will have hoarded 977,813,000 of leftover vaccine doses that are desperately needed in some of the world’s poorest countries.
Many of these nations – including Namibia, Sierra Leone, Gabon and Macedonia – won’t have immunised even 20 per cent of their populations by the beginning of 2022, according to current vaccination rates. 

BBC News
False and misleading claims about Covid-19 vaccines, fertility and miscarriages are still circulating online, despite not being supported by evidence.
Doctors are extremely cautious about what they recommend during pregnancy, so the original advice was to avoid the jab.
But now, so much safety data has become available that this advice has changed and the vaccine is now actively encouraged (as getting Covid itself can put a pregnancy at risk).
We have looked at some of the more persistent claims – and why they are wrong.
A study shows the vaccine accumulating in the ovaries – False
This theory comes from a misreading of a .
The study involved giving rats a much higher dose of vaccine than that given to humans (1,333 times higher).
Only 0.1% of the total dose ended up in the animals’ ovaries, 48 hours after injection. 

Climate change 

Guardian
Sweden’s only remaining mountaintop glacier, which until 2019 was also its highest peak, lost another two metres in height in the past year due to rising air temperatures driven by climate change, Stockholm University says.
In 2019, the south peak of the Kebnekaise massif was demoted to second in the rankings of Swedish mountains after a third of its glacier melted. Kebnekaise’s north peak, where there is no glacier, is now the highest in the Nordic country.
“On 14 August, the southern peak of Kebnekaise was measured at 2,094.6 metres (6,912 feet) above sea level by researchers from Tarfala research station. This is the lowest height that has been measured since the measurements started in the 1940s,” the university said in a statement on Tuesday.
“The decrease in the peak and the changed appearance of the drift can mainly be explained by rising air temperatures but also changing wind conditions, which affect where the snow accumulates in the winter.”
It said the changes reflect a longstanding warming of Sweden’s climate, citing the recent UN climate panel report that said global warming had caused an unparalleled melting of glaciers and was close to spiralling out of control.
Kebnekaise’s south peak measured as high as 2,118 metres in the mid-1990s. 

A similar story can be read in the Independent 

Energy 

Mail
The sale of gas-only boilers in the UK could be banned by 2026, with all new systems to run on hydrogen instead as Prime Minister Boris Johnson pushes ahead with his radical Net Zero climate change agenda.
The Government is consulting on plans to make sure new boilers run on hydrogen, which does not produce carbon dioxide when burned and which ministers hope will supply a third of UK energy by 2050.
Tests are ongoing to determine if hydrogen can be used safely and effectively to replace natural gas, which supplies about 74pc of the energy for heating and hot water in UK buildings and homes.
A ban on sales of new natural gas-only boilers would add to plans to stop the boilers from being installed in new-build homes by 2025. Around 1.5 million boilers are replaced in the UK each year.
However, hydrogen-ready boilers are expensive and are not yet commercially available and work still needs to be done to set standards. 
The proposals are likely to be criticised by Tory MPs who fear that poorer families will bear the brunt of the Prime Minister’s green agenda, which also includes a ban on the sales of new petrol and diesel cars. 
Mr Johnson, whose wife Carrie is an environmentalist, said a doomsday UN report highlighting the scale of global climate change was a ‘wake-up call’ for the world and demanded an end to the use of coal for power.  

Aspirin 

Sun
ASPIRIN could raise the chances of surviving an aggressive form of breast cancer by up to 20 per cent.
Scientists say the painkiller stops the disease making substances that weaken immune responses.
And a new trial will look at how that can increase the effectiveness of drugs, which boost the immune system.
Dr Anne Armstrong, of The Christie NHS Trust in Manchester, said: “Anti-inflammatory drugs like aspirin could hold the key to increasing the effectiveness of immunotherapy when used at the same time.
“Trialling its use is exciting because it is so widely available and inexpensive to produce.”
The study — sponsored by charity Breast Cancer Now and Pfizer — could pave the way for urgently needed new treatments for the 8,000 UK women diagnosed each year with “triple negative” breast cancer.
It mainly affects younger women and black women.
Beth Bramall, from Hampshire, was diagnosed aged 42. She said: “Triple negative breast cancer is so scary. 

Similar stories can be read in the Times, BBC News 

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