The Spectator

In a week in which the world is once again invited to consider the prospect of climatic Armageddon, it would be easy to miss the news of remarkable progress against one of the greatest killers known to mankind. UNAIDS, the United Nations agency responsible for the global battle against Aids, forecast that the epidemic will very likely be over by 2030. That does not mean that the disease will be declared extinct by then — as smallpox was in 1979 and rinderpest in 2011 — but that the incidence of transmission of HIV and death from Aids will have fallen to levels low enough to constitute a chronic public health problem rather than an epidemic. Already, worldwide deaths from the disease have fallen by a third since a peak of 2.3 million in 2005.

Home The General Medical Council said it was dropping cases against four doctors who worked at Stafford Hospital at the height of the scandal of neglect and abuse there. Bail until October was given to eight people, including five policemen, arrested during investigation of an incident last year in which Andrew Mitchell, the former chief whip, was accused of calling police ‘plebs’, which he denies. Two men were charged with the computer theft of £1.3 million from Barclays Bank in Swiss Cottage, north London. A photograph was published of the Queen in a cardigan entertaining the prime minister of New Zealand at Balmoral in a room with a tartan carpet, an electric fire, a stuffed toy corgi and twin beds for the real thing.