The Spectator

Portrait of the week: a Liverpool terror attack, the end of COP26 and the Belarus migrant crisis

issue 20 November 2021

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The UK terror threat level was raised to severe after a taxi exploded and burst into flames just before 11 a.m. on Remembrance Sunday outside Liverpool Women’s Hospital, killing the passenger. He was Emad Al Swealmeen, 32, a failed asylum-seeker from the Middle East, who had converted from Islam, and was confirmed in 2017 at Liverpool Anglican Cathedral nearby. He had previously been sectioned for six months under the Mental Health Act because of his behaviour with a knife. The detonator seemed to have gone off but not the bomb. The taxi driver, whose wounds required hospital treatment, was praised for his courage. The Countess of Avon, widow of the former prime minister Anthony Eden, died aged 101.

In the seven days up to the beginning of this week, 1,092 people had died with coronavirus, bringing the total of deaths (within 28 days of testing positive) to 142,835. (In the previous week deaths had numbered 1,185.)

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