LONDON: The UK government said Sunday that it reached its goal of giving at least one COVID-19 vaccine shot to the most vulnerable people in the country, increasing pressure on ministers to clarify when they will ease a lockdown imposed in early January.
Some 15 million people, or 22% of the UK population, have received their first shot or were offered one. The figure includes most people in the government’s top four priority groups, including everyone over 75, frontline healthcare workers and nursing home staff.
“15,000,000! Amazing team,'' Nadhim Zahawi, the vaccines minister, said in a tweet that featured a red heart. “We will not rest till we offer the vaccine to the whole of phase1 the 1-9 categories of the most vulnerable & all over 50s by end April and then all adults.''
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson plans to unveil his roadmap for easing restrictions on Feb. 22 amid signs that infection rates, hospitalizations and deaths have fallen sharply since England’s third national lockdown began on Jan. 4.
Jockeying has already begun between those who want the measures lifted as soon as possible and those who fear moving too fast will lead to a resurgence of the virus.
Britain got a head start on its vaccination effort in December, when it became the first country to authorize widespread use of a COVID-19 shot. It ranks behind only Israel, 71%, the Seychelles, 53%, and the United Arab Emirates, 50% in the percentage of people who have received one dose, according to data compiled by Oxford University. The US is fifth at 15%.
At the same time, rules that have closed schools, restaurants and nonessential shops in the UK are starting to pay off. The number of new infections, hospital admissions and deaths recorded over the past seven days have all dropped by more than 20% from the previous week, according to government figures.
When Johnson announced the lockdown, he said the government would review the measures in mid-February based on their success in controlling the pandemic and progress in the vaccination effort. Johnson’s first priority is to reopen schools, and he has promised to give schools two weeks notice to give teachers time to prepare for the return of students.
The prime minister on Saturday applauded the vaccine rollout but urged people to be cautious.
“We have still got infections running very high throughout the country — levels which last year we would have thought were really very high indeed — (and) still, sadly, a great many deaths in our hospitals,” he said during a visit to a vaccine manufacturing facility in northeastern England. “Although the number is beginning to come down, and perhaps starting to come down quite fast, we need to look at the data very, very hard.”
Britain has reported over 117,000 virus-related deaths, the highest toll in Europe.
Mark Harper, a member of Parliament from the ruling Conservative Party, last week warned the government against “moving the goalposts” for deciding when to ease the lockdown.
Johnson should start by reopening schools, then gradually lift other restrictions as more people are vaccinated, said Harper, who leads a group of about 70 lawmakers who have lobbied for the government to consider the negative economic and social impacts of the restrictions, along with the health benefits.
“If you think about the restrictions that the government’s placed on everybody, they are the toughest set of restrictions that have ever been placed on the British people outside of the Second and First World Wars,” Harper told the BBC. “So it’s kind of just worth stepping back a bit and saying, ‘This isn’t normal, and it shouldn’t continue, frankly, for a moment longer than it’s absolutely necessary.’”
After meeting the target for reaching the most vulnerable people, UK authorities will progressively expand the vaccination drive to the next five priority groups until everyone over 50 and vulnerable younger people with health conditions that put them at higher risk from the virus have been offered the vaccine.
Public health officials say the top nine priority groups account for 99% of the deaths caused by COVID-19 so far.
While the vaccines currently authorized for use in the UK require two doses to ensure full protection against COVID-19, British authorities say one dose provides a significant level of protection.
Because of this, they have made it their priority to give the first dose to as many people as possible as quickly as possible. To do this, Britain has suggested that the second dose be administered after three months, instead of one month as recommended by the manufacturers.
Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust health think tank, said the number of COVID-19 infections in Britain is still too high to think about lifting the restrictions.
“We’ve made enormous progress … but the transmission is incredibly high still and we’ve got to get it lower,” he said.
There are other dangers on the horizon. UK government scientific advisers say the COVID-19 variant now predominant in the country may be up to 70% more deadly than previous variants, underscoring concerns about how mutations may change the characteristics of the disease.
The findings from the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group, published Friday on the government’s website, confirm preliminary research released Jan. 21. The group, known as NERVTAG, includes experts from universities and public agencies across the UK
The new report is based on analysis of a dozen studies that found the so-called Kent variant, named after the county where it was first identified, was 30% to 70% more deadly than other variants. The studies compared hospitalization and death rates among people infected with the variant and those infected with other variants.
“Based on these analyses, it is likely that infection with (the Kent variant) is associated with an increased risk of hospitalization and death compared to infection with non-variant of cancer viruses,” the advisory group said. “It should be noted that the absolute risk of death per infection remains low.”
UK hits target: Gives at least 1 vaccine shot to 15 million
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UK hits target: Gives at least 1 vaccine shot to 15 million
- The UK will start administering vaccines from Monday to those aged between 65 and 69 and the clinically vulnerable to COVID-19
- Britain has registered nearly 117,000 deaths within 28 days of a positive COVID-19 test
Friends say Minnesota shooting suspect was deeply religious and conservative
- Friends told the AP that they knew Boelter was religious and conservative, but that he didn’t talk about politics often and didn’t seem extreme
NEW YORK: The man accused of assassinating the top Democrat in the Minnesota House held deeply religious and politically conservative views, telling a congregation in Africa two years ago that the US was in a “bad place” where most churches didn’t oppose abortion.
Vance Luther Boelter, 57, was at the center of a massive multistate manhunt on Sunday, a day after authorities say he impersonated a police officer and gunned down former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in their home outside Minneapolis. Democratic Gov. Tim Walz described the shooting as “a politically motivated assassination.”
Sen. John Hoffman, also a Democrat, and his wife, Yvette, were shot earlier by the same gunman at their home nearby but survived.
Friends and former colleagues interviewed by The Associated Press described Boelter as a devout Christian who attended an evangelical church and went to campaign rallies for President Donald Trump. Records show Boelter registered to vote as a Republican while living in Oklahoma in 2004 before moving to Minnesota where voters don’t list party affiliation.
Near the scene at Hortman’s home, authorities say they found an SUV made to look like those used by law enforcement. Inside they found fliers for a local anti-Trump “No Kings” rally scheduled for Saturday and a notebook with names of other lawmakers. The list also included the names of abortion rights advocates and health care officials, according to two law enforcement officials who could not discuss details of the ongoing investigation and spoke to AP on condition of anonymity.
Both Hortman and Hoffman were defenders of abortion rights at the state legislature.
Suspect not believed to have made any public threats before attacks, official says
Drew Evans, superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said at a briefing on Sunday that Boelter is not believed to have made any public threats before the attacks. Evans asked the public not to speculate on a motivation for the attacks. “We often want easy answers for complex problems,” he told reporters. “Those answers will come as we complete the full picture of our investigation.”
Friends told the AP that they knew Boelter was religious and conservative, but that he didn’t talk about politics often and didn’t seem extreme.
“He was right-leaning politically but never fanatical, from what I saw, just strong beliefs,” said Paul Schroeder, who has known Boelter for years.
A glimpse of suspect’s beliefs on abortion during a trip to Africa
Boelter, who worked as a security contractor, gave a glimpse of his beliefs on abortion during a trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2023. While there, Boelter served as an evangelical pastor, telling people he had first found Jesus as a teenager.
“The churches are so messed up, they don’t know abortion is wrong in many churches,” he said, according to an online recording of one sermon from February 2023. Still, in three lengthy sermons reviewed by the AP, he only mentioned abortion once, focusing more on his love of God and what he saw as the moral decay in his native country.
He appears to have hidden his more strident beliefs from his friends back home.
“He never talked to me about abortion,” Schroeder said. “It seemed to be just that he was a conservative Republican who naturally followed Trump.”
A married father with five children, Boelter and his wife own a sprawling 3,800-square-foot house on a large rural lot about an hour from downtown Minneapolis that the couple bought in 2023 for more than a half-million dollars.
Seeking to reinvent himself
He worked for decades in managerial roles for food and beverage manufacturers before seeking to reinvent himself in middle age, according to resumes and a video he posted online.
After getting an undergraduate degree in international relations in his 20s, Boelter went back to school and earned a master’s degree and then a doctorate in leadership studies in 2016 from Cardinal Stritch University, a private Catholic college in Wisconsin that has since shut down. While living in Wisconsin, records show Boelter and his wife Jenny founded a nonprofit corporation called Revoformation Ministries, listing themselves as the president and secretary.
After moving to Minnesota about a decade ago, Boelter volunteered for a position on a state workforce development board, first appointed by then-Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat, in 2016, and later by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz. He served through 2023.
In that position, he may have crossed paths with one of his alleged victims. Hoffman served on the same board, though authorities said it was not immediately clear how much the two men may have interacted.
Launching a security firm
Records show Boelter and his wife started a security firm in 2018. A website for Praetorian Guard Security Services lists Boelter’s wife as the president and CEO while he is listed as the director of security patrols. The company’s homepage says it provides armed security for property and events and features a photo of an SUV painted in a two-tone black and silver pattern similar to a police vehicle, with a light bar across the roof and “Praetorian” painted across the doors. Another photo shows a man in black tactical gear with a military-style helmet and a ballistic vest with the company’s name across the front.
In an online resume, Boelter also billed himself as a security contractor who worked oversees in the Middle East and Africa. On his trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo, he told Chris Fuller, a friend, that he had founded several companies focused on farming and fishing on the Congo River, as well as in transportation and tractor sales.
“It has been a very fun and rewarding experience and I only wished I had done something like this 10 years ago,” he wrote in a message shared with the AP.
But once he returned home in 2023, there were signs that Boelter was struggling financially. That August, he began working for a transport service for a funeral home, mostly picking up bodies of those who had died in assisted living facilities — a job he described as he needed to do to pay bills. Tim Koch, the owner of Metro First Call, said Boelter “voluntarily left” that position about four months ago.
“This is devastating news for all involved,” Koch said, declining to elaborate on the reasons for Boelter’s departure, citing the ongoing law enforcement investigation.
Boelter had also started spending some nights away from his family, renting a room in a modest house in northern Minneapolis shared by friends. Heavily armed police executed a search warrant on the home Saturday.
‘I’m going to be gone for awhile’
In the hours before Saturday’s shootings, Boelter texted two roommates to tell them he loved them and that “I’m going to be gone for a while,” according to Schroeder, who was forwarded the text and read it to the AP.
“May be dead shortly, so I just want to let you know I love you guys both and I wish it hadn’t gone this way,” Boelter wrote. “I don’t want to say anything more and implicate you in any way because you guys don’t know anything about this. But I love you guys and I’m sorry for the trouble this has caused.”
G7 leaders gather in Canada for a summit overshadowed by Israel-Iran crisis and trade wars
- Israel’s strikes on Iran and Tehran’s retaliation, which appeared to catch many world leaders unawares, is the latest sign of a more volatile world
KANANASKIS, Alberta: Leaders of some of the world’s biggest economic are arriving in the Canadian Rockies on Sunday for a Group of Seven summit, overshadowed by an escalating conflict between Israel and Iran and US President Donald Trump’s unresolved trade war.
Israel’s strikes on Iran and Tehran’s retaliation, which appeared to catch many world leaders unawares, is the latest sign of a more volatile world.
Trump in recent days vetoed an Israeli plan to kill Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a US official told The Associated Press, in an indication of how far Israel was prepared to go.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he had discussed efforts to de-escalate the crisis with Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as other world leaders and said he expected “intense discussions” would continue at the summit.
Trump is summit’s wild card
As summit host, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has decided to abandon the annual practice of issuing a joint statement, or communique, at the end of the meeting.
With other leaders wanting to talk to Trump in an effort to talk him out of imposing tariffs, the summit risks being a series of bilateral conversations rather than a show of unity.
Trump is the summit wild card. Looming over the meeting are his inflammatory threats to make Canada the 51st state and take over Greenland. French President Emmanuel Macron visited Greenland on Sunday for a highly symbolic stop on his way to Canada. Macron warned that Greenland is “not to be sold” nor “to be taken.”
“Everybody in France, the European Union thinks that Greenland is not to be sold, not to be taken,” he said during a news conference, applauded by the local crowd.
“The situation in Greenland is clearly a wakeup call for all Europeans. Let me tell you very directly that you’re not alone,” Macron added.
Trump is scheduled to arrive late Sunday in Kananaskis, Alberta. He will have a bilateral meeting with Carney on Monday morning before the summit program begins.
‘He tends to be a bully’
Leaders who are not part of the G7 but have been invited to the summit by Carney include the heads of state of India, Ukraine, Brazil, South Africa, South Korea, Australia, Mexico and the UAE. Avoiding tariffs will continue to be top of mind.
“Leaders, and there are some new ones coming, will want to meet Donald Trump,” said Peter Boehm, Canada’s counselor at the 2018 G7 summit in Quebec and a veteran of six G7 summits. “Trump doesn’t like the big round table as much he likes the one-on-one.”
Bilateral meetings with the American president can be fraught as Trump has used them to try to intimidate the leaders of Ukraine and South Africa.
Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien told a panel this week that if Trump does act out, leaders should ignore him and remain calm like Carney did in his recent Oval Office meeting.
“He tends to be a bully,” Chrétien said. “If Trump has decided to make a show to be in the news, he will do something crazy. Let him do it and keep talking normally.”
Last month Britain and the US announced they had struck a trade deal that will slash American tariffs on UK autos, steel and aluminum. It has yet to take effect, however, though British officials say they are not concerned the Trump administration might go back on its word.
Starmer’s attempts to woo Trump have left him in an awkward position with Canada, the UK’s former colony, close ally and fellow Commonwealth member. Starmer has also drawn criticism — especially from Canadians — for failing to address Trump’s stated desire to make Canada the 51st state.
Asked if he has told Trump to stop the 51st state threats, Starmer told The Associated Press: “I’m not going to get into the precise conversations I’ve had, but let me be absolutely clear: Canada is an independent, sovereign country and a much-valued member of the Commonwealth.”
Zelensky expected to meet Trump
The war in Ukraine will be on the agenda. President Volodymyr Zelensky is due to attend the summit and is expected to meet with Trump, a reunion coming just months after their bruising Oval Office encounter which laid bare the risks of having a meeting with the US president.
Starmer met with Carney in Ottawa before the summit for talks focused on security and trade, in the first visit to Canada by a British prime minister for eight years.
German officials were keen to counter the suggestion that the summit would be a “six against one” event, noting that the G7 countries have plenty of differences of emphasis among themselves on various issues.
“The only the problem you cannot forecast is what the president of the United States will do depending on the mood, the need to be in the news,” said Chrétien.
World faces new nuclear arms race, researchers warn
- Israel — which does not acknowledge its nuclear weapons — is also believed to be modernizing its arsenal, which SIPRI estimated was about 90 warheads at the start of the year
- SIPRI counted a total of 12,241 warheads in January 2025, of which 9,614 were in stockpiles for potential use
STOCKHOLM: Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, researchers warned Monday.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said nuclear powers including the United States and Russia — which account for around 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions.”
Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads.
But SIPRI warned that the trend was likely to be reversed in the coming years.
“What we see now, first of all, is that the number of operational nuclear warheads is beginning to increase,” SIPRI Director Dan Smith told AFP.
This was especially the case with China, which SIPRI said had about 600 nuclear warheads and had added 100 new warheads in 2023 and 2024.
“China is increasing its nuclear force steadily,” Smith said, adding that the country could reach 1,000 warheads in seven or eight years.
While that would still be well short of Russian and US arsenals it would make China “a much bigger player,” said Smith.
He said the world faced new threats “at a particularly dangerous and unstable moment” for geopolitics, adding: “We see the warning signs of a new nuclear arms race coming.”
SIPRI counted a total of 12,241 warheads in January 2025, of which 9,614 were in stockpiles for potential use.
The institute noted in its report that both Russia and the United States had “extensive programs under way to modernize and replace their nuclear warheads.”
The United Kingdom was not believed to have increased its number of warheads in 2024, but SIPRI said that given the country’s 2021 decision to raise its limit on the number of warheads from 225 to 260, it was likely to increase in the future.
Similarly, while France’s arsenal was believed to have remained steady at around 290, “its nuclear modernization program progressed during 2024.”
India and Pakistan both “continued to develop new types of nuclear weapon delivery systems in 2024.”
India had a “growing stockpile” of about 180 nuclear weapons at the start of 2025, the institute said, while Pakistan’s arsenal remained steady at about 170 warheads.
SIPRI also noted that North Korea’s nuclear weapons program remained “central to its national security strategy,” estimating that it had around 50 warheads and was believed to possess “enough fissile material to reach a total of up to 90 warheads.”
Israel — which does not acknowledge its nuclear weapons — is also believed to be modernizing its arsenal, which SIPRI estimated was about 90 warheads at the start of the year.
Smith stressed that the looming nuclear arms race would not just be about “the numbers of warheads.”
“It’s an arms race which is going to be highly technological,” Smith said.
He added that it would be both in “outer space and in cyberspace” as the software directing and guiding nuclear weapons would be an area of competition.
The rapid development of artificial intelligence will also likely begin to play a part, at first as a complement to humans.
“The next step would be moving toward full automation. That is a step that must never be taken,” Smith said.
“If our prospects of being free of the danger of nuclear war were to be left in the hands of an artificial intelligence, I think that then we would be close to the doomsday scenarios.”
Political violence is threaded through recent US history. The motives and justifications vary
- Often, those who engage in political violence don’t have clearly defined ideologies that easily map onto the country’s partisan divides
The assassination of a Democratic Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband and the shooting of another lawmaker and his wife at their homes are just the latest addition to a long and unsettling roll call of political violence in the United States.
The list, in the past two months alone: the killing of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, the firebombing of a Colorado march calling for the release of Israeli hostages, and the firebombing of the official residence of Pennsylvania’s governor — on a Jewish holiday while he and his family were inside.
And here’s just a sampling of some other attacks before that — the killing of a health care executive on the streets of New York late last year, the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in small-town Pennsylvania during his presidential campaign last year, the 2022 attack on the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by a believer in right-wing conspiracy theories, and the 2017 shooting by a liberal gunman at a GOP practice for the congressional softball game.
“We’ve entered into this especially scary time in the country where it feels the sort of norms and rhetoric and rules that would tamp down on violence have been lifted,” said Matt Dallek, a political scientist at George Washington University who studies extremism. “A lot of people are receiving signals from the culture.”
Politics behind both individual shootings and massacres
Politics have also driven large-scale massacres. Gunmen who killed 11 worshippers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, 23 shoppers at a heavily Latino Walmart in El Paso in 2019 and 10 Black people at a Buffalo grocery store in 2022 each cited the conspiracy theory that a secret cabal of Jews were trying to replace white people with people of color. That has become a staple on parts of the right who support Trump’s push to limit immigration.
The Anti-Defamation League found that from 2022 through 2024, all of the 61 political killings in the United States were committed by right-wing extremists. That changed on the first day of 2025, when a Texas man flying the flag of the Daesh group killed 14 people by driving his truck through a crowded New Orleans street before being fatally shot by police.
“You’re seeing acts of violence from all different ideologies,” said Jacob Ware, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who researches terrorism. “It feels more random and chaotic and more frequent.”
The United States has a long and grim history of political violence, from presidential assassinations dating back to the killing of President Abraham Lincoln, lynching and violence aimed at Black people in the South, the 1954 shooting inside Congress by four Puerto Rican nationalists. Experts say the past few years, however, have most likely reached a level not seen since the tumultuous days of the 1960s and 1970s, when icons like Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated.
Ware noted that the most recent surge comes after the new Trump administration has shuttered units that focus on investigating white supremacist extremism and pushed federal law enforcement to spend less time on anti-terrorism and more on detaining people who are in the country illegally.
“We’re at the point, after these six weeks, where we have to ask about how effectively the Trump administration is combating terrorism,” Ware said.
Of course, one of Trump’s first acts in office was to pardon those involved in the largest act of domestic political violence this century — the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the US Capitol, intended to prevent Congress from certifying Trump’s 2020 election loss.
Those pardons broadcast a signal to would-be extremists on either side of the political debate, Dallek said: “They sent a very strong message that violence, as long as you’re a Trump supporter, will be permitted and may be rewarded.”
Ideologies aren’t always aligned — or coherent
Often, those who engage in political violence don’t have clearly defined ideologies that easily map onto the country’s partisan divides. A man who died after he detonated a car bomb outside a Palm Springs fertility clinic last month left writings urging people not to procreate and expressed what the FBI called “nihilistic ideations.”
But, like clockwork, each political attack seems to inspire partisans to find evidence the attacker is on the other side. Little was known about the man police identified as a suspect in the Minnesota attacks, 57-year-old Vance Boelter. Authorities say they found a list of other apparent targets that included other Democratic officials, abortion clinics and abortion rights advocates, as well as flyers for the day’s anti-Trump parades.
Conservatives online seized on the flyers — and the fact that Boetler had apparently once been appointed to a state workforce development board by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz — to claim the suspect must be a liberal. “The far left is murderously violent,” billionaire Elon Musk posted on his social media site, X.
It was reminiscent of the fallout from the attack on Paul Pelosi, the former House speaker’s then-82-year-old husband, who was seriously injured by a man wielding a hammer. Right-wing figures theorized the assailant was a secret lover rather than what authorities said he was: a believer in pro-Trump conspiracy theories who broke into the Pelosi home echoing Jan. 6 rioters who broke into the Capitol by saying: “Where is Nancy?!”
On Saturday, Nancy Pelosi posted a statement on X decrying the Minnesota attack. “All of us must remember that it’s not only the act of violence, but also the reaction to it, that can normalize it,” she wrote.
Trump had mocked the Pelosis after the 2022 attack, but on Saturday he joined in the official bipartisan condemnation of the Minnesota shootings, calling them “horrific violence.” The president has, however, consistently broken new ground with his bellicose rhetoric toward his political opponents, whom he routinely calls “sick” and “evil,” and has talked repeatedly about how violence is needed to quell protests.
The Minnesota attack occurred after Trump took the extraordinary step of mobilizing the military to try to control protests against his administration’s immigration operations in Los Angeles during the past week, when he pledged to “HIT” disrespectful protesters and warned of a “migrant invasion” of the city.
Dallek said Trump has been “both a victim and an accelerant” of the charged, dehumanizing political rhetoric that is flooding the country.
“It feels as if the extremists are in the saddle,” he said, “and the extremists are the ones driving our rhetoric and politics.”
UK appoints Blaise Metreweli first woman head of MI6 spy service
- The MI6 chief is the only publicly named member of the organization and reports directly to the foreign minister
LONDON: The UK government has appointed Blaise Metreweli as the first-ever woman to head its MI6 spy service as the country faces “threats on an unprecedented scale,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced on Sunday.
The MI6 Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) achieved global fame through Ian Fleming’s fictional agent James Bond.
Metreweli will be the 18th head of the service, Starmer’s Downing Street office said in a statement.
“The historic appointment of Blaise Metreweli comes at a time when the work of our intelligence services has never been more vital,” Starmer said.
“The United Kingdom is facing threats on an unprecedented scale — be it aggressors who send their spy ships to our waters or hackers whose sophisticated cyber plots seek to disrupt our public services,” he added.
The MI6 chief is the only publicly named member of the organization and reports directly to the foreign minister.
The person in the post is referred to as “C” — not “M” as in the James Bond franchise, which already had a woman, played by Judi Dench, in the role.
Metreweli will take over from outgoing MI6 head Richard Moore in the autumn.
Currently, she is MI6’s director general — known as “Q” — with responsiblity for technology and innovation at the service, the statement said.
She is described as a career intelligence officer who joined the service in 1999 having studied anthropology at Cambridge University.
Metreweli held senior roles at both MI6 and the MI5 domestic intelligence service and spent most of her career in “operational roles in the Middle East and Europe,” the statement added, without giving further biographical details.
The appointment comes over three decades after MI5 appointed its first female chief.
Stella Rimington held the position from 1992-1996, followed by Eliza Manningham-Buller from 2002-2007.
The UK intelligence and security organization GCHQ appointed its first woman chief, Anne Keast-Butler, in 2023.
