Archaeologists digging on the planned route of the UK鈥檚 HS2 high-speed railway have uncovered an 鈥渁stounding鈥� set of Roman statues. The discovery was made at the site where St. Mary鈥檚, a medieval church in Stoke Mandeville, Buckinghamshire, once stood.

Two complete statues of what appear to be a man and a woman were found, plus the head of a child. A hexagonal glass Roman jug was also uncovered with large pieces still intact, despite having been in the ground for what is thought to be more than 1000 years. A vessel on display in New York鈥檚 Metropolitan Museum of Art is the only known comparable item.

, lead archaeologist for HS2 contractor Fusion JV, told the Press Association news agency: 鈥淭hey鈥檙e hugely significant because they鈥檙e really rare finds in the UK. To find one stone head or one set of shoulders would be really astonishing, but we have two complete heads and shoulders as well as a third head as well.鈥�

鈥淭hey鈥檙e even more significant to us archaeologically because they鈥檝e actually helped change our understanding of the site here before the medieval church was built,鈥� she said.

The discoveries at old St Mary鈥檚 Church have been sent to a laboratory for specialist cleaning and analysis. 鈥淭hey are so significant and so remarkable that we would certainly hope that they will end up on display for the local community to see,鈥� said Wood.

Experts believe the location was used as a Roman mausoleum before the Norman church was built. Around 3000 bodies have been removed from the church and will be reburied at a new site.

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Facebook has blamed a 鈥渇aulty configuration change鈥� for the widespread outage that impacted the social media platform, along with Instagram and WhatsApp, for several hours on Monday.

The platforms had confirmed on Twitter they were aware of issues and working to resolve them after thousands of people reported outages shortly before 5 pm UK time on Monday.

Users were eventually able to access Facebook and Instagram from late on Monday evening, while WhatsApp said its services were 鈥渂ack and running at 100%鈥� as of 3.30 am on Tuesday.

Facebook said in a statement: 鈥淥ur engineering teams have learned that configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between our data centers caused issues that interrupted this communication. This disruption to network traffic had a cascading effect on the way our data centers communicate, bringing our services to a halt.鈥�

The statement also said: 鈥淲e want to make clear at this time we believe the root cause of this outage was a faulty configuration change. We also have no evidence that user data was compromised as a result of this downtime.鈥�

The platforms were affected by outages in 2019, in an incident that saw #FacebookDown, #instagramdown and #whatsappdown trending worldwide on Twitter. A few months prior, users of Facebook and Instagram reported being unable to open pages or sections on the apps.

This latest outage also affected other platforms, such as Twitter, amid an increase in traffic on its website and app. Twitter Support tweeted: 鈥淪ometimes more people than usual use Twitter. We prepare for these moments, but today things didn鈥檛 go exactly as planned. Some of you may have had an issue seeing replies and DMs as a result. This has been fixed. Sorry about that!鈥�

UK summers are likely to regularly see temperatures above 40掳C even if humanity manages to limit global warming to 1.5掳C, meteorologists have warned.

The UK is already seeing increasingly extreme weather, with 2020 the third warmest, fifth wettest and eighth sunniest year on record 鈥� the first to fall into the top 10 for all three variables. Data published in the The State Of The UK Climate 2020 report today revealed the average winter temperature for last year was 5.3掳C, which is 1.6掳C higher than the 1981 to 2010 average.

That makes December 2019 to February 2020 the fifth warmest winter on record, while the average temperature last summer was 14.8掳C, 0.4掳C above the 1981 to 2010 average.

Early August 2020 saw maximum temperatures hit 34掳C on six consecutive days, with five 鈥渢ropical nights鈥� above 20掳C, making it one of the most significant heatwaves to affect southern England in the past 60 years, the report鈥檚 authors said.

Comparing data from the Central England Temperature series, which goes back to 1772, the research found the early 21st century in this region has been 0.5掳C to 1掳C warmer than 1901 to 2000 and 0.5 to 1.5掳C warmer than 1801 to 1900.

, chief executive of the Royal Meteorological Society, which publishes the report, said the world was already seeing extreme heat as a result of warming of 1.1掳C to 1.2掳C above pre-industrial levels.

鈥淚f you take that up by another 0.3掳C, these [heatwaves] are just going to become much more intense 鈥� we鈥檙e likely to see 40掳C in the UK although we have never seen those kinds of temperatures [before],鈥� she said.

鈥淎s we hit 1.5掳C of global warming, that鈥檚 going to not just become something that we see once or twice, it鈥檒l start to become something that we see on a much more regular basis.鈥�

, climate scientist at the Met Office and lead author of the report, said the figures indicated a new normal聽for the UK.

鈥淚n seven out of the last 10 years, we鈥檝e seen temperatures of 34掳C in the UK compared to seven out of the previous 50 years before that,鈥� he said. 鈥淪o this is an indication of the fact that our baseline of our climate is changing and what we regard as normal is changing.鈥�

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The chance of getting covid-19 after being vaccinated drops sharply 21 days following a first dose, new analysis suggests.

People who become infected post-vaccination are also less likely to have symptoms than those who test positive for the virus and haven鈥檛 been jabbed.

The findings, released by the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS), are based on a sample of adults who had received a coronavirus vaccine up to 31 May.

They suggest that the risk of infection initially increases following a first dose, peaking at around 16 days.

There is then a strong decrease in risk up to around one month after the first dose, and the risk then declines slowly but steadily.

Rates of infection post-vaccination are likely to be very low, however.

Out of a sample of 297,493 people who had been vaccinated, 0.5 per cent were subsequently found to have a new infection of covid-19.

Among those who received the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, 0.8 per cent later became infected, compared with 0.3 per cent of those who received the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.

From a sample of 210,918 adults who had received both doses of vaccine, just 0.1 per cent were subsequently found to have a new infection.

Some positive covid-19 tests in people who had recently been vaccinated could be explained by them having been infected unknowingly just before having the jab, the ONS said, or being exposed at a vaccination centre.

The analysis comes as separate figures suggest cases of covid-19 are rising exponentially across England, driven by younger and other mostly unvaccinated age groups.

carried out across England between 20 May and 7 June suggest covid-19 infections are doubling every 11 days, with around 1 in 670 people infected. The highest prevalence is in north-west England.

鈥淧revalence is increasing exponentially and it is being driven by younger ages,鈥� says study author at Imperial College London.

鈥淐learly that is bad news鈥� but the key thing to point out here is that we are in a very different part of the epidemic in the UK and it is very difficult to predict the duration of the exponential phase.鈥�

Co-author , also at Imperial, says: 鈥淚 think we can take quite a lot of comfort from the fact that when we look in the details, it does appear that there is very, very good protection in the older ages, where there is virtually everyone double vaccinated. And in the younger group under the age of 65, where a much smaller proportion have been vaccinated or double vaccinated, most infections are occurring in the unvaccinated group.鈥�

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Efforts to reduce the number of heart attacks and strokes are being stalled by weight gain and increasing diabetes prevalence, analysis of Scottish health data suggests.

Between 1990 and 2014, the rate of heart attacks and strokes plummeted, driven by decreases in blood pressure, cholesterol levels and smoking rates, the research found.

But progress in further reducing cardiovascular disease has been hampered by increasing body mass index (BMI) and diabetes prevalence over the same period.

Heart disease and strokes are the two .

The number of heart attacks in Scotland fell from 1069 per 100,000 people in 1990 to 276 per 100,000 people in 2014.

Ischaemic strokes, which are caused by a blood clot in the brain, fell from 608 per 100,000 people to 188 per 100,000 people over the same period.

The study found that 74 per cent of this fall in heart attacks and 68 per cent of the reduction in strokes could be accounted for by changes in risk factor prevalence.

However, average BMI increased from 27.2 to 28.1 and the prevalence of diabetes more than doubled, from 4 per cent to 9 per cent of the population.

This was estimated to have led to a 20 per cent rise in heart attacks and a 15 per cent increase in ischaemic strokes attributable to these two risk factors.

The increased diabetes prevalence contributed to nearly as many heart attacks as the number prevented by the decline in smoking, the researchers estimate.

But while the team could be confident that changes in risk factors had an impact on the incidence of heart attacks and strokes, they viewed each risk factor in isolation in their analysis, which means that their estimated impact is likely to be exaggerated.

Researchers say the picture is similar across the UK, with data suggesting that the number of people who are obese and the number of people with diabetes has increased over the past couple of decades.

Analysis also indicates that the contribution made by diabetes to heart and circulatory diseases is increasing.

In 1990, the proportion of deaths from heart and circulatory diseases associated with diabetes was 19 per cent. By 2019, this rose to 26 per cent.

Public health policy should be updated to account for the increasing importance of weight gain and diabetes, says lead author Anoop Shah at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

鈥淭here鈥檚 a time lag between people contracting diabetes and developing heart and circulatory disease,鈥� says Shah. 鈥淲e need to act now to address these important risk factors or we risk seeing the impact of these increases for decades to come.鈥�

鈥淓xcess weight is a complex issue and we cannot rely on individual willpower and exercise alone to solve the problem of increasing BMI across the population,鈥� says Nilesh Samani, medical director at the British Heart Foundation, which funded the research.

鈥淲e need to address the environmental factors that drive weight gain and the development of diabetes to not lose the gains we have made in reducing the burden of cardiovascular diseases,鈥� he says.

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