Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
White asparagus is late April’s delicacy across much of north-west Europe. In Germany the pale spears of the Spargel are cherished as “white gold”, their arrival each year marked by festivals and celebrations. But Germany alone needs 300,000 seasonal workers to harvest its crops. Over the past 10 years most of these workers have come from Romanian villages where seasonal migration is one of the few sources of income.
Firm to cut carbon intensity by selling more green energy but critics say first step must be to stop new drilling
Royal Dutch Shell plans to become a net zero-carbon company by 2050 or sooner by selling more green energy to help reduce the carbon intensity of its business.
Ben van Beurden, Shell’s chief executive, said the company must focus on the long-term “even at this time of immediate challenge” caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Households across the UK are now taking to their gardens, doorsteps, balconies and windows to applaud for the frontline workers fighting the coronavirus.
It will be the fourth “clap for carers” event in the UK, becoming a staple for Thursday nights in lockdown.
Leaders of the G7 group of major industrialised nations have agreed the rapid development of a coronavirus vaccine is crucial in dealing with the outbreak.
First Secretary of State Dominic Raab deputised for the UK’s prime minister Boris Johnson at the virtual summit, which also discussed the particular risk coronavirus poses for developing countries.
US reports 25,000 new infections;WHO chief hopes US will remain a ‘friend’; almost 700 test positive on French aircraft carrier. Follow the latest updates
The New York Times is reporting that a pork factory in Smithfield, South Dakota is the new centre of the coronavirus pandemic in the US. This week, the paper reports:
The Smithfield plant became the nation’s largest single-source coronavirus hot spot. Its employees now make up about 44 percent of the diagnoses in South Dakota, and a team of researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has traveled there to assess how the outbreak spiraled out of control. Smithfield is the latest meat processing facility to close in the face of the coronavirus.
A Japanese MP has been expelled from his party after it was revealed he had visited a club in a Tokyo red light district, two days after the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, declared a state of emergency in an attempt to contain the coronavirus outbreak.
Takashi Takai, a 50-year-old lower house member for the Constitutional Democratic party of Japan, admitted he had visited Sexy Cabaret Club in Tokyo’s Kabukicho district on 9 April, media reports said, despite government requests that people refrain from visiting bars, restaurants and clubs as part of efforts to reduce personal contact by 70-80%.
Takai submitted a letter of resignation after media reported his visit to the club, but the party rejected it and expelled him instead, Kyodo news agency said.
Artist posted five images on Instagram, saying ‘my wife hates it when I work from home’
Banksy has revealed his latest artwork created while in lockdown - a series of rats causing mayhem in his bathroom.
The elusive anonymous artist, who usually works in the street, posted a set of five images on his Instagram on Wednesday night, with the caption: “My wife hates it when I work from home.”
The shadow defence secretary called on the government to do “everything it can” to protect the British armed forces from coronavirus – and make public the number of times service personnel have been tested for the disease.
John Healey wrote to the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, amid concerns about a lack of transparency with the British military and after serious outbreaks of the respiratory disease on US and French warships.
Kandahar province went into full lockdown on Wednesday morning as Afghanistan reported its second biggest daily rise of new coronavirus cases in a week, triggered by a surge of infections in Kabul.
Afghanistan’s health ministry has reported 70 new positive cases of Covid-19 in the last 24 hours, pushing the total number of infections to 784.
Most of the new cases were in Kabul, which has so far recorded 201 cases, 31 today.
Kabul went into full lockdown last week, as all roads to the city of six million were blocked and 1,600 police officers were appointed to monitor movement inside the city.
Of the new Covid-19 cases, 22 were confirmed in the western province of Herat, the worst affected area in Afghanistan so far with 313 cases.
The southern province of Kandahar went into full lockdown on Wednesday morning in a bid to contain the spread of coronavirus in one of Afghanistan’s most populated areas.
Germany’s government will extend restrictions on movement introduced last month to slow the spread of the coronavirus until at least 3 May, Handelsblatt business daily reported on Wednesday, citing the dpa news agency.
The chancellor, Angela Merkel, is holding a video conference on Wednesday, first with cabinet ministers and later with the leaders of Germany’s 16 states, who will try to agree on whether to ease the measures given some improvement in the situation.
Britain has given the green light for companies to start putting spades in the ground to build a new high speed rail line, saying that work could proceed in line with coronavirus safety guidelines despite the national lockdown.
I am a junior doctor. In the past few weeks I have seen dozens of people die from Covid-19. I am 25 years old. I’ve been working in the NHS for just over eight months at a major metropolitan hospital. When my colleagues and I decided to apply for medical school six years ago, we knew that we were signing up for a challenge. We were under no illusion that it would be an easy ride. But I don’t think any of us imagined that we would be on the frontline of a pandemic less than a year into our careers.
I have cared for patients from admission until death and I have held their hands when they have been too breathless to speak. I have fought hard for a patient to be considered for ventilation despite knowing that they didn’t meet the criteria. I stayed with them after my shift had ended, gowned and gloved, and watched them take their last breaths, knowing that a few months ago they might have stood a chance. I ring families to tell them that their loved one who came into hospital for something totally unrelated now has coronavirus and will not survive.
NEW: OBR publishes an economic scenario (not forecast) for what might happen to the UK economy as a result of #Covid19. It assumes a 3 month lockdown.
Unemployment: ⬆️by 2 million.
GDP (2020) ⬇️ 13% in 2020.
If so, would be the worst economic contraction for a century.
Here is an excerpt from the report published by the Office for Budget Responsibility today looking at what impact the coronavirus lockdown could have on the economy. It says GDP could fall by 35% in the second quarter of the year.
Here is an extract.
In addition to its impact on public health, the coronavirus outbreak will substantially raise public sector net borrowing and debt, primarily reflecting economic disruption. The government’s policy response will also have substantial direct budgetary costs, but the measures should help limit the long-term damage to the economy and public finances – the costs of inaction would certainly have been higher ...
We do not attempt to predict how long the economic lockdown will last – that is a matter for the government, informed by medical advice. But, to illustrate some of the potential fiscal effects, we assume a three-month lockdown due to public health restrictions followed by another three-month period when they are partially lifted. For now, we assume no lasting economic hit.
A serious concern since the emergence of Covid-19 has been whether those who have had it can get it a second time – and what that means for exiting this crisis.
The Guardian's science correspondent Hannah Devlin looks at how our bodies fight coronavirus when infected, how we develop immunity and if we can get reinfected with Covid-19
Amanda Liberty made complaint about article in the Sun mocking declaration of love for German light fitting
A woman in a long-term relationship with a 92-year-old German chandelier has been told that her attraction to historic light fittings is not considered to be a protected sexual orientation.
Press regulator Ipso made the ruling after Amanda Liberty, a woman from Leeds in her mid thirties, complained about an article in the Sun mocking her public declaration of love for Lumiere, her name for an intricate lamp she bought on eBay.
The parents of a New Zealand nurse working in the NHS who cared for Boris Johnson while he was in hospital with coronavirus have said they are ‘exceptionally proud’ of their daughter. Jenny McGee’s parents, Mike and Caroline, said: ‘She has told us it doesn't matter what patient she's looking after, this is what she does and I just find it incredible.’
Heathrow airport expects passenger traffic to plunge by 90% in April, as demand is mainly limited to airlines focusing on repatriating citizens stranded abroad during the coronavirus outbreak.
The airport said passenger numbers had already tumbled by 52% to 3.1 million in March, compared with a year earlier, after the UK government advised against all but essential travel. Meanwhile, the total number of flights landing and taking off at Heathrow – covering passenger planes and cargo – fell 35% to 25,798.
Dame Jane Goodall also reveals Duke of Sussex is finding departure from UK ‘a bit challenging’
The British primatologist Dame Jane Goodall believes the Duke of Sussex will give up hunting because of his wife’s dislike for the sport, and thinks he has been finding life “a bit challenging” since the couple moved to North America.
Goodall, 86, a friend of the pair who has been a guest at their Frogmore Cottage home in Windsor, said in an interview with the Radio Times that Harry and his brother, the Duke of Cambridge, were champions of the natural world – “except they hunt and shoot”.
Britain missed three opportunities to be part of an EU scheme to bulk-buy masks, gowns and gloves and has been absent from key talks about future purchases, the Guardian can reveal, as pressure grows on ministers to protect NHS medics and care workers on the coronavirus frontline.
European doctors and nurses are preparing to receive the first of €1.5bn (£1.3bn) worth of personal protective equipment (PPE) within days or a maximum of two weeks through a joint procurement scheme involving 25 countries and eight companies, according to internal EU documents.
It has been three weeks since Boris Johnson told the country, we were going into lockdown.
The measures, the prime minister said, would be reviewed in three weeks time and are due to be discussed this Thursday.
We are doing a lot of work in government to be guided by the science and the medical advice that you get and I think that, until you have got that evidence, we will be getting ahead of ourselves.
There will come a time in the future where we can talk about relaxation or transition but we are not there now.
At the daily briefing, Dominic Raab said the government was trying to give front line staff reassurance over personal protective equipment (PPE).
It comes amid renewed concern over a shortage of some supplies in parts of the country.
We understand the importance of getting PPE to the front line whether it’s in care homes or the NHS.
I think the strongest practical reassurance they will want and that we can give them is that over the Bank Holiday weekend over 16 million items were delivered and we are straining every sinew to roll them out even further and even faster.
Police taskforce head says Covid-19 lockdown has not led to fewer young drug runners being used
Children and vulnerable adults are still being forced by gangs to travel from cities to towns and villages as part of “county lines” drug trafficking, according to the head of a police taskforce set up to tackle the problem.
Det Sgt Gareth Williams, head of intelligence and covert policing at British Transport Police (BTP), told the Guardian the restrictions on public transport during the coronavirus lockdown had not resulted in a reduction in the number of mostly juvenile drug runners identified across the country.
As the travel publisher closes its Melbourne and London offices, a former guidebook writer asks what’s next for an industry in crisis
Covid-19 has changed everything. In particular, it has changed everything about travel. As a Lonely Planet writer you learn fast that change is the only constant on the road. Still, no one was expecting the changes announced last week: that Lonely Planet is to close its Melbourne production facility and London offices “almost entirely”, as well as its magazine and Trade and Reference division. However, the famous guidebooks will continue to be published, though they are temporarily on hold.
As travel has outpaced the growth of the global economy for the last eight years, Lonely Planet has grown to become the world’s largest travel publisher, accounting for 31.5% of the global guidebook market. But with planes grounded, borders closed and people quarantined, where travel is headed next is anyone’s guess. “[It’s] a sad and difficult day for all of us in the Lonely Planet family,” wrote managing director of publishing, Piers Pickard.