Contracts to increase capacity handed to 17 companies, some of whom had donated to Conservatives
The government has been urged to publish details of up to £2bn in Covid-19 contracts awarded to private healthcare companies, including some that have helped fund the Conservative party.
Contracts to provide extra capacity during the pandemic have been handed to 17 firms since March 2020.
Continue reading...Paris threatens to take retaliatory measures in row over post-Brexit licences for French fishing boats
Jersey has accused France of making “disproportionate” threats after Paris warned it could cut off electricity to the island in a row over post-Brexit fishing rights.
The maritime minister, Annick Girardin, warned on Tuesday France was ready to take “retaliatory measures” after accusing the Channel Island of dragging its feet over issuing new licences to French boats.
Continue reading...Health minister joins Scott Morrison in defending ban; over-50s eligible for Covid vaccine. Follow latest updates
Liberal senator Jane Hume is asked about her government’s controversial move to make it a criminal offence to enter Australia for citizens who have been in India in the last 14 days.
Hume told the ABC’s Patricia Karvelas the punishments are “a function of the Biosecurity Act” that was introduced with Labor’s support.
“The most important thing here is we’re keeping Australians safe”
No-one is saying this is an easy decision stop in fact, it is a very, very difficult decision to make but I think Australians realise how fortunate we are to be able to live in a country that is largely Covid free and our economy is back on track.
When we see the heartbreaking images of people in India, 300,000 cases a day, 90 million people infected and 200,000 deaths, I think we all fear that third wave.”
It is not a decision made lightly and we are trying to help India in any way we can.”
We don’t want to see anybody charged, we want to see the borders open and for Australians to be able to come home again and we will do that as soon as we possibly can safely.”
Jane Hume, the minister for superannuation and financial services, has been speaking about the government’s proposed $1.7bn increase to the childcare subsidy, which will see the subsidy for families with two children lifted to a maximum of 95% and remove the cap on subsidies for higher-income earners.
Hume said it’s better than more generous proposals from Labor because the Coalition’s plan “is aimed at lower-middle-income workers and people going back to work, study or doing charity work”.
Continue reading...Some blame new residents and second-home owners not keen on sight and sounds of ‘local’ vessels
The spot could hardly be more idyllic. A Cornish creek fringed by apple trees where boats bob at high tide and dogs and children frolic in the mud at low.
But there is trouble in the parish of Feock after a string of acts of vandalism aimed at those bobbing boats led to a wave of anger, fear and suspicion.
Continue reading...Country Milk’s trade with the EU has nosedived with the dairy industry particularly badly affected by new customs rules
A small error in the paperwork – a box ticked by mistake – and the tanker of butter oil was held at French customs for five days, with veterinary authorities at the border threatening to destroy it. The debacle nearly cost the tanker’s exporter, dairy company County Milk, a six-figure sum. After fraught negotiations, the cargo was eventually repatriated.
“You don’t need too many of those to be destroyed and you are in dire straits,” says Phil Langslow, trading director at County Milk, the UK’s largest privately owned dairy ingredients business.
Continue reading...Breweries have been cheering as demand has gone through the roof, even before pubs can reopen their bars and snugs
Glasses were raised in pub gardens across the country on Saturday as revellers wrapped in thick jackets and jumpers made the most of the spring sunshine – and the beer.
Publicans and brewery owners are quietly worried about how to keep up with customers’ overwhelming thirst for beer, wine and spirits in the face of supply chain issues and staff recruitment problems.
Continue reading...Mass weighing 300 tonnes not expected to be cleared until June, says water company
Engineers are working around the clock to clear a “monster” fatberg 1km long which is clogging a sewer in Birmingham.
The blockage is not expected to be removed until June, water services company Severn Trent said in a statement, adding that the fatberg was about four miles east of the city centre in Hodge Hill.
Continue reading...eCall contacts emergency services in an accident – but it is causing problems for some drivers
The Volkswagen, Audi and Skoda group has been accused of knowingly selling cars with defective SOS warning systems that in some cases failed before the new owner had left the dealership.
Since 2018 all new cars sold across the EU have been required to have an eCall system that automatically contacts the emergency services with the vehicle’s location in the event of a serious accident. It is a sophisticated set-up using the car’s navigation system and airbag sensors, and it has its own mobile phone sim card.
Continue reading...Apple, Google owner Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft raked in money in first quarter
Big tech is on a roll. In every minute of the first three months of 2021, Apple, Google owner Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft sold products and services worth about $2.5m (£1.8m) combined. Profits before tax for the period came in at $88bn – more than $1bn of profit for every working day.
After a year of shifting to online work and leisure across the global economy, financial results published this week by most of US tech’s biggest names were bound to be strong. But even more bullish analysts on Wall Street were surprised by how fast they raked in money in the quarter, auguring even greater profits in the years ahead.
Continue reading...Robert Pether’s wife says he is being kept in jail as ‘leverage in a dispute’ with country’s central bank
The wife of an Australian man arrested in Iraq has pleaded with the foreign minister, Marise Payne, to intervene and help her husband, who she says is being kept in jail as “leverage” to help the country’s central bank.
Mechanical engineer Robert Pether, 46, remains behind bars in Baghdad without the means to contact his family after being arrested without warning three weeks ago.
Continue reading...Pascal Soriot says firm is doing its best to produce more and ‘should be proud of what we did in the world’
AstraZeneca’s chief executive, Pascal Soriot, has mounted a robust defence of the drugmaker’s Covid-19 vaccine efforts, and said the business should be proud of what it has done for the world and is doing its “very best” to produce more, as the company faces legal action from the EU over delivery shortfalls, and shipments to poorer countries have also been delayed.
The company generated $275m (£197m) in revenues from the Covid vaccine it developed with Oxford University in the first three months of the year and shipped 48m doses to 120 countries through the global vaccine-sharing initiative Covax, 80% of which went to low and middle-income countries. In total, it has supplied more than 300m vaccine doses to more than 165 countries so far this year.
Continue reading...Former Liberal staffer will speak to Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese in Sydney, and Brisbane and Melbourne on Covid alert. Follow latest updates
Here's Justice Katzmann on the jingle being a benefit to Palmer pic.twitter.com/6fjHIDyBFX
Clive Palmer has been ordered to pay Universal Music $1.5m in damages over the “unauthorised” use of a version of the hit 1980s song We’re Not Gonna Take It by glam metal band Twisted Sister in a political ad during the 2019 election campaign.
Palmer used a cover version of the song during his multimillion-dollar advertising blitz during last year’s federal election campaign. The Palmer version of the song changed the lyrics to:
Australia ain’t gonna cop it, no Australia’s not gonna cop it, Aussies not gonna cop it any more.
Continue reading...Analysis: why the president wants to build the US economy from the middle and bottom, not top down
Cut taxes on the rich. Unleash a wave of entrepreneurship. Growth will pick up and more jobs will be created. Everybody benefits. That, in essence, is trickle down – a theory of economics that Joe Biden wants to consign to the dustbin of history.
The US president was a young politician when the idea that cutting taxes on the well-off would be good for the poor first came into vogue in the 1970s. Now he has used his first address to a joint session of Congress to call on the US’s top 1% to pay for his $1.8tn (£1.3tn) American families plan – higher spending in areas such as education, childcare and infrastructure.
Continue reading...Largest US employer could have saved 133 lives with policy as workers fear calling in sick could lead to firing, advocates say
More than 7,500 Covid-19 infections and 133 deaths could have been prevented if Walmart offered employees two weeks of paid sick leave, according to a report released on Wednesday.
The public health not-for-profit Human Impact Partners calculated the impact that better paid sick leave could have had for employees of Walmart, the largest employer in the US, using findings from the University of Wisconsin that universal sick leave could lead to a nearly 6% reduction in coronavirus infections and deaths for workers in Wisconsin.
Continue reading...Company exceeded Wall Street’s expectations with $55bn in revenue, even as it continued to face landmark antitrust lawsuits
Revenue for Google’s parent company, Alphabet, jumped by 34% on the previous year in the first quarter of 2021, the company announced on Tuesday, fueled in part by a sustained surge in ad sales during a pandemic that has seen people spending more time online.
The robust announcement provides the latest sign that advertisers are expecting the economy to roar back to life as more people get vaccinated, emerge from global lockdowns, and resume travel and spending. Google’s vast digital ad empire is now benefiting from that recovery.
Continue reading...Airport’s plan not in the interests of consumers, says Civil Aviation Authority
Heathrow’s request to increase airport charges to recoup £2.6bn lost during the pandemic has been rejected by the UK’s aviation regulator.
The Civil Aviation Authority’s consumers and markets director, Paul Smith, described the plan as “disproportionate and not in the interests of consumers”.
Continue reading...Powering Past Coal Alliance accused of failing to follow up on pledges as many countries expand use of coal
An attempt by the UK government to encourage countries and businesses around the world to quit coal for power generation is failing to make an impact, and in danger of being used as “greenwash”, an assessment has found.
The Powering Past Coal Alliance, led by the UK and Canada, with 111 members including 24 governments, local governments and businesses, is a key plank of Boris Johnson’s strategy for vital UN climate talks to be hosted in Glasgow in November.
Continue reading...Witnesses will be asked to respond to claims the ’Ndrangheta has laundered billions of euros in City of London
In a high-security, 1,000-capacity courtroom converted from a call centre, Italy’s largest mafia trial in three decades is under way in Lamezia Terme, Calabria. About 900 witnesses are set to testify against more than 350 defendants, including politicians and officials charged with being members of the ’Ndrangheta, Italy’s most powerful criminal group.
Several of the defendants will be asked to respond to charges of money laundering over establishing companies in the UK with the alleged purpose of simulating legitimate economic activity.
Continue reading...That’s what one German billionaire says. But it’s not why the Aztecs and the hippies were such fans
Name: The shroom boom.
Age: Ancient rock art in Castilla-La Mancha in Spain suggests that Psilocybe hispanica, one of the mushrooms that contains the psychoactive compound psilocybin, was taken in religious ceremonies as long as 6,000 years ago.
Continue reading...Firm says it will ‘strongly defend itself’ against claim it breached agreement to supply Covid jab
AstraZeneca said it would “strongly defend itself in court” and highlighted its supply of 50m Covid vaccine doses to European countries as Brussels launched legal action against the pharmaceutical company over delivery shortfalls.
The Anglo-Swedish firm said it regretted the decision by the European commission to start a legal case over alleged breaches of an advance purchase agreement.
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