Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Lira could plunge 15%, analysts warn, after Turkey’s president risks destabilises fragile economy with removal of governor
The Turkish lira could plunge up to 15% in an “ugly reaction” when financial markets reopen on Monday, analysts have warned, after president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan sacked the country’s central bank chief days after a sharp rise in interest rates.
With one expert calling the decision “as bad as Brexit”, Erdoğan shocked global investors by removing the bank chief after only five months and replacing him with a party loyalist.
Glympton Park is a sprawling, 2,000-acre estate featuring an 18th-century stately home, nestled in the verdant Oxfordshire countryside near Woodstock.
It was bought for £8m in 1992, by Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, the senior Saudi royal whose past roles include ambassador to the US. He is said to have spent £42m on renovations, including a pheasant shoot and bullet-proof glass on the driveway to thwart would-be assassins.
Billionaire tax exiles, the British National party, Saudi royals and oil-rich Gulf states have claimed millions of pounds in taxpayer-funded furlough money, the Guardian can disclose.
The revelations, based on analysis of government information, have sparked dismay among MPs at the use of a scheme designed to support struggling businesses and prevent mass unemployment, with one complaining of public money being scattered “like confetti”.
More than 100 federally funded clinics will take bookings for Covid-19 jabs from Friday and will begin administering them from Monday. Follow latest updates
This is Elias Visontay bringing you this morning’s main stories: some Covid vaccine developments, a growing political feud, and misogyny culture in the spotlight across the globe.
PM welcomes vaccine safety vow, then spots new offshore home for folk trafficked here under false pretence – of getting a welcome
After a morning spent painting flowers at a primary school in his Uxbridge constituency, Britain’s prize clot returned to Downing Street to lead a press conference on clots. Blood clots to be precise.
Following the decision of some countries to suspend their Oxford AstraZeneca vaccination programmes over concerns of blood clot side-effects, Boris Johnson was happy to report that the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency had declared the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine to be absolutely safe.
First-year US analysts complete internal survey, describing ‘sleep deprivation’ and workplace ‘abuse’
Junior bankers at Goldman Sachs say they are facing “inhumane” conditions at the investment bank, including 100-hour work weeks and “abuse” from colleagues which has severely affected their mental health.
The responses from the poll participants – 13 investment banking analysts in the US – have shed light on the gruelling demands on first-year analysts, a cohort that features some of the brightest recruits hired annually by Goldman.
Biden administration has come under pressure to share vaccine, which has been authorized in other countries but not yet in US
The United States plans to send roughly 4m doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine that it is not using to Mexico and Canada in loan deals with the two countries.
Mexico will receive 2.5m doses of the vaccine and Canada will receive 1.5m doses, the official said.
Analysis: The rapid development of battery-only cars is eclipsing petrol vehicles and even hybrids, leaving Japan’s big producers racing to catch up
Japan’s traditional carmaking giants need to raise their game in the race to develop pure, battery-driven electric vehicles or risk being left behind by Chinese, American and European producers, analysts have warned.
Despite dominating car production in Asia for decades, Japan’s big players have been slow to fully develop the battery-only technology that is now eclipsing hybrid vehicles as the most likely type of car to plug petrolheads into the automotive revolution.
Short-sailings around UK with dining and entertainment to restart but ships will not call at ports
Cruise operator P&O is to restart domestic holidays this summer, but only for UK residents who have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19.
After its fleet has been grounded for over a year, P&O is dipping its toes back in the water by offering passengers short sailings on two of its ships around the UK coastline. Coronavirus restrictions mean the ships will not call at any ports, although there will be the usual onboard dining and entertainment programme.
Brothers Patrick and John Collison’s online payments empire is now valued at $95bn
The latest fundraising round by the digital payments firm Stripe has boosted the net worth of its co-founders, Patrick and John Collison, to about $11.5bn (£8.3bn) each, catapulting them into the top bracket of the world’s millennial billionaires. Not bad for two brothers from the tiny Tipperary village of Dromineer, population: barely 100.
Too often leaders are out of touch with what is going on in their workplaces. Defining a set of values is the key to progress – and leaders must live by those values
Through the whorls of Canberra’s streets and up the sweep of Commonwealth Avenue, Parliament House sits as a testament to democracy and the rule of law.
It’s a place of many rules, rules about where you can go and when you can speak and how you should speak. The guide to the House of Representatives’ parliamentary procedures runs to more than 100 pages, and points to a further 24 sources of information on the rules. Then there are the standing orders, which run to 164 pages. And that’s not even including the Senate.
Beijing fears ecommerce giant has too much sway over public opinion through stakes in platforms such as Twitter-like Weibo, Wall Street Journal says
Beijing has reportedly told the Chinese e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba to divest its assets in the media sector out of concern over the company’s growing public influence.
Company’s financial chief has been rebranded ‘master of coin’ following £1bn bitcoin investment
Elon Musk, the billionaire chief executive of Tesla with a penchant for eccentric behaviour, has changed his job title to “technoking” of the electric car manufacturer.
In addition to Musk, who also retains his position as chief executive, the company’s financial chief, Zach Kirkhorn, has been rebranded as “master of coin”.
Consumption at home rose sharply last year, with mozzarella up 21% and raclette machines in high demand
How did the French keep smiling through the Covid lockdown? Not by saying “cheese” but by eating it, figures suggest.
Researchers say cheese consumption at home soared last year as the confined sought comfort food. And in a nation that boasts 246 kinds of cheese, as the former president Charles de Gaulle once said, it was Italian mozzarella that benefited most, with a 21.2% rise in sales in 2020.
Parents whose only hope was finding foreign sponsorship or a clinical trial are now looking for homegrown breakthroughs
For three years, Vidya tried to find the cause of her son’s recurrent fevers and low cognitive development. When she found out, she was devastated.
Vineeth, 10, has an incurable illness – mucopolysaccharidosis type 2 – that affects his organs. Afflicting just one in a million, the enzyme-replacement medication that can help stop the illness getting any worse costs £100,000 a year, far beyond the reach of even a wealthier Indian parent.
A Guardian Seascape analysis of 44 recent studies of more than 9,000 seafood samples from restaurants, fishmongers and supermarkets in more than 30 countries found that 36% were mislabelled, exposing seafood fraud on a vast global scale.
Many of the studies used relatively new DNA analysis techniques. In one comparison of sales of fish labelled “snapper” by fishmongers, supermarkets and restaurants in Canada, the US, the UK, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, researchers found mislabelling in about 40% of fish tested. The UK and Canada had the highest rates of mislabelling in that study, at 55%, followed by the US at 38%.
More than 100,000 women are expected to march in Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane to demand action in response to allegations of workplace abuse. Follow latest updates
Janine Hendry, a founder and organiser of the March4Justice, explained to the ABC this morning about why organisers turned down Scott Morrison’s offer of a private meeting with a small number of march delegates:
I think it is really quite disrespectful to the women whose voices need to be heard to have a meeting with our prime minister behind closed doors.
I have invited the prime minister, as I have all other sitting members of parliament, to come and march with us, to come and listen to our voices. I don’t think it is really a big ask – we have come to Canberra.
Letta to lead second largest party in Draghi government as Giuseppe Conte in talks to lead Five Star Movement
A former Italian prime minister, Enrico Letta, has been elected leader of the centre-left Democratic party (PD), the second largest party in Mario Draghi’s government, as another former prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, was in talks to become leader of the Five Star Movement (M5S), its largest.
Letta takes over from Nicola Zingaretti, who abruptly quit the party’s leadership earlier this month over what he called an “unending stream” of criticism, and was elected on Sunday with 860 votes in favour and two against.
Ireland is suspending use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine as a precautionary measure following further reports of blood clots in people who have received it, this time from Norway.
The deputy chief medical officer, Dr Ronan Glynn, said Ireland’s advisory body on vaccines had recommended that deployment of the AstraZeneca jab should be “temporarily deferred” with immediate effect. He stressed, though, that there was no proof that the vaccine had caused blood clots.