Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Outsourcing companies leading the government’s flagship test-and-trace system have failed to reach nearly half of potentially exposed people in areas with the highest Covid infection rates in England, official figures show.
In the country’s 20 worst-hit areas, Serco and Sitel – paid £200m between them – reached only 54% of people who had been in close proximity to an infected person, meaning more than 21,000 exposed people were not contacted.
Britain’s demand for cheap food could be fuelling the spread of the coronavirus in factories, a leading health expert has warned, as analysis shows nearly 1,500 cases across the UK.
Cramped conditions in some factories and in low-paid workers’ homes, spurred by the UK’s desire for cheaply produced food, may have driven infection rates in the sector, according to David Nabarro, a World Health Organization special envoy on Covid-19.
MV Wakashio has split in two and leaked 1,000 tonnes of oil into the water since it ran aground
Salvage crews were preparing to sink a Japanese-owned ship that ran aground off Mauritius, despite opposition from environmental campaigners.
The MV Wakashio broke into two on Saturday, almost three weeks after hitting a reef and spilling 1,000 tonnes of oil into idyllic waters full of marine life.
US companies make roughly 663m syringes a year but the Trump administration has calculated that an extra 850m may be needed
As the race for a vaccine against the coronavirus heats up, the US faces another potential crisis: a shortage of syringes.
The US federal government has already spent hundreds of millions of dollars in hopes of warding off a syringe shortage, if and when a Covid-19 vaccine is approved. It comes as shortages of personal protective equipment continue to hamper the response to the pandemic.
Andrews thanked all Victorians for the role they played in getting the daily coronavirus numbers down below 100.
I’d simply say that, whilst tomorrow’s numbers will be for tomorrow, we are all pleased to see a ‘1’ in front of these additional case numbers, and to a certain extent it is perhaps at that level a little quicker than I thought it might be.
Of course, this Sunday marks the three weeks since the curfew was imposed. Next Wednesday marks three weeks since the most significant workplace restrictions came into effect. To be at this point shows that the strategy is working....
I want to thank each and after Victorian who is making a big contribution to this strategy working. I want to thank them and their families. I want to thank people from all backgrounds, from all parts of the state. No matter your perspective, this is a challenge that none of us are immune from. We’re all in this together. We say that a lot, but it’s true. It’s absolutely true. And because I think more and more Victorians are making the best choices and looking out foreach other, and therefore everybody, we are seeing these numbers come down.
We’ll see what tomorrow holds. But there’s no room for complacency, there’s no way we can assume that this is over. It is an ultra-marathon, and we’re not halfway yet.
The Victorian and federal governments have set up a $15m joint disability response centre, which Andrews said is “essentially mirroring the arrangements we have in aged care”.
There are currently 62 active Covid-19 cases in disability care sectors, across 60 different sites.
We’re grateful to them. That’s not easy. But with that payment, that’ll mean that we can support them to, in turn, keep their clients safe. We all know that, in that sector, that’s what they’re motivated to do – to provide the best care and support to their clients.
Again, I thank the prime minister and the federal government for their partnership. This is yet another example of us working together to deal with a common challenge. And it’s really important that, given the vulnerability of many people across these settings, it’s very, very important that we have a singular focus, and all the senior people around the table at the same time, and that funding to be able to limit the amount of workers who are going to multiple sites.
Inventor now worth $90bn, trailing Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos
Elon Musk has soared through the global wealth league this year and become the world’s fourth richest person, after a boom in the share price of the Tesla car company he co-founded and part-owns increased his wealth by more than $13.3bn (£10bn) in two days of trading.
The Silicon Valley inventor and entrepreneur is now worth more than $90bn and has overtaken France’s richest person, the luxury goods tycoon Bernard Arnault, chairman of Louis Vuitton, cementing the place of American tech plutocrats at the top of the world’s rich list.
The ABC has announced the 2020 Boyer Lectures to be delivered by the philanthropist and business leader Andrew Forrest will be delayed due to ongoing Covid-19 travel restrictions and border closures.
The Crown Resorts casino empire controlled by the billionaire James Packer received more than $110m in jobkeeper payments from the Australian government, propping up the group’s profit.
Crown’s full-year results, filed today with the ASX, show the $111.3m the group received to pay both working and stood-down employees was almost two-thirds of its profit before tax of $153m.
This was close to a quarter of the profit before tax the previous year – no surprise, as Crown’s gaming floors largely shut down during the first wave of the pandemic. Crown hasn’t paid a dividend.
President David Maplass says inequality has worsened as depression looms over poorer nations
The head of the World Bank has called for a more ambitious debt relief plan for poor countries after warning that the Covid-19 recession is turning into a depression in the most challenged parts of the globe.
In an interview with the Guardian, David Malpass raised the prospect of the first systematic write-off of debts since the 2005 Gleneagles agreement as he said fresh Bank figures due out next month would show an extra 100 million people had been pushed into poverty by the crisis.
Some people seem to be above the law. Those people do not include the whistleblower and his lawyer, Bernard Collaery
Timor-Leste only achieved independence in 2002. It was Asia’s poorest country and desperately needed revenue. Revenue from massive gas resources in the Timor Sea was its big hope. But it needed to negotiate a treaty with Australia on their carve-up. Australia ruthlessly exploited that fact: delays from the Australian side in negotiating a treaty for the carve-up of those resources, and repeated threats of more delays, were a constant theme of the negotiations. In November 2002 the former Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer told Timor-Leste’s prime minister, Mari Alkatiri: “We don’t have to exploit the resources. They can stay there for 20, 40, 50 years.” In late 2003 Timor-Leste requested monthly discussions. Australia claimed it could only afford two rounds a year. Poor Timor-Leste offered to fund rich Australia’s expenses. Australia didn’t accept.
Jubilee Debt Campaign reveals sharp rise in number of countries in distress since 2018
Developing nation debt has more than doubled in the past decade and left more than 50 countries facing a repayment crisis, according to a campaign group.
Data from the Jubilee Debt Campaign shows that even without taking full account of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, there has been a sharp jump in the number of poor countries in debt distress since 2018.
Donald Trump has spent the early part of today retweeting stories that promote the (unproven) theory that mail-in voting is subject to widescale fraud.
The president retweeted allegations of voting fraud in Paterson, New Jersey, along with the comment: “The Democrats know the 2020 Election will be a fraudulent mess. Will maybe never know who won!”
The Democrats know the 2020 Election will be a fraudulent mess. Will maybe never know who won! https://t.co/tEWKJ5NcUj
Good morning. We start this morning with news that the United States Postal Service’s inspector general will investigate claims that recent changes could affect this November’s presidential election.
Donald Trump has long issued baseless claims that mail-in voting is ripe for fraud and there are real concerns that cuts to the service could weaken the agency and mail-in ballots may not arrive on time to be counted.
The economic collapse in Britain during the second quarter of 2020 was the most brutal on record. Unemployment is forecast by the Bank of England to soar to 2.5m by Christmas. The Brexit cliff edge approaches. Yet in the City, the FTSE 100 has been on the up.
Never has the disconnect between financial trading and economic fundamentals appeared so extreme. What explains surging asset prices (the FTSE jumped 2% on the same day it was revealed the economy had slumped by 20%) when the outlook for many workers is so grim?
Man who was granted injunction due to risk of suicide says he sustained an injury during attempted removal
An asylum seeker who crossed the Channel to the UK on a small boat claims he was forced out of his cell in a detention centre by officers who wanted to put him on a flight even though a judge had halted his removal hours earlier, the Guardian has learned.
He was restrained and sustained an injury during the attempted removal in the early hours of Wednesday morning by officers unaware of the high court decision.
Thinktank says changes to forecasts reflect accelerated shift away from fossil fuels
The world’s largest listed oil companies have wiped almost $90bn from the value of their oil and gas assets in the last nine months as the coronavirus pandemic accelerates a global shift away from fossil fuels.
In the last three financial quarters, seven of the largest oil firms have slashed their forecasts for future oil market prices, triggering a wave of downgrades to the value of their oil and gas projects totalling $87bn.
Fears over the strength of China’s economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic have been raised after retail sales slumped in July and industrial production remained subdued.
Fuelling concerns for the world economy, retail sales in China dropped in July by 1.1% compared with the same month a year ago, missing predictions for a small increase in consumer spending.
£6.85m programme places emphasis on benefit to businesses rather than protecting workers in the developing world, say critics
A newly announced aid programme that promises to help workers in the developing world supplying goods to British high street chains like Marks & Spencer, Primark and Morrisons has been condemned for using taxpayers’ money to “pick up the bill” for improving workforce conditions.
The £6.85m scheme, announced on Thursday by international development secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan, is being promoted explicitly as benefitting British consumers to ensure they “can continue to buy affordable, high quality goods from around the world”.
Move over payment guideline violations prompts maker Epic Games to take legal action
Apple and Google have removed the enormously popular video game Fortnite from their app stores for violating their in-app payment guidelines, prompting the maker, Epic Games, to take legal action challenging the tech giants’ iron grip over the industry.
Its removal from Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store came after Fortnite circumvented the companies’ in-app payment system and hefty fees, encouraging users to pay the gaming company directly.
Too much is being read into the greenback’s recent weakening against the euro
The dollar is in freefall! The global greenback is doomed! screamed recent headlines. Actually, such sensational headlines are “too sensational”, to echo that noted authority on currencies, Miss Prism, in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.
The dollar’s fall in July to a two-year low against the euro was the immediate impetus for these stories. In fact, the dollar’s recent slide is one in a series of readily explicable fluctuations. When the Covid-19 pandemic went global in March, the dollar strengthened on the back of safe-haven flows into US Treasuries, as it does at the start of every crisis. By May, the Federal Reserve, acting as global lender of last resort, had accommodated this mad scramble for dollars by pouring buckets of liquidity into financial markets and the greenback gave back its early gains.
Entrepreneur Xu Weiping is risking a fortune to build 2,000 3-metre square workspaces in east London
Welcome to cube city. Xu Weiping, a Chinese multimillionaire, has a vision for the future of office work in the post-Covid-19 pandemic world: thousands of office pods where each person works in their own self-contained 3m x 3m cube.
Xu reckons the coronavirus pandemic will have such a fundamental impact on the way people work that he is converting 20 newly constructed office buildings in east London into 2,000 of the individual cube offices.
Indigenous people in headwaters region say financing harms communities and ecosystems
Indigenous people living at the headwaters of the Amazon have called on European banks to stop financing oil development in the region, as it poses a threat to them and damages a fragile ecosystem, after a new report found $10bn in previously undisclosed funding for oil in the region.
The headwaters of the Amazon in Ecuador and Peru are home to more than 500,000 indigenous people, including some who choose to live in voluntary isolation. The area, covering about 30m hectares (74m acres), hosts a diverse rainforest ecosystem, but it is threatened by the expansion of oil drilling.