Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Barbara Parry* arranged to switch her phone and broadband account from Sky to Now TV in March, a week before lockdown. Instead, she was left incommunicado as her line was cancelled and her phone number reallocated.
During the following four weeks, as she pleaded in vain to be reconnected, her partner contracted Covid-19. He died four days later in hospital. Due to the blunders by Now TV, he was unable to call Parry from his deathbed and she was unable to say goodbye. The news was broken by a relative as the hospital could not get through on her cancelled number.
More than 150 Australians and 20 New Zealanders are on the flight from Buenos Aires after being stranded in South America since the outbreak. Follow live
The question about whether kids and teachers go back to school is looming as a brawl that will escalate in the coming week.
Two Labor-led states in particular, Queensland and Victoria, are on a different page of the textbook to the federal government, which wants schools to be open.
In Victoria, the state opposition has begun to grumble about the extended remote learning arrangements.
The vast majority of students in Vic are learning from home because that is the advice from our health experts.
If we did not follow this advice, more than 1 million children, their parents and school staff congregating at schools could spread Coronavirus in our community.
The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners is today launching a nationwide campaign to make sure people don’t neglect health concerns while we’re all in lockdown.
It’s very concerning that some people have potentially been neglecting their health during this pandemic – the last thing we want is a tsunami of serious health issues and worsening chronic conditions coming after this virus, simply because people have stopped taking care of themselves or consulting their GP.
The reason why we are running our campaign Expert Advice Matters is to encourage people to keep taking care of their health. We also want to remind everyone that general practice remains open and expert medical advice matters most.
EU negotiator expresses frustrations at UK refusal to discuss key issues of transition
Michel Barnier has suggested the UK is running down the clock in talks over the future trade and security relationship with the EU.
The claim by the bloc’s chief negotiator during a virtual press conference at the end of a difficult week of videoconference talks was swiftly denied by the government.
Usually hundreds of thousands of Australians would be up before sunrise tomorrow to join ANZAC day dawn services and to honour those who serve and have served. But coronavirus means this year will be different.
While the day has had its elements of public ritual since 1916, much early Anzac Day commemoration was private rather than public, sometimes conducted at the gravesides of Australian soldiers buried in cemeteries in Britain and Australia. Women were prominent in these efforts, honouring the memories of men they might or might not have known by placing flowers on their tombs.
There are other echoes of the past. Anzac Day in 1919 was also disrupted by a major crisis in public health. In New South Wales, where the rate of infection from Spanish influenza was high and the number of deaths – approaching 1,000 by Anzac Day – was alarming, the government had banned public meetings.
Several key developments emerged from the national cabinet meeting earlier today.
Rules around aged care visits, hopes for a restart of community sport, clarification on jobkeeper payments and a repeat of medical advice for school classrooms all made for a busy day.
One month after a national lockdown was declared in an attempt to limit the spread of Covid-19, it is clear that Britain is heading for the deepest recession in living memory.
Boris Johnson’s government launched unprecedented restrictions on 23 March, telling the British public that they must stay at home and bringing life as the nation knew it to an abrupt halt.
The EU’s anxious debate over the bloc’s economic response to the coronavirus pandemic is at heart about the nature and competing visions of the union.
It is a perennial question found lurking in the background of all EU negotiations over long-term budgets, not least the most recent inconclusive and toxic talks in which north was pitted against south.
The coronavirus pandemic will trigger “lasting changes” in shopping behaviour, according to one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of grocery brands.
Unilever’s chief executive, Alan Jope, said the health crisis would accelerate the growth of online food shopping. He also predicted a permanent increase in demand for soap and other cleaning supplies as improved hygiene became a priority for households.
Michael O’Leary says business model will be in tatters if he is forced to leave middle seats empty
Ryanair planes won’t return to the skies if the airline is forced to leave the middle seat empty to comply with “idiotic” in-flight social distancing rules, its chief executive, Michael O’Leary, has said.
The boss of the no-frills carrier, which has thrived by packing its flights as full as possible with passengers lured by low prices, has previously said that blocking out the space in between aisle seats is “nonsense” that would have no beneficial effect.
While the genre is hugely popular in the country and sells in vast numbers, the French music industry and politicians have tried to downplay its success
Dave’s Mercury prize-winning debut album, Psychodrama, was the biggest-selling British rap album in the UK in 2019, certified gold for selling more than 100,000 units. Those numbers wouldn’t even have landed him in the top 10 biggest rap albums in France last year, where artists from greater Paris sell more rap albums than acts from any other city. But, while Dave won album of the year at this year’s Brit awards, and gave a nationally televised performance decrying the prime minister as racist, at last month’s Victoires de la Musique – France’s equivalent of the Brits – none of France’s black or Arab rappers were nominated in an album, artist or song category.
Days after the ceremony, French music industry body SNEP, which is responsible for collating the charts, distributing royalty payments and more, declared rap music an “overexposed phenomenon” in their 2019 market report. It argued that “fan support for urban music must not eclipse the performances of other musical genres” – an explicit call for less promotion and celebration of the most successful French popular music movement of all time.
Airlines in Europe have applied for €12.8bn (£11.3bn) government support since the start of the coronavirus pandemic with no binding environmental conditions attached, according to an analysis of the sector’s bailout pleas.
By Tuesday this week, airlines including easyJet, Scandinavian Airlines and Tui had secured loans and other financial support amounting to €3.36bn. A further €9.47bn is being sought by other airlines, data tracking by Transport & Environment, Greenpeace and Carbon Watch reveals.
The amount of money migrant workers send back to their home countries is expected to decrease by almost $110bn this year as the Covid 19 pandemic increases unemployment across the world.
Remittances to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are projected to fall by nearly 20% to $445bn (£360bn), “representing the loss of a crucial financial lifeline for many vulnerable households”, the World Bank said.
Donald Trump’s botched handling of the Covid-19 crisis has left the US looking like a “third world” country and on course for a second Great Depression, one of the world’s leading economists has warned.
In a withering attack on the president, Joseph Stiglitz said millions of people were turning to food banks, turning up for work due to a lack of sick pay and dying because of health inequalities.
It has been floating around again for a while, but this morning Josh Frydenberg put company tax cuts firmly back on the table.
Business Council of Australia chief executive, Jennifer Westacott told Sky News’s Laura Jayes they were absolutely needed (but she would say that, wouldn’t she).
We’re trying to solve business investment, which was low before this terrible crisis. It’s business investment that drives productivity which drives higher wages. So that’s the problem, let’s frame that up first. Look I think it is important for us to put it back on the table but along with other tax reform. It’s not the only thing that needs to be done. It’s important that we look at the state taxes, the productivity sapping stamp duty taxes, payroll tax. It is interesting how much payroll tax has been deferred.
The whole question of the right configuration of the state taxes. Whether or not we bring forward those other income tax cuts. So it’s not just company taxes but it is important we have a competitive company tax rate. To the treasurer’s point, we’re not asking, in the Business Council, for us to have the lowest rate, we’re simply asking for a competitive rate, so that we can be a magnet for investment in this country.
In case you haven’t seen this as yet, or cried today, I am giving this another run, because we all need a bit of heartbreakingly lovely in our lives.
After noticing that Ken slept with a photo of his late wife every night, one of the carers at Thistleton Lodge presented him with this incredible gift... pic.twitter.com/Q1v8V8HUFS
Tearfund NGO says drinks makers not doing enough to tackle their plastic pollution
Coca-Cola and Pepsi are not doing enough to reduce their plastic waste footprint globally, according to a report.
The charity Tearfund has compiled a league table of how the companies, and Unilever and Nestlé, are faring in their commitments set against a three-point plan.
Company says it made a loss last year due to investment and the competitive market
Amazon received €294m (£258m) in tax credits last year that it can deduct from future bills for its European business, as revenues at the online retailer rose significantly to €32bn.
The company said it received the tax credits because it made a loss last year due to its investment programme and the highly competitive retail environment across Europe and the UK.
Multimillionaire ‘king of the good times’ Vijay Mallya faces allegations of £1bn fraud
The Indian multimillionaire businessman Vijay Mallya has lost his appeal against a decision to extradite him to India to face allegations of a £1bn fraud at his now defunct Kingfisher Airlines.
High court judges on Monday rejected Mallya’s appeal against a 2018 decision granting his extradition, ruling that there was a “prima facie case of fraud by false representation”.
Sir Richard Branson has said he will put his private Caribbean island up as collateral in his attempt to persuade the UK government to save his Virgin Atlantic airline from going bust.
Branson, who is the UK’s seventh richest person with an estimated £4.7bn fortune and lives on Necker Island in the tax-free British Virgin Islands, on Monday promised in a public blogpost that he would “raise as much money against the island as possible to save as many jobs as possible”.
Ships able to carry 2m barrels chartered for $335,000 a day to store oil unwanted during the Covid-19 pandemic
Giant oil tankers are being used to hold record amounts of crude at sea due to a global oversupply that threatens to overwhelm the world’s storage facilities.
A record 160m barrels of oil has been stored in “supergiant” oil tankers outside the world’s largest shipping ports following the deepest fall in oil demand in 25 years because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Even faced with another great depression, wealthier EU countries are resisting action on debt that could ultimately keep the union together
Europe’s leaders are worried – and rightly so. The deadly impact of Covid-19 has resulted in a full-scale health crisis. Evidence of the economic consequences of trying to keep populations safe from coronavirus is starting to emerge. The political ramifications are only starting to be assessed – but they could be profound.
The European Union has found itself in some tight spots over the years, but always found a way of muddling through. It survived the financial crisis and will cope with Brexit. But this time things are a lot more serious.
Court rules accountancy firm breached code of ethics in its dealings with a refiner
A former partner at the accounting firm EY has been awarded $10.8m (£8.6m) in damages after being forced out of his job when he exposed professional misconduct during an audit of a Dubai gold refiner.
The high court in London ruled on Friday that EY had repeatedly breached the code of ethics for professional accountants in its dealings with one of its clients, Kaloti Jewellery International.