Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Data showing fiscal deficit rose to £15bn in 2019-20 sparks row over case for independence
Scotland’s deficit has risen to nearly £2,000 per person after the gap between tax income and spending widened to become more than three times larger than the UK as a whole.
Data released on Wednesday showed Scotland’s fiscal deficit rose to £15bn in 2019-20, fuelling a row over the case for independence at first minister’s questions between Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Labour leader, Richard Leonard.
Critics say plan for fields off Svalbard threatens ecosystem and relations with Russia
Norway is planning to expand oil drilling in previously untouched areas of the Arctic, a move campaigners say threatens the fragile ecosystem and could spark a military standoff with Russia.
Nationwide the need for aid at food banks and pantries has surged amid worst unemployment rate in modern times
Neisha Davis cradles brown paper lunch bags in the crook of one arm, while holding on to Demitri, her wriggling baby son, in the other and keeping a careful eye on Naya, her four-year-old daughter, as she runs around the church car park with another little girl.
It’s hectic but the free packed lunches have become a crucial part of their daily nutrition. So everyday at noon the family make the two-mile journey from Homewood, a low income predominantly African American Pittsburgh neighbourhood with no grocery stores, to the East End Community Ministry’s pop-up lunch stall in East Liberty.
Covid-19 has exposed the fragility of supply chains, which rely on the labour of black and brown workers. The deep inequalities won’t be fixed by injecting funds at the top
Is the UK governed by parliamentary democracy or big businesses? It is a question that should concern us all, yet it is becoming increasingly hard to differentiate between the two, as the government hands out multimillion-pound contracts to private firms with dubious track records, and ministers revolve between roles at big banks and government. Last week, the line between UK aid and private businesses was called into question, as the Department for International Development (DfID) announced the decision to direct £4.85m of taxpayers’ money towards the work of large retailers including M&S, Tesco and Primark.
The DfID funding is intended to support large companies to fix vulnerable supply chains and ensure that “people in Britain can continue to buy affordable, high-quality goods from around the world”. These aims, along with the fact that UK brands have been entrusted to deliver them, set off alarm bells for labour rights campaigners like myself, who advocate for better working conditions in the global garment industry.
In the short term, probably not, but with China weaponising the yuan stern challenges lie ahead
The recent sharp depreciation of the US dollar has led to concerns that it may lose its role as the main global reserve currency. After all, in addition to the Federal Reserve’s aggressive monetary easing – which threatens to debase the world’s key fiat currency even further – gold prices and inflation expectations have also been rising.
But, to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the dollar’s early demise are greatly exaggerated. The greenback’s recent weakness is driven by shorter-term cyclical factors. In the long run, the situation is more complicated: the dollar has both strengths and weaknesses that may or may not undermine its global position over time.
Star calls for live music to challenge social distancing rules, but faces fan backlash
Van Morrison has denounced the supposed “pseudoscience” around coronavirus and is attempting to rally musicians in a campaign to restore live music concerts with full capacity audiences.
The 74-year-old Northern Irish singer launched a campaign to “save live music” on his website, saying socially distanced gigs were not economically viable. “I call on my fellow singers, musicians, writers, producers, promoters and others in the industry to fight with me on this. Come forward, stand up, fight the pseudo-science and speak up,” he said.
App says in blogpost it strongly disagrees with White House position that it is a national security threat
TikTok, the fast-growing video sharing app, announced it was suing the US government on Monday over an executive order banning transactions with the Chinese company in the US.
In a blogpost, TikTok said it strongly disagreed with the White House’s position that the company was a national security threat, saying it had “taken extraordinary measures to protect the privacy and security of TikTok’s US user data”.
The company manufacturing the Oxford University coronavirus vaccine has said it is not in talks with the Trump administration about fast-tracking its vaccine for emergency use ahead of November’s presidential elections.
With both Russia and China pressing ahead with inoculations involving experimental vaccines yet to pass final efficacy and safety trials, the Trump administration has become increasingly frustrated with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which the president has tried to suggest is slowing approval of a vaccine for “political reasons”.
Brisbane watches hotspots after youth detention centre outbreak, Victoria’s hotel inquiry continues and politicians gather in Canberra for the first time in 10 weeks. Follow today’s latest updates
The UK government is preparing to drop a recently introduced tax on global technology companies such as Facebook, Google and Amazon, due to fears that the so-called “Facebook tax” could jeopardise a post-Brexit trade deal.
Rishi Sunak is reportedly planning to ditch the digital services tax which was expected to generate about £500m to help pay towards the huge cost of the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Worker alleges she was unfairly sacked from Covid-19 testing site, but G4S disputes claims
A mixed race woman was disciplined and later sacked from a G4S coronavirus testing centre after suggesting colleagues could adopt the black power salute for a photo in support of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.
The outsourcing giant said Kenya Scarlett had previously been confrontational and demanding; it claimed no one had taken issue with expressing support for BLM.
At $114bn, its market value is above HSBC – but questions remain about business model and if it will ever be profitable
It is a company that is just about to turn five years old but is valued more highly than the oil giant Shell, or HSBC, one of the largest banks in the world.
Pinduoduo is the latest behemoth produced by China’s tech machine, an online shopping site that specialises in extraordinary discounts on everything from tissues to Teslas. And its market value has more than doubled in recent months to $114bn (£87bn).
Outsourcing companies running the government’s flagship test-and-trace system have failed to reach nearly half of potentially exposed people in areas with the highest Covid infections 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.
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.