Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Shares have soared on the world’s stock markets after investors shrugged off a deep slump in the US economy and pinned their hopes on a possible breakthrough in treatment for Covid-19.
Retail giants are set to rely more heavily on click and collect sales even as lockdown restrictions are eased, with the sector’s peak body cautioning against a rush to fully reopen bricks and mortar stores.
Paul Zahra, Australian Retailers Association (ARA) CEO, believes the shift towards delivery and kerbside pickup will leave a “legacy” in Australians’ shopping habits, and said one “fundamentally positive” impact of the pandemic has been that retailers traditionally reluctant to move online have now come on board.
Production will begin slowly with UK plants remaining shut until later in the spring
Ford said it would restart its main European car factories on Monday 4 May, but its UK plants in Dagenham and Bridgend will stay closed until later in the spring.
The US car giant, which closed its European and North American factories at the height of the coronavirus pandemic in mid-March, said production would begin slowly with strict standards on social distancing and safety precautions.
Kristina Kubiliene can ‘barely open her handbag’, allegedly as a result of working long hours
Victoria Beckham’s clothing brand is being sued by a pattern cutter who claims to have developed a serious hand injury that required surgery after working for up to 15 hours a day in the run-up to New York fashion week.
Kristina Kubiliene, 54, worked for Victoria Beckham Ltd at its London studio for nearly eight years and left last year after developing carpal tunnel syndrome, which left her barely able to open her handbag, her lawyer said.
Pandemic spotlights racial disparities, with black workers expected to feature disproportionately in the 26m recent unemployment claims
Just two months ago in the Cabinet Room of the White House, sitting at a table surrounded by a handful of his black supporters, Donald Trump once again praised his job creation record. “Black people right now are having the best, statistically, the best numbers that you’ve ever had, and it’s really an honor,” he said. “Nobody has done more for black people than I have. Nobody has done more.”
That was 27 February and Trump was also still claiming he had done an “incredible job” with the looming coronavirus pandemic. Now the virus has led 26 million Americans to file for unemployment. While the US Bureau of Labor Statistics will not release unemployment figures broken down by race until the beginning of next month, economists are certain that black Americans are suffering the brunt of Covid-19’s economic impact and will probably suffer the most dramatic consequences of the looming recession.
Wall Street has opened higher, despite the prospect of a sickening slump in growth this quarter.
The Dow Jones industrial average has gained 109 points, or 0.46%, to 23,884 as a new week’s trading begins.
Alexandra Scaggs of Barrons has spotted that General Motors’ banks pushed it to suspend its dividend (as flagged earlier).
so GM suspended its dividend & share buybacks
one interesting point that's not in the headlines: Banks wanted that as a condition for extending more credit to the company https://t.co/RWCWF4tvea
to me the press release reads like "hey we decided to stop doing these things"
and the filing reads like "our lenders asked us to stop doing these things before they would extend the repayment date on one of our loans" pic.twitter.com/wH5R4aCqDF
Airbus has warned its 135,000 employees that it may not survive the coronavirus lockdown unless it takes immediate action that may involve deeper job cuts.
Its chief executive, Guillaume Faury, told staff in a letter on Friday that the plane maker was “bleeding cash at an unprecedented speed”, and was considering all options as it waited to see how badly demand would be affected by the Covid-19 outbreak.
We thank Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck and the Chief Medical Officer Prof. Brendan Murphy for joining the aged care industry in constructive dialogue in the national webinar, as we work together to care for and support vulnerable older Australians.
However, we impressed upon them that it is incorrect to characterise the sector as having kept residents isolated, under lock and key, in their rooms. Nor are they secret places.
Australia’s leading aged care providers have banded together to make a statement in response to what the prime minister and chief health minister had to say last week about opening up centres to visits, or face applying to the commonwealth to close.
Almost 1000 aged care providers have signed up to the statement, saying that some facilities made the decision to stop visitation because it was the only way to protect residents, with the decisions being made with “the support of the majority of residents and their families”.
Pressures on aged care workers will further intensify from the major costs of controls and resources needed to continue protecting aged care residents and to allow the safe access for visitors that has been stipulated - but there has been little additional support from Government to achieve this.
The funding provided that equates to an average of $2 per resident per day is not enough for aged care operators to keep winning the fight to keep coronavirus out of aged care homes.
As the prime minister, Boris Johnson, heads back to Downing Street, he faces calls from Labour to be clearer about how Britain might start lifting the coronavirus lockdown, now entering its fifth week. On Sunday, the foreign secretary and first secretary of state, Dominic Raab, warned the outbreak remained at a “delicate and dangerous” stage and said it was irresponsible to speculate about steps to modify the rules underpinning government’s “stay home, protect the NHS, save lives” strategy.
More than 20,000 people have died from Covid-19 in NHS hospitals and thousands more in care homes. But there are growing concerns about the economic impact of lockdown. Gerard Lyons, Johnson’s economics adviser when he was London mayor, warned on Sunday the UK could be the hardest-hit western economy if it does not unlock soon. The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, also called on ministers to start talking to teachers, businesses, trade unions and town hall leaders and open “honest conversations with the public about what new arrangements might look like”. Unions insist worker safety must not be compromised by any changes and questions remain about public appetite for risking a new peak of contagion, but plans to modify restrictions are starting to emerge.
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.