Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
The restaurant and cafe terraces spilling out into the streets of the pretty Dutch medieval town of Sluis were teeming over the weekend with smiling people clinking glasses under the spring sun.
The Netherlands reopened alfresco hospitality last Wednesday and Belgians, ignoring official advice, had driven a short distance across the border in huge numbers to enjoy their neighbour’s freedom over the long Labour day weekend. “We could have filled 400 tables,” said an apologetic waiter at the Resto de Eetboetiek, as he turned away the latest family arriving without a reservation.
Severe Covid-19 vaccine shortages have hampered India’s plan to administer jabs to all adults, with fewer then half of India’s states able to begin vaccinating over-18s amid warnings the shortfall could last months.
Over the weekend, more than 600 million Indians became eligible for the coronavirus vaccine in a policy that was introduced in the wake of a deadly second wave hitting the country last month.
Liberal senator Jane Hume is asked about her government’s controversial move to make it a criminal offence to enter Australia for citizens who have been in India in the last 14 days.
Hume told the ABC’s Patricia Karvelas the punishments are “a function of the Biosecurity Act” that was introduced with Labor’s support.
“The most important thing here is we’re keeping Australians safe”
No-one is saying this is an easy decision stop in fact, it is a very, very difficult decision to make but I think Australians realise how fortunate we are to be able to live in a country that is largely Covid free and our economy is back on track.
When we see the heartbreaking images of people in India, 300,000 cases a day, 90 million people infected and 200,000 deaths, I think we all fear that third wave.”
It is not a decision made lightly and we are trying to help India in any way we can.”
We don’t want to see anybody charged, we want to see the borders open and for Australians to be able to come home again and we will do that as soon as we possibly can safely.”
Jane Hume, the minister for superannuation and financial services, has been speaking about the government’s proposed $1.7bn increase to the childcare subsidy, which will see the subsidy for families with two children lifted to a maximum of 95% and remove the cap on subsidies for higher-income earners.
Hume said it’s better than more generous proposals from Labor because the Coalition’s plan “is aimed at lower-middle-income workers and people going back to work, study or doing charity work”.
Our South Asia correspondent reflects on a catastrophe that is now affecting the lives of almost everyone in the country
You recently lost a close colleague, Kakoli Bhattacharya, to Covid-19. Can you tell us about her and the important work that she did?
Kakoli was the Guardian’s news assistant over here and had worked for us since 2009. She could find any number or contact I needed and smoothed over any and all of the bureaucratic challenges that working in India can present. She made reporting here a huge joy, when it could be a huge challenge, and she was hugely well thought of by journalists for other organisations too. More than that, though, she was the person who welcomed me to Delhi. She knew the region inside out. She was incredibly warm and was someone I could always call on. The Guardian’s India coverage won’t be the same without her.
With less than one-third of Americans fully vaccinated, health authorities switch from mass vaccination clinics to outreach campaigns
A decline in daily Covid-19 vaccination rates has left US public health authorities with a new problem – how to effectively shrink operations.
In the campaign to immunize all American adults against the coronavirus, most of the difficulties to date have involved overwhelming demand and restricted supply. Now, with less than one-third of Americans fully vaccinated, local public health authorities described a sense of whiplash as they pivot from mass vaccination clinics to outreach campaigns, all within a couple of weeks.
Mexican production of AstraZeneca jab suffers setbacks
López Obrador: “it’s probable that they’ll help us with a loan’
Mexica’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said on Friday the US will probably send his country 5m more doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, as the company admitted production in Central and South America had suffered multiple setbacks.
Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine has yet to win EU regulatory approval and is likely to play little part in the bloc’s rollout, but it has already achieved what some observers say is one of its objectives – sowing division among, and within, member states.
“Sputnik V has become a tool of soft power for Russia,” said Michal Baranowski, a fellow with a US thinktank, the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “It’s planted its flag on the vaccine and the political goal of its strategy is to divide the west.”
AstraZeneca’s chief executive, Pascal Soriot, has mounted a robust defence of the drugmaker’s Covid-19 vaccine efforts, and said the business should be proud of what it has done for the world and is doing its “very best” to produce more, as the company faces legal action from the EU over delivery shortfalls, and shipments to poorer countries have also been delayed.
The company generated $275m (£197m) in revenues from the Covid vaccine it developed with Oxford University in the first three months of the year and shipped 48m doses to 120 countries through the global vaccine-sharing initiative Covax, 80% of which went to low and middle-income countries. In total, it has supplied more than 300m vaccine doses to more than 165 countries so far this year.
Clive Palmer has been ordered to pay Universal Music $1.5m in damages over the “unauthorised” use of a version of the hit 1980s song We’re Not Gonna Take It by glam metal band Twisted Sister in a political ad during the 2019 election campaign.
Palmer used a cover version of the song during his multimillion-dollar advertising blitz during last year’s federal election campaign. The Palmer version of the song changed the lyrics to:
Australia ain’t gonna cop it, no Australia’s not gonna cop it, Aussies not gonna cop it any more.
Victoria says 500-bed $15m facility to be built in Mickleham; Australia’s medicine regulator expected to determine whether death of two men in NSW linked to coronavirus jab. Follow the day’s news live
Thousands of corellas have been filmed flocking to the suburban streets of Nowra on the NSW south coast and it is terrifying.
China’s top envoy to Australia has blasted as “ridiculous” the claim that Beijing’s economic coercion has been the cause of tensions between the two countries.
China’s ambassador, Cheng Jingye, has also cautioned Australia against “teaming up in [a] small group against China” - in apparent reference to initiatives like the Quad with the US, Japan and India. Cheng said Australia should not play the “victim game”.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the White House’s chief medical adviser, has said countries have failed to unite to provide an adequate global response to prevent the “tragic” coronavirus outbreak from overwhelming India.
He singled out wealthier nations for failing to provide equitable access to healthcare around the world.
"We’re all in this together. It’s an interconnected world. And there are responsibilities that countries have to each other, particularly if you’re a wealthy country and you’re dealing with countries that don’t have the resources or capabilities that you have,” he said
A single dose of a Covid-19 vaccine can slash transmission of the virus by up to half, according to a Public Health England study.
The PHE finding offers further hope that the pandemic can be brought under control as it indicates that vaccinated people are far less likely to pass the virus on to others.
For Democrats it has been a hundred days of sweeping legislation, barrier-breaking appointments and daring to dream big. For Republicans, a hundred days in the political wilderness.
The party that just four years ago controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress now finds itself shut out of power and struggling to find its feet. As Joe Biden forges ahead with ambitions to shift the political paradigm, Republicans still have a Donald Trump problem.
Senate Democrats are pushing Biden to admit more refugees into the US.
Biden’s announcement earlier this month that he would not increase refugee admissions from the record low cap of 15,000 that Donald Trump set before leaving office. After intense pushback from advocates and Democratic lawmakers, Biden said he’d increase the cap by 15 May.
A coronavirus “vaccination persuasion” initiative targeting elderly people who have declined invitations to get vaccinated is gearing up to be rolled out across Turkey after proving a resounding success in a district in the country’s south-east.
Since February, doctors and healthcare workers in the mainly Kurdish city of Adıyaman, or Semsûr, have been calling people in age groups already eligible for the vaccine to ask why they have not come to clinics for appointments.
India is reportedly running out of Covid-19 vaccines just as a virulent second wave continues to devastate the country, threatening the government’s plans to ramp up the vaccination programme by the weekend in an effort to curb the spread of the virus.
From Saturday, everyone in India over the age of 18 will be eligible for a vaccine, a decision made by the government as the virus has brought India’s healthcare system to its knees, with more than new 352,000 cases on Monday and over 2,800 more deaths.
AstraZeneca said it would “strongly defend itself in court” and highlighted its supply of 50m Covid vaccine doses to European countries as Brussels launched legal action against the pharmaceutical company over delivery shortfalls.
The Anglo-Swedish firm said it regretted the decision by the European commission to start a legal case over alleged breaches of an advance purchase agreement.
Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser said on Sunday the recent pause on the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine should raise confidence in health agencies’ focus on vaccine safety, as the administration tries to curb deadly outbreaks across the US.
Western Australia’s international arrivals cap for the next month will be halved, officials said on today, as the state is battling a coronavirus outbreak that forced more than two million people into a three-day lockdown from Saturday, Reuters reports.
The lockdown was ordered after a traveller likely became infected while in quarantine in a hotel and unknowingly passed it on to two other people in the community.
Australia closed its borders more than a year ago and allows mostly only its citizens and permanent residents to return. All, except from New Zealand, must undergo two weeks of mandatory hotel quarantine at their own expense.
A Spanish man with Covid symptoms who coughed on work colleagues and told them “I’m going to give you all the coronavirus” has been charged with intentionally causing injury after allegedly infecting 22 people, AP reports:
Spanish police said their investigation began after a coronavirus outbreak at the company where the 40-year-old man worked on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca.
Days before the outbreak, the man showed Covid symptoms but refused his colleagues’ suggestions to go home and self-isolate, police said in a statement.