Category Archives: Coronavirus

Xi’s army: from ‘hiding and biding’ to building China’s dream

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The combat capability of the People’s Liberation Army may still be a ‘work in progress’ but it is catching up through influence and training

When Covid-19 swept across Iran last March, killing more than 1,000 people including the senior commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, it was the Chinese military that Tehran turned to for help. On 19 March 2020, batch loads of testing kits, PPE and face masks arrived in the Iranian capital.

In February this year, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) began to donate Covid-19 vaccines to counterparts overseas. The Cambodia armed forces have received two batches of 300,000 vaccines; Sierra Leone’s army was given 40,000 doses; United Nations peacekeeping forces secured 300,000.

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Melbourne descends into chaos as police arrest 62 and fire rubber pellets at anti-lockdown protesters

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It started with construction workers opposing compulsory vaccinations but grew into a broader ‘freedom’ rally which shut down freeways and bridges

Police have fired pepper balls and stinger grenades at violent anti-Covid lockdown protesters on the streets of Melbourne as Australia’s second-largest city – under stay-at-home orders for the 233rd day in total – descended into chaos.

Protesters dressed as construction workers clashed with police for the second consecutive day on Tuesday, assaulting officers, smashing police car windows, throwing bottles and stones, and damaging property.

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Religious rehab centres fill gap as Nigeria grapples with soaring drug use

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With poverty deepening, state services are failing to cope with rising rates of addiction

Kola* was in secondary school in Nigeria when he started smoking cigarettes. He soon graduated to cannabis, heroin and eventually to crack cocaine. Access to drugs was easy and he felt the pressure of friends to participate.

In 2002, when he was 39, he was introduced to a private drug rehabilitation centre in Ibadan, in the south-west of the country, where he spent 90 days weaning himself off his addiction.

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Victoria set to shut down construction for two weeks after anti-vaccine mandate protest

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State government held crisis talks Monday night after Victoria police used pepper spray and rubber bullets to move crowd outside CFMEU office

The Victorian government is set to announce a two-week shutdown of the construction industry after a protest against mandatory vaccines for workers in the sector became violent.

The closure across metropolitan Melbourne, Geelong, the Surf Coast, Ballarat and Mitchell Shire was decided on Monday night after the CFMEU building was damaged and riot police deployed in chaotic scenes in the CBD.

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Crash and burn: the intense and fleeting romances of the Covid era

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The unspoken rules of dating went out the window as people found themselves deeply alone – perhaps it’s no surprise these couples didn’t make it

On 4 July 2020, 34-year-old Samantha Higdon, a tech worker in Austin, Texas, was swiping through the dating app Hinge when she came across a profile that made her thumb pause and hover over the screen.

His smile struck her as warm and somehow familiar: “He just felt right,” she says. And so it began.

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Covid live: UK records 36,100 new cases; Pfizer vaccine safe for children aged 5-11, company says

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UK also reports 49 further deaths; Pfizer says their vaccine produces strong antibody responses in children aged 5 to 11

Boris Johnson has used a meeting with Brazil’s coronavirus-denying president to promote Covid vaccinations – only to undermine his message by failing to wear a face mask, report Peter Walker and Tom Phillips.

The UK prime minister met Jair Bolsonaro – who has been accused of sabotaging Brazilian vaccination efforts and claims not to have been jabbed – at the British consulate general’s residence in New York on Monday, on the eve of the United Nations general assembly.

Related: Boris Johnson uses Bolsonaro meeting to promote AstraZeneca jab

The two Australian jurisdictions grappling with the most severe Covid outbreaks, New South Wales and Victoria, have revealed their plans for reopening, providing those living with lockdown with some sense of what the future may hold.

Both states will ease some restrictions once 70% of the eligible population age 16 and above are fully vaccinated, with further easing at 80%. But when will those targets be reached, and how and why do the plans differ?

Related: Roadmaps out of lockdown: why NSW and Victoria are taking different paths to Covid normal

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Shares in China’s Evergrande plunge again as fears of contagion grow

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Hong Kong stock fell almost 17% amid default fears that are beginning to have a knock-on effect on other markets

Shares in the embattled Chinese property company Evergrande have plunged 17% as investors weigh up whether the group’s massive debt problems could trigger a broader sell off across all financial markets.

Related: ‘China’s Lehman Brothers moment’: Evergrande crisis rattles economy

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Fresh calls for windfall tax on companies that prospered during Covid

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Research highlights six firms that increased their profits by a total of £16bn

Campaigners have issued fresh calls for a windfall tax on companies that prospered during the pandemic, after research highlighted six firms that increased their profits by a total of £16bn.

The outsourcing firm Serco and online clothes retailer Asos were among the companies that saw their global profits more than double over the last financial year, while one investment trust, Scottish Mortgage, saw its returns grow to nine times the average of preceding years.

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Texas women in New York restaurant vaccine brawl say race a factor

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Activist says there will be protest over treatment of Black patrons after confrontation outside Carmine’s

A lawyer for three women from Texas arrested after a brawl outside a popular New York City restaurant over the requirement that guests show proof of vaccination has said race was a factor in the case.

In video shot by an onlooker last Thursday and shared widely on social media, a restaurant hostess, who is white, is seen being attacked.

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Gordon Brown calls for urgent action to avert ‘Covid vaccine waste disaster’

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More than 100m doses could be discarded by December if global leaders do not share jabs with poorest countries, warns former PM

More than 100m Covid vaccine doses are due to expire and be “thrown away” unless global leaders urgently share surplus supplies with the world’s poorest countries, Gordon Brown has warned.

The “staggering” number of stockpiled “use now” jabs will be of no use to anyone by December, according to a new report from the research group Airfinity.

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Chris Rock says he has Covid-19 and urges doubters: ‘Get vaccinated’

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The comedian Chris Rock on Sunday said he had tested positive for Covid-19 and sent a message to anyone still on the fence: “Get vaccinated.”

Related: Tate Reeves: Biden vaccine mandate an ‘attack on hardworking Americans’

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Coronavirus live news: 1.5million people in England to receive booster jab invite

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Texts and letters will be sent to eligible people who had their second vaccine at least six months ago

Ireland’s chief medical officer has praised the country’s “exceptionally” high level of vaccine uptake, describing it as the envy of the world.

The vaccine programme hit a milestone at the weekend, with more than 90% of people over the age of 16 now fully vaccinated, the PA reports.

While vaccination remains our best means of protection against COVID-19, there are additional things that you can do to prevent transmission of the disease. pic.twitter.com/MVyC9xCsEp

The UK government said a further 56 people have died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of today, bringing the UK total to 135,203.

Separate figures published by the Office for National Statistics show there have been 159,000 deaths registered in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate, the PA reports.

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Fauci: FDA vote against Covid booster shots ‘not the end of the story’

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A decision not to recommend third-shot booster vaccinations for most Americans is “not the end of the story”, White House chief medical adviser Dr Anthony Fauci insisted on Sunday, two days after a scientific panel appeared to turn the Biden administration’s plan for combating coronavirus on its head.

Related: Tate Reeves: Biden vaccine mandate an ‘attack on hardworking Americans’

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Tate Reeves: Biden vaccine mandate an ‘attack on hardworking Americans’

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  • Mississippi has second-worst death rate in world, after Peru
  • Governor insists requiring shots for workers is tyranny

Joe Biden’s coronavirus vaccination mandate for federal workers is a tyrannical “attack on hardworking Americans”, Tate Reeves insisted on Sunday, even as the state he governs reeled under a death rate that if Mississippi were a country would make it the second worst-hit in the world, after Peru.

Related: Covid vaccinations among US Latinos are rising thanks to community outreach

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Slow but steady has seen the EU win out in the vaccine race

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Ursula von der Leyen says the union’s vaccination programme is now a success after its stumbling start

We did it,” said Ursula von der Leyen in her annual state of the union address last week. With more than 70% of its adult population now fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, Europe is, “against all critics, among the world leaders”.

Moreover, the Commission president said, the EU had exported half its vaccines: “We delivered more than 700 million doses to the European people, and we delivered more than 700 million doses to the rest of the world. We are the only region to achieve that.”

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Australia Covid live news update: Victoria records 507 new cases and one death ahead of reopening roadmap release; pools to open across Sydney

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Premier Dan Andrews is to release Victoria’s roadmap out of lockdown a day after protests in Melbourne, Sydney, Byron Bay and Brisbane. Follow updates live

The Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, is holding a press conference in Brisbane. The state has recorded no new cases of Covid-19 in the community or in hotel quarantine.

Palaszczuk is urging people to get vaccinated after the state controversially made the Pfizer vaccine available to over 60s. She’s urging people to attend walk-in Pfizer clinics.

This is an interesting piece on the people for whom the end of Covid restrictions sparks fear rather than joy.

Racquel Sherry, 49 and based in Sydney, is immunocompromised and afraid.

In the roadmap to freedom, I hear nothing about people like me, other than as a qualifying postscript to the Covid deaths: ‘But they had an underlying health condition’.

Freedom day doesn’t include me.

Related: ‘Freedom day doesn’t include me’: for some, the end of lockdown will be a time of fear

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Covid and Afghanistan ‘reveal weakness of UK’s security policy’

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Cross-party MPs and peers say the response to the two crises has exposed system as inadequate

The rapid fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban and the response to the Covid-19 pandemic have revealed “serious weaknesses” in the government’s approach to dealing with national security, according to a highly critical cross-party report.

MPs and peers found that the two critical events had highlighted the shortcomings of the national security council – a cabinet committee of senior ministers and officials designed to handle major security challenges. The Lords’ and Commons’ joint committee on the national security strategy (JCNSS) said the system had been exposed as inadequate. It warned that national risk management across government is “loose, unstructured, and lacking in central oversight and accountability”.

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‘Freedom day doesn’t include me’: for some, the end of lockdown will be a time of fear

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Those most at risk from Covid say the easing of restrictions when vaccination targets are met will bring anxiety and danger

“In the roadmap to freedom, I hear nothing about people like me, other than as a qualifying postscript to the Covid deaths: ‘But they had an underlying health condition’,” says Racquel Sherry.

“Freedom day doesn’t include me.”

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Ministers told to bar EU from UK trial data in vaccines row

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England’s deputy medical chief asked for data to be withheld unless British vaccine guinea pigs allowed to travel abroad

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England’s deputy chief medical officer asked ministers to withhold all UK clinical trial data from the EU if European countries continued to deny entry to British vaccine trial volunteers, the Observer can reveal.

Jonathan Van-Tam made the extraordinary proposal after months of uncertainty for the 19,000 volunteers who are effectively unable to travel to Europe to see family, work or go on holiday because they took part in trials of Novavax and Valneva.

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