Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
City still recording small number of Covid cases per day but they don’t appear to be triggering wider outbreaks
San Francisco may have become the first major American city to hit herd immunity to the coronavirus, experts say.
San Francisco is still recording a small number of coronavirus cases, about 13.7 per day, said Dr George Rutherford, professor of epidemiology at University of California, San Francisco, but they don’t appear to be gaining enough of a foothold in the population to trigger wider outbreaks.
Conservative backbencher Steve Baker has urged the UK government to press ahead with lifting England’s remaining Covid restrictions on 21 June despite a sharp rise in cases.
He claimed that by that date, all over-50s and vulnerable younger adults should have been given the opportunity to receive two doses of Covid vaccine.
These groups represent about 99% of Covid deaths and about 80% of hospitalisations. As of today, according to announcements made by the government, these groups should all have been offered a chance to have had a second dose. It would be helpful for the government to clarify that this has been achieved.
If this brilliant milestone isn’t enough to convince ministers that we need to lift all remaining restrictions – especially social distancing requirements – on 21 June, nothing will ever get us out of this.
The Dutch government has promised an independent investigation into a supposedly not-for-profit €100m deal to buy facemasks from China last year that ended up making three young entrepreneurs about €20m richer.
The investigative website Follow the Money revealed that Sywert van Lienden, 30, a former civil servant turned TV pundit and activist, who co-wrote the manifesto of the Christian Democrat (CDA) party (part of the ruling coalition), netted €9.2m.
The Dutch government has promised an independent investigation into a supposedly not-for-profit €100m (£86m) deal to buy face masks from China last year that ended up making three young entrepreneurs about €20m richer.
The investigative website Follow the Money (FTM) revealed that Sywert van Lienden, 30, a former civil servant turned TV pundit and activist, who co-wrote the manifesto of the Christian Democrat (CDA) party (part of the ruling coalition), netted €9.2m.
The global economy is set for the fastest recovery from recession for more than 80 years, but poor nations are at risk of falling further behind wealthy countries amid slow progress with the Covid-19 vaccine, the World Bank has said.
In its half-yearly outlook report, the Washington-based institution said the world economy was forecast to grow at 5.6% this year, in a sharp upgrade from previous estimates it made in January for growth of 4.1%.
Ministers are said to be considering delaying the easing of lockdown in England on 21 June for somewhere between two weeks and a month. We look at what a delay could mean, and how long it may need to last.
Female genital mutilation has revived under Covid but activists are pushing hard to save girls at risk
It was when the phone started ringing with calls from worried mothers in Somalia that Ifrah Ahmed knew she was making an impact. The women told her their daughters had been bleeding for hours after undergoing female genital mutilation and asked what to do. Ahmed told them to seek medical attention, and probably saved lives by doing so.
The mothers called because they had heard the story of a 10-year-old girl who had bled to death after being cut in central Galmudug state in July 2018. It was the first confirmed death in years in a country where any complications arising from FGM are generally denied and it gained worldwide attention. The death was first revealed by a local activist who had been trained by Ahmed’s foundation in how to use the media to publicise her work.
As ambitious declarations go – even for Boris Johnson – it was a big one. At the weekend, the UK prime minister said he would urge the G7 leaders to vaccinate the world against Covid by the end of next year.
But is this feasible? That rather depends on your definition. No country will vaccinate every adult. Vaccinating enough to achieve herd immunity, which could be 60% or 70%, is the real aim. It is possible to achieve that by December 2022, say experts, but only if the G7 leading economies move immediately to make it happen.
It’s been a bit of a heavy morning so far, so here is some dinosaur news from the Guardian’s amazing new science reporter Donna Lu:
A new species of dinosaur discovered in south-west Queensland has been officially recognised as the largest ever found in Australia and among the biggest in the world.
The Australotitan cooperensis, a plant-eating dinosaur of the family known as titanosaurs, likely lived between 92m and 96m years ago, during the Cretaceous period.
Less than 3% of Australians over 16 have been fully vaccinated against coronavirus but health chiefs are tipping numbers will soar in coming weeks.
The sluggish national rollout of jabs continues to spark concern with Melbourne in the grips of another lockdown-inducing outbreak, reports Matt Coughlan from AAP.
There are multiple strains and we will continue to see Covid adapt and mutate – that’s what these viruses do.
We’re likely to see other strains emerging. The sooner we can get the world vaccinated, the less likely it is that it can mutate.
Newly released audio from a 2019 phone call between Rudy Giuliani, US diplomats and a senior adviser to Ukrainian President VolodymyrZelensky has added credence to the claims that Trump’s longtime adviser pressured the Ukrainians to help the former president politically.
In the call — which occurred prior to the infamous conversation between Trump and Zelensky that led to his first impeachment — Giuliani pushes the Ukrainians to publicly announce unfounded investigations into Joe Biden.
The new audio demonstrates how Giuliani aggressively cajoled the Ukrainians to do Trump’s bidding. And it undermines Trump’s oft-repeated assertion that “there was no quid pro quo” where Zelensky could secure US government support if he did political favors for Trump.
The call was one of the opening salvos in the years-long quest by Trump and his allies to damage Biden and subvert the 2020 election process — by soliciting foreign meddling, lying about voter fraud, attempting to overturn the results, and inciting the deadly January 6 assault on the Capitol”.
A Republican representative in Oregon may be ousted from his seat after video footage was published Friday showing he let violent protesters into the state capitol late last year.
On 21 December, far-right rioters descended on the statehouse, attacking police officers and assaulting journalists as lawmakers inside were meeting to discuss how to respond to the Covid crisis. Many of the demonstrators would also be among the mob that attacked the US Capitol on 6 January.
Update: Rep. Mike Nearman "willing to have some consequences for what I did" but says OSP and Salem police also to blame for not keeping armed demonstrators out of the Capitol after Nearman opened a door for the demonstrators. https://t.co/zd68zviL5Z#orleg#orpol
In her resolution, Kotek said personnel who were authorized to be in the Oregon Capitol described the events on Dec. 21 as intense and stressful, terrifying and distressing.
‘Law enforcement officers were visibly injured and shaken due to the demonstrators’ action,’ Kotek added.
African countries face a last-ditch battle against a third wave of Covid infections, as the supply of vaccines to the continent “grinds to a halt”, top health officials have warned.
“The threat of a third wave in Africa is real and rising. Our priority is clear – it’s crucial that we swiftly get vaccines into the arms of Africans at high risk of falling seriously ill and dying of Covid-19,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization (WHO) regional director for Africa.
Thailand has started its Covid vaccination campaign amid concerns over the supply of doses, which are mainly being produced locally by a royal-owned company that has no prior experience of making vaccines.
Thailand aims to vaccinate 70% of the population before the end of the year, and is relying primarily on AstraZeneca doses produced by Siam Bioscience, a company owned by King Maha Vajiralongkorn. The company is also due to supply vaccines to eight other countries in the region.
While most of the world suffered through hundreds of millions of cases and millions of deaths from Covid-19, the 23.5 million people in Taiwan largely lived a normal life, thanks to a well-documented strong and early response that saw it go 250 days without a single local case. It lobbied for inclusion in the World Health Organization’s decision-making body off the back of its undeniable success and expertise under the slogan “Taiwan can help”.
But now the tables have turned and the island itself is in need of assistance, after an outbreak that started among airline staff in April spread across the island. The government appears to have been caught short by something it thought would never happen: the poster child for outbreak prevention had apparently failed to fully prepare an outbreak response.
Summer has nearly arrived and the UK is beginning to unlock from coronavirus restrictions, with a full lifting still on the cards in England on 21 June.
Yet the spectre of the Delta variant is casting an ominous shadow, with concerns it could fuel a third wave. So just how serious could the next peak be – and could it be more serious than Britain’s first two waves?
Brazil’s health ministry has reported 37,156 new cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hours, and 1,010 deaths, according to Reuters:
The South American country has now registered 16,984,218 cases since the pandemic began, while the death toll has risen to 474,414, according to ministry data, in the world’s third worst outbreak outside the United States and India and its second-deadliest.
Portugal’s foreign minister has said that Spain’s decision to require a negative coronavirus test for people crossing the border must be “a mistake”, Reuters reported Lusa news agency saying on Monday:
Portugal had asked Spanish authorities for clarification on “what could only have been a mistake”, Portugal’s foreign minister Augusto Santos Silva said.
“We have asked Spanish authorities for clarification and await it being granted as quickly as possible, because if not we will need to adopt equivalent reciprocal measures,” Santos Silva said, adding that “the epidemiological situation in Spain is, at the moment, worse than what we are living in Portugal.”
Warning comes amid fears of further delays to Kunming summit, which aims to agree on curbing destruction of ecosystems
The world is running out of time to reach an ambitious deal to stem the destruction of the natural world, the co-chair of negotiations for a crucial UN wildlife summit has warned, amid fears of a third delay to the talks.
Negotiators are scheduled to meet in Kunming, China, in October for Cop15, the biggest biodiversity summit in a decade, to reach a hoped-for Paris-style agreement on preventing wildlife extinctions and the human-driven destruction of the planet’s ecosystems.
Cases plummet but children under 12 not yet eligible for shots
Mississippi governor defends low state vaccination rate
A US public health expert has warned that though cases of Covid-19 are at their lowest rates for months and much of the country is returning to normal life, young Americans are still “a vulnerable host” for the coronavirus.
G7 countries will lose $5tn a year by 2050 if temperatures rise by 2.6C
The economies of rich countries will shrink by twice as much as they did in the Covid-19 crisis if they fail to tackle rising greenhouse gas emissions, according to research.
The G7 countries – the world’s biggest industrialised economies – will lose 8.5% of GDP a year, or nearly $5tn wiped off their economies, within 30 years if temperatures rise by 2.6C, as they are likely to on the basis of government pledges and policies around the world, according to research from Oxfam and the Swiss Re Institute.
The village high street in Kirkoswald, Cumbria, was once home to shops including a butcher’s, a greengrocer’s and a shoe shop. Now just one remains: a small convenience store that has became the hub of village life during the pandemic.
After its owner, the local philanthropist David Hodgkiss, died of Covid in March last year, the shop was put up for sale and was destined for closure until residents stepped in. In just six weeks they have raised nearly £200,000 to purchase and run the shop as a community business, and hope the doors could reopen in just a few weeks, staffed by volunteers from the local area.
Police in Malaysia are using drones to detect people with high temperatures in public spaces as part of Covid prevention measures, according to local media.
The drones, which can detect people’s temperatures as high as 20m above ground, emit a red light to alert the authorities if someone has a high reading, Bernama, Malaysia’s state news agency, reported.
Hundreds of healthcare workers treating Covid patients around the world have experienced verbal, physical, and sometimes life-threatening attacks during the pandemic, prompting calls for immediate action from human rights campaigners.
Covid-related attacks on healthcare workers are expected to rise as new variants cause havoc in countries such as India and rollouts of vaccination programmes belatedly get under way in some countries, according to the UN special rapporteur on the right to health.