Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Public health groups are lobbying countries to commit a portion of their Covid-19 vaccine supplies to a “humanitarian buffer” that would be used to inoculate people living in rebel-held territories, those in asylum-seeker camps and others unlikely to receive vaccinations from their governments.
The emergency stockpile is intended to act as a safety net to ensure the global effort to end the Covid-19 pandemic is not sabotaged by governments using vaccines as bargaining chip with restive populations, or simply denying it to some marginalised groups.
At this weekend’s meeting in Riyadh, leaders will urge action to free up resources to help stricken developing countries combat Covid-19
From his house in Nairobi, banker turned financial vlogger James Mumo contemplated the state of Kenya’s post-pandemic economy. “It’s hopeless for a normal businessperson just trying to make a living for their family,” he says.
The economic crisis caused by the pandemic and ensuing lockdowns has left many struggling: 1.7 million Kenyans lost their jobs between April and June 2020, while 20.8 million borrowed funds using a programme provided by popular mobile carrier Safaricom, double last year’s number. One financial services conglomerate headquartered in Nairobi bought a yard to store all the cars it had repossessed after customers couldn’t repay their loans.
With potential injectable vaccines estimated to be out of reach for two-thirds of world’s population, scientists hope to find less-heat-sensitive formulations
News that one of the potential coronavirus vaccines had at least a 90% efficacy rate was a “victory for science”, said K Srinath Reddy, a cardiologist and president of the Public Health Foundation of India. But it meant little to his country’s 1.3 billion citizens.
“For us, the Pfizer vaccine is more of a scientific curiosity than a practical possibility,” Reddy said.
Marshall is asked if he admits there have been shortcomings in South Australia’s hotel quarantine system.
“Not at all. There will be a thorough investigation but what we have said since day one is this is a highly contagious disease ... we know that, very highly trained nurses and with all of their PPE, they have been able to contract the disease, so we know there is a risk associated with every time we bring somebody into this country,” he says.
South Australia reports three new cases in quarantine and lifts many lockdown restrictions. No new locally acquired coronavirus cases in NSW or Victoria. Follow live
If you’re still confused about what happened in South Australia, Josh Taylor has stepped it out in this report. He writes:
The state’s premier, Steven Marshall, made the admission after contact tracers further investigated a male with Covid-19 who claimed to have only picked up a pizza from the Woodville Pizza Bar.
A security guard who tested positive from the Peppers medi-hotel for returned travellers had a second job at the restaurant, and because the person claimed to have just been a customer, health authorities feared a wide range of people may have been exposed to Covid-19 through casual transmission at the pizza bar.
To Tasmania now, where a Hobart man in possession of enough fake luxury watches to keep Australia Post in bonuses for decades has been arrested by the Australian federal police.
More from AAP:
More than a thousand fake luxury watches and pieces of jewellery, a deceptive passport and 4000 steroid tablets have been seized by police from a man’s house in Hobart.
The 49-year-old is facing a string of criminal charges, including making false travel statements, after the Australian Federal Police raid this week.
Ever since coronavirus arrived on the Navajo Nation, women in this matriarchal society have put themselves at risk, taking on more responsibilities, culturally and in everyday life
Sitting in the passenger seat of her husband’s pickup truck just before dusk, Eugenia Charles-Newton watched a young Navajo girl, her niece, at a traditional kinaaldá ceremony in Shiprock, New Mexico.
The coming-of-age ceremony was unlike any other kinaaldá she’d seen. Scores of family members were missing and there was only a small cake, just enough to feed the immediate family. That morning, the girl’s female relatives hadn’t gathered to sing and tell stories as they mixed the cake batter. When the girl ran toward the east before the sun rose, she didn’t have throngs of relatives running behind her to fill the dawn air with happy screams and shouts, celebrating her transition into womanhood. Only the young woman’s brothers ran after her.
Steven Marshall says state would not have gone into six-day lockdown if it had been known man had worked at Woodville Pizza Bar
South Australia’s six-day lockdown will end three days early at midnight on Saturday after it was revealed a male who tested positive for Covid-19 had lied to contact tracers over working in a pizza bar where another case had worked.
The state’s premier, Steven Marshall, made the admission after contact tracers further investigated a male with Covid-19 who claimed to have only picked up a pizza from the Woodville Pizza Bar.
Dr Anthony Fauci speaks at the coronavirus task force press briefing, marking his first appearance at the White House podium in months. The infectious disease expert has moved to allay concerns about the speed with which the coronavirus vaccine has been developed, and implored Americans to continue basic public health measures until it is rolled out
Isolated from the rest of the planet since February, group learned about virus sweeping the globe but have escaped its impact – until now
In February, just as the coronavirus pandemic began to take hold, four people set sail for one of the most remote places on Earth — a small camp on Kure Atoll, at the edge of the uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
There, more than 2,200km from Honolulu, they lived in isolation for nearly nine months while working to restore the island’s environment.
Governor Gavin Newsom announced the stay-at-home order for all non-essential work and gatherings from 10pm to 5 am
California is imposing a curfew affecting nearly all of its 40 million residents beginning this weekend, as the state tries to control a surge in coronavirus cases.
The state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, announced what officials are describing as a limited stay-at-home order on Thursday, saying that all nonessential work and gathering must stop from 10pm to 5am. The order will apply to the 41 counties currently in the most restrictive tier of reopening rules, which accounts for 94% of the state’s 40 million residents.
Letting the virus that causes Covid-19 circulate more-or-less freely is dangerous not only because it risks overwhelming hospitals and so endangering lives unnecessarily, but also because it could delay the evolution of the virus to a more benign form and potentially even make it more lethal.
Though the data is still sketchy and the measures crude, this effect may already be influencing the difference in death rates between Sweden – which took a relaxed approach to containment until recently – and Norway, whose measures have been much stricter. Sweden has more than three times as many deaths per 100 cases as its neighbour.
When you serve in the executive branch, you are required to take an oath of office on your first day. Your oath is not to the president of the United States but to the Constitution and the American people. When Emily accepted this leadership role, she also accepted the responsibility to make the tough choices. This is one of those times.
Make no mistake, I absolutely want the Trump campaign to expose fraud, if it is there. As a father, small business owner and lifelong Republican, I do not want a Joe Biden presidency. I simply do not agree with Joe Biden on how to move America forward. But, as an American, I know elections have consequences and my support of our Constitution outweighs my distress at who will be in the Oval Office.
New claims for unemployment benefits in the US rose to 742,000 last week. It is the first increase since early October, as a surge in coronavirus cases keeps a tight check on the US economic recovery.
More than 21 million Americans are currently claiming some form of unemployment insurance.
Even with news of two promising vaccines, the consumer spending that powers the nation’s economic growth could shrivel amid extended business closures.
While the holiday season traditionally brings enormous sales volume for retailers, restaurants, and movie theaters, many are facing a challenging season. Travel is at a near-standstill, consumers’ wallets are already tightly squeezed, and extended pandemic unemployment assistance is set to expire by the end of December.
The economic pain from the coronavirus pandemic continues. The U.S. Department of Labor just reported that another 742,000 unemployed Americans filed for first-time unemployment benefits just last week. Meanwhile, there’s still no badly needed Covid-19 economic stimulus package.
Red flag: 4.4 million Americans are receiving "Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation," up from 1.4 million in August.
That's the program for people who have been unemployed for months and exhausted their regular UI.
The UK will be urged to reconsider its opposition to waiving intellectual property rights for Covid-19 vaccines and treatments at a World Trade Organization meeting on Friday, a move that would allow mass production of treatments and inoculations against the disease and could significantly shorten the length of the pandemic, campaigners say.
India and South Africahave proposed that WTO member states be allowed to waive patents and other intellectual property (IP) rights on any treatments and tools related to Covid-19 until the end of the pandemic, including for the Moderna and Pfizer/BionNTech vaccines that are set to be approved for use in the coming weeks.
More mink mutation news: a number of cases of Covid-19 have been found in people who work in the mink industry in Sweden.
In a statement the Swedish Public Health Agency said it and “the Swedish Veterinary Institute, the Swedish Board of Agriculture and local infection control units are jointly investigating whether there is any connection between the cases and their contact with minks.”
The year 2020 has been transformative for how society sees fatherhood, and could produce the most profound shift in caring responsibilities since the second world war, according to researchers, business leaders and campaigners.
Research has shown that while women bore the brunt of extra childcare during the initial coronavirus lockdown and are being disproportionately impacted by the economic fallout, there has been also a huge surge in the number of hours men are spending with their children.
Retirement income review to emphasise Australians using ‘voluntary savings’, saying a lift in compulsory super rate would hurt wages growth
The Morrison government is laying the groundwork to scrap the already legislated increase to the superannuation guarantee, declaring the retirement income review has found current policy settings are suitable.
A summation of the retirement income review distributed by treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s office ahead of the report’s official release on Friday put greater emphasis on Australians using “voluntary savings”, including equity within their homes, ahead of raising compulsory superannuation contributions.
‘Value over volume’ doesn’t take into account the benefits of young tourists, which includes working while they’re here
Kiwis have a long history of welcoming guests and sharing what we love about our country. So it was perhaps no surprise that recent comments from New Zealand’s new minister of tourism, Stuart Nash, have elicited such passionate debate amongst locals and the industry.
Speaking at a summit hosted by the Tourism Industry Aotearoa, Nash said the future of the New Zealand tourism industry is high-net-worth visitors who spend more while they are here. To show his intent in this area Nash also said he would like to ban the hire of non-self-contained vans to tourists to stop “Freedom Campers” – a specific subset of backpackers who sleep in their vehicle wherever the fancy takes them, as opposed to paying a few dollars for a campsite with amenities such as bathrooms.
Watching Andrew Cuomo’s coronavirus press briefings was once a household ritual for many in the US and around the world. But on Wednesday, the New York governor lost his cool.
Strict six-day lockdown begins today to allow for a ‘contract-tracing blitz’ to contain a coronavirus cluster that has so far infected 22 people. Follow live
The US coronavirus death toll has now surpassed 250,029, representing a higher death toll than any other country in the world.
According to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, x number Americans have now died of coronavirus, more than eight months after the start of the pandemic.
Walmart, McDonald’s and Uber are among the companies that have the most employees on food stamps and Medicaid, according to a report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO).
The GAO looked into the matter at the behest of Bernie Sanders. “These giant corporations pay starvation wages – wages so low their workers have to rely on Medicaid and food stamps,” Sanders said, pointing to several fast food and other companies whose workers have to rely on benefits because they do not make enough money to survive.
These giant corporations pay starvation wages—wages so low their workers have to rely on Medicaid and food stamps to survive:
Walmart McDonald’s Dollar Tree Uber Burger King FedEx Wendy's
This is what a rigged economy is about. We need a $15 living wage and Medicare for All. https://t.co/GFzfK9ERae
Bleak landmark comes as more than 11m have been infected
Biden Covid adviser warns of further hardship over winter
The United States has seen more than 250,000 deaths due to the coronavirus pandemic as a new swathe of data was released that pushed the stricken country over the grim landmark on Wednesday.
Latest figures from Johns Hopkins University showed that the number of people killed by Covid-19 is now 250,029.