Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
As England braces for a second national lockdown, Downing Street once more faces a rebellion over tougher restrictions. Ahead of a Commons vote on Wednesday, several Conservative MPs are weighing up their options. Here are some key figures who may line up against the government and the broad camps they sit in, alongside Nigel Farage and his plan for a new anti-lockdown party.
England is preparing to enter a second national lockdown after scientific advisers warned that coronavirus infections and the numbers of people in hospital are rising steeply in many areas of the country. But what is the science behind the decision?
Two-thirds of Slovakia’s population of 5.4 million people were tested for coronavirus over the weekend as part of a programme aimed at making it one of the first countries to test its entire population.
Antigen tests were carried out on 3.625 million people – of whom 38,359, or 1.06%, were found to be positive.
Fresh lockdowns to stem the spread of coronavirus have sparked sometimes violent protests in several European countries, fuelled both by ideological fury at new government-imposed restrictions and fears of economic hardship.
As the number of infections surge and hospitals and intensive care units fill up, countries including Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain have once more introduced tough curbs on movement and gatherings.
Footage of a pianist in Barcelona playing a rendition of the Bangles' hit Eternal Flame amid the sound of explosions, wailing sirens and protesters has gone viral on social media.
Peter William Geddes, who was playing in Plaça Nova on 31 October, said as the violence escalated in the background he felt peaceful: 'When I play I am very calm. No nerves.'
Anti-lockdown protests have been ramping up across Europe as many countries head into more stringent Covid-19 lockdowns
Cellular (T-cell) immunity against the virus that causes Covid-19 is likely to be present within most adults six months after primary infection, with levels considerably higher in patients with symptoms, a study suggests.
The data offers another piece of the puzzle that could be key to understanding whether previous Sars-CoV-2 infections – the virus behind Covid-19 – can prevent reinfection, and if so, for how long.
The head of the World Health Organization has gone into self-quarantine after someone he had been in contact with tested positive for Covid-19.
With the virus again spreading rapidly across Europe and elsewhere, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who is based in Geneva, made the announcement by Twitter late on Sunday night, but stressed he had no symptoms.
Strategies for exiting spring lockdowns did not work, and goodwill leached away, allowing infection rates to rise
Last week Europe registered 1.5m new cases of Covid-19 – a record – making it once again the centre of the pandemic. The UK is not exempt, and England will enter a new lockdown from Thursday 5 November. From the outside, it might seem the continent is in the grip of a second wave that is ramping rapidly towards its peak. But it is not one wave, it’s many local waves, and that is crucial in understanding how to rein it in and prevent the same thing happening again.
Though there is some tentative evidence that the virus itself has undergone a change since the summer, there is none to suggest that this change has affected either the transmissibility or the severity of the disease. Nor can the change explain the synchronous surges in all parts of the continent.
Donald Trump has threatened to fire America’s top infectious disease expert during a rally in Florida, just 24 hours before the US presidential election.
Anthony Fauci has served for more than three decades as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and has been critical of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak. During the midnight rally in Florida, crowds chanted: ‘Fire Fauci!’, which the president allowed to continue for several seconds before responding: ‘Don’t tell anybody, but let me wait until a little bit after the election.’
Time at a Standstill is a digital project that brings together the work of 42 photographers who explore the experience of el confinamiento in a country becalmed by coronavirus and isolation. The project can be viewed on the PHotoESPAÑA website
US president Donald Trump is currently speaking past a coronavirus curfew intended to mitigate infections in Florida, as he hosts a rally in Miami-Dade county.
The county has a nightly curfew that comes into effect at midnight. But Trump’s rally is still going on past the witching hour, with thousands of supporters in attendance.
With 25 mins left til Miami-Dade’s midnight curfew goes into effect, Pres. Trump has landed in Opa-Locka. pic.twitter.com/mZtoX6LcwO
“Is there any place you would rather be than a Trump rally? We got a lot of rich people here, lotta money,” says Trump at his rally that is now breaking Miami-Dade curfew.
In Serbia, huge crowds have attended the funeral for the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro in violation of coronavirus-fighting restrictions.
Associated Press report that thousands gathered outside the main temple in the capital, Podgorica, for the liturgy and the burial of Bishop Amfilohije. Authorities said the bishop died Friday after contracting the virus weeks ago.
Governments in Europe face a “very, very difficult situation” in controlling rising numbers of Covid-19 cases as their citizens grow weary with renewed restrictions on daily life, the World Health Organization’s top emergencies expert said.
“Clearly people are frustrated, and have every right to be frustrated, and they are fatigued,” Mike Ryan told a regular WHO news briefing in Geneva.
Footage of a pianist in Barcelona playing a rendition of the Bangles’ hit Eternal Flame amid the sound of explosions, wailing sirens and protesters has gone viral on social media.
Peter William Geddes, who was playing in Plaça Nova on 31 October, said as the violence escalated in the background he felt peaceful: “When I play I am very calm. No nerves.”
Boris Johnson will insist there is “no alternative” to a nationwide lockdown as he addresses the House of Commons on Monday amid mounting fury among Tory MPs, after ministers conceded the new “stay at home” order could be extended beyond 2 December.
The prime minister will tell parliament that without the draconian new measures, which will come into force across England on Thursday, deaths from coronavirus over the winter could be “twice as bad or even worse” than in the first wave.
Morgues in converted ice rinks, security guards outside overwhelmed hospitals to turn patients away, even municipal mass graves.
When Boris Johnson’s “quad” of senior ministers met on Friday, they were presented with a chilling prognosis of what would happen if they failed to take draconian action.
Boris Johnson has announced a four-week lockdown in England, following weeks of pressure from his own scientific advisers and opposition parties to introduce tougher measures to tackle coronavirus. The full details of the restrictions will be published early this week before a vote in parliament on Wednesday.
One notable feature of the campaign has been several publications breaking with tradition to either back a Democratic nominee when you usually expect them to lean to the Republican ticket – or to indeed make presidential endorsements when they usually don’t. But the Trump campaign are making a lot of noise this morning about the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette opting for a Republican for the first time since 1972.
This newspaper has not supported a Republican for president since 1972. But we believe President Trump, for all his faults, is the better choice this year.
We share the embarrassment of millions of Americans who are disturbed by the president’s unpresidential manners and character — his rudeness and put-downs and bragging and bending of the truth.
None of this can be justified. The president’s behavior often has diminished his presidency, and the presidency. Most Americans want a president who makes them proud.
The Biden-Harris ticket offers us higher taxes and a nanny state that will bow to the bullies and the woke who would tear down history rather than learning from history and building up the country.
It offers an end to fracking and other Cuckoo California dreams that will cost the economy and the people who most need work right now. “Good-paying green jobs” are probably not jobs for Pittsburgh, or Cleveland, or Toledo, or Youngstown.
Trump again defending his supporters who surrounded the moving Biden campaign bus: "They escorted the bus. And the radical left said 'oh what a horrible thing that is, to escort the bus.'" He says they're just people with an American flag and a Trump flag.
As trump criticised the US top infectious diseases expert Dr Anthony Fauci, the crowd began to chant, “Fire Fauci! Fire Fauci!”.
Trump responded: “Don’t tell anybody, but let me wait ‘til a little bit after the election, please. I appreciate the advice.”
The US is “in for a whole lot of hurt” under the coronavirus pandemic, senior public health expert Anthony Fauci said, predicting a winter of 100,000 or more cases a day and a rising death toll.
Sir Desmond Swayne, one of the Conservative MPs most opposed to a second lockdown, told Sky News that the policy announced by the PM yesterday would have “disastrous consequences”. He said:
I’m worried about the disastrous consequences for unemployment, for wrecked businesses, for years of under-investment while we try and pay this off, when the reality is that the number of deaths for the time of year is normal and expected.
It is very difficult to believe scientists who tell you that there is a deadly pandemic taking place when there are no excess deaths beyond the normal five-year average.
Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, has called for schools in his region to close for a period during the lockdown to help drive down the virus. He was speaking at a joint conference with Steve Rotheram, the mayor of Liverpool city region, who also backed the proposal. Burnham said:
It’s my view, and it’s shared by Steve, that we do need to see a period of closure in our schools if we are to get those cases right down, and if we are to avoid a scenario where large parts of the north-west are simply put back in tier 3 coming out of this.