Joe Biden’s latest string of victories prompts renewed calls for senator to call it quits for the national good
For more than three years it seemed impossible to millions of Americans that anything could be more important than voting for an alternative to Donald Trump.
Yet right now the US president is no longer seen as the most pressing threat to national security. The coronavirus crisis has temporarily turned the US presidential election into a sideshow.
Continue reading...Scott Morrison says massive step-up of the government’s response to the Covid-19 outbreak likely to be in place for at least six months
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has told Australians to “stop hoarding” as he announces sweeping new measures to try to slow the spread of coronavirus, including a ban on indoor gatherings of more than 100 people, a global do-not-travel order, and strict new rules for visiting aged care homes.
In a massive step-up of the government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, Morrison announced that a national cabinet of state and federal leaders had agreed on Tuesday night to an indefinite new ban on indoor groups of 100 people or more, with exemptions for schools, public transport, universities, prisons, courts, supermarkets and worksites.
Continue reading...Belgium goes into lockdown; EU implements strictest travel ban in history; outbreak reaches every US state. Follow the latest updates
Breaking: Nicola Sturgeon announces schools and nurseries in Scotland will close to pupils at the end of the week.
The first minister said there will be further announcements to support low income students on free school meals as well as students who have exams.
A person has died from coronavirus in Burkina Faso, the first known death from the disease in sub-Saharan Africa, writes the Guardian’s international correspondent Michael Safi.
The country, where security has been deteriorating for months due to attacks by armed groups including some linked to Islamic State and Al-Qaeda, has emerged as a hotspot in Africa, with 27 confirmed cases and at least 200 more people suspected of having the disease.
Continue reading...Ireland's prime minister, Leo Varadkar, delivers stark warnings and calls for unity in the wake of the coronavirus crisis. Speaking on St Patrick's Day, Varadkar called for citizens to isolate, for pubs and restaurants to close and social gatherings to be cancelled. Varadkar also said the most vulnerable would be looked after, insisting banks, government and utilities were there to help
Australian academic, psychologist and author Lea Waters has three handy hints to avoid cabin fever during the coronavirus crisis. The video is the first in a multi-part series looking at ways we can all stay positive during the coronavirus crisis.
Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak delivered a coronavirus update to the UK on Tuesday where the chancellor announced that £330bn of guaranteed loans would be made available for businesses, among a number of other loans for smaller businesses. Johnson meanwhile said that ‘we must act like a wartime government’
The company is prioritising five categories of goods which it classifies as essential products
Online retail giant Amazon is stopping sellers from sending non-essential items to its UK and US warehouses until 5 April, to make space for vital items needed by its customers during the coronavirus outbreak.
Amazon wrote to its third-party sellers, some of whom use the company’s logistics to store and dispatch their products, to inform them that stocks of medical supplies and certain household items are running low due to increased demand from online shoppers.
Continue reading...Border issue and other matters discussed in conference call with Germany, France and UK
Turkey has pressed European leaders to make fresh cash pledges to prevent tens of thousands of refugees from leaving the country and trying to reach Europe amid a Russian-Syrian offensive in north-west Syria.
After intense bombardment in Idlib province last month, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, encouraged thousands of refugees in the country to move on towards the Greek islands and the Baltics, in a repeat of the surge to Europe in 2015.
Continue reading...As more countries take extreme measures to deal with the outbreak of coronavirus, people around the world have been finding novel ways of helping one another and lifting each other's spirits. From singing opera on balconies to playing table tennis through a window, here's a look at how people are coping with life in coronavirus quarantine
Continuing chaotic sitation under Nicolás Maduro leaves hospitals and health services desperately unprepared
There is no ideal time for a pandemic, but fewer countries are less equipped to deal with the Covid-19 outbreak than crisis-ridden Venezuela, warn doctors and public health experts.
Bed shortages, a lack of isolation areas and short supplies of soap are already a daily reality at one hospital in Ciudad Guayana, a city in the country’s east. There is a nearby centre set up for the pandemic response but workers there say there are not enough ambulances to ferry patients.
Continue reading...England’s deputy chief medical officer does not rule out further curbs; Ohio primary polls ordered to close; France in lockdown; WHO urges widespread testing. Follow the latest updates
Iran has temporarily freed a total of 85,000 prisoners, including political prisoners, a spokesman for its judiciary said on Tuesday, adding that the prisons were responding to the threat of a coronavirus epidemic in jails.
“Some 50% of those released are security-related prisoners . Also in the jails we have taken precautionary measures to confront the outbreak,” the spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili.
The #Iranian government feels it is appropriate to release 80k+ prisoners due to #Covid_19 ,including murderers&drug dealers,but continuously refuse to release the innocent political prisoners,because they hold too much value as bargaining chips #freeanoosheh
On the island of Jamaica, political and social messages have long been spread through the dancehalls and music, and so it is with coronavirus.
Just days after the island’s first confirmed case, an educational single, New Hail, was released to teach listeners how to avoid spreading the virus.
Mi just ah think, we cyan a guh roun’ and touch touch people like we used to. Then me link wid one of my G dem - and you know da likkle supm deh weh we ah rub off big finga? Mi seh dah hail deh now, it haffi guh cut out. Because dis nuh good fi we health, right now. Right deh so now, di song pop inna mi head, like yow, we need fi hail wid we foot enuh.
It a affect yuh, and it nuh care ‘bout race, riches or gender. A nuh everything make fi gimmick and joke ‘bout. As an artiste, I’m all about the fun, but this is not a fun thing and me coulda never do a dance fi some people siddung and joke and laugh about. Yuh know how much street dance cancel over this thing, how many people livelihood affected? Yuh know how much a my show dem get cancel because no travelling nah gwaan?
Continue reading...China’s foreign ministry says US president should ‘stop this despicable practice’
Donald Trump has referred to the coronavirus as “the Chinese virus”, escalating a deepening US-China diplomatic spat over the outbreak.
After giving an address on Monday warning of a possible recession, the US president posted on Twitter: “The United States will be powerfully supporting those industries, like Airlines and others, that are particularly affected by the Chinese Virus. We will be stronger than ever before!”
Continue reading...Italy’s Salvini and others on the far right could weaponise people’s despair. Democratic governments must fight them with transparency
If the coronavirus pandemic is fuelling any political hope, it is that this crisis is a robust nail in the coffin of populist politics. Surely, some argue, in the face of an entirely indiscriminate, unforeseen and formidable plague, for which no one can be blamed (unlike, say, greedy bankers and unscrupulous lenders in the global financial crisis, or the terrorists of 9/11) people will turn to the truth, to science and to expert-led government.
And, true, populist leaders seem to have lost their voice, for now: the attempts to blame migrants, porous borders and the forces of globalisation for the coronavirus have received short shrift. Fear and deference have, momentarily at least, rendered citizens less inclined to question mainstream governments and turn to populism’s snake oil vendors. Better still: it looks as though governments led by populists or populists-lite, such as Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, are set for a rough ride, too, unless they change their ways.
Continue reading...New South Wales teachers union warns it is ‘impossible’ for schools to practise social distancing measures recommended by the government
Dozens of independent schools across Australia are going ahead with shutdowns as the New South Wales teachers union warns it is “impossible” for them to practise social distancing measures recommended by the government.
On Tuesday, Pymble Ladies College in Sydney joined dozens of private schools in Victoria when it announced it would move to online classes from Thursday.
Continue reading...An aquarium in Chicago has let its penguins wander around freely after closing to visitors indefinitely due to the coronavirus outbreak. The Shedd Aquarium said on social media: 'While this may be a strange time for us, these days feel normal for animals at Shedd'
Not long ago, I travelled to the Black Hills of South Dakota to see the place from which humanity would supposedly be reborn after global civilisational collapse. The end of the world was trending, and it seemed as good a time as any to visit a place for sitting out the last days. Over the previous few months, perhaps as a means of sublimating my own anxieties about raising a small child in an increasingly dark and volatile world, I had become preoccupied with the apocalyptic tone of our culture.
One of the more perverse aspects of this obsession was a months-long binge of doomsday prepper content, of blogs and forums and YouTube videos in which burly American guys, most of whom were called things like Kyle or Brent, explained how to prepare for a major catastrophe – your global pandemics, your breakdowns of law and order, your all-out nuclear wars – by pursuing various strategies for “tactical survival”. And this had opened out on to a broader vista of apocalyptic preparedness, and to a lucrative niche of the real estate sector catering to individuals of means who wanted a place to retreat to when things truly went sideways.
Continue reading...Though significant, Jacinda Ardern’s measures will not avert a downturn, and lower-income workers will be hardest hit
The New Zealand government’s announcement of a NZ$12.1bn spending package is massive – that’s undeniable. But the economic downturn that New Zealand faces will be even larger. The downturn is going to cause economic chaos, and it will see job losses. The key to limiting the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the economy is supporting employment and businesses, and although the package assists these aims, it doesn’t go far enough.
The stimulus package mirrors similar measures around the world, with wage support and paid self-isolation leave. It boldly focuses on businesses, with support for employment as we enter a downturn – and that’s exactly the right area to be targeting. In New Zealand, increased payments to those already out of work have been announced, as have measures to free up business cashflow. It also includes a suite of additional measures. However, there is a glaring gap, with little support for lower-income workers themselves.
Continue reading...Holiday for minimum security prisoners is cancelled because of outbreak, so many simply run off
Hundreds of prisoners have escaped from four semi-open prisons in São Paulo state in the south-east of Brazil after Easter prison holidays were cancelled and restrictions on visitors tightened because of coronavirus.
Videos showed dozens of prisoners fleeing down a street near one coastal prison and flooding across a soccer pitch on a beach.
Continue reading...Fifty London theatres and 250 throughout UK to close, says industry body
All major British theatre will cease and several cultural institutions will close or postpone shows as the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the UK’s arts and culture sector grows following the government’s call for “drastic action” to halt its spread.
The Society of London Theatre (Solt) and UK Theatre, the industry body that represents nearly every British theatre, announced that, as of Monday night, all its members would close their doors. The groups represent about 50 London theatres and almost 250 others throughout the UK.
Continue reading...Drone footage shows a motorway in Baranzate, near Milan, almost completely empty amid a nationwide lockdown imposed by the Italian government. The European Union on Monday proposed suspending all non-essential inbound travel for 30 days