Glass-walled booths in Seoul won’t let you in unless your temperature is normal
South Korea has opened a high-tech new front in the battle against coronavirus, fortifying bus shelters in the capital with temperature-checking doors and ultraviolet disinfection lamps.
To enter, passengers must stand in front of an automated thermal-imaging camera, and the door will slide open only if their temperature is below 37.5C.
Continue reading...Restaurant diners told to order one dish less than number of people under new system criticised as overly controlling
The Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, has launched a campaign targeting a new enemy of the country: food waste.
“Waste is shameful and thriftiness is honourable,” Xi said in a speech published on Tuesday, describing the amount of food that goes to waste in the country as “shocking and distressing”, according to the state news agency Xinhua.
Continue reading...Russia said on Wednesday the first batch of its Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine would be ready within two weeks and rejected safety concerns over its rapid approval as 'groundless'. The health minister, Mikhail Murashko, said the vaccine, developed by the Gamaleya Institute, would be administered on a voluntary basis. The vaccine has not yet completed its final trials. Only about 10% of clinical trials are successful and some scientists fear Moscow may be putting national prestige before safety
Continue reading...France cancels marathon as cases pick up; WHO warns displacement of people in Beirut risks accelerating spread; four new cases in Auckland
Jordan will close its only land trade border crossing with Syria for a week after a spike in Covid-19 cases coming from its northern neighbour, officials said.
They said the interior minister’s decision to close the main Jaber border crossing would come into effect on Thursday morning.
Britain’s NatWest is cutting at least 500 jobs across its retail business and closing one of its remaining offices in London as banks press on with cost-cutting in the face of a wave of expected loan losses due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The state-backed bank is finalising a voluntary redundancy round targeting cutting 550 full-time equivalent roles across its branches and ‘premier banking’ premium service, union Unite told Reuters.
Tens of thousands of people working for banks have risen to the challenge that the pandemic created. The banks’ response should not be a repeat of the austerity measures that we saw after the financial crisis.
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Well at least we now know where Donald Trump stands on QAnon supporting Marjorie Taylor Greene. Some members of the Republican party disowned her campaign after a series of racist videos emerged in which she complains of an “Islamic invasion” into government offices, claims Black and Hispanic men are held back by “gangs and dealing drugs”, and pushes an antisemitic conspiracy theory that the billionaire philanthropist George Soros, who is Jewish, collaborated with the Nazis.
And that seems all fine with the commander-in-chief
Congratulations to future Republican Star Marjorie Taylor Greene on a big Congressional primary win in Georgia against a very tough and smart opponent. Marjorie is strong on everything and never gives up - a real WINNER!
US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has said his department did everything by the book in regards to arms sales to Saudi Arabia in 2019, after a government watchdog found the risk of civilian casualties in Yemen was not fully evaluated.
His comments came after a state department inspector general report earlier this week concluded the state department did not fully evaluate the risk of civilian casualties in Yemen when it pushed through a huge 2019 precision-guided munitions sale to Saudi Arabia, report the Associated Press.
Rising chorus of concern over Sputnik V vaccine stems from opaque development and lack of mass-testing
In 1977 Scott Halstead, a virologist at the University of Hawaii, was studying dengue fever when he noticed a now well-known but then unexpected feature of the disease.
Animals that had already been exposed to one of the four closely-related viruses that cause dengue and produced antibodies to it, far from being protected against other versions became sicker when infected a second time, and it was the antibodies already produced by the first infection that were responsible, allowing the second infection to hitchhike into the body.
Continue reading...Fight to eradicate disease getting ‘back on track’ after surge in cases due to pause in vaccination campaigns
Polio vaccination campaigns have resumed in Afghanistan and Pakistan – the last two polio-endemic countries in the world – after a “surge” in cases.
The pandemic halted campaigns in both countries in March and confirmed cases have now reached 34 in Afghanistan and 63 in Pakistan – where cases are being recorded in areas of the country previously free of the disease.
Continue reading...GDP falls 20.4% – the worst of any G7 nation in the three months to June
Britain has entered the deepest recession since records began as official figures on Wednesday showed the economy shrank by more than any other major nation during the coronavirus outbreak in the three months to June.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said gross domestic product (GDP), the broadest measure of economic prosperity, fell in the second quarter by 20.4% compared with the previous three months – the biggest quarterly decline since comparable records began in 1955.
Continue reading...Coronavirus restrictions have been reintroduced across New Zealand after four new Covid-19 cases were diagnosed in Auckland
Continue reading...A campaign has highlighted plight of unmarried couples from different countries parted for months
Sarah flew home to Germany in April, leaving her boyfriend, Fares, behind in Jordan, unsure when they might see each other again. “She thought it might take a couple of months,” Fares said.
Inside, he was steeling himself for as long as six months apart, although “I didn’t tell her that,” he says.
Continue reading...New South Wales relents on decision to prevent Canberrans transiting through the state after six-day standoff
Canberrans stuck at the Victorian border have been given four days to return home, after New South Wales relented on its decision to prevent them transiting through the state.
The New South Wales health minister Brad Hazzard said a resolution had been reached on Wednesday, and that drivers must take a direct route and only travel between 9am and 3pm.
Continue reading...Coronavirus updates: New Zealand records first new local cases in 102 days; global deaths likely to pass 750,000 this week, says WHO
As we reported earlier, the Dutch health minister said he plans to introduce mandatory home quarantine for people identified by local authorities as having been in close contact with somebody infected with coronavirus, and for travellers returning from high-risk countries.
Health minister Hugo de Jonge said in a letter to lawmakers that mandatory quarantine could be imposed if people refuse to isolate voluntarily.
Germany has extended a partial travel warning for Spain to the capital of Madrid and the Basque region due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday.
The foreign ministry said it was warning against any unnecessary tourist trips to both regions because of a rising number of new infections and local restrictions put in place to contain the spread of coronavirus.
Continue reading...Move to include local authorities in test and trace could allow politicians to pass blame in a Covid second wave
The saga of the attempts to set up an English test-and-trace system is perhaps the central story of the government’s Covid-19 failure.
At the heart of the tale is a prime minister who promised NHS test and trace would be a “world beating” operation. Next to him sits Matt Hancock, the health secretary whose record is now indelibly associated with the smartphone app that was meant to be integral to controlling the virus, but has yet to materialise. Other key actors include Serco, the multinational outsourcing company that has previously been contracted to run everything from prisons to air traffic control – and, at a cost of £108m, was recently put in charge of recruiting and training thousands of call centre workers to establish contact with infected people and ensure that anyone they had been close to went into self-isolation.
Continue reading...The overarching project of my life has been making myself safe. But what is the point if everyone else is drowning and burning and starving?
I am descended from people who factor a flat tyre into a drive to the airport. I own a personal, portable water filter, just in case. I am someone who patrols her boundaries. I am a list writer, a timetable checker.
The overarching project of my life has been making myself safe. No alarms; no surprises. It has become legend in my family that, at age 11, I ruined a holiday by demanding we move out of our accommodation at the foot of what everyone told me was a dormant volcano, because I thought it was too dangerous. (The volcano did erupt, on my 35th birthday.)
Continue reading...New infections back to nearly half their peak in the Netherlands as France reports ‘worrying increase’
New daily coronavirus infections in the Netherlands are back to roughly half their level at the peak of the pandemic, while France’s prime minister has said it is crucial for his country to avoid a new lockdown amid a “worrying increase” in cases.
Jaap van Dissel, the Netherlands’ chief epidemiologist, told the Dutch parliament on Tuesday that 4,036 new Covid-19 cases had been reported in the past week, an increase of 55% on the previous seven days. The figure translated to a daily average of more than 500, compared with nearly 1,200 at the peak of pandemic.
Continue reading...Amid increasing public clashes with his top public health advisers on the pandemic, Donald Trump appears to have turned to an academic whose views on swift reopening in the face of coronavirus mirror his own.
Related: Covid live news: New Zealand reports first new cases in community; Russia approves vaccine
Continue reading...Russia has approved a controversial Covid-19 vaccine for widespread use after less than two months of human testing, including a dose administered to one of Vladimir Putin’s daughters.
Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the country’s RDIF sovereign wealth fund, said the vaccine would be marketed abroad under the brand name Sputnik V with international agreements to produce 500m doses and requests for 1bn doses from 20 countries.
The vaccine’s name evokes the world’s first satellite to be launched into orbit, Sputnik, during the cold war space race, which was also seen as a competition for international prestige.
Continue reading...Auckland has been swiftly put under a three-day lockdown after four cases of coronavirus were confirmed in one family in the city.
The prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, made the announcement at a late-night press conference after 102 days without any community transmission in New Zealand. The family had not travelled overseas and the source of the infection was unknown
Continue reading...Sputnik V’s development has been marked by worrying opacity and ethical issues
The race to find a vaccine against Covid-19 has not always been particularly edifying, driven at times by so-called “vaccine nationalism”, much cautioned against by the World Health Organization, which has itself been accused of being invested as much in self-interest and prestige as global public health.
Russia’s announcement that it has registered its Sputnik V vaccine as safe and effective for mass production and inoculation even before so-called phase 3 large-scale safety trials, which usually take months, fits the pattern.
Continue reading...Government says it will not cancel trains to seaside after dozens are involved in fight
Belgium’s government has ruled out cancelling trains to the seaside after a weekend beach brawl prompted local mayors to call for limits on visitors to the coast.
Local politicians across Belgium’s 40-mile (65km) strip of coastline called for action after police confronted dozens of young people, who had been disturbing other holidaymakers, at a beach in Blankenberge on Saturday. Some of the young people threw sand in people’s faces and used parasols as projectiles against police. Three people from Brussels appeared before a judge on Monday charged with assault and battery.
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