Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
With cases of Covid-19 surging past the one million mark, Indians are shunning crowded buses and trains to travel on what has traditionally been regarded in this status-conscious society as the poor man’s mode of mobility: the bicycle.
At Bike Studio in Bhopal, owner Varun Awasthi is almost out of stock. Sales are up by 30% and he expects them to rise to 50% once he gets more bicycles.
The AFL roadshow continues with a mini-hub to be created in Cairns, Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has confirmed.
Two yet-to-be named teams will base themselves in the city, and three games will be played at Cazaly’s Stadium. Strict quarantine protocols and the Covidsafe Industry Plan will be rigorously employed, as is the norm these days.
Three @AFL Premiership games will be played at Cazaly’s Stadium and two clubs will relocate to Cairns temporarily with strict quarantine protocols and the COVID Safe Industry Plan in place. It will inject millions of dollars into the local economy and support jobs. #AFL#qldjobspic.twitter.com/MiILnH1DjX
The Australian Education Union says that senior school students and specialist school students should also be allowed to move to flexible learning because of increasing rates of community transmission in Victoria.
More from AAP:
Year 11 and 12 students are being taught in the classroom ahead of exams, as are special school students.
AEU Victorian branch president Meredith Peace said the rigid approach meant some students were missing out and there was additional stress for principals, teachers and support staff.
US infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci has thrown out the first pitch at a Nationals-Yankees game, and it didn’t go amazingly well, but it did lead to some okay Covid-19 jokes:
The US surpassed 4m coronavirus cases on Thursday, after more than 1,100 new Covid-19-related deaths were reported in a single day on Wednesday for the first time since late May.
As states continue to dial back reopening efforts, nearly every metric for tracking the outbreak has shown a worsening spread. The US politicians volunteering other people’s lives to fight Covid-19Read more
Brazil has registered an additional 1,156 deaths over the last 24 hours and another 55,891 confirmed cases, the health ministry has said. The South American nation has now registered 85,238 deaths and 2,343,366 total confirmed cases.
Footage of Niagara Falls tour boats highlights the stark differences in physical distancing between Canadian and US-managed companies.
The Canadian tour company Hornblower Niagara Cruises’s ships can carry up to 700 people but Ontario’s strict rules have permitted them to carry only six passengers at a time.
Boris Johnson was accused of using the coronavirus pandemic “as some kind of political weapon” by Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, against a backdrop of rising tension over the future of the union.
Sturgeon accused the prime minster of “celebrating” the pandemic after Johnson used his first visit to Scotland since last December’s election to hammer home his message that the UK’s response to the virus exemplified the “sheer might” of the union. He claimed it would have spelled economic disaster for Scotland had it not been able to rely on the UK Treasury for assistance.
The cost of preventing further pandemics over the next decade by protecting wildlife and forests would equate to just 2% of the estimated financial damage caused by Covid-19, according to a new analysis.
Two new viruses a year had spilled from their wildlife hosts into humans over the last century, the researchers said, with the growing destruction of nature meaning the risk today is higher than ever.
An unprecedented wave of silence spread around the world in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, according to researchers who found that vibrations from human activity slumped under national lockdowns.
Records from seismic stations all over the planet show that high frequency noise caused by industrial plants, traffic and other activities fell as much as 50% as country after country imposed restrictions that grounded planes, emptied roads and brought down the shutters on shops and businesses.
At least 97 Yemeni healthcare workers have died from Covid-19 as the disease ravages the war-torn country, according to a report that gives an insight into the true scale of Yemen’s poorly documented outbreak.
Yemen, already suffering from a five-year war that has caused the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, has proved uniquely vulnerable to the coronavirus pandemic, according to data published by the medical charity MedGlobal on Thursday.
Martín Vizcarra announced emergency decree putting health ministry in charge of system after Celia Capira chased his truck
As the presidential motorcade pulled away from the main hospital in Peru’s second city – fleeing an angry protest by medical staff and relatives of Covid-19 patients – one woman broke away from the crowd.
Celia Capira ran sobbing after the truck carrying the president, Martín Vizcarra, yelling for him to go and see for himself the grim conditions at the hospital, where her husband was fighting for his life.
Latest updates: how has Covid-19 progressed where you live? Check the week-on-week changes across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
The map shows local authorities where the number of cases has increased week-on-week and where it has fallen. Some of this is due to natural fluctuations, especially in areas where there are very few cases, and so a rise from 1 to 2 is a doubling. Increased testing also means that more cases may be being detected than previously, although the impact of this between one week and the next is likely to be slight.
After an historic election victory, Lazarus Chakwera explains his desire to give Malawians ‘dignity and development’
Promising to “clear the rubble” of corruption within the government, Malawi’s new president is beginning his term by raising the country’s minimum wage in an attempt to win over both doubters and international donors.
In an interview with the Guardian, Lazarus Chakwera, who won a historic victory over Peter Mutharika in June, urged Malawians to trust that he will deliver on his promises.
A diplomacy shaped around self-serving tittle-tattle now risks lives and undermines America’s standing in the world
The campaign by the Trump administration against the World Health Organization has often seemed faintly preposterous.
Over the months of the coronavirus pandemic its untruths and hyperbole have been dismissed by many as iterations of Trumpspeak, whose main purpose has been to distract from the US’s catastrophic response to Covid-19, which has claimed almost 140,000 lives and devastated the economy.
The BBC reports that the coronavirus pandemic has pushed South Korea into a recession, with the country seeing a 2.9% fall in GDP:
South Korea has fallen into recession as the country reels from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
Asia’s fourth-largest economy saw gross domestic product (GDP) fall by a worse-than-expected 2.9% in year-on-year terms, the steepest decline since 1998.
China plans to provide a $1bn loan to make its coronavirus vaccine accessible for countries across Latin America and the Caribbean, the Mexican foreign ministry said on Wednesday, Reuters reports.
Mexico’s foreign ministry said in a statement that China had made the pledge in a virtual meeting between ministers from some Latin American and Caribbean countries.
The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, was asked again about the lockdown of prisoners in Victoria, after it was revealed that a prison guard who works for security firm G4S at the Port Phillip prison had taken a second job working as a security guard in Melbourne’s bungled hotel quarantine program.
A spokeswoman for G4S told AAP:
In recent days, we have received information relating to an employee who, in early April, undertook secondary employment with a security firm without our knowledge. The staff member concluded this contract work in late April. The matter is now the subject of internal disciplinary processes.
We are not making any changes in that regard as a result of the pandemic.
Mikakos also addressed reports that the hospital in Wangaratta, in north-east Victoria, was left short a significant number of healthcare workers yesterday because the new, tighter border restrictions mean that any healthcare worker based in NSW who travels beyond the border bubble has to quarantine for 14 days upon their return.
That means doctors who live in Albury, which is less than an hour’s drive from Wangaratta, will have to quarantine for two weeks to attend regular shifts or consulting days in the regional Victorian hospital.
He has given me a commitment that he will look at his issue. It is really important that healthcare workers, that is people who work in hospital and paramedics and others, are able to provide those services.
As the federal government pledges to send federal law enforcement to cities, and Donald Trump and William Barr connect Black Lives Matter protest against police brutality to alleged spikes in violence, here’s some more context to keep in mind: this isn’t the first time people have pointed to an increase in crime following protests against unjust policing.
It happened in 2014, after the police killing of Michael Brown sparked national protests. Police called it “the Ferguson effect” and argued that protesters had made police afraid to do their jobs.
Bolivia’s plan to hold elections in September is increasingly in doubt amid rising coronavirus deaths, and reports that police have recovered the bodies of hundreds of suspected Covid-19 victims.
In the past five days, a special police unit had found 420 bodies in streets, vehicles and homes in the capital, La Paz, and in Bolivia’s biggest city, Santa Cruz, authorities said on Tuesday. Between 80% and 90% of them are believed to have had the virus.
US death toll at more than 142,000 while Trump admits Covid-19 crisis will ‘get worse before it gets better’
Daily deaths due to Covid-19 on Tuesday surpassed 1,000 for the first time in the US since the start of June, as Donald Trump admitted the crisis would “get worse” before it got better.
The seven-day average for the number of deaths in the country has been slowly rising this month, according to multiple data analyses, and went past the 1,000 mark on Tuesday, taking US fatalities to more than 142,000. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has forecasted that the country will reach 150,000 deaths by early August.
The government’s flagship test-and-trace system is failing to contact thousands of people in areas with the highest infection rates in England, raising further questions about the £10bn programme described by Boris Johnson as “world-beating”.
Local leaders and directors of public health are demanding more control over the tracing operation amid concerns that their ability to contain the virus is being put at risk.