Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
The US president stokes division as the virus rages, while the prime minister of Canada – where the outbreak appears to be stabilizing – has fostered a shared sense of duty
Donald Trump marked the Fourth of July with an apocalyptic speech at Mount Rushmore in which he stoked partisan grievance and deployed racist dog whistles, ignoring calls for unity as coronavirus cases surge.
Three days earlier, Justin Trudeau chose a more low-key location to celebrate Canada’s own national holiday. The prime minister and his family were photographed harvesting vegetables at an Ottawa food bank farm.
Far-right leader is adamant the young can rest easy but 3,500 Brazilians under the age of 40 have already died from Covid-19
Young people should not fret about coronavirus, Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro declared on Tuesday as he announced he had contracted the illness.
But Hugo Dutra was youthful and fit: a dance-addicted millennial with no underlying medical conditions. He died in Rio on 18 April, after eight days on a ventilator.
Employers are avoiding paying maternity benefits and purging union members as orders plummet during Covid-19, say activists
A few weeks ago, Kalpona Akter’s phone started vibrating. She watched with mounting dread as message after message poured in. First there was the garment worker who had been sacked for demanding personal protective equipment for his colleagues. Then pregnant women and union members started calling for help, saying they were also losing their jobs.
As Bangladesh’s garment sector reels from the economic impact of Covid-19 and the shock of £2.4bn of cancelled or suspended orders inflicted on the industry by overseas fashion brands, a wave of job losses has swept across the country. Moreover, during lockdown hundreds of thousands of workers were not paid for work they had already done.
How often should you wash a cloth mask? And how effective are the disposable ones? The expert guide to choosing, wearing and caring for your face covering
The British have been slow to embrace face masks, despite calls from public health experts. Uptake has been just 25% in the UK, compared with 83.4% in Italy and 65.8% in the US. The president of the Royal Society, Venki Ramakrishnan, said this week that wearing one “is the right thing to do” and that a refusal to do so should be seen as socially unacceptable as drink-driving or not wearing a seatbelt.
Perhaps one of the problems has been the changing advice as new evidence emerges. The World Health Organization (WHO) now recommends people wear cloth masks. Ramakrishnan said that in the UK, “the message has not been clear enough, so perhaps people do not really understand the benefits or are not convinced”. It also doesn’t help that the guidance across the UK is different.
Japan’s theme parks have banned screaming on roller coasters because it spreads coronavirus. “Please scream inside your heart.” https://t.co/DJjC40H0Ap
Nine in 10 Americans believe that racism and police violence are problems in the country, a Guardian/Opinium Research poll has found, a sign that public opinion is shifting away from the views put forward by Donald Trump.
The US president has been criticised for relentlessly stoking white fear and grievance in recent weeks, putting him at odds with Black Lives Matter anti-racism protests that have swept the nation following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May.
Donald Trump, who has villanized and denigrated Mexican migrants and threatened Mexico with tariffs, took a different tone with Obrador today.
During the meeting, when two protectionist presidents were ironically touting a trade deal, celebrating the US-Mexico-Canada trade deal, both leaders had cordial words for each other.
Trump launched his 2016 campaign by calling Mexicans rapists.
He's spread racism against our Latino community ever since.
We need to work in partnership with Mexico.
We need to restore dignity and humanity to our immigration system.
Easier because remote working routines have already been established and because, this time, we know what to expect. And harder, because we know what to expect.
French prosecutors have charged two men with attempted murder after a bus driver was assaulted and left brain dead for refusing to let a group of people who were not wearing face masks board the bus.
Four men set upon 59-year-old Philippe Monguillot in the south-western town of Bayonne on Sunday after he asked three of them to wear masks and tried to check another man’s ticket.
A major research effort is under way to understand whether Covid-19 can spread through tiny airborne particles that are released by infected people and remain suspended in the air for hours.
Scientists are working alongside sanitary engineers at the World Health Organization to investigate how tiny aerosols bearing the virus may be released into the environment; whether they are spread around rooms by air-conditioning units; and how infectious the particles may be.
The Ministry of Justice has announced that cleaners in its central London offices will now receive full pay if they are self-isolating or off sick. The arrangement, which will be administered through cleaning agency OCS, also provides back pay for cleaners who were sick or self-isolating after 1 April.
The announcement follows Guardian reports in June that the MoJ failed to investigate a potential Covid-19 cluster among its cleaners. The cleaners’ union, United Voices of the World (UWV), warned in April that workers felt forced to continue working despite feeling unwell because they could not afford to losewould have lost money.
Latest cases 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.
Tom Hanks, who recovered from coronavirus earlier this year, has said he does not have ‘much respect’ for people who do not wear face masks in public during the pandemic. Speaking about ways to stop the spread of the virus, Hanks said: 'At the very least, three tiny things are in everybody's wheelhouse, if you choose to do them. Wear a mask, wash your hands, social distance’
Anti-trafficking organisations say widespread trust in white outsiders makes children an easy target for abusers from the west
Child protection organisations in Kenya say more needs to be done to protect young people from exploitation by overseas perpetrators, as the country reports a rising number of abuse cases.
The warning follows the arrest of Gregory Dow, a 61-year-old missionary, who last month pleaded guilty in a US court to sexually abusing girls at an orphanage he ran in Kenya.
Jair Bolsonaro has announced live on television he has tested positive for coronavirus - after months of repeatedly trivializing the pandemic and flouting social distancing guidelines.
In March, as Covid-19 claimed its first victims in Brazil, the far-right populist leader bragged that, if infected, he would quickly shake off the illness thanks to his 'athlete’s background'. Since then, the president has continued to attend social events and political rallies, often wearing masks incorrectly, if at all.
Members of the World Health Organization’s technical committee have said they are working on publishing a scientific brief about how and if the coronavirus can spread in the air, following a letter signed by more than 200 scientists who have called for the WHO and others to acknowledge that the disease can spread in the air. Committee member Prof Benedetta Allegranzi said evidence on airborne transmission was emerging but ‘is not definitive’
Confusion over NSW-Victoria border closure as the state’s northern border closes for the first time in a century and Melbourne prepares for lockdown. Follow the latest news
Someone asks about some sort of foreign travel tax? I don’t know - there is a lot in the question, and it’s involving shiz that none of us can even think about until at least July next year, because I’m not sure if this is common knowledge or not - but Australia’s international borders ARE CLOSED.
Scott Morrison:
Well, there’s a lot of speculation on all those questions. So I don’t intend to engage in what is the normal budget speculation when you lead up to a budget.
Those matters will be addressed in the budget.
On what we are planning on doing with Hong Kong residents, Scott Morrison says:
We continue to be concerned about issues in Hong Kong as many nations are, and we have remained in close contact with other like-minded countries about this issue.
This is about how we, as a nation, are responding, domestically, to these issues.
On the issue of the broader shutdown of Melbourne - this is a matter that the Premier advised me of and, of course, based on their advice and the advice that I have received from the chief medical officer, then this was necessary.
I hope it isn’t for that long. I hope it’s for a shorter period as possible.
Here’s the full story on a man in compulsory isolation in New Zealand who has absconded from a quarantine hotel to make a late-night “spur-of-the-moment” dash to the supermarket – before testing positive for Covid-19 the following day:
The Netherlands will be at the centre of upcoming talks over European spending on the coronavirus crisis, driven by a mix of traditional Calvinist frugality and political reality, experts say.
As part of the “frugal four” along with Austria, Denmark and Sweden, the Dutch have enraged many in the EU by putting the brakes on a €750bn (US$850bn) rescue package for the worst-hit countries.
Statistics agency is first in France to cross-check Covid-19 fatalities with country of origin
Death rates among immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa doubled in France and tripled in the Paris region at the height of France’s coronavirus outbreak, finds a study from the French government’s statistics agency.
The INSEE agency’s findings, published on Tuesday, are the closest France has come to acknowledging with numbers the disproportionate impact of the virus on the country’s black immigrants and members of other overlooked minority groups.