New case is not linked to main outbreak in Auckland, which has so far infected 69 people
A new case of Covid-19 separate from the main cluster has been confirmed in New Zealand, with the infected person identified as a maintenance worker in a quarantine hotel in Auckland.
On Tuesday, 13 new cases were confirmed, with 12 relating to the Auckland cluster, which now numbers 69 in total.
Continue reading...Anders Tegnell appears to have asked if higher death rate among older people acceptable if faster herd immunity achieved
Sweden’s light-touch approach to Covid-19 has come under renewed criticism after emails show the country’s chief epidemiologist appearing to ask whether a higher death rate among older people might be acceptable if it led to faster herd immunity.
Speculation about the views of Sweden’s leading public health officials was further fanned after it also emerged that Anders Tegnell, the architect of the country’s no-lockdown strategy, had deleted some of his emails.
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Republican senator Lindsey Graham’s Democratic rival in South Carolina’s senate race has now out-raised the incumbent for two consecutive quarters.
Former South Carolina Democratic party chairman Jaime Harrison faces an uphill battle in the Republican stronghold state. The fundraising figures, however, coupled with the racial equity protests and pandemic this year has led Cook Political Report to forecast the race from “likely” to “lean” Republican.
Eva Longoria, Tracee Ellis Ross, Kerry Washington and Julia Louis-Dreyfus will help emcee the Democratic National Convention (DNC), the convention committee announced today.
Each of the celebrities are anchoring one night of the convention. Each night has a theme.
The time has finally come! ...Join me live at the 2020 Democratic National Convention to welcome Joe Biden and Kamala Harris!
Watch it Live: https://t.co/GIf7neWRVo#DemConvention pic.twitter.com/Tddyl7Nlzo
Czech Republic sees resurgence of coronavirus infections; India death toll passes 50,000; Japan GDP falls at annual rate of 27.8%
In the UK, the government has performed a juddering u-turn to say that this summer’s exam results will be based on teacher assessment rather than a controversial standardisation model that prompted fury from students who found themselves sharply downgraded on the basis of their schools’ previous performance.
My colleagues Richard Adams and Sally Weale have a write-up here...
Related: A-level and GCSE results in England to be based on teacher assessments in U-turn
Earlier we posted a link to an interesting El Pais piece which noted that in recent months the average age of those newly infected with coronavirus had dropped significantly. If you’re interested in this phenomenon and its consequences more broadly, take a look at this piece by our own Jon Henley from last week:
Unlike during the early months of the crisis in March and April, when older people accounted for the biggest share of cases, in France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium 20 to 39-year-olds now represent up to 40% of new infections...
The challenge for governments and health agencies, experts say, is to prevent the virus from spreading to more vulnerable populations. “There’s no reason to imagine it can be contained to just one age group, without affecting others, Pascal Crépey, an epidemiologist and public health expert, told Le Parisien.
Related: Surge in Covid-19 cases across Europe linked to young people
Continue reading...Berlin officials say Elsa and her piglets pose a danger and may have to be ‘withdrawn’
A wild boar that has become a frequent visitor at a lakeside bathing resort in Berlin is attracting a growing band of supporters following authorities’ suggestion that it could have to be killed.
The animal, nicknamed Elsa, has earned something akin to celebrity status after a series of photos of it and its piglets stealing a nude bather’s laptop at Teufelssee lake in west Berlin went viral this month.
Continue reading...The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, walked off stage to chants of 'step down' after a speech to workers at the Minsk tractor works on Monday. The factory is one of the large state-run industrial plants that are the pride of his Soviet-style economic model and core support base. During his speech, Lukashenko said he would be willing to hand over power after a referendum in an apparent attempt to pacify mass protests and strikes
Continue reading...Whistleblower Edward Snowden has earned more than $1.2m in speaking fees since he leaked confidential US material to outlets including the Guardian and went into exile in Moscow, according to a filing by the US justice department in court in Massachusetts.
Related: Trump says he will 'take a look' at pardon for Edward Snowden
Continue reading...Since taking office in June, DeJoy has executed sweeping changes at the struggling USPS, leading to delays in mail delivery – and fears mail-in ballots won’t arrive on time
About a month ago, a United States Postal Service (USPS) mail carrier named Mark arrived at his post office in central Pennsylvania and got some shocking news from his station manager. Mark and his coworkers were told they would have to depart the office for deliveries a few hours earlier each day, even if that meant leaving behind much of the day’s mail.
In the weeks that followed, higher-ups at the station instructed carriers to abandon hundreds of pieces of mail in order to depart a mere 10 or 20 minutes earlier. As the days went on, the excess mail started to pile up, and now Mark estimates there are thousands of undelivered letters and packages sitting in his station.
Continue reading...90,000 Africans fought the Japanese in Myanmar on behalf of Britain in the second world war. Feelings are mixed in the few remaining survivors about being sent by a colonial power to fight a battle that wasn’t theirs
Continue reading...Embattled Belarus president looked shaken as people yelled ‘liar’ in fresh blow to regime
Alexander Lukashenko’s grip on power in Belarus has taken a further hit, as workers heckled him during a visit to a factory on the outskirts of Minsk.
The visit to the the state-owned MZKT military vehicles factory on Monday was meant to show the Belarusian president was still in control and retained the support of workers at the vast factories that are the backbone of the country’s neo-Soviet economy, a day after the biggest rally in the country’s recent history against his rule.
Continue reading...People gathered in Bangkok on Sunday for one of the biggest demonstrations against the country's military rulers since the 2014 coup. The student-led movement has three core demands: hold new elections, amend the constitution and end the intimidation of government critics
Continue reading...Interview given by MI6 officer in 1980s was discovered in research for new documentary
A first-hand account of Britain’s role in the 1953 coup that overthrew the elected prime minister of Iran and restored the shah to power has been published for the first time.
The account by the MI6 officer who ran the operation describes how it took British intelligence years to persuade the US to take part in the coup. Meanwhile, MI6 recruited agents and bribed members of Iran’s parliament with banknotes transported in biscuit tins.
Continue reading...Jacinda Ardern has postponed the New Zealand general election by four weeks, to 17 October, but ruled out delaying it any further, as the country tackles a new outbreak of the coronavirus. The outbreak centres on New Zealand's biggest city, Auckland, after the country had been free of coronavirus cases for 102 days
Continue reading...White European and American practitioners have not taken charges of discrimination seriously. It’s time to do our homework and learn to change
We are long overdue a reckoning around race in gender and development work. The number of women who have recently issued public claims of racism or discrimination against global women’s rights organisations is testament to that.
The Nobel Women’s Initiative is the latest to come under fire with allegations of toxic workplace practices, joining the International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC) and Women Deliver, among others. (I’ve previously been employed by IWHC and Women Deliver.)
Continue reading...US National Weather Service’s automated station at Furnace Creek in California hit extreme high at 3:41pm on Sunday
A temperature of 54.4C – or 129.9F – has been recorded in Death Valley, California, in what some extreme weather watchers believe could be the hottest reading ever reliably recorded on the planet.
The United States National Weather Service’s automated weather station at Furnace Creek near the border with Nevada hit the extreme high at 3:41pm on Sunday afternoon, a statement said.
Continue reading...Photojournalist Ada Luisa Trillo has won the Guardian’s Portfolio Review award at Format photography festival this year. Her powerful piece of work on the migrant caravan follows the people who left Central American countries to reach the US
In January 2020, fleeing violence and poor economic conditions, a group of Hondurans organised a huge migrant caravan that travelled through Guatemala into Mexico. After travelling for eight days, the caravan crossed the Suchiate River into Mexico and were met by the recently established Guardia Nacional composed of former federal, military and naval police.
Continue reading...Country is entering a dangerous new phase of rising infections in small towns and villages with limited access to healthcare
Where better to seek sanctuary from a virus roaring through a crowded metropolis than a remote mountainside with views of the Himalayas?
This was the reasoning that prompted Lalit Upreti, 34, to leave the Indian capital, Delhi, where he works as a cook, two months ago to return to his hamlet Khankari in Uttarakhand, near the country’s border with Nepal. Here, he thought, his family would be safe.
Continue reading...Tens of thousands of Belarusians assemble in Minsk as an extraordinary week of rising sentiment comes to a close. ‘I made my choice and my vote was thrown in the bin, so I’ll keep coming out until our president leaves,’ said one demonstrator. Seven days after the country’s authoritarian ruler, Alexander Lukashenko, claimed to have secured 80% of the vote in a presidential election, his legitimacy is in tatters and his regime faces its biggest crisis since he came to power 26 years ago
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At least 23 members of an Oklahoma State University sorority have tested positive for Covid-19, the school said in a statement on Saturday.
The outbreak happened at the off-campus house of the Pi Beta Phi sorority and was detected by rapid-antigen testing done at an off-campus clinic, according to the university.
The coronavirus doesn’t appear to have devastated America’s homeless population to the extent public health officials and advocates for the homeless initially feared.
Johns Hopkins reported 1,029 new deaths on Saturday from the virus in the US. According to the university’s tally, 169,489 people in the US have died from Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic with identified cases exceeding 5 million.
“I am shocked, I guess I can say, because it’s a very vulnerable population. I don’t know what we’re going to see in an aftermath,” said Dr. Deborah Borne, who oversees health policy for Covid-19 homeless response at San Francisco’s public health department. “That’s why it’s called a novel virus, because we don’t know.”
More than 200 of an estimated 8,000 homeless people in San Francisco have tested positive for the virus, and half came from an outbreak at a homeless shelter in April. One homeless person is among the city’s 69 deaths.
Continue reading...The Guardian’s Middle East writers reflect on a week of devastation and anger after a blast that shocked the world
For most of my 15 years in the Middle East, I’ve had a home in Beirut. It’s been a sanctuary to return to from countless trips around the region, a place where the rigours, and sometimes dangers, of Iraq, Syria, Libya and elsewhere could be set aside for a while.
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