Category: #uk

A company is offering voters the chance to escape and “live under a rock” for the week of the White House election. Hotels.com said the opportunity is perfect for “those who are experiencing election stress disorder”. It added: “We‘re transforming an age-old idiom into a bookable experience, so individuals can relax, recharge, and recover… because who knows what else 2020 has in store for us.”

Tennessee boy achieved nuclear fusion at 12

A 12-year-old boy in Tennessee is being recognised by Guinness World Records for achieving nuclear fusion just hours before his 13th birthday. Jackson Oswalt, now 15, of Memphis has been named the world‘s youngest person to achieve nuclear fusion after officials verified that he built his own nuclear fusion reactor at his family‘s home and successfully deployed it in his final hours of being 12 years old.

Police called to deal with a crab

German police were called to a woman‘s home when a large Chinese mitten crab wandered inside through an open door. Freiburg Police said officers responded to a home in Unterlauchringen where a resident had complained of a 10-inch crab, which was armed with “eight legs” and “two scissors”. The crab was taken to the local vets.

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The coronavirus pandemic threatens to upend 20 years of progress in the campaign to tackle extreme poverty across the globe, according to a study by the World Bank.

The economic impact of Covid-19 is expected “to push an additional 88 million to 115 million people into extreme poverty this year, with the total rising to as many as 150 million by 2021”, the new report says.

The estimate is a sharp increase on the Bank’s previous projection in May that the impacts of the virus would force around 60 million people into extreme poverty in 2020.

What was the trajectory before Covid?

Until the coronavirus pandemic struck, global poverty had been declining for more than two decades.

From the start of the 1990s until 2015, global poverty dropped at an average rate of 1% per year. Progress then slowed, as a result of the twin forces of wars and climate change, but 2020 will be the first rise in extreme poverty since 1998, when the Asian financial crisis hit the global economy.

Who has been hit hardest?

Alongside the $1.90-per-day measure of extreme poverty, the World Bank also tracks poverty at $3.20 a day, the typical line for lower-middle-income countries, and $5.50 a day, typical for upper-middle-income countries.

While fewer than one in ten people in the world live on less than $1.90 a day, close to a quarter of the world’s population subsists below the $3.20 line, and more than 40% – almost 3.3 billion people in total – live below the $5.50 line, the report says.

The financial fortunes of this 40% of the world’s population is referred to as “average global shared prosperity”.

The Covid crisis is believed to have already diminished this shared prosperity, which according to the World Bank, is forecast “to stagnate or even contract” over the course of the year ahead “due to the reduced growth in average incomes”.

The international financial institution also notes that while extreme poverty has traditionally hit people in rural locations hardest, increasing numbers of urban dwellers are now being affected.

At the other end of the scale, meanwhile, the world’s wealthiest people have seen their fortunes swell throughout the pandemic.

Billionaires saw their combined wealth climb by 27.5% to $10.2tn (£7.9tn) from April to July this year, according to a report from Swiss bank UBS – topping the previous high set in 2017.

Why is Covid causing so much damage?

The World Bank says that extreme poverty has been exacerbated not just by the virus but by lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, disruptions to the manufacturing and supply chains, the collapse of the tourism industry, and the sharp decline of demand for oil around the world.

Or as Vox puts it, “most of the devastation was not caused directly by the virus but by the worldwide economic recession brought about by the virus and our efforts to fight it”.

What can be done to reverse the problem?

Since 2013, the World Bank has been working towards the target of having no more than 3% of the global population living on just $1.90 a day by 2030.

In the absence of the global pandemic, the poverty rate was expected to fall to 8% by the end of 2020, down from 9.1%. But now, it is on course to reach 9.4%.

“In order to reverse this serious setback to development progress and poverty reduction, countries will need to prepare for a different economy post-Covid, by allowing capital, labour, skills, and innovation to move into new businesses and sectors,” said World Bank Group President David Malpass.

The organisation is also calling on countries where extreme poverty is most prevalent to work towards developing their aid distribution infrastructure.

The Bank’s report says: “In some countries, assistance has so far reached less than one-quarter of households whose incomes fell, and only 10%-20% of firms reported receiving assistance since the pandemic began.”

Malpass has pledged to support developing countries in the push to resume growth and respond to the impacts of Covid-19 while working toward a “sustainable and inclusive recovery”.

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Frank Bruni in The New York Times

on a historic vice-presidential debate

Mike Pence’s debate performance bugged me out

“It was a memorable debate even apart from the insect. (Now there’s a sentence I never imagined writing.) It was historic: Harris is the first woman of color on the presidential ticket of one of America’s two major parties. Her status as a trailblazer was openly acknowledged, and it informed — and gave extra force to — her disapproval of Pence when he wouldn’t acknowledge implicit racial bias in policing. She and Pence were separated not only by 12 feet but by plexiglass shields, which called to mind sneeze guards, conjured thoughts of salad bars and prompted me to wonder which ingredient each of the candidates represented. (I’m going with cottage cheese for Pence.) The Pence camp had resisted these droplet dams — which, truth be told, many public health experts said were of questionable use — but given how freely the coronavirus had been permitted to rampage through the White House, the Harris camp would have been justified in demanding that Pence debate from the inside of a giant Ziploc bag.”

2. Donald Earl Collins in Al Jazeera

on racism in America

Why race relations are an abusive fantasy

“The video that shows Kyle Rittenhouse killing two protesters and wounding another in Kenosha, Wisconsin on August 25 has made him into the very embodiment of American race relations. He is yet another white male vigilante killing in the name of so-called law and order, as well as a self-described Blue Lives Matter supporter. He took it upon himself to leave his home in Antioch, Illinois, cross state lines, seek out a crowd of Black Lives Matter demonstrators protesting on behalf of Jacob Blake, and discharge his AR-15 into the crowd. Rittenhouse personifies the power and the toxic lethality of whiteness, its abusive and narcissistic uncaring for the suffering and death that it causes.”

3. Mark Smith in The Herald

on the great outdoors

The natural solution to virus anxiety

“Let me tell you about the column I didn’t write. I didn’t write a column about the latest virus restrictions. I didn’t write about the people I know who work in pubs and cafes and restaurants who are coming to the end of their tether, and I didn’t write about the people on Twitter who are angry about Trump, and Sturgeon, and Johnson, and everything else. That’s what I didn’t do. Instead, I went outside. I went to Lanarkshire, to an old Roman encampment a couple of miles outside the town, and I met a bunch of people there, gardeners and volunteers, and we weaved in and out of the trees until we reached a clearing and we planted some saplings and shrubs. Mint and raspberry bushes by the path. Willow further in. And wild roses. And oak. So that’s what I’m going to write about instead: the effects I noticed – on the forest, and on us.”

4. Jenni Russell in The Times

on Boris Johnson’s chores

Why should a PM have to make his own lunch?

“There is a remarkable contrast in our prime ministers’ lives between the support system for official business and what happens when the official day stops. From the minute they leave the No 11 flat their days are organised with smooth precision, from security briefings to G7 summits to cabinet. Nobody expects a prime minister to look up their own train timetables, check colleagues’ diaries or order their own cars. Their time and energy are precious resources. That concern evaporates in their private time. The only domestic help in Downing Street is a cleaner. There’s no housekeeper, no chef; they must do it all themselves. A prime minister making momentous evening phone calls on whether to bomb Syria or leave the EU without a deal is simultaneously still responsible for doing his share of the laundry and making family supper.”

5. Lijia Zhang in the South China Morning Post

on historical revisionism

China needs open debate on the Korean war to lay ghosts to rest

“Seventy years ago this month, the People’s Volunteer Army crossed the Yalu River, marking China’s entry into the Korean war, known in China as the ‘War to Resist America and Aid Korea’. In September, when the remains of 117 Chinese soldiers were returned to China from South Korea, the editor-in-chief of the nationalist Global Times, Hu Xijin, took a swipe at America in a tweet: ‘70 yrs ago, the newly founded PRC showed no fear to the US power. Never underestimate Chinese people’s determination to safeguard national security.’
Instead of trying to use the occasion to score points against America, amid intensifying tensions between the world’s two biggest economies, China should take the opportunity to re-examine the war, a watershed event that shaped the course of East Asian history. At school, we were taught that the conflict was China’s great victory against American aggression. Was it?”

Pubs and restaurants in English regions with spiralling coronavirus outbreaks are braced to close their doors within days as Downing Street prepares to tighten lockdown restrictions.

Boris Johnson signed off the lockdown measures last night “alongside new financial support and a simplified system of restrictions in England”, The Times reports. The plan has been met with fury by northern leaders, “who attacked the government for allowing it to leak without briefing them first” about the stricter regulations, the newspaper adds.

Regional lockdown measures have come under scrutiny in recent days after Labour leader Keir Starmer presented data that suggests infections have continued to rise in areas already under localised rules.

Which areas may be affected and how?

The new rules are expected to come into force on Monday and to be applied according to a three-tier system designed to simplify lockdown guidance.

Merseyside and other parts of northern England “will be placed in the highest tier as some hospitals start to run out of dedicated Covid beds and infections rise sharply”, according to The Times. “Tier one” would see hospitality businesses such as pubs, restaurants and cafes close, and possibly other leisure venues and hairdressers, although schools, universities and other businesses would remain open.

“Regions in the middle tier will be subject to a simplified version of existing local lockdown measures, while those in the lowest tier must observe national restrictions such as the ‘rule of six’,” says the newspaper.

Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick this morning refused to confirm or deny that new restrictions would be imposed next week. “It is correct to say the number of cases in the northwest and the northeast and a number of cities, particularly in the Midlands like Nottingham, are rising fast and that is a serious situation,” he told Times Radio.

“We are currently considering what steps we should take, obviously taking the advice of our scientific and medical advisers, and a decision will be made shortly.”

The Times says that the tougher restrictions will be rolled out along with a new system of “wage support for employees of businesses that were forced back into lockdown three months after opening”.

Whitehall sources claim the support “will be more generous than the scheme announced by Chancellor Rishi Sunak last month, which subsidises a fifth of part-time wages”, the paper adds.

Northern fury

Leaders in the north of England have voiced frustration at not being consulted over the measures. Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham tweeted: “No discussion. No consultation. Millions of lives affected by Whitehall diktat. It is proving impossible to deal with this government.”

No. 10 has also been criticised Mayor of Liverpool Steve Rotheram, who last week warned the government that he would not support economically damaging restrictions. Rotheram told the Daily Mirror yesterday that “the government hasn’t responded to our requests to evidence the restrictions imposed in our area”.

Meanwhile, Labour leader Keir Starmer questioned why Tory constituencies such as Uxbridge and South Ruslip, the seat held by Johnson, were being spared further restrictions, while northern areas with lower levels of coronavirus were hit with harsh measures.

“The prime minister can’t explain why an area goes into restrictions, he can’t explain what the different restrictions are, and he can’t explain how restrictions end. This is getting ridiculous,” Starmer told Prime Minister’s Questions.

But despite the criticisms, Downing Street sources insist immediate tough action is necessary. An insider told The Sun that “the numbers are going the wrong way, and there will come a point very soon where we simply have to do more”.

According to the London Evening Standard, senior scientists have “begged” Johnson not to waste the chance to arrest the spread of Covid-19.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Professor Stephen Reicher, who sits on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) behavioural science sub-group, said: “The good news is we have a window of opportunity to do something.

“If we squander that window of opportunity then we really are in trouble, then we really would be talking about going back to March in terms of full lockdown measures.”