Today’s children face losing £350bn in lifetime earnings unless the UK’s governments invest in radical catch-up efforts when the pandemic is over, according to a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
The IFS is urging policymakers to consider options including nearly nine million children repeating a year of schooling, the use of large-scale tuition in summer holidays and extended hours to make up for the classroom time lost during the Covid-19 lockdowns.
Country’s powerful military have previously threatened to ‘take action’ over alleged fraud in a November election
Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s president and other senior ruling party figures have been detained by the military in early morning raids, a party spokesman said on Monday.
Spokesman Myo Nyunt told Reuters that Suu Kyi, President Win Myint and other leaders had been “taken” early in the morning. “I want to tell our people not to respond rashly and I want them to act according to the law,” he said, adding he also expected to be detained.
The activists have been in the tunnel close to Euston station since Tuesday to raise awareness of the climate emergency and to try to halt work on the HS2 project which is under way in the Euston area. They argue that many ancient woodlands will be destroyed by the project. HS2 says it is planting 7m new trees.
A World Health Organization team has visited the Huanan food market in Wuhan as part of its fieldwork in a politically sensitive mission to investigate the origins of the pandemic, AFP reports.
Their visit is being tightly controlled, and the WHO has already lowered expectations of pinpointing the source of the virus, which is known to have infected more than 102 million people so far with over 2.2 million deaths.
AstraZeneca will increase its coronavirus vaccine deliveries to the EU by 30%, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said Sunday as the bloc sought to claw back time lost rolling out the jabs, AFP reports.
The British-Swedish company had announced last week that it could deliver only a quarter of the doses originally promised to the bloc for the first quarter of the year because of problems at one of its European factories.
The NHS has been warned it is putting lives at risk after the service admitted it was not collecting data on who was not accepting invitations to be vaccinated and why.
Early research has shown vaccine take-up was twice as high among white people compared with black people in the first five weeks of the rollout, with lower rates among people with severe mental illness, dementia and learning disabilities.
The UK could help the EU and other nations with coronavirus vaccine supplies even before the domestic vaccination programme has been completed, the international trade secretary, Liz Truss, has said.
As ministers sought to smooth relations with Brussels after the EU’s much-criticised and swiftly rescinded decision to impose a vaccine border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, Truss sought to stress the need for international cooperation.
Almost 600,000 people in the UK were vaccinated against Covid-19 on Saturday, a daily record for the vaccine programme.
Uptake was particularly strong in England, with almost 540,000 people receiving their first vaccination. In Wales, just over 25,000 people got their initial jab, along with almost 23,000 in Scotland and just over 10,500 in Northern Ireland.
Podcast
The comic actor’s exuberant 10-part history unpicks the nuts-and-bolts of what makes sketches funny, from overlooked past acts to SNL, and British favourites including the Two Ronnies
“The sexy dangerous first cousin of standup,” Keegan-Michael Key calls sketch comedy, which feels like a stretch. But then, no one can accuse Key of understatement. His new audio series The History of Sketch Comedy brims with enthusiasm for an art form that, far from sexiness, is often sidelined as the runt of the comedy litter. No longer, if Key has his way. This 10-part podcast demonstrates not only the riches that strew the history of short-form comedy, but the art form’s pedigree as direct descendant of Greek theatre, court jesters and commedia dell’arte.
I didn’t see that coming – but then, there’s plenty in Key’s series that few of us would associate with sketch comedy. The opening two episodes, on the ancient and medieval worlds, are highly digressive and largely untroubled by anything you or I would recognise as sketch. (They’d be equally relevant to a history of comedy or standup more widely.) Each episode also tracks Key’s own career through sketch, improv and theatre. As one half of hit sketch pairing Key and Peele (his sidekick Jordan Peele is now an Oscar-nominated film-maker), he uses a handful of his own sketches – the fantastic Substitute Teacher, for example – as case studies.
Rugby Australia chairman Hamish McLennan confirms offer
Covid-19 means tour is unlikely to go ahead in South Africa
Hopes that the British & Irish Lions Tests against South Africa could take place this summer, and with fans in attendance, look a little brighter with Rugby Australia making an unexpected offer to host the series.
The South African variant of Covid-19 means the tour is unlikely to go ahead in that country, especially with fans, and there has been speculation that the games may be played at stadiums in the UK and Ireland instead, even in the absence of supporters.
Cormac the llama lives a quiet life on a farm in Washington State, totally unaware that his unique immune system may be key to protecting the developing world from Covid-19.
“He is an extremely charismatic llama … he’s a pretty cool guy,” says TJ Esparza, a neuroscientist at the Uniformed Services University. He is part of the team attempting to transform Cormac’s nanobody cells into a drug that will coat the inside of human lungs, providing temporary but effective protection from coronavirus particles.
The Australian Capital Territory has confirmed zero new coronavirus cases. There are no active cases in the state.
In the past 24 hours, 228 tests returned negative results, but ACT Deputy Chief Health Officer, Dr Vanessa Johnston, has urged that people get tested if they have even the mildest symptoms after virus fragments were found in sewage at a wastewater site in Belconnen.
The Belconnen testing site covers wastewater from Aranda, Belconnen, Bruce, Charnwood, Cook, Dunlop, Evatt, Florey, Flynn, Fraser, Giralang, Hall, Hawker, Higgins, Holt, Kaleen, Latham, Lawson, Macgregor, Macquarie, McKellar, Melba, Page, Scullin, Spence, Strathnairn and Weetangera.
All other locations in the ACT had negative sample results on 27 January.
FA will work with government and social media platforms
Rashford: abuse is ‘humanity and social media at its worst’
The Football Association has vowed to work with the government and social media platforms to eradicate racist abuse after a succession of incidents. The Chelsea defender Reece James, West Brom’s Romaine Sawyers and the Manchester United duo Axel Tuanzebe and Anthony Martial were all targeted this week and on Saturday night Marcus Rashford said he had received offensive messages after United’s draw at Arsenal.
In a series of tweets, Rashford said he chose not to share screenshots of the messages he had been sent as “it would be irresponsible to do so … I have beautiful children of all colours following me and they don’t need to read it.”
Lockdown has made exercising the new going out, even if it’s only to your local park. Here’s our pick of sports kit, from high-tech performance gear to at-home workout sweats.
Jeff Bezos’s company is set for sales topping $100bn last quarter, and while rivals are nibbling, its position looks secure
The earliest references to the “one-stop shop” emerged during the first decades of 20th century as the fast-growing US economy spurred rapid retail innovation. A single location for various products provides obvious benefits: removing the hassle of travelling around town to visit different stores.
Jeff Bezos redefined that logic for the internet age, making Amazon a dominant (and perhaps ambivalent) force first in selling books, and then in pretty much everything else. Before 2020 Amazon was a phenomenon, but the coronavirus pandemic has made it all but ubiquitous.