Author: LoveWorld UK

New Zealand will go into a national lockdown on Tuesday night, after detecting one case of Covid-19. The entire country will be at alert level 4 – the highest level of lockdown – for at least three days from midnight, and the regions of Auckland and Coromandel for four to seven days. New Zealand has not had a level 4 lockdown in more than a year, and the case is believed to be the first Delta in-community transmission. The prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said: “Delta has been called a gamechanger, and it is. It means we need to again go hard…

U.S. soldiers deployed at the Kabul airport have been shot at and were forced to return fire, killing two, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said on Aug. 16. Two “armed individuals” were shot and killed in separate incidents at the airport, Kirby told reporters in an off-camera briefing, coming as thousands of people crowd around the facility to try to flee Afghanistan after the Taliban took over the country and declared victory on Aug. 15. About 2,500 troops are currently at the airport, Kirby said. There are “preliminary indications” that one U.S. soldier may have been wounded. The United States will now focus…

Many thousands of people may have isolated unnecessarily because a government error meant they were “pinged” by the Covid app for a “close contact” in the prior five days rather than two days, a Whitehall whistleblower has told the Guardian. As the isolation rules for double vaccinated people were relaxed on Monday, it has emerged that users were never told the app could notify of contact with an infected person as far back as five days before the positive test. Official guidance for the NHS Covid app defined close contact as occurring two days before the infected person had symptoms, while the official NHS…

An extraordinary image has emerged that appears to show hundreds of Afghans packed into a US military cargo plane, in a desperate attempt to flee Kabul after the fall of the capital to the Taliban. The picture obtained by US defence and security news site Defense One is believed to show 640 people crammed into a C-17 Globemaster III, among the highest number of people ever carried in such an aircraft. US defence officials reportedly said the passengers – among them women and children – on the flight were safely evacuated from Kabul to Qatar on Sunday. The flight had not intended to…

British employers plan to increase staff numbers by the most in more than eight years over the coming months and few intend to make staff redundant when government furlough support ends next month, a survey showed on Monday. The quarterly survey by Britain’s Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) added to signs of labour market shortages as the economy emerges from the coronavirus pandemic, though it offered less evidence of wage or inflation pressures The CIPD said the net employment intentions balance – the difference in percentage points between employers who are hiring and those cutting staff – rose…

Asking prices for houses in Britain slipped over the past month for the first time this year, as the partial removal of a temporary cut to property purchase taxes took the edge off demand for larger homes, a survey showed on Monday. Real estate website Rightmove said asking prices fell by 0.3% in its August survey after a 0.7% increase in July, dragged down by “upper end” houses of four bedrooms or more, which saw asking prices fall by 0.8% in July. The August survey covered property first advertised on Rightmove between July 11 and Aug. 7. The readings chimed…

Nuno Espírito Santo said he expects Harry Kane to “get ready and help the team” after the Tottenham striker sat out their victory against Manchester City. Kane, strongly admired by the Premier League champions, was left out of the Spurs squad after returning to group training only on Friday and in his absence Son Heung-min struck a fine winner, leading Nuno to praise his killer instincts on an afternoon when Pep Guardiola bemoaned his side’s profligacy. City are thought to be ready to pay €150m (£127m) for Kane if they believe Tottenham are open to a deal. Spurs maintain Kane is not for…

The Pfizer–BioNTech alliance and Moderna might reap billions from COVID-19 booster shots in the coming years, in what analysts and investors say could be a market comparable to the $6 billion in annual sales for flu vaccines. Pfizer, its German partner BioNTech, and Moderna have together locked in more than $60 billion in sales of their respective COVID-19 vaccines through 2022, with the agreements covering initial doses and booster shots, according to Reuters. Analysts cited by the news service predict revenues of over $6.6 billion for the Pfizer–BioNTech alliance and $7.6 billion for Moderna, chiefly from potential booster shots. Over a longer-term horizon, they predict…

Apple on Aug. 13 provided new details of how its planned child sexual abuse material (CSAM) detection system would work, outlining a range of privacy-preserving limits following backlash that the software would introduce a backdoor that threatens user privacy protections. The company addressed concerns triggered by the planned CSAM feature, slated for release in an update for U.S. users later this year, in a 14-page document (pdf) that outlined safeguards it says it will implement to prevent the system on Apple devices from erroneously flagging files as child pornography, or being exploited for malicious surveillance of users. “The system is designed so…

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said on Sunday that the violence in Afghanistan must end as the Taliban terrorist group entered Kabul, prompting a transfer of power in the country. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani relinquished power on Sunday as the Taliban entered Kabul, according to Interior Minister Abdul Sattar Mirzakwal, who confirmed there would be a transfer of power. Ghani reportedly left the country on Sunday. Raab said he spoke to Shah Mahmood Qureshi, the foreign minister of Afghanistan’s neighbour Pakistan, about the situation. “Shared my deep concerns about the future for Afghanistan with FM Qureshi,” he wrote on Twitter.…