Author: LoveWorld UK

Barcelona earned a far from convincing 2-1 win at home to a depleted Dynamo Kyiv on Wednesday as Lionel Messi scored a penalty for the third Champions League game in a row with the Spaniards maintaining their winning start to the group stage. The Argentine, who had also scored spot-kicks in wins over Group G opponents Ferencvaros and Juventus, tucked away a penalty in the fifth minute while Gerard Pique netted in the second half, glancing in a fine cross from Ansu Fati. Dynamo, who were missing six players due to COVID-19 positives, which also afflicted five members of staff,…

Oil prices fell on Thursday as Democrat Joe Biden edged closer to the White House in a nail-biting U.S. presidential election, though doubts remain over further huge stimulus to bolster the ecomony in the face of the coronavirus crisis. Brent crude fell 33 cents, or 0.8%, to $40.90 a barrel by 0927 GMT and U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude was down 39 cents, or 1%, at $38.76. Both contracts had jumped around 4% on Wednesday. Biden predicted victory over President Donald Trump after winning two critical U.S. states while the Republican incumbent alleged fraud, filed lawsuits and demanded recounts…

Many Wall Street banks’ favorite lawmakers were returned to Congress overnight, boding well for the industry which has been trying to rebuild a broad base of bipartisan support a decade after the financial crisis tarnished its image in Washington. While the outcome of the presidential election and many Congressional races remained unclear early Wednesday, the composition of key banking committees in the House of Representatives and Senate should remain largely intact, ensuring some continuity for the industry next Congress. These committees take the lead on financial services legislation, oversee the country’s top financial regulators, and can conduct investigations into the…

The United States formally exited the Paris Agreement on Wednesday, fulfilling an old promise by President Donald Trump to withdraw the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas emitter from the global pact to fight climate change. But the outcome of the tight U.S. election contest will determine for how long. Trump’s Democratic rival, Joe Biden, has promised to rejoin the agreement if elected. “The U.S. withdrawal will leave a gap in our regime, and the global efforts to achieve the goals and ambitions of the Paris Agreement,” said Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The…

Britain’s Marks & Spencer MKS.L reported the first loss in its 94 years as a publicly listed company after clothing sales were hammered by the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the best known names in UK retail said on Wednesday that it made a pretax loss before one-off items of 17.4 million pounds in the 26 weeks to Sept. 26 – its first loss since listing its shares on the stock market in 1926. The outcome was ahead of analysts’ average forecast of a 59 million pound loss and compared with a profit of 176 million pounds in the same period last year.…

Primark-owner Associated British Foods ABF.L has no plans to build an online business for the fashion retailer despite it recording a 63% slump in full-year profit due to COVID-19 lockdowns, the group said on Tuesday. Over the last decade Primark, which sells only from physical stores, has been the fastest-growing arm of Britain’s AB Foods, a group that also owns major sugar, grocery, agriculture and ingredients businesses. But the pandemic has hit Primark hard, with the clothes retailer’s adjusted operating profit for the year to Sept. 12 falling to 362 million pounds from 969 million pounds in 2018-19, reflecting the closure of…

Britain will launch a COVID-19 mass testing pilot scheme in the northwest city of Liverpool this week, offering everyone tests whether or not they have symptoms, in an attempt to find a new way to use testing to limit the spread of the coronavirus. Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised a “world-beating” national test-and-trace system earlier this year, whereby people with symptoms get tested and the contacts of positive cases are asked to self-isolate. But the scheme has disappointed and the government’s scientific advisory body said last month its impact on virus transmission was marginal. The United Kingdom has the highest…

It was the Halloween horror no one had been expecting: a series of mind-boggling graphs and charts presented at Saturday’s Downing Street press conference that purported to show the Covid-19 pandemic was out of control and a second national lockdown was needed.  But do the graphs and charts really support this? ROSS CLARK find outs … THE HEAT MAP This chart was designed to show that some hospitals – shown in red – already had more Covid-19 patients than at the peak of the first wave in the spring. Hospitals shown in amber have more than half as many virus patients as they had then, while green indicates…

The claim that 4,000 people could be dying from coronavirus by next month could be four or five times too high and not reflect the current situation, experts warn. The shocking figure was presented by chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance in Saturday’s TV briefing where Boris Johnson announced the UK’s second lockdown. But there are concerns that it’s out of date and inaccurate, with SAGE accused of ‘misleading’ the public and MPs by cherry-picking the scariest data. Professor Carl Heneghan, of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, said he ‘cannot understand why they have used…

IZMIR, Turkey (Reuters) – A young girl was rescued from the rubble of a collapsed building in the western Turkish city of Izmir on Tuesday, more than 90 hours after a deadly earthquake in the Aegean Sea killed at least 104 people. Rescuers heard Ayda Gezgin’s screams from under the rubble and managed to pull her out hours later, taking her out on a stretcher as emergency teams continued to search five apartment blocks for survivors. Images showed a rescue worker hugging Ayda after she was found under the debris, covered in dust. Crowds in the area applauded workers after…