The number of Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins seen around Hong Kong has jumped as the pause in high-speed ferry traffic due to the coronavirus allows the threatened species to make something of a comeback, scientists said.
Marine scientist Lindsay Porter of the University of St. Andrews said the mammals – also known as Chinese white dolphins and pink dolphins – were moving back into parts of the Pearl River Delta that they typically avoided due to the ferries that connect Hong Kong and Macau.
Dolphin numbers in the area had jumped by up to 30% since March when the ferry traffic was suspended, allowing scientists a rare opportunity to study how underwater noise affected their behaviour, she said.
Scientists think there are about 2,000 dolphins in the entire Pearl River estuary. A Hong Kong government survey from 2019 found only about 52 dolphins entered the waters around the Asian financial hub, but Porter believes the real number may be slightly higher.
Trump holds Nevada rally indoors despite coronavirus warnings
US President Donald Trump held a Nevada campaign rally at an indoor venue on Sunday despite public health professionals’ warnings against large indoor gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic, Reuters reports.
People in the crowd were seated close together and many did not wear masks.
Biden has criticized Trump for holding campaign events that put people at risk of contracting the coronavirus, which has killed more than 194,000 people in the United States.
Trump played down the virus in its early stages and has alternately embraced and disregarded advice from public health experts, who encourage mask-wearing and maintaining social distance to prevent its spread.
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(@thehill)President Trump slams Joe Biden: “This man is totally unfit to be president.” pic.twitter.com/YWM5CQjHPG
The president’s campaign portrayed the rally at a large warehouse in Henderson as an opportunity for supporters to exercise their rights to peaceful assembly under the US Constitution’s First Amendment.
“If you can join tens of thousands of people protesting in the streets, gamble in a casino, or burn down small businesses in riots, you can gather peacefully under the First Amendment to hear from the president of the United States,” spokesman Tim Murtaugh said in a statement.
Participants were to have temperatures taken before entry and be given a mask they would be encouraged to wear, the campaign said.
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In the UK, close to half a million redundancies are likely to be announced in the autumn, although the number could end up exceeding 700,000, according to a study that lays bare the scale of the Covid-19 jobs crisis facing the UK.
These job cuts are on top of 240,000 redundancies officially recorded by the government up until June. That means the total redundancy figure for 2020 could top one million.
In a bleak warning, the Institute for Employment Studies (IES), which published the analysis, said the number of jobs likely to be lost “will almost certainly exceed anything we have experienced in at least a generation” – far exceeding the peak reached in the last downturn just over a decade ago and the highest since at least 1995.
With the autumn budget weeks away, it is calling for urgent measures to support those affected, stimulate employment growth and provide targeted help to viable firms:
In Australia, the state of Queensland’s chief health officer, Dr Jeannette Young, says death threats and extreme trolling have taken an “enormous toll”, with a permanent police escort now assigned to the officer.
The state’s leadership, including Young, have come under intense scrutiny in recent days over Queensland’s hardline approach to border control in response to the coronavirus, which has prevented multiple family members from attending loved one’s funerals.
The Queensland AMA president, Chris Perry, told the Today show on Monday that Young had been receiving death threats. He said she now required police guards at her home and officers “who go with her everywhere” for her safety.
Singapore is battling new clusters of coronavirus infections in migrant dormitories that had won the all-clear from authorities, highlighting the difficulty of stamping out the disease, even in a closely monitored population, Reuters reports.
As the wealthy city-state tumbled into recession, officials facing intense pressure to revive the economy are opting for limited isolation measures rather than the wide clampdowns earlier, but most low-wage workers are still penned in.
“There is little choice,” said Leong Hoe Nam, an infectious diseases expert at the city’s Mount Elizabeth Hospital. “We need to be realistic. We need the economy to go on.”
The dormitories, home to more than 300,000 workers in industries such as construction and shipbuilding, with several allocated to a room, contribute nearly 95% of Singapore’s tally of more than 57,000 infections.
When authorities uncovered the virus raging through the dormitories they sealed off their occupants, launched vigorous testing and ordered a nationwide lockdown.
Still, an average of 45 daily new infections has shown up there since authorities declared last month that all residents had recovered or been shown by testing to be virus-free. Outside, the daily average is just two local cases.
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Nothing short of force majeure will prevent Yoshihide Suga from becoming Japan’s prime minister when the ruling Liberal Democratic party (LDP) elects a leader to replace Shinzo Abe this week.
As chief cabinet secretary for almost eight years, Suga has acted as the administration’s de facto second-in-command, batting away tricky questions at twice-daily press briefings, advising Abe on policy and reining in Japan’s recalcitrant bureaucracy.
Suga has emerged as the clear favourite to replace Abe, who is resigning on health grounds, since securing the support of key LDP factions. After what observers predict will be a comfortable victory over his rivals, the party’s policy chief, Fumio Kishida, and Shigeru Ishiba, a former defence minister, Suga is practically assured of being approved as prime minister in the lower house of parliament on Wednesday.
Suga’s status as a relative outsider could serve him well as he attempts to steer Japan out of a prolonged recession worsened by the coronavirus pandemic, according to Tobias Harris, a Japan expert at Teneo Intelligence in Washington and the author of a new book on Abe:
French Polynesia has recorded another 67 Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours, raising its total to 1,020.
Of those cases, 958 have been detected since August, when the government and the French High Commission re-opened borders and abolished quarantine restrictions for tourists.
On 9 August, there were just 69 infections. Since that date – five weeks ago – the number of confirmed cases has increased exponentially, up nearly 1500%.
The infections in French Polynesia have only caused two fatalities, a couple in their 80s in the capital Papeete. The majority of infections are on the island of Tahiti, but others are in Mo’orea and Hao.
A small rally in Papeete over the weekend protested a new mask-wearing mandate, introduced to try to slow the current outbreak.
Masks are compulsory in enclosed public places and on public transport while school students older than 11 must also wear them.
Still in the UK, tens of thousands of pubs, bars, nightclubs and gig venues will not survive increased coronavirus-prevention measures, such as local lockdowns and evening curfews, unless they receive fresh state support, the UK government has been warned.
One in four of the 115,000 licensed premises in Britain still had not reopened by the end of August after restrictions were imposed to contain Covid-19, according to data from the analysis firm CGA and AlixPartners.
With concern growing about rising infection rates, a ban on gatherings of more than six people comes into effect across England on Monday, while Scotland and Wales have their own amended restrictions:
Police chiefs have urged the public in England to take personal responsibility and observe the new “rule of six” regulations following a weekend rife with illegal gatherings.
Overall crime dropped dramatically during the coronavirus lockdown, when police were handed powers to enforce regulations designed to limit the spread of the disease. But Martin Hewitt, the chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, said demand for the police was now close to that before the outbreak of the pandemic and urged the public to do their part by limiting gatherings indoors and outdoors to six people:
Israel becomes first country to reimpose lockdown
Israel will enter a three-week nationwide lockdown starting on Friday to contain the spread of the coronavirus after a second-wave surge of new cases, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday, becoming the first country worldwide to reimpose a strict national lockdown.
Reuters reports that during the lockdown, which comes during the Jewish high-holiday season, Israelis will have to stay within 500 metres of their houses, but can travel to workplaces that will be allowed to operate on a limited basis.
Schools and shopping malls will be closed but supermarkets and pharmacies will remain open. The public sector will operate with fewer staff, but non-governmental offices and businesses will not have to close, as long as they do not accept customers.
“I know those measures will exact a heavy price on us all,” Netanyahu said in a televised address. “This is not the kind of holiday we are used to. And we certainly won’t be able to celebrate with our extended families.”
Netanyahu, who has faced increasing criticism over his handling of the coronavirus crisis, said he instructed his finance minister to come up with a new economic package to assist businesses hurt by the lockdown.
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