Officials in Japan have warned of an impending third wave of coronavirus infections amid a rise in cases blamed on colder weather and a government campaign to encourage domestic tourism.
As the prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, vowed to secure enough vaccines to cover Japan’s entire population, the number of daily cases continued to rise after several weeks of staying relatively stable.
Japan reported 1,284 new Covid-19 infections on Tuesday, bringing its total to 111,222 according to a Kyodo news agency tally based on official data. The death toll stood at 1,864.
While Japan has avoided the large number of cases and deaths seen in the UK, US and other countries – with widespread mask-wearing often cited as a factor – the decision to press ahead with a heavily subsidised tourism campaign in July appears to have contributed to a new wave of infections.
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For over half a century, a massive graveyard on the edge of Iran’s capital has provided a final resting place for this country’s war dead, its celebrities and artists, its thinkers and leaders and all those in between.
But Behesht-e-Zahra is now struggling to keep up with the coronavirus pandemic ravaging Iran, with double the usual number of bodies arriving each day and grave diggers excavating thousands of new plots, AP reports.
With 1.6 million people buried on its grounds, which stretch across more than 5 square kilometers, Behesht-e-Zahra is one of the world’s largest cemeteries and the primary one for Tehran’s 8.6 million people. The golden minarets of its Imam Khomeini Shrine, the burial site of the leader of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, are visible for kilometres.
But it was not big enough for the coronavirus, which roared into Iran early this year, seeding the region’s worst outbreak.
Iran has reported over 700,000 infections and more than 39,000 deaths — and has set single-day death records 10 times over the past month. Almost half of the country’s reported virus fatalities have happened in Tehran, putting pressure on the cemetery.
Tehran’s leaders announced in June that they were preparing 15,000 new graves there — about 5,000 more than in a typical year.
Satellite pictures from September show the plots — deep enough to allow for as many as three bodies in each — newly dug, each separated by a layer of dirt and bricks.
While not all of the new graves are for coronavirus victims, most are.
A care home called the police when a woman who had been denied visits to her 83-year-old husband for eight months amid the Covid pandemic sneaked in to get him out.
Patricia Hodges, 75, used to visit her husband, Graham, daily at Wayside House in Bromsgrove, where he was being cared for with Lewy Body dementia. But her anguish at being prevented from seeing him from March to October, and a row over fees, sparked an attempt to move him to another home, she said.
The incident on 28 October followed a dispute between the Hodges and the care home, which began with requests for visits being denied. It ended with the home’s owner being accused of “holding” Graham Hodges over missing fees, which the home strongly denies:
Graduate recruitment suffered the biggest drop this year since the 2008 financial crash as employers cut back on hiring workers to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic.
The latest survey by the Institute of Student Employers (ISE) found that the number of graduate jobs declined by 12% and that the majority of employers anticipated a further decline next year.
Employers in the retail and consumer goods sectors made the biggest cuts, slashing 45% of graduate jobs as the first coronavirus lockdown hit business income and clouded the outlook for employment:
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 18,487 to 705,687, data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases showed on Wednesday.
The reported death toll rose by 261 to 11,767, the tally showed.
Wales faces a wave of mental health problems in the wake of Covid-19 – with younger adults, women and people from deprived areas suffering the most, according to a study.
PA: Researchers at Swansea and Cardiff universities examined the pandemic’s impact on the mental wellbeing of the Welsh population. The initial findings reveal around half of the 13,000 participants showed clinically significant psychological distress, with around 20% suffering severe effects.
Their responses were given during June and July, when the pandemic was seen to be having a dramatic effect on psychological wellbeing.
Professor Nicola Gray, from Swansea University, said: “We examined psychological wellbeing and the prevalence of clinically significant mental distress in a large sample 11 to 16 weeks into lockdown and compared this to population-based data collected pre-Covid-19.
“It showed a large decrease in wellbeing from pre-Covid-19 levels.”
Gray said the effects in Wales, and by implication those in the UK and beyond, are larger than previous studies had suggested.
In more cheerful news from the natural world:
They hatched six weeks ago, watched by thousands of Melburnians who were stuck inside under the coronavirus lockdown. Now, as life is beginning to return to the city below them, three peregrine falcon chicks roosting on a city centre skyscraper are also preparing to leave the nest.
The hatchlings – all female – have been obsessively monitored by cooped-up Victorians who turned to the Collins Street falcons livestream during lockdown.
By Friday they will be ready to take flight, says Victor Hurley, the founder of the Victorian Peregrine Project which monitors the birds in conjunction with Birdlife Australia. Then they will be made to move on – peregrines are fiercely territorial, and won’t tolerate their chicks remaining near home:
South Korea’s spy chief has proposed a summit of the leaders of the United States, Japan and the two Koreas during the Tokyo Olympics next year, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Reuters: Park Jie-won made the proposal in Japan, where he arrived on Sunday for his first trip as head of the National Intelligence Service (NIS) aimed at improving relations strained by a feud over compensation for Koreans forced to work for Japanese firms during its 1910-45 colonial rule.
Park suggested the summit during a Tuesday meeting with new Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, saying it could take up the issues of North Korea’s denuclearisation and the abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korean agents, the newspaper said.
Japan’s relations with both North and South Korea have long been difficult, largely because of its colonisation of the Korean peninsula.
Park conveyed South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s willingness to normalise ties with Japan, for which he said there needed to be some Japanese apology or expression of regret for the wartime forced labour, the newspaper said.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported that Park had suggested that Moon and Suga announce a new declaration to build on a 1998 joint pledge of a “future-oriented relationship”.
“Both leaders are strongly willing to resolve current issues,” the news agency quoted Park as saying.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s attendance at such a summit would be a landmark. The NIS declined to comment on the reports.
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