President wears face covering during visit to military hospital as cases of coronavirus surge across the United States
Donald Trump wore a mask in public for the first time during a visit to a military hospital a short helicopter ride from the White House on Saturday evening. The president’s decision to wear a mask came as cases of coronavirus surged to record levels in the US and after aides and experts urged Trump to follow his own government’s guidelines on face coverings.
Trump flew to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in suburban Washington DC to meet wounded service members and health care providers caring for Covid-19 patients.
We’ll be shutting down the blog shortly. Here’s a look at today’s top news lines:
10.58pm BST
Donald Trump was wearing a black mask as he walked down the entryway of Walter Reed medical center accompanied by hospital staff, marking the first time he has been seen wearing a protective face covering in public.
The president did not stop to take questions from the White House pool before turning down a hallway. His meeting with injured troops and staff is closed to the press.
Cases in India pass 800,000; South African cases top 250,000; UK death toll rises to 44,800
11.26pm BST
Brazil, the world’s second biggest coronavirus hotspot after the United States, recorded 1,071 new deaths from the outbreak on Saturday, with a total of 1,839,850 confirmed cases.
Brazil has now recorded a total of 71,469 deaths, the health ministry said.
11.17pm BST
A demonstration in Tel Aviv against the Israeli government’s handling of the pandemic, which we reported on earlier, has resulted in violent clashes between protesters and police.
This from the journalist Louis Fishman:
Following protests in Tel Aviv’s main square police clash with protesters on Rothschild Blvd. On the news a protester said we are fed up we can’t pay our bills, we can’t pay for rent. The gov is completely out of touch with dire situation of its citizens. pic.twitter.com/G1TZUdYa9M
Outbreaks have hit factories including LA Apparel, ordered to shut down amid 300 cases and four deaths
Francisco Tzul has worked in the Los Angeles garment industry for eight years, sewing clothing on cramped factory floors and struggling to get by on low wages. An undocumented immigrant from Guatemala, Tzul found himself out of work when the pandemic hit in March. So when he heard in May that LA Apparel, a brand run by the former CEO of American Apparel, was hiring workers to make masks, he jumped at the chance.
“Here’s an opportunity, a golden opportunity, I told myself,” he told the Guardian in Spanish. “From one day to the next I became an essential worker, with more dignified wages.”
Data on movement in cities suggests businesses should get creative after hours to weather the Covid-19 recession
A more vibrant night-time economy, including standup comedy in local hairdressers and after-dark art exhibitions in bookshops, could play a crucial role in Australia’s post-pandemic financial recovery, data tracking of people’s movement suggests.
CBD businesses that traditionally relied on office workers have been hard hit during the coronavirus crisis, as people increasingly started working from home.
The problem is not that the tax cuts will add to debt. It’s that they will significantly narrow the revenue base
The week the parliamentary budget office’s latest analysis of government finances found that government revenue raised in the month of May this year was nearly $10bn less than was raised in May last year, and the government spent $39bn more this May than last.
All up, it means the budget deficit in the first 11 months of the 2019-20 financial year was $64.9bn compared with an expected $4.0bn. It also means government debt is now $110bn more debt than budgeted – or 17% more than the government expected in December.
Exclusive: Masterclasses promise to improve work mindsets and link programs to Covid-19 response
Australian government agencies have spent more than $230,000 on “innovationish” training – the latest management fad promising to improve work mindsets – and linked the programs to the government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Australian Securities and Investment Commission and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spent $180,000 with the US company People Rocket LLC, which suggests it can replace traditional management consultancy by developing “cultures that champion innovation through cross-functional collaboration”.
There is a schism between older African migrants – who think Australia is ‘the greatest country in the world’ – and those who came here young or grew up here
This is the fourth in a six-part series on life inside Melbourne’s high-rise public housing. Read the third part here.
Nor Shanino would get into big debates with his father, Idris, an Eritrean refugee, about the police and the country.
Once the hero of the hour, the premier has made missteps, and demoralised Victorians may now be looking for someone to blame
We are all Victorians now, of course, as Scott Morrison recently noted, and thanks for those kind words of support as Melburnians begin six weeks of lockdown. This has been a horrible, gut-wrenching, dispiriting week, especially for the 3,000 public housing tenants confined to their flats for five days, their homes surrounded by police, and for all of us as the flickers of hope – seeing friends and family, watching cafes and swimming pools and playgrounds tentatively reopening – collapse again. As premier Daniel Andrews keeps telling us redundantly, this is not over.
It’s a continuing health and economic global crisis caused by a highly infectious virus. At this moment in Victoria, it’s a psychological crisis, too.
But Australian expats who felt it safer to “ride out” the Covid-19 crisis in their new home country probably never expected that Australia would make it harder for its own citizens to return.
Scientists remain divided over the effectiveness of masks in providing protection against the Covid-19 virus in the wake of Boris Johnson’s hints that he would soon make face coverings compulsory in shops in England.
Some senior researchers told the Observer that they strongly backed the decision as part of the government’s campaign to encourage people to get back to work. Others were less certain that it would be effective.
Mark Wilson’s first visit to the pub in months started perfectly. The 30-year-old met some of his closest friends in a vaping bar, Vape Escape, near the windswept seafront in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset. “I was glad to be seeing people and getting a pint in a pub again,” he says. “We watched the Man United game and they won – so I was in a good mood.”
As the Saturday evening wore on, the group moved on to another pub in the quiet seaside resort, about a 45-minute drive from Bristol. The six friends moved back and forth between the two pubs before calling it a night. “I was pretty merry,” says Wilson. “But it was all good.”
Bachchan’s son Abhishek has also tested positive for the virus, and both are in hospital
Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan says he has tested positive for the coronavirus and is hospitalised in Mumbai, India’s financial and entertainment capital.
In a tweet on Saturday, Bachchan, 77, said his family and staff have also undergone tests and are awaiting results. He appealed to those who were in close proximity to him in the past 10 days to get themselves tested.
The government has drawn up a list of 20 councils facing the worst coronavirus outbreaks in England, with Bradford, Sheffield and Kirklees identified as areas needing “enhanced support”, according to a classified document leaked to the Observer and the Guardian.
As evidence mounts that the relaxation of lockdown rules is leading to a resurgence of Covid-19 in some of England’s most deprived and ethnically mixed areas, officials have ordered the army to deploy extra mobile testing units, which will be sent into a series of hotspots around the country from this weekend.
Two people have been arrested in London after protesters dyed Trafalgar Square’s fountains blood red to call for the government to prevent future pandemics by ending factory farming.
The Animal Rebellion group said it staged the protest in central London on Saturday to draw attention to what it believes to be the real cause of the Covid-19 crisis – animal exploitation.
The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, will have to order steep tax rises or another brutal round of spending cuts to plug a £40bn gap in the public finances caused by emergency spending during the Covid-19 crisis, the former Tory Treasury minister David Gauke says today.
The warning of painful income tax and VAT rises from a respected figure with seven years of ministerial experience at the Treasury comes amid growing anxiety in sections of the Conservative party about the ballooning deficit and spiralling debt burden.
America is breaking records for new coronavirus cases almost every day and hospitals in the new hotspots in southern and western states are under severe strain – as a health expert warned that if the surge continued the US was entering “one of the most unstable times” in its history.
The US saw a record increase of new confirmed cases of Covid-19 on Friday, with more than 66,000 new cases, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker.
A former senior NHS official plans to sue the organisation after he had to pay a private hospital £20,000 for potentially life-saving cancer surgery because NHS care was suspended due to Covid-19.
Rob McMahon, 68, decided to seek private treatment after Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS trust told him that he would have to wait much longer than usual for a biopsy. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer after an MRI scan on 19 March, four days before the lockdown began.
Nicola Sturgeon has warned against complacency after the number of daily coronavirus cases in Scotland dropped back to single figures.
Data released by the Scottish government on Saturday shows that 18,340 people have tested positive for coronavirus, an increase of seven in the past 24 hours. Of those who have tested positive, 323 people were in hospital on Friday night.
New archbishop of York warns church would need to rebuild amid Covid-19 crisis
The Church of England has become “tribal and divided”, the new archbishop of York has said, while warning that it faces “turbulent times and challenging decisions ahead”.
Stephen Cottrell, who was confirmed as theChurch of England’s second most senior cleric on Thursday, said the church would need to reshape itself in the light of the Covid-19 pandemic.