Live updates: follow the latest news on Covid-19 variant Omicron
The Omicron variant of Covid-19 has spread rapidly throughout the world, leading many countries to reintroduce or tighten restrictions in an effort to slow its spread.
While initial evidence suggests Omicron may be less severe than previous Covid variants, it is believed to be more transmissible and more able to evade the protection offered by current vaccines.
What are the symptoms of the Omicron Covid variant?
In the UK, the National Health Service has said the main symptoms of Covid-19 are a high temperature, a new and continuous cough, and changes to people's sense of smell or taste.
But early signs suggest that there are other symptoms that may be more specific to the Omicron variant, including sneezing, fatigue, a headache, lower back pain, fever, scratchy throat, night sweats and a runny nose.
There are also signs that a changed sense of smell or taste is less likely to be a symptom, as has been the case previously.
How easy does Omicron spread?
Early research from experts in Hong Kong, based on lab testing of tissue samples, has shown Omicron replicates up to 70 times faster in the airways leading to the lungs than the Delta variant, which may help explain its rapid spread throughout the population.
But its apparent mildness may be explained by the same Hong Kong study that showed Omicron replicates 10 times slower in the lungs than Delta does.
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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Film: In Syria
Dir: Philippe Van Leeuw
Starring: Hiam Abbass, Diamand Bo Abboud, Mohsen Abbas and Juliette Navis
Verdict: Four stars
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Retail gloom
Online grocer Ocado revealed retail sales fell 5.7 per cen in its first quarter as customers switched back to pre-pandemic shopping patterns.
It was a tough comparison from a year earlier, when the UK was in lockdown, but on a two-year basis its retail division, a joint venture with Marks&Spencer, rose 31.7 per cent over the quarter.
The group added that a 15 per cent drop in customer basket size offset an 11.6. per cent rise in the number of customer transactions.
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Global state-owned investor ranking by size
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United States
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China
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UAE
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Japan
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5
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Norway
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Canada
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Singapore
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Australia
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Saudi Arabia
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South Korea
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets