European governments are rushing to clamp down on public life again amid concerns that summer revelry has reignited the spread of the coronavirus and brought on a second wave of severe outbreaks.
The World Health Organisation has warned the spread of the virus is increasingly being driven by people in their 20s, 30s and 40s who are less likely to show symptoms and unwittingly pass the disease on to others.
Tourists are also carrying Covid-19 across the continent and health officials are caught between the need to shore up ailing economies and the threat of contagion.
Europe’s oncoming second wave of the virus appears different in character to the first months of the pandemic, driven by club-going young adults and returning holidaymakers.
Countries such as Spain, Italy, France and Britain all suffered as the virus found its way into care homes and hospitals, infecting some of Europe’s most vulnerable people and contributing to the high death tolls seen almost without exception.
But with rules remaining in place to protect Europe’s elderly, the return of the virus is less likely to put the same burden on health services.
Instead, the challenge for European governments is to manage the spread of the virus across borders and to enable less-vulnerable younger people to return to work to continue rebuilding the continent’s shattered economies.
Cases rising as hotspots re-emerge
Steep rises in the number of new cases reported daily in Spain and Italy – which both rank among the worst-hit countries in Europe – have led to the closure of discos in an effort to suppress outbreaks blamed largely on young people out socialising.
“We cannot waste the sacrifices made in the past months,” Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza said in a Facebook post. His government has also made mask-wearing compulsory from 6pm to 6am in public venues and in outdoor spaces, including squares and streets, where crowds can gather.
From the beaches of Ibiza to the crowded urban nightspots of Madrid, some 25,000 discos and nightclubs in Spain have been asked to suspend their operations as part of a package of 11 measures to curb the fastest virus growth rate among Europe’s major economies.
Spain’s health ministry blamed night-time socialising for a spate of new outbreaks, punching a hole in the government’s seven-week experiment to restore the country’s tourism industry, which is worth an estimated $175 billion (Dh642.77bn) annually.
“This will devastate us,” said Antonio Gomez of the SpainTOP travel agency in Madrid. “People don’t travel to Spain any more just for sun and beaches.”
In Greece, which threw open its doors to tourists early after appearing to endure the pandemic’s darkest months with relative ease, bars and restaurants have had their opening hours restricted to counter a rise in infections.
Greece reported 150 new Covid-19 cases on Monday, bringing the total to 7,222. Nearly 40 per cent of those have come in August.
The government is requiring bars and restaurants to close between midnight and 7am in the greater Athens region. It has also restricted the number of people allowed to gather for social events such as weddings to 50. The authorities are preparing guidance to help people safely return to work from holidays.
In France an increase of new cases over the past week has prompted the closure of some public areas such as beaches to prevent parties, with nightclubs closed since mid-March. A ban on gatherings of more than 5,000 people was extended until the end of October.
With European governments again curbing the social activities of young people the WHO continues to stress that nobody is invincible to the virus.
"We are seeing young people who are ending up in ICU. Young people are dying from this virus," WHO epidemiologist Maria van Kerkhove said on Tuesday, referring to intensive care units.
More than 21.9 million cases of the coronavirus have been recorded around the world and 774,769 people have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
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Fast%20X
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The years Ramadan fell in May
It Was Just an Accident
Director: Jafar Panahi
Stars: Vahid Mobasseri, Mariam Afshari, Ebrahim Azizi, Hadis Pakbaten, Majid Panahi, Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr
Rating: 4/5
Tearful appearance
Chancellor Rachel Reeves set markets on edge as she appeared visibly distraught in parliament on Wednesday.
Legislative setbacks for the government have blown a new hole in the budgetary calculations at a time when the deficit is stubbornly large and the economy is struggling to grow.
She appeared with Keir Starmer on Thursday and the pair embraced, but he had failed to give her his backing as she cried a day earlier.
A spokesman said her upset demeanour was due to a personal matter.
The%20specs
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Squad
Ali Kasheif, Salim Rashid, Khalifa Al Hammadi, Khalfan Mubarak, Ali Mabkhout, Omar Abdulrahman, Mohammed Al Attas, Abdullah Ramadan, Zayed Al Ameri (Al Jazira), Mohammed Al Shamsi, Hamdan Al Kamali, Mohammed Barghash, Khalil Al Hammadi (Al Wahda), Khalid Essa, Mohammed Shaker, Ahmed Barman, Bandar Al Ahbabi (Al Ain), Al Hassan Saleh, Majid Suroor (Sharjah) Walid Abbas, Ahmed Khalil (Shabab Al Ahli), Tariq Ahmed, Jasim Yaqoub (Al Nasr), Ali Saleh, Ali Salmeen (Al Wasl), Hassan Al Muharami (Baniyas)
COMPANY%20PROFILE
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECompany%20name%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%203S%20Money%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarted%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%202018%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20London%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFounders%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Ivan%20Zhiznevsky%2C%20Eugene%20Dugaev%20and%20Andrei%20Dikouchine%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ESector%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20FinTech%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestment%20stage%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20%245.6%20million%20raised%20in%20total%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Volvo ES90 Specs
Engine: Electric single motor (96kW), twin motor (106kW) and twin motor performance (106kW)
Power: 333hp, 449hp, 680hp
Torque: 480Nm, 670Nm, 870Nm
On sale: Later in 2025 or early 2026, depending on region
Price: Exact regional pricing TBA
Schedule:
Sept 15: Bangladesh v Sri Lanka (Dubai)
Sept 16: Pakistan v Qualifier (Dubai)
Sept 17: Sri Lanka v Afghanistan (Abu Dhabi)
Sept 18: India v Qualifier (Dubai)
Sept 19: India v Pakistan (Dubai)
Sept 20: Bangladesh v Afghanistan (Abu Dhabi) Super Four
Sept 21: Group A Winner v Group B Runner-up (Dubai)
Sept 21: Group B Winner v Group A Runner-up (Abu Dhabi)
Sept 23: Group A Winner v Group A Runner-up (Dubai)
Sept 23: Group B Winner v Group B Runner-up (Abu Dhabi)
Sept 25: Group A Winner v Group B Winner (Dubai)
Sept 26: Group A Runner-up v Group B Runner-up (Abu Dhabi)
Sept 28: Final (Dubai)
Diriyah%20project%20at%20a%20glance
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COMPANY%20PROFILE
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ESSENTIALS
The flights
Emirates flies from Dubai to Phnom Penh via Yangon from Dh2,700 return including taxes. Cambodia Bayon Airlines and Cambodia Angkor Air offer return flights from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap from Dh250 return including taxes. The flight takes about 45 minutes.
The hotels
Rooms at the Raffles Le Royal in Phnom Penh cost from $225 (Dh826) per night including taxes. Rooms at the Grand Hotel d'Angkor cost from $261 (Dh960) per night including taxes.
The tours
A cyclo architecture tour of Phnom Penh costs from $20 (Dh75) per person for about three hours, with Khmer Architecture Tours. Tailor-made tours of all of Cambodia, or sites like Angkor alone, can be arranged by About Asia Travel. Emirates Holidays also offers packages.
CHATGPT%20ENTERPRISE%20FEATURES
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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.
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
The biog
Hometown: Birchgrove, Sydney Australia
Age: 59
Favourite TV series: Outlander Netflix series
Favourite place in the UAE: Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque / desert / Louvre Abu Dhabi
Favourite book: Father of our Nation: Collected Quotes of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan
Thing you will miss most about the UAE: My friends and family, Formula 1, having Friday's off, desert adventures, and Arabic culture and people
Five ways to get fit like Craig David (we tried for seven but ran out of time)
Start the week as you mean to go on. So get your training on strong on a Monday.
Train hard, but don’t take it all so seriously that it gets to the point where you’re not having fun and enjoying your friends and your family and going out for nice meals and doing that stuff.
Think about what you’re training or eating a certain way for — don’t, for example, get a six-pack to impress somebody else or lose weight to conform to society’s norms. It’s all nonsense.
Get your priorities right.
And last but not least, you should always, always chill on Sundays.
