Economic growth

Ghana on Wednesday became the first country to receive vaccines as part of the United Nations-led COVAX program, which is set to deliver tools to fight the coronavirus pandemic to 92 low and medium-income nations, funded by the rest of the world. Thousands of kilometers away, Germany's coronavirus vaccination drive is now accelerating after a slow start and a series of production delays by producers BioNTech-Pfizer and Oxford-AstraZeneca. The new momentum should mean that Europe's No. 1 economy can ease its tough curbs on public movement within weeks rather than months . The West is, however, again facing accusations of vaccine nationalism as wealthy nations prioritize their domestic inoculation drives amid a race to reopen tens of thousands of businesses that were forced to close and are on the brink of bankruptcy. In Germany, the pressure is even more intense in an election year after a 5% economic contraction in 2020. On Tuesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) called on … [Read more...] about COVAX: How vaccines for all will help the global recovery

The NHS is facing a legal challenge over its data deal with controversial Silicon Valley firm Palantir, Sky News can reveal. Palantir, which has become notorious for its close ties to security services and immigration agencies in the United States, secured its first ever deal to handle NHS data in March last year for the nominal sum of £1. Legal group Foxglove announced today that it was bringing a court case against the health service to force it to reconsider the contract, which was extended in December 2020 and is now worth £23.5m. Government's failure to publish COVID contracts details was unlawful, High Court rules The lawsuit is the latest challenge over procurement during the pandemic, which has become a highly contentious topic in recent months, with critics accusing the government of favouring its own contacts. It comes as a batch of internal government emails uncovered by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and seen by Sky News reveal that … [Read more...] about NHS facing legal challenge over data deal with controversial Silicon Valley firm Palantir

Don't max tax THE new unemployment figures should send a chill down Rishi Sunak’s spine. His upcoming Budget could so easily make matters worse. The Chancellor is focused on jobs, and rightly so. But almost every day brings a new leak of a worrying Treasury plan to raise this tax or that. Our views on the madness of hammering working people with extra fuel duty are well known. But hiking corporation tax from the low levels which helped the Tories conjure a job-creation miracle in the last recession is similarly crazy. Unemployment is at a five-year high . Once the furlough ends, the dole queue is likely to lengthen dramatically. Mr Sunak must learn from history. In the decades after World War Two, the US and West Germany encouraged the free market with lower taxes and far less state intervention. Britain maintained high taxes and a big state controlling vast swathes of the economy. America prospered. West Germany rose from its ruins to become … [Read more...] about The latest unemployment figures should send a chill down Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s spine