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The Treasury Department announced Wednesday it will raise $126 billion to finance the government in a series of auctions next week by employing emergency measures to keep from broaching the newly imposed debt limit. The Treasury announcement, part of Treasury's quarterly refunding operations, will see the $126 billion raised by auctioning 3 and 10-year notes and a 30-year bond with the auctions occurring on Tuesday through Wednesday of next week. Those auctions will raise money to meet debt-servicing requirements on $58.6 billion in Treasury notes and bonds that are coming due plus raising approximately $67.4 billion in new cash to keep the government operating. The government's debt ceiling which had been suspended for two years, went back into effect on Aug. 1 at $28.4 trillion, the level the debt had risen to since the limit was suspended. That period has seen the annual federal deficit hit a record $3.4 trillion last year as the government approved trillions of …

[Read more...] about Treasury announces auctions to raise $126 billion next week

Aug 4 (Reuters) - Shares of Robinhood Markets Inc (HOOD.O) jumped more than 15% in premarket trading on Wednesday as interest from star fund manager Cathie Wood and small-time traders set up the stock for a fourth session of gains after its underwhelming IPO last week. The 24% surge in Robinhood's stock on Tuesday elevated it above the $38-price set in last Thursday's IPO and gave the company a market capitalization of about $39 billion. read more Its stock was last up 14.9% at $53.5 on Wednesday, and the second-most traded across U.S. exchanges in trading before the bell. "People are trying to jump on the back of Cathie Wood's vote of confidence in Robinhood shares," said Thomas Hayes, managing member at Great Hill Capital in New York. "The catalyst was certainly Cathie Wood putting in a sizable position after everyone was downbeat after the IPO." Wood's Ark Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF.P) bought another 89,622 shares of Robinhood on Tuesday, and the stock now amounts …

[Read more...] about Robinhood sparks buzz on Reddit, shares up 15%

Healthy teenagers aged 16 and 17 will be offered the Pfizer vaccine within weeks and will be able to overrule their parents to get vaccinated, after a rethink by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI). Speaking at a Downing Street press briefing, Professor Jonathan Van Tam, the deputy chief medical officer, said there was “no time to waste” in rolling out the jabs to teenagers, and said he would be happy to have his own children vaccinated. “I want us to proceed as fast as practically possible,” he said. “The NHS has been kept informed of what has been deliberated by JCVI and it has been preparing multiple permutations and options for many weeks now, and I would expect this programme to begin in a very short number of weeks.” Less than three weeks ago, the committee said that the benefits did not outweigh the risks for youngsters, ruling out the “routine use of universal vaccination of children”. But on Wednesday, the JCVI said it had gathered more data …

[Read more...] about Covid vaccines to be offered to all 16 and 17-year-olds within weeks

There can surely be little mystery about why Nicola Sturgeon has decided to put all of her not inconsiderable political energies into re-igniting the SNP’s clamour for another independence referendum. After all, what else does she have to offer? Breaking up Britain is all she has left for her party conference next month. The massive support of the Scottish public, which surged only a few short months ago and had excitable London-based commentators predicting the imminent end of the United Kingdom, has petered out. And internecine bickering which looked as if the SNP was engulfed in a civil war has left her once super-confident activists looking ill at ease and unsure of where their leader is taking them. It is true that she still wins plaudits from many for her handling of the Covid-19 pandemic; but even here the gloss which she acquired over much of the last year for her superior communication skills has dimmed considerably. There is no doubt that it was the vaccination …

[Read more...] about No wonder Nicola Sturgeon bangs on about independence – everything else the SNP controls is a mess

Nicola Sturgeon has confirmed that nearly all of Scotland's remaining Covid restrictions will come to an end on August 9. In a virtual parliamentary sitting on Tuesday, the First Minister said that most legal restrictions - including those on social distancing and limits on the size of gatherings - will be lifted, allowing large-scale events to take place. Ms Sturgeon said that the country will be able to move beyond Level 0 as a result of the "steady decline in cases" and "the success of vaccination". She also confirmed that close contacts of those who test positive for Covid will no longer be required to automatically self-isolate for 10 days if they receive a negative PCR test. However, t he First Minister announced that the legal requirement to wear face mask will remain in certain public settings for "some time to come". She added that pubs and restaurants will still be required to collect contact details of customers and home working will continue to be advised. Ms …

[Read more...] about Scotland’s Covid rules: what restrictions will end on August 9?

Boris Johnson has decided not to travel abroad for his summer holidays and will instead take a “staycation” in the UK later this month, The Telegraph understands. The Prime Minister’s move matches scores of Britons who have opted to avoid the complexity of foreign travel given the Covid-19 restrictions in place. “The PM’s going to staycation this year,” said a senior government source familiar with his holiday plans. The destination is yet to be announced. Mr Johnson faces mounting pressure to lift more travel rules as 10 Tory MPs called for the “wholly disproportionate and burdensome testing regime for travellers” to end. The group wants all tests for travellers returning from green list countries and for the double-jabbed coming back from amber list countries to be scrapped. Holidaymakers bringing back virtually no cases of Covid to the UK Analysis of official data seen by The Telegraph shows that fewer than one in 60 people returning from countries on the amber or …

[Read more...] about Boris Johnson ditches overseas summer holiday in favour of August staycation

The mass vaccination of children against Covid-19 is set to get the green light, with approval given for 16 and 17-year-olds to receive the jab. The Telegraph understands the change in guidance will be announced on Wednesday after scientific advisers submitted their updated advice to Downing Street. A well-placed government source said that those aged 16 and 17 will be advised to get the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, matching guidance for other younger Britons. It means more than a million children will be encouraged to get a Covid-19 jab, a move that the Government had held off from taking while awaiting more medical evidence. America and some European countries are already vaccinating under-18s en masse, and have gone further than the UK is planning to at present by jabbing children as young as 12 in a bid to build up collective immunity in their populations. The new advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) was being considered by Prof Chris …

[Read more...] about Covid vaccine rollout to be extended to 16-year-olds

The “refusal” to make contingency plans for 2021 exams was the “most unforgivable” aspect of the Government’s mishandling of schools during the pandemic, a report has said. Ministers did not learn lessons about school closures and exams following the first lockdown , which led to a case of “pause, rewind, repeat”, a paper by the Institute for Government (IfG) found. Researchers described the first lockdown as “easily the most disruptive period in children's education since at least the start of the Second World War”. The report said: “Its most important conclusion is that the most unforgivable aspect of what happened is not just the failure to make contingency plans in the summer of 2020 but the refusal to do so – when it was already obvious that fresh school closures might well be needed, and that exams might have to be cancelled again. “Lessons were not learnt from the first lockdown, with the result that, for both school closures and exams, the story from July 2020 to …

[Read more...] about Government’s ‘refusal’ to make contingency plans led to exams chaos, report finds

Disadvantaged pupils could be waiting months for new laptops to allow them to study from home, amid warnings that the Government is failing to "get to grips" with the scale of digital poverty in schools. The Department for Education late last month announced it had purchased another 440,000 devices, such as laptops and tablets, for disadvantaged children to allow them to complete classes online, taking the total number to be provided to schools to more than one million. It said it had already delivered more than 560,000 devices to ensure "students have access to high-quality remote education if they need it". The news of the further batch comes as schools face months of closures to stem to spread of Covid-19. However, concerns are mounting over when students will have access to those devices, with sources suggesting the latest order, of 440,000 more devices, could take months to be delivered from Asia, and could come only after the end of the school year. The Telegraph …

[Read more...] about Disadvantaged pupils face months without laptops to study from home

Covid-19 is not an equal opportunities virus. From the start of the pandemic, we knew that it posed little serious threat to the young. Yet children were locked down just like everyone else. With schools closed they missed out on education, extra-curricular activities, friendships and rites of passage. Exams have been cancelled twice. Now, just as life slowly begins to return to normal, thousands of teenagers find themselves out of school and with nothing to do once more. For pupils in Years 11 and 13, this week is not just a half-term break but the end of their school days entirely. With GCSE and A-level exams replaced by teacher assessment and in-class tests, their results have already been determined. What was once “study leave” is now just “leave”. Relentless exam cramming can be soul-destroying. But unfortunately, in the absence of exams, our entire educational edifice seems to crumble. Schools don’t know what to do with pupils – and so send them home. Exams have been …

[Read more...] about The cancellation of exams has left school leavers on the scrapheap