British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Monday that a vaccine to tackle COVID-19 was "not there yet" but the government was getting ready to roll out it, with a central expectation for the first half of 2021. "On my central expectation, I would expect the bulk of the roll out to be in the first half of next year," he said. Asked if some people could receive a vaccine this year he replied: "I don't rule that out but that is not my central expectation."

Posted Monday, October 26, 2020 4:32 am EDT

Staff at a major London hospital trust have been told to be ready to receive the first batches of the vaccine being developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca Plc, The Sun newspaper reported on Monday. The Sun said the hospital was told to prepare for the vaccine from the "week commencing the 2 November."

Posted Monday, October 26, 2020 3:52 am EDT

France may be experiencing 100,000 new COVID-19 cases per day -- twice the latest official figure -- Professor Jean-François Delfraissy, who heads the scientific council that advises the government on the pandemic, told RTL radio on Monday. France, the euro zone's second-biggest economy, is currently examining whether to tighten lockdown measures further to curb the resurgence of the COVID-19 virus, having already imposed night-time curfews on major cities including Paris.

Posted Monday, October 26, 2020 3:26 am EDT

Higher taxes imposed on Russia's energy sector could make prolonged output curbs by OPEC and allied producers easier to stomach for Moscow's energy majors. The new system of taxes, approved by President Vladimir Putin earlier this month to help Russia weather the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, make it more expensive for energy companies to boost production from mature oil fields and produce more heavy crude.

Posted Monday, October 26, 2020 3:04 am EDT

With athletes in America's biggest sports leagues raking in salaries worth $300 million and more, is it time to reign in the big spending or do superstars deserve the big bucks they make?

Posted Saturday, December 14, 2019 12:32 pm EST

Animal rights activists have repeatedly called for college sports teams to stop using real animals as their mascots. Are these complaints fair or an overreaction?

Posted Monday, December 2, 2019 11:17 am EST

Has the U.S. women's soccer team done enough to warrant salaries that match their male counterparts? The 360 gives you all the angles on heavily-debated topics in the news.

Posted Wednesday, July 10, 2019 1:46 pm EDT

The former “Daily Show” host is serving as the host and emcee of this week’s 2019 Department of Defense Warrior Games in Tampa, where about 300 wounded, ill or injured active-duty and veteran military athletes are competing in 14 adaptive sports.

Posted Wednesday, June 26, 2019 8:55 am EDT

(Bloomberg) -- Investors wondering how China plans to evolve its financial markets in the coming years need look no further than the commentary from the weekend’s Bund Summit in Shanghai for guidance.People’s Bank of China Governor Yi Gang said that promoting broader use of the yuan will continue alongside the opening of markets. “The regulator’s main job is to reduce restrictions on the cross-border use of the currency, and let it take its own course,” he said.Those comments were echoed by Zhu Jun, director general of the central bank’s international division. Policy makers will remove obstacles that stand in the way of broader use of the currency with steady liberalization of the capital account, increasing yuan exchange-rate flexibility and improving liquidity in the bond market, she said.The comments by the two officials are a reminder that even though promoting the yuan hasn’t taken off as rapidly as expected since the idea was kicked off a decade ago, monetary officials are pressing ahead anyway. Success would give Chinese policy makers some things they’ve long dreamed about: the use of the yuan as a global reserve currency and a challenge to the greenback’s dominance in trade and finance.“China will stick to its goal of yuan internationalization and there is no going back from its financial opening up,” said Gao Qi, a strategist at Scotiabank in Singapore. “More and better policies are likely to be seen to accelerate the internationalization.”Chinese policy makers set their plan to raise the influence of their currency in the wake of the global credit crisis but it has made halting progress at best, mostly because the ruling Communist Party has little appetite for giving up control on issues such as capital outflows. Calls for expanding yuan usage picked up in the Asian nation over the past summer as tensions with the U.S. spilled over into the financial sphere.The yuan’s share in global payments and in central bank reserves remains at around 2% but China’s efforts continue. The PBOC said last Thursday that it and Bank of Korea agreed to extend a currency swap agreement another five years and boost the amount involved to 400 billion yuan ($59.9 billion).The yuan has rallied 7% from a low in May to its highest in two years. Investor sentiment has gotten a boost from China’s economic rebound from the damage the virus did earlier in the year and the greenback’s weakness. The surge is also being propelled by a wide interest-rate premium over the rest of the world, and by polls that indicate Joe Biden leads incumbent Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential contest on Nov. 3.Chinese authorities have taken steps to slow the ascent by setting the daily fixing weaker than market watchers expect and by eliminating a rule that made it expensive to bet against the yuan.The yuan fell 0.23% to 6.7017 a dollar as of 5:32 p.m. on Monday as a major meeting of the Communist Party started in Beijing. That gathering will map out China’s next phase of economic development, an agenda that is partly determined by the leadership’s desire to protect the nation from more friction with the U.S.“Given how Sino-U.S. tensions have spiked over the past three years, there’s probably a deep worry amongst Chinese officials of a bifurcation in global trade so this may hasten the need to open up the yuan,” said Jian Hui Tan, a foreign-exchange strategist at Informa Globalmarkets (S) Pte Ltd.(Updates with yuan prices in eighth and 10th paragraphs.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Posted Monday, October 26, 2020 5:35 am EDT

U.S. Secretary of State of Mike Pompeo landed in India on Monday, the first leg of a five-day Asian trip aimed at strengthening strategic ties in the face of growing Chinese influence across the region. Pompeo was met at New Delhi airport by U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Juster, according to a pool report. Pompeo is due to meet India's Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar on Monday evening, before he and U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper hold a joint summit with Jaishankar and Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Tuesday.

Posted Monday, October 26, 2020 5:32 am EDT

BALTIMORE — Diabetes, heart disease and other ailments had been disproportionately cutting lives short in the disadvantaged neighborhoods of West Baltimore for decades when the coronavirus pandemic emerged and piled on. A group of Episcopal Church members found that to be something of a last straw. Buoyed by the recent social justice movement, three Black women from the church with backgrounds ...

Posted Monday, October 26, 2020 5:32 am EDT