Yahoo Finance Tuesday briefing: Green jobs now, not fusion later, Sunak urged
Top story: Rebound economies pump out CO2 again
Good morning – Warren Murray making sure you are not overtaken by events.
Green apprenticeships would prepare young people for jobs in renewable energy and restore the UK’s natural landscape while preventing their careers being blighted for life by the pandemic, a report says. It finds that 250,000 green apprenticeships and skills centres at further education colleges could be created with about £10.6bn of government money. About 500,000 young people aged 16 to 24 are out of work and that number could double when furlough ends, according to the report, commissioned by Friends of the Earth from Transition Economics. With the budget coming on Wednesday, Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, has promised green measures including a £22bn investment in a national infrastructure bank, some of which would go to low-carbon projects, and the sale of green bonds to investors. However, green campaigners are concerned the government is concentrating too much on future technology such as hydrogen and nuclear fusion instead of “shovel-ready” green jobs: such as building the electric-vehicle charging network, extending broadband, insulating homes and restoring natural landscapes.
Separately, the International Energy Agency has warned that the world has only a few months to prevent the energy industry’s carbon emissions from surpassing pre-pandemic levels this year as economies rebound from Covid-19 restrictions. Its figures show fossil fuel emissions climbed steadily over the second half of 2020 and by December were 2% higher than in the same month the year before. It happened only months after Covid-19 triggered the deepest drop in carbon dioxide output since the end of the second world war. Countries whose economic stimulus packages aim for a net environmental benefit – such as France, Spain, the UK and Germany – have been most successful in keeping a lid on the carbon emissions rebound. Those with the weakest green recovery measures, such as China, India, the US and Brazil, have recorded a steep resumption of emissions.
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‘The girls are free’ – All 279 Nigerian students kidnapped from their boarding school in the northern state of Zamfara have been released and are on government premises, the governor of the state has said. “I am happy to announce that the girls are free,” Dr Bello Matawalle told AFP. “They have just arrived in the government house and are in good health.” An AFP reporter saw hundreds of girls wearing hijabs, gathered at the government premises. Authorities initially said 317 girls were abducted in the raid by hundreds of gunmen on the Government Girls Secondary School in remote Jangebe village on Friday. But Matawalle said the “total number of female students abducted” was 279.
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Big unknown of child ‘long Covid’ – With schools in England poised to reopen on Monday, scientists are warning that emerging data on “long Covid” in children so far is uncertain but should not be ignored, given there is no coronavirus vaccine yet available at their age. Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has suggested 13% of under-11s and about 15% of 12- to 16-year-olds report at least one enduring symptom five weeks after being infected. However, some experts say the way ONS data is collected makes the figures not entirely reliable in this case. Japan has insisted that China stop subjecting Japanese citizens to anal Covid swabs, saying it causes “great psychological pain”. France has given the OK for the Oxford vaccine to be given to people aged 65-75 with serious health risks – a reversal of the previous position – while those over 75 will continue to receive the Moderna vaccine. And the WHO says the pandemic will not be over this year – this and other developments at our live blog.
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Phone-addict students lose sleep – Almost four in 10 university students may have an addiction to smartphones, a habit that plays havoc with their sleep. A study of 1,043 students aged 18-30 at King’s College London found 406 displayed symptoms of smartphone addiction. More than two-thirds of the addicts had trouble sleeping, compared with 57.1% of those not hooked on their device. Students who used their phone after midnight, or for four or more hours a day, were at highest risk but even two hours could be addictive. The researchers write in Frontiers in Psychiatry: “Of those that stopped using their device more than an hour before bedtime, 23.8% exhibited addiction, compared to 42% of those stopping less than 30 minutes before bedtime.” Dr Bernadka Dubicka, chair of child and adolescent psychiatry at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said: “The negative impact of smartphone use on sleep is very concerning from a mental health perspective … young people should try to limit their smartphone use late at night, for example, by charging their phone in a different room to their bedroom.”
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Claims Libya PM won office on bungs – Libya’s democratic transition has been upended by UN findings that the new interim prime minister, Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, may have gained power after his supporters offered bribes as high as $200,000 to attract votes. They allegedly offered the money in a hotel in Tunis where a UN-selected forum met to elect an interim PM ahead of national elections in December. The inquiry reports that a row broke out in the lobby after some delegates discovered their bribes were less than others’. The UN report is due to be published on 15 March after an investigation was demanded by the UN special envoy for Libya, Stephanie Williams. Libya’s parliament was due to meet on Monday to give a vote of confidence in the new government but the bribery controversy and Dbeibah’s inability to name his cabinet have put that at risk.
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Devoid of all flavour – A food website has been taken down after it stripped bloggers’ recipes of their gubbins and presented them as, well, just recipes. Recipeasly said it wanted to “fix online recipes” by removing adverts and “life stories”. Amid a furious backlash, food writer Kat Kinsman tweeted: “Wait, so you are just stealing content, eliminating context and creator revenue, and diminishing the labour that is the only way these recipes exist in the first place because you have decided the humans behind them are annoying?” After it was taken down the site’s landing page said it would “commit to making changes where we have fallen short”, which is quite apt really.
Today in Focus podcast: Behind appeal of Brazilian butt lift
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Lunchtime read: Rich golfers fighting over a tee
When a Chinese billionaire bought Wentworth, one of Britain’s most prestigious golf clubs, dentists and estate agents were confronted with the unsentimental force of globalised capital.
Sport
Spectator sports in England are set to be given a £300m boost in Wednesday’s budget, with the government ready to provide a fresh package of loans and grants to help summer sports and clubs survive the impact of the third lockdown. Pascal Gaüzère will not be dropped from the Six Nations panel of referees despite admitting that he should not have allowed Wales’s opening two tries against England in Cardiff on Saturday. The prime minister, Boris Johnson, has pledged £2.8m towards a potential joint bid from England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland to host the 2030 World Cup, saying it is the “right time” to “bring football home”.
It was only a one-word expletive but, coming from the mouth of a manager facing an eighth defeat in nine Premier League matches, Ralph Hasenhüttl’s immediate reaction to two late chances Southampton squandered at Everton was the sound of despair, anger and disbelief. Arsenal found their away form again, Manchester City gave Chelsea little room for error, and there was no stopping Jill Scott in the Women’s Super League on the weekend. Gordon Elliott said “it absolutely breaks my heart to hear people say that I have no respect for my horses” and that he will spend his life paying for “a moment of madness”.
Business
Asia-Pacific stock markets have been mixed so far – benchmarks in Tokyo, Shanghai and Hong Kong declined, while Seoul and Sydney advanced. Overnight the S&P 500 index climbed 2.4%, recovering most of its losses from the past week after a selloff in US Treasury bonds eased. The FTSE is looking 0.2% lower while the pound is worth $1.387 and €1.153 at time of writing.
The papers
“Hancock seizes on data to urge EU to think again on Oxford jab” – the Guardian print edition splash today. Our budget previews are led by: “Labour will back rises in business tax”, quoting Anneliese Dodds, the shadow chancellor, who writes for us today about what she would do differently from Rishi Sunak. Others have some pre-budget dribs and drabs as we await the full reveal. “Sunak to arm City for fightback with shake-up of listings regime” says the FT – the chancellor, it says, wants to give the City of London post-Brexit muscle to compete with exchanges in New York, Amsterdam and Frankfurt.
The Telegraph has “Hague tells Tories to prepare for tax rises” though its splash is “Fewer than 10 Covid patients over 80 sent to ICU each day” – its angle on the success of jabs as emphasised by Matt Hancock. “Vaccines cut risk of serious illness by 80%” says the Metro. Like many the Express worries for Prince Philip, giving his transfer to a heart hospital the front-page pic slot. Its top story is per Matt Hancock: “One jab brings dramatic drop in hospital cases”. The Mirror gives the Duke its full front page bar the masthead and puffs: “Prayers for Philip”.
The Times has “Digital pass to unlock Europe for UK tourists” – our version says that Spain will open a corridor for Britons if an EU vaccine passport is not agreed. The ex-president of France Nicolas Sarkozy facing a year in jail is the picture lead. The Mail rips some peeling wallpaper off a cracking story: “PM’s secret fund for Carrie’s No 10 decor” – it says “wealthy Tory benefactors” would pay for the flat to be fitted out to his fiancee’s tastes. Apparently, “Mr Johnson has complained the cost of the refurbishment by Carrie Symonds was ‘totally out of control’.” He could always pick up a paint roller …
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