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Eco/Invest/Demography

Covid’s spreading fast because billions don’t have water to wash

Underprivileged people in cities are particularly vulnerable as they often live in densely populated areas where social distancing is hard, especially if they have to share a water source. Transmission in the Americas has been tougher to contain in poor urban areas that have limited access to water, sanitation and public health services, said Carissa Etienne, director of the Pan American Health Organization.

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Delhi launches Electric Vehicle Policy,Mahindra seeks investors for EV business

Under the policy, the Delhi government will give incentive of up to Rs 30,000 for two-wheelers, autos and e-rickshaws while for cars, it will give incentive of up to Rs 1.5 lakh, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said.

“After launching this policy, we expect 500,000 new electric vehicle in next five years… The Delhi government will set up dedicated ‘EV Cell’ to implement ‘electric vehicle policy,” Kejriwal said.
Meanwhile,Indian automaker Mahindra & Mahindra is looking for investment partners for its domestic electric vehicles business and is finalising investment plans for its Automobili Pininfarina unit, the group’s managing director said on Friday.

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India suffers record jump of 62,538 new COVID-19 cases,tally crosses 2 million

India has been posting an average of around 50,000 new cases a day since mid-June, but experts say its testing rate at 16,035 per million people is far too low.

Still, the government has taken some solace from the relatively low death rate, at about 2%, with 41,585 deaths so far, though that figure will be understated as only deaths of people who have been tested for the virus are counted.

Epidemiologists say the epidemic in India is likely to be months away from hitting its peak, which will put an already overburdened healthcare system under more strain.

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Beirut’s accidental cargo: how an unscheduled port visit led to disaster

The captain and lawyers acting for some creditors accused the ship’s owner of abandoning the vessel and succeeded in having it arrested. Months later, for safety reasons, the ammonium nitrate was unloaded and put in a dock warehouse.

On Tuesday, that stockpile caught fire and exploded not far from a built-up residential area of the city. The huge blast killed 145 people, injured 5,000, flattened buildings and made more than a quarter of a million people homeless.

The ship might have succeeded in leaving Beirut, had it managed to load the additional cargo.

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University of Washington forecasts 300,000 U.S. COVID-19 deaths

“We’re seeing a rollercoaster in the United States. It appears that people are wearing masks and socially distancing more frequently as infections increase, then after a while as infections drop, people let their guard down,” Dr Christopher Murray, director of the IHME, said in announcing the university’s revised forecast.

The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 stands at more than 159,000, the most of any country in the world, with nearly 4.9 million known cases

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Facebook’s dilemma: How to police claims about unproven COVID-19 vaccines

Determining what constitutes a false claim regarding the COVID-19 shot is much harder than fact-checking a claim about an established vaccine with a proven safety record, Facebook fact-checkers told Reuters.

“There is a lot of content that we see and we don’t even know what to do with it,” echoed Emmanuel Vincent, founder of Science Feedback, another Facebook fact-checking partner, who said the number of vaccines in development made it difficult to debunk claims about how a shot would work.

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