As was expected, American and NATO withdrawal did not mean peace had been brought to the Afghan peoples. The Taliban have managed to take control of vast parts of the countryside and now has concentrated attacks on a number of large cities including Kunduz, Herat and Lashkar Gah. In southern Nimroz province, the capital of Zaranj appeared to be the first provincial capital to fall to the Taliban. US aircraft pounded Taliban positions in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province as the insurgents closed a major border crossing with neighbouring Pakistan. In Helmand’s provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, airstrikes destroyed a market in the centre of the city – an area controlled by the Taliban. The Taliban now control nine out of the 10 districts of the city.

General Kenneth McKenzie, head of the US Army Central Command, told reporters in Kabul, “The Taliban are attempting to create a sense of inevitability about their campaign. They are wrong,” he said.”Taliban victory is not inevitable.” Famous last words?

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office advises British citizens to “leave now by commercial means because of the worsening security situation”, adding: “The level of consular assistance the British embassy can provide in Afghanistan is extremely limited, including in a crisis. Do not rely on the FCDO being able to evacuate you from Afghanistan in an emergency. Terrorists are very likely to try to carry out attacks in Afghanistan. Specific methods of attack are evolving and increasing in sophistication. You should note an overall increased threat to western interests in Kabul. Follow the instructions of local authorities. There is a high threat of kidnapping throughout the country.”

United Nations’ Afghanistan envoy, Deborah Lyons, explained Afghanistan had now entered a “new, deadlier, and more destructive phase.”

Vassily Nebenzia who is Russia’s UN Ambassador expressed concern at the level of deterioration. “With the withdrawal of foreign forces, the outlook looks grim.” He added that “the prospects of slipping into full scale and protracted civil war, unfortunately, is a stark reality,” 

A new report from Carnegie UK shows wellbeing in England has decreased in the last year while loneliness and mistrust in the government have increased. The decline in wellbeing started before the pandemic and continued to drop as the country entered its first national lockdown in March 2020.

The charity predicts that when it reports on 2020/21 levels later this year, this decline will be even worse. 

Sarah Davidson, chief executive of Carnegie UK, said anybody who has lived through the last year and a half will have become “so aware of the fact that the things that affect our experience of life goes so much wider than simply things which are captured by by economic data. So much of what we’ve talked about during this pandemic has really reflected the complexity of our lives and the fact that things like our personal relationships, and the extent to which we can influence decisions … and even things like our access to green spaces has an impact,” she said. “All of these things actually tell you something really important about the quality of our life.”

The number of adults in England feeling lonely has been increasing since 2017 and in the last year jumped by 44%, from 2.6 million to 3.7 million. Meanwhile, trust in government is at an-all time low following a nearly 40% drop from 2018/19 to 2019/20 (from 31% to 19%).

The charity is proposing a new measure of national progress – gross domestic wellbeing, or GDWe – to measure whether life is getting better or worse. The latest GDWe score, based on ONS data, was 6.79 out of 10 for 2019/20, compared with 6.89 for 2018/19, its lowest level since 2015/16.

“We’re not saying that economic factors are not important, because they are, and the model of wellbeing that we talk about highlights the importance of balancing social, economic, environmental [and] democratic outcomes … In order to properly capture what’s important to people’s lives, you really need to measure all these things,” Davidson said. She added that this data, which shows wellbeing falling in multiple measured areas, including relationships and governance, should then be used to influence policy decisions.

Wellbeing in decline in England as loneliness rises, report shows | Health | The Guardian

 Space Command, at RAF High Wycombe,  is the UK’s first command centre and is aimed at protecting the country’s interests in space. It will also provide command and control for all of the UK’s space capabilities, including the UK’s Space Operations Centre, RAF Fylingdales, SKYNET and others.

The UK is spending an additional £1.4bn on space capabilities over the next 10 years.

 The United Nations head of climate change, Patricia Espinosa, says a little over half of all countries which signed the Paris accord have submitted updated proposals to curb emissions.

In a statement, Espinosa said, “I call on those countries that were unable to meet this deadline to redouble their efforts and honour their commitment under the agreement.”

The deadline for submissions passed on July 30. China and India who rank first and third respectively as the world’s worst emitters of greenhouse gases have remained silent. 

In the 2015 Paris Agreement,  signatories of the accord was given until the end of 2020 to submit their own determined targets, known as Nationally Determined Targets (NDTs). The pandemic meant that the COP 26 climate conference in Glasgow was postponed to November this year.

The amount of natural disasters appears to be have created a sense of urgency from the climate chief, with Espinosa saying, “recent extreme heat waves, droughts and floods across the globe are a dire warning that much more needs to be done, and much more quickly, to change our current pathway. This can only be achieved through more ambitious NDCs.”

Some of the worlds smaller countries are taking the Paris agreement seriously. Fifteen countries with what can be considered relatively low rates of carbon emissions submitted pledges this week. The group which includes Sri Lanka, Israel, Malawi, Barbados, Malaysia, Nigeria and Namibia, set themselves ambitious targets.

Carbon emissions: China, India miss UN deadline to update targets | News | DW | 31.07.2021

 Soon such weather events will be so commonplace that they will no longer make the news.

Four people were killed by blazes that swept through the Turkish tourist regions of Antalya and Muğla, forcing thousands of holidaymakers to be evacuated from their hotels by a flotilla of boats.

Throughout the country, firefighters battled more than 50 blazes. Dozens were hospitalised by the smoke. The Turkish meteorological office sees little likelihood of respite in the week ahead. Next week, Ankara and several other sites are set for temperatures more than 12C higher than the August average.

The heat intensity of wildfires in Turkey on Thursday was four times higher than anything on record for the nation. Conditions at the sites of dozens of other blazes throughout the country were tinder dry. Turkey’s 60-year temperature record had been broken the previous week when Cizre, a town in the south-east, registered 49.1C.

“Those numbers are off the scale compared to the last 19 years,” said Mark Parrington, a senior scientist in the EU’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service.

Residents of affected towns told reporters they had never seen anything like it.

 Ibrahim Aydın, a farmer, said he had lost all his livestock and nearly been killed while fighting the flames. “Everything I had was burned to the ground. I lost lambs and other animals.” He pointed out. “This is not normal. This was like hell.”

Climate scientists have long predicted the Mediterranean will be hit hard by rising temperatures and changes in rainfall, driven by human emissions. Future wildfire risk is projected to increase in southern Europe, according to the last report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

This year looks likely to continue the trend. The World Meteorological Organisation tweeted that extreme heat is hitting the wider Mediterranean region with temperatures forecast to rise well above 40C in inland areas of Italy, Greece, Tunisia and Turkey. It has urged preparations to prevent health and water supply problems.

Wildfires have already hit southern Greece, forcing evacuations of villages outside the western port city of Patras. Blazes are also reported in Bulgaria and Albania. The EU has issued its highest fire risk alert to places in Italy, Portugal, Spain and parts of North Africa. A large fire broke out on Thursday in Lebanon, where one person has died.

Turkish fires sweeping through tourist areas are the hottest on record | Turkey | The Guardian

Not very long ago nurses were earning praise for their commitment and dedication during the worse of the pandemic.  Now nurses around the US are holding strikes, protesting deteriorating working conditions and severe understaffing issues.

For over four months, more than 700 nurses at the Tenet Healthcare-owned Saint Vincent hospital have been on strike, the second-longest nurses’ strike in Massachusetts’ history. The hospital has brought in replacement workers throughout the strike and have spent more than $30,000 a day on police coverage during the strike.

Dominique Muldoon, a nurse for more than 20 years at Saint Vincent’s hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts, explains, “Most of us felt like we went from heroes to zeroes quickly.”   Nurses had worked through breaks and past scheduled shifts to try to ensure patient care. Understaffing and cuts were the “new normal” at the hospital.

Marlena Pellegrino, a nurse at Saint Vincent hospital, said, We worked through some very tumultuous times where our employer could have stepped up to assist us instead of being an obstacle in our way of trying to care for our patients.” 

In Chicago, about 300 nurses at Community First medical center held a one-day strike on 26 July over hospital failures during the pandemic and new contract negotiations.

Kathy Haff, an emergency room nurse at Community First medical center for 29 years, explained the hospital lost a significant number of nurses on staff during the pandemic, including three nurses who died from the virus, and now nurses are working severely understaffed and with inadequate equipment to perform their duties.

“They don’t appreciate us. They claim to, but they don’t. They just take advantage of us left and right,” said Haff. “We’re working at half staff basically. They don’t care that we’re short. They just keep loading us up and keep criticizing if you’re not moving fast enough. There is no appreciation. All those ‘healthcare heroes’ signs were garbage. We didn’t believe one bit of them. We’re like, yeah whatever. We’re like healthcare suckers because they didn’t protect us.”

 1,400 nurses at USC Keck hospital and USC Norris Cancer hospital in Los Angeles held a two-day strike on 13 and 14 July over understaffing and patient safety concerns.

Thousands of nurses represented by National Nurses United at hospitals throughout California and Texas held a day of action on 21 July to call attention to workplace issues highlighted by the pandemic.

Juan Anchondo, a nurse for nearly 18 years at Las Palmas medical center in El Paso, Texas, explained staffing issues at his hospital have worsened throughout the pandemic as nearby hospitals have lured workers away with bonuses and better pay, and support nurses from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) left several months ago after assisting with Covid-19 surges in the region.

“People don’t take breaks,” said Anchondo. “One of the things we’re trying to negotiate is a relief break nurse…”

Kimberly Smith, an ICU nurse for 12 years at the Corpus Christi medical center in Texas, said unsafe staffing was a prevailing issue in new union contract negotiations but that these important issues to nurses have fallen by the wayside for the sake of profits and public relations campaigns asserting nurses are heroes for working on the frontlines during the pandemic and empty thank you events where nurses were given free hotdogs.

“I just want to be safe at work. I don’t need a hotdog. You’re telling me I’m a hero and how wonderful I am. Just make the working conditions safe. That’s all nurses want. We want to feel like we’re able to give the best care we can and have enough resources to do it,” said Smith, who added that nurses regularly skip breaks because there is no staff to relieve them. ‘‘Even before the pandemic the staffing wasn’t this bad. It’s been a horrible year. Nurses have passed away, are getting out of the profession, they’re retiring.”

‘We went from heroes to zeroes’: US nurses strike over work conditions | Nursing | The Guardian

The answer is a resounding no

Advanz Pharma – and its former private equity owners HgCapital and Cinven inflated thyroid drug prices over 10n years by up to 6,000% paid out more than £400m to shareholders and directors during the same period. So much for the usual defence of high prices and lucrative profits that it is for the expense of research and development costs.

Advanz and its subsidiaries were found to have charged “excessive and unfair prices” between 2009 and 2017 for liothyronine tablets, primarily used to treat hypothyroidism and were fined a combined £100m by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

During the period that the CMA found that drug prices were inflated, Companies House filings show that dividends were paid to entities controlled either from Luxembourg or Jersey.

The shareholder payouts were channelled through Mercury Pharma Group, part of the Advanz Pharma network of companies and one of the firms fined in the CMA’s crackdown.

Between 2009 and 2012, Mercury Pharma Group paid £44.4m in dividends while under the ultimate ownership of Hg Capital, via a Luxembourg-based entity called Midas.

In 2012, fellow private equity group Cinven bought Mercury from Hg and merged it with Amdipharm, which it had purchased that year, combining them under the control of a Jersey-based entity called Amdipharm Mercury.

Under the ownership of this new entity, Mercury paid a £12.8m dividend.

Cinven sold Amdipharm Mercury to Canadian drugs company Concordia Healthcare in a £2.3bn deal in 2015, but the Jersey-based structure remained in place.

Now under Concordia’s control, Mercury paid dividends of £240.3m in 2016 and £85.4m in 2017, both to the Canadian firm’s London-based subsidiary Concordia Investment Holdings (UK) Limited. 

This firm paid no income tax over the period, instead claiming tax credits worth a combined £42m. It was able to do so in part because it made significant losses over the three years, partly due to £344m in debt interest that it paid on £1.47bn in loans that carried an interest rate of 10.5%.

As well as paying the Jersey entity hundreds of millions of pounds in interest, Concordia Investment Holdings (UK) also paid it dividends worth a combined £65m.

Also over the eight-year period covered by the CMA’s fine for inflating drug prices, Advanz Pharma also handed significant payouts to senior managers. The Guardian analysis found the company rewarded directors handsomely via a complex system of dividend payments and intra-company loans involving offshore entities. A subsidiary paid directors, who never numbered more than three people, about £21m over the period of the drug price inflation.

Drug firm that hiked prices by 6,000% paid shareholders £400m | Pharmaceuticals industry | The Guardian

Not very long ago nurses were earning praise for their commitment and dedication during the worse of the pandemic.  Now nurses around the US are holding strikes, protesting deteriorating working conditions and severe understaffing issues.

For over four months, more than 700 nurses at the Tenet Healthcare-owned Saint Vincent hospital have been on strike, the second-longest nurses’ strike in Massachusetts’ history. The hospital has brought in replacement workers throughout the strike and have spent more than $30,000 a day on police coverage during the strike.

Dominique Muldoon, a nurse for more than 20 years at Saint Vincent’s hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts, explains, “Most of us felt like we went from heroes to zeroes quickly.”   Nurses had worked through breaks and past scheduled shifts to try to ensure patient care. Understaffing and cuts were the “new normal” at the hospital.

Marlena Pellegrino, a nurse at Saint Vincent hospital, said, We worked through some very tumultuous times where our employer could have stepped up to assist us instead of being an obstacle in our way of trying to care for our patients.” 

In Chicago, about 300 nurses at Community First medical center held a one-day strike on 26 July over hospital failures during the pandemic and new contract negotiations.

Kathy Haff, an emergency room nurse at Community First medical center for 29 years, explained the hospital lost a significant number of nurses on staff during the pandemic, including three nurses who died from the virus, and now nurses are working severely understaffed and with inadequate equipment to perform their duties.

“They don’t appreciate us. They claim to, but they don’t. They just take advantage of us left and right,” said Haff. “We’re working at half staff basically. They don’t care that we’re short. They just keep loading us up and keep criticizing if you’re not moving fast enough. There is no appreciation. All those ‘healthcare heroes’ signs were garbage. We didn’t believe one bit of them. We’re like, yeah whatever. We’re like healthcare suckers because they didn’t protect us.”

 1,400 nurses at USC Keck hospital and USC Norris Cancer hospital in Los Angeles held a two-day strike on 13 and 14 July over understaffing and patient safety concerns.

Thousands of nurses represented by National Nurses United at hospitals throughout California and Texas held a day of action on 21 July to call attention to workplace issues highlighted by the pandemic.

Juan Anchondo, a nurse for nearly 18 years at Las Palmas medical center in El Paso, Texas, explained staffing issues at his hospital have worsened throughout the pandemic as nearby hospitals have lured workers away with bonuses and better pay, and support nurses from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) left several months ago after assisting with Covid-19 surges in the region.

“People don’t take breaks,” said Anchondo. “One of the things we’re trying to negotiate is a relief break nurse…”

Kimberly Smith, an ICU nurse for 12 years at the Corpus Christi medical center in Texas, said unsafe staffing was a prevailing issue in new union contract negotiations but that these important issues to nurses have fallen by the wayside for the sake of profits and public relations campaigns asserting nurses are heroes for working on the frontlines during the pandemic and empty thank you events where nurses were given free hotdogs.

“I just want to be safe at work. I don’t need a hotdog. You’re telling me I’m a hero and how wonderful I am. Just make the working conditions safe. That’s all nurses want. We want to feel like we’re able to give the best care we can and have enough resources to do it,” said Smith, who added that nurses regularly skip breaks because there is no staff to relieve them. ‘‘Even before the pandemic the staffing wasn’t this bad. It’s been a horrible year. Nurses have passed away, are getting out of the profession, they’re retiring.”

‘We went from heroes to zeroes’: US nurses strike over work conditions | Nursing | The Guardian

UK companies announced bumper payouts to investors with a combined £7.2bn in dividends and share buybacks as the economy rebounds and Covid fears recede.

Big oil and miners dominated the dividend bonanza, with mining firm Anglo-American revealing the largest payout, worth a total of $4.1bn, after reporting its strongest half-year profit in the company’s 104-year history.

 It followed similar moves by Shell, drinks company Diageo and Lloyds Banking Group, which helped round out a bonanza day for shareholders.

Rising commodity prices, which lifted miners and oil majors, as well as the Bank of England’s gradual removal of Covid dividend caps for the UK’s largest banks, fuelled the increase.

Quarterly dividend payouts – based on when they were distributed rather than when they were announced – have already grown 51.2% to £25.7bn in the three months to June, compared to 2020.

Soaring global oil prices helped Shell report its highest profit in two years, allowing the board to raise its dividend by nearly 40% and launch share buybacks worth $2bn.

Meanwhile, the house buying boom and the return of consumer spending raised economic forecasts at Lloyds Banking Group, which swung back to profit and announced the resumption of dividends, with an aggregate £473m payout to shareholders.

Drinks company Diageo – which owns brands like Johnnie Walker whisky and Smirnoff vodka – announced share buybacks and dividends totalling £1bn.

 Rio Tinto announced the largest interim dividend in its history, saying it planned to pay shareholders $9.1bn.

 Barclays, meanwhile, said that it planned to buy back up to £500m of shares from its investors, while also paying a half-year dividend of 2p a share, resulting in a total £800m return for investors.

Danni Hewson, a financial analyst at AJ Bell, said. “Amidst all the gloom and angst of the last months, this is the kind of day investors will have been hoping for.”

“Companies that have seen a strong rebound in their earnings and cash flows have returned to good levels of dividends earlier than our initial expectations,” David Smith, fund manager of Henderson High Income Trust, said. “Also with the significant growth in dividends from the mining sector and restrictions on payments from banks removed, the outlook for aggregate market dividend growth for the rest of the year is positive.”

UK-listed companies report combined £7.2bn in dividends and share buybacks | Oil | The Guardian