Railway strikes in the UK have halted services throughout July and Augst 2022.
Sony, owners and creators of the gaming sensation PlayStation, have been hit with a lawsuit with a possible £5 billion pay out.
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The UK government has once again extended its trade sanctions with Russia.
The UK underwent a record-breaking heatwave in July with another hitting the country in August.
The UK has blocked a Chinese company from purchasing intellectual property from the University of Manchester using its powers under the National Security and Investment Act.
In mid-August this year, Health Secretary Matt Hancock gave an executive order to disband Public Health England. The executive agency will be merged with the NHS Test and Trace programme to form the new National Institute for Health Protection (NIHP), promised for September. Now in October, the new institution is still “pending”, delayed until spring 2021
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8 years after the killing of Jyoti Singh Pandey, famously eulogised as ‘Nirbhaya’ (meaning “fearless”). Hundreds of people have once again gathered in New Delhi to denounce the rape and murder of a young woman in Uttar Pradesh. Sparking outrage in India, a 19-year old Dalit woman died in hospital, after being assaulted by four ‘upper Caste’ men.
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The London Interbank Offer Rate (LIBOR) is the interest rate that participating banks offer to other banks for loans on the London market. It is the most widely used benchmark for short-term interest rates globally. [1]
LIBOR is scheduled to be phased out by 2022. A suggested replacement rate is the Sterling Overnight Interbank Average Rate (SONIA) which measures the rate paid by banks on overnight funds. SONIA is calculated as a trimmed mean [2] of rates paid on overnight unsecured wholesale funds.
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The e-commerce sector in Mexico represents a huge investment opportunity for domestic and international firms. Currently, online shopping represents 2% of the country’s $203 billion in annual retail sales. COVID- 19 has accelerated the growth of e-commerce as Walmart de Mexico, the largest retailer in Mexico, e-commerce sales grew 68% in a single quarter.
The fourth and final quarter of the year is often where fellow shopaholics find the biggest and best bargains. Stocking up on seasonal promos, flashing the cash in the Black Friday sales and of course the post-Christmas ‘let’s spend even more of a fortune’ Boxing Day sales. People usually don’t think twice about nipping into their local shopping centre or high street stores, however now that’s not as easy as it sounds.
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During 2020, Malaysia’s Corruption Perception Index score rose from 41 to 51 out of 180 countries, showing improvement in the country’s corruption problem. [[1]] However, Malaysians are still not satisfied, blaming a lack of substantial change on the economic downfall that has happened recently.
As a result of Covid-19 restrictions, the judiciary in England and Wales has published a slew of measures to promote remote hearings in order to reduce the backlog of cases. The Lord Chief Justice set the tone in March by urging for an increased use of telephone and video technology. This was quickly followed by the Coronavirus Act 2020, which legislated for a broader range of audiovisual court proceedings.
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Questions are being raised about the right of patients to claim for clinical negligence in relation to a healthcare worker’s ‘negligent’ actions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The NHS has introduced an ‘additional indemnity coverage’ scheme. This scheme is available for cases whereby healthcare professionals have carried out activities related to COVID-19. This is in accordance with clauses 10-12 Coronavirus Act 2020.
The Public Interest Disclosure (Protection) Bill is a new bill being proposed by the Scottish National Party’s Dr Philippa Whitford. The bill aims to provide protection for whistle-blowers, by establishing an independent body that would set, monitor and enforce standards on how whistle-blower cases are handled.
Within the emerging economies of the ASEAN (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam), the pandemic has shined a light on their investment potential. This has also highlighted investment areas that could both speed up the economic recovery in these countries and lay the foundation for extended growth.
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On Thursday 10 September, Michael Gove met with European Vice President, Maros Sefcovic.[1] This emergency meeting was scheduled after the UK has proposed controversial legislation to override parts of the Withdrawal Agreement which was signed last year. The proposed Internal Market Bill, proposed on the 9 September, aims to ensure that goods continue to move easily between the UK’s four nations post-Brexit.
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Last year, the global conglomerate, LVMH announced that it would be going ahead with the acquisition of Tiffany, however, in September 2020, LVMH backtracked and decided against the 16.2-billion-dollar acquisition due to the ongoing trade war between their home state of France and the United States.
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The UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela published its first report on 16 September 2020. In this, it recognised the numerous cases of extrajudicial executions, torture, excessive use of force, arbitrary detentions et al under the regime of Nicolas Maduro, the President of Venezuela.
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On August 23rd, 2020, Jacob Blake, an unarmed black man was shot multiple times by Rusten Sheskey, a police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The shooting occurred two months after the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act (2020), a civil rights bill aimed at combatting racial bias, police misconduct, and the use of excessive force.
