The virus is running faster than it has ever done before – Sturgeon

Sturgeon makes an appeal to people to stick to the rules – but seeks to give a message of hope.

“While we work hard to get people vaccinated… please help us keep the virus at bay by taking care and following all of the vital health advice.

“I know, I really do know, everyone is sick of this – and I include myself in that. And I know that many feel frustrated because we might think others are not taking this as seriously as we have been.

“We are so close now, not just to seeing the light at the end of the tunnel but actually reaching the light at the end of the tunnel.”

She calls on people to follow the health advice and rules, and says people should keep outdoors as much as possible and if you are meeting indoors then to keep a window open for ventilation.

Sturgeon says that advice also goes for when watching sport, including the Euro 2020 football tournament and also Wimbledon.

And she wishes Scot Andy Murray good luck for his next match as well as England for their football match with Germany.

Ms Sturgeon says “we’re very much in a race just now between the virus and the vaccines”.

“We are very confident that the vaccines will ultimately win this race,” she adds. “The question is what happens between now and then.

“If over the next few weeks, the virus gets ahead, unfortunately we will see more people become ill, we will see more people die and we will see more pressure on our NHS.

“The problem we’ve got just now is the virus is running faster than it has ever done before. The Delta variant that we are dealing with just now… is significantly more transmissible. That is helping to drive the steep rise in cases we’ve been seeing in recent days.”

But, she says, vaccines are breaking the link between the virus and serious illness.

To show that, she says that throughout the whole pandemic around 13% of cases and 89% of all deaths have been in the over 65s, but now nearly all over-65s have had both doses, that is changing.

Those aged 65 and over are now accounting for just 2% of new cases.

Fewer people who get Covid now are going to hospital, she explains.

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Wall Street gets ready to hand out billions in dividends

The largest US banks will issue $130bn in dividends and stock buybacks as the Fed ends pandemic restrictions on returns.

Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo said on Monday they were raising their capital payouts after the US Federal Reserve gave them a clean bill of health following their annual “stress tests” last week.

Analysts and investors had expected the country’s largest lenders to start issuing as much as $130bn in dividends and stock buybacks from next month after the Fed last week ended emergency pandemic-era restrictions on how much capital they could give back to investors.

Morgan Stanley delivered the biggest surprise to investors, however, saying it would double its dividend to 70 cents a share in the third quarter of 2021. Some analysts had been expecting a boost to about 50 cents.

The Wall Street giant also said it would increase spending on share repurchases. Its shares rose as much as 3.7 percent in after-market trading following the announcement.

Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman said in the announcement that the bank could return so much capital because of the excess it has accumulated over several years. The action, he said, “reflects a decision to reset our capital base consistent with the needs we have for our transformed business model”.

Bank of America Corp said it will increase its dividend by 17 percent to 21 cents a share beginning in the third quarter of 2021, and JPMorgan Chase & Co said it will go to $1 a share from 90 cents for the third quarter.

Goldman Sachs Group said it planned to increase its common stock dividend to $2 per share from $1.25.

Wells Fargo & Co, which has built up capital more rapidly than rivals due in part to a Fed-imposed cap on its balance sheet, said it plans to repurchase $18bn of stock over the four quarters beginning in September.

The repurchase target amounts to nearly 10 percent of its stock market value and is in line with expectations from analysts.

Wells Fargo, which for years has been trying to move past a series of costly mis-selling scandals, said it was doubling its quarterly dividend to 20 cents a share, consistent with analyst expectations.

“Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, we have built our financial strength … as well as continuing to remediate our legacy issues,” CEO Charlie Scharf said in a statement. “We will continue to do so as we return a significant amount of capital to our shareholders,” Scharf added.

The stress tests used to trigger anxiety across Wall Street, but the banks’ solid showing underscores how comfortable the industry has grown with the exercises. This year, with banks sitting on a massive stockpile of excess cash, the exams were primarily an indicator of how much of that money can be doled out to shareholders.

One outlier

Citigroup, meanwhile, confirmed analysts’ estimates that a key part of its required capital ratios had increased under the stress test results to 3 percent from 2.5 percent.

An increase of that size will limit Citigroup’s share buybacks, versus its peers, a report from analyst Vivek Juneja of JPMorgan shows. Juneja expects Citigroup will have the lowest capital return of big banks he covers.

Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser said the bank will continue its “planned capital actions, including common dividends of at least $0.51 per share” and buying back shares in the market.

Bank of America’s shares were flat in after-hours trading, shares of Goldman Sachs were up 0.6 percent, while Citigroup’s and JPMorgan’s were down 0.9 percent and 0.3 percent, respectively.

The Fed said on Thursday it was ending its remaining curbs on dividend payouts after finding the country’s largest banks would remain well capitalised in its latest stress tests.

The central bank said the test found 23 of the largest firms would suffer a combined $474bn in losses under a hypothetical severe downturn, but would still have more than twice as much capital required under Fed rules.

A surge in payouts is welcome news for investors but could put big banks on defence again in Washington. Critics, including US Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, have condemned buybacks and dividends for enriching executives, and have called for lenders to use excess capital to do more for employees.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

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Picasso painting found as builder arrested over art heist

A painting by Pablo Picasso that was stolen nine years ago during a heist at a Greek gallery has been recovered.

Police say a 49-year-old builder has been arrested for the theft of Picasso’s Head of a Woman and a second work by Dutch artist Piet Mondrian.

Initially, the raid on the Athens National Gallery in 2012 was blamed on two thieves.

The artworks were stripped from their frames in the early morning heist which took only seven minutes to carry out.

A third work in pen and ink by Italian artist Guglielmo Caccia, from the 16th Century, was also seized but police said the suspect told them it had been damaged and he had flushed it down the toilet.

‘Impossible to sell’

Police first revealed that the Picasso painting and Mondrian’s 1905 work Stammer Windmill were recovered late on Monday, and gave further details to reporters the following morning.

A few months ago it had emerged that they still believed the Picasso had not left Greece.

Culture Minister Lina Mendoni told reporters the artwork would have been “impossible to sell or go on display” because it had a personal inscription from the Spanish painter on the back that read, in French, “For the Greek people, a tribute by Picasso.”

image caption The artwork was eventually discovered in a storage unit on the outskirts of Athens

He had given it to the National Gallery in Athens in honour of Greek resistance to Nazi Germany during World War Two. The Cubist work, painted in 1939, is one of a number of portraits of Picasso’s partner Dora Maar.

Months of planning

During the Tuesday press conference, police alleged that the 49-year-old suspect had confessed to the theft and explained how he planned the raid for six months in advance.

Almost every day he would monitor the movements of security guards and other staff, they said, noting the times the guards took cigarette breaks. On 9 January 2012, the suspect set off a false alarm in another part of the building and broke into the ground floor of the museum, police explained.

At the time the police minister condemned security measures as “non-existent”, with faulty alarms and some areas of the building not covered by security cameras.

Within minutes, four works had been seized, although a second Mondrian painting was apparently dropped during the escape.

Police said the builder, described as a decorator, had hidden the paintings at his home for years and had no intention of selling them. Recently, however, he had moved them, wrapped in plastic sheets, to a dried up riverbed in Keratea, outside Athens, where they were eventually found in good condition.

image caption Police released a picture of the dried up riverbed where the paintings were found

The museum’s security system has since been upgraded and the Greek government hailed the paintings’ recovery as “a major success”.

The culture minister said the National Gallery’s “greatest wound has been healed” while its director, Marina Lambraki-Plaka, told Greek media that it was like a resurrection.

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China pressure ‘undermining Australian universities’, report says

Chinese pro-democracy students in Australia fear punishment for their family back home if they speak out on sensitive issues, a new report says.

Human Rights Watch found such students feel surveilled in Australia, leading many to self-censor in classrooms.

Academics teaching China courses in the country say they have also felt pressure to censor themselves.

The rights group said the perceived pressure was undermining the academic freedom of Australian universities.

Australia’s higher education system is heavily reliant on fee-paying Chinese students, which accounted in pre-Covid times for about 40% of all international students in the country.

There are currently about 160,000 Chinese students are enrolled in Australian universities.

There has been growing concern about China’s influence on local campuses in recent years, following a deterioration in relations between the two nations.

‘Culture of self-censorship’

Human Rights Watch said it had interviewed nearly 50 students and academics in Australia and found an “atmosphere of fear” that had worsened in recent years.

Researchers said they had confirmed three cases where a student’s activities in Australia had prompted police in China to visit or get in contact with their families there over their actions.

In one case, Chinese authorities also threatened a student with jail after they opened a Twitter account in Australia and posted pro-democracy messages.

Many pro-democracy students also said they feared fellow students reporting on them to Chinese authorities.

“Fear that what they did in Australia could result in Chinese authorities punishing or interrogating their parents back home weighed heavily on the minds of every pro-democracy student interviewed,” said the report.

Its author, Sophie McNeill, said university administrators were “failing in their duty of care to uphold the rights of students from China”.

Tutors and lecturers have also reported facing increased pressure, the report says. HRW interviewed 22 academics at Australian universities who teach China studies or Chinese students.

More than half of those interviewed practiced regular self-censorship when talking about China, Ms McNeill found.

Some reported that on a few occasions, they had also experienced censorship from university management. Examples included instances where they were asked not to discuss China publicly or were deterred from holding China-related events.

The report quotes one unidentified academic who refused officials’ request for a “sanitised” version of his Chinese Studies unit when teaching online during the pandemic to students based in China.

‘Reports of intimidation and coercion’

For a number of years now, Australia has been debating the reach of China’s alleged interference on campuses.

In the past Chinese authorities and media outlets have dismissed such concerns as smears, and the country’s ambassador described as “groundless” allegations that Chinese students in Australia were being monitored for dissident behaviour.

In 2019, the Australian government set up a taskforce and new guidelines for universities to combat what it described as “unprecedented levels” of foreign interference.

Scrutiny has focused on research collaborations between Australian and Chinese universities – as well as the presence of Confucius Institutes, Chinese language and cultural centres funded by the Chinese government – on Australian campuses.

A recent parliamentary inquiry has examined foreign interference in the university sector. It is due to report in July.

Universities Australia, a representative group of the nation’s top institutions, told the inquiry in March that universities were aware of “confronting reports of intimidation and coercion of students”.

“This is unacceptable conduct… the safety and security of students and their right to free expression and debate is fundamental to every university,” said chief executive Catriona Jackson.

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