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The head of the World Health Organization has urged countries to launch immediate and sustained efforts to tackle the “very serious” crisis of long Covid, which is causing prolonged suffering” for tens of millions of people.
The WHO director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said his organization estimated that up to 20% of Covid survivors had been left with mid- and long-term symptoms such as fatigue, breathlessness and cognitive dysfunction. Women were more likely to have the condition.
With the absence of evidence about how best to treat it, people face “often lengthy” and “frustrating” waits for support or guidance, he writes. Countries must “seriously ramp up” research into the condition and access to care for those affected if they are to “minimise the suffering”.
The Ghebreyesus long Covid plan. Provide immediate access to antivirals to patients at high risk of serious disease, investment in research, support patients’ physical and mental health, ensure financial support, equitable access to Covid tests and vaccines, and multidisciplinary care.
Lockdown babies slower to meet some milestones. Babies born during the first lockdown met fewer developmental milestones at the age of one compared with those born before the pandemic – although they may have been faster to crawl, a study suggests.
Putin ‘miscalculated’ Russia’s ability to occupy Ukraine, Biden says
The US president has said he believes Vladimir Putin is a “rational actor” who badly misjudged his prospects of occupying Ukraine since he did not expect the ferocity of the Ukrainian defiance, but does not believe he would resort to using a tactical nuclear weapon.
“I think … he thought he was going to be welcomed with open arms, that this was the home of Mother Russia in Kyiv, and that where he was going to be welcomed, and I think he just totally miscalculated,” Joe Biden said. “I think he is a rational actor who has miscalculated significantly.”
When asked by the interviewer Jake Tapper how realistic he believed it would be for Putin to use a tactical nuclear weapon, Biden responded: “Well, I don’t think he will.” It comes as the Biden administration looks for what the president has described as an “off-ramp” for Putin to de-escalate his invasion of Ukraine before potentially resorting to weapons of mass destruction.
The world risks ‘Armageddon’. Last week Biden invoked the biblical final reckoning between good and evil in unusually direct remarks about the dangers posed by Putin’s thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons to assist Russia’s faltering attempt to take over swathes of Ukraine.
Elon Musk rejects claim he talked to Putin about Ukraine. The Tesla boss has denied a report that he spoke to the Russian president, including about the potential for using nuclear weapons, before floating a peace plan that suggested Ukraine cede territory to Russia.
Saudi Arabia to face ‘consequences’ over oil output
Photograph: Bandar al-Jaloud/Saudi Royal Palace/AFP/Getty Images
Biden has said there “will be consequences” for Saudi Arabia after its decision last week to side with Putin and cut oil production. “There’s going to be some consequences for what they’ve done, with Russia,” the president said in an interview on CNN. “I’m not going to get into what I’d consider and what I have in mind. But there will be – there will be consequences.”
The remarks herald a dramatic abandonment of Biden’s recent attempts to seek rapprochement with crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, and casts doubt on the future of the US-Saudi security relationship.
John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesperson, said yesterday that Biden believed the US ought to “review the bilateral relationship with Saudi Arabia and take a look to see if that relationship is where it needs to be and that it is serving our national security interests … in light of the recent decision by Opec, and Saudi Arabia’s leadership”.
Midterm oil prices. The move to cut oil production comes just weeks before a critical midterm election that could hinge on how much American consumers are paying at the pumps.
In other news …
New Zealand’s annual bird of the year competition is primed for controversy after the perennial favourite, the kākāpō, was struck from the ballot, after twice winning the competition, amid concerns that continued dominance could divert attention from less charismatic contenders.
A military-controlled court in Myanmar has sentenced the ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi to three more years in jail for corruption, according to reports, meaning she now faces 26 years in prison. Rights groups have described the trumped-up charges as attempts to remove her from politics.
The culture minister of Nigeria has urged the British Museum to follow the example of the Smithsonian Institution after it returned ownership of 29 Benin bronzes to the country at a celebratory event in Washington. “They should learn from what has happened today,” he said.
Bill Murray reportedly paid $100,000 to settle a complaint by a woman on a film set that he straddled her and kissed her through a mask. Murray previously described the seemingly now settled incident as a “difference of opinion” amid talk of his famously “difficult” behavior on set.
Stat of the day: every Japanese American incarcerated in second world war finally named
Ireichō, a sacred book of names, for the first time lists all 125,284 people of Japanese descent who were held in remote camps across the US and is now on display at the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles. Families were uprooted suddenly and forcibly sent to live in barracks and horse stables in 1942 after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in response to a US oil embargo and the seizure of Japanese assets.
“The project is about repairing the historical record,” said Duncan Ryūken Williams, the director of the University of Southern California’s Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture. “Part of the work of repair is to honor those who were unjustly incarcerated, but it it’s also simply to make sure that no one is left out.” The camps were closed in 1946 after the August 1945 US nuclear bombing of Japan, which may have killed more than 400,000 civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Don’t miss this: How Hockey Canada’s code of silence helped damage the country’s national sport
Despite dismissals of “substantial misinformation and unduly cynical attacks” and an insistence of Hockey Canada’s “excellent reputation”, there is growing urgency to address allegations of abuse in Canadian ice hockey. Hockey Canada’s chief executive and entire board of directors stepped down this week amid an enveloping crisis, which has led Nike, Bauer and Tim Horton to walk away and the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, to suggest a new body should oversee the sport at a minor level.
It all comes after a settlement Hockey Canada paid to an alleged victim of a sexual assault that she said involved multiple players from the 2018 under-20 world champion Canadian team. Another survey recently found that misconduct, including hazing, assault, and bullying that “outside hockey would not be acceptable, has become embedded behaviour” within the CHL.
Climate check: ‘We have no dry land left’ – impact of Pakistan floods to be felt for years
Across Pakistan, at least 4m acres of crops have been destroyed amid an estimated $30bn-$35bn economic hit. The heavy rainfall that began in July has stopped, but many areas in the Balochistan and Sindh provinces remain flooded. Children play and swim in fields where green crops of rice should have been, ready for harvest, writes Shah Meer Baloch in Jaffarabad.
“I lost all my investment of the season but for me more worrying is the new season,” said Mohammed Ali, a landlord in Balochistan who has seen 500 acres of his crops washed away. “It is October now and I can’t grow wheat as we have no dry land left. The water is receding in a very slow phase and it seems we can’t grow wheat and other crops.”
Last thing: Unaired Kanye West-Tucker Carlson material contains more racist conspiracy theories
Unaired segments of an interview between Kanye West and the Fox News host Tucker Carlson document the rapper airing a series of comments based on racist conspiracy theories, writes Ramon Antonio Vargas. In the clips, West detailed his belief in an unfounded and antisemitic conspiracy theory that Planned Parenthood was founded “to control the Jew population”.
“When I say Jew, I mean … who the people known as the race Black really are,” said West in another of the clips, invoking an unfounded theory used by antisemites. “This is who our people are.” He also complained his children were attending a school that celebrates Kwanzaa, the African holiday in December. “I prefer my kids knew Hanukkah than Kwanzaa – at least it will come with some financial engineering.”
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