https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-58095689 When Australian runner Nagmeldin 'Peter' Bol led the men's 800m Olympic track final on Wednesday, an entire nation held its breath, daring to believe. For the longest minute or so, Bol took the pack almost all the way, setting the pace at the front. Glued to screens across the country, Australians - millions of them in lockdown - willed him on, their first finalist in the event in 53 years. Alas, a fairytale ending wasn't to be. Going into the last bend, Bol was overtaken, and ultimately finished fourth. "I didn't know if I was going to win, but I knew one thing for certain," Bol said after the race. "That the whole of Australia was watching - and that carried me on." Bol's runs in Tokyo have set national records; in particular, his semi-final win on Sunday electrified Australia. Before the final, the potential for a new track champion, a 27-year-old man of Sudanese heritage, energised Australians of all backgrounds. Many read up every detail of his life story. Born in what is now South Sudan, Bol's family fled to Egypt when he was four, before migrating to Australia on humanitarian visas four years later. He went to school in Perth on a basketball scholarship, but his running talent was noticed by a sports teacher before being nurtured by her father and local coaches. Despite initially resisting the sport, he eventually moved to Melbourne to train full-time, and often spent time away from family for races in Europe. Just 10 years after entering the sport, Bol, at his second Olympics, has been in the form of his life. On Thursday, his achievement was widely celebrated. Many also noted how he had help evolve Australia's conversation about what national heroes could look like. "Seeing you run your heart out in green and gold gives us great hope for the Australia we know we can be," wrote Craig Foster, an asylum-seeker advocate and former Australian footballer. For the Sudanese-Australian community in particular, Bol's sudden surge to national attention brought much pride. Australia's press and politicians have drawn criticism for marginalising the community in recent years, especially with fear-mongering stories about gangs and violence. "As a South Sudanese Australian struggling with my own sense of identity and belonging, on Wednesday I'll get to forget that for a few moments, all thanks to Peter Bol, a young man and a symbol of what as a nation we can aspire to be, not just at the Olympics, but every day," wrote Nyadol Nyuon in a widely shared newspaper piece the day of the race. But she added that Bolt's achievements should not be "the standard one must attain to be accepted into society". In 2021, Bol should be able to held up as an Australian hero both with and without discussions of race, many have argued. "I want to untie his personal achievements from the yoke of 'the refugee', who was 'born in Sudan but fled the war-torn country when he was four', so that he may stand in his own glory," Nyuon wrote. Bol has also rejected being pigeon-holed. "I don't think people should be seen as a refugee or a migrant or something like that," he said in an interview last year. "I think it's better if we have a better conversation, to get to know the person, instead of the assumptions."

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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-58052902 Chinese authorities are targeting students as part of their latest vaccination campaign, as China sees its biggest virus surge in months. The government reported 71 new domestic cases on Wednesday - the highest daily count since January. A vaccination campaign for minors aged 12 to 17 is being expanded to try and combat the spread of the highly contagious delta variant. The latest cases have now spread to at least 16 provinces and municipalities. It is unclear how many in China are fully vaccinated, although authorities say more than 1.6 billion doses have been administered so far. China's Ministry of Education has asked local authorities to implement a programme targeting vaccinations of school students. Several provinces are already giving school students the jab, but the pressure is on to achieve the government's target of having 80 to 85 percent of the entire po[CENSORED]tion vaccinated by the end of the year. However, local media pointed to doubts over whether current prevention measures to combat the virus are still working. Experts quoted said the outbreak was under control but more efforts were needed to "plug the loopholes" in controlling the virus, alongside vaccinations and social distancing. The latest outbreak started in Nanjiang in the eastern Jiangsu province before spreading to the tourist destination of Zhangjiajie in central Hunan province. From there, tourists carried the virus to at least a dozen cities, including large hubs like Beijing and Chongqing. The city of Yangzhou, which is also in Jiangsu and has a po[CENSORED]tion of more than 4.5 million people, has been put under restrictions after 40 cases were detected. It's thought a 64-year-old woman, who travelled from Nanjiang to Yangzhou and visited po[CENSORED]r parlours to play cards, is responsible for the spike in the city. She is now being investigated by police for hiding her travel itinerary from authorities. Authorities in Wuhan have also started testing the entire po[CENSORED]tion of 11 million people after a handful of cases were detected. The city was thrown into the spotlight after the coronavirus first emerged there in 2019. The gambling hub of Macau is also testing all 600,000 residents, after the city recorded four new coronavirus cases. Local media has reported that some of the people who have tested positive were fully vaccinated, leading to discussion online about the threat of breakthrough infections and whether a booster shot is needed. Officials say vaccines continue to be effective against all the variants so far, and can protect people from severe symptoms and hospitalisations, according to The Global Times.

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2021/07/31/why-have-some-places-suffered-more-covid-19-deaths-than-others Seventeen months into the covid-19 pandemic, plenty of questions about the catastrophe remain unanswered. It is still unclear how sars-cov-2 originated, for instance. Another puzzle is why some areas have had less destructive epidemics than others. Why has Florida had fewer deaths per person from covid-19 than the American average, even though restrictions there have been looser for longer? But researchers are getting closer to the “magic” variable: the factor that does most to explain variance in deaths from the virus. It turns out that this has little to do with health measures, climate or geography. Instead it relates to economics. The huge literature on the determinants of covid-19 infections and deaths finds that many widely assumed relationships do not always hold in the real world. Everyone knows that the old are most at risk; but Japan, where 28% of people are over the age of 65 compared with 9% globally, has seen remarkably few deaths so far. Some studies suggest that places that had bad flu seasons before the pandemic suffered less since; but other researchers have called that conclusion into question. There is no consistent correlation between the toughness of lockdowns and cases or deaths. Faced with these surprising results, a hunt has begun that is as morbid as it is nerdy. Wonks are searching for less obvious variables that do more to explain variation in deaths from covid-19. And so far the most powerful of them all is inequality—usually measured as the Gini coefficient of income, where zero represents perfect equality and one represents perfect inequality. In a recent exercise Youyang Gu, a data scientist, ran multiple versions of a model that seeks to find correlations between 41 different variables and American state-level deaths from covid-19. Only three variables “consistently have non-zero coefficients”, he finds: inequality, po[CENSORED]tion density and nursing-home residents per person. And of those three, inequality has the biggest effect. Look around the world, and it seems that Mr Gu may be on to something. Deaths from covid-19 have been lower in egalitarian Scandinavia (even in Sweden, which imposed few restrictions) than for Europe as a whole. France, where the Gini is 0.29, has seen far fewer excess deaths than neighbouring Britain, where it is 0.34. New York state has both extremely high inequality and a huge covid-19 death toll; Florida is less exceptional on both counts. Few other researchers rank the variables in the way that Mr Gu does. Yet our survey of the dozens of papers investigating the determinants of the toll from covid-19 finds that inequality has consistently high explanatory power. A recent study by Frank Elgar of McGill University and colleagues, looking at 84 countries, finds that a 1% increase in the Gini coefficient is associated with a 0.67% increase in the mortality rate from covid-19. Another, by Annabel Tan, Jessica Hinman and Hoda Abdel Magid of Stanford University, looks at American counties. They find that the association between income inequality and covid-19 cases and deaths varied over 2020 but was generally positive; higher inequality tends to lead to more suffering. There is a lot less research on the potential reasons behind this intriguing relationship. Three sound plausible. The first relates to pre-existing health. A study in 2016 by Beth Truesdale and Christopher Jencks of Harvard University found “modest evidence” of a link between higher income inequality and lower life expectancy. This may be because of what economists call a “concave” relationship between health and income: giving a rich woman an extra dollar in income probably improves her health by less than removing a dollar from a poor man harms his. People in worse health tend to suffer more from covid-19 (and indeed some other research has drawn links between inequality and pre-existing conditions that may aggravate the disease, such as obesity).

Dive into any niche world and you’re guaranteed to be amazed by the dedication, expertise and total commitment of those that po[CENSORED]te it. That was certainly the case when Autocar found itself pitched into the middle of a national-level radio controlled car racing event in a corner of a public park in Uxbridge, just north of Heathrow. Held in blistering heat on the morning of the British Grand Prix, it proved no less intense than the drama that was playing out at Silverstone – just without the 140,000-strong crowd. The brief was simple, if more than a little intimidating: at the invitation of Tamiya UK, the British arm of the Japanese kit building empire, we were challenged to build up one of its 1/10th-scale TT-02 chassis from the box for a junior member of the Autocar team – by that I mean my six-year-old son Elliott – to race in round four of the MB Models King of Clubs series at the grandly named West London Racing Centre. On one level that just sounded like fun, especially as I’d always fancied building one of Tamiya’s RC kits. On another, we had just three weeks to build the car and get Elliott up to speed on the driving. Gulp. I have to admit, I definitely took the lead ‘technical director’ role on the build, with Elliott wandering over from time to time to check out progress before going back to kicking his football about. At first glance, the instructions looked daunting (until I stopped trying to read the Japanese). But like anything, once you broke it down to one step at a time it became captivating – especially as I was building against the clock. The best bit was the lack of glue, my nemesis from childhood days building plastic plane kits. Here, there were just lots of screws and grease to be applied to the moving parts. But with everything bagged and labelled clearly, the chassis and its suspension soon began to take form. These kits really are pieces of miniature automotive art. The fully operational front and rear coil-spring damped suspension was so satisfying to piece together on the bathtub-type frame, although proper diffs on each axle left me wondering what massive error I’d just committed and would only find when it was time for testing. But the bit I was really worried about were the electronics: a 6V RS540 Sport Tuned motor – apparently with a best efficiency rpm of around 18,000! – mated to a separately supplied two-channel transmitter, receiver and steering servo. This bit looked really complicated. I didn’t pay too much attention to the many gearing options suggested and stuck to the basics, while my Dad – an RC enthusiast who dabbles in boats rather than cars – was a welcome consultant engineer to make sure it was all synced up and ready to roll. Although how he manages with all those wires on his own when he’s colour-blind, Lord only knows… Last job with little more than a week to go: spray-painting the plastic body (on the inside) and applying the stickers (on the outside). Tamiya had kindly sent me a kit right up my particular street: a fully Martini-liveried silver Porsche 911 Carrera RSR, just like the one Herbie Müller and Gijs van Lennep ran to victory on the 1973 Targa Florio. Proper! But I had to source the paints myself and when they arrived it was beyond time to get the masking tape out. As per the instructions, I went to work first on the fluorescent red bumpers – except the spray paint leaked under the tape. What an unsalvageable mess. At this point I sacrilegiously forgot about historical accuracy, sent a silent apology to Herbie and Gijs, and went for an all-over fluorescent scheme instead… Anybody want to buy an unused can of silver paint? In my defence, the easy-to-apply Martini stripes worked really well against the bright red – and at least it would be easy for Elliott to spot out on track. The build finished precisely three days before the race meeting, and although initial shakedown tests were surprisingly trouble-free (once engineer consultant Smith Sr Sr sorted the steering servo), Elliott was struggling with the controls. That’ll be because he’s six. And his bumbling old man hadn’t given him enough time to test. Elliott didn’t care, of course (again, because he’s six) – but on race day I was a bag of nerves, knowing full well we’d be diving into a world way beyond our paddling depth.

https://www.economist.com/china/2021/07/31/china-is-rapidly-building-new-nuclear-missile-silos On a hot and sticky day in the northern city of Tianjin, America and China held their highest-level meeting on Chinese soil since Joe Biden was sworn in as America’s president in January. But the encounter on July 26th between Wendy Sherman, America’s deputy secretary of state, and counterparts from China’s foreign ministry failed to clear the air. Instead, it merely deepened the gloom that hangs over the world’s most critical great-power relationship. According to an American spokesman, Ms Sherman promised “stiff competition” with China and raised its “ongoing genocide” in the far-western region of Xinjiang, among other sore issues. She suggested co-operation on tackling problems such as climate change, narcotics and Afghanistan. But that olive branch was snapped by Xie Feng, a deputy foreign minister, who said relations were at a “stalemate” and thundered that America’s aim was to “bring China down”. His boss, Wang Yi, told America to choose between improving ties or “clashes and confrontation”. Mercifully, the two nuclear-armed countries do not appear as close to military conflict as the Soviet Union and America sometimes did during the cold war. But as the diplomats were sparring in Tianjin, the Federation of American Scientists (fas), a research group, said it had spotted China building as many as 110 silos for intercontinental ballistic missiles (icbms) near the city of Hami, in eastern Xinjiang (see picture). A month earlier, the James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies, an ngo in California, had identified 120 silos being built in Yumen, in the desert of Gansu, a neighbouring province. Both outfits found the sites by poring over satellite imagery from Planet, an American firm. Nuclear wonks were shocked. For decades, China has hewed to a policy of “minimum deterrence”, involving the maintenance of a relatively small arsenal that would allow it to hit back at aggressors but not wage an elaborate nuclear war. The Pentagon reckons the country has 200 or so operational warheads—about the same number as Britain or France—and only 100 or so icbms. (America and Russia have nearly 12,000 warheads between them.) The fas says the satellite pictures suggest the “most extensive” building of silos since the construction of them by America and the Soviet Union during the cold war. On July 27th America’s Strategic Command, which is in charge of nuclear weapons, reacted with a tweet: “This is the second time in two months the public has discovered what we have been saying all along about the growing threat the world faces and the veil of secrecy that surrounds it.” America’s State Department said the discoveries were “deeply concerning” and demonstrated that China was “deviating” from its long-established nuclear strategy.

Bentley is selling five Mulsanne Grand Limousine models, coachbuilt in partnership with Mulliner, that have never been registered or used. The British firm ceased production of the £241,000 Mulsanne last year, but it built these bespoke models in 2015 for customers in the UAE. None of the five have been registered or driven on the road, despite having been shipped to the Middle Eastern country. The Grand Limousine models feature a body stretched by 1000mm, with 79mm of additional head room and unique exterior and interior designs. One model was designed with silver-over-blue exterior paint, paired with a blue and linen interior completed by Burr Walnut veneer. A second model received damson-over-black paintwork, with damson leathers and a dark walnut veneer. Another model is described as having an “Onyx over Candy Red exterior, with a Hotspur and Camel interior finished with Olive Ash veneer”, while another gains “Rubino Red over Light Gazelle bodywork, with an interior in Fireglow and Twine leather paired with Burr Walnut veneer”. The stretched limousines have a specially re-engineered chassis and suspension and are driven by Bentley’s twin-turbocharged 6.75-litre petrol V8 engine, producing 505bhp and 752lb ft of torque. The cars also received unique 21in wheels to match their exterior paintwork. All Mulsanne Grand Limousine models were equipped with custom heating, ventilation and climate control, with an intercom to speak to the driver. The model also marked the first time that electrochromic smart glass (able to switch from completely opaque to transparent) was used in a Bentley.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-58052894 A fresh Covid outbreak in China has spread to more locations, raising concerns over the country's vulnerability to the highly contagious Delta variant. More than 300 cases have been detected within a span of 10 days. Chinese media is dominated by news on the outbreak, and the country's top respiratory diseases specialist has reportedly expressed grave concern.. The government has imposed fresh travel restrictions and is testing millions. It is unclear how many in China are fully vaccinated, although authorities say more than 1.6 billion doses have been administered so far. A total of 15 provinces have now confirmed cases. Cases in 12 of the provinces are connected to an outbreak that began in Nanjing in eastern Jiangsu province. Authorities have attributed the spread to the Delta variant and the domestic tourism season. In Zhuzhou, in central Hunan province, more than a million people have been told not to leave home for three days while mass testing and a vaccination drive is organised. The regional government described the situation there as "grim and complicated". In other cities entire communities are being placed under emergency lockdown as cases of the Delta variant emerge. The outbreak is the largest in China for months. The country was largely successful in controlling the virus within its borders last year. What is the Delta variant? Cases of the variant first emerged in July in Nanjing airport, among workers who had cleaned a plane that arrived from Russia. Authorities promptly tested 9.2 million residents of Nanjing and imposed lockdown on hundreds of thousands of people. But over the weekend the spotlight turned to po[CENSORED]r tourist destination Zhangjiajie in Hunan province, where many of the latest cases have emerged. Travellers from Nanjing were thought to have visited the city recently. Health officials have zeroed in on a theatre in Zhangjiajie, and are now trying to track down about 5,000 people who attended performances and then travelled back to their home cities. One performance alone had hosted about 2,000 people, according to reports. All attractions in Zhangjiajie have been closed and tourists are being asked to take a Covid test before leaving the city, local media reported.. "Zhangjiajie has now become the new ground zero for China's epidemic spread," Zhong Nanshan, China's leading respiratory disease expert, told reporters. The new outbreak has reached Beijing too, with the city reporting several locally transmitted infections. All of Beijing's air, bus and travel links to areas with positive cases have been cut. All tourists have also been banned from entering the capital, and officials are only allowing "essential travellers" with negative Covid tests to enter. The virus has also reached Wuhan, in Hubei province, the Chinese city where Covid-19 first emerged, with seven people testing positive for the virus. According to Chinese state media, the city had seen zero locally transmitted infections since June 2020. China is also battling a rise in cases in Zhengzhou in northern Henan province, which saw devastating floods just last month, as well as Hainan island to the south of the mainland.

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https://uspolicy.org/sauer-biden-should-respect-vaccine-makers-patent-rights/ US Policy Editor Charles Sauer has a new piece in RealClear Policy on patent rights. The White House recently issued a patent waiver for Covid-19 vaccines. Here’s an excerpt of Sauer’s article: “President Biden recently made what the Wall Street Journal referred to as the worst single Presidential decision since Nixon’s wage and price Controls. Biden, in a move that he is selling as compassion for poor countries that do not have access to vaccines, agreed to support a waiver of Intellectual Property Rights of U.S. companies. The decision to issue such a waiver is a dangerous one. It takes away the I.P. rights of U.S. (and other) companies and will diminish future incentives for groundbreaking medical research, as well as research in other industries. The administration made this move despite the fact that intellectual property is the only right explicitly laid out in the Constitution. Despite the fact that our pharmaceutical companies have said that they would do whatever they could to supply these countries with vaccines. Despite the fact that the countries in question don’t have the capabilities or the manpower to manufacture the vaccines. And, despite the fact that such a waiver will do little to help nations get access to the vaccine in time. Simply giving out the “recipe” for vaccine does little to overcome the logistical hurdles for nations to ramp up their own vaccines. Many experts admitted that waiving the patent rights by itself will have little short-term impact and said the impact would be “marginal” at best. So, for a largely symbolic gesture that offers few practical benefits, President Biden struck a blow to the heart and soul of our innovation economy. This decision is so bad that many of the countries that I have referred to as socialist over years and years writing about healthcare public policy refused to sign off on the waiver. While the U.S. has abandoned support for I.P. in this case, many of our European allies are defending I.P. rights. For the last several decades, intellectual property has been under attack from various quarters, from activist groups to big tech companies. Companies like Google, consider intellectual property a cost of doing business that they would prefer not to pay. As a result of their lobbying, legislation has been passed making patents less valuable and making it harder for patent holders to defend their inventions. Some members of Congress, over the last few years, have begun to see that the pendulum swing too far against I.P. and patent rights. So, in recent years, members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have introduced legislation to strengthen the patent system. A nice change from previous legislative attempts to undermine patent protections, bills like the STRONGER Patents Act would reverse some of the damage done in previous so-called “patent reform” bills. The silver lining to Biden’s decision to waive the patent protections on the vaccines is that it has energized voices from both sides of the political spectrum to criticize the decision and defend and proclaim the importance of I.P. Some Democrats joined Republicans in opposing the waiver, the Wall Street Journal editorial page skewered the decision, and the Washington Post editorial page — not exactly a voice of conservatism — said the move was not the way to help poor countries get the vaccine. They added that, “t is also true that stripping away their intellectual property now could discourage future innovation.” And, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a center-left technology organization has a long report out why the decision is bad and the 10 actions that would be not only better, but more effective.”

Johan van Zyl, a long-time senior Toyota executive who stood down as the head of the firm's European division earlier this year, has died at the age of 63. The South African had worked for Toyota since 1993, and was appointed president and CEO of Toyota Motor Europe in 2015. He retired from that role earlier this year and moved back to South African, where he had recently taken on the role of chairman of Toyota South Africa. Van Zyl died on Friday 30 July due to illness. In a statement, Toyota said the “unfortunate loss has come as a shock to us all”, and highlighted van Zyl’s “humour, calmness and personal empathy”. During his time at the helm of Toyota’s European arm van Zyl has spearheaded the firm’s major revival in the region, including the return of the Corolla to the market, the expansion of its SUV range and the addition of po[CENSORED]r sports cars such as the GR Supra and GR Yaris. Van Zyl was also key to negotiations to secure the long-term future of the firm's Burnaston plant in Derbyshire. Matt Harrison, who succeeded van Zyl as Toyota Motor Europe’s president and CEO, said: “We have lost an inspirational leader and an amazing human being. For those of us who were fortunate to work closely with Johan, we will always remember him as a great mentor, who had a story to share on any topic and who truly cared about people. “Our heartfelt thoughts and prayers go to his wife, daughters and his grandchildren.” After completing a doctorate in business economics van Zyl joined Toyota in 1993, initially as the firm’s South African sales boss. He rose to become Toyota South Africa’s managing director in 1997, before being promoted to president and CEO of the division in 2003. Van Zyl was eventually given responsibility for Toyota’s interests across the whole of Africa, before taking over the European division in 2015. He became a senior managing officer of the Toyota Motor Corporation in 2017.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-58009605 It was one of the defining phrases of the Hong Kong protest movement. Now, it has landed one man in jail for nine years. Back in 2019, "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times" was an ubiquitous slogan in the city, chanted by tens of thousands as they took to the streets in pro-democracy demonstrations. But this week a man was convicted partly because he was carrying a flag emblazoned with the phrase. Activists say the landmark ruling marks "the beginning of the end" for freedom of expression in Hong Kong. Hong Kong's year under China's controversial law Where did the slogan come from? The eight-character phrase was first used by Hong Kong politician Edward Leung back in 2016, when he ran for a by-election and used it as a campaign slogan. At the time he was one of the leaders of Hong Kong Indigenous, a political party that advocates for independence for the city. Leung said the slogan "represents the people who believe in freedom, embrace freedom, and are willing to fight for freedom with their blood and sweat", according to the South China Morning Post. It did not gain traction back then. Polls consistently indicated that the majority of Hongkongers did not favour independence from the mainland. But it was a different story three years later as the pro-democracy protests erupted and anger at the Hong Kong government grew. The phrase was frequently chanted at rallies, with many waving or wearing black flags, signs and T-shirts with the slogan printed in white Chinese and English lettering. As early as 2016, Hong Kong authorities had objected to the phrase, with chief executive Carrie Lam saying at the time that it "challenges national sovereignty" and threatened China's "one country two systems" model in governing Hong Kong. But it wasn't until 30 June 2020 that China's controversial and broadly-worded national security law came into effect in Hong Kong. Among other things, the law bans anything considered as "crimes of secession and subversion" - effectively clamping down on protest slogans. Just a day later - on the anniversary of Hong Kong's handover from British to Chinese rule - Tong Ying-kit drove a motorcycle into a group of police officers while carrying a flag emblazoned with the "Liberate Hong Kong" slogan. The Hong Kong government later said the slogan connoted "Hong Kong independence" and warned people not to defy the national security law.

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