Two from the BBC, January 11. First up:
Covid: Half of Europe to be infected with Omicron within weeks - WHO
The World Health Organization has warned that half of Europe will have been infected with the Omicron variant of Covid-19 within six to eight weeks.
Dr Hans Kluge said a "west-to-east tidal wave" of Omicron was sweeping across the region, on top of the surge of the Delta variant already present.
The projection was based on the seven million new cases reported across Europe in the first week of 2022.
The number of infections has more than doubled in a two-week period.
"Today the Omicron variant represents a new west-to-east tidal wave, sweeping across the region on top of the Delta surge that all countries were managing until late 2021," Dr Kluge told a news conference....
....MUCH MORE
And the headline story:
The global economy faces a "grim outlook", World Bank president David Malpass has warned, as the aftershocks of the pandemic continue to weigh on growth - especially in poor countries.
His organisation's latest forecast predicts global growth will slow to 4.1% this year from 5.5% in 2021.
It attributed the slowdown to virus threats, government aid unwinding and an initial rebound in demand fading.
But Mr Malpass said his greatest worry was widening global inequality.
"The big drag is the inequality that's built into the system," he told the BBC, noting that poorer countries were especially vulnerable to economic damage from efforts to fight inflation.
"The outlook for the weaker countries is still to fall further and further behind. That causes insecurity."
But output in developing and emerging countries is expected to remain 4% lower than it was before Covid struck....By 2023, economic activity in all advanced economies, such as the US, Euro area and Japan, is likely to have recovered from the hit it took during the pandemic, the bank said.
....MUCH MORE
