Pandemic

Thursday 31 July 2025 - 18:25pm JOHANNESBURG - Relief for indebted consumers. The South African Reserve Bank has cut interest rates by another 25 basis points.  This brings the country's repo rate down to 7%, and the prime lending rate to 10.5%. It's the first time the repo rate is…

The inventory of homes for sale rose 24.8% year over year, marking the 21st consecutive month of inventory growth and the third consecutive month with over 1 million active listings. July 2025 inventory hit a new post-pandemic high, but remains 13.4% below pre-pandemic levels. The total number of unsold homes…

The film Eddington opens at night as Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) sits in his Chevy Tahoe on the edge of a New Mexico desert. On duty, he’s bathed in blue light, watching YouTube: a video on how to convince your spouse to want a child. More cops pull up,…

Radio 2 has lost nearly half a million listeners since the launch of its new weekday schedule earlier this year, which included Scott Mills replacing Zoe Ball as host of the flagship breakfast show, figures suggest. The BBC station had an estimated weekly audience of 12.62 million across April to…

A dark, pandemic-era thriller blending psychological drama, live experimental music, and the haunting spirit of Edgar Allan Poe. Los Angeles, CA, USA | July 30, 2025 –– Prepare to be haunted in a whole new way. This fall, acclaimed playwright Omen Kaine unveils The Heart Tells Tales , a gripping,…

UK-listed companies in the FTSE Construction and Materials sector issued eight profit warnings during the first six months of 2025, compared to just two in H1 2024. This is the highest total since the covid-19 pandemic in 2020, according to EY-Parthenon’s latest Profit Warnings report. Listed firms in the sector…

In late June, the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO), a group of independent experts convened by the World Health Organization (WHO), published an assessment of the origins of COVID. The report concluded that although we don’t know conclusively where the virus that caused the pandemic…

Collecting cards is absolute hell. It’s been that way since the pandemic. It was around this time thousands of people stopped looking at cards as collectibles, and instead took to them as legalized gambling — not only driving prices up to astronomical levels, but making it almost impossible for regular…

Dar es Salaam:  The United Republic of Tanzania has been awarded a significant grant of US$25 million from the Pandemic Fund to enhance its national health security and pandemic preparedness capacities. In addition to this core funding, the initiative has successfully mobilized US$7 million in co-investment and US$6.7 million in…

COVID-19 did more than just change the world of healthcare and how people interact; it revolutionized academia. The pandemic forced a shift to remote learning almost overnight, starting in the spring of 2020. Although the pandemic affected all levels of learning, higher education was the sector most significantly impacted. The…