Eliana Willis

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    'It’s a massive joy': the programme-makers bringing back quality British kids' TV

    While the BBC’s dollops of Bitesize Daily has reminded the country of the value of children’s television, there is another public-service initiative quietly climbing the charts. It is the awkwardly named Young Audiences Content Fund (YACF), which was launched in 2019 to reverse a collapse in the number of original British children’s programmes, where funding has fallen by 40% in 10 years.No one knew if devoting £60m to a three-year-long experiment to subsidise programmes for four- to 18-year-olds could revive a creative sector that was dying on its feet or reintroduce variety beyond bought-in cartoons. But as the YACF enters year two, it is judged to have had a good start despite the pause in most TV production. Floella Benjamin, who championed it, says: “It is a success – it has opened the door to people whose voices have not been heard. The BBC can only do so much.”It is also delivering a lockdown dividend, after it improvised by inviting children and teenagers to become involved in short, quality programmes for broadcast, after only a quarter of children polled said television reflected their lives.If you want to see the output for yourself, try sampling the six-part Letters in Lockdown, available on All 4. One that touched me was made in three weeks, with Soham, a 16-year-old boy from Coventry, who writes to his absentee father in the Middle East: “I never felt I had a father figure; you drifted away,” he says, remarking he would have liked tips on shaving. As they share the letter, his father has teary moments and they reconcile.An experiment in May called See Yourself on Screen challenged children to compete to make a short TV show (with mentors) resulting in 15 that made it to broadcast. I loved one from a young girl, Betsy – called Squeaks and Wheeks – about her guinea pigs. “My best friends in lockdown … they can sometimes get a bit smelly,” she says. So she gussies them up with a shampoo and groom in preparation for a guinea-pig tea party. This was all mentored by Jessica Hynes. More

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    Biden tells Trump to 'do your job' as coronavirus fails to 'just disappear'

    The presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Joe Biden, told Donald Trump “to step up and do your job” on Tuesday, highlighting that it had been a month since Trump most recently predicted the coronavirus would “just disappear”.“He was wrong – and more than 25,000 Americans died due to the virus last month,” Biden tweeted on Tuesday morning. “Mr President, step up and do your job before even more American families feel the pain of losing a loved one.”More than 4.7 million people in the US have been diagnosed with Covid-19 and at least 155,471 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University. While the US is home to 4% of the world’s population, the country accounts for more than a quarter of global confirmed infections.More than 30 million Americans are unemployed because of the business closures to stop the spread of coronavirus. The White House and Congress are negotiating a new economic relief package, but two key relief measures ended last week, leaving millions of families with a sudden drop in income and fewer protections from evictions.Amid these colliding crises, Trump on Monday floundered in an interview with the Axios news site, where he repeatedly insisted the US was doing better than other countries, brandishing several pieces of paper with charts to make his point.Axios’s national political correspondent, Jonathan Swan, then realized Trump was talking about how many deaths the US has had in relation to identified cases. Swan then explained the deaths as a proportion of the population was where the US was doing badly in comparison with the rest of the world. Trump responded: “You can’t do that.”Covid-19 deaths rose for a fourth week in a row to more than 8,500 people in the seven-day period that ended Sunday, according to a Reuters analysis.A surge in cases has been identified in midwestern states for the first time while fewer cases and hospitalizations were recorded in some of the country’s most populated states: Arizona, Florida, Texas and California.California has had more cases identified than anywhere in the country, but Governor Gavin Newsom said on Monday the weekly average of cases was down 21% from the previous week. He also cautioned it was too early to celebrate.“This virus is not going away,” Newsom said. “It’s not going to take Labor Day weekend off or Halloween off or the holidays off. Until we have a vaccine, we are going to be living with this virus.”The nation’s top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, on Monday praised the state of Connecticut, which has one of the lowest infection rates in the country, because of its slow, staggered reopening process. “You are in a situation that you now, in many respects, have the upper hand, because you have such a low rate that when you do get new cases, you have the capability of containment as opposed to mitigation,” Fauci said.New York, which has also been slow to reopen compared with much of the rest of the country, also had a case positivity rate lower than 1% this past weekend. But the densely populated state and its neighbor New Jersey have seen an increase in cases in recent days.The disparate situations across the country prompted teachers from dozens of school districts, including Chicago, Milwaukee and Philadelphia, to lead protests from their cars on Monday asking for instruction to be online in the fall. More

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    Donald Trump flounders in interview over US Covid-19 death toll

    Donald Trump

    President again says he is doing ‘incredible job’ fighting pandemic and casts doubt on Jeffrey Epstein’s cause of death
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    ‘You can’t do that’: Trump argues with reporter over Covid-19 death figures – video

    Donald Trump visibly floundered in an interview when pressed on a range of issues, including the number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the US, his claims that mail-in voting is fraudulent, and his inaction over the “Russian bounty” scandal.
    The US president also repeatedly cast doubt on the cause of death of Jeffrey Epstein, and said of Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite who has pleaded not guilty to participating in the sex-trafficking of girls by Epstein, that he wished her well.
    In the interview, broadcast on HBO on Monday and conducted by Axios’s national political correspondent, Jonathan Swan, Trump again asserted that his administration was doing an “incredible job” responding to the coronavirus.
    Claiming that the pandemic was unique, Trump said: “This has never happened before. Nineteen seventeen, but it was totally different, it was a flu in that case. If you watch the fake news on television, they don’t even talk about it, but there are 188 other countries right now that are suffering. Some, proportionately, far greater than we are.”
    Trump has repeatedly referred to the 1917 flu pandemic, whereas the outbreak happened in 1918 and into 1919.
    And when asked about the death toll from coronavirus so far in the US, of almost 155,000 killed, Trump appeared irritated and said: “It is what it is”
    His opponent in the upcoming presidential election, Democrat Joe Biden, tweeted on Tuesday morning: “Mr President, step up and do your job before even more American families feel the pain of losing a loved one.”
    Biden also wrote: “On July 1st, Donald Trump predicted the coronavirus was going to ‘just disappear.’ He was wrong – and more than 25,000 Americans died due to the virus last month.”
    [embedded content]
    [embedded content]
    Swan pressed the president on which countries were doing worse. Trump brandished several pieces of paper with graphs and charts on them that he referred to as he attempted to suggest the US figures compared well internationally.
    “Right here, United States is lowest in numerous categories. We’re lower than the world. Lower than Europe.”
    “In what?” asks Swan. As it becomes apparent that Trump is talking about the number of deaths as a proportion of cases, Swan says said: “Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the US is really bad. Much worse than Germany, South Korea.”
    Trump then says: “You can’t do that.”
    According to figures from Johns Hopkins University, the US has had over 4.7m confirmed Covid-19 cases, with 155,471 deaths. The US accounts for more than a quarter of all global confirmed infections.
    In another section of the interview, Trump repeats his false assertion that the reason the US has a significantly higher number of cases is because it tests more than anyone else, saying: “You know, there are those that say you can test too much. You do know that.”
    Asked who says that, Trump replies: “Oh, just read the manuals. Read the books.”
    Trump also appears, without evidence, to assert that children are receiving positive Covid-19 test results for having a runny nose – which is not generally listed among the symptoms of coronavirus, which include a high temperature and a new continuous cough.
    “You test, some kid has even just a little runny nose, it’s a case. And then you report many cases,” Trump says.
    The president attempts to shift blame for the outbreaks of coronavirus on to state governors, saying: “We have done a great job. We’ve got the governors everything they needed. They didn’t do their job – many of them didn’t, some of them did.”
    The actor and activist Mia Farrow tweeted that: “Every American should watch this, the full, flabbergasting interview.”
    Trump was also asked about his previous baseless assertion that due to mail-in voting, the forthcoming US election would be “the most inaccurate and fraudulent election in history”.
    In the interview, Trump says: “So we have a new phenomena [sic], it’s called mail-in voting.” Swan then clarifies that mail-in voting has existed since the US civil war.
    Further attempting to cast doubt on the process, Trump says: “So they’re going to send tens of millions of ballots to California, all over the place. Who’s going to get them? Somebody got a ballot for a dog. Somebody got a ballot for something else. You got millions of ballots going. Nobody even knows where they’re going.”
    The interview took place last Tuesday, before the president’s tweet that falsely floated the idea that November’s election could be delayed.
    On Maxwell and Epstein, the president appeared to cast doubt on the official account of the cause of Epstein’s death, which has been a repeated source of conspiracy theories.
    Of Maxwell, Trump says “Her friend or boyfriend Epstein was either killed or committed suicide in jail. She’s now in jail. Yeah, I wish her well.” Trump goes on twice more to say of Epstein: “Was it suicide or was he killed?”

    Parker Molloy
    (@ParkerMolloy)
    Trump again wishes Ghislaine Maxwell well pic.twitter.com/whWhZoO4mC

    August 4, 2020

    In another part of the interview, he dismissed again as “fake news” intelligence reports that Russia had been offering bounties to the Taliban for attacks on US forces in Afghanistan. Asked specifically by Swan whether he had ever discussed the issue with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, Trump confirms he has never mentioned it to him.
    When Swan asks Trump about Russia supplying weapons to the Taliban, the president asserts: “I have heard that, but it has never reached my desk.”
    Lily Adams, a spokeswoman and adviser for the so-called war room of the Democratic party’s national committee slammed the president as incoherent and rambling through misinformation.
    “Trump’s disastrous interview would be laughable if the stakes weren’t so high. More than 155,000 Americans have died, over 4.7 million have been infected, and we are in the sharpest economic downturn on record … coronavirus cases are skyrocketing and the economy is spiraling because of his failed response,” Adams said.

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    Donald Trump defends Dr Deborah Birx after calling her Covid-19 assessment 'pathetic' – video

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    1:44

    The US president has defended his public health expert Deborah Birx after she drew criticism from House speaker Nancy Pelosi and from his own earlier tweet, labelling her assessment of Covid-19’s spread as ‘pathetic’. Pelosi targeted Birx, saying Trump spread coronavirus misinformation and Birx was his appointee. The president pointed to coronavirus flareups overseas as a measure of the US success, saying the country was doing very well and adding he had a lot of respect for Birx
    Trump calls Birx’s dire warning on widespread coronavirus in the US ‘pathetic’

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    'Ghetto presidents': musicians risk all to take on authoritarian rule in Africa

    They call him the “ghetto president”, and his ambition is to bring the dreams and the sounds of the streets to the corridors of power.Bobi Wine, a popular reggae star and prominent opposition MP in Uganda, will release a new album next month that addresses what he calls “the real issues people are facing – the injustices, corruption, high taxation, misrule, abuse of human rights, dictatorship.”“Rise up, African musicians, and we can accomplish the task,” Wine said in an interview. “We can’t be defeated. The more they oppress us, the stronger we become. No dictator in history has ever defeated the artists and no one will ever.” More

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    Trump says US should take share of proceeds from proposed TikTok sale – video

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    Donald Trump says the Treasury should receive a share of proceeds from the proposed sale of Chinese-owned video app TikTok. The president’s plans come after he reversed his call to ban the popular app in the US due to privacy concerns. Speaking from the White House, Trump said the US would make any sale of the app possible – and should be in line for a share of the proceeds. ‘It would come from the sale,’ he said. ‘Which no one else would be thinking about but me’
    TikTok sale: Trump approves Microsoft’s plan but says US should get a cut of any deal

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    Nancy Pelosi says she doesn't have confidence in Dr Deborah Birx over coronavirus – video

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    0:33

    US House speaker Nancy Pelosi says she has lost trust in Dr Deborah Birx, a senior scientist on Donald Trump’s coronavirus taskforce, after the US surpassed 154,000 deaths due to the virus. Pelosi criticised Birx’s role in the White House’s handling of the pandemic, claiming president Trump had been spreading disinformation about Covid-19, and Birx was his appointee
    Nancy Pelosi says she has no confidence in Deborah Birx over handling of pandemic

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