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U.K. coronavirus restrictions to include hotel quarantines, threats of fines and prison

InternationalFeb 11. 2021

By The Washington Post · William Booth, Karla Adam

LONDON – Britain, besieged by a more contagious coronavirus strain and alarmed by the potential of new and imported variants, is about to launch the toughest travel restrictions in Europe, including mandatory hotel quarantines and 1o-year prison terms for those who lie on entry forms.

The government has already shut down almost all travel by international visitors from 33 countries seen as viral hotspots, including Brazil and South Africa.

Beginning Monday, British citizens returning from those “red list” countries must quarantine for 10 days in designated hotels, under police guard, costing travelers £1,750 or about $2,400. Travelers must submit to multiple coronavirus tests before release. Those who try to elude quarantine face $14,000 fines.

The threat of prison time is for anyone found guilty of misleading authorities over having recently been in a red list country.

Only essential travel is allowed from countries not on the list, including the United States. And all international arrivals must show proof of a recent negative coronavirus test and self-quarantine for 10 days, getting tested on days 2 and 8, Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced on Tuesday evening.

The raft of measures marks a profound escalation in Britain’s pandemic response, showing how worried the government and its scientific advisers are about the dizzying rise of various coronavirus “variants of concern,” some of which have evolved to be much more infectious, possibly more deadly or potentially less responsive to vaccines.

Already, Britain on many days posts the highest per capita death toll from the virus in the world.

Forcing arrivals into government-run quarantine sites near airports has been policy in Australia, China and South Korea. But it is new for Europe. And it is especially out-of-character for this Conservative Party British government.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been criticized for being too slow in declaring each of three national lockdowns. His government reopened pubs before fully reopening schools and paid people to go out and eat in restaurants last summer.

Throughout the pandemic, Johnson and his Tory backbenchers have been resistant to sweeping travel bans, seeing Britain, and London especially, as a vital crossroads of global travel, trade and finance.

That the “sovereign free-trading island nation,” as Johnson like to describe his country, is essentially retreating into its castle keep, pulling up the drawbridges, appears especially hard for Johnson, as the measures come just as the prime minister hoped to launch his vision for a post-Brexit “Global Britain.”

The red flags denote countries with exploding outbreaks or those that have produced concerning mutations of the virus. Fourteen are in Central and South America, alongside a dozen African nations. Portugal is the only country in Europe to make the list.

Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, said the Johnson government tends to view coronavirus restrictions as “something that will harm the economy, rather than seeing the case for how restrictions early on would actually be better for the economy in the long-term.”

Bale said he imagined the government’s threat of prison for travelers caught lying was designed to be “eye-catching” and show that “to breach regulations would be a serious thing to do.”

But he said it could also be “an attempt by the government to get everyone talking about that, rather than failures going back to March to protect the borders.”

The government has been lax in law enforcement of previous coronavirus travel restrictions, with border force police issuing few fines, leaving it to public health tracers to follow up with travelers to see if they are abiding by quarantine rules.

The newly announced, more actively enforced quarantines have stirred deep feelings of lost liberties.

Jonathan Sumption, a former supreme court judge and medieval historian, asked the health minister in a guest column in the Telegraph, “Does Mr. Hancock really think that non-disclosure of a visit to Portugal is worse than the large number of violent firearms offences or sexual offences involving minors, for which the maximum is seven years?”

Sumption continued, “The hotel quarantine rules are a form of imprisonment in solitary confinement. They are brutal, inhumane and disproportionate. They are economically extremely destructive. They are also of limited value because the virus is already endemic in the UK and spontaneously mutates all the time.”

Lindsey Scott, 36, a supervisor on an offshore oil rig in the Black Sea, off the Turkish coast, told The Washington Post he was reevaluating a planned visit home to see his family in Scotland.

“I’m sure there are a lot of people worse off than me right now,” he said. “Just seems a bit extreme. Would be happy to isolate at home and get the two tests so I could at least be with my family.”

Linda Bauld, a professor of public health at the University of Edinburgh, said that once Britain’s new measures come into effect on Monday, it will have some of the strictest border controls in Europe. She noted that Norway and Iceland also have some managed quarantine.

She said that in addition to risks from new variants, there’s a recognition from some research that Britain “should have had a quarantine system in place some time ago” and that international travel contributed to the second wave of the pandemic here.

In Scotland, Bauld said, “we got infection levels down to 2-3 cases a day in July, and then people were allowed to go off on holiday. And the genomic sequencing shows that lineages of the virus were reseeding into the country by people coming back from elsewhere.”

Johnson’s government and the National Health Service have been running one of the most efficient vaccine campaigns in the world, and they’ve held out hope that if everyone lines up and gets their jabs, restrictions could be lifted in the spring – and summer might feel more normal.

But on Wednesday, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps warned on BBC radio: “Please don’t go ahead and book holidays for something which, at this stage, is illegal to actually go and do, whether it’s here or abroad.”

Earlier this week, England’s deputy chief medical officer, Jonathan Van-Tam, said, “The more elaborate your plans are for summer holidays – in terms of crossing borders, in terms of household mixing – given where we are now, I think we just have to say, the more you are stepping into making guesses about the unknown at this point.”

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Fed Chair: Unemployment rate was closer to 10%, not 6.3%, in January

InternationalFeb 11. 2021

By The Washington Post · Rachel Siegel

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday that the real unemployment rate in January was “close to 10 percent,” significantly higher than the 6.3% rate reported by the Department of Labor last week.

The discrepancy is due to the “misclassification” of some jobless Americans, Powell said during a virtual speech at the Economic Club of New York. After accounting for people who have left the labor force since February 2020, the unemployment rate is much higher than the official figure, he said.

“Correcting this misclassification and counting those who have left the labor force since last February as unemployed would boost the unemployment rate to close to 10 percent in January,” Powell said Wednesday.

The higher figure is another reflection of how the pandemic continues to constrain the labor market. The U.S. gained back a paltry 49,000 jobs in January. In December, the country lost 227,000 jobs.

The latest figures come as Congress debates President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus package, which would extend unemployment benefits, issue $1,400 in direct checks and set aside hundreds of billions of dollars to fight the pandemic.

Powell has repeatedly said that the economy’s future depends on controlling the virus. As the number of cases rose through the holiday season, the labor market’s recovery slowed. And for many service-sectors workers, jobs that depend on person-to-person contact have yet to return.

Following Powell’s speech, Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore. said that the 10% unemployment rate cited by Powell reinforces “the need for the strongest possible benefits package in our COVID relief bill.”

“Federal Reserve Chair Powell’s assessment of joblessness in America is bleak,” Wyden said in a statement.

Powell noted that nearly 5 million people said the pandemic prevented them from looking for work in January. Some parents are providing full-time child care or been forced to stay home with children during virtual schooling. Others have been deterred by fear of the virus, especially in jobs that at restaurants, hotels and entertainment venues.

“We are still very far from a strong labor market whose benefits are broadly shared,” Powell said.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has flagged undercounts in the official unemployment rate before. In May – when the unemployment rate was a reported 13.3% – the Bureau of Labor Statistics noted a “misclassification error” that lowered the overall rate by about 3 percentage points, meaning the May unemployment rate would have been about 16.3%.

Powell has also spoken about the discrepancy before. After the official unemployment rate fell to 7.9% in September, Powell said that a broader, more accurate measure that adjusts for “mistaken characterizations of job status, and for the decline in labor force participation since February” would put that month’s rate at around 11%.

Powell has repeatedly urged lawmakers to keep relief flowing, especially for the 10 million Americans whose jobs have not returned since the pandemic began. The Fed, in turn, has no plans to raise interest rates until the labor market heals substantially.

As congressional Democrats rush to pass Biden’s coronavirus package, some economists worry the full thrust of the bill could be too much for the economy to handle. Some economists have questioned whether the $1.9 trillion stimulus, combined with pent-up savings that Americans are expected to unleash once the pandemic ends could suddenly overheat the economy, triggering a rise in inflation and forcing the Fed to respond by raising interest rates.

Powell dismissed those concerns. Inflation has been low or stable for decades, and the Fed is prepared to tolerate a temporary rise inflation over its’ 2% target, he said.

It’s possible, Powell said, that aid from Congress plus a spike in consumer spending could cause “some upward pressure on prices.”

But “my expectation is that will be neither large nor sustained,” he said.

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Stocks turn lower; Treasurys gain on subdued CPI

InternationalFeb 11. 2021

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Claire Ballentine, Olivia Raimonde

U.S. stocks notched a second straight small decline after reaching a record, as investors assessed what the latest inflation reading means for aid prospects.

The S&P 500 Index ended and up-and-down session lower by less than 0.1%. The Dow Jones industrial average posted a gain, while the Nasdaq 100 retreated. The 10-year Treasury yield fell back below 1.15% after the core consumer price index was unchanged last month.

The CPI data are part of an intensifying debate in financial markets over the course of inflation. Despite the muted January figure, investors continue to worry that price pressures are set to increase in the months ahead as Congress passes an aid bill and more vaccinations spur consumer spending.Twitter Inc. climbed after reporting a jump in revenue. Lyft Inc. rallied as the co-founder said the ride-hailing company will “absolutely” turn a quarterly profit this year.

Surging Inflation May Force Fed to Resort to Yield Curve-Control

These are the main moves in markets:

Stocks

– The S&P 500 Index lost less than 0.1% 4 p.m.EST.

– The Stoxx Europe 600 Index fell 0.2%.

– The MSCI Asia Pacific Index rose 0.8%.

– The MSCI Emerging Market Index gained 1.1%.

Currencies

– The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index fell 0.1%.

– The euro added 0.1% to $1.2125.

– The British pound rose 0.2% to $1.3841.

– The Japanese yen slipped 0.1% to 104.67 per dollar.

Bonds

– The yield on 10-year Treasurys fell two basis points to 1.13%.

– The yield on two-year Treasurys was unchanged at 0.11%.

– Germany’s 10-year yield rose one basis point to -0.44%.

– Britain’s 10-year yield climbed two basis points to 0.48%.

Commodities

– West Texas Intermediate crude gained 0.5% to $58.65 a barrel.

– Gold futures added 0.4% to $1,844.20 an ounce.

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Oil rallies with U.S. supply drop further draining global glut

InternationalFeb 11. 2021

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Andres Guerra Luz

Oil extended its longest winning streak in two years in New York as a decline in U.S. crude inventories further showcased how global supplies are shrinking.

Futures rose almost 1% after a U.S. government report showed domestic oil stockpiles fell by 6.6 million barrels to the lowest since March 2020. Still, the data showed gasoline supplies are at the highest since June, while crude exports fell to the lowest level in weeks.

“It was good to see the crude draw wasn’t just from one area, but constructive that it was throughout the whole U.S.,” said Brian Kessens, a portfolio manager at Tortoise, a firm that manages roughly $8 billion in energy-related assets. “If there was one thing to be concerned about, it was that gasoline inventories built.”

Oil has climbed more than 9% so far this month as the OPEC+ alliance’s supply curbs, led by Saudi Arabia, continue to deplete global oil inventories. Iraq said OPEC+ is unlikely to change its production policy at next month’s meeting, providing a signal to the market that oversupply concerns will be kept at bay.

The spread between Brent’s nearest contracts surged this week — a key sign of market tightness — while swaps tied to the physical North Sea market have also increased amid frenzied trading of derivatives late Tuesday. The so-called prompt spread for U.S. benchmark crude futures is also strengthening as declines at the nation’s largest storage hub in Cushing, Okla., brings oil stockpiles there to the lowest levels since July.

West Texas Intermediate for March delivery rose 32 cents to $58.68 a barrel as of 11:00 a.m. in New York. Brent for April settlement gained 45 cents to $61.54 a barrel.

There are still concerns that the rally may be overdone, with technical indicators showing crude in overbought territory. Rising prices may also spur American oil explorers to boost drilling and production later this year, the Energy Information Administration said in a monthly report Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the combined refining margin for gasoline and diesel fell toward $12 a barrel on Wednesday as the EIA report showed a nearly 4.3 million-barrel increase in gasoline supplies. At the same time, a rolling gauge for gasoline demand remains at its lowest seasonally in decades.

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‘Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury’ is a must-buy. But it’s not because of Bowser’s Fury.

InternationalFeb 11. 2021“Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury” MUST CREDIT: Nintendo

By The Washington Post · Jhaan Elker

“Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury” – a Wii U port of a mainline, flagpole-and-course-based Mario game – pairs a revamped version of the original “Super Mario 3D World” with an all new expansion (“Bowser’s Fury”) sectioned off from the main game. Here’s the thing: Despite the heavy marketing on the new content, what makes “Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury” worth buying for owners of “Super Mario 3D World” isn’t the new stuff found “Bowser’s Fury,” because it’s really not that new. Instead, the best stuff is actually found in the “3D World” redux.

Let me explain.

“Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury’s” first screen that loads up emphasizes the paired games right away, splitting the screen in half and giving a choice, play the “Super Mario 3D World” game or play the “Bowser’s Fury” game. Nintendo’s advertising heavily emphasized the “Bowser’s Fury” content, which makes a sort of sense. After all, the new stuff is supposed to be the incentive for returning players to repurchase the game. But the reality is this: while Kaiju God-Slaying Bowser vs. Super Saiyan Cat Mario was littering the Internet, Nintendo should’ve pumped up the two key changes made to “Super Mario 3D World” that greatly enhance it overall.

– – –

The “Super Mario 3D World” portion of the package takes the classic Mario games formula and applies it to 3D, meaning in this game, you use 3D Mario game controls like long jumps and butt stomps to navigate courses toward the end goal, the iconic flagpole. Throughout the courses are hidden collectibles like stamps and green stars that unlock special courses and minigames on an overview world map. Toward the end of each section is a castle level with a big boss and a Sprixie to rescue. You do this all while collecting power-ups like the new cat suit to change Mario’s abilities (in the cat suit’s case, you can claw enemies, climb up walls and do diagonal dive attacks).

But the key ingredient to it all? Multiplayer. Adding 1-3 more players to the screen complicates things quickly. Players are supposed to cooperatively work together to reach the flagpole, but power-ups and coins are limited.

The player ahead of the others will move the camera’s focus ahead, leaving lagging teammates behind (who can hit a button to bubble up and catch up). Each player’s individual points are tallied at the end of levels, and the player with the most points gets a nifty crown to wear in the next stage to showcase their dominance. And funniest of all: The run button also grabs other players. Add the fact that each playable character, Mario, Luigi, Peach and Blue Toad, all have different stats and abilities, and it all adds up to a hilarious balance of cooperation and competition while running through challenging obstacles as quickly as possible.

This is where the two critical changes to the Switch version come into play. These changes radically alter the experience and, in my opinion, make the entire purchase worth it. To start, the gameplay is faster in every aspect compared to its Wii U counterpart. Apart from the obvious faster load-times, characters move noticeably faster, as do enemies and obstacles. It just adds to the hilarious chaos multiplayer offers, as players have to hone their reflexes even more to survive courses.

Secondly and more importantly, you can now play the game online with friends. How this wasn’t mentioned more in any of the advertising is baffling, considering how much that radically opens up the multiplayer experience to everyone, especially during these pandemic times.

When I played online in a demo Nintendo hosted for journalists and influencers, I noticed a tiny bit of input delay, but the gameplay never stuttered or lagged, meaning once I got used to the delay, I was able to compete with the others effectively. It was also relatively easy to join the online session. While only the host player is able to save any progress made in an online play session, this downside is outweighed by what I found to be one of the better online experiences Nintendo’s had to offer.

The multiplayer allows for so many unique, creative experiences. Just try playing with your own custom rulesets, like a game where one person’s job is to constantly sabotage the others, or a game where one person has to carry Luigi at all times, and you restart a level if Luigi dies once.

The Wii U was not the success Nintendo was hoping it’d be, so it’s satisfying to see one of the best multiplayer entries of the system find a second life on the much more popular Switch, even if not much of the actual content of the game has changed.

– – –

If you think that the additional content Bowser’s Fury provides is what makes “Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury” valuable, I encourage you to reset your expectations. Bowser’s Fury feels more like a testing ground for the next “3D World” entry than a fully developed game by itself.

I went into the experience wanting to like Bowser’s Fury. The setup seemed pretty good – Bowser’s been corrupted by this black ink that looks straight out of “Super Mario Sunshine” and, coincidentally, Bowser Jr. is there hoping Mario can help change his father back. The two tackle a brand new “open world,” where the course-world structure is gone and replaced with a world map where the camera is set free on a 360 degree axis.

Bowser’s Fury lets two players control Mario and Bowser Jr. as they set about collecting Cat Shines, this game’s equivalent of power stars. Collecting these Cat Shines powers up lighthouses that further clean up the inky mess and reveal more of the world map. Eventually, you’ll hit a Cat Shine threshold where you can activate the Giga Bell, which allows Mario to go into Super Saiyan Giant Cat form to battle the massively sized Bowser. You need to fight Bowser multiple times until he’s finally completely restored, meaning this game is about continually searching the world for more Cat Shines.

The last wrinkle to the gameplay is a new mechanic that draws inspiration from “Breath of the Wild’s” Blood Moon segments. Every so often, Bowser’s shell, which is at the center of the world map, will rise higher and higher until it summons rain and the goliath himself. During these segments, the sky goes dark and Bowser himself causes mayhem on the map, dropping stone pillars and breathing fireballs. After a short while, or if you collect a Cat Shine during this segment, Bowser will disappear and normal gameplay will resume. It’s a chaotic interlude to break up the otherwise samey-feeling gameplay.

Mario controls exactly as he does in “Super Mario 3D World,” while Bowser Jr. has those controls plus a paintbrush swipe attack and the ability to reveal hidden objects using point and click motion controls. You can also have the computer control Bowser Jr. and select the amount of help it actually gives you.

Here’s where the experience begins to fall apart. To start, the overall map feels like an oversized approximation of one of “Super Mario Odyssey’s” Kingdoms. Because of this, you’ll want every movement option that Odyssey offered in its gameplay and more. But Bowser’s Fury is using “Super Mario 3D World’s” controls engine, which feels dated for this game’s open-world ambition. You can’t do things every other 3D World Mario game offers, like the triple jump, and you don’t have things Odyssey offered that gave you incredible movement flexibility, like infinite rolling or Cappy-hopping.

The “open world” is sort of a facade too. Yes, there are no loading screens between any section of the game, but the world doesn’t offer the same interconnectivity or explorative wonder that, say, Odyssey’s Kingdoms offer, where discoveries really are exciting and unexpected. Instead, this map feels more like five separate “Super Mario 3D World” levels stitched together in different mountain-like zones, with large expanses of water between. I would go through each “mountain zone” similarly to how I’d progress through a regular “Super Mario 3D World” level, from top to bottom, with very short branches off the main path offering a challenge for an extra cat shine.

Finally, facing off against the Giant Bowser quickly loses its luster when you see it for what it is. The game really tries to play up Kaiju Bowser’s menace. Heck, there is even a part in his theme song that perfectly copies Sephiroth’s theme from “Final Fantasy 7.” But facing Bowser just looks grandiose simply because it’s bigger. The actual fight takes the same Mario boss formula that’s been here this entire franchise: recognize the pattern, wait for the opening, then jump on 2-3 times.

In short, the experience falters because it doesn’t offer any truly new ideas, and it just doesn’t compare to the brilliance of Mario’s last game of this variety, “Super Mario Odyssey.” Bowser’s Fury gets beat by Odyssey in every category: aesthetics, sound design, controls and gimmick wow-factor. And while the game does provide a potential blueprint for how to take the 3D World series going forward – it wouldn’t surprise me if the next game applied this open-world format to four players – Bowser’s Fury is certainly not enough to merit a purchase on its own.

The graphics aren’t a noticeably substantial upgrade, and handheld mode for both games had pretty steady framerates throughout (it’s worth noting that “Super Mario 3D World” was closer to 60 FPS and “Bowser’s Fury” is closer to 30).

Even with the Bowser’s Fury miss, the content is worth it. If you want one of the best and most versatile multiplayer experiences to date for the Nintendo Switch, online or offline, go with “Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury.”

But if you’re looking in particular for the “Bowser’s Fury” part to surprise you with new Mario gameplay concepts, look elsewhere. Bowser’s increase in size and inky gloss may distract you at first, but trust me, it’s simply covering up more of the same.