We’ve summarised the 15 key stories of the last week into an easily digestible briefing so that you can stay up to date on what’s happening around the world. You can subscribe to receive the briefing in your inbox each week.

Politics

  1. Trump has announced his nominee for the US Supreme Court as Amy Coney Barret, following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. A heated battle in the Senate is expected to follow
  2. Across Europe, cases of Covid-19 continued to rise. Spain led, with 319.9 cases per 100,000, and the UK continued to see a rise in new cases, driven in part by outbreaks at universities. Several more areas of the UK went into local lockdowns.
  3. Today new laws came into effect making it a crime to not self-isolate when instructed to do so after being contacted by NHS track and trace. This came a week after the new ‘rule of 6’ was introduced, limiting group gatherings.
  4. Armenia and Azerbaijan clashed early on Sunday morning in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. Armenia declared martial law, while Turkey vowed to support Azerbaijan. Russia has called for an immediate ceasefire.
  5. A grand jury announced on Wednesday that no murder charges would be brought against the three police officers many hold responsible for Breonna Taylor’s death. The decision sparked protests in Louisville and two police officers were shot
  6. The Swiss have decisively rejected the end of free movement between Switzerland and the EU, after a referendum was held on the accord. They also voted for paternity leave for new fathers and rejected a proposal to make it easier to hunt endangered species
  7. The Lebanese prime minister designate, Mustapha Adib, has stepped down after he was unable to form a government. The country is in the midst of an economic crisis as a result of the explosion in Beirut and the resignation of the previous cabinet.
  8. Michael Gove confirmed that a Kent Access Permit will be needed by lorries weighing over 7.5 tonnes in order to travel through Kent. Enforced by ANPR and the police, the scheme aims to prevent long queues of lorries at Dover and Folkestone

Business and Economics

  1. With the furlough scheme set to end at the end of October, Rishi Sunak this week announced a new job subsidy scheme. The new scheme seeks to support employment in ‘viable jobs’, by topping up the wages of part-time workers. Sunak also cancelled the Autumn Budget.
  2. Trump has agreed to a deal between Tiktok, Oracle and Walmart, in which some of Tiktok’s operations, including its US ones, would be spun off into Tiktok Global, in which Oracle and Walmart would take a 20% stake. Tiktok was forced to restructure its US operations after Trump threatened to ban it on national security concerns.
  3. With coronavirus restrictions beginning to be reimposed in the UK, some leading supermarkets, including Tesco and Morrisons, have put in place limits on purchases of certain items, such as flour and dried pasta. While the supermarkets say they still have good availability of these products, they pre-emptively imposed these measures to prevent a wave of panic-buying.
  4. This week, some of the extent of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the UK government’s finances was revealed. In August, the took borrowed £36 billion, while borrowing between April and August totalled £174 billion. The UK’s government debt is now larger than GDP and is at its highest level, relative to GDP, since the 1960s.
  5. The vast majority of Unilever’s Dutch shareholders backed this week Unilever’s proposal to base the entire group in London, ending its Anglo-Dutch dual structure as part of a broad restructuring of Unilever.
  6. The European Commission announced it would challenge a ruling that means Apple does not have to hand over $13 billion in back taxes to Ireland. In July, the EU’s general court overturned an earlier decision in 2016 that Ireland had illegally given Apple tax breaks.
  7. Kioxia, a Japanese memory chipmaker, decided to postpone its IPO on the Tokyo Stock Exchange set for 6 October. The chipmaker, which had hoped to raise about $3.6 billion valuing the company at $20 billion, cited the impact of US-China tensions on its profitability as the cause of the delay.

Written by Milo Dennison and Ed Hilditch

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