Worldwide waffling

Pornhub, one of the world's most visited adult sites, is changing its rules over user uploads after being accused of hosting illegal videos. A New York Times investigation accused the site of being "infested" with child-abuse and rape-related videos. Pornhub said the claims were "irresponsible and flagrantly untrue". But it has now said users must be verified to upload videos and removed its download function, which meant removed content could easily resurface. The verification feature will launch in the new year, it said.

London should be placed in tier three "now" to avoid a spike in deaths over Christmas, experts have warned. The city saw a spike in Covid-19 cases at the end of England-wide lockdown on 2 December, new figures have revealed. Government officials are due to meet on 16 December to review what tier each area should be allocated.

Dr John Ashton, author of Blinded by Corona, said "if London doesn't want hospitals to be full over Christmas the government needs to get a grip today". "Deaths will start going up during the Christmas period and new year unless something is done," said Dr Ashton, a former regional director of public health for north-west England.

Stocks are off to a mostly higher start on Wall Street, keeping several indexes near record highs, but weakness in some Big Tech shares kept the gains in check. The S&P 500 was up 0.2% in the early going. Companies that stand to benefit the most from a recovering economy were putting up some of the biggest gains, including industrial companies, banks, and smaller companies. The S&P 500 was above the record high it closed at a day earlier, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was also near its all-time high.

In the spring, during the first COVID-19 surge in the United States, the rising death toll reached a sobering peak in April-a seven-day average of 2,116 daily deaths. This past weekend, the seven-day average of U.S. deaths from COVID-19 broke that record twice, at 2,123 on Saturday and 2,171 yesterday, according to the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic.

Yesterday, the seven-day averages for all four of the primary metrics that the COVID Tracking Project follows-tests, cases, hospitalizations, and deaths-were at record highs. But deaths offer the clearest comparison with the spring surge, because in those early weeks many more cases were going uncounted while testing was slow to ramp up.