LONDON/TOKYO (Reuters) -European factories continued to ramp up their post-lockdown recovery in June but Asian manufacturers saw momentum weaken amid rising input costs and the reintroduction of curbs to combat a new wave of coronavirus infections, surveys showed. Czech and Polish manufacturing hit a record pace of activity for the second month in a row as orders rose and economies opened up again. But manufacturing activity grew at a slower pace in China and Japan as raw materials rose, while activity shrank in Vietnam, Malaysia and India, where governments imposed tougher restrictions to contain fresh coronavirus outbreaks.

A regulation underpinning a digital certification system for individuals in the European Union to verify their COVID-19 status via a common credential has gone into application today — on schedule. From today, almost all EU Member States are now able to issue and verify digital certificates, …

The U.S., U.K. and China are roaring ahead, while most lower income nations are struggling, reversing decades of progress in alleviating global poverty. “This has become the inequality virus.”

Over all, the birthrate declined by 4 percent in 2020. Births were down most sharply in December, when babies conceived at the start of the health crisis would have been born.

Much of the continent is experiencing a wave of outbreaks driven by the B.1.1.7 variant, which ravaged Britain this winter.

Despite the pandemic, it was a record-setting year for the world’s wealthiest- with a $5 trillion surge in wealth and an unprecedented number of new billionaires.

During a plague outbreak in 1899, officials in Honolulu quarantined and burned the city’s Chinatown. Some Covid-19 talk today echoes their rhetoric.

Widespread disease outbreaks have the potential to shock societies into new ways of living.