and say, well, i m not going to do this because it will cause some spiral in the economy. you re worried about paying your bills, you re worried about feeding your family, you re worried about heating your home. he described the government help with bills as welcome and necessary, but knows it won t be sufficient to relieve a painful income squeeze. simon jack, bbc news. the government s latest figures show coronavirus cases in the uk remain stable withjust over 84,000 new cases recorded in the latest 24 hour period. on average nearly 88,000 infections have been reported per day in the last week. there are more than 111,500 people in hospital with covid. 254 deaths have been reported that s of people who died within 28 days of a positive test, though some will have died of other causes. on average in the past week, 252 deaths were announced every day. on vaccinations, more than 37 million people have now had a boosterjab, which means 65.1% of those aged 12 and over
use of connection calls in combat use very seriously. we re working to determine what has happened and we will continue consulting and sharing information with key partners. secretary of state john kerry went to geneva in september of last year to negotiate a deal brokered by russia in which the syrians agreed to hand over their chemical weapons. today the pentagon indicated that process of turning over the weapons continues but slowly. so far according to a defense official syrian president ba shash al asad has given up 65.1% of his declared chemical arsenal and the final deadline is coming up in june. according to the guardian newspaper, syria acknowledged that chemical weapons were used in recent attacks but he blamed it on opposition forces. the u.s. and its allies are investigating. all right, steve, thank you. summertime is coming as temperatures rise. so do the cost of some hot commodities. gas prices surging to a 13-month high this week. the national gas average spiked
a score of 90 on the conference board s index means the economy is healthy. last time we saw that number was 2007 before the start of the financial crisis. over the last two months we ve seen steady declines. november s report showed a score of 71.5 and 65.1 in december. that is lowest number we ve seen since august. joining us now for more on this is jonathan hunt, portfolio manager for capitalist pig hedge fund. contributor to for fox news channel, good to see you. happy new year. consumers have no faith in congress, guys get your act together. if there is a deal tomorrow, how do you think is this is going to affect consumer confidence over the next six months? it might slightly help but already there is a tremendous damage done. it s no surprise that consumers are not confident. to be confident you have to have
index score of 71.5 and just 65.1 in december. that s the lowest number we have seen since august. matt mccall is the president of penn financial group. he jones us now live. how serious is this? it is extremely serious, gregg. we re seeing numbers backdating going back to november. what we haven t seen yet, we won t see until january the effect of the uncertainty of fiscal cliff and potential of falling off the fiscal cliff will have on the economy and have on consumers and potentially lead us back into as you mentioned what a lot of economists believe, another recession. gregg: what happens when fourth quarter earnings come out? nobody is really talking about this. companies, fourth quarter ends in a few days from now. we haven t had many warnings come from companies but when you see consumer confidence falling, mastercard came out with their numbers on holiday sales only increasing .7%. well below estimates and historical averages and consumer is 70% of the
i mean if you were really concerned about how middle income people are doing and howing the unemployed are doing, how the average person who depends on their pay paycheck, not their stock portfolio is doing, you quickly resolve these cliff issues so the tax rates don t revert to get you the results you just showed. very quickly extend unemployment. i mean, i thought the point that someone made earlier in the reporting was critical. there are millions, couple million, actually, of unemployed people who have been on the rolls already. we know that they are hurting economically. there are not enough jobs out there. it is not their fault. have you that. then, of course, payroll tax holiday as you mentioned, paychecks take a hit as well. we are starting to see signs of this within the markets. i m going to put up this brafic. consumer confidence dropped from the 71.25 in november to 65.1 in december. that s four times the expected 1.25. this is quite significant. i thought it was