1. Without cruise ships, Venice is a different place. And while environmental campaigners may understandably want a cleaner city, baggage handlers, ship cleaners and port security guards have been protesting on the steps of Venice's Santa Lucia train station to call urgent attention to the 6,000 Venetians who rely on the cruise industry for work. Supporters of the cruise industry say the Italian government must come up with a long-term plan - such as a new cruise terminal, outside the Venice lagoon - that will protect the city and guarantee the ships' future in the area. Because of the continuing debate, the world's second-largest cruise firm, Royal Caribbean, announced that next summer its cruise liners will dock at Ravenna, 150km to the south. Passengers who want to visit Venice will be taken there on buses. The protesters say other cruise ships could be permanently diverted to ports at Genoa or Trieste.

2. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Gilead Sciences antiviral drug, remdesivir, as a Covid treatment. The intravenous drug has helped shorten the recovery time of some hospitalized Covid-19 patients. It was one of the drugs used to treat President Donald Trump, who tested positive for the virus earlier this month. The drug will be used for Covid-19 patients requiring hospitalization, Gilead said. Remdesivir is now the first and only fully approved treatment in the U.S. for Covid-19, which has infected more than 41.3 million and killed more than 1 million, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University in the US.

3. Move over climate change threats and focus on the next big world worry — old people! Yep, Bloomberg’s Noah Smith says economies will be challenged by old people hanging around and not paying enough tax! Japan is the canary in the coalmine, with a shrinking population, which isn’t necessarily hurting national income but that’s different from who pays the tax. Japan’s income per capita has continued to rise as productivity grows and more women enter the workforce but “pronounced ageing like Japan's does come at an economic cost. Every year, a dwindling pool of working-age Japanese people is forced to support an expanding pool of grey-haired consumers. This is why Japan's living standards are falling behind rich countries with growing populations.” (Bloomberg) That means those who are against immigration for climate change reasons might have to pay a lot more tax to save the world! That’s an equation a lot of us don’t get.

4. How Donald Trump performs in today’s Presidential debate and over the next couple of weeks of electioneering could have a big bearing on how Wall Street responds to a Biden victory. Once it was thought that a Biden win as a blue wave taking both the House of Reps and the Senate would be bad because of the Democrat’s tax and regulations policies. But now there’s a belief that it would bring on bigger stimulus more quickly. This is all speculative stuff but certainly a Biden win is no longer seen as a potential catalyst for a big Wall Street sell off after election day Tuesday week.

5. The three major US indexes all closed higher on Thursday after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that Republicans and Democrats were "just about there" on a Coronavirus stimulus deal. The Dow Jones moved 152.84 points or 0.54% higher to reach 28,363.66, the S&P 500 gained 17.93 points or 0.52% to 3,453.49 and the Nasdaq lifted 21.31 points or 0.19% to 11,506.01.