| Trump blasts new coronavirus message: 'LIBERATE' swing states that have Democratic governors Posted: 17 Apr 2020 10:30 AM PDT  President Trump fired off a series of tweets Friday that appeared to encourage citizens in states protesting strict coronavirus lockdown orders to "LIBERATE" themselves from their governors.
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| Philadelphia Fed's Harker: U.S. economy could contract by 5% in 2020 Posted: 17 Apr 2020 10:22 AM PDT  Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker said the U.S. economy could contract by 5% in 2020 amid the novel coronavirus-induced shutdowns.
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| Doctors who contract coronavirus prepare for the worst, and return to work in fear after recovering Posted: 17 Apr 2020 03:29 AM PDT  Amidst the coronavirus pandemic, emergency room workers are encountering a harsh new reality, often going from caregiver to patient when they contract the virus themselves.
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| New York Governor sounds optimistic note as coronavirus numbers improve Posted: 18 Apr 2020 09:20 AM PDT  Cuomo's cautiously upbeat report at a daily briefing came as the daily death toll across the state, the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States, dropped to 540 on April 17, down from 630 a day earlier and the lowest in more than two weeks. The governor said total hospitalizations of patients being treated for COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus, came to 16,967, a drop of more than 1,300 over the past three days. "If you look at the past three days, you could argue that we are past the plateau and we're starting to descend which would be very good news," Cuomo said.
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| Asia virus latest: China revises death toll, Duterte threatens crackdown Posted: 17 Apr 2020 08:24 AM PDT  The Chinese city where the coronavirus first emerged raised its death toll by 50 percent to a total of 3,869. The revision came as a growing chorus of world leaders suggested China had not been entirely open about the full domestic impact of the virus. The additional deaths in Wuhan were cases that were "mistakenly reported" or missed entirely, according to the official announcement.
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| Asia Today: Singapore sees huge surge in new virus cases Posted: 17 Apr 2020 08:42 PM PDT  Singapore reported 942 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, a single-day high for the tiny city-state that pushed its total number of infections to 5,992, including 11 deaths. The number of cases in Singapore has more than doubled over the past week amid an explosion of infections among foreign workers staying in crowded dormitories. This group now makes up around 60% of Singapore's cases.
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| Jeff Bezos Buys a Fourth Apartment in a Luxe Manhattan Building Posted: 17 Apr 2020 02:01 PM PDT  It seems the Amazon CEO has plans to create a multi-floor dream home overlooking Madison Square Park
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| John Kerry: New Trump environmental rules will 'kill more Americans' Posted: 17 Apr 2020 04:56 AM PDT  Former Secretary of State John Kerry charged Thursday that the Trump administration was using the coronavirus pandemic as a cover to weaken key environmental regulations that will "kill more Americans."
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| Small-business loan program ran out of money within minutes, some banks say Posted: 18 Apr 2020 03:00 PM PDT  "It was Hunger Games," said one senior banking executive.
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| Many migrants on U.S. deportation flight had coronavirus, Guatemalan president says Posted: 17 Apr 2020 06:52 PM PDT  Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei said on Friday a large number of migrants on a deportation flight to Guatemala from the United States this week were infected with the coronavirus, adding that U.S. authorities had confirmed a dozen cases. Giammattei said 12 randomly selected people on the deportation flight tested positive for coronavirus when examined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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| Cuomo says New York is 'past the plateau' as coronavirus hospitalizations continue to fall Posted: 18 Apr 2020 10:56 AM PDT  Despite the good news, another 540 New Yorkers died as a result of the virus on Saturday, and 2,000 more were admitted to hospitals in the state.
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| Coronavirus: Japan doctors warn of health system 'break down' as cases surge Posted: 18 Apr 2020 04:43 AM PDT  It comes as coronavirus cases in the country surge, leaving its doctors and hospitals stretched.
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| Hong Kong police arrest democracy activists, media tycoon Posted: 18 Apr 2020 12:31 AM PDT  Among those arrested were 81-year-old activist and former lawmaker Martin Lee and democracy advocates Albert Ho, Lee Cheuk-yan and Au Nok-hin. Police also arrested media tycoon Jimmy Lai, who founded the local newspaper Apple Daily. Lai, Lee Cheuk-yan and Yeung Sum — a former lawmaker from the Democratic Party — were charged in February over their involvement in a mass anti-government demonstration on Aug. 31 last year.
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| Russia Reports New Record Daily Rise in Coronavirus Cases Posted: 18 Apr 2020 01:35 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Russia recorded its largest daily increase in coronavirus infections, with the new cases rising by almost 5,000 in a single day.New infections jumped by 4,785 to 36,793, the official Russian coronavirus information center reported on its website. Forty people died in the past day, including 21 in Moscow, bringing the number of fatalities to 313. The pace of new cases increased 17.6% after slowing to less than 15% in the previous two days.Officials in Moscow have tightened restrictions on moving around the capital, introducing a new system of digital travel passes on Wednesday to try to curb the spread of the virus. President Vladimir Putin has ordered most Russians to stay at home until April 30, warning this week that the epidemic has yet to reach its peak in the country. On Thursday, he postponed all planned public celebrations of the May 9 World War II victory, including the Red Square military parade.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| 44 jihadists found dead in Chad prison: prosecutor Posted: 18 Apr 2020 03:09 PM PDT  N'Djamena (AFP) - A group of 44 suspected members of Boko Haram, arrested during a recent operation against the jihadist group, have been found dead in their prison cell, apparently poisoned, Chad's chief prosecutor announced Saturday. Speaking on national television, Youssouf Tom said the 44 prisoners had been found dead in their cell on Thursday. The dead men were among a group of 58 suspects captured during a major army operation around Lake Chad launched by President Idriss Deby Itno at the end of March.
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| Donald Trump denies US has most coronavirus deaths and says 'strange things are happening' in China Posted: 17 Apr 2020 06:03 PM PDT  President Donald Trump says that "a lot of strange things are happening" regarding the origins of the coronavirus and claims that China has far more deaths than its figures suggest. Mr Trump cast doubt on China's official death toll, which was revised up on Friday. China said 1,300 people who died of the coronavirus in the Chinese city of Wuhan - half the total - were not counted, but dismissed allegations of a cover-up. The US president said on Friday that many more people must have died in China than in the US, which is currently the epicentre of the global pandemic and has reported the largest number of deaths in the world linked to the virus. "We don't have the most in the world deaths," Mr Trump said. "The most in the world has to be China. It's a massive country. It's gone through a tremendous problem with this, a tremendous problem - they must have the most."
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| Ecuador's death rate soars as fears grow over scale of coronavirus crisis Posted: 17 Apr 2020 03:09 PM PDT  Mortalities in one province leap from 3,000 to 11,000 in six weeks, with health and mortuary services overwhelmed New data suggests that Ecuador's coronavirus toll may be much higher than previously indicated, after figures revealed a massive jump in deaths in the province at the centre of the country's devastating outbreak.Since the beginning of March six weeks ago, 10,939 people have died in Guayas province, which includes Ecuador's largest city, Guayaquil, according to figures released late on Thursday.The region would usually see about 3,000 deaths in a six-week period, with the new figures suggesting that the local death rate has almost quadrupled.In Ecuador as a whole, coronavirus has been confirmed as the cause of only 421 deaths, and is suspected in a further 675, but interior minister María Paula Romo said the true number was probably much higher."The number of deaths is totally out of the ordinary," she told the Guardian.Ecuador has been one of worst-affected countries in Latin America, overwhelming medical and mortuary services in Guayaquil, where grieving families have been forced to live alongside corpses of loved ones or abandon them in the street."We've wanted to be open about the statistics for deaths to show a more complete panorama," Romo said, adding that the full statistics would explain "why the funeral services and cemeteries simply could not cope in recent days in Guayaquil and Guayas".The crisis in Ecuador's commercial capital has become a warning to Latin America, where many countries have poor health services and high inequality.Last week, authorities in Guayaquil started handing out thousands of cardboard coffins and created a helpline for families who need corpses to be removed from their homes.Nearly 70% of Ecuador's coronavirus cases have been concentrated in Guayas province, which had 5,777 of the national total of 8,450 cases on Friday.Authorities said nearly 30,000 coronavirus tests had been administered in the country. There are plans to increase capacity to 1,400 tests a day.However, some regional authorities say the death toll will continue to rise. Andrés Guschmer, a Guayaquil councillor who has been leading the fight against the virus in the city, has predicted the number of people infected will exceed 35,000.
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| Landlords are soliciting sex in exchange for rent, advocates say Posted: 17 Apr 2020 02:41 PM PDT  "Landlord coercion has always been a reality, but we've never seen anything like this," Jabola-Carolus said.
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| Pakistan lifts limit on mosque congregations as Muslim holy month approaches Posted: 18 Apr 2020 08:08 AM PDT |
| Amazon reportedly tried to shut down a virtual event for workers to speak out about the company's coronavirus response by deleting employees' calendar invites Posted: 17 Apr 2020 02:33 PM PDT  Amazon has now fired five workers since the coronavirus pandemic began who were involved in protests or criticized the company's treatment of workers.
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| Mexico Downgraded to Baa1 by Moody’s on Weak Growth Outlook Posted: 17 Apr 2020 02:35 PM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Mexico received a long-anticipated downgrade by Moody's Investors Service after a year of economic contraction and persistent uncertainty.The nation's sovereign debt was downgraded one notch to Baa1 with a negative outlook, the rating firm said in a statement. Mexico has held a solid A3 investment-grade rating since 2017, but Moody's lowered the country's outlook from stable to negative in June 2019."Mexico's medium term economic growth prospects have materially weakened," analyst Ariane Ortiz-Bollin wrote in the decision. "The continued deterioration in Pemex's financial and operational standing is eroding the sovereign's fiscal strength."Moody's also cut Pemex's rating two notches to Ba2, well into junk levels, fueling concerns that the state oil company's bonds could be in line for a forced sell-off. The outlook on Pemex's rating remains negative.The decision follows a downgrade by Fitch Ratings Inc. on Wednesday to BBB-, the lowest investment grade score, and a downgrade by S&P Global Ratings on March 26 to BBB.Mexico has been in a precarious position since the election of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in 2018. He canceled an airport project in Mexico City before even assuming office, buffeting markets and ushering in a year and a half of persistent uncertainty that has weighed on the country's economic prospects. In 2019, Mexico's gross domestic product contracted 0.1%, the product of a dismal investment climate domestically and global trade uncertainties.Mexico's Finance Ministry sought to downplay the rating cut."The institutional and economic foundations of our country are solid," the ministry said in a statement. "In their evaluations, the rating agencies reiterate that the country has a highly credible and prudent fiscal policy record."Additional pressure was put on the sovereign rating by state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos, better known as Pemex. While the company doesn't have an official government debt guarantee, investors worried that an effort to support the firm with continuous capital injections could undermine Mexico's fiscal position.Still, Lopez Obrador's government staved off a downgrade by defying market expectations and maintaining fiscal prudence. The government posted a primary budget surplus in 2019, only the third time Mexico has done so in a decade.But in the lead up to the downgrade, Mexican markets got hammered by a slide in global oil prices and fears of a continued spread of the coronavirus.(Updates with Finance Ministry comments in seventh paragraph.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| In Trump-Cuomo spat on coronavirus, the gloves come off Posted: 17 Apr 2020 10:46 AM PDT  The New York governor, who has been reluctant to engage with Trump during the crisis, turned the president's criticisms back on him.
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| Survey: One in Five U.S. Firms Say Coronavirus Will ‘Accelerate’ Decoupling from China Posted: 17 Apr 2020 06:58 AM PDT  Less than 50 percent of 25 large U.S. companies surveyed said that decoupling from China would be "impossible," a 22 point reduction from a similar survey conducted last October, amid growing concerns over reliance on Chinese manufacturing following the coronavirus pandemic.The American Chamber of Commerce in China and the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai published a joint survey Friday that signaled shifting business attitudes around China. While 66 percent of 70 U.S. companies had said in October that breaking from China was not possible, the number shrunk to 44 percent in March in a survey of 25 companies that represent a subset of the 2019 respondents. One in five said that the outbreak would accelerate decoupling.While over 70 percent of the respondents said that they had no plans to relocate production or supply chains out of China in the short term, over half — 52 percent — said it was too early to tell for their long-term supply chain strategy."Our survey results show that companies are considering adjustments to their business strategy, but there is no mass exodus as a result of COVID-19," Ker Gibbs, President of AmCham Shanghai, admitted. "Still, there is no escaping the fact that the current crisis adds a new and unwelcome dimension to the conversation about decoupling. This will be part of the discussion for months to come."An American Chamber of Commerce survey of 119 companies last month found that 40 percent of respondents would maintain their planned levels of investment in China this year, while 24 percent said they planned to cut investment. A third said it was too early to determine coronavirus's impact.Global attitudes around China have also shifted, with Japan announcing earlier this month that it would direct more than $2.2 billion of its coronavirus economic stimulus package to incentivize domestic companies to move their manufacturing out of China.China has been criticized by American lawmakers and business leaders for hoarding medical supplies and restricting exports, stranding American coronavirus equipment sourced in China."It is the cruelest irony that this nation is now dependent on China for many of these products," New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said at his daily press briefing on April 2. "Gowns and gloves are not complicated components to manufacture."Despite the evident obstacles to operating in China, Walmart announced a $425 million expansion in Wuhan — the epicenter of coronavirus — over the next five years.
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| Escaped prisoners caught in other state after homeless center recognizes them Posted: 17 Apr 2020 10:22 PM PDT  A Wisconsin prison kitchen employee accused of being potential accomplice; more arrests expected.
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| UK tells doctors to treat COVID-19 patients without full-length gowns due to shortage: report Posted: 17 Apr 2020 10:33 AM PDT  British healthcare staff have been advised to treat COVID-19 patients without full-length protective gowns due to shortages of equipment, the Guardian newspaper reported on Friday. Health minister Matt Hancock told a committee of lawmakers earlier that Britain was "tight on gowns" but had 55,000 more arriving on Friday and was aiming to get the right equipment where it was needed by the end of this weekend. The Guardian reported that with hospitals across England set to run out of supplies within hours, Public Health England had changed guidelines which stipulated full-length, waterproof surgical gowns should be worn for high-risk hospital procedures.
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| Coronavirus forced schools online, but many students didn't follow Posted: 17 Apr 2020 10:33 AM PDT  Teachers across the U.S. report their attempts at distance learning are failing to reach large numbers of students.
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| My father is a top virologist who believes the coronavirus vaccines won't be ready for distribution until 2021 — here's why Posted: 18 Apr 2020 06:00 AM PDT  "SARS-CoV2 vaccines will not be realistically available for another 12-18 months. And even then, we must be lucky every step of the way."
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| World cruise, begun before pandemic, nears end of odyssey Posted: 18 Apr 2020 11:45 AM PDT |
| 'I pray to God it never happens again': US gulf coast bears scars of historic oil spill 10 years on Posted: 18 Apr 2020 07:36 AM PDT  The Deepwater Horizon devastated the ecology and economy from Texas to Florida but BP-funded recovery programs are ongoing and the sector is a big employerWhen the explosion ripped through the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, Leo Linder was standing in his living quarters in his underwear. He suddenly found himself facing a fellow rig worker in what had been a separate room because the force of the explosion had blown the walls away.Linder wasn't to know it at the time but the blast was to trigger the worst environment disaster in US history, with the BP operation spewing more than 4.9m barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, fouling hundreds of miles of shoreline from Texas to Florida, decimating wildlife and crippling local fishing and tourism industries.The spill also had a human cost, with 11 workers dying in the disaster. One of them, Gordon Jones, had relieved Linder around an hour before the explosion. "He said, 'What the hell are you doing, go home,'" Linder said. "In many ways he saved my life. The guilt from surviving, as well as the damage done, still gnaws at me. It kills me."The 10th anniversary of the disaster, which began on 20 April 2010, marks a period of devastation and partial recovery, with billions of dollars extracted from BP to aid a clean-up that is still under way. Projects to replenish damaged oyster-catching areas and restore degraded marshland are ongoing. An enduring image of the spill was a brown pelican, the state bird of Louisiana, struggling in oily gunk. But a project to restore Queen Bess island, a crucial rookery for thousands of the birds, is only now nearing completion.The recovery has been patchy, with some businesses unable to recover and some people forced to move away."It was a bit like a bad dream," said Albertine Kimble, a retiree who has spent the past two decades in Carlisle, a small town south of New Orleans. "It was impending doom, it affected the fisheries and the birds. It was even more depressing than Hurricane Katrina and that flooded my house."Kimble has had to raise her house twice on stilts due to the threat of flooding in an area prone to storms and coastal erosion accelerated by the climate crisis. The process has also been worsened by the oil and gas industry's practice of forging canals through wetlands, which has introduced corrosive salt water. The nearby town of Pointe à la Hache was turned into a "ghost town" as fishing opportunities vanished, Kimble said."It was a bit like the coronavirus, just dead," she said. "I don't think it's recovered, to tell you the truth."The fishing industry is a major constituent of life in southern Louisiana and shutting down the ability to catch fish, oysters and shrimp was a major blow to communities. Many of the fishermen and women used their boats to help the clean-up effort by deploying booms and spreading oil dispersant.Even after the Gulf was declared safe to fish in again, crews initially reported pulling in smaller catches of oddly deformed fish with oozing sores. Dolphins started dying in record numbers, tuna and amberjack developed deformities to their heart and other organs. Scientists have also found lingering problems within the web of marine life.Recent research by the University of Florida found the richness of species in the Gulf has declined by more than a third due to direct and indirect impacts of the spill. A separate study of 2,500 individual fish from 91 species by the University of South Florida found oil exposure in all of them.Many of the species are popular types of seafood. The extent of the exposure has startled researchers."We were quite surprised that among the most contaminated species was the fast-swimming yellowfin tuna as they are not found at the bottom of the ocean where most oil pollution in the Gulf occurs," said lead author Erin Pulster, a researcher at the university's college of marine science.The seafood industry lost nearly $1bn, while house prices in the region declined by as much as 8% for at least five years, according to a report by the conservation group Oceana."It was an entire Gulf of Mexico-wide event," said Tracey Sutton, a marine scientist at Nova Southeastern University. told Oceana. "Nobody was ready for this scale of pollution. As far as we know, the actual impact of the spill is not over yet."Deepwater Horizon exploded 40 miles off the coast and shot out oil that proved devilishly difficult to clean from the nooks and crannies of Louisiana's marshland. An initial attempt to cap the spill was unsuccessful, necessitating the drilling of a secondary relief well to stem the flow. It took four months to completely stop the gushing oil.In all, BP paid out about $65n in compensation, legal fees and clean-up costs, which includes billions for affected states. A judge ruled the petrochemical giant was "grossly negligent" in the lead-up to the disaster. Subcontractors Transocean and Halliburton were "negligent", the judge said.The payment of the compensation money adds to the complex relationship states like Louisiana, which bore the brunt of the spill, have with the oil industry. The industry caused an environmental and societal catastrophe along the coast and is contributing towards the climate crisis that threatens more and more of the state with inundation each year.But the compensation paid has helped fund various coastal conservation projects and oil and gas remain major, and largely popular, employers in the region. Linder was only on Deepwater Horizon because the pay was four times the $28,000 a year he was earning as an English teacher."I don't think anyone realized right off the bat we'd have this unprecedented natural disaster," said Chip Kline, an assistant to Governor John Bel Edwards and chairman of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA)."During the spill there were some intense moments with BP but in Louisiana we have an economy largely driven by oil and gas; it employs a lot of Louisiana residents. We try to strike a balance."A decade on, with an incomplete recovery, coastal Gulf communities face a Trump administration that is attempting to reverse many of the safety-based regulations imposed after the oil spill. Residents are hoping this won't lead to a repeat."It made me sick to the stomach thinking about all the oil out there in the beautiful Gulf of Mexico," said Kimble. "I hope and pray to God it never happens again."
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| Far more COVID-19 cases in Silicon Valley than official figure: study Posted: 17 Apr 2020 04:20 PM PDT  The true number of COVID-19 cases in California's Silicon Valley is at least 50 times higher than the official figure, according to a preliminary study that took blood samples from a group of residents and tested them for viral antibodies. Stanford researchers used Facebook to recruit 3,300 volunteers from Santa Clara County and estimated that between 2.5 to 4.1 percent of the population had been infected, which is 50 to 85 times higher than the number of confirmed cases.
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| Gifts to Thank Health Care Workers for Their Hard Work Posted: 18 Apr 2020 11:55 AM PDT |
| Trump Hijacks Dr. Deborah Birx’s Coronavirus Presentation Posted: 18 Apr 2020 04:01 PM PDT  During her presentation at the White House COVID-19 briefing on Saturday, Dr. Deborah Birx was cruising along until she waded into one of President Donald Trump and the GOP's sorest spots: the Chinese government's apparent undercounting of coronavirus casualties. As Birx, the White House's coronavirus coordinator, explained a slide showing COVID-19 deaths per capita for various countries, China's was marked with an asterisk at the very bottom.Trump, standing on the sidelines, couldn't help but interject. "Excuse me, does anybody really believe this number?" he said, interrupting an apparently startled Birx—who then wheeled around, smiled, and coolly explained she put China's number on the chart to demonstrate "how unrealistic this could be."Though Birx tried to move on, Trump still couldn't keep quiet. He soon interrupted her again, to make a similar point, this time on the numbers shown for Iran. "Does anyone really believe that number?" Trump asked again. "You see what's going on over there." He then asked to return to the previous slide and walked over to the screen, hovering and pointing incredulously to China and Iran's numbers.The moment was a fitting one for Saturday's roughly 70-minute briefing, which was absent familiar figures like Vice President Mike Pence and Dr. Anthony Fauci.Trump did the lion's share of the talking, veering between lambasting Democratic politicians and the media—in particular New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman—and embracing comfortable topics. He repeatedly mentioned a phone call with unnamed world leaders who, he said, had offered effusive praise for his handling of the outbreak.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Photos capture North Korea ships' sanctions busting in Chinese waters: U.N. report Posted: 17 Apr 2020 12:15 PM PDT  On Oct. 10 last year, eight North Korean vessels - several carrying illicit coal shipments - were anchored in Chinese waters off the port of Ningbo-Zhoushan, according to a photo in a U.N. report published online on Friday. The annual report to the U.N. Security Council by independent sanctions monitors said North Korea continued to flout council resolutions "through illicit maritime exports of commodities, notably coal and sand" in 2019, earning Pyongyang hundreds of millions of dollars.
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| People are calling out London police for cramming onto a bridge to applaud health workers, despite the lockdown rules they are meant to enforce Posted: 17 Apr 2020 03:55 AM PDT  Videos from Westminster Bridge showed clusters of officers standing next to each other, deviating from rules they are charged with enforcing.
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| Libya's east-based forces hit Tripoli civilian area, 4 dead Posted: 17 Apr 2020 01:12 PM PDT |
| Michigan residents sue governor over coronavirus pandemic orders Posted: 18 Apr 2020 12:48 PM PDT  Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer faces at least two federal lawsuits challenging her April 9 executive order to fight the coronavirus outbreak, including requirements that residents stay at home and that most businesses close.
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| Philippines' Duterte threatens martial law-like virus crackdown Posted: 16 Apr 2020 10:19 PM PDT  Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened a martial law-like crackdown to stop people flouting a virus lockdown in the nation's capital. Duterte spoke a day after authorities reported an upsurge of cars on Manila's roads, which have been nearly deserted since a sweeping lockdown was imposed a month ago on about half the country's 110 million people. Duterte has repeatedly threatened to impose nationwide military rule over the Philippines, where the mere words evoke the worst rights abuses of the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship.
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| Trump Calls For Reopening America’s Gyms Day After Call With SoulCycle’s Owner Posted: 17 Apr 2020 01:07 PM PDT  President Donald Trump unveiled a proposal this week to reopen America's gyms in spite of the coronavirus outbreak after a phone call that included the head of the company that owns luxury fitness brands Equinox and SoulCycle, who also happens to be a high-profile Trump supporter.In a memo issued on Thursday titled "Guidelines for Opening Up America Again," the White House included gyms among the businesses that would reopen to the general public during "phase one" of its plan to jump-start the American economy, which has cratered amid nationwide stay-at-home orders and business closures. Though the document said gyms could open "if they adhere to strict physical distancing and sanitation protocols," their inclusion nevertheless struck public health experts as bizarre. "Gyms are like a petri dish," said Laurence Gostin, the director of the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University. "People are close to one another, they're sweating, they're coughing and sneezing, they're touching multiple surfaces, they're sharing equipment, they're indoors. Literally all of the heightened risk factors for COVID transmission are all entwined together in a gym."The White House's guidance included mitigation measures that would ostensibly minimize the risk of transmission at gyms that opt to reopen, including "strict physical distancing and sanitation protocols." But Gostin said he's not convinced that the risks of transmission could be sufficiently minimized."It's very hard to socially distance. Machines are right next to each other. It's also very hard to disinfect. You'd have to do it continuously, not just every hour," he said. "There was certainly no attempt to put in any scientific evidence as to why they're safe or how they could possibly be made safe."The decision on gyms came a day after Trump's phone call with 16 business leaders including Bahram Akradi, chief executive of health club chain Life Time, and Stephen Ross, the founder and chairman of the Related Companies. That firm's broad portfolio includes a vast swath of commercial and residential real estate properties, as well as Equinox Holdings, which owns its own eponymous chain of luxury gyms as well as fitness brands SoulCycle, Blink Fitness, and Pure Yoga.Trevor Noah Drags Equinox Owner for Ignoring Trump's RacismThose businesses, like the larger fitness industry, have been hit particularly hard by the coronavirus. SoulCycle has slashed payroll and furloughed employees. Equinox and Blink have both frozen membership charges.Arkadi has donated to prominent Republicans in the past, though not to Trump. He warned in an appearance on Laura Ingraham's primetime Fox News show late last month that he might be forced to lay off up to 90 percent of his employees unless American businesses began to reopen.The White House readout of Wednesday's phone call said industry representatives—which included Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Brian Moynihan of Bank of America, Jimmy John Liautaud, the eponymous owner of the Jimmy John's restaurant chain, and Phil Ruffin of Treasure Island Hotels—"shared ideas for ways their industries can safely return." The White House declined to comment on whether ideas presented by Ross informed its phase one guidelines. In an emailed statement, a Related spokesperson told The Daily Beast, "Stephen Ross never discussed gyms, exercise clubs or anything like that with the President and this story is factually incorrect garbage.""Equinox is an independent company, with multiple investors and Related doesn't make strategic or operational decisions for them," the spokesperson added.Ross was one of more than 200 people named to the White House's economic recovery task forces this week, which will advise the Trump administration on policies to reverse the economic damage done by the coronavirus. He was one of 27 high-dollar donors to pro-Trump groups who made the list. Since the 2016 presidential campaign, he's donated about $300,000 to the Republican National Committee.Ross also hosted a fundraiser for Trump's reelection campaign last year at his home in the Hamptons. The move drew criticism from Trump critics and calls to boycott his fitness businesses, which are among the nation's largest by revenue. That fundraiser, combined with one other, helped the president and affiliated campaign groups raise $12 million. As Ross endured criticism for hosting the event, Trump rushed to his defense. "He's a great friend of mine; he's a very successful guy. We were competitors but friends in real estate in New York in the old days," he told reporters. "He's probably more inclined to be a liberal if you want to know the truth, but he likes me, he respects me."Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Mexico’s Pemex Has Too Much Fuel and Nowhere to Store It All Posted: 18 Apr 2020 04:00 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Mexico's Pemex has too much gasoline and nowhere to store it, potentially racking up significant ship fees as demand wanes because of the fast-spreading coronavirus.A lack of storage capacity in Mexico is forcing the state-owned oil company to leave its fuel purchases in ships off the coast of Mexico, according to three people familiar with the situation and ship-tracking data. Now as much as 3 million barrels of refined products are sitting in tankers off of Mexico's coast.Mexico has been late to experience the demand slump that has hit other nations because President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador initially refused to enact stringent measures in response to the coronavirus pandemic. But now sales have fallen between 40% and 50% at some of Mexico's biggest privately-owned gas stations in the past two weeks, according to three major fuel importers and retailers in Mexico, who asked to remain anonymous because the information is private.The squeeze is especially tough for Pemex, whose bonds were cut to junk by Moody's Corp. on Friday after 15 years of oil production declines and losses that almost doubled last year. Pemex's debt load is the highest of any oil major. With Pemex's six refineries operating at less than 30% of their capacity, it imports about 65% of Mexico's gasoline needs, mostly from the U.S. The country was American refiners' biggest customer, bringing in about 500,000 barrels a day last year.Pemex didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.Last December, Mexico's Energy Ministry changed regulations that would have gradually raised the country's minimum fuel inventory requirement, which is currently set at five days for gasoline and diesel. Pemex has fuel storage capacity for about three to five days.Heavy costsThe current cost of holding a cargo in a ship off major Mexico ports past the delivery date, known as demurrage, is $25,000 a day, according to shipping rates provided to Bloomberg by a person familiar with the market.There are at least six tankers carrying fuel anchored near the port of Pajaritos on Mexico's east coast, while several more tankers are waiting at the ports of Tuxpan, Altamira and Dos Bocas, according to ship-tracking data, and two of the people.One tanker, the British Seafarer, has been anchored near Pajaritos for a month because there's no demand, or storage space, for its cargo of regular gasoline, said one of the people.Demand slumpMexico's gasoline demand has fallen by about 60% and diesel 35% in the first half of April, according to a preliminary study by Onexpo, the national fuel retailer association. In some metropolitan areas sales have been reduced by as much as 70% because of social distancing to combat the coronavirus pandemic, Onexpo said. In rural areas, the drop is less pronounced, at about 30%, since diesel is still necessary for agricultural machinery and product transport.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Iranian army acquires combat capable drones with 930-mile range: Defense minister Posted: 18 Apr 2020 02:02 AM PDT |
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