Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Tinned tomato suppliers are rationing stocks to supermarkets after demand in the UK surged more than 30% and threatened to use up supplies ahead of this year’s harvest.
Supermarkets and convenience store groups are understood to be jockeying for supplies as families continue to buy more tinned foods than usual after the closure of schools and restaurants forced them to cook more meals at home.
A 96% drop in passenger numbers because of coronavirus restrictions has not been matched by cuts in flights
The coronavirus outbreak has provoked a string of unsettling sights, such as the sudden widespread use of masks, shuttered businesses and deserted streets. Another unusual phenomenon is also playing out in the skies – near-empty airplanes flying through the air.
Widespread travel restrictions around the world have slashed demand for air travel, with more than eight in 10 flights canceled. But there is a disparity in the US – while the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has reported a 96% slump in passenger volume, to a level not seen since 1954, this hasn’t been matched by the number of flights being scrapped.
Ex-chair of DB Group Kim Jun-ki ‘forgot his responsibilities’, says Seoul court
The former head of a South Korean conglomerate who was convicted of raping his maid and sexually assaulting a secretary has been given a suspended sentence.
Kim Jun-ki, the 75-year-old former chair of DB Group, which has activities in finance and steel, repeatedly violated the two women, the Seoul central district court found.
Campaigners call for action as majority of big countries fall short of 0.7% aid target
The world’s major powers have failed to make progress towards meeting their commitments on aid spending, according to new data, prompting calls for countries to step up in the face of the Covid-19 outbreak.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) update on spending in 2019, published on Thursday, showed aid contributions by its forum of the largest donors were less than half the targeted 0.7% of their gross national income.
New charges for reCaptcha spur web security firm Cloudflare to develop its own identity-checking software
The days of clicking on traffic lights to prove you are not a robot could be ending after Google’s decision to charge for the tool prompted one of the web’s biggest infrastructure firms to ditch it for a competitor.
“Captcha” – an awkward acronym for “completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart” – is used by sites to fight automated abuses of their services. For years, Google’s version of the test, branded reCaptcha, has dominated, after it acquired the company that developed it in 2009 and offered the technology for free worldwide.
Firm to cut carbon intensity by selling more green energy but critics say first step must be to stop new drilling
Royal Dutch Shell plans to become a net zero-carbon company by 2050 or sooner by selling more green energy to help reduce the carbon intensity of its business.
Ben van Beurden, Shell’s chief executive, said the company must focus on the long-term “even at this time of immediate challenge” caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Amazon has ordered the temporary closure of all six of its French distribution centres, one day after a French court ruled it was not doing enough to protect its workers in the country amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The online giant said in a statement that “this week, we are requesting employees of our distribution centres to stay at home. In the longer term, we will evaluate the impact of that [court] decision for them and our French logistic network”.
The Arcadia Group, which owns brands including Topshop, Dorothy Perkins and Miss Selfridge, is estimated to have cancelled in excess of £100m of existing clothing orders worldwide from suppliers in some of the world’s poorest countries as the global garment sector faces ruin.
According to data from the Bangladesh Garments and Manufacturing Association (BGMEA), the Arcadia Group has cancelled £9m of orders in Bangladesh alone.
European markets are falling deeper into the red this morning, as coronavirus recession fears swirl.
The FTSE 100 is now down 90 points, or 1.5%, at around 5,700 points - with similar losses in other markets.
The OBR says the UK economy could fall by 35% in the second quarter. Brutal for sure, but it also expects a very sharp bounce back. This puts it in the V-shaped recovery camp, which is an ever-decreasing circle. Charles Evans, the Chicago Fed president, said yesterday the US is in for a very sharp but hopefully short downturn.
Money managers are more pessimistic. According to Bank of America’s latest Global Fund Manager Survey, just 15% see a V-shaped recovery. Over half (52%) see a U-shaped recovery, where the long line along the bottom stretches on for some time, perhaps years. A fifth (22%) see a W-shaped recovery – possibly sparked by a sharp bounce back and second or third wave of infections – and 7% see the dreaded L – a long depression like the 1930s and no real recovery. The biggest tail risk is a second wave of infections, which makes the speed at which you reopen economies key. My bet, for what it’s worth, is WWW.
Newsflash: Global oil demand is expected to fall by a record amount this year -- according to industry experts.
The International Energy Agency has predicted that demand will slump by 29 million barrels per day in April -- to levels last seen in 1995 -- as the Covid-19 lockdown hits demand extremely hard.
“By lowering the peak of the supply overhang and flattening the curve of the build-up in stocks, they help a complex system absorb the worst of this crisis.
“There is no feasible agreement that could cut supply by enough to offset such near-term demand losses. However, the past week’s achievements are a solid start.”
Britain has given the green light for companies to start putting spades in the ground to build a new high speed rail line, saying that work could proceed in line with coronavirus safety guidelines despite the national lockdown.
Heathrow airport expects passenger traffic to plunge by 90% in April, as demand is mainly limited to airlines focusing on repatriating citizens stranded abroad during the coronavirus outbreak.
The airport said passenger numbers had already tumbled by 52% to 3.1 million in March, compared with a year earlier, after the UK government advised against all but essential travel. Meanwhile, the total number of flights landing and taking off at Heathrow – covering passenger planes and cargo – fell 35% to 25,798.
Saudi Arabia and Russia reach truce after collapse in demand caused by coronavirus
The world’s largest oil producers have agreed a historic deal to cut global oil production by almost 10% to protect the market against the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
Members of the Opec oil cartel and its allies have agreed to withhold almost 10m barrels a day from next month after the outbreak of Covid-19 wiped out demand for fossil fuels and triggered a collapse in global oil prices.
A robotic delivery service in Milton Keynes could prove to be the future of locked-down Britain, as miniature autonomous vehicles bring food deliveries to almost 200,000 residents of the town.
Starship Technologies, an autonomous delivery startup created in 2014 by two Skype cofounders, has been testing its beer cooler-sized robots in public since 2015. The small, white, six-wheeled vehicles trundle along pavements to bring small deliveries to residents and workers of the neighbourhoods in which they operate, without the need for a human driver or delivery person.
Premier Daniel Andrews says state of emergency will be extended for a further four weeks as Australians trapped on Antarctic cruise ship arrive in Melbourne. Follow updates live
McGowan says he took his kids camping ... in his backyard ... over Easter because obviously other locations were unavailable.
And that’s the end of the press conference.
“We’ve successfully flattened the curve, but now we’ve got to figure out how to keep it there but also find out a long-term solution to the problem we face,” McGowan says.
He says he is working on getting commercial tenancy legislation in parliament this week. He’s not sure whether residential tenancy legislation will be ready this week but it will be brought in when it is.
The former will be brought into WA parliament for debate on Wednesday.
With the IMF and World Bank spring conference approaching, research underlines need to bail out world’s poorest countries
For more than two years the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have warned that sub-Saharan Africa stands on the verge of a debt crisis. Ever since commodity prices began to fall in 2015, the public finances of nations stretching from Nigeria to Kenya and Chad to South Africa have deteriorated.
If China is the manufacturing centre of the world, Africa is its chief supplier of essential materials, from oil and copper to the rare-earth minerals used in mobile phones. As China’s manufacturing waned in the middle of the last decade, so did the crucial foreign earnings that keep African nations afloat.
The once ubiquitous electric float had seen its power wane. Then came the pandemic
The humble milkman – a regular sight on most British streets throughout the 20th century – was almost consigned to the history books by the rise of the supermarkets.
But now, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, these dairy deliverers on their electric floats are busier than ever as they try to keep up with newfound demand for their services.
France and the Netherlands have openly clashed over the meaning of a messy compromise struck by finance ministers which has unlocked a €500bn (£438bn) pandemic rescue package for European economies but left major issues unresolved.
Hours after a breakthrough was secured late on Thursday evening to allow immediate support for businesses and healthcare systems, it became clear on Friday that there remained bitter divisions within the EU over the longer-term task of rebuilding the European economy.
Mexico holds out against scale of reductions which would amount to 10m barrels per day, or 10% of global supply
Opec countries and allies led by Russia have agreed in principle to cut their oil output by more than a fifth and said they expected the United States and other producers to join in their effort to prop up prices hammered in the coronavirus crisis.
But there was some confusion after Mexico apparently refused to sign up to its share of cuts under the deal, which would have been 400,000 barrels per day. The Mexican energy minister Rocio Nahle Garcia tweeted that her country had suggested a cut of 100,000 barrels.
A messy compromise to unlock €500bn (£438bn) of EU support for countries hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic has been struck after Italy’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, warned that the existence of the bloc was at stake.
EU finance ministers on a video conference call struck a deal late on Thursday after the Netherlands shifted on a demand for “economic surveillance” of countries benefiting from €240bn of credit lines via the European stability mechanism, a bailout fund for struggling member states.