| 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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| 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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| Sunlight destroys virus quickly, new govt. tests find, but experts say pandemic could last through summer Posted: 17 Apr 2020 01:07 PM PDT  Preliminary results from government lab experiments show that the coronavirus does not survive long under high-temperature, high-humidity conditions, and is quickly destroyed by sunlight, providing evidence from controlled tests of what scientists believed — but had not yet proved — to be true.
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| McDonald's apologizes after restaurant in China bans black people Posted: 17 Apr 2020 06:03 AM PDT  A sign said that "black people are not allowed to enter" the restaurant in Guangzhou.
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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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| Pakistan lifts limit on mosque congregations as Muslim holy month approaches Posted: 18 Apr 2020 08:08 AM PDT |
| 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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| Tehran cautiously reopens as economic hardship trumps virus risks Posted: 18 Apr 2020 08:19 AM PDT  Iran allowed some shuttered Tehran businesses to reopen Saturday despite the Middle East's deadliest coronavirus outbreak, as many faced a bitter choice between risking infection and economic ruin. Top officials argue that Iran's sanctions-hit economy cannot afford to remain on lockdown, and approved similar measures in other provinces last week. There was a "significant" uptick in highway use on Saturday, according to Tehran's traffic police chief, who told state TV that some anti-congestion measures had been lifted to discourage use of public transportation.
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| 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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| 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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| Trump blasts new coronavirus message: 'LIBERATE' swing states that have Democratic governors Posted: 17 Apr 2020 01:52 PM 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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| 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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| 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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| After dozens of deportees are positive for coronavirus, U.S. deploys CDC to Guatemala to 'validate' its tests Posted: 16 Apr 2020 09:44 PM PDT  After Guatemalan officials reported more than half of deportees on two flights from the U.S. tested positive for COVID-19, the Trump administration deploys the CDC to 'review' the country's results.
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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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| 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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| 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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| To know the real number of coronavirus cases in the US, China, or Italy, researchers say multiply by 10 Posted: 17 Apr 2020 05:11 AM PDT  Nations with severe outbreaks may only be confirming around 10% of coronavirus cases, research suggests.
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| 25 years after Oklahoma City bombing, anxiety remains high Posted: 16 Apr 2020 08:52 PM PDT  In the 25 years since a truck bomb ripped through a federal building in downtown Oklahoma City and killed 168 people, the United States has suffered through foreign wars, a rise in mass shootings and a much deadlier act of terror, the Sept. 11 attacks. Ordinarily, survivors and victims' families would gather Sunday at the memorial where the Alfred P. Murrah Building once stood to pay tribute to the lives that were lost and tragically altered, as they have every year since the bombing. Instead, the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum will offer a pre-recorded video that will air online and on TV and will include the reading of the names of everyone killed followed by 168 seconds of silence.
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| Turkey's coronavirus cases overtake Iran, highest in Middle East Posted: 18 Apr 2020 10:46 AM PDT  Turkey's confirmed coronavirus cases have risen to 82,329, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Saturday, overtaking neighbouring Iran for the first time to register the highest total in the Middle East. An increase of 3,783 cases in the last 24 hours also pushed Turkey's confirmed tally within a few hundred of China, where the novel coronavirus first emerged. Koca said 121 more people have died, taking the death toll to 1,890.
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| '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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| Stimulus cash is being sent to dead people. Their loved ones can probably keep it. Posted: 17 Apr 2020 12:01 PM PDT  "We don't want it. It's not who this stimulus was supposed to benefit," said one woman whose mother passed away.
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| Hannity Lauds South Dakota, Home of Worst U.S. Virus Cluster, for Never Having to Shut Down Posted: 16 Apr 2020 08:20 PM PDT  Fox News host Sean Hannity touted South Dakota on Thursday night as a state that has never had to shut down amid the coronavirus pandemic, leaving unmentioned that it is home to the country's worst coronavirus cluster.Applauding President Donald Trump's latest guidelines for governors to explore reopening their states during the crisis, Hannity kicked off his primetime broadcast by pointing to the Upper Midwest state as a good example of an area that can quickly get back to work."Earlier today, [Trump] unveiled—finally we can hopefully move on— the federal government's three-phase plan to reopen America again," he said. "Starting as early as May 1 but actually earlier in some places. South Dakota never closed—at all! Even their restaurants stayed open."Later in Hannity's monologue, after noting that many industries and essential businesses have remained open through the pandemic, he once again pointed to the state as an exemplar for returning to normal."The details of this plan include what will be a data-driven, multi-layered model that allows governors to react to their own state's unique circumstances," Hannity said. "For example, densely populated New York City will not be on the same timeline as Montana or South Dakota, which never shut down anything."South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, however, has come under fire recently for refusing to implement statewide stay-at-home orders even though her state's confirmed cases have been surging and a pork processing plant in Sioux Falls has now become the largest single-source hotspot in the country. "I don't believe it's appropriate considering the data, the facts, and the science that we have," Noem, a Republican, said Tuesday amid calls for her to sign a shelter-in-place order.Besides holding up a state that's currently seeing a surge in coronavirus cases as a place that doesn't need social distancing restrictions, the TV talk show host unveiled his personal plan to reopen Yankee Stadium and other New York City sports venues in the near future. The city, of course, is the epicenter of the pandemic and has already had more than 11,000 deaths.Hannity, who workshopped his proposal during an earlier radio interview with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, explained that his plan would call for all stadium workers to be tested for COVID-19 daily and attendees to have their temperature taken before entering the stadium. Saying he would also agree to wear a mask and gloves to attend a game, Hannity then weighed in on what concessions could be served. "You probably can't eat popcorn because you have to keep your mask on the whole time, but you could probably eat a hot dog," he enthusiastically proclaimed. "Open up your respirator, take a bite, and you chew it under your mask. I have to drink my beer if I'm at a game, so if I have to use a straw and slip it in, I will do that. Whatever it takes to get my beer, I want to have a beer."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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| Venezuela slams US over 'vulgar' central bank funds seizure Posted: 17 Apr 2020 02:56 PM PDT  Venezuela on Friday hit out at the United States over the seizure of $342 million that its central bank had held in an account at Citibank. In a Twitter post, Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza blasted the "vulgar dispossession" of the money "ordered" by the US -- and pointed to "complicity" by the opposition-controlled National Assembly. The US-based assets of Venezuela's central bank are among those that have been frozen under tough sanctions put in place by the government of President Donald Trump.
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| 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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| Royal Caribbean, Celebrity halt cruises through June 11; Carnival, Princess cancel through June Posted: 16 Apr 2020 08:51 PM PDT  Royal Caribbean and Celebrity Cruises have extended their sailing suspension through June 11 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
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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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| 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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| 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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| 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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| Wuhan abruptly increased its coronavirus death toll to 50% higher than previously reported Posted: 17 Apr 2020 09:53 AM PDT  Local officials in Wuhan, China, where the coronavirus began, blamed the discrepancy on past underreporting from an overwhelmed medical system.
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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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| Get the Breezy, Bahamian Look of Lulu de Kwiatkowski's Home Posted: 18 Apr 2020 05:00 AM PDT |
| Chinese help for virus gets wary reception in France Posted: 17 Apr 2020 09:34 PM PDT  An operation by France's Chinese community to help the diaspora during the coronavirus outbreak by distributing masks, disinfectant and gloves has prompted questions and legal problems for some of its backers. Sceptical of the French government's response to the epidemic, the Chinese embassy, business leaders and ex-pat associations have handed out so-called "COVID kits", masks and other protective equipment to their compatriots. Among the masks given out were the highly sought-after FFP2 type, which in times of critical supply shortages have been reserved for medical personnel on the frontlines of France's coronavirus battle.
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| US using coronavirus pandemic to unlawfully expel asylum seekers, says UN Posted: 17 Apr 2020 12:19 PM PDT  CDC recently issued order encouraging immediate deportation of non-citizens without valid documents, citing obscure quarantine law * Coronavirus – latest US updates * Coronavirus – latest global updates * See all our coronavirus coverageAn unprecedented US policy authorizing the summary expulsion of migrants and asylum seekers because of the coronavirus pandemic violates international law, the United Nations has warned.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a sweeping order on 20 March encouraging the immediate deportation of non-citizens arriving overland without valid documents. The order cited an obscure quarantine law to claim the move is justified on public health grounds.In the first 18 days to 8 April, 10,000 people were expelled within two hours of arriving on US soil – effectively denying them the legal right to seek international protection, according to Customs and Border Protection figures.This amounted to 80% of all migrants and refugees being escorted back over the border into Mexico, where reports of kidnapping, trafficking and assaults by organised crime gangs and corrupt security forces are rife.This novel policy of systematic and rapid expulsions constitutes "refoulement" – the forcible return of refugees or asylum seekers to a country where they are liable to be subjected to persecution – which violates US and international laws and treaties designed to protect people at risk of persecution, torture and trafficking."We understand that in the current global Covid-19 public health emergency all governments have an obligation to enact measures to protect the health of their populations. While this may warrant extraordinary measures at borders, expulsion of asylum seekers resulting in refoulement should not be among them," said Chris Boian from the UN Refugee Agency.The vast majority of those expelled were men, women and children from Mexico and Central America's northern triangle – El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras – where a toxic mix of organized crime, state sponsored repression, extreme poverty and impunity has fueled an exodus of citizens in recent years.Since taking power, the Trump administration has employed a variety of legally questionable measures to slash migration and roll back rights for asylum seekers without changing any laws.For instance, since January 2019 tens of thousands of non-Mexican asylum seekers and migrants have been forced back into Mexico under the so-called Migrant Protection Protocols, where they must wait months or years for a court hearing in the US.The new order singles out those without valid travel or immigration documents including asylum seekers for immediate expulsion on public health grounds, meanwhile excluding commerce and people with the correct documents from the same countries.But the quarantine provision of the 1944 Public Health Service Act does not supersede other laws, or allow for selective application based on immigration status.In a recent article for Just Security, the leading immigration law professor Lucas Guttentag, said: "The CDC order is designed to accomplish under the guise of public health a dismantling of legal protections governing border arrivals that the Trump administration has been unable to achieve under the immigration laws."As the coronavirus crisis unfolded, Trump initially minimized the gravity until cases and deaths started to escalate in the US, at which point he pivoted to blaming foreign nationals.He has since used the pandemic to justify ramping up construction of the wall on the southern border. There is no evidence of undocumented migrants spreading coronavirus in the US, however, the US has deported dozens of infected migrants to Guatemala.As countries across the world have enacted mitigation measures to tackle the pandemic, the right to freedom of movement has been forcefully restricted by repressive regimes in the northern triangle.Over the past few weeks, Trump has used the daily White House coronavirus briefings to congratulate himself and the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, for a fall in numbers at the southern border.About 570 people were apprehended every day during the first week of April – down by almost 50% compared to the first week of March, according to analysis by Adam Isacson, who runs the Washington Office of Latin America's defense oversight program.If the downward trend continues, April could see the lowest number of apprehensions in 50 years.The controversial border quarantine order, which has been widely condemned by human rights, humanitarian and religious groups, must be renewed every 30 days.Isacson said: "The danger is that the administration will use coronavirus as a pretext to maintain the expulsions for as long as possible. Right now, not only are courts barely in session, but there's no litigation happening on this yet because the policy itself is mostly secret and it's hard to reach plaintiffs on the Mexican side of the border."
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| As pandemic closes restaurants, some chefs sue insurers Posted: 17 Apr 2020 06:13 AM PDT  Jimi Grande, a representative from the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies, argued that the pandemic was "fundamentally uninsurable."
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| First hit, first opened? Seattle eyes reopening economy Posted: 17 Apr 2020 05:24 AM PDT  "It's a marathon, not a sprint," Mayor Jenny Durkan said. "We're not even really halfway through, even though we've hit the peak."
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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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| People entering Canada could face a $750,000 fine if they don't quarantine for 14 days — even if they don't show coronavirus symptoms Posted: 18 Apr 2020 05:28 AM PDT  Canada also said it would require people coming on planes to prove they have a mask to cover their nose and mouth.
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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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| India coronavirus: Officials suspended over large crowds at Hindu festival Posted: 17 Apr 2020 01:42 AM PDT  Hundreds of people defied social distancing rules to participate in the chariot-pulling festival.
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