Most Asian equities retreated Wednesday after a two-day rally as investors closely track developments in the coronavirus crisis, while the oil market continued to fluctuate ahead of a crucial producers' meeting.
While the deadly disease continues to sweep across the planet, signs that the rate of infections is possibly levelling out and countries are preparing to ease some lockdown restrictions have instilled a semblance of optimism this week.  However, the scale of the fight was laid bare by official data showing France's economy suffered its worst contraction during the first three months of this year since just after World War II.  The French central bank said that in the last two weeks of March, as the coronavirus crisis deepened, economic activity plunged 32 percent.  "Signs that the number of new daily coronavirus cases is topping out in Western Europe... is driving expectations that social distancing measures will be lifted soon," said Stephen Innes, at AxiCorp.  "Relaxing of ..

Asian markets mostly down as traders fret over virus

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At the construction site in Tel Aviv, Jamal Salman and the other Palestinian workers wore gloves and masks, and their employer provided apartments for them to stay overnight.
But his wife, alarmed by the news about the coronavirus outbreak in Israel, called him every night from the West Bank, begging him to come home. He came back early this week.
Now he sits alone in his basement all day, quarantined from his wife and five children and wondering how he'll make ends meet. In Tel Aviv he earned $1,500 a month, enough to support his family. Now he's unemployed.
Coronavirus is like an all-out war,\" he said. Everyone is suffering. The coronavirus outbreak poses a dilemma for tens of thousands of Palestinian laborers working inside Israel who are now barred from traveling back and forth. They can stay in Israel, where wages are much higher but the outbreak is more severe, or they can return home to quarantine and unemployment in the West Bank.
Authorities on both sides are wrestling with .

Outbreak poses dilemma for Palestinians working in Israel

Rio de Janeiro's samba schools usually spend the year furiously sewing costumes for the city's blowout Carnival celebration.
Now, nimble fingers are working to protect lives instead, making medical outfits for hospital workers who face a surge of coronavirus patients.
Dr. Wille Baracho on Tuesday carried rolls of fabric into the Unidos de Padre Miguel samba school's workshop in the Vila Vintem favela. Inside, seamstresses perched on plastic chairs busily transformed beige and pale yellow fabric into medical wear.
The initiative started with Baracho and one of his colleagues at a nearby hospital emergency room where they have seen a shortage of materials. Both happen to sit on Padre Miguel's board and saw a chance to redirect labor. The city joined in, donating thousands of yards of fabric, and the seamstresses set to work Friday.
We have some friends who died already, some who are on leave or sick with the disease, Baracho said, adding that he has found it more fulfilling to produce ..

Rio samba schools start sewing scrubs in coronavirus effort

Pakistan's novel coronavirus cases rose to 4,072 on Wednesday, as Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa directed his top  commanders to provide full support to the federal and provincial governments in combating the pandemic which has killed 58 people in the country.
The Ministry of National Health Services in its morning update said that 208 new COVID-19 patients were added to the list during the last 24 hours.
So far 58 patients have died, including four in the last 24 hours, while 467 had recovered. Another 25 were reported to be in critical condition.
The authorities conducted 42,159 test so far, including 3,076 in the last 24 hours.
The province and region wise data of cases was not available on the ministry's website as it was being updated.
However, private media and official sources reported that number of patients in Punjab has risen to 2,030, Sindh 986, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa 527, Gilgit-Baltistan 212, Balochistan 206, Islamabad 83 and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir 28.
Pakistan was ..

Pakistan's coronavirus cases rise to 4,072

In its worst performance since 1945, the French economy shrank around six per cent in the first quarter of this year as the coronavirus pandemic decimated business activity, the Bank of France said Wednesday.
Official figures showed previously that the economy shrank 0.1 per cent in the last three months of 2019, meaning that with two consecutive quarters of negative growth, the country is now technically in recession.
The French central bank said that in the last two weeks of March, as the coronavirus crisis deepened, economic activity plunged 32 per cent.
"You have to go back to the second quarter of 1968, hit by the May (political upheaval), to find a similar fall in activity," it said, noting that even that year the downturn was 5.3 per cent, still less than the latest figures.
For every two weeks the country is locked down by the virus, the Bank of France expects the economy to shrink by 1.5 per cent.
At the same time it cautioned against a simple, straight-line extrapolation of .

French economy shrinks 6% in Q1: Bank of France

Major League Soccer side Real Salt Lake said it was laying off staff and reducing pay for employees across the club as it adjusts to the league shutdown forced by the coronavirus pandemic.
A statement from the Utah outfit said the "distressing" action had been taken after the club discovered it would not benefit from US government aid to help businesses hit by the COVID-19 crisis.
"As a result, we are forced to adapt and align our workforce appropriately to face these new challenges and difficult circumstances," Real Salt Lake said in a statement.
"This will require a reduction in salary for all executives and staff as well as a decrease in staffing levels across the organization, which includes a furlough of some of our staff members.
"This is obviously a distressing outcome as we deeply value and appreciate each of our employees." The club said it planned to re-hire staff as soon as MLS resumes play.
MLS chiefs have said the league will not restart before May 10 and have pushed back 

Real Salt Lake announces pay cuts, layoffs as virus bites

Formula One's mandatory shutdown period will be extended by a further two weeks following the delay to the season caused by the coronavirus pandemic, world motorsport's governing body has confirmed.
The decision to prolong the break during which no staff members related to car performance are allowed to work will be extended from 21 to 35 days. The traditional summer shutdown was brought forward from August last month and increased from two to three weeks.
The latest extension received "unanimous approval" from all F1 stakeholders, the FIA said in a statement.
Teams must observe the shutdown period across March, April and/or May.
"Further discussions regarding this topic remain open between the FIA, Formula 1 and all teams in light of the ongoing global impact of COVID-19," it added.
The opening nine rounds of the 2020 season have been either cancelled or postponed, with doubts over a number of the other 14 races as the pandemic continues to overshadow the sporting calendar.
The ...

Formula One shutdown period extended to five weeks

Filmmaker Cary Joji Fukunaga has dismissed the suggestion that he should polish his upcoming project, James Bond movie No Time To Die, after it was delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The film, which marks actor Daniel Craig's last outing as British spy 007, was set to release this month but in the wake of the global pandemic, the makers decided to push it till November.
Fukunaga, who came aboard as a director after the exit of Danny Boyle, was asked by a fan on Instagram about trimming and polishing the movie, given the extra time he now has before the film's debut.
In his reply, the director said the final cut of the film is great and there is no need to tinker with it.
Some people have asked me this and although time would have been lovely, we had to put our pencils down when we finished our post production window, which was thankfully before COVID shut down everything else, Fukunaga said.
The short answer is money. Although Bond is a big movie, we still have to weigh cost ...

Cary Joji Fukunaga rules out re-editing 'No Time To Die'

Maddalena Ferrari lets herself cry when she takes off the surgical mask she wears even at home to protect her elderly parents from the coronavirus that surrounds her at work in one of Italy's hardest-hit intensive care units.
In the privacy of her own bedroom, where no one can see, the nursing coordinator peels away the mask that both protects her and hides her, and weeps for all the patients lost that day at Bergamo's Pope John XXIII Hospital.
We're losing an entire generation, Ferrari said at the end of one of her shifts. They still had so much to teach us. The pressures on hospital ICUs in Italy and Spain may have eased in recent days as new virus cases decline. But the emotional and psychological toll the pandemic has taken on the doctors and nurses working there is only now beginning to emerge.
Already, two nurses in Italy have killed themselves, and psychologists have mobilized therapists and online platforms to provide free consultation for medical personnel.
Individual ...

Italy, Spain ICU pressures decline, but emotional toll rises

Britain's biggest retailer Tesco said Tuesday that it recruited over 45,000 staff in the past two weeks as the coronavirus outbreak sparked a stockpiling surge while many supermarket workers fell ill.
In an earnings update, Tesco said costs were forecast to increase by between 650 million pounds and 925 million pounds ($787 million and $1.12 billion) on "significant cost increases in payroll, distribution and store expenses".
Chief executive Dave Lewis said "COVID-19 has shown how critical the food supply chain is to the UK" but he noted that "initial panic buying has subsided and service levels are returning to normal".
Tesco said that "more than 45,000 new colleagues" joined since March 20, including drivers meeting soaring demand for home deliveries.
"In the first few weeks of the crisis, significant panic buying... cleared the supply chain of certain items," it said.
"The size and nature of our workforce means we have experienced a significant absence of colleagues," it added.

Tesco recruits 45,000 UK staff on virus demand

A global condom shortage is looming as the coronavirus pandemic shutters factories and disrupts supply chains, the world's top maker of the contraceptives said, with the United Nations warning of "devastating" consequences.
Over half of humanity has been confined to their homes as the highly contagious virus marches round the planet, while governments worldwide have ordered the closure of businesses deemed non-essential.
Malaysia -- one of the world's top rubber producers and a major source of condoms -- imposed a nationwide lockdown last month as infections surged to the highest level in Southeast Asia.
But restrictions on the operations of Malaysian contraceptive giant Karex, which makes one in every five condoms globally, mean the firm expects to produce 200 million fewer condoms than usual from mid-March to mid-April.
With other producers around the world likely facing disruption and difficulties in getting condoms to market due to transport problems, supplies of contraceptives ...

Virus may spark 'devastating' global condom shortage

Exploitation of wildlife by humans through hunting, trade, and habitat degradation leads to close contact between the animals and humans, increasing the risk of spillover of viruses like the novel coronavirus which causes COVID-19, according to a study.
The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, provides new evidence for assessing spillover risk in animal species and highlights how the processes that create wildlife population declines also enable the transmission of animal viruses to humans.
"Spillover of viruses from animals is a direct result of our actions involving wildlife and their habitat," said lead author Christine Kreuder Johnson, from the University of California, Davis in the US.
"The consequence is they're sharing their viruses with us. These actions simultaneously threaten species survival and increase the risk of spillover. In an unfortunate convergence of many factors, this brings about the kind of mess we're in now," Johnson said.
The ...

Wildlife trade, habitat degradation driving virus spillover: Study

The meat is too fatty and the staff are slow to clean up coffee stains -- some Kuwaitis quarantined in five-star hotels due to the coronavirus outbreak have a litany of complaints.
Authorities in the oil-rich country have forced citizens returning from abroad to isolate for 14 days in luxury properties before they are permitted to re-enter society.
Kuwait has adopted the strictest measures in the Gulf to combat the spread of coronavirus. It has recorded more than 700 cases, and one death.
Plush hotels have turned into quarantine shelters, preparing to host around 60,000 Kuwaitis returning from countries including Italy, Germany, Iran, Egypt and Lebanon.
The first batch arrived two weeks ago, and for some accustomed to the best in life, their accommodation has proven less than satisfactory.
"Dear minister of finance, the food has no taste, it is inedible and we're throwing it away," one woman, who did not reveal her face, said in a video uploaded online.
"We are emotionally tired, and .

Pampered Kuwaitis quibble in five-star quarantine

The economy may have slowed and normal life come to a standstill, but in the world of hair, a follicle free-for-all unencumbered by coronavirus has Americans asking one critical question -- to cut or not to cut?
For Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot, the answer was clear: "I thought I would do it myself but I thought it would be a disaster."
She only admitted to having had her hair cut after being caught red-handed when her hairdresser posted on Facebook that giving the mayor a trim had been a pleasure: cue the chorus of public shaming.
In her defense, Lightfoot invoked her visibility and the fact that the hairdresser wore a mask, but the accusations of privilege and elitism poured in.
Stuck at home for several weeks, Americans are finding their normally carefully coiffed 'dos growing roots or even transforming into mullets.
Rather than despair, many are using their intriguing growth patterns and bird's nest-like locks as an antidote to tragedy, posting jokes, memes, video montages and ...

To cut or not to cut? In US, quarantine slows everything but hair growth

This is TikTok's time. The social video platform which was already a favorite of teens is increasingly being used by adults looking for ways to pass the time during coronavirus lockdowns.
Users post short videos -- no longer than 60 seconds but often as short as 15 -- to showcase their bite-size dance skills or share relatable experiences with a humorous twist.
The application, owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance, saw 65 million worldwide downloads in March, according to analytics site SensorTower.
In addition to the existing 800 million reported in January by DataReportal, the app is nearing a billion users -- though TikTok itself does not publish such data.
And though teens have been posting on the platform for months, it seems adults with more free time -- as much of the world is encouraged to stay at home to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus -- are finally catching on.
Cecile, stuck at home in Paris with her six- and three-year-old children, was intrigued when a friend .

TikTok's time: video platform sees appeal growing during lockdowns

The Indian-American community mourned the death of veteran journalist Brahm Kanchibotla, who died of coronavirus in the US.
Kanchibotla, 66, was admitted to a hospital on Long Island on March 28, some five days after he showed symptoms of the novel coronavirus. He died on April 6.
For several years, Kanchibotla was New York and UN correspondent of the United News of India. In recent years, he was writing for two ethnic Indian American publications: The Indian Panorama and South Asia Times.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday condoled the demise of Kanchibotla, saying he will be remembered for his fine work.
"Very sad to learn about the passing away of veteran Indian-American journalist Brahm Kanchibotla due to COVID-19. Our heartfelt condolences to his family. He will be deeply missed by his friends and admirers in the US and India, India's Ambassador to the US, Taranjit Singh Sandhu, tweeted.
"I never ever dreamed of losing my friend and fellow journalist Brahm Kanchibhotla the 

Indian-Americans mourn death of veteran journalist

The Australian Cricketers Association (ACA) has launched an Emergency Assistance Fund of USD 250,000 to provide interim relief to former and current players, who are waiting for government aid amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
"The impact of the Coronavirus pandemic is affecting many of our past player members, as well as those current players who rely on additional income for a sustainable wage," ACA said in a release on its website.
"To help bridge the gap for our members who are waiting on government support to be made available to them, we have launched the ACA Emergency Assistance Fund."
The Coronavirus outbreak, which has taken a big toll on human lives and the global economy, has so far killed 50 people in Australia while infecting nearly 6000.
Kelly Applebee, the ACA's General Manager Member Programs and Relations, said the fund would help those who are experiencing job loss, increased anxiety, stress and general uncertainty.
"Over the past couple of weeks, we've spoken to several ..

ACA launches emergency assistance fund for players amid COVID-19 pandemic

Just weeks ago, cities and even states across the U.S. were busy banning straws, limiting takeout containers and mandating that shoppers bring reusable bags or pay a small fee as the movement to eliminate single-use plastics took hold in mainstream America.
In a matter of days, hard-won bans to reduce the use of plastics  and particularly plastic shopping sacks  across the U.S. have come under fire amid worries about the virus clinging to reusable bags, cups and straws.
Governors in Massachusetts and Illinois have banned or strongly discouraged the use of reusable grocery bags. Oregon suspended its brand-new ban on plastic bags this week, and cities from Bellingham, Washington, to Albuquerque, New Mexico, have announced a hiatus on plastic bag bans as the coronavirus rages.
Add to that a rise in takeout and a ban on reusable cups and straws at the few coffee stores that remain open, and environmentalists worry COVID-19 could set back their efforts to tackle plastic pollution for ...

Pandemic deals blow to plastic bag bans, plastic reduction

England fast bowler Mark Wood says the coronavirus pandemic has burst the bubble in which sportspersons, at times, live, making them as vulnerable as a common man is to the unprecedented challenges posed by the global health crisis.
The COVID-19 pandemic has so far killed over 80,000 globally and infected nearly 1.5 million and Wood said he too worries about his family's health.
"There are times when professional sportsmen and women exist in our own bubble. The coronavirus crisis has burst that bubble. Instead of thinking about fitness, performance or the next match, our concerns are exactly the same as everyone else's," the 30-year-old wrote in a column for 'BBC'.
"It's a scary time, one that has made me anxious for the health of my family and friends. I've worried about my parents and grandparents. I've got friends who work in the NHS and it's so sad to hear what they are going through, along with all the stress that is being put on hospitals.
"Just because I play cricket for ...

Coronavirus crisis has burst the bubble in which sportspersons exist: Mark Wood

A sizeable chunk of the 29 million doses of hydroxychloroquine bought by the US to combat the coronavirus pandemic is from India, President Donald Trump has said as he acknowledged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was "great" when he sought his help to allow the sale of the anti-malaria drug to treat the growing number of COVID-19 patients in America.
Trump and Prime Minister Modi spoke over the phone last week. During the call, Trump requested Modi to lift the hold on the American order of hydroxychloroquine, of which India is the major producer.
Hydroxychloroquine has been identified by the US Food and Drug Administration as a possible treatment for the COVID-19 and it is being tested on more than 1,500 coronavirus patients in New York. Anticipating that it will work, given initial positive results, Trump has bought more than 29 million doses of hydroxychloroquine for potential treatment of COVID-19 patients.
"I bought millions of doses (of hydroxychloroquine). More than 29 ...

More than 29 million hydroxychloroquine doses bought by US have come from India: Trump

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is considering changing its guidelines for self-isolation to make it easier for those who have been exposed to someone with the coronavirus to return to work if they are asymptomatic.
The public health agency, in conjunction with the White House coronavirus task force, is considering an announcement as soon as Wednesday, Vice President Mike Pence said on Tuesday.
Under the proposed guidance, people who are exposed to someone infected would be allowed back on the job if they are asymptomatic, test their temperature twice a day and wear a face mask, said a person familiar with the proposal under consideration. The person described the proposal on the condition of anonymity because the draft had not been finalized.
The new policy is aimed in particular at workers in critical jobs. But it also comes as the Trump administration is eyeing what it calls a stabilization in infection rates and looks toward rolling back some of the restrictive ...

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