US just took a step beyond funding Covid-vaccine research towards actively securing shots. The government signed an agreement with Pfizer Inc and BioNTech securing 100 million doses of their vaccine candidate for $1.95 billion, payable if the inoculation succeeds in clinical trials and gets approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Vaccine pricing is always contentious, and even more so ...

Bloomberg Boeing Co 737 planes in storage because of the coronavirus pandemic are at risk of losing power in both engines when they fly again and must be inspected, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said. The emergency order applies to about 2,000 older Next Generation and Classic versions of Boeing’s workhorse single-aisle jet in the US, not the grounded ...

Bloomberg British Airways owner IAG SA is looking at raising as much as 2.75 billion euros ($3.2 billion) in a share sale to help strengthen its balance sheet and ride out the coronavirus crisis. The London-based group, which also owns Spain’s Iberia and Aer Lingus of Ireland, said that it may opt for a rights issue, though no final decision ...

Bloomberg First released in 1959, the iconic Barbie doll has seen Mattel Inc through the civil rights movement, the Cold War and the rise of the internet. And now it’s helping the company weather a global pandemic. While Mattel’s overall sales fell 15% in the second quarter from a year earlier — the result of closed retail stores, supply-chain troubles ...

Bloomberg Creditors of South African Airways (SAA) gave the government more time to find the money to fund a rescue of the bankrupt state-owned airline. At a meeting convened by the airline’s administrators, creditors voted to extend the deadline to July 27 from an initial deadline of July 22. If the money is not guaranteed by then, another creditors meeting ...

Bloomberg Neiman Marcus Group Inc, the luxury retailer that’s making its way through bankruptcy proceedings, said it will permanently close its store in New York City’s Hudson Yards along with three other US locations. Its planned exit from Hudson Yards comes just over a year after the mall at the mega-project opened to much fanfare in March 2019. The three-story ...

Bloomberg China, Russia and Iran are looking to disrupt the US electoral process before November’s vote, including attempts at compromising the private communications of political campaigns and candidates, a top US intelligence official warned. William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said that federal officials continue to monitor hackers trying to gain access to state and federal ...

Bloomberg Australia joined the US in rejecting China’s expansive maritime claims in the South China Sea, calling them “inconsistent” with the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. “There is no legal basis for China to draw straight baselines connecting the outermost points of maritime features or ‘island groups’ in the South China Sea,” Australia’s mission to ...

Bloomberg US officials said they now have custody of a Chinese researcher who had taken shelter at the country’s consulate in San Francisco after she was charged with trying to hide her military background. Officials briefing reporters declined to discuss the circumstances of the arrest of Juan Tang, a researcher at the University of California at Davis who was accused ...

Bloomberg At least seven potential pro-democracy candidates for Hong Kong’s Legislative Council elections in September have received questionnaires from the government asking them to show they haven’t violated the city’s mini constitution or recently imposed security law. Alvin Yeung and Cheng Tat-hung of the Civic Party, Kenneth Leung who plans to represent the accountancy sector, and four other opposition figures ...