Bloomberg An overnight gas leak at an LG Chem Ltd polymer plant in southern India has killed at least 11 people and forced the evacuation of thousands in the city of Visakhapatnam after the company tried to restart operations following the partial easing of the country’s coronavirus lockdown. “The unfortunate event took place past midnight when they tried to restart ...

Bloomberg The World Health Organization (WHO) is considering a new mission to seek the source of the coronavirus in China, amid growing controversy over the origin of a pandemic that has killed more than a quarter of a million people. “Without knowing where the animal origin is, it’s hard to prevent it from happening again,” Maria Van Kerkhove, a WHO ...

Bloomberg France will lay out its plan to roll back lockdown measures, joining countries including Germany, Italy and the Netherlands in easing restrictions as the economic pain from the fallout of the coronavirus intensifies. French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe was expected to unveil final details of his plan to end curbs on public life on Thursday. The country is preparing ...

Bloomberg Japan was set to approve on Thursday the antiviral drug remdesivir for use against the novel coronavirus, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said, without giving details. The relatively quick move by Japan’s usually conservative authorities is expected days after the US authorised Gilead Sciences Inc’s drug for emergency use on virus patients. Abe did not indicate in an interview earlier ...

Bloomberg Prudential Financial Inc. expects coronavirus deaths to cut earnings by about $200 million this year after it swung to a net loss in the first quarter. The life insurer’s earnings will be hardest hit in the second quarter, by an estimated $135 million, company executives told analysts on a conference call. That assumes 100,000 fatalities in the US and ...

Bloomberg Telefonica SA and Liberty Global Plc have agreed to create the UK’s largest phone and internet operator, threatening their rivals and marking another industry-defining deal for billionaire John Malone. The deal values the new company at 31 billion pounds ($38 billion), with Telefonica’s O2 being valued at 12.7 billion pounds and Liberty’s Virgin Media valued at around 18.7 billion ...

Bloomberg UK house prices may fall 16% because of the economic upheaval caused by the coronavirus, according to a desktop stress test by the Bank of England (BOE). That decline would be in line with the fall in residential property values during the financial crisis, though the central bank says that banks would not suffer “very material losses in the ...

Bloomberg Industrial production in the euro area’s two largest economies cratered in March, highlighting the crippling impact of just half a month of factory closures to control the spread of the deadly coronavirus. A 9.2% decline in output in Germany and a 16.2% drop in France are the latest signs of the severity of Europe’s slump. The warning from industry ...

Bloomberg Nintendo Co. beat its own forecast for sales of the Switch console in the last fiscal year, reflecting surging demand for games and other entertainment as people spend more time at home amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Nintendo sold 21 million units of the Switch in the year ended in March, ahead of its estimate of 19.5 million. The Kyoto-based ...

Bloomberg AT&T Inc.’s obsession with paying down debt has led to some financial creativity. Right before the end of 2019, AT&T took a collection of cell-tower rent payments that it will receive in the future, rolled them into a subsidiary, then sold shares of the unit to investors for $6 billion. The new entity is called AT&T Investment & Tower ...