Bloomberg Boris Johnson warned Britons they face “tougher measures” including a potential full lockdown if they continue to ignore calls to stop social gatherings, as his government asks Parliament to grant sweeping powers to tackle the accelerating coronavirus outbreak. With the UK’s weekend newspapers full of reports about people meeting in parks and traveling to coastal towns, the prime minister ...

“Worrying,” wrote Lewis Thomas, “is the most natural and spontaneous of all human functions.” Thomas — physician, philosopher, essayist, administrator (dean of the Yale and New York University medical schools, head of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center) — thought we worry too much about our health, as though a human being is “a teetering, fallible contraption, always needing watching and ...

A diamond is forever and so, perhaps, is Bernard Arnault’s interest in Tiffany & Co. Investors have been having some doubts that the chairman and founder of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA would deliver on his $16 billion takeover of the storied jeweller. But right now, Arnault is behaving like a classic luxury buyer. The bid for Tiffany is ...

It would be charitable to describe the federal government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic as sloppy and uncoordinated. Thankfully, there is a model for an epic national comeback. It dates back to the weeks following the attack on Pearl Harbor in late 1941, when President Roosevelt created the War Production Board, one of the most dynamic public-private partnerships in history. ...

With little but uncertainty ahead, Congress and the states must mobilise immediately to shift the nation to a largely vote-by-mail system by November. There are two obstacles to that goal — one practical, one political. Lurking behind both is the fear that President Donald Trump will seek to disrupt the vote to maintain power, and that Republicans and right-wing media ...

When my local supermarket opened for business at 6 am the other day, I had my plan of action in place. The instant the door was unlocked, I hurried to the pharmacy aisle, where I found, to my surprise and delight, three bottles of rubbing alcohol. But now I faced a puzzle. Should I play homo economicus and buy them ...

Apocalyptic visions of hastily-raised national barriers to trade, long lines of trucks gathering at the border, and shortages of essential supplies have haunted Europe ever since the UK voted to leave the bloc since 2016. If such a scenario is getting closer to reality, it has little to do with Brexit and everything to do with the coronavirus pandemic. Erratic ...

What scientists know about Covid-19 is changing fast. And people — from the public to politicians to the press — are confusing the possible with the probable. It’s causing a lot of undue guilt and fear. In times like these, we turn to experts — but what are we supposed to think when the experts themselves are so uncertain? We’re ...

Bloomberg Stocks dropped globally along with American futures while credit markets sagged after the coronavirus death toll surged and US Congress failed to agree on a $2 trillion stimulus plan. Government bonds rose. S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures dropped to their daily limits in early trading before trimming those declines as the session progressed. The Stoxx Europe 600 slumped, ...

Bloomberg Indian assets suffered a rough start to the week as stocks posted their worst-ever day on record as trading resumed after a system-wide halt, and the rupee hit a new low following a lockdown in much of Asia’s third-biggest economy. The S&P BSE Sensex and the NSE Nifty 50 indexes crashed 13% each at the close in Mumbai, just ...