Bloomberg Coal miners including Consol Energy Inc and Contura Energy Inc must shutter their operations in Pennsylvania after the governor ordered “non-life-sustaining” businesses to close. The order took effect from March 19, according to a statement from Gov. Tom Wolf. Pennsylvania is the latest state to order commercial activities to shut down as governments move to slow the spread of ...

Bloomberg South Africa’s state-owned utility has yet to agree a supply contract for the bulk of coal needed for its newest power station, more than a decade after approving a plan to negotiate with Anglo American Plc. In 2007, an Eskom Holding SOC Ltd committee signed off on the start of talks with Anglo for as much as 17 million ...

Bloomberg Mexico slashed the price for its flagship Maya crude, the latest producer to discount its cargoes as the coronavirus pandemic destroys fuel demand and Saudi Arabia floods the world with crude. Petroleos Mexicanos’s trading arm PMI lowered its Maya crude differential into US Gulf Coast by $2 to minus $10.05 a barrel for April, PMI said. The so-called K ...

Bloomberg Microsoft Corp. unveiled new features for its Teams corporate-chat software, timed to the product’s third anniversary and arriving amid a surge of interest in digital workplace communications tools spurred by the Covid-19 outbreak. Several of the tools may be especially useful for employees in the new world of work from home. Real-time noise suppression should block out the sounds ...

Bloomberg The economic impact of the growing coronavirus outbreak is shifting from service-driven industries like hotels and restaurants to the manufacturing sector on both sides of the Atlantic, leading to a synchronized shutdown of heavy industry that historians and industry experts say is unlike any seen since the 1940s. Automakers in the US and Europe are idling plants in response ...

Bloomberg Tesla Inc. will hand out masks and take workers’ temperatures before they enter the carmaker’s California factory, according to an internal email laying out measures being taken while production keeps going. The company also is adding more hygiene stations and rearranging parts of the plant to promote social distancing, Valerie Workman, the carmaker’s head of human resources for North ...

Bloomberg German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government should finance a stimulus plan worth as much as 150 billion euros ($162 billion) to help offset the economic fallout from the coronavirus crisis, Bavarian state leader Markus Soeder said. Measures taken by Merkel administration, including an existing $610 billion liquidity program for companies, are insufficient, Soeder said. His comments come as the government ...

Bloomberg The Swiss watch industry has survived lickings before, but Rolex, Omega and Cartier now face a combination of economic punches putting them back on their heels. The industry was adapting to downturn from political protests in its largest market, Hong Kong, when coronavirus outbreak hit. Meanwhile, Swiss franc, surging gold prices, and store closures are set to saddle firms ...

Bloomberg As companies and government agencies send their employees home to avoid contact with the coronavirus, many cybersecurity teams are facing the unenviable challenge of securing sprawling, vulnerable networks. Every time an employee connects to their corporate network from home, they’re creating possible access points for hackers to exploit. When this happens 1,000 times on a single network almost overnight, ...

Bloomberg The Trump administration escalated its attacks on China over the coronavirus, as US officials publicly alleged that Beijing concealed and minimised the spread of the disease within its borders until it was too late to stop a global outbreak. President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Michael Pompeo called the disease the “Chinese virus” at a White House news ...