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Bloomberg Indonesia banned an annual ritual of citizens travelling in large numbers to their hometowns and villages ahead of the Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr to prevent the spread of coronavirus in the world’s largest Muslim-majority country. President Joko Widodo, who announced the ban at a cabinet meeting in Jakarta, said the prohibition was based on an assessment that about ...

Bloomberg European Union (EU) leaders head to a key virtual summit on Thursday without any concrete proposals from the bloc’s institutions on how to finance a controversial economic recovery fund, raising the chances of yet another inconclusive showdown. A “roadmap” distributed to national delegations from EU Council President Charles Michel, who will chair the video conference, contains no details on ...

Bloomberg The US Treasury has deployed more than half of the Coronavirus Relief Fund, which provides for payments to state, local, and tribal governments. The daily Treasury statement notes that, $81.9 billion had been used this month. The $150 billion fund was established to help lessen the economic impact of the Covid-19 outbreak. The coronavirus pandemic has crushed sources of ...

Bloomberg UK inflation slowed in March as the nation entered lockdown and oil prices continued to tumble. Consumer prices rose 1.5% from a year earlier, down from 1.7% in February, the Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday. Downward pressure came from fuel and clothing prices. Core inflation eased to 1.6%. The inflation outlook has been thrown into turmoil by ...

Bloomberg Scotland’s economy could shrink by 12% this year as a result of restrictions put in place to combat the spread of the coronavirus outbreak, while the government said the financial hit was no reason to ease the lockdown prematurely and risk greater harm. The overall picture for the year is based on output declining by a third during the ...

Bloomberg New York State has applied for a $4 billion federal loan to shore up its unemployment trust fund amid a record surge of claims by workers sidelined by the Covid-19 pandemic, a spokeswoman said. “All benefits, including enhanced benefits, are being paid, and to help ensure it remains that way the state has applied for an up to $4 ...

Bloomberg Lyft Inc. withdrew its profit and revenue forecasts for 2020, following rival Uber Technologies Inc. in citing evolving and unpredictable impacts from Covid-19. The San Francisco-based ride-hailing company has seen demand fall dramatically, crushing its earlier estimates. Uber and Lyft, both of which aren’t yet profitable, told investors earlier this year they would turn a profit by the end ...

Bloomberg Netflix Inc. posted the strongest financial results in company history, adding a recorded 15.8 million paid subscribers — almost double the figure forecast by Wall Street analysts. Yet rather than gloat, the company’s executives warned investors not to get too excited. Netflix benefited in the first quarter from an unprecedented health crisis, the global coronavirus pandemic. With billions of ...

Abu Dhabi / WAM Abu Dhabi’s Hub71, the tech ecosystem powered by Mubadala, has been selected by the top US data residency hosting platform, InCountry, to be the home of its Middle East headquarters. This new development marks a strategic move to capitalise on the UAE’s growing cloud market, which Gartner predicts is set to increase by 21 percent year ...

Bloomberg The Kremlin put on a brave face as prices for Russia’s benchmark crude closed in on levels last seen in a devastating 1998 financial crisis. “The pandemonium with futures is absolutely speculative, just a trading issue,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday, referring to negative prices on some US futures contracts. “There’s no need to give this ...