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Bloomberg Just one kilogram of freshly caught squid a day was almost enough to live on for Thai fishermen like Wisut Boonnak. Now the catch has halved in price and he’s spending more time on village duties. “It’s the biggest price drop that I can remember,” said Wisut, who’s been fishing for the past 40 years off the southern Thai ...

Bloomberg Even before the pandemic struck, outdoor air pollution was linked to the deaths of as many as nine million people each year. Now two new studies show that Covid-19 patients are more likely to die if they live in regions with high levels of air pollution. Air pollution affects human health in insidious ways. The burning of fossil fuels ...

Bloomberg The International Monetary Fund (IMF) wants policy makers to avoid repeating the Depression-era mistake of ratcheting back budget deficits. Instead, it’s urging them to ramp up fiscal stimulus when the coronavirus contagion starts to abate. “Once the recovery has happened and we are past the pandemic phase, for advanced economies it would be essential to undertake a broad-based stimulus,” ...

Bloomberg Finland’s lockdown will cause gross domestic product (GDP) to shrink between 1.5% and 2.0% for each month that it is in place, the Finance Ministry said Thursday. The longer the restriction measures last, the slower the recovery will be, Mikko Spolander, director general of the Economics Department, told reporters in Helsinki. “The danger is that the longer the economy ...

Bloomberg The Trump administration would like to make purchases of milk and meat products as part of a $15.5 billion initial aid package to farmers rattled by the coronavirus, said Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue. “We want to purchase as much of this milk, or other protein products, mutton and other products, and move them into where they can be utilised ...

Bloomberg Google parent Alphabet Inc. is slowing hiring for the remainder of the year, the most drastic action by the web search giant since the Covid-19 pandemic began battering its advertising business several weeks ago. Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai told staff about the decision in an email. He also highlighted other areas of cost cutting, saying the company will ...

Bloomberg Profits and dividends at Britain’s publicly traded companies are set to halve this year due to the Covid-19 outbreak, Citigroup Inc. predicts. The bank warned clients that the pandemic’s economic impact will be greater in the UK due to the country’s dependency on its services industry, which is deeply affected by social distancing efforts. While consensus is for a ...

Bloomberg The Trump administration is preparing to attack the legal basis of requirements to capture mercury and other heavy metal pollution from power plants, setting the stage for a court to potentially toss out the mandates altogether. The move will come in the form of a final Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule concluding those mercury pollution controls are too costly ...

ABU DHABI / WAM His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, and Tunisian President Kais Saied, have discussed bilateral relations, the global Covid-19 crisis and ways to contain the pandemic’s repercussions at various levels. In a telephone call, the leaders reviewed the measures the countries ...

Dubai / WAM The Dubai Department of Economic Development has said that foodstuff trade in the emirate continues to run smoothly and as planned as a result of measures taken by the department to support the food security agenda in the UAE. In a statement, the department, also known as Dubai Customs, noted that external trade in foodstuff for the ...