Politics

Bloomberg The UK government is facing renewed calls to speed up testing of patients and healthcare workers for the coronavirus, as the outbreak spreads. Ministers and officials were challenged to explain why they said 10,000 tests were being carried out every day but only 7,000 people had received them. The concerns over testing rates came after a week of lockdown ...

Bloomberg Prime minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc orders a 15-day period of isolation nationwide beginning from Wednesday, according to a statement on the government’s website. Residents must stay at home and can only go outside for “essential needs,” such as food, medicines, urgent medical services or to go to work at companies permitted by the government to remain open, it said. ...

Bloomberg Hungary’s parliament handed prime minister Viktor Orban the right to rule by decree indefinitely, effectively putting the European Union democracy under his sole command for as long as he sees fit. While governments around the world assume emergency powers to fight the coronavirus, locking down all aspects of every-day life and shutting borders, few democracies have given their governments ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump abruptly abandoned his ambition to return American life to normal by Easter, heeding advice from the government’s top doctors that re-opening the US economy in two weeks risks greater death as the coronavirus outbreak accelerates. In a stark shift from two weeks of measured optimism, the president said his guidelines for Americans to practice “social distancing” ...

Bloomberg Coronavirus deaths in Italy and Spain rose above 17,000, keeping Europe focussed on further restricting people’s movements and avoiding a health-care collapse. Italy, the country with the most reported deaths, recorded 756 new fatalities on March 29. Spain’s Health Ministry said 838 people died from the virus over a period of 24 hours, its highest daily number yet. Both ...

Bloomberg Russia moved towards a lockdown across the world’s largest country by area to try and halt the spread of coronavirus, following Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin’s order for residents to stay in their homes. Heads of all Russia’s regions should adopt similar restrictions as those announced in the capital and surrounding areas, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said at a televised ...

Bloomberg Venezuela National Assembly President Juan Guaido called for a broad coalition to form a “national emergency government” to replace Nicolas Maduro’s regime and get financing to save lives as the coronavirus crisis spreads. Such a government “must be broad and include all the necessary political and social sectors to confront this severe emergency,” Guaido said in a video message ...

Bloomberg In small groups and large crowds, through inner-city lanes and down interstate highways, hundreds of thousands of India’s poorest are slowly making a desperate journey on foot back to their villages in a mass exodus unseen since the days immediately after India’s independence in 1947. For many, it’s a matter of life and death. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s order ...

Bloomberg French President Emmanuel Macron’s approval rating surged in March, even though doubts about the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis grew in recent days, two opinion polls show. Macron’s rating rose 11 percentage points from February to a nearly two-year high of 43% this month, according an Ifop poll published in Le Journal du Dimanche on March 29. The ...

Bloomberg Italy’s coronavirus death toll topped 10,000 and Spain posted record fatalities, signalling that lockdowns in Europe won’t be lifted anytime soon while its leaders split along economic fault lines. Deaths in Italy slowed to 889 from a record 969 on March 27 and the 5,974 new infections were similar to the previous day’s level. Spain suffered another 832 deaths. ...