Bloomberg Indonesia plans to mobilize volunteers to fight the spread of coronavirus in coastal villages and the vast hinterlands of the archipelago with part of a $4.4 billion rural budget to be used to fund the initiative. The squads of volunteers will help authorities in increasing awareness about the pandemic in the country’s almost 75,000 villages, collect data on people ...

Bloomberg Hong Kong is warning residents to abide by home quarantine orders and social distancing regulations or they will face criminal prosecution and fines, as the Asian financial centre continues to battle a resurgence in imported coronavirus cases. The city has already caught more than 70 people violating some of the more than 50,000 home quarantine orders, sent them to ...

Bloomberg Japanese sellers of masks, toilet paper and other sanitary products are turning out to be rare beneficiaries of the coronavirus. Sales of masks, alcohol wipes and other healthcare products jumped by about 47% at Japanese drug stores, a record in trade ministry data going back to 2014. Outlays on daily necessities including toilet paper surged 31%, also a record. ...

Bloomberg Oil majors and traders are scrambling to book supertankers to try and divert a flood of American crude to Asia, betting the region is the best place to store the surplus while the market waits for a rebound. A dozen very large crude carriers are being sought to load from the US Gulf Coast over a 10-day period from ...

Bloomberg Brazil’s two largest fuel distributors declared force majeure on purchases of ethanol as the coronavirus pandemic hammers demand in Latin America’s largest economy. The Raizen venture owned by Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Cosan SA sent a letter to suppliers invoking the clause for both anhydrous ethanol that’s blended in gasoline and the hydrous variety used directly in cars, ...

Bloomberg Pioneer Natural Resources Co and Parsley Energy Inc are asking Texas oil regulators for an emergency meeting to consider curbs on state output as a collapsing oil market envelops the nation’s biggest crude-producing state. Jointly signed by the chief executives of both companies, the letter seeks a virtual meeting among the three-member Texas Railroad Commission no later than April ...

Bloomberg What was meant to be a year that blew the wind energy industry well past its previous record for installations will more likely pass with gains that are merely solid. Developers are set to boost capacity by 9% this year to 66,422 megawatts, according BloombergNEF. That’s scaled back from the 24% expansion the London-based research arm of Bloomberg LP ...

Bloomberg China is burning more coal in yet another sign that the first country hit by a coronavirus outbreak is returning to a level of normalcy. Daily coal burn at select coastal plants has doubled from early February, at the height of the country’s lockdown to stop the spread of Covid-19. The plants are responding to resurgent electricity demand as ...

Bloomberg Chinese state-backed investment fund CNIC Corp is considering purchasing about a 10% stake in Greenko Group, one of India’s largest renewable energy companies, according to people familiar with the matter. Greenko, whose backers include Singapore sovereign fund GIC Pte has been seeking to raise around $800 million by introducing a long-term investor, said one of the people. The Indian ...

Bloomberg UK consumers scaled back their unsecured borrowing in February as the country battled flooding and the start of the coronavirus update. Loans to households rose just 877 million pounds ($1.09 billion) from January, when they rose 1.1 billion pounds, the Bank of England said in a report. At the same time, mortgage approvals jumped to 73,546, the most since ...