DUBAI / WAM The Ministry of Community Development (MoCD) has launched four interactive channels under a new initiative named ‘Taaluf’ to provide family counselling for free to all UAE community members. In a statement, the Ministry said that the launch of the counselling initiative aims to mitigate the psychosocial and mental health impacts of Covid-19 on individuals during home quarantines ...

Bloomberg China’s leaders normally spend a lot of time and money on keeping the country’s 1.4 billion people in line — and that was before a global pandemic ravaging the world economy threatened to put millions out of work. A rare street clash over the weekend on the border of virus-stricken Hubei province shows the challenges president Xi Jinping faces ...

Bloomberg The Kremlin’s sudden shift of ownership of multi-billion-dollar oil projects in Venezuela shields oil giant Rosneft PJSC from further US sanctions but keeps Moscow firmly behind embattled President Nicolas Maduro amid a wider stand-off with Washington. “Russia is not walking away from Maduro and will seek to thwart US efforts to depose him,” said Vladimir Frolov, a former diplomat ...

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 A group of sixteen banks will have to provide $23 billion of loans to T-Mobile US Inc. in order to allow the mobile carrier to close its planned acquisition of Sprint Corp., after the Covid-19 outbreak disrupted plans to sell the debt to third-party investors. The banks were formally notified that they will need to make the funds available ...

Bloomberg Pakistan’s central bank is said to have intervened to stop a plunge in the rupee, the worst performer in Asia this week. The South Asian nation’s currency fell to a record low 168 to a dollar in intraday trading as per traders before closing at 165.54, data posted on the website of the State Bank of Pakistan showed. The ...

Bloomberg As central banks around the world reignite quantitative easing programs or adopt them for the first time, Japan’s key focus of controlling bond yields rather than a quota of purchases is being explored. When the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) broke the emergency glass on March 19, it set a target for the yield on three-year Australian government bonds ...

Bloomberg UniCredit SpA suspended a dividend payment and a share buyback in a setback to Chief Executive Officer Jean Pierre Mustier’s plan to improve shareholder rewards. The decision comes after the European Central Bank recommended that lenders restrict payouts until at least October as the coronavirus pandemic wreaks havoc on markets. Its previous call for banks to be prudent on ...