Bloomberg The German government is engaged in last-minute debates over the details of its bailout of Deutsche Lufthansa AG, with Chancellor Angela Merkel seeking a deal that doesn’t involve a direct stake in the national carrier, while her deputy, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, favors such an investment, according to people familiar with the matter. Under a scenario preferred by the ...

Bloomberg TUI AG will eliminate as many as 8,000 jobs, about 15% of its workforce, to cut costs and slim down its business as people travel less and favor different locations following the coronavirus outbreak. The world’s biggest package-holiday company is seeking to pare overall costs by almost one-third and offer more local breaks in the hope of encouraging a ...

Bloomberg Iceland will test all airline passengers arriving at Keflavik Airport for coronavirus by June 15, with those resulting negative spared a mandatory two-week quarantine, the government said. Testing will take place inside the terminal of the international airport. Visitors will be allowed to head to their accommodation while they wait for the result of their test, which is expected ...

Bloomberg Afghan President Ashraf Ghani ordered government forces to resume operations against the Taliban and other insurgent groups after 40 people, including newborn babies, were killed when armed militants opened fire inside a hospital and at a funeral ceremony. The Taliban denied involvement in the attacks on the hospital in a Shiite neighbourhod of capital Kabul and on a funeral ...

Bloomberg As the coronavirus inflicts ever more death and economic carnage across the US, President Donald Trump is resorting to his preferred and battle-tested tactic to fight the biggest threat to his re-election: diversion. The shift was clear on Mother’s Day, when he flooded Twitter with 126 posts, including promoting a tweet that called his own Justice Department “corrupt.” A ...

Bloomberg The hunt for Joe Biden’s running mate is intensifying as some candidates make their interest in the job clear. Stacey Abrams and Kamala Harris have both taken steps to ensure their names are included in any public lists, but while Abrams has been actively campaigning, Harris has taken a subtler approach. Biden, campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon and strategist ...

Bloomberg The United Nations agency leading the fight against a desert-locust upsurge in East Africa will lodge a new appeal for funding next week, warning the plague could still cause a food crisis. The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) plans to ask its partners for about $110 million on May 20, according to the agency’s Nairobi-based Resilience Team Leader Cyril ...

Bloomberg Hong Kong’s 23-day streak without a case of local coronavirus transmission has come to an end, reflecting the challenge of eradicating a virus that can spread undetected through carriers with no symptoms. The case of a 66-year-old woman with no recent travel history becoming infected, confirmed by the government in a briefing on Wednesday, dashes hope that the city ...

Bloomberg The UK economy shrank almost 6% in March as the nation went into lockdown, plunging into what may be its deepest recession in more than three centuries. The sharp decline is only a small part of the damage of the restrictions to control the coronavirus, which were in place for all of April and look set to endure in ...

Bloomberg Public transportation systems around the US are asking the federal government for an additional $32 billion, double the amount lawmakers are proposing in the latest relief bill, to help mass-transit providers cover lost revenue during the coronavirus pandemic. The funding request from New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority and mass-transit systems in New Jersey, San Francisco and Atlanta comes as ...