Bloomberg Ford Motor Co.’s sagging stock fell further after the automaker forecast a more than $5 billion second-quarter operating loss due to the coronavirus pandemic’s blow to the global car industry. The projected deficit — which is about $2 billion worse than some analysts were anticipating — is based on Ford’s expectation for significant volume declines in every region. Ford ...

Bloomberg When the European Union (EU) presents its plan to rebuild its economy after the coronavirus, it’s likely to include three kinds of funding: taxpayers’ money, borrowed money and theoretical money. Officials in Brussels have a tendency to pad out their flashy headline figures with the theoretical stuff. But investors trying to gauge the strength of the policy response would ...

Bloomberg Google employees won’t be back at their offices for at least two more months, and even then any return will be “staggered and incremental,” Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai said in an email to his workforce. The bulk of Google’s US employees are based in California’s Bay Area, which just extended several stay-at-home orders through the end of May. ...

Bloomberg China’s plan to resume annual parliamentary sessions delayed by the coronavirus outbreak next month could be seen as a statement of the country’s commitment to get back to normal. The actual gathering may end up showing how much has changed. The National People’s Congress (NPC) will start its annual session on May 22, the official Xinhua News Agency said ...

Bloomberg Malaysia reported the highest daily increase in new coronavirus cases since April 16 due to infections among people who returned from overseas. The country confirmed 94 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, of which 72 recently flew back from neighbouring Indonesia, Director-General of Health Noor Hisham Abdullah said in a briefing. That brings the total number of cases to 5,945. ...

Bloomberg Europe took another step towards life after lockdown as France, Spain and Greece unveiled details of how they plan to emerge from the coronavirus and cautiously restart economies crippled by the pandemic. In Paris, PM Edouard Philippe announced plans to reopen stores starting on May 11. Spanish counterpart Pedro Sanchez said he aims to remove most restrictions on daily ...

Bloomberg The apparent increase in homeless people occupying New York City subway cars has ignited a new dispute between Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Andrew Cuomo over who’s responsible and what’s the best way to deal with the problem. The dispute went public after de Blasio proposed overnight shutdowns of 10 end-of-line stations to “deep clean” cars and to ...

Bloomberg A Hong Kong court rejected an appeal by an influential activist who was trying to reduce his prison sentence for rioting related to a violent 2016 protest. Edward Leung, 28, a self-described Hong Kong “localist” whose more radical approach to politics won him supporters among the city’s protesters, had been sentenced to six years in prison in 2018 for ...

We Americans are progress junkies, as I’ve written many times. We believe that tomorrow ought to be better than today, just as today was better than yesterday. This optimism, in part, defines us as a people. We assume that progress is the natural order of things. Problems are meant to be solved. History is an upward curve of well-being. But ...

Alphabet Inc, the parent of digital-search giant Google, is facing one of the most difficult internet ad-spending markets in its history. The company’s recent actions signal it is taking the prospect of a downturn seriously. Alphabet reported March-quarter sales results that beat Wall Street estimates. The company posted first-quarter revenue ex-traffic acquisition costs of $33.7 billion, up 14% from a ...