Bloomberg Days after insisting he had absolute authority to steer the country’s economic recovery from the coronavirus outbreak, President Donald Trump instead handed over the keys to governors and businesses. Trump issued guidelines for states to consider as they decide whether to relax stay-at-home orders and other social-distancing measures enacted to curb the spread of the virus. The brief document ...

Bloomberg Russia recorded its largest daily increase in coronavirus infections, with the new cases rising by almost 5,000 in a single day. New infections jumped by 4,785 to 36,793, the official Russian coronavirus information center reported on its website. Forty people died in the past day, including 21 in Moscow, bringing the number of fatalities to 313. The pace of ...

Bloomberg Hong Kong police arrested 14 people on Saturday on suspicion of organising and participating in an unauthorised assembly in 2019, when months of pro-democracy protests upended life in the city. The police action was connected to unauthorised assemblies on August 18, October 1 and 20 in Hong Kong Island and Kowloon last year, Superintendent Lam Wing-ho said at a ...

Bloomberg Abba Kyari, chief of staff to Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari and an ardent supporter of state intervention in the economy, has died. His age wasn’t disclosed. “The Presidency regrets to announce the passage of the Chief of Staff to the President, Mallam Abba Kyari,” presidential spokesman Garba Shehu said on Twitter. Kyari had been hospitalised in the commercial capital, ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump’s campaign boasts it needed just 24 hours to switch into virtual mode after coronavirus lockdowns ended his signature, high-energy rallies. For Joe Biden, who thrives on the personal connection of retail politics, the transition is taking much longer. Trump’s digital operation dominates the digital space in no small part thanks to the presidential bully pulpit and ...

Bloomberg Indonesia has extended stricter social-distancing rules to millions of people living on the main island of Java, and in West Sumatra, as the world’s fourth-most populous nation strives to stem a spike in coronavirus cases. Large-scale social restrictions will be put in place across five regions in West Java that collectively house almost 9 million people, Health Minister Terawan ...

The US Space Force — which has been dismissed variously as a fantasy, a presidential folly and a prospective Pentagon turf war — was finally set to launch for real on Saturday — as 86 newly minted space warriors graduate from the Air Force Academy. The surprise in this space startup, so far, is that most of the bad things ...

Judging by the number of motor vehicles being stolen in New York City right now, cars have become no less desirable during a lockdown. Burglary rates aren’t a reliable economic indicator, but they’re far from the only sign that car demand could prove more resilient than might appear from recent record sales declines. If unemployment doesn’t surge even higher — ...

President Donald Trump’s reopening guidelines for states are more cautious than you might expect from someone who consistently calls for a rapid return to economic activity. The “gating” metrics that states are supposed to meet before reopening are fairly robust: They should see a two-week downward trajectory of flu and Covid-like symptoms, and a two-week downward trajectory of documented cases ...

The coronavirus pandemic and its devastating effect on the US economy has ensured that big government—the one that’s already spending some $4.7 trillion in the current fiscal year—is poised to get even larger. As in past crises that led to massive government interventions, new initiatives will largely stay in place once the business downturn ends to the long-term detriment of ...