As a Manhattan resident, I’ll be the first to admit that New York City in general and Manhattan in particular are not optimally designed for social distancing. People here tend to get around not in their own automobiles but on foot or by bus, subway, taxi or ride-share. We buy our groceries mostly not in giant wide-aisled supermarkets but in ...

Italy was the first country in Europe to implement draconian measures to contain the Covid-19 epidemic. As the outbreak slows, the government is weighing when and how to reopen its economy. There’s not much cause for optimism, sadly. The coalition government of the populist Five Star Movement and the center-left Democratic Party has been much better at enforcing lockdowns than ...

For a man who swept to office almost eight years ago vowing to restore Japan’s economic vitality after two decades of malaise, going back to the starting line must be particularly painful for Shinzo Abe. Japan’s longest serving prime minister, Abe has huge parliamentary majorities and no internal challengers to his command of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Yet despite ...

Bloomberg The world’s largest oil producers are hammering out the terms of an unprecedented deal to mitigate the devastating impact of the coronavirus crisis as they prepare for an extraordinary meeting this week. Saudi Arabia and Russia are closing in on an agreement to curb output, which could drain some of the oil surplus threatening to overwhelm storage tanks and ...

Bloomberg It’s crunch time for the European Union (EU) as it strives to overcome internal differences and agree to a plan that would stem a virus-led downturn, which may eclipse the severity of the Great Recession more than a decade ago. The EU’s finance ministers on Tuesday will seek to endorse a list of measures worth more than half a ...

Bloomberg India’s unemployment rate could have climbed to more than 20% as the economy lost jobs after a nationwide lockdown took effect in the last week of March, according to a survey by the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy Pvt. The jobless rate was 23.4% for the week ended April 5 based on a sample size of 9,429 observations, Mahesh ...

Abu Dhabi / WAM The number of stores providing e-services for consumers in the UAE rose by 150 percent in the past two weeks, according to an updated list published by the Telecommunications Regulation Authority (TRA). This significant surge reflects the expansion of e-services in accordance with the high demand from consumers in the United Arab Emirates. The updated list ...

Sharjah / Emirates Business The Emirates Publishers Association (EPA) has announced several initiatives, which aim to support the local publishing industry to overcome the current challenges facing the sector posed by the novel coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic, and offer them the required impetus to continue production of quality content. The announcement was made during EPA’s fifth board meeting, conducted remotely, ...

DUBAI / WAM The Ministry of Community Development (MoCD) announced the launch of the “We Are Your Family” remote initiative to reach out to senior citizens. The initiative seeks to check on psychological and social health of senior citizens and fulfill their needs via phone or visual applications. Hessa Tahlak, Assistant Under-Secretary for Social Development at the Ministry of Community ...

ABU DHABI / WAM Aldar Properties announced on Tuesday that it will cut 20 percent of school fees and a refund of all payments made towards catering and transport expenses for the third term of the current academic year, to all students enrolled in Aldar Academies and Cranleigh Abu Dhabi. Aldar will also launch ‘All In This Together’ fund to ...