April, 2020

• 26 April

  Johnson to return to Downing Street office on Monday

  

  Bloomberg Boris Johnson was expected to return to work on Monday and take charge of the UK’s handling of the pandemic, a month after he was struck down by the coronavirus. The government has been without a leader since the prime minister was admitted to the hospital on April 5. Since being released he’s been slowly easing his way back, ...

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• 26 April

  Japan mulls extending state of emergency

  

  Bloomberg As Japan nears three weeks under a state of emergency to tackle the spread of the coronavirus, reports indicate that the government is weighing the need to extend the emergency beyond early May. There is a growing view within the government that it may not be possible to fully lift the emergency as planned on May 6, national broadcaster ...

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• 26 April

  Spain reports smallest increase in virus deaths

  

  Bloomberg Spain reported the smallest increase in coronavirus deaths in more than a month as the government prepares more steps to ease one of the world’s strictest lockdowns. Fatalities increased by 288, holding below 400 for the third day, and lower than the 378 recorded on April 25, according to data published by the Health Ministry. The daily death count ...

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• 26 April

  Trump tweets virus briefings maybe ‘not worth the time’

  

  Bloomberg President Donald Trump has been determined to talk his way through the coronavirus crisis, but frequent misstatements at his daily news conferences have caused a litany of public health and political headaches for the White House. Trump sought to clean up his briefing room riff from the day before about the possibility of fighting coronavirus infection in patients with ...

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• 26 April

  Can the US government survive next disaster?

  

  Among the many political shortcomings that the pandemic has laid bare is that the US suffers from constitutional and statutory gaps that make its democracy, and even its basic governing ability, vulnerable in an emergency. The good news? The hard thinking about this problem has mostly already been done. The bad news? No one who can do anything about it ...

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• 26 April

  Brazil deserves better than Bolsonaro

  

  When a congressional back-bencher with fringe right-wing ideas took office last year, many Brazilians held their breath. Some hoped and prayed that Jair Bolsonaro might rise to the occasion, moderate his rhetoric and compensate for his lack of executive experience by delegating to a first-rate cabinet. Leave it to the adults in the room — Economy Minister Paulo Guedes, Vice ...

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• 26 April

  Coronavirus: Deflation is stalking globe now

  The economic contraction wrought by efforts to contain the coronavirus is shredding inflation. Now deflation, a prolonged period of falling prices, is stalking the globe. The collapsing oil market is both a symptom of weaker demand and cause for a deepening slump. Huge levels of stimulus are likely to be required long after the pandemic subsides. Yet concerns about prices ...

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• 26 April

  US economy may have hit Covid-19 bottom

  As the calendar turns to May, we’re likely to see a slow return of growth for some types of economic activity that were wiped out by the coronavirus shutdowns in March and April. That’s the good news. The bad news is, as we’ve seen in the oil industry, much of the economy remains tremendously oversupplied for likely levels of demand ...

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• 26 April

  UK’s democracy in the age of coronavirus crisis

  

  The UK’s House of Commons, often called the “mother of parliaments” (although that’s not the original meaning of the term), took a flying leap into the Zoom era this week with its first virtual Prime Minister’s Questions meeting. It was a different look from the usually raucous, crowded chamber of standing speeches, jeers, interruptions, eye-rolls and the suspense-filled votes that ...

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• 26 April

  Mass antibody virus tests have its limits

  

  As governments in Europe and elsewhere start to look at reopening their economies after the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, mass antibody testing has come to the fore as a potential way of making sure the outbreak doesn’t surge again. These serological tests — which are being rolled out in Italy, Germany and the UK, as well as New ...

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