April, 2020

• 25 April

  Developing nations are learning from Covid-19

  

  Across the developing world, the defining images of the battle against the Covid-19 pandemic have been of migrant workers: abandoned, angry, starving. In their zeal to control the spread of the new coronavirus, governments have all too often betrayed their most aspirational citizens — those who move from countryside to cities to build better lives for themselves and their families. ...

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• 25 April

  AT&T CEO steps aside mid-makeover

  

  First Walt Disney Co’s Bob Iger, and now AT&T Inc’s Randall Stephenson. As two of the world’s most powerful entertainment and communications companies confront the streaming wars and the Covid-19 pandemic — bracing for what may be a new normal brought on by both — they’ll have to venture into the unknown under new leadership. Stephenson, who took a prosaic ...

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• 25 April

  The coronavirus isn’t just the flu, say results

  The results from the first blood surveys that test for evidence of antibodies to the new coronavirus have begun rolling in. They’ve been confirming earlier hints that in hard-hit places a significant share of people — 21.2% in the New York City survey — may have been infected with the virus, and that in most other places the percentages are ...

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• 25 April

  What’s gone wrong in US amid Covid-19?

  Remember the Magic School Bus, the animated series in which a somewhat demented school teacher named Ms. Frizzle (catchphrase: “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!”) takes her class on mind-bending adventures? In one episode, she reduces the bus to microscopic size and takes her charges into the bloodstream of an ill classmate. You see the kids swimming around in tiny ...

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• 25 April

  Coronavirus has popped Boeing and Airbus bubble

  

  It’s not just air tickets that are being cancelled as the coronavirus causes global travel to seize up. Purchases of aircraft are also being pulled. Aircraft lessors Avolon Holdings Ltd, China Development Bank Financial Leasing Co, and General Electric Co’s GECAS have rescinded orders for 173 Boeing Co 737 MAX aircraft over the past month, worth $17.8 billion at list ...

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• 25 April

  US isn’t protecting blue-collar workers

  

  My son Nick lives in New Zealand, which has done a remarkable job fighting the coronavirus. As of April 24, the nation of 4.8 million people had 1,456 confirmed cases and only 17 deaths. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s government is now talking about not just containing the virus but eliminating it. It helps that New Zealand is an island nation ...

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• 25 April

  Covid-19 is an opportunity for radical simplification

  

  Only a few months into the Covid-19 pandemic, its disruption of our lives might still seem to be no more than a giant pause — global in scale and unprecedented, yes, but nonetheless temporary. But what if, as some experts reckon, this pause lasts years? What if there’s no return to normality even when it’s over? Maybe this pandemic isn’t ...

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• 25 April

  Invisibility cloaks and air purifiers

  

  Bloomberg Gorden Wagener has spent a good amount of his coronavirus quarantine thinking about waffles. Daimler’s head of design, who created such iconic cars as the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren and Vision Mercedes concepts, wanted to bake bread during his pandemic free time, but soon found the bread maker he wanted was out of stock. So he ordered a waffle iron ...

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• 25 April

  Facebook is taking on Zoom with new video calling feature

  

  Bloomberg Facebook Inc. is launching a new group video chat product meant to capitalise on a world now stuck indoors and offer an alternative to services that have exploded in popularity in recent months, like Zoom. Messenger Rooms, a feature that will be available on Facebook’s core social network and its Messenger app, will allow video chats among as many ...

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• 25 April

  Apple, Google boost privacy protections for contact-tracing tool

  

  Bloomberg Apple Inc. and Google said they are putting stronger privacy protections in their upcoming contact-tracing tool for Covid-19 and that an early version will launch for developers next week. The companies said the system’s tracking keys — a string of characters linked to a user’s device — will be generated in more random ways, and that Bluetooth data will ...

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