March, 2020

• 10 March

  Congo initiates probe into top general’s death

  

  Bloomberg Democratic Republic of Congo President Felix Tshisekedi initiated an independent investigation into the death of the country’s head of military intelligence and said preliminary results suggested he’d died by hanging. The United Nations peacekeeping mission in the central African nation is assisting with the probe, which is expected to conclude soon, according to minutes from a meeting Tshisekedi had ...

  Read More »
• 10 March

  Virus becomes new battleground for China-Taiwan rivalry

  

  Bloomberg The weeks-long ordeal of more than 1,000 Taiwanese stuck at the centre of China’s coronavirus outbreak shows how the global crisis has evolved into another battleground between Beijing and Taipei. Taiwan on Tuesday was set to airlift almost 500 of its residents from Wuhan, the original epicentre of an outbreak that has since spread across the globe and shaken ...

  Read More »
• 10 March

  Biden needs to admit he, Hunter made mistakes

  

  Former vice president Joe Biden’s astonishing political success over the past week has felt like a bandwagon for sensible politics. But to keep it rolling towards the general election in November, Biden will have to do something his rival President Trump would never consider: admit that he and his son made mistakes. Trump’s allies are already aiming their next artillery ...

  Read More »
• 10 March

  Work-from-home amid coronavirus

  

  The banging comes first, followed by the screaming. I could try to blot out the noise and carry on, but proximity to family is supposed to be one of the benefits of working from home. My one-year-old son knows there’s a computer keyboard on the other side of the door that needs a merry bashing with his tiny fists. I ...

  Read More »
• 10 March

  Colombia success story is missing something

  There is perhaps no greater success story in the world over the last three decades than Colombia. To see this, just stand in the middle of the Plaza de Bolivar in the centre of Bogota. In 1988, there was a gaping hole along one entire side of the square. That was where the Palace of Justice had been, before guerrillas ...

  Read More »
• 10 March

  Gold, Bitcoin no longer frenemies in virus era

  There was a time when Bitcoin earned its stripes as a safe asset in times of crisis or uncertainty. Now, it seems that a global disease outbreak has proven too much for the premier cryptocurrency, with prices plunging over the past month. Bloomberg Opinion first stumbled across the notion that Bitcoin was a sanctuary four years ago during Brexit fever, ...

  Read More »
• 10 March

  Italy’s coronavirus lockdown tests limits of democracy

  

  Italy has adopted seemingly draconian measures to stop the outbreak of Covid-19 that has killed 500 people in the country so far and [the number of virus cases soared by 25% to 9,172 on March 09]. [Italy imposed national restrictions on its 60 million people to control the coronavirus on Tuesday.] Initially, the government had announced the lockdown of northern ...

  Read More »
• 10 March

  How to turn banking rescue into a crisis

  

  Bungling the rescue of a bank that has more than $20 billion in deposits is probably the costliest own goal India has scored since its foolish November 2016 ban on most currency notes. Arm-twisting government-controlled State Bank of India to inject capital into failing Yes Bank Ltd was the only option left for New Delhi. But the halfhearted bailout just ...

  Read More »
• 10 March

  How Instagram exposes you to virus contagion

  

  You may not have been exposed to the new coronavirus yet, but you’ve almost certainly been exposed to an adjacent contagion. Maybe you’ve even helped spread it. It might be retweeting Australian complaints about supermarkets sold out of hand sanitiser. Liking Gwyneth Paltrow’s Instagram post of herself in a face mask. Scrolling agog through Facebook photos from a friend in ...

  Read More »
• 10 March

  Stocks climb after biggest rout since financial crisis

  

  Bloomberg Stocks climbed globally along with US index futures on Tuesday, recovering some ground after the deepest equity rout since the great financial crisis. Bonds and haven currencies trimmed their exceptional gains from a day earlier and the dollar strengthened. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index jumped alongside contracts on the three main American gauges, though few benchmarks came close to ...

  Read More »