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Bloomberg India will provide collateral-free loans worth $40 billion to boost liquidity for small businesses and help the economy tide over the coronavirus outbreak. The loans will benefit up to 4.5 million small businesses, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in New Delhi on Wednesday. The program will be open until October 31. “Essentially this is to spur growth and to ...

Bloomberg In China’s latest efforts to pit renewable energy against fossil fuels, it is again betting on size. Resources such as wind and solar don’t stand much of a chance if there isn’t a way to store energy when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. So some of China’s biggest state-owned companies are pouring in billions of ...

Bloomberg Afghan President Ashraf Ghani ordered government forces to resume operations against the Taliban and other insurgent groups after 40 people, including newborn babies, were killed when armed militants opened fire inside a hospital and at a funeral ceremony. The Taliban denied involvement in the attacks on the hospital in a Shiite neighbourhod of capital Kabul and on a funeral ...

Bloomberg As the coronavirus inflicts ever more death and economic carnage across the US, President Donald Trump is resorting to his preferred and battle-tested tactic to fight the biggest threat to his re-election: diversion. The shift was clear on Mother’s Day, when he flooded Twitter with 126 posts, including promoting a tweet that called his own Justice Department “corrupt.” A ...

Bloomberg The UK economy shrank almost 6% in March as the nation went into lockdown, plunging into what may be its deepest recession in more than three centuries. The sharp decline is only a small part of the damage of the restrictions to control the coronavirus, which were in place for all of April and look set to endure in ...

Bloomberg Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is seeking almost $656,000 in new funding from California in the midst of the billionaire’s battle over whether Tesla Inc. should be reopening its plant in the state. SpaceX’s request for funds to train existing workers and hire new ones will go before the state’s Employment Training Panel on May 15, one week ...

Bloomberg More than 1,000 workers at European slaughterhouses have contracted Covid-19, highlighting the growing challenges the global meat industry faces from the pandemic. In Ireland, 556 workers in 10 meat-processing facilities tested positive as of last week, the nation’s health department said. The Robert Koch Institute, which publishes daily Covid-19 reports in Germany, said there have been outbreaks at plants ...

DUBAI / WAM Lt. General His Highness Sheikh Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior, on Tuesday said that the UAE excels in dealing with all crises and exceptional circumstances and has made positivity the basis of its developmental drive. “This achievement is attributed to the leadership of President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed ...

ABU DHABI / WAM Etihad Credit Insurance (ECI) and Abu Dhabi Exports Office (Adex) on Tuesday announced a strategic alliance to help UAE exporters overcome the most pressing challenges they face in the current economic climate. Adex and ECI will combine their highly complementary suite of financial and insurance products and services to bring to UAE businesses a full range ...

Bloomberg Fuel consumption in India is showing signs of rebounding after witnessing the worst monthly sales in more than 12 years. Demand in May will be as much as 25% higher than April as planting season begins, requiring tractors and water pumps to burn more diesel, and the easing of the world’s biggest lockdown brings more trucks back to the ...