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Bloomberg The novel coronavirus outbreak has derailed Myanmar’s move to open its stock market to foreign investors. Only two of the country’s five listed securities have attracted international traders since rules were relaxed on March 20, leaving their foreign-shareholding ratios at minimal levels. Officials had hoped to attract funds from both expatriates and non-resident foreigners. “After two trading days when ...

Bloomberg Australians have done a good job in adjusting to government restrictions and social-distancing measures but it isn’t the right time to begin easing some of those rules, Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy said. “It’s really important that we look at what’s happened around the world, where people have released restrictions and had to reimpose them,” Murphy told reporters. Australia ...

Bloomberg The Philippines should gradually reopen the economy and allow businesses to operate at 50% capacity to save jobs, according to Teresita Sy-Coson who helps run an empire ranging from banking to retail under SM Investments Corp. More than 1 million workers were affected by temporary closures, prompting 98% of almost 42,000 establishments to seek assistance for their employees, the ...

Bloomberg Tokyo reported an additional 166 coronavirus cases on Sunday, bringing the total in the city to 2,068. Governor Yuriko Koike released the daily increase in an online briefing. New infections eased from a single-day record gain of 197 marked the previous day. Japan’s Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura urged residents to further limit contact with other people and warned it ...

Bloomberg Singapore will start imposing fines on first-timers who flout social-distancing rules, while those who aren’t wearing masks may be barred from entering some premises which provide essential services, as the spread of coronavirus in the city-state showed few signs of abating. The government has closed beaches, and some areas of parks and nature reserves, saying “tougher measures” are necessary ...

Bloomberg India’s government is likely to divide the country into three zones — red, orange and green — during the proposed extended period of lockdown and might permit a few services to function in safe zones, the Economic Times reported, citing people it didn’t identify. No activity will be allowed in the red zones where sizable number of cases were ...

Bloomberg By proposing to obliterate the legal justification for restricting toxic pollution from power plants, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has flouted bedrock practices that have driven federal policymaking for decades, according to a group of resource economists writing in the journal Science. Finalised in 2012, the agency’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) was the first US rule ...

Bloomberg Ethiopia’s government vowed to continue work on a massive dam that’s stoked tensions with Egypt, even as the Horn of Africa nation contends with the growing spread of the coronavirus. Completing what would be Africa’s largest hydropower reservoir, filling it and producing electricity is a top priority for Ethiopia, State Minister for Finance Eyob Tekalign said on a conference ...

Bloomberg The cost of pollution is headed for its biggest weekly gain in more than two years in Europe on optimism that the economy is preparing to snap back from coronavirus-imposed lockdowns. After falling 25% in March, the price of permits to emit carbon dioxide is still well below where it started the year. The gains are a sign that ...

Bloomberg Canadian lawmakers approved a bill to subsidise wages by 75% in a bid to stabilize the economy as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the coronavirus his generation’s greatest challenge yet. The flagship C$73 billion ($52 billion) program — more than one-quarter of the government’s emergency fiscal plan to date — was passed in an emergency sitting of the House ...