PARIS - Long-dormant viruses brought back to life; the resurgence of deadly and disfiguring smallpox; a dengue or zika "season" in Europe.
These could be disaster movie storylines, but they are also serious and increasingly plausible scenarios of epidemics unleashed by global warming, scientists say.
The COVID-19 pandemic that has swept the globe and claimed over 760,000 lives so far almost certainly came from a wild bat, highlighting the danger of humanity's constant encroachment on the planet's dwindling wild spaces.
But the expanding ecological footprint of our species could trigger epidemics in other ways too.
Climate change -- already wreaking havoc with one degree Celsius of warming -- is also emerging as a driver of infectious disease, whether by expanding the footprint of malaria- and dengue-carrying mosquitos, or defrosting prehistoric pathogens from the Siberian permafrost.
'IGNORANCE IS OUR ENEMY'
"In my darkest moments, I see a really horrible future for Homo sapiens because we are an animal, and when we extend our borders, things will happen to us," said Birgitta Evengard, a researcher in clinical microbiology at Umea University in Sweden.
"Our biggest enemy is our own ignorance," she added. "Nature is full of microorganisms."
Think of permafrost, a climate change time bomb spread across Russia, Canada and Alaska that contains three times the carbon that has been emitted since the start of industrialization.
Even if humanity manages to cap global warming at under two degrees Celsius, the cornerstone goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement, the permafrost area will decrease by a quarter by 2100, according to the UN's climate science panel, the IPCC.
And then there are the permafrost's hidden treasures.
"Microorganisms can survive in frozen space for a long, long time," said Vladimir Romanovsky, a professor of geophysics at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks.
AN ANTHRAX COMEBACK?
As ground thaws, once-frozen soil particles, organic material and microorganisms that had been locked away for millennia are carried toward the surface by water flows, he explained.
"That's how thawing can spread these microorganisms into present day environments."
There are already examples of ancient, long-frozen bugs coming to life.
"When you put a seed into soil that is then frozen for thousands of years, nothing happens," said Jean-Michel Claverie, an emeritus professor of genomics at the School of Medicine of Aix-Marseille University in France.
"But when you warm the earth, the seed will be able to germinate," he added. "That is similar to what happens with a virus."
Claverie's lab has successfully revived Siberian viruses that are at least 30,000 years old.
These reanimated bugs only attack amoebas, but tens of thousands of years ago there were certainly others that aimed higher up the food chain.
"Neanderthals, mammoths, woolly rhinos all got sick, and many died," said Claverie. "Some of the viruses that caused their sicknesses are probably still in the soil."
The number of bacteria and viruses lurking in the permafrost is incalculable, but the more important question is how dangerous they are.
And here, scientists disagree.
"Anthrax shows that bacteria can be resting in permafrost for hundreds of years and be revived," said Evengard.
In 2016, a child in Siberia died from the disease, which had disappeared from the region at least 75 years earlier.
2-MILLION-YEAR-OLD PATHOGENS
This case has been attributed to the thawing of a long-buried carcass, but some experts counter that the animal remains in question may have been in shallow dirt and thus subject to periodic thawing.
Other pathogens -- such as smallpox or the influenza strain that killed tens of millions in 1917 and 1918 -- may also be present in the sub-Arctic region.
But they "have probably been inactivated", Romanovsky concluded in a study published earlier this year.
For Claverie, however, the return of smallpox -- officially declared eradicated 50 years ago -- cannot be excluded. 18th- and 19th-century victims of the disease "buried in cemetaries in Siberia are totally preserved by the cold," he noted.
In the unlikely event of a local epidemic, a vaccine is available.
The real danger, he added, lies in deeper strata where unknown pathogens that have not seen daylight for two million years or more may be exposed by global warming.
If there were no hosts for the bugs to infect, there would not be a problem, but climate change -- indirectly -- has intervened here as well.
"With the industrial exploitation of the Arctic, all the risk factors are there -- pathogens and the people to carry them," Claverie said.
The revival of ancient bacteria or viruses remains speculative, but climate change has already boosted the spread of diseases that kill about half a million people every year: malaria, dengue, chikungunya, zika.
"Mosquitoes moving their range north are now able to overwinter in some temperate regions," said Jeanne Fair, deputy group leader for biosecurity and public health at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
"They also have longer breeding periods."
'CLIMATE CHANGE APERITIF'
Native to southeast Asia, the tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus) -- which carries dengue and chikungunya -- arrived in southern Europe in the first decade of this century and has been moving rapidly north ever since, to Paris and beyond.
Meanwhile, another dengue-bearing mosquito, Aedes aegypti, has also appeared in Europe. Whichever species may be the culprit, the Europe Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has registered 40 cases of local transmission of dengue between 2010 and 2019.
"An increase in mean temperature could result in seasonal dengue transmission in southern Europe if A. aegypti infected with virus were to be established," according to the Europe Center for Disease Prevention and Control.
As for malaria -- a disease that once blighted southern Europe and the southern United States and for which an effective treatment exists -- the risk of exposure depends in large part on social-economic conditions.
More than five billion people could be living in malaria-affected regions by 2050 if climate change continues unabated, but strong economic growth and social development could reduce that number to less than two billion, according to a study cited by the IPCC.
"Recent experience in southern Europe demonstrates how rapidly the disease may reappear if health services falter," the IPCC said in 2013, alluding to a resurgence of cases in Greece in 2008.
In Africa -- which saw 228 million cases of malaria in 2018, 94 percent of the world's total -- the disease vector is moving into new regions, notably the high-altitude plains of Ethiopia and Kenya.
For the moment, the signals for communicable tropical diseases "are worrying in terms of expanding vectors, not necessarily transmission," said Cyril Caminade, an epidemiologist working on climate change at the Institute of Infection and Global Health at the University of Liverpool.
"That said, we're only tasting the aperitif of climate change so far," he added.
Agence France-Presse
World No.1 Novak Djokovic on Tuesday said he had tested positive for coronavirus, the Serb star becoming the fourth player to contract the virus after taking part in his exhibition tennis tournament in the Balkans.
Djokovic, who is "not showing any symptoms" according to a statement from his spokesperson, joined Grigor Dimitrov, Borna Coric and Viktor Troicki in testing positive for COVID-19.
Djokovic said his wife Jelena also tested positive while the results of their children were negative.
"I am extremely sorry for each individual case of infection," the 33-year-old Serb said in a statement.
"I hope that it will not complicate anyone's health situation and that everyone will be fine," the 17-time Grand Slam winner added, saying he would go into self-isolation for the next 14 days.
Bulgaria's Dimitrov, the world No. 19, announced on Sunday he had tested positive after pulling out of the event, the biggest since the tennis season was halted because of the pandemic.
Croatia's Coric and Troicki of Serbia also followed suit on Monday, revealing they also had tested positive.
Sunday's final in the Croatian coastal town of Zadar, which was supposed to feature Djokovic and Russia's Andrey Rublev, was cancelled.
Some 4,000 fans watched the first leg of the tournament in Belgrade earlier this month.
The slew of positive tests raises questions over the sport's planned return in August.
Agence France-Presse
Major League Baseball's Philadelphia Phillies have closed their Florida training base after eight COVID-19 positives and multiple reports say MLB's Toronto Blue Jays and the NHL Tampa Bay Lightning also shuttered training facilities.
Friday's moves came as state officials announced a record one-day spike of COVID-19 cases, with nearly 4,000 new record infections in Florida.
The NBA and Major League Soccer plan to gather in quarantine areas near Orlando to resume their virus-halted campaigns in July after play was stopped in March.
The Phillies said five players and three staff members tested positive for COVID-19 at the club's Clearwater training facility, which MLB said was being shuttered indefinitely.
The team said a further 12 staff members and 20 players from the club's major league and minor league rosters were awaiting results of tests.
The Tampa Bay Times and ESPN reported the NHL Lightning closed its training facility, just 23 miles (37km) from Clearwater, after multiple players and staff members tested positive for COVID-19.
The Lightning facility is closed until at least July 6, the Times reported.
Also on Friday, Toronto Maple Leafs star Auston Matthews went into quarantine at his home in Arizona after testing positive for COVID-19, the Toronto Sun reported.
The 22-year-old Matthews is hoping to be healthy enough to attend the Leafs' training camp which begins on July 10. Arizona, and especially the Phoenix area where Matthews grew up, has also seen a spike in cases.
The Blue Jays closed their spring training facility in Dunedin, four miles north of Clearwater, after a player exhibited coronavirus symptoms, ESPN reported, saying the player had recently spent time with Phillies players. He is awaiting results of a COVID-19 test.
Phillies managing partner John Middleton said all the team's facilities were being closed as a precaution.
"The Phillies are committed to the health and welfare of our players, coaches and staff as our highest priority, and as a result of these confirmed tests, all facilities in Clearwater have been closed indefinitely to all players, coaches and staff and will remain closed until medical authorities are confident that the virus is under control and our facilities are disinfected," Middleton said in a statement.
The club said it was "too early to know" how the Clearwater outbreak could impact the Phillies' 2020 season.
Major League Baseball is currently locked in bitter negotiations with the league's players union over the terms of a shortened season.
Agence France-Presse
WASHINGTON - The United States lost another 687 people to the new coronavirus in the 24 hours leading up to 8:30 pm (0030 GMT) Thursday, according a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
It marks the eighth day in which the daily toll from the virus has been fewer than 1,000, even as the US remains the country hardest-hit by the pandemic with a total of 118,381 deaths out of a total of 2,187,876 official cases.
Some 20 states have seen a rebound in infections as the epicenter of the country's outbreak has moved from New York and the country's Northeast to the South and West.
But the White House's chief infectious disease expert said Thursday he does not think new widespread containment measures will be necessary.
"I don't think we're going to be talking about going back to lockdown," said Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health, when asked if some states should re-issue stay-at-home orders.
"I think we're going to be talking about trying to better control those areas of the country that seem to be having a surge of cases."
Agence France-Presse
STOCKHOLM - Deaths in Sweden from COVID-19 passed 5,000 on Wednesday, the Public Health Agency said, far more than in neighboring Nordic countries.
The official death toll has now reached 5,041, up from 4,939 on Tuesday.
Sweden has taken a softer approach to fighting the coronavirus, leaving most schools, shops and restaurants open and relying on voluntary measures focused on physical distancing and good hygiene.
Deaths in Sweden has been far higher relative to the size of the population than in Denmark, Norway and Finland, where authorities have taken a stricter approach. But they have been lower than in Britain, Italy and Spain, where there have also been lockdowns.
(Reporting by Johan Ahlander; editing by Johannes Hellstrom)
-reuters-
DAKAR, Senegal — When Daniel Khan Mbuh died in a hospital in northern Cameroon, the hospital declared the cause of death to be COVID-19 — then released the body to the family instead of arranging for a safe burial, his daughter Stella said.
Mbuh said she was told the house where she had been caring for her father in the city of Bamenda would be disinfected. Nobody came. When she tried to get tested, the hospital refused, saying there were not enough test kits. And she was never advised to self-isolate, so she simply imposed her own two-week quarantine on herself and her siblings.
“They said they are following contacts,” Mbuh said of health officials, “but I am one of the contacts. And I am not being followed.”
The spread of the new coronavirus is now accelerating in many countries in Africa, where medical resources are stretched, rumors are rife and efforts to stop the pandemic are sometimes haphazard.
Public health experts have warned that Africa could become the next epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The World Health Organization said last week that confirmed cases in Africa had doubled in 18 days to reach 200,000; the first 100,000 took 98 days.
“Even though these cases in Africa account for less than 3% of the global total, it’s clear that this pandemic is accelerating,” Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO’s regional director for Africa, said in a video briefing last week.
She said that until there was a vaccine available, the continent would have to live with a steady increase of cases.
Most African nations staved off the initial spread of the virus for several months, partly by closing borders early, banning public gatherings and, in some countries, effectively tracing contacts using past experience of infectious diseases.
But the time this bought was not enough to bolster weak health care systems and to prepare for the predicted explosion of cases.
And now that many African countries, like others across the globe, are lifting their restrictions in order to restart their economies, the virus has new opportunity to spread and potentially, to overwhelm health care systems.
Nigerian doctors announced a nationwide strike starting on Monday over the lack of personal protective equipment in government hospitals and hazard pay for treating COVID-19 patients. Dozens of Nigerian health care workers have been infected, partly because they had no protective gear.
Epidemiologists at the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned of a “catastrophic shortage” of health care professionals, and a drastic reduction of medical supplies because of border closures, price increases and restrictions on exports imposed during the pandemic.
“Africa needs to intensify its efforts to slow the spread of the pandemic,” they said in an article published last week in the journal Nature. They said that the continent needed financial support to stop the pandemic and tackle its economic and humanitarian effects.
The early spread of the pandemic in many African countries was driven by foreigners and the economic elite: people from Europe, and those with the means to travel there.
It has continued to spread among elites. Ghana’s health minister caught the virus “in the line of duty,” the country’s president, Nana Akufo-Addo, said on Sunday. Four people in the Kenyan president’s office tested positive and have been taken to the hospital, according to a statement from the office.
However, what has often been perceived in Africa as a foreigners’ disease is increasingly reaching all sections of society. Testing is still extremely limited in most countries, so it is impossible to know how widely the pandemic has taken hold. But a month ago, the WHO predicted that between 29 and 44 million Africans could become infected in the first year.
Truckers are carrying the coronavirus across borders, just as truckers had also spread HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Countries now have set up border controls, which can intensify the points of contact and possible spread of infection.
In the border town of Garoua-Boulaï in the Central African Republic, dozens of truck drivers jostled outside a tarpaulin tent waiting to get tested for the coronavirus. Some wore masks, but many did not, or had pulled them down below their chins.
They had to wait for many days for results until their samples could be driven 370 miles across the country to the capital, Bangui. But as they waited, other citizens crossed back and forth at the border without being checked. No truck, no problem.
Rumors and lack of information have also contributed to the spread. In Tanzania, President John Magufuli said that the country had eradicated coronavirus “by the grace of God.” His government stopped releasing any data on cases after April 29.
In Nigeria, most of the public health messages have been released in English, which many Hausa speakers in the north do not understand.
-Ruth Maclean, The New York Times-
BANGKOK - Thailand on Monday lifted a nationwide curfew after more than two months and allowed restaurants to resume selling alcohol as the coronavirus crisis eased, with 21 days since a recorded case of local transmission.
The Southeast Asian nation of about 70 million people was the first country outside China to report a case of coronavirus, on Jan. 13, and has been a relative success story in containing it, with just 3,135 confirmed cases and 58 fatalities. Some 2,987 patients have recovered.
Officials have credited Thais' early adoption of wearing masks - ubiquitous in public since January - as well as its border closure, shuttering of many business and the curfew for the retreat of the new virus that has infected 7.9 million worldwide and killed more than 430,000.
Other establishments allowed to reopen on Monday were schools with less than 120 students, exhibition halls, music concerts, film productions, playgrounds, amusement parks and sports competitions without spectators.
Pubs, bars and karaoke outlets will remain closed, but restaurants that reopened two weeks ago with social distancing will now be able to serve alcohol.
Monday was the second time in five days that Thailand reported no new cases.
All new cases in the past three weeks have been found in quarantine among Thais returning from abroad, said Taweesin Wisanuyothin, a spokesman for the government's COVID-19 task force.
(Reporting by Panarat Thepgumpanat; Editing by Martin Petty)
-reuters-
ROME - Yellow police tape -- a familiar sight across Italy since the coronavirus began sweeping the country in March -- reappeared at the weekend outside a Rome squat where around 15 new cases have emerged.
Health workers insist the outbreak among squatters including a Peruvian family is under control, at a time when Italy is cautiously relaxing measures to contain the disease that has claimed more than 34,000 lives.
A second outbreak was far bigger and occurred at a hospital on the western edge of Rome, with 109 cases and five deaths.
Rome's regional COVID-19 crisis center said all those who tested positive for the virus at the illegally occupied building had been transferred. All their contacts were identified and 108 tests were carried out.
After the uproar of blaring ambulances to handle the new cluster of cases, the southern working-class district of Garbatella returned to normal on Sunday, apart from the police tape and a squad car outside the building, as well as a posse of journalists.
Mask-wearing shoppers could be seen buying groceries, a man walking his dog, another throwing garbage into an overflowing bin.
"Occupants who are still in the building are confined there," a police officer told AFP, adding that the Red Cross was delivering food to them.
Many of the windows were shuttered in the orange brick block of flats, typical of the buildings that sprang up in the outskirts of Rome during the 1970s.
The squatters also receive aid from an NGO.
An employee at a nearby grocery store who gave his name only as Ion said the inhabitants were both South American and Italian, "working people, mainly families".
He added that some of the flats share toilets.
"This doesn't worry us very much," he said. "We're wearing masks and being careful."
But Raffaele, a 77-year-old who lives nearby, complained that "there is absolutely no check (on) constant comings and goings of people from all over the world."
He said he feared that such transience could help spread the coronavirus. "Let's say we are being very careful, we are disinfecting non-stop."
'NO ILLUSIONS' Meanwhile two army vehicles were stationed outside the San Raffaele Pisana hospital on Sunday, but the situation appeared under control.
Health officials said rigorous contact tracing was under way, with some 200 recent patients being tested.
The two new outbreaks of COVID-19 came as Italy was re-emerging from lockdown in a phased process that began in early May.
The epidemic appeared under control even in its epicenter in the northern Lombardy region.
"No one had any illusions that the problems were over," WHO deputy director Ranieri Guerra told Italian journalists. "It means the virus hasn't lost its infectiousness, it isn't weakening... we shouldn’t let down our guard."
However, the Italian immunologist added: "Such micro-outbreaks were inevitable, but they are limited in time and space. And today we have the tools to intercept them and confine them."
Italy, which went under nationwide quarantine on March 10, has been one of the hardest-hit countries in the world by COVID-19, mostly in the north.
Agence France-Presse
CHICAGO - A series of studies in mice of Moderna Inc's COVID-19 vaccine lent some assurance that it may not increase the risk of more severe disease, and that one dose may provide protection against the novel coronavirus, according to preliminary data released on Friday.
Prior studies on a vaccine for SARS - a close cousin to the new virus that causes COVID-19 - suggests vaccines against this type of virus might have the unintended effect of causing more severe disease when the vaccinated person is later exposed to the pathogen, especially in individuals who do not produce an adequately strong immune response.
Scientists have seen this risk as a hurdle to clear before vaccines can be safely tested in thousands of healthy people.
While the data released by the US National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) and Moderna offered some assurance, the studies do not fully answer the question.
"This is the barest beginning of preliminary information," said Dr. Gregory Poland, an immunologist and vaccine researcher at the Mayo Clinic who has seen the paper, which has yet to undergo peer review.
Poland said the paper was incomplete and disorganized, and the numbers of animals tested were small.
The authors said they have submitted the work to a top-tier journal. Moderna's vaccine is in midstage testing in healthy volunteers. Moderna said on Thursday it plans to begin final-stage trials enrolling 30,000 people in July.
In the animal studies, mice received one or two shots of a variety of doses of Moderna's vaccine, including doses considered not strong enough to elicit a protective immune response. Researchers then exposed the mice to the virus.
Subsequent analyses suggest "sub-protective" immune responses do not cause what is known as vaccine-associated enhanced respiratory disease, a susceptibility to more severe disease in the lungs.
"Subprotective doses did not prime mice for enhanced immunopathology following (exposure)," Dr. Barney Graham of the Vaccine Research Center at NIAID and colleagues wrote in the manuscript, posted on the bioRxiv website.
Further testing suggested the vaccine induces antibody responses to block the virus from infecting cells.
The vaccine also appeared to protect against infection by the coronavirus in the lungs and noses without evidence of toxic effects, the team wrote.
They noted the mice that received just one dose before exposure to the virus seven weeks later were "completely protected against lung viral replication," suggesting a single vaccination prevented the virus from replicating in the lungs.
"At first glance, it looks promising in inducing neutralizing antibody protection in mice," Dr. Peter Hotez, a researcher at Baylor College of Medicine said in an email. He had not reviewed the paper in detail.
Poland, who was not involved with the research, said the paper leaves out "important parameters" that could help scientists judge the work.
"The results, such as they are presented, provide interesting data that are reassuring... This needs to be replicated and it needs to be peer-reviewed," he said.
-reuters-
About one in five of Britain's patients with COVID-19 caught the disease while in hospital, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported, citing papers by government scientists.
At the peak of the coronavirus outbreak in Britain, transmission within hospitals was believed to account for up to 22 percent of cases in hospitalized patients, and up to 11 percent of deaths, the report added.
Data from Public Health England showed that as Saturday, the UK has logged 292,950 cases of the disease, with 41,481 deaths.
-reuters-
BANGKOK - A single mother in Thailand is doing brisk business out of face shields with characters from cartoons, games and sci-fi movies, hoping to cash in and promote safety for children as her country emerges from the coronavirus pandemic.
From her small studio room, Maysa Talerd, 31, has been designing patterns and carefully pressing stickers of famous fictional superheroes and villains onto the face shields, aiming to blend safety and style and expand her new business.
"Normally, a face shield is transparent, so people might get bored. With these fun designs, they'll encourage people to wear them," she said.
"At least with the cartoon characters, kids will want to wear them and show off to their friends at school."
Orders are pouring in for shields with the faces from Darth Vader and his Stormtroopers from Star Wars films to Japanese superhero Mobile Suit Gundam and the heroes, villains and figures of Thai folklore.
Thailand is gradually easing restrictions in an effort to revive its economy, while keeping strict physical distancing measures in place to prevent infections.
It has recorded 58 deaths so far and 3,125 confirmed cases - the majority of whom have recovered - and has not reported a local transmission in 17 days.
A few months ago, Talerd had no income but is on her way to being financially stable, receiving orders of 50 to 100 shields at a time, which she sells for 180 baht ($5.77) each.
"I think this might become the main income for me in the future because toy stores are contacting me to do wholesale," she said.
-reuters-
HONG KONG - Equities and oil sank Friday while the dollar rallied as investors ran for the hills following the worst Wall Street rout since March, fuelled by worries about the economic recovery and a second virus wave in the US.
And the magnitude of the financial earthquake caused by the crisis was brought home by data showing the British economy shrank 20.4 percent month-on-month in April.
World markets have blasted higher since hitting a deep trough three months ago, supported by trillions of dollars in government and central bank help and an easing of lockdown measures.
But the optimism on trading floors was shattered Wednesday when Federal Reserve boss Jerome Powell signalled the world's top economy would take some time to bounce back from the crisis.
While his comments, and the bank's decision to keep interest rates at near zero for at least two years, was expected, the dose of reality jolted traders.
That coincided with figures showing a spike in new infections in key states including Texas, California, Arizona and Florida, which fanned concerns of a new wave as the nation slowly reopens.
However, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said there would be no more shutdowns, telling CNBC: "I think we've learned that if you shut down the economy, you're going to create more damage."
"Investors have been arguing in recent weeks that the stock market performance and economic reality have been disconnected, wondering when reality might hit the market," said JP Morgan Asset Management strategist Tai Hui.
"The fear of a rising rate of COVID-19 infections is the most important driver in our view for this sell-off."
Hong Kong, Sydney, Mumbai, Singapore, Jakarta and Bangkok all fell between one and two percent while Wellington and Seoul were more than two percent lower. Tokyo finished 0.8 percent lower and Shanghai was slightly off.
London opened more than one percent lower after the GDP figures were released, while Paris and Frankfurt were also lower.
Still, the losses were shallower than earlier in the day and much lighter than on Wall Street on Thursday, where all three main indexes were routed.
The correction that was needed?
Analysts also blamed profit-taking after the huge run-up since March, which has seen some indexes rise more than 50 percent, with many saying investors had run ahead of themselves on hopes for a V-shaped recovery.
"There is an argument to be made that equities were due a decent correction in light of the gains made in the past three months," said David Madden of CMC Markets.
"On the other hand, economies can't stay locked down forever so a jump in the infection rate is going to be the cost of trying to get things back to normal."
The world equities retreat was reflected in oil markets, with both main contracts tumbling more than eight percent Thursday, hit by uncertainty over demand and data showing a jump in US stockpiles.
And the losses continued into Friday, weighing on energy giants in the region.
The dollar, under pressure for weeks owing to the huge Fed easing measures and the return of risk-taking, rallied as investors sought its safe-haven status. The greenback was up more than one percent against the Canadian, Australian and New Zealand dollars as well as Indonesia's rupiah.
It also jumped more than two percent against the Mexican peso and South African rand.
"Who knows whether this is just the 'correction we had to have' or the start of something more serious," said National Australia Bank's Ray Attrill.
"Certainly though, we don't doubt the ongoing power of central bank policy actions -- from the Fed in particular -- in continuing to place a floor under risk assets relative to the underlying economic fundamentals on which stock prices are supposed to be based."
Agence France-Presse
BELGRADE, Serbia -- After being suspended for three months due to the coronavirus pandemic, top-level international tennis returns this weekend in Belgrade with a charity tournament hosted by world number one Novak Djokovic and where fans will be welcome.
The Adria Tour will be held until July 5 in Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia.
On the tournament's first stop, on Saturday and Sunday, the Serbian star will be joined by world number three Dominic Thiem.
Germany's Alexander Zverev and Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov, ranked seventh and 19th in the world respectively, are also set to take part.
The ATP and WTA Tours have been suspended since March due to the pandemic and will not resume at least until the end of July.
The French Open was postponed until September and Wimbledon was cancelled for the first time since World War II.
The four tennis stars will play under regulations allowing up to 1,000 people to attend open-air sports events, which were introduced in Serbia on Monday.
The matches will be played at Novak Tennis Centre, financed by Djokovic's family, with a view of the Danube river.
Tickets sold out in seven minutes after they were put on sale online last Wednesday.
The event will be broadcast live in more than 100 countries, its director Djordje Djokovic, Novak's younger brother, said.
"Every spectator will get a mask at the entrance, disinfectants will be placed throughout the complex," Djordje Djokovic said.
Also, the entire centre will be disinfected after every match.
"We are professionals in this sport and we want to play," said the 33-year-old Djokovic.
However, two tennis giants -- Roger Federer, out for the rest of the year following knee surgery, and Rafael Nadal, who recently resumed training -- will be absent.
"Taking the situation into account, I didn't have the nerve to call and invite them," said Djokovic.
Both Djokovic and Thiem were training during the lockdown.
"I had a tennis court so I could train every day," said Djokovic referring to his period of confinement in Spain, where he was staying with his family at a home in Marbella.
Thiem said he was the best prepared player in Belgrade since he has played matches in Austria behind closed doors.
After the Serbian capital, the tournament will move to Zadar, on Croatia's Adriatic coast, where Djokovic and his peers will be joined by two Croatian tennis stars -- former US Open champion Marin Cilic and Borna Coric.
After Montenegro, the event will end on July 5 with an exhibition match between Bosnian number one Damir Dzumhur and Djokovic.
"In Sarajevo and Bosnia, people really love Djokovic... it will be an exceptional event for them, an ideal opportunity to see Novak up close," world number 107 Dzumhur said.
All the matches will be played on clay.
The money raised will be donated to various regional charities.
Balkan countries coped with the coronavirus pandemic with relative success.
The region of some 22 million people registered fewer than 24,000 infections and around 700 deaths.
Agence France-Presse
MOSCOW - Russian restaurant owners stripped of their income by the coronavirus lockdown are campaigning for their businesses to be allowed to reopen by posting pictures of themselves naked on social media.
Hundreds of bar, restaurant and cafe employees have posted photographs of themselves naked with carefully positioned plates, cups, saucepans, bottles, bar stools and napkin holders.
Their demand is for authorities to allow them to start serving clients as the country gradually eases measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
"We are naked because we are left with nothing," said Arthur Galaychyuk, owner of the Relab Family bar chain in the city of Kazan, whose 20 employees took part in the campaign.
Restaurants in Kazan will be allowed to open their summer terraces on June 11 after more than two months of lockdown.
"We don't want to stage a strip show or to fool around, we only want one thing - to work!" said Pavel, a chef from the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, in a post with a group picture of his colleagues wearing only masks and holding kitchenware.
"We don't pose more of a risk than supermarkets, shopping malls, hair salons or public transport," the post said.
Authorities in Novosibirsk have not announced when local restaurants can open.
President Vladimir Putin ordered strict lockdown measures at the end of March shutting all businesses except food stores and pharmacies. The country's regions were allowed to adjust the measures depending on the situation on the ground.
Moscow is in the process of lifting the lockdown and many businesses, including shopping malls, book stores and beauty salons have reopened.
The Russian capital plans to allow cafes and restaurants to open their outside terraces later in June before reopening fully from June 23. Indoor restaurants and bars remain closed in other parts of Russia.
-reuters-
LONDON - The United Kingdom's COVID-19 death toll neared 52,000 on Wednesday, according to a Reuters tally of official data sources that highlighted the country's place as one of the worst hit in the world.
New data for England and Wales brought the toll to 51,766, the highest in Europe and putting the UK behind only the much larger United States in a pandemic that has killed more than 400,000 people around the world.
Such a large death toll has prompted criticism of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who opposition parties say was too slow to impose a lockdown or protect the elderly in nursing homes or to build a test and trace system.
The Reuters tally comprises fatalities where COVID-19 was mentioned on death certificates in England, Wales and Northern Ireland up to May 29, and up to May 31 in Scotland. It also includes more recent hospital deaths.
Unlike the lower death toll published daily by the government, the Reuters tally includes suspected cases - which gives a more accurate picture because testing was scarce early in the crisis.
Johnson's government has said it is making real progress in driving down the number of deaths that take place each day.
The UK death toll for confirmed cases of COVID-19 rose by 55 to 40,597 on Monday, the lowest rise since a lockdown was imposed in March.
Still, the death toll surpasses even some projections by the government's own scientific advisers.
In March, Britain's chief scientific adviser said keeping deaths below 20,000 would be a "good outcome." In April, Reuters reported the government's worst-case scenario was 50,000 deaths.
Epidemiologists say excess mortality - deaths from all causes that exceed the 5-year average for the time of year - is the best way of gauging deaths from a disease outbreak because it is internationally comparable.
Although these figures take longer to compile, Britain is faring badly here too.
About 64,000 more people than usual have died in the United Kingdom during this year's pandemic, according to the latest available data, an expert from the Office for National Statistics said on Tuesday.
-reuters-
PARIS - International airlines are in line to make a combined net loss of more than $84 billion this year in the wake of the coronavirus crisis which has decimated air travel, the International Air Transport Association said Tuesday.
"After $84 billion net losses this year we forecast supplementary losses of $15 billion in 2021," the IATA said at a new conference, revealing the extent to which its 290 member carriers have been affected by the virus and the ensuing global lockdown designed to limit its spread.
"The losses this year will be the biggest in aviation history, over $84 billion in 2020 and nearly $16 billion in 2021," said IATA director general Alexandre de Juniac.
"By comparison, airlines lost $31 billion with the Global Financial Crisis and oil price spike in 2008 and 2009. There is no comparison for the dimension of this crisis."
De Juniac said IATA research "shows that people will return to flying as soon as borders open" and carriers had to be prepared for an orderly resumption once demand returns in line with health guidelines.
"The outlook is challenging to say the least. But aviation is a resilient industry," De Juniac added. "With a globally harmonized and mutually recognized approach to the re-start measures, we can rebuild the confidence of travelers and kick-start the recovery in aviation and more broadly.
He added the sector hoped that a range of safety measures including more effective mass testing would "give governments the confidence to re-open borders without quarantine measures" as "if quarantine is introduced economies are effectively kept in lockdown for the purposes of travel."
But De Juniac warned of a growing debt burden as despite government relief measures that had grown by $120 billion to $550 billion -- equivalent to some 92 percent of expected 2021 revenues.
The IATA warned in April that airlines faced an "apocalypse" without state aid and forecast that revenues would fall by some 55 percent amid the sharpest falloff in passenger demand since the 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001.
De Juniac said he hopes to see a more orderly resumption of service than on that occasion "when everybody essentially did their own thing and we have spent 20 years sorting out the differences."
Agence France-Presse
NEW DELHI-- Malls and temples re-opened in several cities across India on Monday despite the country recording a record daily number of new coronavirus infections, with the pandemic expected to ravage the country for weeks to come.
After a 10-week lockdown the government has risked lifting some restrictions in a bid to ease the devastating blow to the economy dealt by the coronavirus.
But the number of new cases rose by 9,983 to 256,611, according to government figures announced Monday, putting the country of 1.3 billion on course to overtake Britain and Spain among nations with the highest number of infections.
The reported death toll of 7,135 is much lower than reported in other badly-hit countries, but the epidemic is only expected to peak locally in July, according to health experts.
Still, in the capital Delhi, shopping malls, restaurants, temples, and mosques were allowed to re-open for the first time since March 25.
The response was tentative, however, and only a trickle of people returned to some places of worship.
Businessman Mohit Budhiraja, wearing a mask and carrying sanitizer, went to his local temple in eastern Delhi for the first time since the lockdown.
"It felt like something was missing when I couldn't come to the temple for all these weeks," he said.
"I hope things improve, but now I will come every day."
Many temples set up sanitization tunnels at their entrances and barred worshippers from bringing offerings.
"People are having their temperature tested twice before they get in," said Ravindra Goel, a trustee of the Jhandewalan temple, one of the oldest in Delhi.
The 400-year-old Jama Masjid mosque -- one of the biggest in India -- planned to allow the faithful in just three times a day instead of the usual five.
MAJOR HIT
Delhi is one of India's worst coronavirus hotspots, accounting for more than 27,600 cases and 761 deaths -- although media reports say the real figures are much higher.
Mumbai, which accounts for around a fifth of India's cases and hospitals have been overrun, was more cautious. Roadside shops were allowed to re-open, but malls, restaurants, and hair salons remained shuttered.
The Indian government says the tough lockdown it ordered on March 25 has limited the spread of the coronavirus.
But it is now braced for a major hit to the economy, with millions of laborers now jobless.
Rating agencies have said the economy could contract by more than five percent this year, after average growth of about seven percent over the past decade.
Despite restrictions being eased last month, India's manufacturing sector is struggling to restart because of an exodus of migrant workers prompted by the virus lockdown.
Big cities -- once an attractive destination for workers from poor, rural regions -- have been hit by reverse migration as millions of laborers fled to their village homes.
"A lot of the manufacturing industry is actually located in the very states where the pandemic's impact has been great," Professor Santosh Mehrotra at Jawaharlal Nehru University told AFP last week.
"Now these are the areas where naturally workers have left in large numbers... They will not return in a hurry."
Agence France-Presse
TOKYO - The Tokyo metropolitan government will ask people working at nightclubs and similar entertainment establishments to regularly take coronavirus tests, Gov. Yuriko Koike said Sunday.
The policy is part of new measures aimed at stemming the spread of the virus in major nightlife districts in Tokyo, such as Shinjuku's Kabukicho area, she told reporters after holding talks with economy minister Yasutoshi Nishimura.
Since the relaxation of social and economic restrictions late last month, a number of new confirmed COVID-19 cases have been connected to so-called host clubs, where women pay to be entertained by young men with drinks.
Koike said Tokyo on Sunday confirmed 14 new cases and six of them were found to be involving people in nightlife districts.
On Saturday, the metropolitan government reported 26 new cases, out of which 12 infected with the virus were male employees, aged in their 20s and 30s, working at the same host club in Shinjuku Ward and four others were also suspected of being linked to nightlife establishments.
"With the involvement of experts, I'd like to continue working with the Tokyo metropolitan government," Nishimura separately told reporters, referring to their efforts to prevent the spread of the virus in night entertainment districts.
The Japanese government fully ended a nationwide state of emergency on May 25. Tokyo, which has seen the highest number of infections in the country at nearly 5,400, proceeded last Monday with its second stage of loosening business restrictions, including the reopening of most facilities such as cinemas, sports gyms and cram schools.
But just a day after Koike issued a warning or what she calls a "Tokyo alert" amid signs of a possible resurgence of infections.
Tokyo, with a population of roughly 14 million, has mapped out a three-step plan to ease virus restrictions, with museums, schools and sports facilities without spectator stands reopened in the first phase.
Karaoke boxes and bars will be able to reopen in the third phase of the capital's road map. But businesses regarded as "three Cs" of closed spaces, crowded places and close-contact settings, including nightclubs and live music venues, are not yet part of the three-phase policy.
Still, given that the restrictions are not mandatory, some nightlife establishments in the Kabukicho and other areas have stayed open, with their owners saying they cannot afford to continue losing money.
-Kyodo News-
LONDON - BP will cut about 15 percent of its workforce in response to the coronavirus crisis and as part of Chief Executive Bernard Looney's plan to shift the oil and gas major to renewable energy, it said on Monday.
Looney told employees in a global online call that the London-based company will cut 10,000 jobs from the current 70,100.
"We will now begin a process that will see close to 10,000 people leaving BP – most by the end of this year," Looney said in a statement.
Reuters had earlier reported the planned job cuts, citing three company sources.
BP shares were up 3.3 percent by 1230 GMT, against a 2.2 percent gain for the broader European energy sector.
The affected roles will be mostly senior office-based positions and not front-line operational staff, the company said.
About a fifth of the job cuts will take place in Britain, where BP employs 15,000 people, a company spokesman said.
Like all the world's top energy companies, BP has cut its 2020 spending plans after the coronavirus pandemic brought an unprecedented drop in demand for oil. BP has flagged a 25 percent cut to $12 billion this year and said it would find $2.5 billion in cost savings by the end of 2021 through the digitalization and integration of its businesses.
On Monday, however, Looney said the company is likely to need to cut costs even further.
BP is giving no pay rises to senior employees until March 2021 and said it is unlikely to pay any cash bonuses this year.
ENERGY TRANSITION
The job reductions are also part of Looney's drive to make the 111-year-old oil company more nimble as it prepares for the shift to low-carbon energy, the sources said.
"It was always part of the plan to make BP a leaner, faster-moving and lower-carbon company," Looney said.
The spokesman said that the coronavirus crisis "amplified and accelerated" BP's transition plans.
Looney last month announced a large round of senior management appointments, halving the size of BP's leadership team under his plan to reshape the company's structure.
Shortly after taking office in February, the 49-year-old CEO said that he was creating 11 divisions to "reinvent" BP and dismantle the traditional structure dominated by its oil and gas production business and its refining, marketing and trading division.
Chevron Corp, the second-largest U.S. oil producer, last month said that it will cut between 10 percent and 15 percent of its global workforce as part of an ongoing restructuring.
Royal Dutch Shell, meanwhile, has initiated a voluntary redundancy program.
(Reporting by Ron Bousso and Shadia Nasralla Editing by Louise Heavens and David Goodman)
-reuters-
DUBAI - A wedding party contributed to a new surge in coronavirus infections in Iran, President Hassan Rouhani said on Saturday but insisted the country had no option but to keep its economy open despite warnings of a second wave of the epidemic.
Iran, which has been gradually relaxing its lockdown since mid-April, has reported a sharp rise of new daily infections in recent days. Thursday's toll of 3,574 new cases was the highest since February, when the outbreak was first reported.
"At one location, we witnessed a peak in this epidemic, the source of which was a wedding that caused problems for the people, health workers and losses to the economy and the country's health system," Rouhani said in a televised meeting in Tehran of a national committee tackling the outbreak. He did not say when or where the wedding took place.
New cases dipped to 2,269 on Saturday, bringing Iran's total cases to 169,425, with 8,209 deaths.
Health officials have been warning of a second wave of the outbreak, but say a reason for the surge in new cases could be wider testing. One official said about 70% of the new cases in Tehran were among those who had traveled outside the capital in recent days.
Iran has been struggling to curb the spread of COVID-19 but authorities are concerned that measures to limit public and economic life to contain the virus could wreck an economy already reeling under international sanctions.
"In these circumstances, we have no other choice," Rouhani added. "We have to work, our factories have to be active, our shops have to be open, and there has to be movement in the country as far as it is necessary."
Iranian universities reopened on Saturday after being closed for more than three and a half months, state media reported.
Nurseries will reopen next Saturday, Rouhani said. Domestic tourism travel can also resume, as well as classes on the Koran, music and languages.
From June 21, cinemas, theaters, concert and music halls can reopen but will only be allowed to be 50 percent full. More mosques will also be permitted to open, after those in the lowest-risk area reopened last month.
-reuters-
