Gru and Minions urge handwashing, fun at home in new coronavirus public service announcement

(Reuters) - Gru and the popular yellow Minions from the animated “Despicable Me” movie franchise are urging people to keep their distance to help fight the spread of the novel coronavirus in a new public service announcement unveiled on Wednesday.

Illumination, the animation studio behind “Despicable Me,” developed the PSA with the World Health Organization and the United Nations Foundation.

The PSA is voiced by actor Steve Carell as Gru and will be translated into multiple languages including Spanish, French, Portuguese and Arabic, among others.

In the minute-long PSA, Gru urges people to wash their hands regularly and keep physical distance, find fun things to do at home such as dancing and cooking a new dish, and to be kind to others.

“At this challenging time, we must find all ways possible to provide hope to people while sharing advice that can protect our health,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom, director-general of the World Health Organization, said in a statement.

Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Tom Brown

Auto industry races to make ventilators during virus crisis

The automotive industry is offering its expertise and manpower to the hospital sector as it gears up to build mechanical ventilators during the coronavirus pandemic, an initiative that is being met with some scepticism.

American auto manufacturers General Motors and Ford, French car companies PSA and Renault, and Formula 1 engineers have joined the ranks in response to a massive global shortage of the vital piece of medical equipment.

As hospitals around the world face a surge of patients with breathing difficulties from COVID-19, the scarcity of ventilators has forced doctors to make life-or-death decisions.

Repurposing car factories for emergency production has drawn comparisons to World War II, when they were used to build tanks and fighter planes.

But some experts say that in this situation, building critical care ventilators will require different techniques and procedures from what a car factory normally sees.

US President Donald Trump used wartime economy analogies to justify his appeal to the automobile industry as the country grapples with a mounting number of coronavirus cases. He ultimately used a 1950s law concerning defence production to force one of GM's plants to make ventilators.

In France, meanwhile, a consortium of industrial companies has been created -- including PSA and automotive equipment supplier Valeo -- to manufacture "10,000 ventilators by mid-May", President Emmanuel Macron announced Tuesday.

For its part, Mercedes has asked its Formula 1 team, which was idle due to postponed or cancelled Grand Prix races, to get to work.

The six-time world champion team built a less-invasive respiratory device in order to reserve ventilators -- which require breathing tubes and sedation -- for the most severely affected patients.

The team says it could manufacture some 1,000 units a day with the help of six other UK-based F1 teams which have committed to help build the devices.

A version of the device -- which increases air and oxygen flow into the lungs and is often used to treat sleep apnea -- has already been used in hospitals in Italy and China to help COVID-19 patients.

The "Project Pitlane" mission takes advantage of "the core skills of the F1 industry: rapid design, prototype manufacture, test and skilled assembly," Formula 1 said in a statement.

- Dependent on suppliers -

Some look sceptically on the car industry's entry into the world of medical equipment, however.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a non-profit organisation founded after the creation of the atomic bomb and which is known for its symbolic "Doomsday Clock", said in a recent article that car manufacturers are not best placed for assembling medical equipment.

"Ventilators might resemble the pumps and air conditioners used in automobiles, but few automakers build their own -- they buy them from specialised producers," the group pointed out.


While carmakers have under-utilised production capacity at the moment, they are still dependent on suppliers who are often overseas, at a moment when supply chains have nearly ground to a halt, it said in its report.

"Facile images of Ford assembly lines building World War II bombers can only get us so far in solving the ventilator problems of today," the group said.

But car manufacturers say they are up to the task.

Renault has put its "technocentre" outside of Paris, its largest research and development centre in France, to work on developing a prototype using state-of-the-art equipment such as 3D printers

In the world race to get ahead of the coronavirus, time is of the essence.

For Formula 1 and University College London engineers, "it took fewer than 100 hours from the initial meeting to production of the first device," the team said.

This may be a typical lead time in motor racing, but not necessarily in other industries.

Agence France-Presse

PSA and Fiat Chrysler unveil merger of equals

PARIS -- PSA and Fiat Chrysler unveiled Thursday a plan for a 50-50 merger of their operations to create the world's fourth-largest car manufacturer that would generate billions in savings without factory closures.

In a joint statement the French and US-Italian carmakers said their boards of directors "have each unanimously agreed to work towards a full combination of their respective businesses by way of a 50/50 merger."

It would be achieved via the creation of a parent company in the Netherlands in which the shareholders of each current group would own half.

The merged company would have combined sales of nearly 170 billion euros per year and 11 billion euros of operating profits, the carmakers said.

The Dutch-based parent company would have balanced representation and a majority of independent directors with FCA's John Elkann as chairman and PSA's Carlos Tavares as CEO and member of the board.

The boards of both carmakers "both share the conviction that there is compelling logic for a bold and decisive move that would create an industry leader with the scale, capabilities and resources to capture successfully the opportunities and manage effectively the challenges of the new era in mobility," said the statement.

A merger would create significant savings as both firms share the costs of developing electric vehicles that are expected to dominate personal transportation in the future as the world strives to reduce carbon emissions to limit climate change.

"The significant value accretion resulting from the transaction is estimated to be approximately 3.7 billion euros in annual run-rate synergies derived principally from a more efficient allocation of resources for large-scale investments in vehicle platforms, powertrain and technology and from the enhanced purchasing capability inherent in the combined group’s new scale," it said.

"These synergy estimates are not based on any plant closures," it added.

France, which owns a stake in PSA and earlier this year opposed a mooted tie-up between Renault and Fiat Chrysler, signaled it favours the project.

French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire "favorably greets the entry into negotiations" of the two carmakers, said a statement from his office.

However, it warned the French government "will remain particularly vigilant on the industrial footprint in France, where decision making will be located and promises by the new group to create in Europe the infrastructure to build electric batteries" needed for the shift to new vehicles.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

France's PSA eyes takeover of GM's Opel, Vauxhall

PARIS - French carmaker PSA said Tuesday it was thinking about taking over Opel and Vauxhall, loss-ridden European subsidiaries of US auto giant General Motors.

PSA, which groups the Peugeot, Citroen and DS brands, "is exploring the possibility of acquiring Opel and Vauxhall", a company spokesman told AFP.

PSA and GM already have a cooperation agreement which has so far lead to three joint European projects that have yielded "quite big synergies", the spokesman said.

PSA was overtaken by rival Renault last year as France's biggest carmaker by volume.

Opel sells its vehicles under the Vauxhall brand name in Britain.

PSA's announcement comes a week after GM reported a loss of $257 million on its European operations for 2016, the sixteenth consecutive loss-making year for GM on the continent. This takes GM's cumulated European losses since 2000 to more than $15 billion.

The US giant hopes to return to breakeven in Europe by 2018 after the impact of Britain's vote to leave the EU and subsequent weakness in the pound sterling weighed on last year's performance.

source: news.abs-cbn.com