Thursday, 28 May 2020

Thursday Morning Briefing: China parliament advances Hong Kong security law as tensions with U.S. rise

HONG KONG

China parliament advances Hong Kong security law as tensions with U.S. rise

China’s parliament approved a decision on Thursday to go forward with national security legislation for Hong Kong that democracy activists in the city and Western countries fear could erode its freedoms and jeopardize its role as a global financial hub.

U.S. and China fight at United Nations over Hong Kong
The United States and China clashed over Hong Kong at the United Nations on Wednesday after Beijing opposed a request by Washington for the Security Council to meet over China’s plan to impose new national security legislation on the territory.

U.S. business to Trump: Go slowly on Hong Kong response
Business groups are urging U.S. President Donald Trump to go slowly in responding to Beijing’s planned imposition of new national security laws on Hong Kong, warning revoking the city’s special U.S. privileges will hurt the territory and its people.

What you need to know about the coronavirus today

Vaccine booster plan
Britain's GlaxoSmithKline laid out plans on Thursday to produce 1 billion doses of vaccine efficacy boosters, or adjuvants, next year as the race to develop and produce a successful solution to the coronavirus crisis heats up.

The world's largest vaccine maker said it was in talks with governments to back a manufacturing expansion that would help to scale up production of future vaccines for COVID-19.

Adjuvants have been shown to create stronger and longer-lasting immunity against infections and allow for lower dosing of the protein in a vaccine, making way for higher-volume production.

Experts have predicted that a successful vaccine will take more than a year to develop.


Second wave specter
South Korea reported its third consecutive day of rising coronavirus cases on Thursday and the most new cases since April 5.

At least 69 cases this week were linked to a cluster of infections at a logistics facility operated by an online shopping firm, in Bucheon, west of Seoul.

The spreading outbreak and warehouse closures come as e-commerce firms scramble to keep up with a surge in orders as more people opted to shop from home during the coronavirus outbreak.


Track the spread of the virus with this state-by-state and county map.

Far cry from the typical MBA
This summer, dozens of incoming students at New York's Columbia Business School had planned to sail around Croatia for a week to get to know each other.

Instead, they are chatting online and playing icebreaker games on Zoom.

It's a far cry from the typical MBA experience and some students are reconsidering the value of a degree that can cost upwards of $100,000 a year.

Rage against the machine
Lockdown bans on live performances have left many British musicians on the breadline, fueling a campaign for them to get a bigger share of the profits from streaming their songs online.

Gum, mints and snack bars
Impulse purchases - gum, mints and snack bars tossed into a shopping basket at the supermarket checkout line - are falling as more people get groceries delivered or pick them up curbside.

U.S. sales of mints are down 30 percent year-on-year at stores tracked by market researcher Nielsen in the 11 weeks to May 16, while sales of gum are down 28 percent.

From Breakingviews: Corona Capital - EasyJet, South Korea, Blackstone
Read concise views on the pandemic’s financial fallout from Breakingviews columnists across the globe.

Reuters reporters and editors around the world are investigating the response to the coronavirus pandemic.

We need your help to tell these stories. Our news organization wants to capture the full scope of what’s happening and how we got here by drawing on a wide variety of sources. Here’s a look at our coverage.

Are you a government employee or contractor involved in coronavirus testing or the wider public health response? Are you a doctor, nurse or health worker caring for patients? Have you worked on similar outbreaks in the past? Has the disease known as COVID-19 personally affected you or your family? Are you aware of new problems that are about to emerge, such as critical supply shortages?

We need your tips, firsthand accounts, relevant documents or expert knowledge. Please contact us at coronavirus@reuters.com.

We prefer tips from named sources, but if you’d rather remain anonymous, you can submit a confidential news tip. Here’s how.

Life under lockdown

As much of the world begins to emerge from lockdown, people are looking back at time spent cut off from friends, family and colleagues by the coronavirus and forward to what happens next. Reuters has captured some of those reflections along with portraits from across Africa and the Middle East of people inside their rooms looking out and outside looking in.

A pandemic nurse's love letter to New York
The coronavirus pandemic has restricted almost everyone’s freedoms in America but for Meghan Lindsey it has done the opposite. This is the freest she has ever felt. Traveling to New York City at age 33 to work as a COVID-19 nurse was the first time that Meghan, a married mother of two, had ever left southwest Missouri.

In Brazil's shadow, laid-back Uruguay curbs COVID-19
Leonardo Silveira, a bookstore owner in Montevideo, is hopeful about the future as Uruguay begins a gradual reopening. The small country has kept rates of COVID-19 at one of the lowest levels in Latin America, even as the region becomes a coronavirus epicenter.

COVID Science

Anti-inflammatories may keep coronavirus from replicating. Researchers in Spain using computer techniques have analyzed 6,466 approved drugs and identified seven that might inhibit the main enzyme that helps the coronavirus to replicate, referred to as M-pro.

Morning fever screenings may be misleading.
As businesses and cities reopen, screening people for fever when they arrive in the morning at work or school is likely to be widely used to help prevent coronavirus spread. But "morning may be the worst time" to screen for fevers, researchers say.

People with chronic kidney disease should take extra precautions to stay safe from the novel coronavirus, new data from New York City suggest.

Doctors are seeing dramatically increased rates of blood-clot-related complications in patients infected with the novel coronavirus and in other research, clot removal is proving more difficult in coronavirus patients with a stroke

Follow the money

Trump's executive order targets political bias at Twitter and Facebook: draft

U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to order a review of a law that has long protected Twitter, Facebook and Alphabet’s Google from being responsible for the material posted by their users, according to a draft executive order and a source familiar with the situation.

3 min read

New wave of U.S. layoffs feared as coronavirus pain deepens

Job cuts by U.S. state and local governments whose budgets have been crushed fighting the COVID-19 pandemic and more second-wave layoffs in the private sector likely contributed last week to a 10th straight week of more than 2 million Americans seeking unemployment benefits.

6 min read

U.S. firms shield CEO pay as pandemic hits workers, investors

Sonic Automotive, which operates 95 U.S. car dealerships, started laying off and furloughing about a third of its workforce as the coronavirus pandemic crushed its sales. Then it changed its executives’ pay packages - handing them a multimillion-dollar windfall.

12 min read

Nissan plans to slash costs after first loss in 11 years

Nissan outlined a new plan on Thursday to become a smaller, more cost-efficient carmaker after the coronavirus pandemic exacerbated a slide in profitability that culminated in its first annual loss in 11 years.

4 min read

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