Feed aggregator

Wall Street drifted lower on Thursday as policymakers pulled out all the stops to try and stave off a deep and lasting coronavirus-driven recession and its damaging fallout on corporate America.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping discussed the coronavirus by phone on Thursday and agreed to deepen cooperation on developing pharmaceuticals, the Kremlin said.

Amazon workers in France are coming under unacceptable pressure, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Thursday, after staff complained they faced not getting paid if they stopped showing up due to fears of coronavirus contamination.

Shares of Uber Technologies Inc rose as much as 35% after CNBC reported that the company has plenty of cash on hand to get through the coronavirus crisis and is seeing growth in areas of businesses other than ride-hailing.

The U.S. Department of Energy said on Thursday it will buy up to 30 million barrels of crude oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve by the end of June as a first step in fulfilling President Donald Trump's directive to fill the emergency stockpile to help domestic crude producers.

U.S. oil prices rose 10% on Thursday after a three-day sell-off as the spread of the coronavirus and a battle for market share between Saudi Arabia and Russia drove prices to their lowest in almost 20 years.

Several employees at Goldman Sachs Group Inc's New York headquarters are believed to have contracted the novel coronavirus, according to two sources, making it the latest Wall Street bank whose staff have been affected by the pandemic.

Germany expects a record 2.15 million people to this year make use of a scheme that allows employees to work shorter hours but keep their jobs, as the impact of the coronavirus causes havoc in the labor market, a ministry document seen by Reuters showed on Thursday.

The crisis for airlines deepened on Thursday as Lufthansa warned the industry might not survive without state aid if the coronavirus pandemic lasts a long time, and Qantas Airways told most of its 30,000 staff to take leave.

Middle East and African airlines are in crisis with hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk from the coronavirus outbreak, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said on Thursday, calling for state intervention.

The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits surged by the most since 2012 to a 2-1/2-year high last week, as companies in the services sectors laid off workers because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The new coronavirus is killing one person every 10 minutes in Iran, the health ministry spokesman tweeted on Thursday, as the death toll in the Middle East's worst-affected country climbed to 1,284.

Chad confirmed its first case of coronavirus on Thursday, a Moroccan national who had traveled to the country from Cameroon, the government said in a statement.

The European Union has responded to the coronavirus, seen by German Chancellor Angela Merkel as the biggest challenge since World War Two, with a wide range of measures to limit the spread of the disease and the resulting economic damage.

The dollar surged on Thursday as extraordinary steps by central banks across the world to stem a coronavirus-induced financial rout saw mixed success, boosting bonds but failing to halt losses in stocks from Asia to Wall Street.

Ray Dalio, founder of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates LP, said on Thursday corporations in the United States will lose as much as $4 trillion due to the economic damage from coronavirus outbreak.

A summit of Southeast Asian and other international leaders scheduled in Vietnam early next month has been postponed until end-June due to worries about coronavirus, Vietnam's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Thursday.

The world's wealthiest nations poured unprecedented aid into the reeling global economy on Thursday as coronavirus cases ballooned in the current epicentre Europe and London became the latest major center bracing for lockdown.

The prime minister in the Netherlands has offered reassurances amid the global coronavirus outbreak: telling citizens on Thursday there is no shortage of toilet paper.

The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits surged to a 2-1/2-year high last week, suggesting a pickup in layoffs as the coronavirus pandemic fractures economic activity.