NEW YORK TIMES
Saturday
• More than six weeks after the first coronavirus deaths in a US nursing home, outbreaks continue to unfold in nursing facilities across the country, where about 7,000 lives—about a fifth of US virus deaths—have occurred, while more than 36,500 residents and nursing home employees have contracted Covid-19.
• Trump openly encouraged right-wing protests of social distancing restrictions in states with stay-at-home orders, a day after announcing guidelines for how the nation’s governors should carry out an orderly reopening of their communities on their own timetables.
• In France, lawmakers are considering the use of digital tracking of coronavirus cases, a move that has proved effective in Asia, but which might be controversial in a country that prizes personal freedom and privacy.
• Determining just how deadly the coronavirus will ultimately be is a key question facing epidemiologists, who expect resurgent waves of infection that could last into 2022, though they say there is no evidence that any strain of the virus, has mutated to become more severe in some parts of the world than others.
• In 2015, Bill Gates warned that the greatest risk to humanity was not nuclear war but an infectious virus that could threaten the lives of millions of people—a speech right-wing agitators now claim as evidence that he planned to create a pandemic to wrest control of the global health system.
• Chinese president Xi Jinping has used the coronavirus pandemic to shore up his political power at home, but the tools the Communist Party has exploited in the effort are threatening China’s international standing—officials in France, Britain, and nearly two dozen African nations have rebuked statements and actions by the Chinese government.
• Unhappy with Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin’s willingness to offer concessions to Democrats in previous stimulus negotiations, Republicans are warily watching the talks over replenishing a small-business loan program.
• As the coronavirus rages across the globe, ventilators that pump oxygen into the lungs of critically ill patients are seen as the best hope for saving lives, but shortages have unleashed a wave of experimentation that is leading to some promising alternatives to help sustain patients.
• Washington is considering pulling back front-line CIA personnel from bases in Afghanistan, part of the government’s effort to further reduce violence in the country in the wake of its landmark peace agreement with the Taliban.
• The coronavirus outbreak has brought China’s nearly half-century-long run of growth to an end—since the country emerged from abject poverty and isolation more than 40 years ago, it has become perhaps the world’s single most important growth engine.
• Congress has left it to the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve to help midsize businesses with more than 500 employees and fewer than 10,000, but the Fed’s program will offer those companies only cheap bank loans that cannot be forgiven, potentially saddling them with debt loads that could hamper recovery.
Sunday
• In-depth cover story reports on what lies ahead in the next year for America amid the coronavirus pandemic, with a general consensus among experts that there will be no quick return to previous lives, but that there is hope for managing the virus in the near and long term.
• Doctors are sounding an alarm about an unexpected and perhaps overlooked crisis: a surge in Covid-19 patients with kidney failure that is leading to shortages of machines, supplies and staff required for emergency dialysis.
• One in three jobs held by women has been designated as essential, according to Times analysis of census data crossed and the federal government’s essential worker guidelines—and nonwhite women are more likely to be doing essential jobs than anyone else.
• Meat plants, geared for maximum efficiency and profit, have become major “hot spots” for the coronavirus pandemic, with some reporting widespread illnesses among their workers, making them perhaps the weakest link in the nation’s food supply chain.
• In Germany, 3,000 households chosen at random in Munich for an ambitious study whose central aim is to understand why many people—even those with no symptoms—have the coronavirus, part of an aggressive approach to combat the virus in a comprehensive way.
• In the scramble to contain the spread of Covid-19, the Trump administration has continued its aggressive immigration enforcement agenda, deporting thousands of people to their home countries, including some who are sick with the virus.
• As AMZN becomes an essential company during the pandemic, and moves aggressively to hire people to cement its dominance, it has in some ways also become more vulnerable, something opponents of its worker policies and sheer pervasiveness hope to leverage in their fight against it.
• As the coronavirus spread around the world, the majority of mutual funds found few refuges, with some falling 20 percent or more, but a select few—including Mathews China Small Companies, Grizzly Short, and T. Rowe Price US Treasury Long-Term—managed to find profits.
• Big data and machine learning can help portfolio managers beat the competition, even index funds, but only if they can figure out when to rely on the tech and when to think for themselves, according to experts, who say early efforts to apply these methods to asset management have a spotty record.
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Weekend
• “Authorities in Wuhan, the coronavirus pandemic’s original center, revised the local death toll upward by 50%, publicly acknowledging for the first time that they had previously omitted many fatalities, including people who died at home.”
• Because the methodologies and tallies of the organizations constructing a global overview of the coronavirus and its death toll differ—and because mistakes are made—discrepancies result that contribute to confusion and hamper progress.
• A new spike in coronavirus cases is the darkest shadow hanging over the future of previously common mass gatherings—and any conversation about getting the economy back up must include the preconditions for containing a second wave through identifying and isolating new cases.
• Governors in states across the country are moving to cancel or freeze billions of dollars in spending as states brace for fallout from the economic shutdown resulting from the coronavirus pandemic.
• House minority leader Kevin McCarthy said he would support adding money for hospitals to funding for a popular small-business aid program, pointing the way to a potential breakthrough in talks on the current round of stimulus spending.
• The Trump administration announced at $19B relief program for farmers that will include $16B in direct payments to farmers and ranchers and $3B in mass purchases of dairy, meat and produce that will be distributed through food banks; related story says the administration “is taking steps to reduce costs and restrictions on farmers looking to hire migrant workers during the coronavirus pandemic, including lowering their minimum wages.”
• Tech startups face new challenges in the coronavirus era—in place of a relentless push for growth is a desperate effort to conserve cash, which means cutting payroll, slashing marketing budgets, asking vendors to extend payment terms, and scratching for additional capital.
• A fleet of tankers full of Saudi oil is slowly making its way to the US Gulf Coast, bringing about seven times as much as the region took from the country in a typical month last year, threatening to worsen an already historic oversupply of crude and further pressure storage companies.
• H.O.T.S.: Companies like Z and Opendoor were supposed to lead a revolution in real estate by using algorithms to flip homes, but the pandemic has thwarted their plans; A viable treatment for Covid-19 is desperately needed, but investors are way too enthusiastic about the latest potential breakthrough; PG is thriving as consumers stock up on daily essentials during the pandemic, but the crisis could have spillover effects for the company and its rivals.
FINANCIAL TIMES
Weekend
• Front page story reports the coronavirus threatens to create a $500B hole in US state budgets, and force major cuts to spending on education and other public services, unless the federal government steps in with bailout funds.
• Denmark became the first European nation to reopen its primary schools and kindergartens after a coronavirus lockdown, a move other countries are likely to watch closely as they prepare for how and when they will take similar action.
• Agriculture experts warn that lockdowns, quarantine requirements, and border closures around the world are likely to have a negative effect on food production by limiting the movement of bees, which are struggling to pollinate under curbs.
• The World Medical Association, which represents 10M global doctors, censured the World Health Organization for being involved in “political games” by failing to heed Taiwan’s early warnings about the coronavirus, leading to a flawed response to the pandemic.
• Two police departments in California deployed the first “homeless outreach” drones in the US to broadcast coronavirus safety messages while protecting officers from contact with people.
• Bank of England head Andrew Bailey supported the claim that UK economic output has fallen 35 percent since the coronavirus lockdown, and said there would be persistent “scarring” to the economy in the years ahead.
• Big Read story says “After a disastrous first quarter, the Chinese economy is showing signs of a strong recovery, but that could be put at risk if there is a second wave of infections and if demand in its main export markets collapses.”
• Lex Column: A retail shakeout will be painful for the millions of people who work in the industry, but it is long overdue, and putting zombie chains like JCP to rest will give the wider sector a better chance of recovery; Foxton’s decision to buy itself some time by bolstering cash reserves will give it a head start over the pack when the UK property market recovers; On one measure of risk—credit default swaps—investors remain overly relaxed about the fortunes of the largest emerging markets.
• Comment: Former US Treasury secretary Henry Paulsen says the world has faced more daunting challenges than the coronavirus, and that the recovery—and the future—can only be secured if major economies pull together and find common ground.
NEW YORK POST
Saturday
• Sales of fermented cabbages like sauerkraut and kimchi have spiked as consumers look for ways to bolster their immune systems against the coronavirus.
• Large restaurant chains have taken $30M in federal loans meant to shore up small businesses during the coronavirus crisis.
Sunday
• Treasury Secretary Mnuchin said it was his idea to include Trump’s name on the IRS stimulus checks being mailed to Americans who don’t have direct deposit to help ease the financial burdens caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
• Fraud alerts are going out from U.S. banks in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic—BAC advised its customers not to respond to unsolicited requests for their account or personal information such as access codes, PINs, or Federal Student Aid IDs, and other banks have taken similar actions