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FINANCIAL MARKETS
Asian stocks rise after Wall Street advance on aid hopes
BEIJING (AP) — Asian stock markets rose Friday after Wall Street gained on hopes government and central bank action can shield the world economy from a looming recession caused by the coronavirus.
Benchmarks in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Australia and Southeast Asia advanced. Tokyo was closed for a holiday. Oil gained again a day after U.S. benchmark crude soared by a record 23%.
Investors were encouraged after seeing more steps by the Federal Reserve and other central banks and governments to support credit markets and the economy.
On Wall Street, the S&P 500 rose 0.5% in a relatively modest change compared with violent price swings over the past week.
On Thursday, the European Central Bank launched a program to inject money into credit markets by purchasing up to 750 billion euros ($820 billion) in bonds. The Bank of England cut its key interest rate to a record low of 0.1%. Australia's central bank also cut its benchmark lending rate to 0.25%. Central banks in Taiwan, Indonesia and the Philippines also cut their benchmark rates.
VIRUS OUTBREAK-CALIFORNIA
California expands stay-at-home order
SACREMENTO (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom has put the nation's most populous state on a stay-at-home order. It expands to nearly 40 million people restrictions he said already applied to about half the state. He said late Thursday that the statewide restriction on any non-essential movement outside the home is needed to control the spread of the coronavirus that threatens to overwhelm the state's medical system.
He earlier in the day issued the dire prediction that 56% of California's population could contract the virus over the next eight weeks.
VIRUS OUTBREAK-NIKKI HALEY-BOEING
Haley cuts ties with Boeing over possible bailout
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley has resigned from the board of Boeing Co., cutting ties with a company she long supported as South Carolina governor because of her opposition to a bailout of the airplane manufacturer that is in the works amid the new coronavirus outbreak.
The move is also an opportunity for the Republican to draw a distinction with the Trump administration, something that some strategists have said could be helpful if Haley pursues the White House herself.
Earlier this week, Boeing said it was seeking $60 billion in “public and private liquidity” for the aerospace industry, which is struggling amid a COVID-19 outbreak that has halted major travel and shuttered many businesses.
The Trump administration has said it would back Boeing, which is also a top U.S. defense contractor.
VIRUS OUTBREAK-CHINA-ROBOT MAKER
Robots still in demand
BEIJING (AP) — While other industries struggle, Liu Zhiyong says China’s virus outbreak is boosting demand for his knee-high, bright yellow robots to deliver groceries and patrol malls looking for customers who fail to wear masks.
ZhenRobotics sells its six-wheeled, self-driving RoboPony cart to retailers, hospitals, malls and apartment complexes. The firm’s orders have tripled since the outbreak began.
Robots for use in factories and consumer industries are near the top of the ruling Communist Party’s wish list for technology development. Chinese leaders see them as a profitable export and a way to make up for a shrinking workforce as the population ages.
TESTLA-AUTO PILOT-NTSB REPORT
Tesla, drivers, lax regulation faulted in fatal crash
DETROIT (AP) — The National Transportation Safety Board says two drivers, Tesla and lax regulation of new partially automated driving systems are to blame for a fatal 2019 crash in Florida involving a Tesla on Autopilot.
The NTSB, in a report issued Thursday, said the design of the Autopilot system contributed to the crash because it allowed the Tesla driver to avoid paying attention. The reports also said Tesla failed to limit where Autopilot can be used, allowing drivers to activate it in areas it wasn’t designed for.
The board, which investigates crashes and makes safety recommendations, also took the unusual step of accusing the government’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of contributing to the crash saying the agency failed to make sure automakers put safeguards in place to limit use of electronic driving systems to areas where they are designed to work.
TRUMP-G-7
Trump calls off June G-7 meeting because of virus
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday called off the G-7 meeting at Camp David scheduled for June, citing the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the White House said.
The leaders of seven major industrial nations — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States — will instead huddle by video conference. Trump had originally hoped to hold the summit at his private golf resort outside Miami before moving it to Camp David after a public uproar.
CONGRESS-SENATOR-STOCKS
Burr sold stock before market began to fall
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., sold as much as $1.7 million in stocks just before the market dropped in February amid fears about the coronavirus epidemic. Senate records show that Burr and his wife sold between roughly $600,000 and $1.7 million in more than 30 separate transactions in late January and mid-February. That was just before the market began to fall and as government health officials began to issue stark warnings about the effects of the virus.
The stock sales were first reported by ProPublica and The Center for Responsive Politics. Most of them came on Feb. 13, just before Burr made a speech in North Carolina in which he predicted severe consequences from the virus, including closed schools and cutbacks in company travel, according to audio obtained by National Public Radio and released Thursday.
Those remarks were much more dire than remarks he had made publicly, and came as President Donald Trump was still downplaying the severity of the virus.
There is no indication that Burr had any inside information as he sold the stocks and issued the private warnings.
VIRUS OUTBREAK-CASH
Filthy lucre: Paper money shunned for fear of virus spread
NEW YORK (AP) — In a world suffering a pandemic, cash is no longer king.
A growing number of businesses and individuals worldwide have stopped using banknotes in fear that physical currency, handled by tens of thousands of people over their useful life, could be a vector for the spreading coronavirus.
Public officials and health experts have said that the risk of transferring the virus person-to-person through the use of banknotes is small. But that has not stopped businesses from refusing to accept currency and some countries from urging their citizens to stop using banknotes altogether.
Open Books, a non-profit bookstore in Chicago, sent an email to customers last week asking individuals not to use cash. A chain of diners in Washington State has also stopped accepting cash. And delivery services like Grubhub, Door Dash, and others have instituted “no contact” deliveries, and have either stopped offering cash as a payment option or are actively discouraging it.
Experts say cash does carry a risk of transmitting the virus, but the risk from cash so far is small compared with other transmission routes.
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