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Coronavirus

Only a few weeks ago, the common wisdom was that the global economy would soon shake off the effects of the coronavirus disruption. Such optimism has now drained away as the outbreak spreads and there is growing speculation in financial markets that big central banks are looking at ways to jointly keep the wheels of the world economy turning. Such joint action is rare - for a major coordinated rate cut you have to go back to the global financial crisis in 2018 when the Federal Reserve and five other major central banks - the ECB, Bank of Canada, Bank of England, the Swedish Riksbank and the Swiss National Bank all cut the cost of borrowing together.

While nothing has been announced, the Bank of Japan promised to take all necessary steps on Monday just days after a similar move by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. That, combined with the Paris-based OECD think tank's move to slash its 2020 growth forecasts, will keep markets on their toes. The purely human cost of the outbreak, meanwhile, keeps rising. The death toll globally has now risen above 3,000 to 3,044 according to the latest Reuters tally. For the latest updates.

Health officials in Washington state said that a nursing home resident had died after contracting coronavirus, while New York’s governor confirmed his state’s first positive case, as the virus moved out of its West Coast foothold. It appeared poised for a spike in the United States, in part because of more testing to confirm cases. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services confirmed that it is investigating a manufacturing defect in some initial coronavirus test kits that prompted some states to seek emergency approval to use their own test kits.

U.S.

Pete Buttigieg dropped out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, saying he no longer saw a chance of winning, the day after fellow moderate Joe Biden won a big victory in South Carolina. “Today is a moment of truth ... the truth is that the path has narrowed to a close for our candidacy if not for our cause,” Buttigieg told supporters. The 38-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, gained early momentum after he narrowly won the Iowa caucuses and finished a close second in New Hampshire. But his early momentum from those rural, mostly white states did not translate into electoral success in the more diverse states of Nevada and South Carolina.

For a few precious hours, Luz thought she would soon see her children again. The 42-year-old Peruvian is one of about 2,000 migrants, mostly seeking asylum in the United States, who are living in a sea of tents on the banks of the Rio Grande in Mexico, within view of the frontier fence. On Friday afternoon, a U.S. court blocked the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy that has forced them to wait south of the border as their cases proceed.

A judge ruled the Trump administration did not act lawfully when it named a former Virginia attorney general as the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and invalidated some new asylum directives. District Judge Randolph Moss in Washington ruled Ken Cuccinelli’s appointment violated a 1998 law governing how vacancies in senior government positions may be filled until the U.S. Senate confirms a new permanent choice.

World

Iraq’s healthcare system is in crisis. There’s a shortage of drugs and the medical staff to administer them. Doctors are fleeing in their thousands, and life expectancy and child mortality rates are far below average for the region. Reuters takes a look at the collapse of medical care that has aggravated unrest in the country.

A sudden, violent tremor knocked José Rinaldo Januario to the floor of his kitchen one Saturday afternoon two years ago - a mystery given the Brazilian city of Maceio had little history of seismic activity. When the shaking stopped, the bar owner and his 21-year-old son Arthur raced out onto the street, fearing the house might collapse. Cracks in his home widened in the months after the tremor in March 2018. His family was forced to abandon the house last year, part of an exodus of thousands of people being evacuated from the seaside city. Last May, federal authorities identified a culprit: petrochemical giant Braskem.

“Today I have no sense of celebration,” Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said after voting, voicing the frustration across the country after a seemingly neverending election season. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought re-election under the weight of an imminent corruption trial, with the country’s third ballot in less than a year predicted to end in another deadlock. Paramedics dressed in head-to-toe protective gear stood guard at dedicated polling stations where Israelis under quarantine from the coronavirus voted.

Tens of thousands of ethnic Uighurs were moved to work in conditions suggestive of “forced labor” in factories across China supplying global brands, an Australian think tank said in a report. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute report, which cited government documents and local media reports, identified a network of at least 27 factories in nine Chinese provinces where more than 80,000 Uighurs from the western region of Xinjiang have been transferred.

Tokyo 2020 has been billed as the 'Reconstruction Olympics,' an opportunity to laud Japan's massive effort to rebuild the country's northeastern region ravaged by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, as well as nuclear meltdowns. Fukushima evacuees disagree.