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Coronavirus

Finance chiefs from the Group of Seven industrialized nations are holding their emergency telephone call on the coronavirus outbreak today but financial market hopes for major action to prop up the global economy are set to be disappointed.

G7 sources contacted by Reuters ahead of the call said there is no appetite just yet for any coordinated moves to launch big spending programs or cut interest rates - not least because many of the world's central banks are already lending at historically cheap levels and have little firepower left.

Overnight tallies of new confirmed cases out of Asia underlined just how much the outbreak has evolved from its Chinese origins in recent weeks. Just 125 new cases were reported in China, while South Korea declared a further 600 overnight.

More subtly, watch out too for how fears of infection are changing aspects of everyday life as banal as greeting habits: from NBA basketball to international cricket, fist bumps are replacing handshakes and even high-fives, while U.S. companies are discouraging personal contact such as hugs among their employees. Here is a graphic tracking coronavirus cases by country.

Highlights

It was a scene that was hard to imagine just one week ago. Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg appeared together before a tiny crowd in the Chicken Scratch restaurant in Dallas, where Buttigieg endorsed the former vice president. Fighting back tears, Biden compared the former mayor of South Bend to his late son Beau, saying it’s the highest compliment he could offer any person. Former rivals Amy Klobuchar and Beto O’Rourke also endorsed Biden’s presidential candidacy on the eve of Super Tuesday voting, as moderate Democrats rallied around Biden to strengthen his challenge to front-runner Bernie Sanders.

Super Tuesday: Bernie Sanders will look to take command of the Democratic presidential race when 14 states vote, while top rival Joe Biden aims to gain ground by muscling aside upstart Michael Bloomberg and consolidating moderate support on the nominating campaign’s biggest day. The Super Tuesday Democratic contests may test just how forcefully a Latino vote, that shaped recent local races in North Carolina and flipped California Congressional districts in 2018, stands to influence the race for the White House. Here is what you need to know about this key day.

The United States said it was slashing the number of Chinese nationals permitted to work at the U.S. offices of major Chinese state-owned media outlets to retaliate against Beijing’s “long-standing intimidation and harassment of journalists.” Describing the latest U.S. move as political oppression of the Chinese media, Beijing signaled that it intends to respond to the measures which it said have seriously harmed bilateral relations.

Conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices appeared sympathetic toward a bid by Trump’s administration to buttress its power to quickly deport illegal immigrants without court interference in a politically charged election-year case concerning one of Trump’s signature issues.

World

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu led in a tight election in Israel, but was still short of a governing majority in the third national ballot in less than a year, partial results showed. Netanyahu, head of the right-wing Likud party, claimed victory in Monday’s vote over his main challenger, former armed forces chief Benny Gantz of the centrist Blue and White, after exit polls projected his party had come out on top.

Greek troops and riot police remained on high alert along the land border between Greece and Turkey, the main flashpoint in an escalating row between the European Union and Ankara over how to deal with a new wave of migrants and refugees. Some 10,000 migrants have been trying to breach the border since Turkey said last Thursday it would no longer uphold a 2016 accord with the EU to keep refugees on its territory in return for billions of euros in aid.

President Vladimir Putin wants to amend the constitution to make it illegal for Russia to give away any part of its territory to a foreign power, a proposal likely to irritate Japan and Ukraine that have territorial disputes with Moscow.