Europe

16 April 2020; AFP: A 99-year-old British World War II veteran on Thursday completed 100 laps of his garden in a fundraising challenge for healthcare staff that has captured the heart of the nation, raising more than £12 million ($15 million, 13.8 million euros).

"Incredible and now words fail me," said Tom Moore, a captain who served in India, after finishing the laps of his 25-metre (82-foot) garden with the help of his walking frame.

PARIS (Reuters) - Amazon (AMZN.O) has no clarity yet on when its warehouses in France might reopen, the head of its French business said on Thursday, after the e-commerce giant clashed with unions over the measures taken to limit the risks of coronavirus contagion.

Amazon closed six French warehouses used to stock and package goods for shipment on Thursday until at least April 20, in one of the biggest fallouts yet from a growing stand-off with its workers over safety measures during the pandemic.

MINSK (Reuters) - Belarus Finance Minister Maxim Yermolovich said on Thursday Minsk is due to receive emergency funding of $500-900 million from the International Monetary Fund this year due to the coronavirus crisis.

Belarus plans to cut budget spending, the minister said.

Yermolovich told reporters that Belarus still plans to issue Eurobonds and bonds on the Russian markets in the future after Minsk postponed a Eurobonds issue in March.

PARIS, April 16 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Nearly 700 sailors assigned to the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle’s naval group have tested positive for the coronavirus, the armed forces ministry said.

The ministry said 1,767 mariners, nearly all from the Charles de Gaulle itself, had been tested and results showed at least 668 to be infected with the new coronavirus. Results are still not in from a third of the tests.

“Thirty-one personnel are today in hospital,” it said in a statement. “More tests are being carried out.”

LONDON (Reuters) - The dollar consolidated its gains against other currencies on Thursday before the release of weekly U.S. jobless data, which are likely to provide more evidence of a deep recession in the world’s biggest economy.

The dollar edged up 0.1% to 99.774 against a basket of major currencies, after snapping a four-day losing streak the previous day as equity market gains hit a wall.

However, stabilising oil prices and some improvement in risk sentiment on stock markets helped temper the dollar’s gains. [O/R] [O/R]

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain will probably have to maintain some level of social distancing until a vaccine for the novel coronavirus is available, Neil Ferguson, a professor who has helped shape the government’s response to the pandemic, said on Thursday.

“We will have to maintain some level of social distancing, a significant level of social distancing, probably indefinitely until we have a vaccine available,” Ferguson told BBC radio.

VIENNA, April 16 (Xinhua) -- The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) daily basket price dropped to 17.51 U.S. dollars a barrel on Wednesday, compared with 19.70 dollars on Tuesday, according to OPEC Secretariat calculations released on Thursday.

Also known as the OPEC reference basket of crude oil, the OPEC basket, a weighted average of oil prices from different OPEC members around the world, is used as an important benchmark for crude oil prices.

HELSINKI, April 15 (Xinhua) -- Large quantities of anti-epidemic supplies have arrived in Finland from China on Wednesday, announced Finnish National Emergency Supply Agency (NESA).

The consignment, landing at Helsinki airport, included 5 million pieces of protective gloves and 170,000 pieces of respirators ordered from China.

It came a day after a total of 2.4 million pieces of surgical masks, jointly ordered from China by Uusimaa Hospital District (HUS) Logistics and NESA, arrived in the Nordic country.

LISBON, April 16 (NNN-Xinhua) — Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said that the country will see a transition from the restrictions imposed due to the COVID-19 pandemic to a return to economic and social activities in May.

The president made the remark after meeting with economists, entrepreneurs, specialists, politicians and union members.

“If April goes well, this will make May start to be progressively different,” he said.

“It is necessary to win in May,” he reiterated, saying that it will be a cautious return.

London, Apr 14 (AFP/PTI) Britain's economy could shrink by 13 per cent in 2020 in the case of a three-month coronavirus lockdown, according to a scenario published Tuesday by fiscal watchdog the Office for Budget Responsibility.

"The resulting 13 per cent fall in annual GDP in 2020 would comfortably exceed any of the annual falls around the end of each world war or in the financial crisis," the OBR said.