Category: Breaking News

Li’s death was a “tragic reminder” of how China’s preoccupation with maintaining stability drives it to suppress vital information, Nicholas Bequelin, Southeast Asia regional director for Amnesty International said.

“China must learn the lesson from Li’s case and adopt a rights-respecting approach to combating the epidemic,” he said.

Some media described Li as a hero “willing to speak the truth” but there were signs that discussion of his death was being censored. The topics “the Wuhan government owes doctor Li Wenliang an apology” and “we want free speech” briefly trended on Weibo late on Thursday, but yielded no search results on Friday. The virus has spread around the world, with 320 cases in 27 countries and regions outside mainland China, a Reuters tally of official statements shows. Mike Ryan, WHO’s top emergency expert, told the Executive Board in Geneva he was worried about stigma being attached to the virus amid reports of Asians being shunned in the West. “The unnecessary, unhelpful profiling of individuals based on ethnicity is utterly and completely unacceptable and it needs to stop,” he said. The outbreak could have spread from bats to humans through the illegal traffic of pangolins, the world’s only scaly mammals, Chinese researchers said, sparking some scepticism. “This is not scientific evidence,” said James Wood, head of the University of Cambridge’s veterinary medicine department. Two deaths have been reported outside mainland China, in Hong Kong and the Philippines, but how deadly and contagious the virus is remains unclear, prompting countries to quarantine hundreds of people and cut travel links with China. There were 41 new cases among about 3,700 people quarantined in a cruise ship moored off Japan, taking the total on board to 61. Chinese-ruled Hong Kong quarantined for a third day a cruise ship with 3,600 on board after three people who had been on the vessel proved infected. Singapore reported three more coronavirus cases not linked to previous infections or travel to China, prompting it to raise its alert to orange, the level reached during the SARS outbreak in 2003. China has sealed off cities, cancelled flights and closed factories, cutting supply lines to global businesses, so that Beijing resembles a ghost town. Virus concerns swiped world markets on Friday but failed to stand in the way of the best week for stocks since June and the strongest for the dollar since August. As Trump praised China’s discipline, the head of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice, Li Fuying, told reporters that people deliberately concealing contacts or refusing to go into isolation could be punished with death.

American companies in China said they are likely to see a direct impact of the coronavirus in their 2020 revenues figures, the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Shanghai announced on Friday. In a survey conducted among 127 companies, 87% of the respondents said their revenues will be impacted while as many as 24% stated that they now foresee a drop of 16% or more in revenues as a result of the outbreak.

Additionally, almost one third stated corporate headquarters aren’t taking potential economic consequences of the virus enough into account.

Furthermore, 16% of the poll participants stated that they expect Chinese gross domestic product (GDP) to fall by 2% or more because of the disease. Earlier, reports said companies across China are extending work from home or holiday periods. Meanwhile, work at a number of companies, including Fiat Chrysler, Foxconn, Hyundai, Kia and Apple, has been impacted by the coronavirus.

Dr. Gregory Poland, professor of medicine and infectious diseases and the director of the Vaccine Research Group at Mayo Clinic, and Dr. Scott Gottlieb, Pfizer board member and former FDA Commissioner, join “Squawk Box” to discuss the spread of misinformation on the coronavirus. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned on Monday that the world may be “dangerously” unprepared for the next pandemic as the flu-like coronavirus that emerged from China about a month ago spreads rapidly to new countries. At an executive board meeting in Geneva, Tedros urged the World Health Organization’s 196 member countries to “invest in preparedness,” not “panic.” He added that funding for outbreak preparedness in surrounding countries “has remained grossly inadequate” in the past. “For too long, the world has operated on a cycle of panic and neglect,” Tedros said, according to a transcript of his remarks. “We throw money at an outbreak, and when it’s over, we forget about it and do nothing to prevent the next one.” “If we fail to prepare, we are preparing to fail,” he added. Tedros said more than $1 billion has been spent trying to stop the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. By comparison, he added, just $18 million was spent on preparedness in Congo’s neighbor Uganda before the virus crossed the border. “This must be a lesson for the rest of the world,” he said. The plea from WHO’s top official comes as the deadly coronavirus has now killed at least 362 people and sickened more than 17,400 worldwide, including patients in the U.S. and Europe. The respiratory illness, which is capable of spreading through human-to-human contact, is not yet considered a pandemic. A pandemic is “an epidemic occurring worldwide, or over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries and usually affecting a large number of people,” according to WHO. While the new virus has spread to almost two dozen countries, the majority of the cases remain in mainland China. Nevertheless, many global health experts expect the virus will become a pandemic. Since emerging about a month ago in Wuhan, China, the coronavirus has infected more people than the 2003 SARS epidemic, which sickened roughly 8,100 people across the globe over nine months. As of Monday, there are nearly 200 cases in at least 23 countries, outside of China, a handful of which have been transmitted from human contact within those countries. On Thursday, WHO declared the virus a global health emergency after declining to do so at two previous meetings. Tedros said the “continued increase in cases and the evidence of human-to-human transmission outside of China” were “most deeply disturbing.”

“During these wartime conditions, there must be no deserters, or they will be nailed to the pillar of historical shame forever.”

A senior official in the Chinese government has instructed authorities in Wuhan, the city where the ongoing coronavirus outbreak originated, to round up the sick and quarantine them in isolated hospitals and shelters.The vice premier leading the government’s response to the 2019-nCoV epidemic, Sun Chunlan, has instructed Wuhan officials to go door to door, according to The New York Times. She told them to check residents’ temperatures and investigate anyone who came in contact with known patients.

“Set up a 24-hour duty system,” Sun said, according to the NYT. “During these wartime conditions, there must be no deserters, or they will be nailed to the pillar of historical shame forever.”

It’s an extreme, authoritarian move: rounding up and isolating thousands of residents in makeshift shelters that are being hastily assembled per the government’s order. Some of the shelters, which are being assembled in sports arenas and other large facilities, opened up on Thursday. Social media posts are already showing grim, cramped situations, the NYT reports. Doctors and medical supplies are reportedly in short supply. It’s difficult to be optimistic that this roundup will improve conditions within the city, which has been under lockdown for weeks.

Health officials are focusing on faster diagnoses of the coronavirus. A Chinese doctor who warned of the outbreak has died.

• Death toll in China surpasses 600.
• Health officials focus on faster diagnoses.
• Wuhan is told to round up infected residents for mass quarantine camps.
• Chinese doctor who warned of outbreak has died.
• Refunds for U.S.-China air travel increase 500 percent.

United States President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter on Friday that “strong and sharp” President of China Xi Jinping assured him China’s efforts to fight the outbreak of coronavirus will be successful and expressed hope the disease will be “gone” in spring. “Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days. Nothing is easy, but he will be successful, especially as the weather starts to warm & the virus hopefully becomes weaker, and then gone. Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!” tweets from the US president said. Meanwhile, the coronavirus death toll is nearing the one from SARS 17 years ago, when 774 people died over the course of eight months. As of Friday, there have been 635.deaths and at least 31,400 infections.

Maybelline maker L’Oreal forecast on Thursday that China’s coronavirus health crisis would have a short-term hit on its Asian business, its biggest sales driver, though the group said it still expected to outperform cosmetics rivals in 2020. Thriving appetite from Chinese consumers for luxury creams such as L’Oreal’s Lancome range has fueled sales growth at the French firm, which exceeded expectations in the fourth quarter. Its rival Estee Lauder) has also benefited from this trend and performed strongly in the last three months of 2019, though the Clinique-owner trimmed its profit forecast for 2020 on Thursday, citing the virus impact. The outbreak has killed over 500 people in China so far, and is leading to travel restrictions that could affect beauty sales in airport duty free lounges. L’Oreal’s Chief Executive Jean-Paul Agon said the health scare would have “a temporary impact on the beauty market in the region and therefore on our business in China and travel retail in Asia, even if it is too early to assess it.”

Asia Pacific accounts for nearly 35% of L’Oreal’s revenue.

The group had 12,000 direct employees in China, Agon said in an interview with France’s Les Echos interview on Thursday, and another 12,000 worked selling its brands in shops. Its Chinese sites that were closed during extended Lunar New Year holidays were due to reopen on Monday, Agon said, though he did not specify what these were and whether they included factories. L’Oreal will hold a news conference on Friday. Concern over the virus overshadowed a strong set of results, as L’Oreal made progress in the fourth quarter even in its most sluggish division, home to mass market products sold in supermarkets like Garnier shampoo. Business across Asia picked up pace in the period despite street protests in Hong Kong that forced some retailers to close and caused some luxury goods firms’ revenues there to plummet. It reported a bit of a blip, however, in the United States where demand for make-up has dropped off, and its North American sales fell 2% from a year earlier on a like-for-like basis, which strips out acquisitions and currency swings. L’Oreal said total fourth-quarter revenue rose 11.4% to 7.9 billion euros ($8.67 billion), up 9.6% like-for-like. That was up from like-for-like growth of 7.8% in the previous quarter. For the whole of 2019, L’Oreal’s net profit rose 9.3% to 3.98 billion euros, and its operating margin increased to 18.6%, from 18.3% a year earlier. Agon said L’Oreal was confident of outperforming the broader beauty market in 2020. It grew around 5.5% in 2019, according to L’Oreal estimates.

* World depends on container trade for consumer goods

* Some ships being re-routed to South Korean ports

* Some analysts say disruptions could continue into March

By Jonathan Saul and Lisa Baertlein

LONDON/LOS ANGELES, Feb 6 (Reuters) – China’s fast-spreading coronavirus is throwing the global container shipping trade out of sync, with lines re-routing cargoes and reducing calls to Chinese ports, setting the scene for months of delivery delays ahead, industry sources said. The spread of the deadly virus has shut down cities and factories in China and disrupted global air travel. China’s decision to extend its Lunar New Year holiday period until Feb. 10 has compounded logistical complications, despite its ports staying open. China is a vital link to the container sector, transporting everything from fresh food to phones and designer clothes as well as industrial parts. The world’s top container lines Maersk, MSC and CMA CGM have all reduced calls to China, known as blank sailings, the companies said in recent days. Exports of goods from China have already been hit, with broader repercussions. Hyundai Motor has said it will suspend production in South Korea, its biggest manufacturing base, because of a lack of spare parts. Disruptions to sea cargo flows have compounded an already pressured situation for shipping lines as they struggle with weaker markets and higher costs from new International Maritime Organization (IMO) regulations on low sulphur fuel. Shipping and trade sources say regular schedules are also being affected by truck and port workers in China stuck at home or away from their places of work. In addition, warehouses around dock areas in China are not fully working. This has led to ships being diverted from China to ports in South Korea. South Korea’s Busan port, one of the world’s major container terminals, has already seen a spillover with container capacity at 78% and could rise further from its usual level of 70%, a Busan port official said. “Shippers are parking cargo at our ports, so later, perhaps when the coronavirus dies down and the level of cargo (backlogged in China ports) decreases, they can deploy a small ship to carry these cargo to their destination in Chinese ports,” the official said If container levels increased to over 80% it would be difficult to run the port efficiently, the official said. While China’s Lunar New Year period usually leads to a slowdown, the virus is expected to further reduce cargo volumes. Lasse Kristoffersen, chief executive of Norwegian shipping group Torvald Klaveness, told Reuters that 25% of its container fleet was affected as sailings were cancelled. “This is largely due to lower volumes on China. This is normal during Lunar New Year, but it seems to us that the volumes are lower than normal for this period – likely impacted by the coronavirus,” he told Reuters. U.S.-based shipping industry consultant Jon Monroe, whose company is active in China, said that blank sailings in February were higher than usual. Even when the impact of the virus dies down there will be a rush to ship goods in and out of China, creating more logistical problems. “Everybody will be making up for lost time. This is really the perfect storm,” he said. Shipping consultancy Alphaliner said extended holidays and emergency measures to tackle the virus were estimated to reduce cargo volumes at Chinese ports including Hong Kong by over 6 million TEUs (20 foot equivalent units) in the first quarter of 2020 and forecast global container throughput growth would fall by at least 0.7% in 2020. China’s container throughput rose last year by over 4% to 261.25 million TEU. “Since these extended void sailing programmes on long-haul services (by container lines) are slated to continue until mid-March, any cargo volume recovery could be negatively affected, even after the end of the holidays,” Alphaliner said. Executives at seaports on the U.S. West Coast, which handle the majority of Chinese imports into the United States, are preparing for expected disruptions. “You’ll see soft levels of imports go into the month of March,” Port of Los Angeles executive director Gene Seroka told Reuters. (Additional reporting by Roslan Khasawneh in Singapore, Hyunjoo Jin and Joyce Lee in Seoul and Gus Trompiz in Paris, Editing by Veronica Brown and Susan Fenton)

https://youtu.be/w7rsyRx-700

PARIS (Reuters) – Airbus has prolonged a planned closure of its final assembly plant in Tianjin, China, as a result of the coronavirus emergency, the planemaker said on Wednesday, adding it was monitoring for any signs of impact on deliveries. It appears to be the first significant impact on aerospace production since the coronavirus outbreak, whose death toll has risen to nearly 500. Airbus has said it is planning to raise output from the plant to six A320-family aircraft a month, just over 10% of Airbus narrowbody production, in early 2020 from a previous rate of four. “The Tianjin final assembly line facility is currently closed,” Airbus said in a statement. “Airbus is constantly evaluating the situation and monitoring any potential knock-on effects to production and deliveries and will try to mitigate via alternative plans where necessary.. Industry sources said the Tianjin plant had been closed along with many businesses over the Chinese New Year but was due to reopen at the end of January. The reopening has been suspended due to the virus outbreak hitting the logistics involved in keeping the line open. Tianjin is one of two Airbus aircraft final assembly lines outside Europe, alongside a sister plant in Mobile, Alabama.

BERLIN (Reuters) – German sportswear company Adidas (ADSGn.DE) on Wednesday said it was temporarily shutting a “considerable” number of its stores in China due to the coronavirus outbreak. The company said the fast-spreading virus was having a negative impact on its business but added that it could not yet assess to what extent. Adidas has about 12,000 outlets in China, including franchise stores. Adidas saw sales growth slow to 11% in China in the July-September period from 14% in the second quarter. Several retailers have warned that coronavirus is taking its toll, including Nike Inc (NKE.N) and Hugo Boss (BOSSn.DE), which have both closed some stores in China. Adidas’s German rival Puma (PUMG.DE) said that factories will remain closed until Feb. 10. “We have so far not been informed of any production or shipment delays. A number of stores – both owned and operated and partner stores – remain closed for the time being due to local regulations”, a Puma spokesman said. “It is too early to comment on the effects of these closures”, he added. The group cancelled or postponed all Puma events in China in February including training and marketing meetings and put travel restrictions in place. Its Shanghai office remains closed until February 9.