The new coronavirus pandemic raging around the globe will worsen if countries fail to adhere to strict healthcare precautions, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Monday.

“Let me be blunt, too many countries are headed in the wrong direction, the virus remains public enemy number one,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual briefing from the U.N. agency’s headquarters in Geneva.

“If basics are not followed, the only way this pandemic is going to go – it is going to get worse and worse and worse.”

Global infections stand at 13 million, according to a Reuters tally, with more than half a million deaths.

Tedros, whose leadership has been criticised by U.S. President Donald Trump, said that of 230,000 new cases on Sunday, 80% were from 10 nations, and 50% from just two countries.

The United States and Brazil have been worst hit.

WHO emergencies head Mike Ryan said some places in the Americas may need “limited or geographically focused lockdowns that suppress transmission in specific areas where transmission is frankly out of control”.

He urged countries not to make schools into a political football, saying schools could safely reopen once the virus had been suppressed.

Tedros said the WHO had still not received formal notification of the U.S. pullout announced by Trump. The U.S. president says the WHO pandered to China, where the COVID-19 disease was first detected, at the start of the crisis.

Trump, who at the weekend wore a protective face mask in public for the first time, has himself been accused by political opponents of not taking the coronavirus seriously enough, something he denies.

A two-member WHO advance team in China to investigate the origins of the coronavirus, first discovered in the city of Wuhan, is in quarantine, as per standard procedure, before beginning work with Chinese scientists, Ryan said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-who/coronavirus-crisis-may-get-worse-and-worse-and-worse-warns-who-idUSKCN24E1ZK

 

Category: Health

Asian stock markets slipped on Tuesday, oil sagged and a safety bid supported the dollar as simmering Sino-U.S. tensions and fresh coronavirus restrictions in California kept a lid on investor optimism as earnings season gets underway.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 1.2%. Japan’s Nikkei retreated from a one-month high touched on Monday, dropping 0.8%. A firm dollar put pressure on the Aussie and kiwi.

The moves came after a selloff on Wall Street that followed reopening rollbacks in California, where Governor Gavin Newsom ordered bars closed and restaurants and movie theaters to cease indoor operations.

S&P 500 futures were flat in Asia after the index lost 0.9% on Monday.

Meanwhile tension grew between the United States and China. The United States on Monday rejected China’s disputed claims to offshore resources in most of the South China Sea – a shift in tone which prompted a rebuke from Beijing.

The Trump Administration also plans on scrapping a 2013 auditing agreement that could foreshadow a broader crackdown on U.S.-listed Chinese firms, as friction between the world’s two largest economies generates heat on a broad front.

“It’s not just the tempo which is picking up, but the aspect of so many areas being pulled in to the dispute,” said Vishnu Varathan, head of economics at Mizuho Bank in Singapore.

“Last time it was really about the bottom line,” he said, but now what had been primarily a trade dispute ranges across political and strategic dimensions, making a resolution less likely and the next moves less predictable.

California’s return to restrictions also has markets on edge about whether the virus can wreak more economic harm, as total infections surged by a million in five days and now top 13 million.

Oil prices, a proxy for global energy consumption and therefore growth expectations, reflected the growing worries. U.S crude futures fell 2% to $39.23 per barrel and Brent futures fell 1.8% to $41.94 per barrel.

ALL ABOUT 2021

The pullback in risk assets remains modest but has, at least temporarily, knocked the wind from the frothiest sections of the markets.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq shed 2% on Monday and shares of Tesla ended down 3%, tapping the brakes on a rally that has boosted the electric car maker’s stock by more than 40% in two weeks.

Along with the virus, there are also signs of an interruption to the steady flow of better-than-expected economic data. On Tuesday data showed Singapore entered recession last month, with the economy contracting 41.2% for the quarter, worse than the 37.4% analysts had forecast.

Chinese customs data showed exports and imports rising last month, in yuan-denominated terms, from the same period a year earlier. Dollar denominated figures are due later on Tuesday.

Currency markets hemmed the dollar in a tight range, with the kiwi stalling its grind higher at $0.6532 and the Aussie sat at $0.6941.

The euro hung on to overnight gains at $1.1346 though awaits German sentiment data at 0900 GMT for the next read on Europe’s recovery.

Focus then shifts to U.S. earnings, with JP Morgan, Citigroup and Wells Fargo as well as Delta Air Lines due to report on Tuesday to a market already looking ahead to 2021 and beyond.

“It’s really about 2021 – 2020 is over,” said fund manager Hugh Dive, chief investment officer at Atlas Funds Management in Sydney, where earnings season properly begins next month.

“The outlook statements are what the market will look at,” he said. “If a company surprises on the upside with their 2020 earnings, but has shaky commentary for 2021, well they’re not going to be rewarded for that.”

Spot gold sat below recent peaks at $1.797.30 per ounce and U.S. Treasuries were firm. The yield on benchmark 10-year U.S. government debt was $0.6168%.

https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/asian-markets-dip-as-virus-and-sino-u-s-tensions-flare

 

Category: FinanceAsia

China has described a primary by Hong Kong’s pro-democracy parties as a “serious provocation”, warning that some campaigning may have breached a tough new security law it imposed on the city.

“This is a serious provocation against the current election system,” the Liaison Office, which represents China’s government in the semi-autonomous city, said in a statement late Monday.

More than 600,000 Hong Kongers turned out over the weekend to choose candidates for upcoming legislative elections despite warnings from government officials that the event could breach Beijing’s sweeping new law.

Polls for the city’s partially elected legislature are due to take place in September.

Pro-democracy parties are keen to use seething public anger towards Beijing’s increasingly authoritarian rule to win a majority within a chamber that has always been weighted in favour of pro-Beijing parties.

Control could give them a greater ability to stall budgets and legislation, one of the few tactics left open to the opposition camp.

But in its statement, the Liaison Office said campaigning to take control of the chamber is itself a breach of the new security law.

“This is suspected of violating Article 22 of the national security law and other local election regulations,” the statement said.

Article 22 targets “subverting state power”. It outlaws “serious interference and obstruction” of the central and Hong Kong governments, or any act that causes them to be “unable to perform their functions normally”.

Beijing’s security legislation bypassed Hong Kong’s legislature and its contents were kept secret until the law was enacted at the end of last month.

It targets subversion, sedition, terrorism and foreign collusion with up to life in prison.

But its broad phrasing such as a ban on encouraging hatred towards China’s government has sent fear rippling through a city used to being able to speak its mind.

Under the law, China has claimed jurisdiction over some serious cases and allowed its intelligence apparatus to set up shop openly in the city for the first time.

Those provisions have ended the legal firewall that existed since the 1997 handover between the mainland’s party-controlled courts and Hong Kong’s independent judiciary.

On the mainland, national security laws are routinely used to crush dissent, including subverting state power.

China says the law is needed to return stability after huge and often violent pro-democracy protests last year.

Opponents, including many Western nations, say the law has started to demolish the “One Country, Two Systems” model where China agreed to let Hong Kong retain key civil liberties, as well as legislative and judicial autonomy, until 2047.

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/china-says-hong-kong-opposition-primary-serious-provocation-023403874.html

 

Category: Hong Kong

Beijing’s top representative office in Hong Kong has warned the pro-democracy opposition’s primary elections at the weekend could violate a new national security law, exacerbating concerns over a crackdown on the former British colony’s democracy movement.

Preliminary results showed a group of young democrats, or “localists”, performed strongly in the elections that drew more than 600,000 votes, reflecting a potential change of guard to a more radical grouping likely to rile authorities in Beijing.

The primary polls are aimed at selecting democracy candidates who stand the best chance of success in September elections for the Legislative Council, Hong Kong’s governing body. Final results are due later on Tuesday.

Many observers see the election as a symbolic protest vote against the tough new security law that punishes what Beijing broadly defines as subversion, secession, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces with up to life in prison.

“The goal of organiser Benny Tai and the opposition camp is to seize the ruling power of Hong Kong and … carry out a Hong Kong version of ‘color revolution’,” a spokesman for the Liaison Office said in a statement just before midnight on Monday.

Luo Huining, the head of the Liaison Office, will have oversight over the implementation of the contentious security law that will also allow mainland security agents to be officially based in China’s freest city for the first time.

Critics of the law fear it will crush wide-ranging freedoms promised to Hong Kong when it returned to Chinese rule in 1997, while supporters say it will bring stability to the city after a year of sometimes violent anti-government protests.

The law has drawn condemnation from Western nations, with the European Union saying on Monday it is working on measures to punish Beijing for the move, including a possible review of EU governments’ extradition treaties’ with the financial hub and offering more visas to its citizens.

The law has also seen countries such as Britain and Canada caution citizens over an increased risk of arbitrary detention in Hong Kong and possible extradition to mainland China where they could face trial in courts controlled by the Communist Party.

Australia last week said it was suspending its extradition treaty with Hong Kong due to the security law and was offering students, graduates and workers in Australia on temporary visas the opportunity to stay and work for an additional five years.

Finland said on Monday the Nordic country’s extradition treaty with Hong Kong should not be applied as the security law means people could be transferred to mainland China.

The U.N. Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression said on Monday he was “extremely concerned” about the future of Hong Kong following the adoption of the new national security law.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-security/beijings-hong-kong-office-warns-pro-democracy-poll-could-violate-new-security-law-idUSKCN24F05Y

 

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Category: Hong Kong