WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday temporarily prevented the House of Representatives from obtaining secret grand jury testimony from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
The court’s order keeps previously undisclosed details from the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election out of the hands of Democratic lawmakers at least until early summer. The court will decide then whether to extend its hold.
BERLIN — If Angela Merkel’s sudden embrace of a €500 billion debt-fueled fund to help Europe’s coronavirus recovery came as a surprise, her success in winning the endorsement of her own conservative party for the plan was a jaw-dropper.
For years, German conservatives railed against proposals in Europe that carried even the slightest whiff of joint liability for debt.
“We’re not going to overcome chronic indebtedness by dividing the debt amongst ourselves,†Horst Seehofer, then-leader of Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (and current German interior minister) said at the time of the eurozone crisis. Then-Labor Minister Ursula von der Leyen responded to a worsening of the crisis in 2011 by suggesting Germany demand gold reserves or stakes in industrial companies as collateral for any loans to fellow euro members.
Though Merkel shot down von der Leyen’s idea, the chancellor was hardly a pushover when it came to spending German treasure on eurozone weaklings.
Times have changed.
Conservative leaders say they have few qualms about accepting the common debt issuance as it doesn’t entail the kind of large-scale mutualization they so feared during the Greek crisis.
Merkel’s conservatives have put their weight behind the Franco-German plan presented on Monday — which would move the EU one step closer to a bona fide fiscal union — with almost no questions asked.
“We support Chancellor Merkel and President [Emmanuel] Macron’s joint initiative as a major contribution to European solidarity in the corona crisis,†the Christian Democratic Union’s parliamentary group said in a statement, released during the Merkel-Macron press conference.
“This is a process and it’s important that Germany and France take a common position,†Andreas Jung, deputy leader of the CDU parliamentary group, explained on German public television Tuesday.
Even Friedrich Merz, a prominent fiscal conservative who is running for the leadership of the CDU, praised Merkel and Macron for “a very good proposal.â€
Conservative leaders say they have few qualms about accepting the common debt issuance as it doesn’t entail the kind of large-scale mutualization they so feared during the Greek crisis.
“This proposal shows that European solidarity can work without mutualization of debt,†Ralph Brinkhaus, the leader of the CDU parliamentary group, told Der Spiegel.
At least when it’s old debt.
Countries would not be allowed to use the money in the fund to repay existing obligations, which in Italy’s case totals about €2.5 trillion. The bonds sold to seed the fund would be issued in the name of the EU. That means individual members would only be responsible for repaying their own share (to be determined by the European Commission) and not liable for others’ portions.
At least in theory. It’s hard to imagine that Germany (even if it’s not legally bound) would allow the EU to default on the bonds if Italy or Spain couldn’t pay what they owed. The fallout would be too damaging. Such concerns are just one reason German conservatives rejected similar plans in the past.
So why did Germany’s conservative bloc go from being the scourge of southern Europe to its enthusiastic savior? In a word, business.
Unlike the euro crisis, which triggered dramatic turbulence in financial markets but left German industry unscathed, the corona pandemic threatens Germany’s own economic stability. The nations in the eye of the euro crisis storm, such as Portugal and Greece, were not key German trading partners. The countries in focus now — especially Italy — are a different story.
Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron speak to the media at the Chancellery during the coronavirus crisis on May 18, 2020 in Berlin | Pool photo by Andreas Gora/Getty Images
Italy is Germany’s fifth-largest trading partner with a total trade volume of more than €125 billion last year. Major German car companies and machinery makers rely heavily on suppliers in Italy’s northern industrial corridor. Permanent damage to those supply chains could also do irreparable harm to German industry.
That’s why German industry, traditionally close to the CDU, has been one of the loudest voices urging Berlin to push ahead with the recovery fund.
“The EU’s response should be unprecedented,†said Dieter Kempf, president of the Federation of German Industries, the country’s most powerful business lobby, in a joint statement with his counterparts from Italy and France last week. “In order to limit the damage to business and society from this crisis, we need a strong financial policy response with a strong show of solidarity for the hardest-hit countries.â€
While Merkel appears to have secured the support of key conservatives, and the leaders of the Bavarian faction, her proposal has met with some resistance on the backbenches. Whether those voices, which are louder than they are influential, can mount a conservative uprising is doubtful, however.
For once, the rest of Europe needn’t worry about Berlin’s backing.
The German chancellor is riding high at the moment, with both her personal ratings and those of her party at their highest levels in years.
That’s why the opposition is unlikely to have much luck in derailing the proposal either. The liberal Free Democrats are sticking to their longstanding position that debt mutualization is a no-go. But with the party polling at just 6 percent in opinion polls, its influence is limited.
The far-right Alternative for Germany might have had more luck mounting a counterattack if it weren’t consumed by a civil war over some leaders’ ties to neo-Nazi elements.
For once, the rest of Europe needn’t worry about Berlin’s backing.
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Celebrities really are just like us — they are not experts on the coronavirus pandemic.
That’s why Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and member of the White House coronavirus task force, has teamed up with actors Julia Roberts, Hugh Jackman, Millie Bobby Brown and other self-aware A-listers for the #PassTheMic campaign.
As part of the campaign, each participating celebrity will hand over their social media accounts to a COVID-19 expert for a day so you can hear important facts about how to end the pandemic from “people who actually know what they’re talking about,†according to the promotional video below.
The campaign begins on Thursday, with Fauci taking over Roberts’ accounts, and will run for three weeks.
Yemi Alade, Connie Britton, Danai Gurira, David Oyelowo, Sarah Jessica Parker, Busy Philipps, Rita Wilson, Robin Wright and more will also surrender their Instagram, Facebook and Twitter accounts for a day to front-line workers and health and economic experts.
The campaign, announced Wednesday, is part of the ONE World Campaign and calls for a global response to the coronavirus that protects the most vulnerable and most economically affected populations, and also strengthens health systems in case a pandemic occurs again. It’s run by ONE, a global campaign to end extreme poverty and preventable disease by 2030.
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The strongest storm ever recorded in the Bay of Bengal bashes into India and Bangladesh, forcing millions to evacuate.
Brazil’s novel coronavirus outbreak surged to cataclysmic levels on Tuesday afternoon when the country recorded 1,179 deaths from COVID-19 ― a record daily high for a nation that now has more than 270,000 confirmed cases overall.
Brazil passed Italy and Spain on the list of countries with the most coronavirus cases last weekend, then passed the United Kingdom on Monday afternoon. Only Russia and the United States have more ― although researchers have said that a lack of testing means Brazil’s count is likely far higher than official figures suggest.Â
There are many factors that determine how bad a country’s outbreak becomes, but one unmistakable commonality between the three countries at the top is that their hard-right leaders have downplayed the severity of the crisis and embraced outlandish conspiracy theories, ensuring the outbreaks would be worse than they should have been.Â
In Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro’s lax response to the coronavirus made his country’s emergence as the world’s newest coronavirus hot spot tragically inevitable.Â
“Everyone who’s been watching Brazil, who’s been seeing the numbers increase day after day, week after week, knew that it was headed in this direction,†said Anya Prusa, a senior associate at the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Brazil Institute in Washington. “It’s not a surprise, but it is a real humanitarian tragedy.â€
Deep social inequality and large populations already vulnerable to infectious diseases meant that limiting the spread of the coronavirus in Brazil required an aggressive response. Instead, Bolsonaro dismissed the pandemic as a media conspiracy and the disease as a “tiny flu,†fought with governors and state officials over social distancing measures, fired one health minister and drove another to quit, and largely left Brazilians ― especially the poorest and most vulnerable ― to fend for themselves.
“Brazil went into this with a number of challenges that have been exacerbated by the government response at the very top,†Prusa said. “It is a disaster. And it didn’t need to be a disaster of this size.â€
The disaster will likely only worsen in the coming weeks as Bolsonaro continues to downplay the pandemic. Brazil’s state public health systems are reaching their breaking points. Its Indigenous populations have warned that a slow government response has put them further at risk as the virus spreads. Outbreaks in some of Brazil’s poorest communities have been met by aggressive and deadly police crackdowns rather than a robust public health response.Â
And as Brazil reaches the heights of its pandemic, it has no health minister ― the oncologist who previously held the position quit last Friday, just 28 days into his tenure, after refusing to endorse Bolsonaro’s efforts to expand the use of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug that is not proven to work against the coronavirus, to treat infected patients.Â
The most dire predictions from the outset of Brazil’s pandemic have come true, including one from the prior former health minister, Luiz Henrique Mandetta, who forecast that the virus could quickly inundate hospitals and state public health systems.
Photos of mass graves in the Amazon region have spread globally as the virus overwhelmed public health systems in poorer and financially strapped states. On Monday, São Paulo Mayor Bruno Covas warned that the public hospitals in his city ― the largest and wealthiest in Brazil ― could reach their capacity by the end of May.Â
Joenia Wapichana, the first Indigenous woman elected to Brazil’s national Congress, told HuffPost in April that the virus would spread rapidly once it reached Indigenous lands. But despite those warnings, government agencies were slow to deliver aid to Indigenous groups or to protect their lands, The Associated Press reported this week.
Illegal raids from miners, loggers and agribusiness interests have increased, despite government guidance to avoid Indigenous lands, as the pandemic and Bolsonaro’s opposition to regulatory enforcement conspired to limit oversight from environmental agencies.Â
At least 38 Indigenous tribes now have confirmed COVID-19 cases, according to the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples in Brazil, the country’s largest tribal organization. The virus has killed 89 Indigenous Brazilians in the Amazon region, the group said in a statement this week that argued the actual number of infections and deaths among tribes is likely far higher than documented.Â
Indigenous leaders also worry that the pandemic could soon reach Brazil’s isolated groups ― those that have no known contact with outside communities ― after a member of the isolated Awá Guajá people attacked a hunter from another tribe last week, according to the Forest Guardians, a group of tribal leaders that protects the Amazon rainforest from illegal incursions. The attack was likely the result of the Awá Guajá feeling increasingly threatened by outside invaders and accidentally targeting a member of a friendly tribe, the Forest Guardians said in a statement circulated by the nonprofit Survival International.Â
“If you don’t put an end to the invasions of our territory, the uncontacted Awá Guajá people will die,†the statement said. “Once again, we are warning the Brazilian government and the international community that the Awá Guajá people are currently suffering a genocide.â€
Brazil’s other potential hot spots were its dense pockets of poverty ― the informal favelas of cities like Rio de Janeiro and the suburban periphery neighborhoods of São Paulo and other metropolitan regions. Long victims of government neglect and stigma, many of those communities lack access to basic sanitation and health care, which, along with their small and tightly packed houses, leave them vulnerable to infectious disease outbreaks.Â
But favela residents have seen little help from the government as the pandemic worsens.Â
“The word ‘favela’ has not been heard from any government official,†Gilson Rodrigues, a favela leader in São Paulo, said in a Facebook Live broadcast in March, Americas Quarterly reported. “We need to organize and protect ourselves.â€
Favela residents across Brazil have organized to manufacture their own hand sanitizer, monitor residents’ health, and create news apps to combat the spread of misinformation about the virus.Â
But the government’s response, at least in some parts of the country, has been to continue ramping up a deadly drug war.
In Rio de Janeiro, where Gov. Wilson Witzel, like Bolsonaro, is a supporter of hard-line public security tactics, police have continued to stage raids into favela neighborhoods to root out the drug gangs that operate within them. Rio’s police, who are among the deadliest in the world and regularly wield extrajudicial force, killed at least 10 people in one such operation this week, according to community activists. During a Tuesday operation, police shot and killed a 14-year-old boy.
“The world needs to know what is happening in Rio de Janeiro. The state of Rio de Janeiro, governed by [Witzel], is using pandemic isolation as a strategy for violent police actions,†Raull Santiago, a community activist in Rio’s Complexo do Alemão favela, tweeted Tuesday. “The [World Health Organization] says that to beat the coronavirus, we need to do social isolation. But police have been carrying out violent operations in the slums and putting us at risk of violent death.â€Â
The operations have also drawn out crowds of angry and scared residents who oppose the tactics of a police force that killed nearly five people per day a year ago.
“In Brazil, the pandemic brought deaths, thirst, hunger, extreme difficulties,†Santiago said in a follow-up tweet. “And our leaders still incite violent actions by the police. It is a lot of human rights violations.â€
Bolsonaro dismissed the pandemic as a media conspiracy and the disease as a “tiny flu,†fought with governors and state officials over social distancing measures, fired one health minister and drove another to quit, and largely left Brazilians ― especially the poorest and most vulnerable ― to fend for themselves.
Bolsonaro has pushed states and cities to abandon social isolation measures and business closures in favor of kickstarting the economy, especially as the pandemic has left many Brazilians facing food shortages and little choice but to continue working, even as the pandemic worsens.
But if Brazil doesn’t curb its outbreak, that will do little to boost economic growth.
“If you don’t contain the spread of the virus, then it doesn’t matter what economic measures you use,†Prusa said.Â
Leaders in neighboring countries like Argentina and Paraguay have openly worried about how Bolsonaro’s refusal to respond will affect their countries, where aggressive measures have limited outbreaks. Rates of deforestation, meanwhile, have continued to skyrocket in the Amazon during the pandemic, sparking fears that Brazil could experience an even worse fire season than it did in 2019 when record blazes and Bolsonaro’s environmentally destructive policies made him a pariah on the world stage.
Bolsonaro has continued to ignore the devastation. On Tuesday, he met with the heads of two major Rio de Janeiro soccer clubs about efforts to restart Brazil’s professional league.Â
Later, he sat for an interview with a prominent online journalist. Hours after Brazil’s Ministry of Health reported more than 1,100 deaths, Bolsonaro cracked a joke about chloroquine.Â
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The new tool was announced at Build, Microsoft’s annual developer event. It was held virtually this year for the first time in its history because of the coronavirus pandemic. Other highlights included new Google Docs-like features for Office and some Edge browser updates.
The new search tool pops up in the middle of your screen with a big query box, just like Spotlight. It launches with the Alt-Space shortcut, and it’s insanely fast at finding files, programs and a few other items. It’s way faster than the current Windows search tool.
The release, which is in beta for now, starts with the number zero — an indication to expect some buggy stuff, if the not-so-friendly name of the tool didn’t already give that away. Another turnoff: You have to install it from GitHub, along with a separate .NET Core program, a framework upon which PowerToys and other open-source software runs.
Today, Windows search is a confusing amalgam of the Start menu, Search, Cortana and Win-R. And your options are limited. For example, you can search the internet using Windows search, but exclusively on Bing, and only with the Microsoft Edge browser.
To improve the experience, Microsoft is combining its tools and opening up development to the masses with open-source code. The possibilities are limited by the imaginations of Windows’ power users, who are a pretty imaginative bunch.
The PowerToys tool has some other nifty features, including the ability to remap keyboard shortcuts. Try doing that on a Mac.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel | Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images
German chancellor says ‘multilateralism faced a major challenge even before the pandemic.’
BERLIN — Countries should not resort to renationalization and protectionism in response to a “deep global recession” caused by the coronavirus crisis, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday.
“It was … clear that multilateralism faced a major challenge even before the pandemic, and this challenge has not become smaller,” said Merkel, two days after she put forward a Franco-German plan for a €500 billion EU recovery fund.
Merkel was speaking after a videoconference with the heads of the International Labour Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization at which they discussed the economic response to the crisis.
“The answer to the pandemic can certainly not be to renationalize all international supply chains now; then everyone would pay a very high price,” Merkel said.
Asked if she had spoken to Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte or Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz since Monday’s announcement, Merkel said she had not. Kurz declared Tuesday that the countries — who advocate lower EU spending and tight fiscal discipline — will present their own counter proposal.
“We are now in the phase of waiting for the proposal from the Commission,” Merkel said.
The European Commission is set to lay out its draft recovery plan next Wednesday, May 27.
The U.K. government said there will be no “international border†between Northern Ireland and Great Britain | Paul Faith/AFP via Getty Images
After months of resisting the idea, the UK has accepted there will be customs checks on goods crossing the Irish Sea.
LONDON — The U.K. on Wednesday finally admitted there will be a post-Brexit trade border down the Irish Sea.
In its plan detailing how the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland will function once the U.K. leaves the EU customs union, the U.K. government said there will be no “international border†between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
That is a very different thing to a trade border — and showed the journey Britain has been on.
EU leaders had become increasingly frustrated at suggestions Britain was not taking seriously the scale of administration required to implement the Withdrawal Agreement Boris Johnson struck with Brussels last year. The deal will keep Northern Ireland in the customs union of both territories, in order to maintain an open border with the Republic of Ireland under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
It means Northern Ireland can reap the benefits of U.K. trade deals — a major argument for Brexit — but will have to comply with EU rules, placing a protective customs ring around the nation.
Former Prime Minister Theresa May allowed herself an “I told you so†moment.
For many months, Johnson appeared unwilling to accept the full implications of what he had signed up for. The prime minister told Conservative members in November: “There will not be tariffs or checks on goods coming from GB to NI that are not going on to Ireland — that’s the whole point.â€
He said that if any business is asked to fill in customs declaration paperwork, they should telephone him “and I will direct them to throw that form in the bin.â€
The U.K. got out of that one by insisting all the paperwork will be digital.
The document published this afternoon said U.K. authorities will have to apply EU customs rules to goods entering Northern Ireland, adding that it would entail “some new administrative process for traders, notably new electronic import declaration requirements, and safety and security information.â€
It insisted there would be no new customs infrastructure in Northern Ireland, before confirming that existing infrastructure for animal and food checks would be expanded to cope with the new workload. Livestock moves are already subject to checks, but food is not.
Former Prime Minister Theresa May, whose solution to the Irish border conundrum was to maintain EU customs rules and create a border down the Irish Sea, allowed herself an “I told you so†moment. During a Commons statement on the announcement, she asked Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove whether the U.K. will have to abide by EU regulations on some goods — possibly indefinitely.
Gove insisted the Northern Irish Assembly will have the chance to ditch the system in 2024, but admitted: “It is the case that there will be EU regulations … that will apply in Northern Ireland to 2024.â€
The European Commission appeared satisfied with the plan. A spokesman said the proposal “provides a stable and lasting solution to address the unique circumstances on the island of Ireland.†But officials in Brussels will study the document more closely to ensure it meets their demands on keeping the single market secure and respecting the Good Friday Agreement.
A lot of questions remain over the U.K. approach.
Britain said there will be no restrictions at all on trade moving from Northern Ireland to Great Britain. But the government will consult on how businesses will be deemed eligible for unfettered trade.
Goods heading to the EU through Northern Ireland or goods “at a clear and substantial risk of doing so†will have to pay tariffs before leaving Great Britain, where tariffs apply. But what constitutes a “substantial risk†is set to be clarified by the joint committee on the Withdrawal Agreement, which includes representatives from the U.K. government and the EU27.
The U.K. clearly took a step forward along its Brexit path with the publication of the plan.
Meanwhile, the exact processes for businesses — including the tariff compensation scheme for firms wrongly forced to pay duties — will also need to be laid out.
But the U.K. clearly took a step forward along its Brexit path with the publication of the plan, and it appears to have landed well in Brussels.
Even the Democratic Unionist Party, which threatened to bring down the government when May was in power rather than see a new border down the Irish Sea, accepted the fight had been lost.
Party leader and Northern Ireland First Minister Arlene Foster welcomed elements of the proposal and called for assurance it would not in future “saddle individual Northern Ireland businesses with further costly administrative burdens.â€
Fiat-Chrysler’s call for state support from the Italian government in response to the coronavirus crisis has triggered howls of complaint from politicians pointing out that the carmaker isn’t an Italian tax resident.
Tax justice is becoming an increasingly prominent theme of crisis bailouts — with countries ranging from France to Poland arguing that there will be no cash for companies registered in foreign tax havens.
On May 16, Fiat applied for a state guarantee to cover a €6.3 billion loan. Politicians, including the No. 2 in Italy’s Democratic Party Andrea Orlando and left-wing MP Stefano Fassina, immediately cried foul that the company officially decamped from Italy six years ago, with Fiat becoming Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and moving its headquarters from Turin to Amsterdam.
“A company seeking huge funding from the Italian state should bring its headquarters back to Italy,†Orlando tweeted.
“How can the Italian Republic, in accordance with our constitution, dedicate a billion euros [to guarantee the loan] to some of the richest families in the world, residing in tax havens, when they forget millions of families pushed to the limit?†Fassina asked in Il Fatto Quotidiano newspaper.
“If state aid is given to Fiat, Italian citizens have the right to know whether the company moved its tax domicile to the U.K. to obtain a tax advantage” — Tommaso Faccio, ICRICT
The government tried to cool down the debate by stressing that the money would stay in Italy.
“We are talking about … Italian factories, which produce in Italy and employ a great number of workers,” said Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, while Finance Minister Roberto Gualtieri stressed that the aid would only benefit the Italian subsidiary of the group, FCA Italy, which “has its headquarters and pays taxes in our country.”
A formal decision on aid has not been made by the Italian government, and the ministry of economic development declined to comment. Fiat also declined to comment beyond its statement, which stressed the money would be “dedicated exclusively to financing FCA’s activities in Italy” and should provide “support to some 10,000 small and medium enterprises in the automotive supply chain in Italy.”
The public guarantee to cover the loan has also been questioned on other grounds. It would allegedly allow FCA’s parent company to save cash and pay a €5.5 billion dividend that is due to shareholders before the closing of the planned merger with France’s PSA Groupe, the owner of brands like Peugeot, Citroën and Opel.
The aid will be granted under a so-called liquidity decree adopted during the coronavirus crisis, and only companies based in Italy are eligible. Conte and Gualtieri say that FCA Italy fulfills this condition.
But given FCA’s complex corporate structure, aid from Rome would ultimately support the whole group, which pays taxes in several European countries, including Luxembourg, the U.K. and the Netherlands.
FCA is now a multinational group controlled by a parent company registered in the Netherlands and it is subject to British tax rules, said Tommaso Faccio, the head of secretariat at the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT).
“If state aid is given to Fiat, Italian citizens have the right to know whether the company moved its tax domicile to the U.K. to obtain a tax advantage,” Faccio said, adding that the only way to get that information would be to publish country-by-country reporting that is not public.
According to former European Commission President Romano Prodi, the aid should be subject to Fiat’s commitment to invest in Italy. “If I spend money to build a house, I need to know where it will be built,†Prodi told Italian public broadcaster RAI.
Gualtieri said that’s already the case.
But Gualtieri’s promise might be tough to keep given next year’s merger between FCA and France’s PSA to form the fourth-largest automaker of the world. “A European champion,” as French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire called it.
The deal is currently under the scrutiny of the European Commission, which will issue a decision by June 17.
But the creation of a new car company means the debate on FCA’s tax residence is “outdated” and the discussion should rather focus on the industrial plans of the new group, said Giuseppe Berta, a professor of economic history at Bocconi University and former director of the Fiat historical archive.
“How can you talk about production and jobs in Italian factories without taking into account the fact that these elements will be defined in the industrial strategy of the group that will be born in a few months?” Berta asked, while noting that strategic choices for the new entity will be determined by the new chief executive, Carlos Tavares, who currently leads the French group.
Next year’s merger between FCA and France’s PSA to form the fourth-largest automaker | Vladimir Simicek/AFP via Getty Images
According to Carlo Calenda, an Italian MEP from the Socialists and Democrats group, the merger is precisely why FCA is asking for aid.
FCA’s parent company has sufficient resources to help its Italian subsidiary restart production, but prefers to keep it in its coffers with a view to a €5.5 billion pre-merger dividend, Calenda said.
FCA declined to comment.
Gualtieri stressed that under new Italian rules, aid beneficiaries won’t be allowed to distribute dividends in 2020 but, in the case of FCA, the pre-merger dividend would come from the Dutch-registered group holding and might happen next year. The company hasn’t said anything about reducing or postponing the dividend.
But Berta said that the pandemic crisis might put into question both the structure of the merger and the size of the dividend.
For MP Fassina, however, the question is a moral one related to FCA Chairman John Elkann, the scion of Fiat’s founding Agnelli family.
“We only ask him, as we ask every company benefiting from precious and very scarce public resources, to pay taxes in the community which is up to its chin in debt to help them,†he said.
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The warning suggests deepening pessimism among economists about the scale and duration of the fallout from what the bank described as an “unprecedented crisis.”
The worsening outlook is due to the outbreak shutting down economic activity and “erasing much of the recent progress made in poverty alleviation,” World Bank President David Malpass said in a statement.
A recent surge of cases in some countries is also forcing the bank to deploy what it considers to be its “largest and fastest crisis response” ever. It said its emergency relief efforts had already reached 100 developing countries, which are home to 70% of the world’s population.
Some of the world’s poorest people are already starting to feel the pain.
Tens of millions of people in Africa may become destitute as a result of the crisis, human rights chiefs warned Wednesday.
“We cannot afford to stand idly by and hope this most viral and deadly of diseases bypasses Africa, which is home to many of the world’s poorest countries who are simply not in position to handle such a pandemic,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet and Chairperson of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights Solomon Dersso said in a joint statement.
— CNN’s Sarah Dean contributed to this report.