Jailbreak.
News Items/John Ellis
1. Honeywell, a US company best known for its home thermostats, has announced that it has built the world’s most powerful quantum computer. While all eyes were on IBM and Google, which last year knocked heads over quantum supremacy, Honeywell has been working quietly on quantum tech that it plans to make available to clients via the internet in the next three months. (via MIT Technology Review)
2. Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has won the primaries in Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas. Senator Bernie Sanders has won primaries in California, Colorado and Vermont (his home state). The primary in Maine has not been called. Former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York won the caucuses in American Samoa. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts lost her home state (she finished third). Mr. Bloomberg plans to huddle with aides tomorrow and "decide his path forward" in the race. Mr. Biden’s victories have come on the strength of his support among black voters, older voters, and suburbanites, according to exit polls. Mr. Sanders has dominated with younger voters and Latinos. News Items will have a note on the results later today. (via The New York Times)
3. World health officials said Tuesday the mortality rate for COVID-19 is 3.4% globally, higher than previous estimates of about 2%. “Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press briefing at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva. In comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected, he said. The World Health Organization had said last week that the mortality rate of COVID-19 can differ, ranging from 0.7% to up to 4%, depending on the quality of the health-care system where it’s treated. Early in the outbreak, scientists had concluded the death rate was around 2.3%. During a press briefing Monday, WHO officials said they don’t know how COVID-19 behaves, saying it’s not like influenza. They added that while much is known about the seasonal flu, such as how it’s transmitted and what treatments work to suppress the disease, that same information is still in question when it comes to the coronavirus. News Items is told, by various sources, that the WHO is all-but-certainly overstating the mortality rate. (via CNBC.com, emphasis added)
4. The World Bank has committed $12 billion in aid for developing countries grappling with the spread of the coronavirus. The emergency package includes low-cost loans, grants and technical assistance. The action comes as leaders around the world pledge to shield their countries from the economic impact of the outbreak. It follows warnings that slowdown from the outbreak could tip countries into recession. The aid is intended to help countries improve their public health response to the crisis, as well as work with the private sector to reduce the economic impact. "What we're trying to do is limit the transmission of the disease," World Bank Group President David Malpass told the BBC. (via BBC News)
5. The 10-year US Treasury yield dropped below 1 per cent for the first time on Tuesday, after the Federal Reserve delivered its first emergency rate cut since the financial crisis in order to stave off the long-term economic impact from the spread of the coronavirus. The yield, which moves inversely to price, on the 10-year Treasury dropped to a fresh all-time low of 0.999 per cent in afternoon trading in New York. The unscheduled cut indicates that investors believe a lot more action may be needed to stave off the worst financial effects of the spreading illness. (via Financial Times. The Wall Street Journal)
6. It is hard to exaggerate the historic significance of Tuesday’s events in the bond market. According to historical work by Robert Shiller, the Nobel laureate economist at Yale University who has reconstructed the 10-year interest rates available in the U.S. back to 1871, it has never before dropped this low. Many momentous events have shaken the U.S. since Ulysses S. Grant’s presidency, but none of them were sufficient to drive long-term money down to such cheap levels.
7. An ocean of debt: "A comparison of today’s circumstances with the period before the financial crisis is instructive. As well as a big post-crisis increase in government debt, an important difference now is that the debt focus in the private sector is not on property and mortgage lending, but on loans to the corporate sector. A recent OECD report says that at the end of December 2019 the global outstanding stock of non-financial corporate bonds reached an all-time high of $13.5 trillion, double the level in real terms against December 2008. The rise is most striking in the US, where the Fed estimates that corporate debt has risen from $3.3 trillion before the financial crisis to $6.5 trillion last year." (via The Big Read, Financial Times)
8. The coronavirus outbreak has brought parts of the world’s shipping industry to the brink of paralysis, with disruption that began in China hitting shipping lanes on the other side of the world with no obvious correlation. The sudden stop in economic activity has sent freight rates plunging on some lines, while rates on other lines have soared due to equipment shortages caused by the disruption. Data from the past two weeks suggest a recovery in activity is under way, but analysts also caution that another dip could be coming. (via Financial Times)
9. The economic impact of Covid-19 may be centered on the Chinese mainland but ripples are spreading around the region, according to new data that revealed grim numbers at the heart of the viral outbreak and deteriorating sentiment elsewhere. Purchasing managers' indices for Hong Kong and China fell to all-time lows in February, consistent with a deep recession, while the figures pointed to a sharper slowdown in Australia, Japan and elsewhere. The latest data show why the US Federal Reserve made an emergency cut in interest rates on Tuesday and will heighten pressure on Asian central banks to follow suit as the scale of the economic shock becomes clearer. (via Financial Times)
10. China’s services sector had its worst month on record in February as new orders plummeted to their lowest level since the global financial crisis, a business survey showed on Wednesday, with economists urging swift support to avoid mass bankruptcies. The Caixin/Markit services purchasing managers’ index (PMI) almost halved last month to just 26.5 from 51.8 in January. It was the first drop below the 50-point margin that separates growth from contraction on a monthly basis for the first time since the survey began almost 15 years ago in late 2005. (via Reuters, Caixin Global)
11. The sharp drop in the oil price since the coronavirus outbreak has left US shale producers hanging on for survival, and dependent on their big rivals in Opec to come to their rescue. US producers do not have a seat at the Opec table, but would cheer if the cartel — due to meet in Vienna this week — decided to deepen output cuts to prop up the oil price. Saudi Arabia, the dominant member of the group, is said to be pushing to remove at least another 1m barrels of production a day. A lot of cash-strapped US producers are at risk of bankruptcy if Opec goes the other way and decides to fight another battle for market share by keeping the taps flowing. (via Financial Times)
12. Iran’s growing stockpile of nuclear fuel recently crossed a critical threshold, according to a report issued Tuesday by international inspectors: For the first time since President Trump abandoned the 2015 nuclear deal, Tehran appears to have enough enriched uranium to produce a single nuclear weapon, though it would take months or years to manufacture a warhead and deliver it over long distances. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors nuclear capabilities and reports to the United Nations, also documented for the first time how Iran’s leadership blocked its inspectors from visiting three critical sites where there was evidence of past nuclear activity. (via The New York Times)
13. Nearly three dozen Iranian government officials and members of parliament are infected and a senior adviser to the supreme leader has died. The Health Ministry has proposed sending 300,000 militia members door-to-door on a desperate mission to sanitize homes. The top prosecutor has warned that anyone hoarding face masks and other public health equipment risks the death penalty. Iran’s leaders confidently predicted just two weeks ago that the coronavirus contagion ravaging China would not be a problem in their country. Now Iran is battered by coronavirus infections that have killed 77 people, among the most outside of China, officials said Tuesday. But instead of receiving government help, overwhelmed doctors and nurses say they have been warned by security forces to keep quiet. And some officials say Tehran’s hierarchy is understating the true extent of the outbreak — probably, experts contend, because it will be viewed as a failure that enemies will exploit. (via The New York Times)
14. Iran has temporarily released more than 54,000 prisoners in an effort to combat the spread of the new coronavirus disease in crowded jails. Judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili told reporters the inmates were allowed out of prison after testing negative for Covid-19 and posting bail. "Security prisoners" sentenced to more than five years will not be let out. (via BBC News)
15. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s path to forming the next Israeli government became harder after near-final election results showed his lead narrowing. Preliminary tallies had suggested Netanyahu would have an easier time putting together a coalition, after plunging his country into a yearlong political crisis linked to the corruption cases entangling him. But with just several thousand more votes to count, his nationalist-religious bloc shrank to 58 of parliament’s 120 seats, media reported. (via Bloomberg News)
16. The Taliban have resumed attacks against Afghan forces soon after signing a deal to end their war with the U.S. military, raising concerns that the Americans are leaving their Afghan allies vulnerable to an insurgency unwilling to let go of violence as its main leverage. The Taliban have carried out at least 76 attacks across 24 Afghan provinces since Saturday, when they finalized an agreement for a troop withdrawal by the United States, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s national security council said. And on Wednesday, the United States conducted its first airstrike against the insurgents after an 11-day lull. (via The New York Times)
17. President Trump has spoken by telephone to a senior Taliban official at a time when a row over prisoner exchanges and a fresh outbreak of violence jeopardized a historic US-Taliban peace agreement signed on Saturday. Trump confirmed the conversation but gave few details about the discussion. “We had a good conversation. We’ve agreed there’s no violence. We don’t want violence. We’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters. “We had actually a very good talk with the leader of the Taliban.” “The relationship is very good that I have with the mullah,” he added later in the day. (via The Guardian)
18. Rising Chinese pollution levels measured from space are showing a gradual but uneven industrial pickup after the economic slowdown caused by the nation’s fight to contain the deadly novel coronavirus. Though the measure of nitrogen dioxide in China’s atmosphere has risen nearly 50% from February 17, it’s still roughly 20% below the equivalent period last year, according an analysis from the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, which used satellite data from NASA. (via Bloomberg News)
19. China’s efforts to contain the coronavirus by initially shutting down factories and keeping workforces at home could have global ramifications for public health around the world, including regarding diabetes, blood pressure, headaches and fevers. As the world’s top producer of active pharmaceutical ingredients, including the ones used to manage those conditions, China’s disrupted factory output has the potential to upset global supply chains, and regulators have been watching with concern. The United States’ Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last Thursday announced that one drug was already in short supply after production of its active pharmaceutical ingredient was affected by the coronavirus. (via South China Morning Post)
20. A decade of growth in the U.S. economy allowed cities to patch fiscal holes left by the financial crisis and recession. A surprising number now see new signs of trouble. The proportion of American cities expecting general-fund revenue to drop more than 3% when the books close on the 2019 fiscal year increased to 27% from 17% in fiscal 2018, when adjusted for inflation. That is one of the findings from a Wall Street Journal analysis of data collected from 478 U.S. municipalities by the National League of Cities, an advocacy group. The total general-fund revenue reported by these cities—locales that span the U.S.—is expected to be lower in fiscal 2019 than in fiscal 2018, adjusted for inflation, the first such dip in seven years. Cities in the survey range in population from the low tens of thousands to the millions. (via The Wall Street Journal)
21. From humans to black-tailed prairie dogs, female mammals often outlive males – but for birds, the reverse is true. Now researchers say they have cracked the mystery, revealing that having two copies of the same sex chromosome is associated with having a longer lifespan, suggesting the second copy offers a protective effect. “These findings are a crucial step in uncovering the underlying mechanisms affecting longevity, which could point to pathways for extending life,” the authors write. “We can only hope that more answers are found in our lifetime.” (via The Guardian)
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Coronavirus Links: Does the Fed know something the rest of us do not with its panicked interest rate cut? The official coronavirus numbers are wrong, and everyone knows it. Thousands wait for hospital beds in South Korea as coronavirus cases surge. Coronavirus in Italy fills hospital beds and turns doctors into patients. UK epidemic now likely, says Chief Medical Officer. China’s manufacturing heartland almost back to normal as over 6 million workers return. Staying home with the kids: School closures cause chaos for Japanese hospitals. Critically ill coronavirus patient saved by stem cells, study says. Foxconn expects to resume normal production by end of March. China car sales drop record 80%. Coronavirus pushes aviation sector into ‘crisis zone.’ Hotels are emptying as the outbreak spreads. What happens in Vegas if no one stays in Vegas? Google has canceled its biggest event of the year because of coronavirus concerns. Airbnb may delay its IPO as coronavirus sends shivers through the market. Chicago's Catholic diocese recommended changes to how priests give communion. Your government at work: CDC blocked FDA official from premises.
Quick Links: AI will be offered as a major in 180 more Chinese universities. China’s $62 billion belt and road project in Pakistan risks becoming corridor to nowhere. A war of attrition in north-west Syria is spiraling out of control. US conducts first air strike on Taliban since deal. Richard Haass: How not to leave Afghanistan. New research report: Outdoor air pollution cuts three years from human lifespan. Ant Financial takes stake in Swedish payments firm Klarna. News Items video of the week (so far).
Political Links: The stunning resurrection of Joe Biden. What would a Sanders foreign policy look like? Tom Edsall: Trump has his sights set on black voters. Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions forced into runoff for Alabama Senate seat. There’s a better way to predict the next president and other trends.