Pretty much everybody agrees that the world will look very different after the coronavirus pandemic, but perhaps the biggest challenge will remain: the climate crisis. Environmental campaigners hope that the response to the former will not prevent the later from being tackled.
Airlines are lobbying to rewrite the rules of a global agreement designed to tackle aviation emissions, with the coronavirus outbreak expected to make its targets tougher to meet, write the Guardian’s Gwyn Topham and Fiona Harvey.
Campaigners accused airlines of attempting to “dodge their obligations”, but the industry said it was “a matter of survival”, with most international travel currently frozen in the Covid-19 crisis.
The International Air Transport Association (Iata) has called on the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) to amend the carbon offsetting and reduction scheme for international aviation (Corsia), or risk airlines pulling out.
Activists are furious. You can read more here:
German carmaker BMW will start producing face masks to help protect its own staff and the public against the spread of the new coronavirus, chief executive Oliver Zipse said today.
Zipse said BMW would soon be able to produce several hundred thousand masks per day, according to Reuters:
The company has already delivered 100,000 masks to the government from its own existing stocks, and handed over another 50,000 masks and a million medical gloves on Wednesday, with a further million masks to be handed over in the next two weeks.
BMW said on Monday that a production stoppage at its factories is being extended by two weeks until April 30.
To put today’s bond yield rise into context, here is the year so far for the Italian 10-year yield.
While it’s a notable increase in the yield (meaning prices have dropped as demand falls), it does not yet rival the market turmoil as the scale of the crisis in Europe became clear in mid-March. Italy has been the hardest hit by the coronavirus in Europe.
Nevertheless, the European Central Bank will be watching closely – particularly after Christine Lagarde’s previous missteps.
Tesco sales jumped 30% in the first few weeks of the coronavirus outbreak as shoppers stockpiled in the run-up to the lockdown but additional costs involved in feeding the nation could reach almost £1bn.
Dave Lewis, the chief executive, said: “Initial panic-buying has subsided and service levels are returning to normal. There are significant extra costs in feeding the nation at the moment but these are partially offset by the UK business rates relief.”
The supermarket said the stockpiling had cleared the supply chain of certain products but supply levels had now stabilised, with more normal sales volumes being experienced.
You can read more here:
Tesco coronavirus costs as much as 925m but sticks with dividend
Tesco has incurred extra costs of between £650m and £925m as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, but it will still pay its dividend to shareholders.
Britain’s biggest supermarket said it had hired more workers to cover sickness absences and that it had also faced increases in costs in stores – which are practicing physical distancing – and in its supply chains.
It has hired an extra 45,000 staff in the last fortnight alone.
Announcing preliminary results, Tesco said that the pandemic uncertainty meant that it could not provide financial guidance – but it said that if behaviour returns to normal by August that it would benefit from increased volumes of food buying and business rates relief from the government.
