Business

LONDON — British clothing-to-food retailer Marks & Spencer could axe up to 950 management and administrative jobs to counter slumping profits and sales in the face of the coronavirus outbreak, it said on Monday.

The high-street stalwart, which had already been suffering from fierce online competition from the likes of US giant Amazon, has seen its troubles compounded by the COVID-19 lockdown that shuttered shops nationwide.

The enforced closures, which sought to halt the spread of the killer disease, were imposed on March 23 and lasted almost three months for non-essential stores.

M&S had in May revealed that annual net profit slumped by almost 50 per cent, booked a sizeable charge for the coronavirus outbreak, and added it would slash costs.

The company added on Monday that the latest proposed cutbacks were part of its transformation plan.

"M&S is now proposing to implement these changes and create a new retail management structure that is fit for the future — removing role duplication, providing clearer leadership accountabilities and freeing up its retail teams to focus more on the customer," it said in a statement.

"The proposed changes would affect 950 roles across central support functions in field and central operations and property and store management."

In Britain, the coronavirus outbreak, in tandem with a tough retail climate, has sparked the demise of several well-known high-street names and the loss of thousands of jobs.

Earlier this month, pharmacy giant Boots and department store group John Lewis said they would together axe at least 5,300 jobs, despite government efforts to safeguard employment.

Some 9.3 million UK workers have had up to 80 per cent of their wages paid for by the UK government under its furlough scheme, which ends in October.

WASHINGTON — After months of working from home, stir-crazy Americans have finally reached the long, hot days of summer only to watch their vacation horizons dim, with travel options shrinking as the country's coronavirus cases soar.

"All I've been doing this year is canceling trips", 61-year-old Keith Gibbons said with a sigh, a new reality that the government contractor called "very frustrating".

Trips abroad are mostly out: The overwhelming majority of countries now bar American citizens amid a sharp US resurgence of COVID-19. The country's caseload has climbed to over 3.7 million — more than one-fourth the world's total — and deaths have reached over 140,000. 

As for cross-country trips, it is not that simple: In the vast US, laws on mask-wearing and social distancing vary dramatically, and sometimes confusingly, from one jurisdiction to another.

Some states are even imposing quarantines on visitors. Hawaii, for example, has ordered those arriving on the Pacific archipelago to self-quarantine for 14 days. 

Its governor, David Ige, announced on Thursday that beginning September 1, visitors will also have to submit to a coronavirus test within 72 hours of departing for the state and present proof of a negative result upon arrival in Hawaii. 

Meanwhile, New York has extended its list of US states — totaling 22 now — whose citizens will be required to self-quarantine after arriving in the northeastern state. 

In the city of Chicago visitors from 17 states must self-isolate for two weeks — or face fines of up to $500 a day.

Complicating many Americans' travel plans, the summer destinations of Florida and California are among the hardest-hit by COVID-19, even if the popular Disney World park in Orlando, Florida has partially reopened and a Disney-linked shopping district in California reopened earlier this month.

As for ocean cruises, a highly popular travel option in normal years, they remain banned by a federal "No Sail Order" through September. 

'It doesn't seem wise' 

At this point, Gibbons said: "It doesn't seem wise to go anywhere, either because of the local health situation or because the hotels and other establishments are taking steps to deal with COVID in a manner that makes the trip less interesting." 

So if "you want to go to a nice hotel for the weekend but the restaurants are closed, the pool is closed, services are limited, it doesn't sound like a lot of fun".

Saher Rizvi, a 40-year-old neurologist in Washington, was supposed to leave in early July for a 10-day vacation to Monaco with her husband and two sons, aged five and seven. The trip had to be cancelled. 

Today, she draws a sharp red line: Her family will not travel by plane or by train. 

"I don't think it is safe," said Rizvi, who as a physician has followed the evolution of the pandemic closely.

While some people may have to travel by plane or train for important professional purposes or for family emergencies, "for pleasure, it just seems like the risk benefit doesn't seem worthwhile", Rizvi said. 

Instead, her husband had been trying to persuade her to rent an RV for a road trip, but she has her doubts. 

"From a Monaco vacation to the RV, well," she burst out laughing, making clear that the lure of travelling in a compact camper was not compatible with the level of luxury she expected from a hotel overlooking the Mediterranean.

Summer vacation has long been a staple for Americans. This year has not been kind to them.

The recent surge in COVID-19 infections — coupled with the devastating blow to the economy and jobs — has sharply impacted travel plans, according to the US Travel Association (USTA): Bookings for future airplane and hotel reservations dropped a sharp 73 per cent year-over-year in early July.

A recent survey by the research institute Longwoods International found that 76 per cent of Americans were prepared to change their travel plans for the next six months because of the pandemic. Indeed, 45 per cent have already cancelled their plans.

"I can't complain", Gibbons said. "A lot of people have lost their lives, or are sick; others lost their jobs. So I'm fortunate that I've still got a job and have these choices to make."

At this point, Gibbons has successively canceled planned trips to Florida, Delaware and Portugal.

USTA, which represents the hotel, restaurant, leisure and air-travel sectors, said most Americans are now planning to travel by car and to stay relatively close to home, even if a few hardy souls are taking the chance of traveling to national parks. 

Result: With domestic travel spending expected to drop by 40 per cent, this year will be no holiday for the travel and leisure sectors.

ALGIERS — Algeria said on Saturday that the coronavirus crisis on top of falling oil prices have caused unprecedented damage to its economy, including over $1 billion in losses in the public sector alone.

"Algeria is facing an unprecedented difficult economic situation", said Prime Minister Abdelaziz Djerad, quoted by the official APS news agency.

This was due to "the structural crisis inherited from the former government, the fall in hydrocarbon prices and finally, the health crisis" of the novel coronavirus. 

The premier was speaking at a meeting at which Finance Minister Aymen Benabderahmane announced public company losses totalled more than $1 billion, affecting mainly the transport and energy sectors.

The government decided in early May to slash the state budget by half because of the global collapse in oil prices and coronavirus lockdowns.

The North African nation is heavily dependent on oil production, which generates over 90 per cent of its export revenues.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts Algeria's economy will shrink by 5.2 per cent this year, and it will have among the highest budget deficits in the region. 

President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has ruled out approaching the IMF for loans, saying, "accumulating debt harms national sovereignty".

A commission tasked with assessing the impact of the pandemic on the national economy was set up Saturday, according to APS.

Algeria has reported several record daily tallies of COVID-19 cases in the past week, with 601 new infections confirmed Saturday. 

The worst-affected country in North Africa, Algeria has officially reported a total of more than 22,500 cases of the COVID-19, including 1,068 deaths.

WASHINGTON — Twitter said Saturday that hackers "manipulated" some of its employees to access accounts in a high-profile attack, including those of Joe Biden and Elon Musk, and apologized profusely for the breach.

Posts trying to dupe people into sending the hackers Bitcoin were tweeted by the official accounts of Apple, Uber, Bill Gates and many others on Wednesday, forcing Twitter to lock large numbers of accounts in damage control.

The hack has also raised questions about Twitter's security as it serves as a megaphone for politicians ahead of November's election.

More than $100,000 worth of the virtual currency was sent to email addresses mentioned in the tweets, according to Blockchain.com, which monitors crypto transactions.

"We know that they accessed tools only available to our internal support teams to target 130 Twitter accounts", said a statement posted Saturday on Twitter's blog.

For 45 of those accounts, the hackers were able to reset passwords, login and send tweets, it added, while the personal data of up to eight unverified users was downloaded.

Twitter said it was aware of its responsibility to its users and to society in general.

"We're embarrassed, we're disappointed, and more than anything, we're sorry," Twitter said.

"We know that we must work to regain your trust, and we will support all efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice."

Twitter locked down affected accounts and removed the fraudulent tweets. It also shut off accounts not affected by the hack as a precaution.

Most of those have now been restored, Twitter said on Saturday.

For the 130 accounts that were accessed, Twitter said the hackers were able to see personal information including e-mail addresses and phone numbers.

'We're sorry'

And in cases where hackers took over an account, they may have been able to view "additional information", Twitter said without going into detail.

It did not name the employees involved in the drama.

The attack was carried out by a group of young friends — one who lives with his mother — with no links to state or organised crime, The New York Times reported on Friday.

The paper said it interviewed four people who participated in the hacking, who shared logs and screenshots backing up their accounts of what happened.

The young hackers said a mysterious user who went by the name "Kirk" initiated the scheme with a message and was the one with access to Twitter accounts.

They added they were only involved in taking control of lesser-known but desirable Twitter accounts, such as an "@" sign and single letters or numbers that could easily be sold, according to the report.

The hackers maintained they stopped serving as middlemen for "Kirk" when high-profile users became targets.

President Donald Trump's account, which has 83.5 million followers, was not targeted.

"The president will remain on Twitter," White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said. "His account was secure and not jeopardised during these attacks."

Twitter said it is limiting the information it makes public about the attack while it carries out "remediation steps" to secure the site, as well as training employees to guard against future hacking attempts.

MAAN, Syria —Pruning scissors in hand, Syrian pistachio farmer Fadi Al Mahmoud inspected his orchard, hoping for his first harvest after years of war, as nearby army de-miners swept the ground for buried explosives.

"I will be fine as long as my orchard is fine," said the 40-year-old, who returned to his village of Maan in the north of battle-scarred Hama province only months ago, after years of displacement.

The region, long a centre of Syria's famed pistachio production, was controlled for years by rebels, but it fell to government forces early this year.

After the violence subsided, many farmers like Mahmoud returned, hoping this season would mark the revival of what was once a leading industry, its produce beloved across the Middle East.

"The pistachio tree is the lung that allows the villages of the Hama countryside to breathe," Mahmoud told AFP during a break from pruning the trees with shears and a small saw.

Parting the green leaves, he examined the pistachios, looking for the purple hue on their greenish cream-coloured outer casing that indicates they are ready to be picked.

Syria was once a top exporter of the green nut that is widely used in sweets and sprinkled on ice cream across the Middle East.

The country produced up to 80,000 tonnes a year before the start of the conflict in 2011, mostly for export to Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan and Europe.

In 2013, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, Syria was still the world's fourth largest pistachio producer after Iran, the United States and Turkey.

 Death in the soil 

But years of bitter fighting blocked access to Syria's best pistachio regions in Hama, Aleppo and Idlib provinces, leading production to plunge by more than half during the war, according to the agriculture ministry.

Of more than 70,000 hectares (170,000 acres) of farm land alloted for pistachio growing in the northwest, a quarter has been damaged by war, said Hassan Ibrahim, director of the ministry's pistachio department.

Mahmoud said that on his farm, "some tree branches had withered, and there were trenches and landmines scattered all around".

"I hope I can start to make up for the losses during the war," he said.

He explained that pistachio orchards "require a lot of care".

"They must be ploughed four times a year and sprayed with pesticides twice annually or more."

Although the battles have died down, danger still lurks in the soil in the form of anti-personnel mines and other unexploded ordnance left behind during the war.

The authorities "have sent teams to sweep the area," Ibrahim told AFP.

Outside the village, where the skeleton of a charred vehicle sits in an arid field, Syrian army de-miners swept the rust-brown earth with metal detectors for remnants of war.

A loud blast echoed across the land as they detonated a landmine.

Another local pistachio farmer, Ibrahim Ibrahim, recalled harvests before the war.

"We used to pluck tonnes from our trees every year and distribute them in local markets or export them," said the 55-year-old.

The nuts "make up our main source of income".

"This is the first year that farmers re-enter their lands without fear," he said.

"I hope... this year we will see production rise to pre-war levels."

FRANKFURT AM MAIN — European Central Bank (ECB) governors are expected to refrain from doling out fresh stimulus medicine, hoping EU leaders will do their bit to shore up the crisis-hit region with a huge coronavirus recovery plan.

The ECB has taken unprecedented action to cushion the economic blow from the pandemic, which has left the eurozone facing its worst downturn since World War II.

But ECB chief Christine Lagarde hinted last week that the governing council would take a breather, starting Thursday, so as to gauge the effectiveness of its measures, so far.

"We have done so much that we have quite a bit of time to assess (the latest data) carefully," she told the Financial Times.

The ECB meeting comes on the eve of a July 17-18 European Union summit in Brussels where leaders will wrangle over a proposed 750-billion-euro ($847-billion) recovery fund to kickstart the bloc's battered economy.

Lagarde, who has repeatedly urged governments to underpin central bank efforts with fiscal policy, has called the plan a potential "game changer".

The fund would be financed through joint EU borrowing and consist mainly of grants for the hardest hit member states.

But the proposal is fiercely opposed by Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands and Austria who want to rein in the spending and insist on loans rather than grants, making agreement this week uncertain.

Crucially, the fund has the backing of German Chancellor Angela Merkel whose own government has ditched its no-new-debt dogma to unleash 130 billion euros in fiscal stimulus for Europe's top economy.

In Washington, the International Monetary Fund urged governments not to let up, as "the costs of premature withdrawal are greater than continued support where it is needed," its chief Kristalina Georgieva wrote in a blog post.

With the focus on national capitals, "don't interrupt your vacation for the next ECB meeting," ING bank analyst Carsten Brzeski told AFP.

"It's all about fiscal policy and the summit on the European recovery fund."

Emergency bond buys

At last month's governing council meeting, the ECB expanded its pandemic emergency bond-buying scheme known as PEPP by 600 billion euros to 1.35 trillion, and extended it until June 2021.

The goal of the government and corporate debt purchases is to keep credit flowing and encourage spending and investment in the 19-nation eurozone.

It comes on top of the bank's already ultra-loose monetary policy of historically low interest rates, cheap loans for banks and a pre-pandemic bond-buying scheme to the tune of 20 billion euros monthly -- all designed to bolster economic growth and push up stubbornly low inflation.

In June, the ECB said it expected the eurozone economy to shrink by a record 8.7 per cent in 2020 because of the pandemic, before returning to growth in 2021.

Incoming data suggest a rebound is already under way as countries emerge from lockdown and consumption ramps up, but the speed and strength of the recovery remains uncertain.

Lagarde told the FT that the virus-fighting measures taken by the ECB so far have "demonstrated their efficiency, their effectiveness".

Capital Economics economist Jack Allen-Reynolds said he expected Lagarde "to emphasise that the bank will do more if needed" amid growing fears of a possible second coronavirus wave.

Managing expectations

The ECB's next economic growth and inflation forecasts are due in September and policymakers will probably wait until then before deciding on further action, observers say.

"Monetary policy should remain accommodative where output gaps are significant and inflation is below target," International Monetary Fund chief Georgieva urged.

ECB board member Isabel Schnabel appears to have started managing expectations for later in the year by suggesting that the bank may not use up its full PEPP envelope, and Lagarde can expect to be grilled on the remark on Thursday.

She may also be quizzed on her reaction to the resolution of a long-simmering row in Germany about the ECB's sovereign bond purchases, which spiralled after the country's highest court questioned the legality of the stimulus scheme in May.

German lawmakers ended the spat by adopting a resolution earlier this month saying they were satisfied the ECB had demonstrated the scheme's "proportionality".

BEIJING — China's economy returned to growth in the second quarter following a coronavirus contraction, with President Xi Jinping promising continued expansion ahead and urging foreign companies to be a part of it.

The forecast-beating figures released Thursday follow a string of data showing the world's number two economy slowly emerging from the pandemic, and should provide hope to other governments looking to recover from a crisis that has likely caused a global recession.

Gross domestic product expanded 3.2 per cent in April-June, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said, smashing expectations and a massive improvement on the 6.8 per cent contraction in the first quarter.

In a letter to members of the Global CEO Council, Xi said "the fundamentals of China's long-term economic growth have not changed and will not change", according to state media.

He reiterated repeated pledges to continue opening up an economy that many foreign businesses say offers unfair advantages to Chinese companies, and added that it was "the right choice to stay rooted in China".

However, in a sign that full recovery could take time, retail sales -- a key indication of consumer sentiment -- fell short of forecasts, shrinking 1.8 per cent on-year in June, suggesting continued reticence about going out to spend even as the virus appears largely under control in China.

The data also failed to lift Asian markets, led by Shanghai, which tanked 4.5 per cent having rallied around 15 per cent this month.

"No matter how much stimulus and fiscal sugar you try to entice consumers with, they will not leave their apartment and go on a spending spree until they feel confident the landscape is virus-free," said AxiCorp strategist Stephen Innes.

The retail sector occupies an increasingly crucial role in China's economy as leaders look to consumers, rather than trade and investment, to drive growth.

A domestic consumption pick-up is especially needed as external demand weakens, but Innes noted it is easier to normalise supply than demand.

Louis Kuijs of Oxford Economics said household consumption remains the "weakest link" among indicators, although China's economic upturn is expected to continue in the second half of 2020.

'Still under pressure'

Economists warn, however, that official Chinese figures should be taken with a grain of salt, with longstanding suspicions they are massaged upward for political reasons by a ruling Communist Party that bases its legitimacy on delivering continued prosperity.

"Is it too good to be true?" ING chief economist for Greater China Iris Pang asked, telling AFP that more data was needed.

She also pointed to risks down the road including trade and tech tensions with other major economies, particularly the United StateEconomists also warn of uncertainty owing to an uneven recovery -- growth in infrastructure investment has rebounded, but private fixed-asset investment and retail sales remained weak.

As if mindful of the concerns, Xi pledged that "China will foster new opportunities and create new prospects for Chinese and foreign enterprises", and will implement growth-oriented policies, his letter said, according to Xinhua.

The coronavirus, which first emerged in the city of Wuhan late last year, has since shut businesses and destroyed millions of jobs globally, likely tipping the world economy into recession.

Growth beat the 1.3 per cent gain tipped in an AFP poll of analysts but remains among China's lowest quarterly expansion rates on record.

The economy contracted 1.6 per cent on-year in the first six months, the NBS said, and urban unemployment dipped to 5.7 per cent in June from 5.9 per cent a month earlier. Unemployment is a closely watched marker, with nearly nine million graduates expected to enter an uncertain labour market this year and analysts saying actual joblessness is likely higher.

Industrial production grew 4.8 per cent in June, in line with expectations and up from 4.4 per cent in May.

NBS spokeswoman Liu Aihua said China's economy was staging a "gradual recovery". But it is "still under pressure" as the pandemic ravages many of China's key trading partners.

China is expected to be the only major economy to see growth in 2020, being the first hit by the virus and to bounce back.

SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter is investigating a massive hack in which high-profile users from Elon Musk to Joe Biden had their accounts hijacked by scammers, who the social network believes targeted its employees to gain access to internal systems.

Posts trying to dupe people into sending hackers the virtual currency Bitcoin were tweeted by the official accounts of Apple, Uber, Kanye West, Bill Gates, Barack Obama and many others on Wednesday.

"We detected what we believe to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools," Twitter said.

"They used this access to take control of many highly-visible... accounts," the company said, adding that it was investigating "what other malicious activity they may have conducted or information they may have accessed."

The fraudulent posts, which were largely deleted, said people had 30 minutes to send $1,000 in the cryptocurrency, promising they would receive twice as much in return.

A total of 12.58 bitcoins -- worth almost $116,000 -- were sent to email addresses mentioned in the tweets, according to the site Blockchain.com, which monitors crypto transactions.

"Tough day for us at Twitter," chief executive Jack Dorsey said in a tweet.

"We all feel terrible this happened. We're diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened."

Blue checkmarks

Twitter said it had locked down the affected accounts and removed the tweets posted by the hackers.

"Most accounts should be able to Tweet again," the Twitter support team said in an evening update, having earlier temporarily disabled all posts from verified accounts with an official blue checkmark.

But the firm told users that it "may take further actions and will update you if we do."

US President Donald Trump's account, which has more than 83 million followers, was not among those targeted, but many specialist Bitcoin firms were.

"All major crypto Twitter accounts have been compromised," Cameron Winklevoss, co-founder of the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange, said in a tweet on Wednesday.

"This is a SCAM, DO NOT participate!" he warned.

Vice reported that a Twitter insider was responsible, citing leaked screenshots and two anonymous sources apparently behind the hack, one of whom told the media outlet they had paid the employee.

US Senator Josh Hawley tweeted a letter to Dorsey expressing concern over privacy for the San Francisco-based company's millions of users worldwide.

"I am concerned that this event may represent not merely a coordinated set of separate hacking incidents but rather a successful attack on the security of Twitter itself," he said.

BitTorrent chief executive Justin Sun was offering a $1 million reward for bringing the Twitter hackers to justice, reports said.

'Giving back'

The tweet that appeared on Tesla founder Musk's Twitter feed said: "Happy Wednesday! I am giving back Bitcoin to all of my followers. I am doubling all payments sent to the Bitcoin address below. You send 0.1 BTC, I send 0.2 BTC back!"

It added that the offer was "only going on for 30 minutes."

The fake messages that appeared on other famous accounts made similar promises of instant riches.

One version of the scam invited people to click on a link at which they would be exploited.

The BBC reported that a website address in some of the duplicitous tweets had been registered under the name "Anthony Elias", which appeared to be a play on the words "An alias".

Twitter has been targeted by hackers in the past.

In March 2017, the accounts of Amnesty International, the French economics ministry and the BBC's North America service were broken into by hackers believed to have been loyal to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Last August, a series of insulting or racist messages were posted on the personal account of Twitter founder Dorsey without his knowledge.