Coronavirus updates: Shake Shake returns $10m govt aid

‘Bears are out for blood’: Oil plunges 21% to a 2-decade low as coronavirus shatters demand.

Western Texas Intermediate reaches a low of $14.30 a barrel, dropping to its lowest level since 1999 as coronavirus tanks demand for the commodity.

On Friday, data from Baker Hughes showed that the number of active oil rigs in the US dropped by 35% compared to the same time last month.

The WTI market has entered contango, with spot prices lower than prices of future delivery of crude oil.

Read more

Shake Shack received, then returned, $10 million in coronavirus stimulus funding after being criticized for taking money meant for struggling small businesses.

Shake Shack is returning the $10 million US government loan it received as part of the coronavirus stimulus package after facing criticism for taking money meant for struggling small businesses.

Less than two weeks after the Paycheck Protection Program was introduced, the government department in charge ran out of money, and small business owners complained about being frozen out of the package.

Shake Shack operates more than 200 locations around the world, employs thousands, and last year made nearly $595 million in revenue.

The decision to return the check also came two days after the company raised $150 million in a private equity offering.

Read more

Denmark and Poland are refusing to bail out companies registered in offshore tax havens.

Governments around the world are scrambling to bail out their economies with huge stimulus packages amid the coronavirus crisis.

Denmark and Poland are the first to exclude firms that incorporate themselves in famous tax havens, meaning they can avoid domestic business taxes.

“Companies based on tax havens in accordance with EU guidelines cannot receive compensation, insofar as it is possible to cut them off,” Denmark’s finance ministry said on Saturday.

“Companies that seek to dodge their obligations to broader society by cutting their tax bills shouldn’t expect to get bailed out when things go wrong,” Robert Palmer, executive director of Tax Justice UK, told Business Insider.

Read more

Trump is trying to rewrite the narrative of his coronavirus response by only showing flattering news coverage of him at the White House press conference.

At the White House coronavirus task force briefing on Sunday, President Donald Trump replayed clips of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo praising the federal government’s response to the coronavirus crisis, and read aloud a flattering Wall Street Journal column about him.

There was no mention of the scathing criticism that Cuomo has also leveled at Trump’s coronavirus responses – prompting critics to accuse Trump of excluding criticisms against him and rewriting his own narrative.

Trump told reporters that he played the clips of Cuomo to celebrate the bipartisan unity in the face of the crisis.

When a CNN reporter asked whether Trump should be basking in praise on the day the US death toll surpassed 40,000, the president said: “You’re fake news … You don’t have the brains you were born with.”

Read more

The Boston Globe published 16 pages of obituaries, echoing a Lombardy newspaper which also grew the section during the coronavirus outbreak.

The Boston Globe printed 16 pages of obituaries on Sunday, far more than it usually carries, the paper reported in an article on the section. 

Although it is not possible to know which deaths are as a result of the coronavirus, at the same time a year earlier the death notices ran to just seven pages, according to The Globe.

Readers remarked on the section, just as readers of an Italian paper, L’Eco di Bergamo, did when its own death notices section expanded massively at the height of that country’s crisis. 

Massachusetts is the third most-affected state in the US, with 38,077 confirmed coronavirus cases and 1,706 dead, according to The Guardian. 

Read more

Piers Morgan says that Trump is ‘failing the American people’ and warns that he will lose the election if he continues to make the coronavirus crisis about himself.

UK television personality Piers Morgan warned that longtime friend Donald Trump would lose the presidential election in November if he continued to make the coronavirus pandemic about himself. 

Speaking to CNN’s “Reliable Sources” on Sunday, Morgan was critical of Trump’s coronavirus press briefings and said he wasn’t worried about whether his comments were going to offend the president. 

He added that Trump was “failing the American people,” and that he watched Trump’s coronavirus press briefings with “mounting horror.” 

Read more

Powerful photos show healthcare workers quietly standing up to anti-lockdown protesters in Denver.

Powerful photos show two people dressed in N95 masks and scrubs standing defiant against anti-lockdown protesters on Sunday in Denver, Colorado.

The Denver protesters were calling for state lockdown orders to be lifted while the apparent healthcare workers were counter-protesting silently in the street.

Video taken of the standoff shows a protester in her car yelling at one healthcare worker to “go to China if you want communism.” 

Read more

Trump says he holds a grudge against Mitt Romney and doesn’t want his advice on restarting the US economy.

Sen. Mitt Romney is the only Republican senator who’s not included on President Donald Trump’s advisory committee on restarting the US economy amid the coronavirus pandemic. 

“I have 52 Republican senators,” Trump said at a Sunday coronavirus briefing. “I’m not a fan of Mitt Romney, I don’t really want his advice.” 

Romney may have been able to offer some relevant experience to the discussion, as a former governor and a Harvard Business School graduate who co-founded the private equity firm Bain Capital.

Read more

Trump said he’s close to reaching a deal with Congress for a $400 billion-plus coronavirus aid package that includes a boost for small business loans.

President Donald Trump said during a Sunday press conference that Democrats and Republicans are nearing agreement on approving extra money to help small businesses hurt by the coronavirus pandemic. 

The deal, which Trump said could be ready as early as Monday, would end a stalemate over Trump’s request to add $250 billion to a small-business loan program established last month as part of a $2.3 trillion coronavirus economic relief plan. That fund has already been exhausted.

Democratic leaders want more money for small businesses but with additional safeguards to ensure that credit reaches businesses in underserved communities.

Read more

Paper stimulus checks ‘have not gone out’ to the 70 million Americans still waiting for them in the mail.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said that paper checks for the government’s $1,200 coronavirus stimulus payment have yet to be issued.

Concerns emerged last week when senior Treasury Department officials told The Washington Post that the checks were delayed because Trump asked that his signature appear on the checks.

Instead of a signature, Mnuchin said that it was his idea for the president’s name to appear in the memo line of the checks as “a terrific symbol to the American public.”

Read more

Gov. Cuomo announced plan to start ‘most aggressive’ antibody testing of New Yorkers to see just how widely the coronavirus has spread.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Sunday that the state is set to roll out antibody testing to survey the state’s population and determine how many people have been exposed to the novel coronavirus. 

The plan comes as New York has seen hospitalization rates fall in recent days. 

There were 507 deaths related to COVID-19 reported in New York on Saturday, 33 of which occurred in nursing homes, down from 540 on Friday. 

Read more