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Author: LS

Libya’s judicial bodies suspend their work

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Yesterday, the Chairman of the Supreme Judicial Council, Mohammed Al-Hafi gave orders to suspend work at courts, procuratorates and other judicial bodies until the end of April to fight the country’s outbreak of Coronavirus .

According to the Chairman’s decision No.35, the presidents of the courts is to prepare alternate schedules by assigning a number of judges and employees to attend on a daily basis at the court premises, to look into urgent cases. Nevertheless, the council requested the competent authorities to exclude judges, prosecutors and judiciary employees who have to go work, from the curfew order, to enable them to carry out the tasks assigned to them.

Spot gold price jumps on coronavirus fears

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Gold prices edged higher today as investors sought safe havens, with fears about the economic damage from the coronavirus intensifying after governments extended lockdowns to curtail its spread.

Spot gold was up 0.3% at $1,621.60 per ounce by 09:41 GMT, while U.S. gold futures gained 0.3% to $1,629.30.

Elsewhere, palladium fell 1.8% to $2,229.23 per ounce, platinum dropped 2.3% to $724.29, and silver slipped 2.8% to $14.07.

German state finance minister commits suicide after ‘virus crisis worries’

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Germany’s international broadcaster “Deutsche Welle” (DW) stated that the police suspect Thomas Schäfer died by suicide after his body was found on train tracks near Wiesbaden. He was the finance minister for the state of Hesse, where Germany’s financial center Frankfurt lies.

Schäfer was a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats (CDU). He had been active in Hessian state politics for more than two decades and was finance minister for almost 10 years.

Schäfer had been widely expected to succeed state premier, Volker Bouffier, if he decided not to stand for re-election in 2023.

In a statement, Bouffier said that the state’s leadership has received the news with “sadness and disbelief.”

Bouffier also said that Schäfer had been living under considerable worry and stress because of the current COVID-19 pandemic.

“His main concern was whether he could manage to fulfill the huge expectations of the population, especially in terms of financial aid,” Bouffier said on Sunday. “He clearly couldn’t see any way out. He was desperate, and so he left us. That has shocked us, has shocked me.”

“Our sincere condolences go to his closest relatives,” he added.

Tripoli: Water supplies restored

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 Man-made River Authority (MMRA) announced that electricity has been restored in the field and that water is pumped right away thanks to the technical team at the field who worked very hard, despite all logistical and security difficulties.

Yesterday, Water was cut off from Tripoli and other cities due to a power interruption in the eastern well field.

Crude dips below $20

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Oil prices fell sharply today, with U.S. crude briefly dropping below $20 and Brent hitting its lowest level in 18 years, on heightened fears that the global coronavirus shutdown could last months and demand for fuel could decline further.

Brent crude, the international benchmark for oil prices, was down $2.09, or 8.4%, at $22.84 by 09:17 GMT, after earlier dropping to $22.58, the lowest since November 2002.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude fell $1.11, or 5.2%, to $20.40. Earlier in the session, WTI fell as low as $19.92.

“Global oil demand is evaporating on the back of COVID-19-related travel restrictions and social distancing measures,” said UBS oil analyst Giovanni Staunovo.

The price of oil is now so low that it is becoming unprofitable for many oil firms to remain active, analysts said, and higher cost producers will have no choice but to shut production, especially since storage capacities are almost full.

Dollar snaps a week of declines

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Today, the dollar snapped a week of declines, rising against major currencies and riskier emerging markets as investors braced for a prolonged period of uncertainty while governments tightened lockdowns to fight the coronavirus.

Over the past two weeks the dollar first posted its biggest weekly rise since the 2008 financial crisis and then its biggest weekly drop since 2009. 

The dollar index rose as much as 0.7% to 98.992 USD, the Euro dropped 0.6% to $1.1077, while sterling weakened as much as 1% to $1.2318 before rebounding somewhat.

China’s Sinopec cuts 2020 capital spending by 2.5%

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Asia’s top refiner China Petroleum & Chemical Corp, or Sinopec, will trim capital expenditures in 2020 by 2.5% from a year earlier amid plunging oil prices and tepid fuel demand caused by the coronavirus outbreak.

Sinopec plans to spend 143.4 billion yuan ($20.21 billion) this year, with 61.1 billion yuan on upstream exploration focusing on an oilfield in northwestern China and construction at two shale-gas fields in the southwest.

China defends against incoming second wave of coronavirus

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A growing number of imported coronavirus cases in China, where the epidemic originated in December, risked fanning a second wave of infections when domestic transmissions had “basically been stopped”, a senior health official said today.

China, where the disease first emerged in the central city of Wuhan, had an accumulated total of 693 cases entering from overseas, which meant “the possibility of a new round of infections remains relatively big”, Mi Feng, spokesman for the National Health Commission (NHC), said.

In the last seven days, China has reported 313 imported cases of coronavirus but only six confirmed cases of domestic transmission, NHC’s data showed.

Airlines have been ordered to sharply cut international flights from Sunday. And restrictions on foreigners entering the country went into effect on Saturday.

It should be noted that a total of 3,300 people have now died in mainland China, with a reported 81,439 infections.