Mangaluru: Debt-ridden businessman sets himself ablaze

Udupi, Mar 6: District Health Officer Sudheer Chandra said that health department had compiled a list of foreigners visiting the Temple town Udupi and ensure that they are not infected with Coronavirus.

Addressing media persons at District Government Hospital in Ajjarkad on Friday, he said the Isolation Unit set up with five beds to treat the new Coronavirus infection includes two beds with Ventilator facility. Isolation wards with three beds were set up in Kundapur and Karkala taluks to treat the affected.

In order to prevent the spread of Coronavirus, Committees were formed at District and Taluk level, he added.

Udupi, Apr 29: Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) kit used by the doctors to treat COVID-19 patients was found in the river at Kodangala, Alevoor Gram Panchayat limits, sources said on Wednesday.

According to them, a Panchayat office staff who noticed the PPE thrown in the river informed the Health Department about it on Tuesday and following which a police complaint was filed.

As the PPE is used only for medical treatment, police officials need to investigate who used the kit and in which hospital, who threw it in the river and the purpose of throwing it.

Global oil markets remained under intense pressure on Tuesday, with Brent crude dropping below $20 per barrel for the first time in 18 years while other major benchmarks across the world tumbled. 

Brent, the international crude marker, slipped to $18.10, indicating that markets see no immediate let-up to the collapse in oil demand that sent some US oil benchmarks plunging under $0 for the first time on Monday, leaving producers paying for buyers to take their oil away while available storage is scarce.

Coronavirus has sent the oil sector into a state of crisis, with lockdowns implemented by authorities to smother the outbreak slashing demand for crude by as much as a third.

Contracts for the US benchmark West Texas Intermediate for delivery next month tumbled as low as minus $40 a barrel on Monday. Analysts at Citi warned that “if global storage worsens more quickly, Brent could chase WTI down to the bottom”.

The collapse in the May WTI contract was partly a technical product of the fact that it expires on Tuesday, meaning trading volumes were low and making the contract for June delivery more noteworthy, analysts said. That contract held above $20 a barrel on Monday but slid as much as 42 per cent on Tuesday to trade at lows of $11.79, suggesting the blowout in the May contract was more than a blip and that the entire global oil market faced challenges.

Goldman Sachs analysts said the June contact was likely to face downward pressure in the coming weeks, pointing to the “still unresolved market surplus”.

“As storage becomes saturated, price volatility will remain exceptionally high in coming weeks,” they said. “But with ultimately a finite amount of storage left to fill, production will soon need to fall sizeably to bring the market into balance, finally setting the stage for higher prices once demand gradually recovers.”

Warren Patterson, head of commodities strategy at ING, said it was likely that “storage this time next month will be even more of an issue, given the surplus environment”.

“And so in the absence of a meaningful demand recovery, negative prices could return for June,” he added.

European equities traded lower, partly dragged down by weaker energy stocks. The continent-wide Stoxx 600 was down 1.9 per cent, with its oil and gas sub-index dropping 3.3 per cent. In London the FTSE shed 1.7 per cent, while Frankfurt’s Dax slid 2.3 per cent. 

Equities were also broadly lower in Asia, with futures tipping US stocks to fall 1 per cent when trading in New York begins later.

On Wall Street overnight, the S&P 500 closed down 1.8 per cent, partly because of weakness in energy shares, but also due to increased pessimism over the time it will take for countries to emerge from lockdowns.

In fixed income, the yield on the 10-year US Treasury fell 0.03 percentage points to 0.585 per cent as investors retreated to the safety of the debt.