BALTIMORE: After years of staff cuts, shrinking budgets and declining readership, the Baltimore Sun finally has some good news to report about itself: a deal for a new nonprofit group to take over, and potentially revive the struggling newspaper. 

PARIS: Former Australian finance minister Mathias Cormann was elected Friday as the new head of the influential Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, sources told AFP, in a choice that dismayed environmental campaigners. 

LONDON: The financial toll of Brexit is clear for exporters like cookware maker Neil Currie: He is buried in new paperwork, has lost orders and the cost of exporting frying pans to France has doubled. 

ABIDJAN: Africa’s economy should return to growth in aggregate across the continent in 2021 after a coronavirus recession, the African Development Bank said Friday, while warning that poverty and public debt would continue to rise. The 2.1-percent contraction of the pan-African economy in 2020 was the first recession in half a century, but should give way to expansion of 3.4 percent this year, the AfDB said in the 2021 edition of its African Economic Outlook report. 

Kuwait Ministry of Health said Friday 1,356 people tested positive for the coronavirus while eight persons died of the virus in the past 24 hours. The new cases increased number of registered infections to 207,249 and deaths topped 1,156, MoH spokesman Dr. Abdullah Al-Sanad told KUNA.

WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden’s stimulus program is being hailed as both boosting domestic growth and spurring the global recovery, but the IMF warned that policymakers will need to be alert to risks posed by the massive cash injection. 

KUNA: Kuwait on Thursday reported 1,505 new coronavirus infections and four deaths, the health ministry said. In a statement to KUNA, ministry spokesman Dr Abdullah Al-Sanad affirmed total number of infections surged to 205,893 and the death toll climbed to 1,148.

HONG KONG: Hong Kong carrier Cathay Pacific said yesterday it suffered a record $2.8 billion loss last year as the coronavirus pandemic wiped out demand for travel-and the airline warned of a long road to recovery ahead. Chairman Patrick Healy described 2020 as the “most challenging” in the airline’s 70-year history and said much will now depend on how effective and widespread global vaccination programs are.

LONDON: The collapse of British finance firm Greensill has sparked panic and threatened 50,000 jobs, in particular at the sprawling steel empire of Indian-British billionaire Sanjeev Gupta. Greensill specialized in short-term corporate loans via a complex and opaque business model that ultimately sparked its declaration of insolvency on Monday.