DUBAI/RIYADH: The slump in demand for crude during the coronavirus pandemic has forced oil companies to contemplate the possibility that the fossil fuel market has peaked and the time for a global energy transition has come. 

KUWAIT: Kuwait’s confirmed novel coronavirus cases increased by 475 to 108,743, while seven patients died in the past 24 hours, raising the death toll to 639, the health ministry said yesterday. 

NEW YORK: Beach umbrellas are back in garages as temperatures cool, but wealthy New Yorkers are staying in the Hamptons beyond summer, fearful of the pandemic and rising crime in the city. Robert Moore, a silver-haired digital entrepreneur, has been ensconced in his villa in Amagansett, a stone’s throw from the beach, since March 13 when coronavirus began spreading across New York.

SYDNEY: Australia pledged billions in tax cuts and measures to boost jobs yesterday to help pull the economy out of its historic COVID-19 slump in a budget that tips the country into its deepest deficit on record. Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s conservative government has unleashed A$300 billion in emergency stimulus to prop up growth this year, backpedalling on a previous promise to return the budget to surplus.

NEW YORK: Amid a flood of government spending, the global downturn sparked by the coronavirus pandemic will not be as bad as originally feared, IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva said yesterday, but she warned that the crisis is far from over. 

KUWAIT: Kuwait’s confirmed coronavirus cases increased by 676 to 108,268 with four people having succumbed to the disease raising the death toll to 632 in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said yesterday. 

LONDON: Britain’s economy proved more resilient than initially thought last month, despite a tightening of lockdown restrictions and an end to a temporary government subsidy for businesses such as restaurants and bars, a major survey showed yesterday.

LONDON: British Finance Minister Rishi Sunak said yesterday he would protect the public finances after a surge in spending, and also defended Prime Minister Boris Johnson whose handling of the coronavirus crisis has come under fire.

LONDON: The eurozone’s economic recovery faltered in September as the reimposition of some restrictions on activity to halt a resurgence in the coronavirus sent the bloc’s dominant service sector into reverse, a survey showed.