NEW YORK: US authorities fined Citibank $400 million over deficiencies in risk management practices and required an overhaul of internal controls at the global financial powerhouse, officials announced Wednesday. 

KUWAIT: Kuwait’s confirmed coronavirus cases increased by 698 to 109,441, while three patients died in the past 24 hours, raising the death toll to 642, the health ministry said yesterday. 

LONDON: The new boss of Tesco, Britain’s biggest retailer by sales, backed the strategy of his predecessor yesterday, despite a drop in first-half core profit as COVID-19 costs and losses at Tesco bank outweighed a surge in sales. Ken Murphy, formerly at healthcare group Walgreens Boots Alliance, succeeded Dave Lewis on Oct. 1.A

BERLIN: German industrial output edged down in August following three months of relatively strong increases, suggesting the recovery in Europe’s largest economy from the coronavirus shock is starting to lose steam. 

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.