By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Raymond Colitt, Chiara Albanese, James Regan
Germany is pushing to ramp up production of coronavirus vaccines as Europe faces pressure to close the gap with Britain and the U.S. in a bid to end to the pandemic.
With inoculations gradually getting started across the region, authorities are concerned the slow pace of the rollout could force longer lockdowns and cause more economic damage for months to come. Across Europe, more than 400,000 people have died of the virus, which has infected 16.2 million and continues to spread.
“We’re working intensely on having additional production here in Germany soon,” Jens Spahn, the country’s health minister, said Monday on ZDF television, adding that more capacity could be available at a facility in Marburg as soon as February. “That would increase the amount considerably.”
Less than a week after the European Union cleared a shot developed by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, the sense of urgency has grown amid concerns about a faster-spreading strain that emerged in the U.K. and has been found in Spain and elsewhere in Europe.
Like other European countries, Italy started its vaccination campaign on Sunday, administering a shot to health workers. The country is now seeking to speed up the process of inoculating the bulk of the population, which will take months, Health Minister Roberto Speranza said in an interview with La Stampa.
Italy plans to rely on a production hub in Pomezia, near Rome, where a part of the viral element of the AstraZeneca Plc’s shot is produced. A military airport near the capital will distribute the vaccine across the country.
While inoculations offer a way out of the pandemic, bottlenecks have disrupted distribution. In Spain, vaccines were held up by a logistic problem in Belgium and will be delayed until Tuesday.
To speed up the rollout, a debate has emerged about breaking BioNTech’s license or sharing it with other manufacturers. Spahn dismissed the proposal in favor of boosting existing capacity, saying more suppliers wouldn’t speed things up because production is complicated and requires preparation.
In addition to supply issues, authorities face the difficult task of convincing people that the shots are safe and effective. A poll in France published in Le Journal du Dimanche on Sunday showed that only 44% of those surveyed planned to receive the vaccine, with just 13% certain to.
“As of today we have no idea if these vaccines protect against transmission,” Dominique Le Guludec, president of France’s HAS health authority, told FranceInter radio. “The only certainty we have today regarding these vaccines is that they prevent symptomatic forms and severe forms. So they will stop the health system becoming saturated.”
After approving the first vaccine weeks after the U.S. and the U.K., the EU made a show of marking “Delivery Day” on Sunday, when doses of the vaccine were distributed.
But the fanfare doesn’t make up for the bloc’s supply gap. It may have enough vaccine for two-thirds of its population in the middle of September, three months behind the U.S., according to London-based research firm Airfinity Ltd.
As result, officials are pleading with pandemic-weary residents to stick to distancing and hygiene measures with most having to wait months for an inoculation.
“It’s important to see that not everyone will get their chance in these first days,” Spahn said, adding on Twitter that it could be midyear for widespread availability if other vaccines get approved.
Drugmakers from AstraZeneca Plc and GlaxoSmithKline Plc to BeiGene Ltd. agreed to cut prices on some of their newest drugs in China by an average of 51% to be covered by the country’s national insurance fund.
A total of 119 new therapies — treating ailments from pulmonary diseases and diabetes to cancers and lupus — were added for coverage by the state-run medical safety net after drawn-out negotiations, the National Healthcare Security Administration said in a notice posted on its website Monday.
The average price cut is 10 percentage points less than last year, a relief to both domestic and foreign drugmakers that have seen their profits eroded by Beijing’s push to drive down health-care costs. Companies are eager to get their treatments on the list even at steep discounts to gain access to the world’s second-biggest market for pharmaceuticals.
Patients in China will only need to pay for a small fraction of the cost of these drugs out of their own pocket as the lion’s share of the bill will be footed by China’s $373 billion (2.44 trillion yuan) national medical insurance fund, which covers more than 95% of the country’s 1.4 billion people. The list of medicines covered by the fund has been updated annually with new entries since 2017, when Beijing accelerated its campaign to bring new drugs to its growing middle class as quickly and cheaply as possible.
In total, Chinese patients can now draw on state insurance to pay for 2,800 medicines. Beijing also managed to slash prices more than 40% on average for 14 drugs whose annual sales exceed 1 billion yuan each. The new version of the drug-reimbursement list will be effective from March 1.
The drugs that made it on the latest list include AstraZeneca’s cancer therapy Zoladex. Brukinsa, the first cancer drug from China to ever receive U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval, developed by Beijing-based BeiGene, was also added.
Glaxo drugs Benlysta and Volibris, which treat lupus and high blood pressure in the lungs, respectively, made the list. Other top-of-the-line therapies from multinationals were a diabetes drug from Novo Nordisk S/A, a medicine for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease developed by Astra, and an ulcerative colitis therapy by Takeda Pharmaceutical Co.
The latest inclusions feature popular immune cancer therapies known as PD-1 inhibitors, cancer treatments that use the body’s immune system to fight tumors — a priority for Beijing given that China has around 4 million new cancer patients annually. Included are treatments developed by local companies BeiGene, Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine Co. and Shanghai Junshi Biosciences Co.
The list also highlights treatments for covid-19 such as the antivirals ribavirin and arbidol, although China has largely contained coronavirus flare-ups after the outbreak a year ago in Wuhan that sparked the pandemic.
It is unclear how deep a cut each company consented for individual therapies. The National Healthcare Security Administration in the past has reached agreements with some drugmakers to withhold the details of the price cuts. Those missing from the new list include Merck & Co. and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.’s best-selling cancer therapies Keytruda and Opdivo.
For foreign drugmakers, the competition in China has brought significant sacrifices. New drugs are often brought to the market at prices lower than they are sold in the West, but still face competition from a growing legion of Chinese biotech firms developing similar medicines that can be sold more cheaply.
The process can be painful for local companies as well. Chinese drugmaker Simcere Pharmaceutical Group said it had agreed to slash the price of its newly approved stroke therapy by almost 70% to get it on the reimbursement list, figuring expanded access would fuel sales. Green Valley Pharmaceuticals, based in Shanghai, said it had participated in the price negotiations for its Alzheimer’s disease drug but didn’t obtain reimbursement status.
Global pharmaceutical companies’ older drugs that have gone off-patent are also facing price cuts. In a separate national campaign in which China’s public hospitals bulk-buy generic medications, prices have been driven down by as much as 90%.
Brexit deal hands a mix of relief, unwanted change to business
InternationalDec 29. 2020Automobiles manufactured by Vauxhall Motors in the factory parking lot in England’s Ellesmere Port on Feb. 5, 2018. Brexit had made Vauxhall, owned by France’s PSA Group, postpone further investment in its plant in Ellesmere Port. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Matthew Lloyd
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Joe Mayes, Siddharth Philip, Deirdre Hipwell
Britain and European Union may have signed a trade deal, but British businesses still face a raft of difficult changes.
More than four years in the making, the Brexit agreement avoids the worst-case scenario of new tariffs and quotas after Dec. 31. That’s a welcome relief, and gives companies greater scope to focus on containing the damage from the coronavirus pandemic.
The divorce will still create significant disruption for a range of industries. Mutual recognition of standards, which would have allowed firms to make products in the U.K. and market them in the EU without any extra certification process, isn’t part of the deal. Likewise, workers in Britain’s services industry — which makes up 80% of its economy — face new costs and bureaucracy as their professional qualifications will no longer be automatically recognized in the EU.
The deal also requires extra customs paperwork and checks at the EU border. The queues of trucks that formed around Dover, Britain’s busiest port, after France blocked incoming traffic has given Britons a taste of the disorder that could be in store.
While a deal is better than no deal, “there are more issues there which will only emerge over time because I think we’ve underestimated the interconnectedness of the European economies,” Ulrich Hoppe, director general of the German-British Chamber of Industry & Commerce, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV.
With the full text of the agreement being published only days before it comes into force, a chorus of business voices has pleaded for a grace period to comply with the changes.
Here is a look at what a Brexit deal means for a variety of industries.
Automotive
U.K. auto manufacturers generated about $107 billion (79 billion pounds) in sales last year and employed about 180,000 people. Carmakers now must decide whether to move forward with investment in new models and production capacity that had been put on hold for years.
Vauxhall, owned by France’s PSA Group, had been holding out for more clarity on Brexit before deciding whether to approve further investment in its plant in Ellesmere Port. For others, the delays to the deal have already taken a toll — Nissan Motor Co. has decided against producing an electric model in northern England.
The deal is good news because it mostly avoids tariffs and gives electric-car makers sufficient time to phase in the new requirements, raising the chance that PSA will further invest in Vauxhall, said David Bailey, a business economics professor at Birmingham Business School.
Here are the key requirements for rules of origin, which determine what percentage of the value of a car’s components need to be sourced locally to qualify for tariff-free trade:
– Parts made in the U.K. as well as the EU count as local content.
– Gasoline and diesel cars need to be made with at least 55% local content to avoid tariffs – 5 percentage points more than what automakers and the U.K. wanted.
– Electric vehicles and hybrids will need 40% local content, 10 percentage points more than what the U.K. had asked for.
– Until 2023, batteries can have as much as 70% overseas content, and EVs and hybrids can have as much as 60% foreign content.
– From 2024 to 2026 – when European battery production is expected to be much more advanced – batteries can have 50% overseas content and EVs and hybrids 55% content.
The terms for electric and hybrid cars are more lenient because the region is still in the early stages of localizing battery production. However, the 40% local content requirement for EVs and hybrids may be difficult to meet for companies that source parts mainly in Asia, Bailey said.
Manufacturing
Producers are responsible for about 10% of U.K. gross domestic product, and have been spared the threat of new tariffs. But they face a raft of paperwork and new standards regulations which could create substantial pressure across the country on its first day outside the single market and customs union.
On standards, there is no mutual recognition of conformity assessments in the deal, meaning manufacturers will have to get their products approved separately by regulators in both markets. They may also have to run two separate production processes if U.K. and EU specifications differ, adding costs.
And at the border, the prospect of trucks turning up without the correct post-Brexit forms raises worries about serious traffic snarls. For example, as many as 10,000 trucks per day carrying everything from German car parts to Spanish lettuces, as well as U.K. exports to Europe, pass through Dover. This key port on the southeast coast has warned of 17-mile (27-kilometer) lines of vehicles on both sides of the English Channel if its average customs clearing is slowed by just two minutes.
Disruption is a nightmare for manufacturers because their years of investment into digitizing their operations have left them reliant on just-in-time supply chains. This helps them avoid the expense of stockpiles, but means that any delays in shipments spell trouble for the entire production process and the whole industry.
Retail
The thorny issue of tariffs had been British retailers’ biggest concern as higher import costs in a low-margin sector would have had to be passed on to consumers during a recession. This was particularly important for supermarket chains such as Tesco Plc and J Sainsbury Plc as the U.K. produces only about half the food it consumes, and the vast majority of imported food comes from the EU.
British wine merchants will be relieved that wine traveling between the U.K. and EU will require only simplified paperwork. In a no-deal scenario wines from the EU would have required expensive laboratory tests and other documentation, adding costs.
However, retailers still face a raft of new non-tariff barriers stemming from costs and staffing needed to manage extra customs paperwork which, in time, could filter down to the prices paid by shoppers at checkouts. Any upheaval could aggravate the impact the pandemic has had on consumer spending. The timing may mean additional pain – January is normally a dire month for retailers given that consumers usually pull back spending after their surge of shopping for Christmas.
Drugs
The pharmaceutical industry has long called for a mutual recognition agreement to protect the sector from unnecessary duplication and cost. The deal has achieved this at least in part, with inspections of drug manufacturing facilities to be valid in both regions.
However, the text doesn’t mention another industry request – mutual recognition of batch testing. This suggests U.K. safety tests on medicines may need to be conducted again before they can be sold in the EU, which would add time and cost burdens.
The pharmaceutical sector, like others, will also have to get to grips with customs and border checks. Coronavirus has given the issue extra weight and highlighted the need for the smooth passage of drugs and vaccines — about 45 million packs of medicines move from the U.K. to the EU every month, with 37 million going the other way.
The U.K. and EU have agreed to a one-year phase-in period for implementing regulation in Northern Ireland to give companies time to prepare to adjust packaging and distribution routes.
Aerospace
This heavily regulated industry contributes $27 billion (20 billion pounds) a year to the U.K. economy, and has long dealt with standards where the slightest change in a design or machine used to make an aircraft component can spark a safety reassessment. The Brexit agreement includes an accord on safety that maps out an approach based on mutual recognition and cooperation. This is essential as some parts crisscross the English Channel multiple times during the process of building a plane. Companies like Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc know that any major break with the status quo risks substantial disruption.
After year-end, the U.K. will oversee its own aircraft safety regime. That means handing the responsibility to the Civil Aviation Authority for the first time in decades. There’s a question of whether it will be able to take on so much work quickly enough to avoid disruption.
Airlines
Both sides agreed to explore a liberalization of rules that limit the operations of airlines outside of the territory where their ownership is based. Before the split, U.K. shareholders counted toward EU ownership requirements, but now they don’t. This threatens the rights of airlines like IAG SA and easyJet PLC to operate within the bloc.
IAG, the owner of British Airways, Iberia and Vueling, is incorporated in Spain but has significant U.K., U.S. and Qatari ownership. EasyJet has had difficulty keeping its EU share of ownership above the required 50% threshold. Both have said they’ll address their shareholder structure, but under the current setup their status as EU-controlled could be tested. Future changes to the rules could help insulate them from challenges. The U.K. and EU have agreed to consider making changes to the rules within 12 months.
Trucking
Hauliers face new restrictions when moving goods between the U.K. and the EU. Previously, U.K. drivers could do unlimited trips between EU countries, and as many as three deliveries within a single country in the bloc. An extra delivery within a country is known as a “cabotage” trip.
Now, British operators can only do two extra journeys when they move goods to the EU, and can only make one cabotage trip.
The restrictions are a major blow to the U.K. concert industry, which has relied on being able to move instruments and sound equipment on multiple trips between European countries without having to return to Britain.
Chemicals
This is the U.K.’s biggest manufacturing export sector, with annual turnover of about $42.5 billion (31.5 billion pounds). While the deal document contains signals that cooperation will continue, Britain’s access to a full spectrum of chemicals may still be at risk.
Chemical makers have yet to be told how aligned the U.K.’s new stand-alone regulatory framework will be with Europe’s Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals regime, considered the gold standard for the safety and control of more than 22,000 substances and fluids that are key in industries from aerospace to electronics. Based on a “one substance, one registration” principle, it’s taken companies years of investment to put together all the dossiers containing data on the properties and hazards of each chemical required by REACH.
The Brexit agreement includes a commitment to cooperate on sharing this data. However, the lack of a firm arrangement means companies may yet face having to repeat the time- and money-consuming process of repeating all that paperwork to operate in both markets.
If ensuing talks fail to achieve regulatory alignment, the industry could face a 1 billion-pound bill to repeat all the safety documentation, according to Neil Hollis, BASF SE’s regulatory affairs manager.
Services
Services make up 80% of the U.K. economy and comprise a breadth of activities including IT, law, accountancy, insurance, consulting and architecture.
The EU is Britain’s largest export market for services, so the lack of automatic recognition for professional qualifications is a setback. It means firms will have to jump through extra bureaucratic hoops to have the right to provide services in an EU member state.
Short-term business travel between the U.K. and EU will continue unimpeded, but U.K. business visitors will only be able to travel to the EU for 90 days in any 180-day period.
Data
Movement of data generates $235 billion (174 billion pounds) of value in the U.K., according to the Confederation of British Industry, but the legal framework for this activity was in doubt because Britain is about to exit the EU’s data protection regime. The Brexit deal provides an interim solution that protects current data flows until a separate legal agreement is reached.
The temporary accord saves thousands of businesses from having to find alternative certifications before Jan. 1 to continue transfers, and postpones the risk of fines for violating the bloc’s strict privacy laws. This is a relief for any business which transfers data across the frontier from big tech platforms to airlines to banks.
EU officials said a so-called data adequacy decision, which would certify that U.K. data protection standards are comparable to the bloc’s, could be made in early 2021. Until then, the bridge offered by the Brexit deal leaves the existing rules place for as many as six months after Dec. 31.
Agriculture
British farmers welcomed the deal on tariffs, which will help products from barley to lamb remain competitive in the EU, the destination for more than 60% of the nation’s agricultural exports.
Still, even with the deal, there will be trade friction and the National Farmers Union called on the government to ensure cargoes of perishable foods aren’t left “languishing in queues at the border” in the new year. The British Meat Processors Association has also lamented that fresh-meat shipments won’t be prioritized in lines at the border, which may require traders to switch to trading lower-value frozen supply instead.
Fishing
A totemic sector for the campaign to leave the EU, despite its tiny contribution to U.K. GDP, the fishing industry is not happy with the agreement struck with the bloc and accused Prime Minister Boris Johnson of selling out coastal communities to get a deal.
Under the agreement, 25% of EU rights to catch fish in U.K. waters will be transferred to British boats over 5 1/2 years, much less than London’s demand for an 80% cut. After the phasing-in period, there will be annual negotiations over allocations, with each side able to use tariffs in retaliation if they disagree. The U.K. says they should be proportionate and limited to fish.
“Throughout the fishing industry there is a profound sense of disillusionment, betrayal, and fury that after all the rhetoric, promises and assurances, the Government caved-in on fish,” the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations said in a statement. “Some of the bellwether stocks tell the story most vividly, After a further five years adjustment period, the U.K.’s share of Channel cod will have increased from 9.3% to 10.2%.”
David Henig, U.K. director of the European Centre for the International Political Economy think tank, said the industry had lost out in the trade-off in the final days of the talks.
“In the end for the U.K. it seems the fear of losing car manufacturing, coupled with fear of border chaos, were a higher priority than fish or the level playing field,” he wrote in a blog post on Sunday. “This meant that the U.K. settled on other issues such as fish without any reward.”
Seconds after Usmaan Ahmad heard metallic bangs in his Tesla Model S last month and pulled off a suburban Dallas thoroughfare, flames started shooting out of his five-year-old car.
The sound was like “if you were to drop an axle of a normal car” on the ground, Ahmad, 41, said. Only the car was intact, he recalled. Suddenly, as he stood on the side of the road, the car ignited in flames, concentrated around the front passenger-side wheel. “This was shooting out like a flamethrower,” recalled Ahmad, who works in strategy and business development for a health-care system.
The combustion of Ahmad’s car is one of a growing number of fire incidents involving older Tesla Model S and X vehicles that experts say are related to the battery, raising questions about the safety and durability of electric vehicles as they age. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is evaluating the fire of Ahmad’s vehicle in Frisco, Tex., and has contacted Tesla over the matter, NHTSA spokesman Sean Rushton said this month. The agency opened an investigation last year into alleged battery defects that could cause fires in older Tesla sedans and SUVs.
Tesla did not respond to requests for comment sent to multiple representatives.
A lawsuit and defect petition that spurred the NHTSA probe allege Tesla manipulated its battery software in older model cars to reduce the risk of fire, lowering the range and lengthening charging times as it sought to address an undisclosed defect. The attorney filing suit on behalf of Tesla owners last year cited an “alarming number of car fires” that appeared to be spontaneous. Since the agency agreed to look into the issue last year, little more has been disclosed about the status of the probe.
Tesla has argued its cars are 10 times less likely to catch fire than gasoline vehicles, citing data from the National Fire Protection Association and U.S. Federal Highway Administration on the number of incidents by mileage traveled for its fleet of electric cars vs. other vehicles. Tesla said in 2018 that its vehicles had five fires per billion miles traveled, vs. 55 fires per billion miles traveled in the United States.
Other electric vehicle models have faced federal scrutiny and voluntary recalls over fire risks. Last month, NHTSA announced General Motors was recalling more than 50,000 Chevrolet Bolt electric cars in the United States over the potential for fire in its high-voltage battery pack, after the agency confirmed there were five known fires involving the vehicle, resulting in two injuries. NHTSA advised owners to park their cars outside until the problem is repaired.
General Motors spokesman Daniel Flores said dealers were updating the cars’ battery software to limit their charge capacity to 90 percent while the company addressed the issue. The batteries, he said, “may pose a risk of fire when charged to full, or very close to full, capacity,” and the company is “working around-the-clock to identify the root cause.”
Audi recalled its e-tron SUV last year shortly after its U.S. launch following the discovery of a potential fire risk, which the company said was a wiring harness issue. Audi spokesman Mark Dahncke said that Audi recorded no fires globally and that the recall was done out of an abundance of caution.
And federal regulators investigated General Motors for battery fire risks in its plug-in hybrid Chevrolet Volt in 2011, a problem GM agreed to address.
There were 189,500 highway vehicle fires in the United States in 2019, according to the National Fire Protection Association, encompassing passenger and other types of road-going vehicles. Experts say electric cars catch fire at a similar rate to gas cars, if not less often. But the duration and intensity of the fires, fueled by chemicals and the extreme heat buildup in lithium-ion battery systems, can make the fires in electric cars harder to put out.
“Battery fires can take up to 24 hours to extinguish,” Tesla says in an emergency response guide for the Model S on its website. “Consider allowing the battery to burn while protecting exposures.”
As a report prepared for NHTSA suggests, electric vehicle fires can result from a chain reaction of events where, for example, a defect causes overheating in a single cell. Through that vector, the heat can ignite highly flammable materials surrounding the source and spread to the rest of the battery, eventually spiraling out of control as temperature and pressure rise unabated, a process known as “thermal runaway.” But the issue may not be inherent to batteries, but rather the fact that the current crop of electric vehicles are relatively new to market and uniform safety standards have yet to be adopted, research has said.
An October 2017 Battelle report prepared for NHTSA on the safety of lithium-ion batteries for electric and plug-in hybrid cars “suggests that the technology and industry has not matured sufficiently to have established comprehensive safety codes and standards that mitigate risks.”
Tesla has come under particular scrutiny over concerns its computerized cars made emergency responses and investigations more difficult, with features such as retracting door handles that proved an impediment to first responders, for example, and proprietary systems with critical incident information that have required Tesla’s cooperation to decode.
The NHTSA defect petition that led to the probe cited alleged “high-voltage battery fires that are not related to collision or impact damage to the battery pack.” It focused on Model S and X vehicles from model years 2012 through 2019 and homed in on their battery management systems, including thermal management and charging control, NHTSA said.
One of the most gruesome incidents involving the Model S was the case of driver Omar Awan, who was trapped in a burning car in South Florida in 2019 after the car’s electronic door handles failed to retract following a fiery crash, his family said. The man’s family blamed that design feature in a wrongful-death lawsuit, saying his death was caused by the design features rather than the crash itself.
The battery reignited at least three times in the impound lot, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
Another fatal wreck in South Florida, in 2018, led the family of a teenage victim to sue Tesla, alleging the battery pack was defective. The firm representing that family alleged there were at least a dozen cases of Model S batteries igniting after a collision or while parked.
In 2019, Tesla said it sent investigators to the site of a Model S explosion in a Shanghai car park after video showed smoke billowing from the parked car before a fiery blast.
And a Tesla Model S burst into flames while sitting in traffic on a Los Angeles street in 2018, with fire shooting similarly from the wheel well. Tesla called it an “extraordinarily unusual occurrence.”
The Frisco incident bore resemblances to many of the previous cases, although Ahmad had been driving the Tesla Model S 85D shortly before it ignited. Ahmad said his battery was at around a 60 percent charge, he said, and he was cruising lightly on the way home from Home Depot.
Firefighters showed up within minutes after Robert Watson, 41, of Frisco witnessed black smoke and called 911. One of Watson’s sons started recording the fire, which was growing in intensity.
“It looked like the back of a jet engine with the afterburner on coming out of that front passenger wheel,” recalled Watson, who works for a technology company. The firefighters had the blaze under control in about 10 minutes, witnesses recalled.
But there was another issue. As he stood on the side of the road, Ahmad said, a firefighter asked how to get inside the cabin as they worked to douse the flames.
Ahmad thought to try the key fob but knew it might be futile. The Model S uses retractable door handles that are electronically controlled, popping out when they detect a nearby fob.
The firefighter “looked at me and he said, ‘You’re lucky you got out when you did, because you could have gotten stuck in there,'” Ahmad said. It raised similar concerns to the Florida crash involving Awan.
Keith Gall, battalion chief of administrative services for the Frisco Fire Department, told The Washington Post the fire involving Ahmad’s Tesla was deemed “unintentional,” though he did not elaborate. The car was destroyed, Ahmad said, and is sitting in an insurance lot. Now he is awaiting answers on the potential cause, though he said Tesla had not initially proved eager to investigate the fire.
“I am assuming the battery exploded and caused the fire, but would like to request Tesla please look into this,” he wrote Nov. 25 to a Tesla service center representative, who later responded they were glad he was safe and would look into the matter.
Since then, Tesla has repeatedly cited insurance hurdles. Once Ahmad files a claim, the parties will agree to jointly inspect the car, one Tesla representative told him.
“Until this is done, there is no time frame,” the Tesla rep told him in an email shared with The Post. A month after Ahmad’s email to Tesla, the company and his insurance agency agreed to jointly inspect the car, Ahmad said.
Ahmad said he wants to determine the root cause of the problem so this doesn’t happen to someone else.
Ahmad fears for others who have the same model vehicle and even for his parents, whom he convinced to get a Tesla Model X SUV.
“I don’t want anybody else to experience something this scary,” he said.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Iain Rogers
German officials ruled out a rapid lifting of the nation’s coronavirus restrictions as the country’s death toll from the disease ticked above 30,000.
Interior Minister Horst Seehofer told Bild am Sonntag newspaper that Germany “must not risk everything we have achieved with quick easing, otherwise it will start all over again.”
“If the lockdown does not have a sufficient effect, the measures must be tightened,” he said, adding that a “third wave” must be avoided “at all costs.”
German cases and deaths have been on the rise since October, prompting Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to impose a harder shutdown — with schools and nonessential stores shuttered — until at least Jan. 10. Germany joined European Union partners in starting vaccinations on Sunday, but officials have said it will take months for the program to have a tangible impact on the spread of the disease.
“I expect that we will have to extend the measures,” Manuela Schwesig, the state premier of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, said in reference to the nationwide lockdown. “We are not through this yet,” she said in an interview with Bild newspaper.
Germany has recorded several hundred coronavirus-related deaths each day in the past few weeks. The number of fatalities rose by another 351 in the 24 hours through Monday morning, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, after having crossed the 30,000 mark for the first time on Sunday. Total cases exceed 1.65 million.
Seehofer, a member of the Bavarian sister party to Merkel’s CDU, accused some senior colleagues of failing to recognize the seriousness of the pandemic. Merkel pushed for tighter restrictions to be introduced earlier, but faced resistance among the heads of Germany’s 16 states.
The virus curbs from October onward were “inadequate” and some top officials, including regional leaders, “simply underestimated the gravity of the situation,” Seehofer told Bild.
“You can only get the spread of a highly infectious and potentially deadly virus under control with rigorous countermeasures,” he said, adding that Germany still lacks “satisfactory solutions” for schools and public transport.
By Syndication Washington Post, The Japan News-Yomiuri
The suspensions of the entry of foreign visitors and the Go To Travel campaign began Monday.
The government is hoping to prevent the spread of infections with a new variant of the novel coronavirus from overseas by putting the entry ban into force through the end of January.
Furthermore, the government is asking people to refrain from travel during the year-end and New Year holidays by temporarily halting the tourism promotion campaign through Jan. 11.
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga emphasized that the entry ban was an action he had taken at an early stage.
“I gave instructions on the policy on Saturday in order to deal with the situation ahead of time,” he said on Monday morning, responding to questions from reporters at the Prime Minister’s Office. “I would like to ask the public to take thorough measures against infection such as washing their hands and wearing masks. I hope they have quiet year-end and New Year holidays.”
The government had allowed foreign students and expatriates to enter since October on an exceptional basis. After the spread of the new variant, the government had suspended entries from Britain and South Africa, and on Monday it extended the suspension to all countries.
Business personnel traffic with 11 countries and regions, including China and South Korea, will continue in accordance with bilateral agreements. However, if the variant of the virus spreads, the government will consider suspending it.
On the other hand, the return of Japanese nationals from overseas and the reentry of foreign nationals with resident status will continue to be permitted. But travelers returning or reentering Japan from a short-term business trip are again being required to quarantine at home or elsewhere for 14 days.
Domestic flight bookings
Due to the surge in domestic infection numbers, the Go To Travel campaign has been suspended for the first time since it started in July.
The suspension is scheduled to last for 15 days, until Jan. 11, but may be extended depending on the future infection situation.
There were few passengers returning to their hometowns or going on trips at the domestic terminal of Haneda Airport in Tokyo on Monday morning, despite the year-end holiday season. The electronic board was lined with announcements of flight cancellations.
The number of bookings for domestic flights from Dec. 25 to Jan. 3 fell sharply to 801,113 for All Nippon Airways, down 42.4% from the previous year, and 511,965 for Japan Airlines Group, down 51.5%, it was announced on Dec. 18.
There was no noticeable congestion on the Shinkansen bullet trains departing from Tokyo. As of 10 a.m. Monday, the occupancy rate of unreserved seats on the Tohoku, Yamagata, Joetsu and Hokuriku Shinkansen lines was between 10-30%, while that of the Tokaido Shinkansen was up to 30%.
The government will discuss what to do with the travel campaign after Jan. 12 at a meeting of the subcommittee on coronavirus countermeasures, which it plans to hold on or after Jan. 4. Depending on the infection situation, the suspension may be continued or only partially lifted.
Special measures law
In addition, the ruling and opposition parties will enact amendments to the special measures law for pandemic influenza prior to the enactment of the fiscal budget in the Diet session to be convened in January.
Hiroshi Moriyama, chairperson of the Liberal Democratic Party Diet Affairs Committee, and Jun Azumi, his counterpart in the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, talked in the Diet Building and agreed on doing so Monday morning.
In order to strengthen measures against the novel coronavirus, the government is considering including in the proposed amendment specified support measures for stores and other businesses that close or shorten their hours in response to requests, as well as penalties for those that do not.
The Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) on Monday raided a gambling den in Bangkok’s Chaeng Wattana area and arrested 89 alleged gamblers.
“The CIB has been working with Thung Song Hong police after we received a tip-off that a building in Chaeng Wattana Soi 14 in Bangkok’s Thung Song Hong subdistrict was being used as a gambling den,” said Pol Lt-General Torsak Sukwimol, the CIB chief.
“At the scene, officials arrested 89 suspected gamblers — 75 Thais and 14 foreigners — and confiscated four gambling tables and several gambling equipment.”
The detainees were charged with gambling and violating the Emergency Decree on Public Administration in Emergency Situations BE2548, which prohibits unauthorised gathering in a crowded space.
“Although they were wearing face masks, the crowded environment might have put them at risk of contracting and spreading Covid-19,” added Torsak.
“Officials checked their temperature before taking them into detention, and have contacted the Bangkok public health office to perform detailed testing.”
Torsak added that the building had been used as a gambling den in the past and had been ordered to shut down, but the gamblers had returned and reopened the place.
The Thailand Meteorological Department said on Tuesday that the weak high-pressure system covering upper Thailand and the South China Sea would bring morning fog, with dense fog in some areas.
The weather in the North and the Northeast remains cool to cold, while mountaintops are cold to very cold. Motorists in upper Thailand should proceed with caution due to poor visibility, the department said.
Meanwhile, a weak northeast monsoon prevails over the Gulf and the South, resulting in less rain.
The department said that from December 30 to January 3, the strong high pressure from China would extend to cover upper Thailand. Cool to cold weather will be likely over upper Thailand with a 6-8 degrees Celsius drop in temperature and strong winds.
The weather forecast for the next 24 hours:
North: Cool weather with fog in the morning and dense fog in some areas; minimum temperature 14-21 degrees Celsius, maximum 32-36°C; temperature on hilltops is likely to drop to 5-13°C.
Northeast: Cool weather with fog in the morning and dense fog in some areas; minimum temperature 18-22°C, maximum 32-35°C; temperature on hilltops is likely to drop to 12-16°C.
Central: Fog in the morning and dense fog in some areas; minimum temperature 23-24°C, maximum 35-36°C.
East: Partly cloudy with fog in the morning; minimum temperature 23-24°C, maximum 31-35°C; waves 1-2 metres high and two metres off shore.
South (east coast): Partly cloudy with thundershowers in 20 per cent of the areas; minimum temperature 22-24°C, maximum 31-33°C; waves 1-2 metres high and two metres during thundershowers.
South (west coast): Partly cloudy with thundershowers in 10 per cent of the areas; minimum temperature 22-25°C, maximum 32-34°C; waves a metre high and 1-2 metres during thundershowers.
Bangkok and surrounding areas: Fog in the morning; minimum temperature 25-29°C, maximum 33-36°C.
Nonthaburi’s old Provincial Hall is getting a facelift to remove the ugly lines that have marred its century-old beauty just to the north of Bangkok.
The Metropolitan Electricity Authority (MEA) and local authorities are moving the electric cables and posts that obscure the teakwood façade and placing them underground. The cable rerouting is part of first-phase renovation of Nonthaburi Pier on the Chao Phraya River.
The Provincial Hall, now a museum, is a large two-storey teak building built in the European style during the reign of King Chulalongkorn (King Rama V) in 1910.
The Fine Arts Department listed the building as a historic site in 1981, while the Association of Siamese Architects granted it an award for conservation in 2000. In 2009 the old Provincial Hall reopened as the Nonthaburi Museum, after renovation work on its exquisitely crafted wooden facade.
Now, the electrical cables in front of the building are being rerouted underground, with work scheduled for completion in January.
The MEA has so far buried 48.6 kilometres of cables that used to run overhead along major routes in Bangkok, including Silom, Sukhumvit, Phahonyothin, Phaya Thai, Rama I, Rama IV, Ratchadamri, Ratchawithi, Ratchaprarop, Sri Ayutthaya, Sawankhalok, Sathupradit, Sawang Arom, Phitsanulok, and Nakhon Sawan roads.
The Education Ministry said on Monday it will upgrade the education system next year by reducing the time students spend in classroom in order to boost personal learning time.
Education Minister Natthapol Teepsuwan said the move was part of an ongoing push to improve Thai education in 2021.
He added that the new budget for school lunches will soon be proposed to the Cabinet as a “gift to students”.
Natthapol also said more foreign teachers would be back in the classroom soon, after many were barred from returning to Thailand due to the Covid-19 travel ban.
Automobiles manufactured by Vauxhall Motors in the factory parking lot in England’s Ellesmere Port on Feb. 5, 2018. Brexit had made Vauxhall, owned by France’s PSA Group, postpone further investment in its plant in Ellesmere Port. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Matthew Lloyd
Natthapol Teepsuwan
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