coronavirus

The US Labor Department said Thursday it cited Smithfield Foods for failing to protect employees from the coronavirus, making it the first major US meatpacker to face a fine after outbreaks at slaughterhouses infected thousands of workers this spring and caused meat shortages. The department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited Smithfield Packaged Meats in …

JPMorgan Chase executives told senior employees of the bank’s sales and trading operation that they and their teams must return to the office by Sept. 21, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. Trading chief Troy Rohrbaugh and Marc Badrichani, the bank’s global head of sales and research, delivered …

Federal law enforcement authorities have charged 57 people with stealing $175 million from an aid program meant to help small businesses weather pandemic lockdowns, officials said on Thursday, adding that they are eyeing hundreds more suspected cases of fraud. Officials said they have identified 500 individuals who may have defrauded the $660 billion Paycheck Protection …

With Major League Baseball’s proposed plans of playing the 2020 postseason in a controlled bubble environment, at least one team has taken issue with the protocols regarding players’ families. According to The Athletic, a handful of Dodgers players are citing their own diligence in observing the game’s health and safety protocols as to why their …

AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine could still be ready this year even though it had to halt a key clinical study after a participant got sick, CEO Pascal Soriot said Thursday. The British pharmaceutical firm should know by the end of 2020 whether the vaccine protects patients from the virus if it’s able to resume the study …

Forget the iPhone 12, Apple’s hottest new product is a face mask. The iPhone maker has reportedly created its first face mask designed in-house, and is beginning to send them out to corporate and retail workers as the Covid-19 pandemic continues. The Apple Face Mask, as it has been dubbed, was developed by the same …

The labor market’s recovery slowed this week as 884,000 Americans applied for unemployment benefits, a number higher than most experts had expected. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones predicted 850,000 first-time filings for the week. Instead, last week’s filings were unchanged from the prior seven days. The week’s filings still sit well above the pre-pandemic record …

Some 884,000 Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week as the labor market’s recovery from the coronavirus crisis stalled once again, new data show. That means a seasonally adjusted total of 60.1 million initial jobless claims have flooded unemployment offices during the COVID-19 pandemic — a number larger than the entire population of South Africa. …

President Trump admitted in March that he wanted to publicly downplay the danger posed by the coronavirus in order to avoid creating “panic,” even as he expressed privately that the disease posed a deadly threat, according to a new book on the Trump presidency by Bob Woodward. “I wanted to always play it down,” Trump told …

Governor Andrew Cuomo announced on Wednesday that he would allow New York City restaurants to reopen for indoor dining at 25 percent capacity beginning September 30. The announcement comes more than two months after Cuomo and mayor Bill de Blasio put the brakes on a plan to reopen indoor dining at restaurants in light of …