Bitcoin is about to undergo a scheduled technical adjustment as the number of new coins awarded to the computer wizards who "mine" the cryptocurrency will be cut in half, but forecasting which way its price will move afterward is more complicated now.

China's banking and insurance regulator on Saturday issued draft rules on commercial banks' online lending business, banning the use of such loans for riskier investments and capping banks' online consumer credit, in a move to rein in financial risks.

Hackers linked to Iran have targeted staff at U.S. drugmaker Gilead Sciences Inc in recent weeks, according to publicly-available web archives reviewed by Reuters and three cybersecurity researchers, as the company races to deploy a treatment for the COVID-19 virus.

Paris and the Netherlands are lending their respective parts of Air France-KLM up to 11 bln euros. The tricky bailout exposes the frailty of the 2004 merger. Ed Cropley reveals how other operators, including Germany’s Lufthansa and Britain’s IAG, could fly into similar problems.

The coronavirus has helped make Big Tech too big to fail. Before the pandemic, political pressure in D.C. and Brussels was mounting on Silicon Valley giants like Facebook. Gina Chon explains how their size has been an asset in a crisis, which will mute arguments to break them up.

North Korea’s portly dictator has dropped out of sight. Concern is rampant: Is he sick with coronavirus? In a coma? Dead? Whatever his condition, Pete Sweeney discusses the country’s succession problem and its implications for the region.

Goldman Sachs shareholders gave lukewarm approval for CEO David Solomon’s $27.5 mln package. It’s similar to what his peers get, and most of it doesn’t come for at least a year. Still, in a time of economic crisis, eight-digit rewards attract extra scrutiny, John Foley suggests.

Shares in Europe’s top banks have plunged as investors fret about a surge in bad debts. Yet most lenders’ capital buffers can absorb a spike three times as bad as the 2009 average. As Liam Proud explains, that makes taxpayer bailouts and widespread equity hikes unlikely.

U.S. billionaire John Malone may merge his Virgin Media broadband outfit with mobile operator O2. A joint venture could see Spain’s Telefonica, O2’s indebted parent, pocketing over 4 billion pounds. Ed Cropley explains how this might mean a lonelier future for rival Vodafone.

Could President Trump refuse to pay back the $1.1 trln the U.S. owes to China? While markets would hate the idea, it’s theoretically possible thanks to broad powers designed for times of emergency. John Foley explains how this dangerous weapon could be used if push came to shove.

Kingsoft Cloud will debut on Nasdaq, testing appetite for Chinese shares a month after the Luckin Coffee scandal. Data demand is booming in China amid Covid-19, and Kingsoft is a strong rival to market leader Alibaba. Robyn Mak explains why New York might like this listing.

U.S. cable firms are in for pain even after the pandemic starts to fade. Sports rights to air football games and other matchups are expected to soar and so will monthly bills. Jennifer Saba explains why non-sports lovers will choose Netflix and Disney+ and ditch their cable.

Like diseases in the past, the pandemic will change intimacy patterns. Covid-19 will make it harder for lovers to swipe right on platforms like $22 bln Match Group’s Tinder with peace of mind. But more engagement, if fewer hookups, may benefit the model, argues Dasha Afanasieva.

Gains in Reliance Industries boosted Indian shares on Friday, but they ended the week sharply lower as coronavirus cases continued to spiral and markets awaited an economic stimulus.

A train killed 16 migrant workers who had fallen asleep on the track on Friday while they were heading back to their home village after losing their jobs in a coronavirus lockdown, police said.

A court asked the Indian government on Friday to respond to a challenge against its order for compulsory use of a contact tracing app by public and private sector employees returning to work amid the world's biggest coronavirus lockdown.

Indian police have filed a culpable homicide complaint against an LG Chem subsidiary over a toxic gas leak at its chemical plant in the south of the country that killed 11 people and forced 800 into hospital for treatment from poisoning.

Inflows into India's equity mutual funds nearly halved in April, industry data showed, as many investors rattled by stock market volatility due to the new coronavirus and the impact of a lockdown on the economy chose to stay away.

The Indian government plans to borrow 12 trillion rupees ($160 billion) in the fiscal year to March 2021, up from the previously budgeted 7.8 trillion rupees to cushion the blow from the new coronavirus pandemic, it said on Friday.

Doctors in hazmat suits ran temperature checks on passengers at Delhi airport and bags were disinfected as the first group of Indians returned home on special flights from Singapore and the Gulf on Friday since a sweeping lockdown was imposed in March.

Some residents frustrated over a strict coronavirus lockdown in Ahmedabad, the largest city in Gujarat, hurled stones and were met with teargas in clashes with paramilitary forces on Friday.

When gas began leaking from a nearby chemical factory and drifting towards his house in southern India, there were no warnings and no alarms, welder Elamanchili Venkatesh said.

India captain Virat Kohli and his team mates would be ready to spend two weeks in quarantine in Australia if that helped the tour go ahead as planned later this year, a top official of the Indian board has said.

Amid mounds of rubble and the ruins of buildings destroyed during nearly a decade of war, a Ramadan iftar meal has reunited a community in northwestern Syria.

Before she was laid off from her bartending job in Charleston, South Carolina, Shana Swain used to spend her nights serving food and mixing Manhattans and Cosmopolitans.

The magical atmosphere will be missing if the cricket season currently stalled by the COVID-19 pandemic resumes in empty stadiums, India captain Virat Kohli has said.

Kuwait will enact a "total curfew" from 4pm (1300 GMT) on Sunday through to May 30 to help to curb the spread of the new coronavirus, its cabinet said in a statement on Friday.

A 5-year old boy has died in New York from a rare inflammatory syndrome believed to be linked to the novel coronavirus, highlighting a potential new risk for children in the pandemic, Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Friday.

The U.S. government reported more catastrophic economic fallout from the coronavirus crisis on Friday as the pandemic pierced the very walls of the White House and California gave the green light for its factories to restart after a seven-week lockdown.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence's press secretary, the wife of one of President Donald Trump's senior advisers, has tested positive for the coronavirus, raising alarm about the virus' potential spread within the White House's inner most circle.

Villagers placed the bodies of three victims of a deadly gas leak from an LG Polymers plant in Andhra Pradesh at the gates of the site on Saturday, and demanded the factory be shut down immediately and its top management arrested.

Hundreds of migrant workers in Gujarat have clashed for a second day with authorities, hurling stones at police trying to enforce a lockdown to stem the spread of coronavirus.

More than 1,000 people queued up on Saturday to get free food parcels in Geneva, underscoring the impact of the coronavirus epidemic on the working poor and undocumented immigrants even in wealthy Switzerland.

Pfizer Inc said on Friday it is in talks to shift more of its medicine production to outside contractors as it prepares for large-scale production of an experimental vaccine to prevent COVID-19, should it prove safe and effective.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday reported 1,248,040 cases of the new coronavirus, an increase of 28,974 cases from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 2,180 to 75,477.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 1,251 to 168,551, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Saturday.

China reported one new coronavirus case for Friday, unchanged from the day before, data from the national health authority showed on Saturday.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn is in self-quarantine for a couple of weeks after coming into contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19, an FDA spokesman told Reuters late on Friday.

Thailand reported four new coronavirus cases and one more death on Saturday, bringing the total to 3,004 cases and 56 deaths since the outbreak started in January.

China will reform its disease prevention and control system to address weaknesses exposed by the coronavirus outbreak, a senior health official said on Saturday.

Singapore registered 753 new coronavirus infections, its health ministry said on Saturday, taking the city-state's total to 22,460 cases.

Chinese regulators have approved Novartis' Mayzent to treat relapsing multiple sclerosis in adults, the Swiss drug maker said in a statement on Saturday.

Russian authorities said on Saturday they had recorded 10,817 new cases of the coronavirus in the last day, pushing the nationwide tally to 198,676.

The Philippines' health ministry reported on Saturday that coronavirus deaths have reached more than 700.

Tokyo reported 36 new cases of coronavirus infections on Saturday, TV Asahi said, three less than a day earlier and the seventh consecutive day that new infections have remained below 100.

Indonesia reported on Saturday 533 new coronavirus infections, the biggest daily increase, taking the total number to 13,645, health ministry official Achmad Yurianto said.

Malaysia health authorities on Saturday reported 54 new coronavirus cases for a total of 6,589.

Slovakia on Friday recorded no new cases of coronavirus for the first time since March 10, government figures showed.

The number of deaths from the coronavirus in Mexico's best-known border city, Tijuana, has soared and the COVID-19 mortality rate is twice the national average, the health ministry says, after medical staff quickly fell ill as the outbreak rampaged through hospital wards.

A 5-year old boy has died in New York from a rare inflammatory syndrome believed to be linked to the novel coronavirus, highlighting a potential new risk for children in the pandemic, Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Friday.