Mint Lite | Top 5 news and views around the world

News and views, opinions and talking points from around the world to start your day

Leaders around the world seem to be facing tremendous pressure. It’s been more than two months since WHO officially declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic on 11 March, and lockdowns are being eased around the world. Yet, global leaders are facing their hardest times as economies tank and people exhausted by restrictions and hardship demand more. For the rest of the news you need to know before you start your day, here’s Mint Lite.

Cases spike, flights resume

India on Monday recorded its biggest single-day jump in cases of covid-19, overtaking Iran to become one of the 10 worst-hit nations, even as the government allowed domestic air travel to restart. India reported another 6,977 cases, taking its total to 138,845, according to government data, despite the world’s longest lockdown imposed in March. Total deaths have crossed 4,000. Confusion reigned on Day one as flights resumed after a two-month break during the lockdown. Many passengers reached the airport only to learn that their flights had been cancelled. There was further confusion as states have implemented their own quarantine measures. Meanwhile, the Railways said it would run an additional 2,600 special trains in the next 10 days to help nearly 3.5 million stranded migrant workers get to their homes.

Japan out of crisis, but is Abe?

Japan lifted the state of emergency imposed on Tokyo and other regions since April as the number of new coronavirus cases has dropped to less than 50 a day. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Monday that the crisis is over. His political troubles, however, may be just beginning. Abe’s efforts to curb the outbreak and ease the economic damage have been widely seen as slow and ineffective. He’s been outshone by regional governors, who pressed him to finally call the state of emergency credited with halting the spread of infections for now. During the state of emergency, Japan slipped into recession for the first time since 2015 with two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. Analysts expect Japan to suffer a contraction of almost 22% this quarter, the deepest since records began in 1955. The coronavirus crisis has undermined support for his economic stewardship and depleted the resources Abe will need to avert a deep recession and pull off another comeback like ones that made him the country’s longest-serving premier. Some in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party are weighing possible successors, led by former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida.

India’s natural gas output falls one-fifth in April

Lockdown restrictions and lower usage and demand from industries has affected the production of natural gas in India (see chart). Data from the oil ministry showed that natural gas output was 2.16 billion cubic metres in April, or 18.6% lower than the 2.65 bcm produced in the same month last year. ONGC and Oil India both produced between 10% and 15% less natural gas during the lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus. Oil refineries too produced about 30% less fuel in April at 18.9 million tonnes as the lockdown kept most vehicles off the roads and cut into demand.

UK’s Johnson Faces Heat

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is facing the most political pressure since he won a huge parliamentary majority last year, as lawmakers from all sides publicly attack his top aide even after Johnson put his own authority on the line to back him. Facing a furore over Dominic Cummings breaking the nation’s lockdown rules, Johnson said he understood why his key adviser had traveled more than 400km to seek care for his four-year-old child when he was supposedly self-isolating as because he had coronavirus symptoms. Johnson said that while he understood the public’s anger and confusion, Cummings’s actions were “sensible and defensible." The controversy comes at a highly sensitive moment for Johnson, with Britons beginning to chafe after two months of restrictions in a country where fatalities from the virus have topped 36,000. That gives Britain the worst death toll in Europe and the highest in the world after the U.S.

Olympian, hockey legend Balbir Singh dies

Three-time Olympic gold medallist and legendary hockey centre-forward Balbir Singh died at the age of 95 after a prolonged pulmonary illness in Mohali on Monday. Singh took India to its first Olympic gold as an independent country at the 1948 London Games when they beat Britain 4-0 in the final. India went on to defend the title at the next two Games in Helsinki and Melbourne. Singh scored five goals in India’s 6-1 victory over the Netherlands in the 1952 final, a record that still stands. He also captained India at the 1956 Games when they scored 38 goals in five matches and conceded none. Following his retirement, Singh coached the Indian team which won the World Cup in 1975.

*Curated by Shalini Umachandran. Have something to share with us? Write to us at businessoflife@livemint.com or tweet to @shalinimb

Subscribe to newsletters

* Enter a valid email
* Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter.