NEW YORK (Reuters) &#8211; Corporate America is downsizing its real estate footprint as companies allow more employees to work from home, a growing threat to the bottom line of owners of traditional office buildings and a sign that companies are looking for ways to cut costs as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.



A Reuters analysis of quarterly earnings calls over the past week revealed more than 25 large companies plan to reduce their office space in the year ahead, a move designed to reduce the second-largest expense after payrolls at corporations.



Energy company Halliburton Co said it intends to close more than 100 facilities. Financial services company State Street Corp said it is going to nearly double the workers assigned to one office before adding additional space, based on the assumption that a significant portion of its workforce will continue to work from home even after a vaccine for COVID-19 emerges. Bedding company Sleep Number Corp plans to slow the growth of its total square footage as more consumers shop online.



“You should expect and hold us to a much lower footprint really starting quite soon,” State Street Corp’s CEO, Ronald Philip O’Hanley, said on the company’s July 17 earnings call.



Regions Financial Corp, meanwhile, told analysts: “Whether through increased use of hoteling, work from home or modified scheduling, we are confident overall office square footage will continue to decline,” as some workers share desks or stop coming into the building.



Analysts say the plans to cut back on real estate are likely the first wave of cost-cutting measures to hit office workers as companies try to maintain margins going into what may be a long recession. So far, the majority of the 14.7 million U.S. jobs lost during the pandemic have been in hard-hit areas such as restaurants, travel and retailers.



Reductions in office spending could likely be followed by layoffs and investments in technology that should help improve productivity with a reduced workforce, said Bill McMahon, chief investment officer of active equity strategies at Charles Schwab.



“Clearly, we’re seeing businesses starting to rationalize their physical plants and at some point they will turn to labor too,” he said.



Morgan Stanley in June forecast that work-from-home policies will increase vacancy rates in office buildings. Vacancy rates in New York will reach 10%-12% in the next two to five years from 8.7% now, while San Francisco will reach 7-9% from 5.8%, it predicted.



So far, concerns about declining office space use have not hurt commercial mortgaged-backed securities, with the iShares CMBS ETF up 4.4% for the year to date.



While companies tend to cut back on their real estate needs during typical recessions, the last four months of economic lockdown have shown that many workers can remain productive at home, said Danny Ismail, an analyst at independent research firm Green Street Advisors. As a result, the cutbacks that companies are making are more likely to be permanent, he said.



“Every company just went through a mass work-from-home experience and for the majority it was mostly positive,” he said.



Green Street Advisors expects that office demand will be reduced by up to 15% as a result of work from home policies once the coronavirus pandemic is contained.



That reduction in necessary space will most likely hurt real estate investment firms with large exposures in cities such as San Francisco and New York as workers are expected to be given more freedom by employers to live in lower-cost areas away from the coasts, Ismail said.



“Even before COVID-19, you’d seen a migration from majority coastal cities along the Northeast and West Coast to Sun Belt markets,” he said, referring to the region stretching from Florida to Southern California, collectively known as the Sun Belt. “We think that will accelerate in the future as the cost of living, quality of life and ability to keep your job is much better in a post-COVID-19 world than before.”

wall street

Who needs an office? US companies cut back

(Reuters) &#8211; Tesla will build its next factory near Austin, Texas, Chief Executive Elon Musk announced late on Wednesday.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="594" height="410" src="https://www.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/gettyimages-1155740300-594x594.jpg" alt="Billionaire Elon Musk: I am not Warren Buffett’s biggest fan" class="wp-image-351991" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/gettyimages-1155740300-594x594.jpg 594w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/gettyimages-1155740300-594x594-300x207.jpg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/gettyimages-1155740300-594x594-100x70.jpg 100w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/gettyimages-1155740300-594x594-218x150.jpg 218w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 594px) 100vw, 594px" /><figcaption>Billionaire Elon Musk: I am not Warren Buffett’s biggest fan (Photo by Charley Gallay/Getty Images for E3/Entertainment Software Association)</figcaption></figure>



The 2,000-acre site on the Colorado River is about 13 minutes from downtown Austin, Musk said during the company’s second-quarter earnings call.



“It’s going to be an ecological paradise &#8230; open to the public,” he said.



Musk said Tesla would consider site runner-up Tulsa, Oklahoma, for future production.



Musk and his team met earlier this month with officials in both states, which were competing to land the $1.1 billion plant.



Musk on Wednesday said the plant will build Tesla’s new Cybertruck and its heavy-duty Semi truck, as well as the Model 3 and Model Y cars for eastern North America.



Texas Governor Greg Abbott said in a statement on Wednesday: “Tesla is one of the most exciting and innovative companies in the world, and we are proud to welcome its team to the State of Texas,” said Governor Abbott. “Texas has the best workforce in the nation and we’ve built an economic environment that allows companies like Tesla to innovate and succeed.”

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GENEVA/ZURICH (Reuters) &#8211; Researchers are making “good progress” in developing vaccines against COVID-19, with a handful in late-stage trials, but their first use cannot be expected until early 2021, a World Health Organization (WHO) expert said on Wednesday.



WHO is working to ensure fair vaccine distribution, but in the meantime it is key to suppress the virus’s spread, said Mike Ryan, head of WHO’s emergencies programme, as daily new cases around the globe are at near-record levels.



“We’re making good progress,” Ryan said, noting that several vaccines were now in phase 3 trials and none had failed, so far, in terms of safety or ability to generate an immune response.



“Realistically it is going to be the first part of next year before we start seeing people getting vaccinated,” he told a public event on social media.



WHO was working to expand access to potential vaccines and to help scale-up production capacity, Ryan said.



“And we need to be fair about this, because this is a global good. Vaccines for this pandemic are not for the wealthy, they are not for the poor, they are for everybody,” he said.



The U.S. government will pay $1.95 billion to buy 100 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine being developed by Pfizer Inc and German biotech BioNTech if it proves safe and effective, the companies said.



Ryan also cautioned schools to be careful about re-opening until community transmission of COVID-19 is under control. Debate in the United States over restarting education has intensified, even as the pandemic flares up in dozens of states.



“We have to do everything possible to bring our children back to school, and the most effective thing we can do is to stop the disease in our community,” he said. “Because if you control the disease in the community, you can open the schools.”

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FRANKFURT/BEIJING/DETROIT (Reuters) &#8211; Tesla Inc’s (<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/TSLA.O">TSLA.O</a>) rapid rise to become the world’s most valuable carmaker could mark the start of a new era for the global auto industry, defined by a Silicon Valley approach to software that is overtaking old-school manufacturing know-how.



Tesla’s ascent took many investors by surprise. But executives at Daimler AG (<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/DAIGn.DE">DAIGn.DE</a>), the parent company of Mercedes-Benz, had a close-up view starting in 2009 of how Tesla and its chief executive Elon Musk were taking a new approach to building vehicles that challenged the established system.



Daimler, which bears the name of the man who invented the modern car 134 years ago, bought a nearly 10% Tesla stake in May 2009 in a deal which provided a $50 million lifeline for the struggling start-up.&nbsp;&nbsp;



That investment gave Mercedes engineers an inside view of how Musk was willing to launch technology that wasn’t perfect, and then repeatedly upgrade it, using smartphone style over-the-air updates, paying little regard to early profitability.



Mercedes engineers helped Tesla develop its Model S luxury sedan in exchange for access to Tesla’s partially hand-assembled battery packs, but in 2014 Daimler decided to sell their stake amid doubts Tesla’s approach could be industrialized at scale.



Tesla would go on to pioneer new approaches in manufacturing, designs in software and electronic architecture which enable it to introduce innovations faster than rivals, leaving analysts to draw comparisons with Apple (<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/AAPL.O">AAPL.O</a>).



Three people directly involved with the Mercedes side of the collaboration said the brief partnership highlighted the collision of old and new engineering cultures: the German obsession with long-term safety and control, which rewarded evolution, and the Silicon Valley carmaker’s experimental approach which embraced radical thinking and fast innovation.



“Elon Musk has been walking on the edge of a razorblade in terms of the aggression with which he pushes some technologies,” said a former Mercedes engineer who worked on the partnership.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">RELATED COVERAGE</h4>



<ul class="wp-block-list"><li><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-singapore/tesla-hiring-servicing-staff-in-unsupportive-singapore-idUSKCN24N0EF">Tesla hiring servicing staff in &#8216;unsupportive&#8217; Singapore</a></li></ul>



By contrast, Mercedes and other established automakers are still not comfortable about releasing a new technology, such as partially automated driving, without years of testing.



Tesla did not respond to requests for comment.



Investors favor the Tesla model, in an industry undergoing fundamental and dizzying change even though the U.S. carmaker will face an onslaught of competing electric vehicles from established automakers during the next few years.



They are putting their money on Musk and his company, even though Mercedes-Benz alone sold 935,089 cars in the first half of 2020, dwarfing the 179,050 delivered by Tesla in the same period.



Today, Tesla is worth nearly $304.6 billion, more than six times Daimler’s 41.5-billion-euro ($47.7 billion) market capitalization.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://graphics.reuters.com/AUTOS-TESLA/NEWERA/bdwvkerrkvm/img/tesla.JPG" alt=""/></figure>



GRAPHICTesla electrifies the auto industry’s new era



TWO CULTURES COLLIDE &nbsp;



Daimler and Tesla began collaborating after Mercedes engineers, who were developing a second-generation electric Smart car, bought a Tesla Roadster. They were impressed by the way Tesla packaged batteries, so arranged a visit to Silicon Valley to meet Musk in January 2009 and ordered 1,000 battery packs.



The collaboration expanded. At a joint press conference in the Mercedes-Benz museum in Stuttgart in May 2009, Tesla said the partnership would “accelerate bringing our Tesla Model S to production and ensure that it is a superlative vehicle”.



For its part, Mercedes wanted to use Tesla’s batteries to power an electric version of its compact Mercedes-Benz B-Class. The Tesla Model S would hit the road in 2012. An electric B-Class, arrived in showrooms two years later.



Despite having batteries supplied by Tesla, the Mercedes had a shorter operating range after Daimler engineers configured the B-class more conservatively to address their concerns about long-term battery degradation and the risk of overheating, a second Daimler staffer who worked on the joint projects told Reuters.



German engineers found that Tesla engineers had not done long-term stress tests on its battery. “We had to devise our own programme of stress tests,” the second Daimler engineer said.



Before starting production of a new car, Daimler engineers specify a “Lastenheft” &#8211; a blueprint laying out the properties of each component for suppliers. Significant changes cannot be made once the design is frozen.



“This is also the way you can guarantee that we will be profitable during mass production. Tesla was not as concerned about this aspect,” the second Daimler source said.



Daimler’s engineers suggested the underbody of the Model S needed reinforcing to prevent debris from the road puncturing a battery pack, the first Daimler engineer said.



To quash doubts about safety and security, following a series of battery fires, Tesla raised the ride height of its vehicles, using an over-the-air update, and a few months later, in March 2014, said it would add a triple underbody shield to new Model S cars and offered to retrofit existing cars.



Musk was able to make adjustments quickly thanks to Tesla’s ability to burn through more cash during development.



“At Mercedes you can make such adjustments every three years at best,” the engineer said.



The Model S, a four-door electric sedan would go on to outsell the flagship Mercedes-Benz S-Class in the United States in May 2013, and outstrip S-Class deliveries globally by 2017.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">MUSK: INNOVATE OR GO</h3>



Musk&#8217;s relentless focus on innovation explains, in part, why he has disrupted the traditional auto world. In an interview&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp8smJFaKYE">here</a>&nbsp;at the 2020 Air Warfare Symposium, published on YouTube, he was asked about the importance of innovation among his employees.





“We certainly need those that do advanced engineering to be innovative,” Musk said. “The incentive structure is set up &#8230; such that innovation is rewarded. Making mistakes along the way does not come with a big penalty. But failure to try to innovate at all &#8230; comes with a big penalty. You will be fired.”



Established automakers are playing catch-up to Tesla, designing their own software operating systems and dedicated electric cars.



Mercedes will release its EQS next year &#8211; a four-door limousine built on a dedicated electric vehicle platform, with an operating range of 700 km. A new version of the Mercedes S-Class, which will have combustion and hybrid powertrains and semi-autonomous driver assistance systems, is due this year.Slideshow&nbsp;(4 Images)



From an investor perspective, traditional players face billions of dollars in restructuring costs as they transform product lines and factories to move away from internal combustion technology



“No one is going to give an OEM (established automaker) a five-year window to say &#8230; you can totally retool your business, and I am going to buy in and fund this journey,” said Mark Wakefield, co-leader of automotive and industrials practice at consulting firm AlixPartners.



Start-ups, however, get time from investors to learn, make mistakes and grow, he added.



Investors are betting on Tesla’s ability to scale up manufacturing just as they once backed Toyota Motor Corp (<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/7203.T">7203.T</a>), which defined the auto industry’s last era with its mastery of highly efficient, high-quality lean production.



Toyota overtook the market capitalization of former industry leader General Motors&nbsp;(<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/GM.N">GM.N</a>) in 1996, though it wasn’t until 2008 that it sold more vehicles than its Detroit rival.



The Japanese giant also cultivated ties with Tesla, with the U.S. startup helping it design an electrified RAV4 compact sports utility vehicle under a 2010 deal.



Toyota was impressed by the speed with which Tesla came up with the new design, but ultimately decided Tesla’s methods were not suitable for mass production by a mainstream manufacturer when Toyota’s standards for product quality and durability were applied, two company insiders familiar with the partnership said.



Toyota said the joint project involved cooperation on the development of electric cars, parts and production system.



“Toyota accomplished what the project set out to achieve, and it ended in October 2014 after Tesla delivered roughly 2,500 electric powertrain systems over three years” for an electrified RAV4 crossover SUVs, a spokeswoman said.



Both the Toyota and Daimler collaborations were agreed before the Volkswagen (<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/VOWG_p.DE">VOWG_p.DE</a>) emissions-cheating scandal in 2015, which prompted a global regulatory backlash and forced carmakers to step up investments in electric cars.



“That was all before dieselgate, which changed the economics of electric and combustion-engined cars,” a senior Daimler manager said. “Tesla has a lead. Let’s see if they can scale up.”

Elon Musk At SpaceX Headquarters

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(Reuters) &#8211; Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk qualified on Tuesday for a payout worth an unprecedented $2.1 billion, his second jackpot since May from the electric car maker following its massive stock surge.



Tesla’s stock was down 3% in afternoon trading, eroding a recent rally that has elevated the company’s market capitalization to almost $300 billion, larger than any other carmaker.



Despite Tuesday’s stock dip, and importantly for Musk’s personal finances, Tesla’s six-month average market capitalization for the first time has reached $150 billion. That triggers the vesting of the second of 12 tranches of options granted to the billionaire in his 2018 pay package to buy Tesla stock at a discount. Musk, who is also majority owner and CEO of the SpaceX rocket maker, receives no salary.



Even with Tuesday’s decline in Tesla’s stock, its six-month average market capitalization rose, thanks to the stock’s strong rally in recent months.



In early May, Musk’s first tranche vested after Tesla’s six-month average stock market value reached $100 billion.



Musk has already achieved targets related to Tesla’s financial growth that are also required in order to vest the latest options tranche.



Each tranche gives Musk the option to buy 1.69 million Tesla shares at $350.02 each, less than a quarter of their current price. At Tesla’s current stock price of $1,594, Musk would theoretically be able to sell the shares related to the tranche that vested in May and the current tranche for a combined profit of $4.2 billion, or almost $2.1 billion per tranche.



Musk’s first tranche was worth about $700 million in May, when it vested, but its value has since increased along with Tesla’s stock price.



The median compensation for Tesla employees last year was about $58,000, according to a company filing.



Tesla’s stock has surged more than 500% over the past year as the company increased sales of its Model 3 sedan.



Following higher-than-expected second-quarter vehicle deliveries, some investors believe Tesla might report a profit in its second-quarter report on Wednesday after the bell. That would mark four consecutive profitable quarters, a first for Tesla and a key hurdle for it to be added to the S&amp;P 500 index&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/finance/markets/index?symbol=.SPX">.SPX</a>.



Analysts on average expect a $240 million loss for the quarter, according to Refinitiv. A month ago, analysts expected a loss of almost $340 million.

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NEW YORK/SEOUL (Reuters) &#8211; Convinced of Tesla Inc’s (<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/TSLA.O">TSLA.O</a>) imminent meteoric rise, Orestis Palampougioukis, a Netherlands-based software developer, took out a 43,000 euro ($49,000) loan in early October to invest it all in the electric carmaker, which at the time was trading at around $230 a share.FILE PHOTO: Tesla electric vehicles for test driving are parked in Hanam, South Korea, July 6, 2020. Picture taken on July 6, 2020. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji/File Photo



Since then, Palampougioukis’ bet has paid off as Tesla’s share price has increased more than six-fold, trading around $1,500 on Monday and surpassing every rival to become the world’s highest-valued automaker. After investing an additional 14,000 euros in personal funds, he has pocketed around 10,000 euros in profit to date, even when accounting for the 7% interest he pays the bank.



“To me it didn’t feel like a bet because I studied what Tesla does very closely and it’s simply inevitable that it would dominate,” Palampougioukis said, adding that he plans to own the shares for decades.



He is not alone. Retail investors around the world, staunch believers in the company&#8217;s mission to lead the auto industry into a battery-powered future, have invested their personal money, and at times their parents&#8217; retirement funds, in Tesla and reaped handsome rewards. 



Tesla reports second-quarter results on Wednesday after the close of trading. While analysts polled by Refinitiv on average expect the company to report a loss, a surprisingly strong vehicle delivery report boosted hopes among many retail investors for a profitable quarter.



Discussions about Tesla on online retail investor forums have surged, with users debating whether to hold their shares in hopes of even higher returns or cash out. (Graphic:&nbsp;<a href="https://tmsnrt.rs/3jmlmWr">tmsnrt.rs/3jmlmWr</a>)



While the total number of Tesla retail investors is not known, around 75% of the company’s stock is owned by large institutional investors and Tesla executives, including Chief Executive Elon Musk, according to Refinitiv data.



Tesla shares are among the most popular on U.S. retail investor platforms, such as Robinhood Markets Inc and TD Ameritrade (<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/AMTD.O">AMTD.O</a>). The number of users holding Tesla stock on the Robinhood trading app increased more than 400% from the first two weeks of July 2018 to the same point this year, according to data from Robintrack.net, which compiles data on the investing platform.



In South Korea, where Tesla has become the latest craze among tech-savvy professionals, the company is the most-traded overseas stock, with Koreans buying $3.2 billion worth of Tesla shares so far this year, up nearly 13-fold from all of 2019.



Choi Jong-wan, the former head of Korea’s Tesla owners’ club, borrowed money to invest in Tesla after the company unveiled its Model 3 in 2016. He also bought Tesla stock for his seven-year-old son, taking advantage of Korean inheritance tax breaks.



Choi, who bought a Model S, said the company’s shares are supported by its many fans buying stock. Convinced of Musk’s vision, Choi bought when Tesla shares tanked in the past.



“I am getting more confident about Tesla,” he said. “I will sell Tesla stock when other automakers introduce better electric cars than Tesla at competitive prices.”



Some investors have invested their stock proceeds in the company by buying its vehicles. David, a marketing specialist from Oakland, California, who asked that his last name not be used, bought a Tesla Model 3 last August after selling some of his Tesla shares.



He bought his first Tesla shares for a couple of hundred dollars right out of college in 2010. The company had just listed publicly, with the shares trading around $29.



David has since invested about another $40,000 and currently holds 180 shares.



“Tesla has treated me well so far. I believe in their vision and I believe in Elon Musk,” he said. “But the house we bought needs a new roof and I’m thinking to just sell a few shares to pay for that.”



Musk’s own net worth has soared even higher thanks to the latest share price rally. The outspoken Tesla boss is within reach of another share-based payday potentially worth as much as $2 billion. Including previously vested tranches, Musk would own options for about $4 billion worth of Tesla shares.

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HAVANA (Reuters) &#8211; State-run stores in Cuba began selling some food and hygiene products in U.S. dollars on Monday as the import-dependent country faces a grave shortage of tradable currency to purchase goods abroad.People wait in line to enter a store that sells products in U.S. dollars in Havana, Cuba, 



Cuba last had to open such dollar stores for basic goods in the 1990s when the fall of the Soviet Union plunged the Communist-run island into a deep economic depression.



This time it is the coronavirus pandemic, which has shuttered tourism and hit other revenue earners, worsening an existing liquidity crisis due to the implosion of ally Venezuela’s economy and the tightening of U.S. sanctions on old foe Cuba.



Lines formed in front of the stores on Monday and Cubans packed banks to obtain the bank card needed to purchase dollar goods although most residents resigned themselves to obtaining the basics in local currency.



“Not all Cubans can buy there, we don’t all have family abroad,” Lazara Rodriguez, 43, a dancer who lives near one of the stores, said.



The government said 62 stores were opening across the country with more to follow in the coming months.



Some 80 outlets selling domestic appliances, car parts and other items such as motorbikes opened late last year, and used cars went on sale for greenbacks earlier in 2020.



The Cuban state monopolizes retail and foreign trade but pandemic fallout has worsened shortages of food, medicine and other goods and there are long lines at retail outlets.



Consumers said the dollar stores provided an option amidst scarcity for some, but complained they still lacked many products.



“Its good, the prices are acceptable, but it does not have many products like detergent, oil and ham,” retiree Guillermo Antigua said, exiting a store in Havana.



Cuba is reopening with no new cases of COVID-19 reported on Monday, but private eateries with no access to wholesale markets have been finding it difficult to put together an offer.



The new stores are an option for some.



“This is good. We have options to keep working. At least they are selling us products,” cafeteria owner Daniel Gonzalez said as he packed cheese and other items into his car.



Cuba legalized the dollar after the fall of the Soviet Union but it was taken out of circulation in 2004.



Since then, there have been two currencies, the peso and the convertible peso, which is valued at 24 pesos, circulating although possession of the dollar and other tradable currencies remained legal.



Cubans who patronize the dollar stores need a dollar-denominated bank card from an account opened with tradable currencies which may be obtained through offshore remittances or other means such as exchanging local pesos on the street.Slideshow&nbsp;(3 Images)



The government claims the convertible peso is equal to the dollar, but imported goods, when available, have huge mark-ups as they are purchased in tradable currencies. The peso and convertible peso have no value abroad.



“As in the 1990s, national currencies have lost their convertibility and do not allow companies to pay debts and import inputs,” Pavel Vidal, a former Cuban central bank economist who teaches at Colombia’s Universidad Javeriana Cali, said.



“To ensure that at least some sectors and markets work, they have to dollarize them.”

1280px-Comité_Central_PCC

In Cuba, the old foe’s greenback makes a comeback

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) &#8211; Vodacom Group plans to create a ‘super app’ in partnership with digital payment provider Alipay, part of China’s Alibaba group, to allow consumers in South Africa to shop online, pay bills and send money to family from next year.



The app will also help small to medium enterprises (SME) access financial services such as lending and insurance, the two companies said in a joint statement on Monday.



Vodacom and other mobile operators in South Africa are seeking to expand their mobile payment apps into online market places to leverage their network and customer base.



They are also looking to tap more than 11 million South Africans who do not have bank accounts, to offer lending and other financial services.



South Africa’s biggest mobile operator by subscribers, MTN, plans to offer a similar app, while Telkom has repurposed its almost 70-year old Yellow Pages telephone directory business into an online market place app called Yep.



“This partnership is a significant milestone in promoting greater financial inclusion within the communities in which we operate, accelerating our financial services aspirations across Africa,” Vodacom Group Chief Executive Shameel Joosub said in the statement.



The super app, much like WeChat, a platform developed by Tencent Holdings Ltd in China, will be operated by Vodacom Financial Services, with Alipay as the technology provider, the firms said in their statement.



Alipay is owned by Ant Financial, the financial affiliate of the Alibaba Group Holdings.



The partnership will be a growth opportunity for Vodacom Financial Services, which in just four years has grown from a loss-making entity into a business with more than 12 million customers and contributes 1 billion rand ($59.98 million) in profit to the Vodacom Group, the mobile operator said.



The app will also allow consumers to stream music and follow news.



($1 = 16.6722 rand)

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(Reuters) &#8211; The World Health Organization reported a record increase in global coronavirus cases for the second day in a row, with the total rising by 259,848 in 24 hours.



The biggest increases reported on Saturday were from the United States, Brazil, India and South Africa, according to a daily report. The previous WHO record for new cases was 237,743 on Friday. Deaths rose by 7,360, the biggest one-day increase since May 10. Deaths have been averaging 4,800 a day in July, up slightly from an average of 4,600 a day in June.



Total global coronavirus cases surpassed 14 million on Friday, according to a Reuters tally, marking another milestone in the spread of the disease that has killed nearly 600,000 people in seven months. The surge means that 1 million cases were reported in under 100 hours.



The WHO reported 71,484 new cases in the United States, 45,403 in Brazil, 34,884 in India and 13,373 in South Africa.



India on Friday became the third country in the world to record more than 1 million cases of the new coronavirus, behind only the United States and Brazil. Epidemiologists say India is still likely months from hitting its peak.



Cases in Brazil crossed the 2 million mark on Thursday, doubling in less than a month and adding nearly 40,000 new cases a day. A patchwork of state and city responses has held up poorly in Brazil in the absence of a tightly coordinated policy from the federal government.



The United States, which leads with world with over 3.7 million cases, has also tried to curb the outbreak at the state and local levels with only limited success.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) &#8211; Twitter Inc disabled a campaign-style video that President Donald Trump retweeted on Saturday, citing a copyright complaint.



The video, which included music from the group Linkin Park, disappeared from the president’s Twitter feed late Saturday with the notification: “This media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner.”



Twitter removed the video, which Trump had retweeted from White House social media director Dan Scavino, after it received a Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice from Machine Shop Entertainment, according to a notice posted on the Lumen Database which collects requests for removal of online materials.



Machine Shop is a management company owned by the rock band Linkin Park, according to its LinkedIn page.



“We respond to valid copyright complaints sent to us by a copyright owner or their authorized representatives,” a Twitter representative said in an email statement.



The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.



Twitter began challenging Trump’s tweets in May and has repeatedly clashed with him since. The social media company has several times disabled or commented on tweets by the president because of what it said were copyright complaints or violations of a policy against threatening violence.



Twitter removed an image the president tweeted on June 30, which included a picture of Trump, because of a complaint from the New York Times, whose photographer had shot the image.



The company also put a tweet from the president behind a warning label in late May, saying that he had violated its rules against “glorifying violence” when he advocated that Minneapolis authorities be tough in responding to protests over the death of George Floyd.

gettyimages-642093036-594×594-2

Twitter disables Trump tweet over copyright complaint

(Reuters) &#8211; China’s embassy in Myanmar on Sunday accused the United States of “outrageously smearing” the country and driving a wedge with its Southeast Asian neighbors over the contested South China Sea and Hong Kong, as tensions mount between the superpowers.



Responding to U.S. claims Beijing was undermining the sovereignty of its neighbors, the Chinese embassy said U.S. agencies abroad were doing “disgusting things” to contain China and had showed a “selfish, hypocritical, contemptible, and ugly face”.



The United States last week hardened its position on the South China Sea, saying it would back countries in the region that challenge Beijing’s claim to about 90% of the strategic waterway.



In a statement on Saturday, the U.S. embassy in Yangon called China’s actions in the South China Sea and Hong Kong, where Beijing has imposed tough new national security laws, part of a “larger pattern to undermine the sovereignty of its neighbors”.



The U.S. statement drew parallels between China’s actions in the South China Sea and Hong Kong with large-scale Chinese investments projects in Myanmar that the United States warned could become debt-traps, along with trafficking of women from Myanmar to China as brides, and the inflow of drugs from China into Myanmar.



“This is how modern sovereignty is often lost &#8211; not through dramatic, overt action,&nbsp;but through a cascade of smaller ones that lead to its slow erosion over time,” the U.S. embassy said.



In its rebuke, China said the statement showed a “sour grapes” attitude by the United States towards “flourishing China-Myanmar relations” and was “another farce on a global tour by the U.S. authorities to shift the attention on domestic problems and seek selfish political gains”.



“The U.S. should first look in the mirror to see whether it still looks like a major country now,” it said.



The Chinese embassy in Yangon did not answer phone calls seeking further comment. The U.S. embassy was not immediately available for comment.



Myanmar has increasingly become a battleground for influence between the two countries since relations between the government led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and the West became strained over its treatment of the Rohingya Muslim minority.



Author and historian Thant Myint-U told Reuters in an email although the country was of negligible economic value to the rivals, its strategic importance as a bridge between mainland China and the Bay of Bengal was hard to ignore.



“Myanmar’s instincts since independence in 1948 are to try to be friends with everyone, but it’s not clear that’s going to remain possible, in this coming period of increasingly febrile superpower rivalry,” he said.



“The&nbsp;sheer weight of China’s giant industrial revolution next door is already transforming Myanmar; if multi-billion dollar infrastructure projects are added to the mix, the border between the two countries will become increasingly difficult to see,” he said.



“It’s important to remember that Myanmar was one of the few countries in the world where the last Cold War led to proxy armed fighting which in turn led to military dictatorship and decades of self-imposed isolation.”

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