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ALGIERS — Algeria said on Saturday that the coronavirus crisis on top of falling oil prices have caused unprecedented damage to its economy, including over $1 billion in losses in the public sector alone.

"Algeria is facing an unprecedented difficult economic situation", said Prime Minister Abdelaziz Djerad, quoted by the official APS news agency.

This was due to "the structural crisis inherited from the former government, the fall in hydrocarbon prices and finally, the health crisis" of the novel coronavirus. 

The premier was speaking at a meeting at which Finance Minister Aymen Benabderahmane announced public company losses totalled more than $1 billion, affecting mainly the transport and energy sectors.

The government decided in early May to slash the state budget by half because of the global collapse in oil prices and coronavirus lockdowns.

The North African nation is heavily dependent on oil production, which generates over 90 per cent of its export revenues.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts Algeria's economy will shrink by 5.2 per cent this year, and it will have among the highest budget deficits in the region. 

President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has ruled out approaching the IMF for loans, saying, "accumulating debt harms national sovereignty".

A commission tasked with assessing the impact of the pandemic on the national economy was set up Saturday, according to APS.

Algeria has reported several record daily tallies of COVID-19 cases in the past week, with 601 new infections confirmed Saturday. 

The worst-affected country in North Africa, Algeria has officially reported a total of more than 22,500 cases of the COVID-19, including 1,068 deaths.

WASHINGTON — Twitter said Saturday that hackers "manipulated" some of its employees to access accounts in a high-profile attack, including those of Joe Biden and Elon Musk, and apologized profusely for the breach.

Posts trying to dupe people into sending the hackers Bitcoin were tweeted by the official accounts of Apple, Uber, Bill Gates and many others on Wednesday, forcing Twitter to lock large numbers of accounts in damage control.

The hack has also raised questions about Twitter's security as it serves as a megaphone for politicians ahead of November's election.

More than $100,000 worth of the virtual currency was sent to email addresses mentioned in the tweets, according to Blockchain.com, which monitors crypto transactions.

"We know that they accessed tools only available to our internal support teams to target 130 Twitter accounts", said a statement posted Saturday on Twitter's blog.

For 45 of those accounts, the hackers were able to reset passwords, login and send tweets, it added, while the personal data of up to eight unverified users was downloaded.

Twitter said it was aware of its responsibility to its users and to society in general.

"We're embarrassed, we're disappointed, and more than anything, we're sorry," Twitter said.

"We know that we must work to regain your trust, and we will support all efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice."

Twitter locked down affected accounts and removed the fraudulent tweets. It also shut off accounts not affected by the hack as a precaution.

Most of those have now been restored, Twitter said on Saturday.

For the 130 accounts that were accessed, Twitter said the hackers were able to see personal information including e-mail addresses and phone numbers.

'We're sorry'

And in cases where hackers took over an account, they may have been able to view "additional information", Twitter said without going into detail.

It did not name the employees involved in the drama.

The attack was carried out by a group of young friends — one who lives with his mother — with no links to state or organised crime, The New York Times reported on Friday.

The paper said it interviewed four people who participated in the hacking, who shared logs and screenshots backing up their accounts of what happened.

The young hackers said a mysterious user who went by the name "Kirk" initiated the scheme with a message and was the one with access to Twitter accounts.

They added they were only involved in taking control of lesser-known but desirable Twitter accounts, such as an "@" sign and single letters or numbers that could easily be sold, according to the report.

The hackers maintained they stopped serving as middlemen for "Kirk" when high-profile users became targets.

President Donald Trump's account, which has 83.5 million followers, was not targeted.

"The president will remain on Twitter," White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said. "His account was secure and not jeopardised during these attacks."

Twitter said it is limiting the information it makes public about the attack while it carries out "remediation steps" to secure the site, as well as training employees to guard against future hacking attempts.

MAAN, Syria —Pruning scissors in hand, Syrian pistachio farmer Fadi Al Mahmoud inspected his orchard, hoping for his first harvest after years of war, as nearby army de-miners swept the ground for buried explosives.

"I will be fine as long as my orchard is fine," said the 40-year-old, who returned to his village of Maan in the north of battle-scarred Hama province only months ago, after years of displacement.

The region, long a centre of Syria's famed pistachio production, was controlled for years by rebels, but it fell to government forces early this year.

After the violence subsided, many farmers like Mahmoud returned, hoping this season would mark the revival of what was once a leading industry, its produce beloved across the Middle East.

"The pistachio tree is the lung that allows the villages of the Hama countryside to breathe," Mahmoud told AFP during a break from pruning the trees with shears and a small saw.

Parting the green leaves, he examined the pistachios, looking for the purple hue on their greenish cream-coloured outer casing that indicates they are ready to be picked.

Syria was once a top exporter of the green nut that is widely used in sweets and sprinkled on ice cream across the Middle East.

The country produced up to 80,000 tonnes a year before the start of the conflict in 2011, mostly for export to Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan and Europe.

In 2013, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, Syria was still the world's fourth largest pistachio producer after Iran, the United States and Turkey.

 Death in the soil 

But years of bitter fighting blocked access to Syria's best pistachio regions in Hama, Aleppo and Idlib provinces, leading production to plunge by more than half during the war, according to the agriculture ministry.

Of more than 70,000 hectares (170,000 acres) of farm land alloted for pistachio growing in the northwest, a quarter has been damaged by war, said Hassan Ibrahim, director of the ministry's pistachio department.

Mahmoud said that on his farm, "some tree branches had withered, and there were trenches and landmines scattered all around".

"I hope I can start to make up for the losses during the war," he said.

He explained that pistachio orchards "require a lot of care".

"They must be ploughed four times a year and sprayed with pesticides twice annually or more."

Although the battles have died down, danger still lurks in the soil in the form of anti-personnel mines and other unexploded ordnance left behind during the war.

The authorities "have sent teams to sweep the area," Ibrahim told AFP.

Outside the village, where the skeleton of a charred vehicle sits in an arid field, Syrian army de-miners swept the rust-brown earth with metal detectors for remnants of war.

A loud blast echoed across the land as they detonated a landmine.

Another local pistachio farmer, Ibrahim Ibrahim, recalled harvests before the war.

"We used to pluck tonnes from our trees every year and distribute them in local markets or export them," said the 55-year-old.

The nuts "make up our main source of income".

"This is the first year that farmers re-enter their lands without fear," he said.

"I hope... this year we will see production rise to pre-war levels."

FRANKFURT AM MAIN — European Central Bank (ECB) governors are expected to refrain from doling out fresh stimulus medicine, hoping EU leaders will do their bit to shore up the crisis-hit region with a huge coronavirus recovery plan.

The ECB has taken unprecedented action to cushion the economic blow from the pandemic, which has left the eurozone facing its worst downturn since World War II.

But ECB chief Christine Lagarde hinted last week that the governing council would take a breather, starting Thursday, so as to gauge the effectiveness of its measures, so far.

"We have done so much that we have quite a bit of time to assess (the latest data) carefully," she told the Financial Times.

The ECB meeting comes on the eve of a July 17-18 European Union summit in Brussels where leaders will wrangle over a proposed 750-billion-euro ($847-billion) recovery fund to kickstart the bloc's battered economy.

Lagarde, who has repeatedly urged governments to underpin central bank efforts with fiscal policy, has called the plan a potential "game changer".

The fund would be financed through joint EU borrowing and consist mainly of grants for the hardest hit member states.

But the proposal is fiercely opposed by Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands and Austria who want to rein in the spending and insist on loans rather than grants, making agreement this week uncertain.

Crucially, the fund has the backing of German Chancellor Angela Merkel whose own government has ditched its no-new-debt dogma to unleash 130 billion euros in fiscal stimulus for Europe's top economy.

In Washington, the International Monetary Fund urged governments not to let up, as "the costs of premature withdrawal are greater than continued support where it is needed," its chief Kristalina Georgieva wrote in a blog post.

With the focus on national capitals, "don't interrupt your vacation for the next ECB meeting," ING bank analyst Carsten Brzeski told AFP.

"It's all about fiscal policy and the summit on the European recovery fund."

Emergency bond buys

At last month's governing council meeting, the ECB expanded its pandemic emergency bond-buying scheme known as PEPP by 600 billion euros to 1.35 trillion, and extended it until June 2021.

The goal of the government and corporate debt purchases is to keep credit flowing and encourage spending and investment in the 19-nation eurozone.

It comes on top of the bank's already ultra-loose monetary policy of historically low interest rates, cheap loans for banks and a pre-pandemic bond-buying scheme to the tune of 20 billion euros monthly -- all designed to bolster economic growth and push up stubbornly low inflation.

In June, the ECB said it expected the eurozone economy to shrink by a record 8.7 per cent in 2020 because of the pandemic, before returning to growth in 2021.

Incoming data suggest a rebound is already under way as countries emerge from lockdown and consumption ramps up, but the speed and strength of the recovery remains uncertain.

Lagarde told the FT that the virus-fighting measures taken by the ECB so far have "demonstrated their efficiency, their effectiveness".

Capital Economics economist Jack Allen-Reynolds said he expected Lagarde "to emphasise that the bank will do more if needed" amid growing fears of a possible second coronavirus wave.

Managing expectations

The ECB's next economic growth and inflation forecasts are due in September and policymakers will probably wait until then before deciding on further action, observers say.

"Monetary policy should remain accommodative where output gaps are significant and inflation is below target," International Monetary Fund chief Georgieva urged.

ECB board member Isabel Schnabel appears to have started managing expectations for later in the year by suggesting that the bank may not use up its full PEPP envelope, and Lagarde can expect to be grilled on the remark on Thursday.

She may also be quizzed on her reaction to the resolution of a long-simmering row in Germany about the ECB's sovereign bond purchases, which spiralled after the country's highest court questioned the legality of the stimulus scheme in May.

German lawmakers ended the spat by adopting a resolution earlier this month saying they were satisfied the ECB had demonstrated the scheme's "proportionality".

BEIJING — China's economy returned to growth in the second quarter following a coronavirus contraction, with President Xi Jinping promising continued expansion ahead and urging foreign companies to be a part of it.

The forecast-beating figures released Thursday follow a string of data showing the world's number two economy slowly emerging from the pandemic, and should provide hope to other governments looking to recover from a crisis that has likely caused a global recession.

Gross domestic product expanded 3.2 per cent in April-June, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said, smashing expectations and a massive improvement on the 6.8 per cent contraction in the first quarter.

In a letter to members of the Global CEO Council, Xi said "the fundamentals of China's long-term economic growth have not changed and will not change", according to state media.

He reiterated repeated pledges to continue opening up an economy that many foreign businesses say offers unfair advantages to Chinese companies, and added that it was "the right choice to stay rooted in China".

However, in a sign that full recovery could take time, retail sales -- a key indication of consumer sentiment -- fell short of forecasts, shrinking 1.8 per cent on-year in June, suggesting continued reticence about going out to spend even as the virus appears largely under control in China.

The data also failed to lift Asian markets, led by Shanghai, which tanked 4.5 per cent having rallied around 15 per cent this month.

"No matter how much stimulus and fiscal sugar you try to entice consumers with, they will not leave their apartment and go on a spending spree until they feel confident the landscape is virus-free," said AxiCorp strategist Stephen Innes.

The retail sector occupies an increasingly crucial role in China's economy as leaders look to consumers, rather than trade and investment, to drive growth.

A domestic consumption pick-up is especially needed as external demand weakens, but Innes noted it is easier to normalise supply than demand.

Louis Kuijs of Oxford Economics said household consumption remains the "weakest link" among indicators, although China's economic upturn is expected to continue in the second half of 2020.

'Still under pressure'

Economists warn, however, that official Chinese figures should be taken with a grain of salt, with longstanding suspicions they are massaged upward for political reasons by a ruling Communist Party that bases its legitimacy on delivering continued prosperity.

"Is it too good to be true?" ING chief economist for Greater China Iris Pang asked, telling AFP that more data was needed.

She also pointed to risks down the road including trade and tech tensions with other major economies, particularly the United StateEconomists also warn of uncertainty owing to an uneven recovery -- growth in infrastructure investment has rebounded, but private fixed-asset investment and retail sales remained weak.

As if mindful of the concerns, Xi pledged that "China will foster new opportunities and create new prospects for Chinese and foreign enterprises", and will implement growth-oriented policies, his letter said, according to Xinhua.

The coronavirus, which first emerged in the city of Wuhan late last year, has since shut businesses and destroyed millions of jobs globally, likely tipping the world economy into recession.

Growth beat the 1.3 per cent gain tipped in an AFP poll of analysts but remains among China's lowest quarterly expansion rates on record.

The economy contracted 1.6 per cent on-year in the first six months, the NBS said, and urban unemployment dipped to 5.7 per cent in June from 5.9 per cent a month earlier. Unemployment is a closely watched marker, with nearly nine million graduates expected to enter an uncertain labour market this year and analysts saying actual joblessness is likely higher.

Industrial production grew 4.8 per cent in June, in line with expectations and up from 4.4 per cent in May.

NBS spokeswoman Liu Aihua said China's economy was staging a "gradual recovery". But it is "still under pressure" as the pandemic ravages many of China's key trading partners.

China is expected to be the only major economy to see growth in 2020, being the first hit by the virus and to bounce back.

SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter is investigating a massive hack in which high-profile users from Elon Musk to Joe Biden had their accounts hijacked by scammers, who the social network believes targeted its employees to gain access to internal systems.

Posts trying to dupe people into sending hackers the virtual currency Bitcoin were tweeted by the official accounts of Apple, Uber, Kanye West, Bill Gates, Barack Obama and many others on Wednesday.

"We detected what we believe to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools," Twitter said.

"They used this access to take control of many highly-visible... accounts," the company said, adding that it was investigating "what other malicious activity they may have conducted or information they may have accessed."

The fraudulent posts, which were largely deleted, said people had 30 minutes to send $1,000 in the cryptocurrency, promising they would receive twice as much in return.

A total of 12.58 bitcoins -- worth almost $116,000 -- were sent to email addresses mentioned in the tweets, according to the site Blockchain.com, which monitors crypto transactions.

"Tough day for us at Twitter," chief executive Jack Dorsey said in a tweet.

"We all feel terrible this happened. We're diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened."

Blue checkmarks

Twitter said it had locked down the affected accounts and removed the tweets posted by the hackers.

"Most accounts should be able to Tweet again," the Twitter support team said in an evening update, having earlier temporarily disabled all posts from verified accounts with an official blue checkmark.

But the firm told users that it "may take further actions and will update you if we do."

US President Donald Trump's account, which has more than 83 million followers, was not among those targeted, but many specialist Bitcoin firms were.

"All major crypto Twitter accounts have been compromised," Cameron Winklevoss, co-founder of the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange, said in a tweet on Wednesday.

"This is a SCAM, DO NOT participate!" he warned.

Vice reported that a Twitter insider was responsible, citing leaked screenshots and two anonymous sources apparently behind the hack, one of whom told the media outlet they had paid the employee.

US Senator Josh Hawley tweeted a letter to Dorsey expressing concern over privacy for the San Francisco-based company's millions of users worldwide.

"I am concerned that this event may represent not merely a coordinated set of separate hacking incidents but rather a successful attack on the security of Twitter itself," he said.

BitTorrent chief executive Justin Sun was offering a $1 million reward for bringing the Twitter hackers to justice, reports said.

'Giving back'

The tweet that appeared on Tesla founder Musk's Twitter feed said: "Happy Wednesday! I am giving back Bitcoin to all of my followers. I am doubling all payments sent to the Bitcoin address below. You send 0.1 BTC, I send 0.2 BTC back!"

It added that the offer was "only going on for 30 minutes."

The fake messages that appeared on other famous accounts made similar promises of instant riches.

One version of the scam invited people to click on a link at which they would be exploited.

The BBC reported that a website address in some of the duplicitous tweets had been registered under the name "Anthony Elias", which appeared to be a play on the words "An alias".

Twitter has been targeted by hackers in the past.

In March 2017, the accounts of Amnesty International, the French economics ministry and the BBC's North America service were broken into by hackers believed to have been loyal to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Last August, a series of insulting or racist messages were posted on the personal account of Twitter founder Dorsey without his knowledge.

BRUSSELS — A European court on Wednesday annulled an EU order that Apple repay Ireland 13 billion euros ($15 billion) in back taxes, in a major legal setback for Brussels.

The commission’s historic ruling against Apple was delivered in August 2016 by Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager in a shock decision that put Europe on the map as a scourge of Silicon Valley.

The iPhone-maker and Ireland had appealed the order, which Apple CEO Tim Cook slammed at the time as “total political crap”.

Vestager was derided as Europe’s “tax lady” by US President Donald Trump because of the case, as well as a series of antitrust fines she imposed on Google.

The clear cut decision by the EU’s general court could now face another appeal at the top European Court of Justice, with a decision expected no earlier than 2021, but Vestager initially said only that Brussels was studying the judgement. 

In 2016, the EU accused Ireland of allowing Apple to park revenue earned in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and India and sparing it almost any taxation.

Brussels said this gave Apple an advantage over other companies, allowing it to avoid Irish taxes between 2003 and 2014 of around 13 billion euros ($14 billion).

EU officials argued that constituted illegal “state aid” by Ireland.

But the EU court said the commission “did not succeed in showing the requisite legal standard that there was an advantage”.

The commission “was wrong” to declare that Apple units based in Ireland “had been granted a selective economic advantage and, by extension, state aid.”

Apple welcomed the decision and reiterated that the profits in question were always intended to go to the United States and not Ireland.

“This case was not about how much tax we pay, but where we are required to pay it,” an Apple spokesman said in an email to AFP.

“We’re proud to be the largest taxpayer in the world as we know the important role tax payments play in society,” Apple added.

Dublin also hailed the decision.

The government said it had “always been clear” Apple received no special treatment, adding: “The correct amount of Irish tax was charged... in line with normal Irish taxation rules”.

Vestager said the EU would “carefully study the judgement and reflect on possible next steps,” which could include an appeal.

“The Commission stands fully behind the objective that all companies should pay their fair share of tax,” she added.

‘One per cent’ 

Some observers have expressed doubts on the Apple case, wondering whether the EU was right to use antitrust law to crack down on tax optimisation strategies by multinationals.

In similar cases, the same EU court struck down an order by Brussels that Starbucks pay 30 million euros in back taxes to the Netherlands.

In a separate decision, however, it said Fiat must pay roughly the same amount to Luxembourg.

The case comes as the EU is trying to come up with ways to better ensnare digital giants to pay taxes where they do business, though this has been opposed by some European capitals.

“Today’s court decision illustrates how difficult it is to use EU state aid rules to collect tax,” said Tove Ryding, tax expert at the European Network on Debt and Development.

“If we had a proper corporate tax system, we wouldn’t need long court cases to find out whether it is legal for multinational corporations to pay less than one percent in taxes,” she said.

Talks to come up with a new global tax system at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development have been stalled due to opposition by the US.

The Apple decision came on the eve of another landmark case at the EU courts, this one a lawsuit brought by an Austrian activist against Facebook over data privacy.

BEIJING — Chinese trade enjoyed surprise growth in June as the world slowly emerges from economy-strangling lockdowns, though officials warned of headwinds for recovery owing to the spread of the pandemic.

The figures come days before the release of data expected to show the world's number two economy returned to growth in the second quarter following a contraction in the first three months of the year.

The 2.7 per cent growth in imports was the first since December and much better than the 9 per cent contraction forecast in a Bloomberg News poll, while exports also beat expectations by rising 0.5 per cent.

In May, imports had collapsed 16.7 per cent and exports retreated 3.3 per cent.

Customs spokesman Li Kuiwen told reporters Tuesday that imports and exports showed "signs of recovery and stability" in the second quarter and that China was "forging ahead" with efforts to ensure stability in areas such as employment, foreign trade, and investment.

But he cautioned the external environment is "more grim and complicated" now, with COVID-19 plunging the global economy into a deep recession and international trade and investment experiencing sharp contractions.

In the first half, exports dropped 6.2 per cent on-year while imports fell 7.1 per cent, official data showed, reflecting the hit from the pandemic, which first surfaced in central China.

ING China economist Iris Pang told AFP agricultural purchases boosted imports and that the push could continue if floods ravaging much of central China persist, threatening food supplies.

"We also see a broad-based recovery in exports," she said.

China's economy is expected to have grown in April-June, having shrunk 6.8 per cent in the preceding three months as the virus battered the planet.

That was the first quarterly contraction since China began logging such data in the early 1990s.

Beijing's trade surplus with the United States — a major cause of anger in the White House — narrowed slightly to $29.4 billion in June, down 1.7 per cent year-on-year.

Tensions have been rising as the superpowers trade barbs on multiple fronts, including the pandemic and a new security law in Hong Kong.

But Li said the US and China will continue to implement a phase-one trade deal signed in January that marked a truce in their long-running trade war.

Analysts warn, however, that the trade recovery could lose momentum due to weak external demand from renewed lockdowns in key trading partners.

HSBC chief China economist Qu Hongbin said in a recent report that "the gauges for new export orders in China's purchasing managers' index... still contracted in recent months", referring to the key indicator of factory activity.

Imports were likely supported by continued improvement in domestic demand and commodity prices, he added.

Martin Rasmussen of Capital Economics noted that the boost from shipments of medical products and work-from-home equipment, "which are still growing at over 30 per cent year-on-year, will continue to fade".

Risk consultancy SinoInsider cautioned that despite Chinese efforts to rely more on its domestic consumer market, this could be hampered as overall spending power decreases.

NEW YORK — Wall Street stocks edged higher in choppy trading on Tuesday following mixed earnings reports from large banks as markets assessed the economic hit from the US coronavirus resurgence.

About 15 minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.2 per cent at 25,141.15.

The broad-based S&P 500 added 0.1 per cent at 3,157.24, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index gained 0.3 per cent to 10,419.35.

Large US banks reported huge increase in reserves set aside for bad loans amid the latest rise in US coronavirus cases that has prompted Texas, California and other states to roll back steps to reopen their economies.

But both JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup reported better-than-expected profits due to strength in trading and investment banking. Wells Fargo suffered a $2.4 billion loss.

JPMorgan shares rose 0.4 per cent, while Citigroup fell 2.1 per cent and Wells Fargo tumbled 6.6 per cent.

Delta Air Lines shed 2.8 per cent as it reported a second-quarter loss of $5.7 billion due to the steep downturn in travel caused by the coronavirus.

The reports marked the unofficial start of the second-quarter earnings season, which many analysts expect to show the bulk of the hit from the COVID-19 closures.

While in Europe, Frankfurt stocks dived 1.5 per cent and Paris shed 1.8 per cent, with sentiment hit by the reimposition of some containment measures in parts of the United States, Australia and Hong Kong.

London traded only a shade lower as the British pound slid on official data showing that the virus-plagued UK economy shrank by almost a fifth in the three months to April.

A weaker British currency tends to boost share prices of companies listed in London who earn vast sums in dollars.

World oil prices fell further on growing speculation that top crude producing countries will agree to tapering their output cuts at an expanded OPEC+ meeting this week.

In Asia, Hong Kong fell more than 1 per cent, Shanghai dropped 0.8 per cent and Tokyo lost 0.9 per cent. 

The benchmark Nikkei 225 index was down 0.87 per cent, or 197.73 points, at 22,587.01, while the broader Topix index slipped 0.50 per cent, or 7.87 points, to 1,565.15.