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Our View: Greening up the Diamond City

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State attorney seeks to prohibit former cop Collins from using criminal histories of alleged victims

By The Associated Press ALTERED EXPECTATIONS: General Electric Co. General Electric believes the viral outbreak could have a negative impact of about $300 million to $500 million on its first-quarter industrial free cash flow. Operating profit for the period could be hurt by about $200 million to $300 million. GE said that the expectations are incorporated into its full-year 2020 outlook.NXP Semiconductors N.V. says its first-quarter revenue expectations are being reduced, citing the potential impact of the virus. The company foresees revenue being lowered by $50 million to $150 million. The company said the $50 million impact is what it's seen so far, and that the upper range of $150 million is estimated on seeing a return to weakness in the coming weeks. RATIONING: Kroger Co., the nation's biggest independent grocer, is placing limits on the number of certain products that customers buy as its shelves are cleared by people doing heavy stocking in preparation for any spread of the virus. “Due to high demand and to support all customers, we will be limiting the number of sanitization, cold and flu related products to 5 each per order. Your order may be modified at time of pickup or delivery,” the company said on its website. Amazon is warning same-day grocery customers that delivery may be limited. Target and Walmart are scrambling to replenish shelves with basics like canned goods, toilet paper and other household essentials, but have yet to announced rationing. TRAVEL RESTRICTIONS: Starbucks converted its big annual shareholders meeting in hometown Seattle to a virtual only event due to concerns about the virus. The meeting will still be held on March 18 as originally planned. The party-like event which attracted 4,000 shareholders last year was supposed to be held at a theater in downtown Seattle. A virus cluster has emerged in Washington state, however, with nine deaths reported. The International Air Transport Association says that January had the slowest monthly year-over-year growth since April 2010, at the time of the volcanic ash cloud crisis in Europe that led to massive airspace closures and flight cancellations. “January was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the traffic impacts we are seeing owing to the COVID-19 outbreak, given that major travel restrictions in China did not begin until 23 January,” said Alexandre de Juniac, the group director general.F5 Networks Inc. postponed its analyst and investor event due to the virus outbreak. The company was scheduled to hold the event in New York this week. The cloud technology company, based in Seattle, also postponed its annual user conference scheduled for mid-March in Orlando, Florida.The Global Gaming Expo Asia scheduled for later this month in Macao has been pushed back to the end of July. More than 13,000 people attended last year’s expo.CLOSE TO HOME: Amazon says one of its employees in Seattle has contracted the new coronavirus. “We're supporting the affected employee who is in quarantine,” the online retailer said in a statement.Amazon said earlier this week that two of its employees in Milan, Italy have contracted the virus and are quarantined.Amazon has asked its 800,000 employees worldwide to postpone non-essential travel. It is also conducting some job interviews on video conference calls instead of in its offices.Aflac announced Wednesday that a temporary worker at its call center in Kobe, Japan is infected with the virus. The individual had attended an event in Osaka where multiple participants also contracted the virus. The company said it's continuing to monitor the recovery of the infected individual, who is being instructed to refrain from coming into the office. Aflac said its Kobe call center operations remain unaffected and its operations in Japan are continuing to run normally. STAFF REDUCTIONS: Finnish national carrier Finnair is planning temporary layoffs between 14 days up to one month for its entire staff based in Finland due to the economic impact caused by coronavirus to the airline's operations. More than 6,000 Finnair employees will be affected. The Finnish flag carrier, which has a total staff of nearly 7,000, has strongly focused on Europe to Asia flights from its Helsinki hub and has been forced to temporarily cancel flights to mainland China and other Asian destinations because of the coronavirus. THE MACRO VIEW: The head of the 189-nation International Monetary Fund said Wednesday that the economic impact of the spreading coronavirus will be more serious than originally thought and will push global growth this year below last year’s modest gain.“We unfortunately over the past week have seen a shift to a more adverse scenario for the global economy,” said IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva. The IMF’s forecast in January that the global economy would rebound to growth of 3.3% this year, up from 2.9% last year, is no longer expected, Georgieva said. “Global growth will dip below last year’s levels but how far it will fall and how long the impact will be is still difficult to predict,” she said. “It will depend on the epidemic and the timeliness and effectiveness of our actions.”She said the IMF will publish a specific forecast when it updates its World Economic Outlook as part of the spring meetings of the IMF and the World Bank. Officials announced yesterday that those meetings will be in April will be “virtual” with the use of video conferencing to limit travel because of the coronavirus.“We know the disease is spreading quickly with over one-third of our membership affected directly,” Georgieva said. “This is no longer a regional issue. It is a global issue calling for a global response.”Georgieva and World Bank President David Malpass pledged to supply resources to help low-income countries cope with the disease. Malpass said the World Bank was making $12 billion available to help countries purchase testing kits, masks, portable ventilators and other supplies needed to detect and treat the virus.

Companies trim outlooks, travel and staff as virus spreads