timelets

But besides his massacres, the rest of Sulla's proceedings also gave offence. For he proclaimed himself dictator, reviving this particular office after a lapse of a hundred and twenty years. Moreover, an act was passed granting him immunity for all his past acts, and for the future, power of life and death, of confiscation, of colonization, of founding or demolishing cities, and of taking away or bestowing kingdoms at his pleasure. He conducted the sales of confiscated estates in such arrogant and imperious fashion, from the tribunal where he sat, that his gifts excited more odium than his robberies. He bestowed on handsome women, musicians, comic actors, and the lowest of freedmen, the territories of nations and the revenues of cities, and women were married against their will to some of his favourites.

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Sulla*.html

Across America, bills for Covid-19 treatment are coming due, and some patients are paying large out-of-pocket fees despite a federal safety net set up to help them avoid such financial surprises.

“There’s a lot of confusion, and a lot of patients are scrambling,” says Jack Hoadley, a researcher at Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute who has studied billing. “But what they’ve tried to create is a sort of patchwork universal health-care system for this one disease.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-pays-for-covid-19-medical-care-that-depends-on-how-or-if-you-are-insured-11600075801

The price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude to be delivered in May, which closed at $18.27 a barrel on Friday, ended Monday at negative $37.63. That effectively means that sellers must pay buyers to take barrels off their hands.

The historic low price reflects uncertainty about what buyers would even do with a barrel of crude in the near term. Refineries, storage facilities, pipelines and even ocean tankers have filled up rapidly since billions of people around the world began sheltering in place to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-oil-is-11-a-barrel-now-but-three-times-that-in-autumn-11587392745

In mid-January, long before most Germans had given the virus much thought, Charité hospital in Berlin had already developed a test and posted the formula online.

By the time Germany recorded its first case of Covid-19 in February, laboratories across the country had built up a stock of test kits.
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"Testing and tracking is the strategy that was successful in South Korea, and we have tried to learn from that," Prof Streeck said.
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Dr Merkel has communicated clearly, calmly and regularly throughout the crisis as she imposed ever-stricter social distancing measures on the country. The restrictions, which have been crucial to slowing the spread of the pandemic, met with little political opposition and are broadly followed.