Major European stock markets dived more than 7%, and U.S. and Japanese indexes over 5% after Saudi Arabia launched an oil price war with Russia that sent investors already spooked by the coronavirus outbreak running for the exits. In Italy, where infections and deaths are still soaring even as they slow in China, the origin of the epidemic, much of the industrial north around Milan was coming to terms with a quarantine regime affecting 16 million people. Deaths in Milan’s Lombardy region – where cinemas, theaters and museums are closed, sporting events suspended and restaurant hours restricted – jumped 25% in a day to 333, while the national death toll soared by 97 to 463, the highest in the world after China.
