Italy, Spain, Austria, Finland and Denmark begin to lift movement restrictions as their infections numbers ease.
Reported by Al Jazeera 19 hours ago.
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European Commission: Members should coordinate on virus curbs
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`Am I going now to my execution?’ One doctor’s very long day
PARMA, Italy (AP) — It was March 7, in the afternoon. Dr. Giovanni Passeri had just returned home from Maggiore Hospital, where he is an internist, when he was urgently called back to work. His ward at the hospital was about to admit its first COVID-19 case. Driving back to the hospital, down the tree-lined […]
Reported by Seattle Times 12 hours ago.
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Cheops: the science begins
Video: 00:03:00ESA’s first mission dedicated to the study of exoplanets is about to start its science operations after successfully completing its in-orbit commissioning phase.
Cheops (Characterising Exoplanet Satellite) was launched from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on 18 December 2019. Since then the telescope cover opened and started observing its first stars. Now that the spacecraft, telescope’s optical performance, detectors and electronics are all working as planned, Cheops will study hundreds of known exoplanets orbiting bright stars. The mission will use the transit method – recording the minute dip in light as a planet passes in front of its host star – to measure planet sizes with unprecedented precision and accuracy and to determine their densities by combining these with independent measurements of their masses.
Cheops is a small (or S class) mission in ESA's Science Programme, developed as a partnership with Switzerland, with important contributions from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The science mission will continue until October 2023 and will expand our understanding of exoplanets and the Universe we live in. Reported by ESA 17 hours ago.
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CAC 40 Rebounds As Some Countries Ease Lockdown Measures
French stocks were moving higher on Thursday as the death rate in Italy, Spain and France - the worst-hit countries in Europe by the novel coronavirus - appeared to be slowing.
Reported by RTTNews 16 hours ago.
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Fake: Viral image of dead doctors, nurses is fake
An image showing nurses and doctors dead inside what looks like an ICU is viral with a claim that it's from Italy.
Reported by IndiaTimes 16 hours ago.
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`Am I going now to my execution?' One doctor's very long day
PARMA, Italy (AP) — It was March 7, in the afternoon. Dr. Giovanni Passeri had just returned home from Maggiore Hospital, where he is an internist, when he was urgently called back to work. His ward at the hospital was about to admit its first COVID-19 case.
Driving back to the hospital, down the tree-lined streets of Parma, Passeri, 56, recalled thinking: “Am I going now to my execution?”
Italy’s more than 21,000 coronavirus dead have included scores of doctors, including a colleague of Passeri's at Maggiore, a hospital in one of Italy’s hardest-hit northern provinces.
Since that afternoon more than a month ago, Passeri has worked every day. From the evening of April 7 until the morning of April 9, Associated Press photographer Domenico Stinellis documented his night and day, from a tense, 12-hour overnight shift to his drastically altered routine at home with his wife and 10-year-old son.
In his apartment, he sleeps alone in a garret room hastily converted into a bedroom to prevent any chance of transmitting the virus to his wife. The first time his son, Francesco, leaped up to hug him when Passeri came home after tending to coronavirus patients, the physician stiffened. That's no longer safe, the physician had to say.
Now, when Passeri senses that the emotional pressure on Francesco is building too much, they play cards together. Each wears a mask.
At work, colorful drawings are affixed to the front door of his hospital pavilion to boost morale. Reads one: “To all you warriors, thanks."
Morale, though, can be a precious commodity. Passeri cannot forget the looks in his patients’ eyes when they gasp for air.
COVID-19, as the world now knows, can be devastating; it causes mild to moderate symptoms in many of those infected, but pneumonia and other... Reported by SeattlePI.com 16 hours ago.
Driving back to the hospital, down the tree-lined streets of Parma, Passeri, 56, recalled thinking: “Am I going now to my execution?”
Italy’s more than 21,000 coronavirus dead have included scores of doctors, including a colleague of Passeri's at Maggiore, a hospital in one of Italy’s hardest-hit northern provinces.
Since that afternoon more than a month ago, Passeri has worked every day. From the evening of April 7 until the morning of April 9, Associated Press photographer Domenico Stinellis documented his night and day, from a tense, 12-hour overnight shift to his drastically altered routine at home with his wife and 10-year-old son.
In his apartment, he sleeps alone in a garret room hastily converted into a bedroom to prevent any chance of transmitting the virus to his wife. The first time his son, Francesco, leaped up to hug him when Passeri came home after tending to coronavirus patients, the physician stiffened. That's no longer safe, the physician had to say.
Now, when Passeri senses that the emotional pressure on Francesco is building too much, they play cards together. Each wears a mask.
At work, colorful drawings are affixed to the front door of his hospital pavilion to boost morale. Reads one: “To all you warriors, thanks."
Morale, though, can be a precious commodity. Passeri cannot forget the looks in his patients’ eyes when they gasp for air.
COVID-19, as the world now knows, can be devastating; it causes mild to moderate symptoms in many of those infected, but pneumonia and other... Reported by SeattlePI.com 16 hours ago.
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Coronavirus: Man 'taking canoe to go shopping' fined for breaking lockdown rules in Italy
Police issue €280 fine after spotting him rowing on Arno river
Reported by Independent 15 hours ago.
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Italian mob seeks to profit from coronavirus crisis, prosecutors say
Italy's mafia clans are taking advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to buy favour with poor families facing financial ruin, prosecutors and officials say, and are offering loans and food in what is seen as an age-old recruitment tactic.
Reported by Reuters India 15 hours ago.
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EU Commission President offers 'heartfelt apology' to Italy
EU Commission President offers 'heartfelt apology' to Italy
Reported by euronews 15 hours ago.
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Italy mafia using coronavirus crisis to profit off poor families, prosecutors say
Mobs reportedly giving out loans during lockdown
Reported by Independent 13 hours ago.
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Criminal Groups Offer Coronavirus Relief For Informal Economy Workers
Watch VideoGovernments around the world are pumping out stimulus plans to offset the burden that millions of workers are suffering because of COVID-19. But these economic relief packages don’t help every person who's now jobless. “The vast majority of workers in the informal economy are suffering right now,” said Robert Neuwirth, author of "Stealth of Nations: The Global Rise of the Informal Economy."
The estimated 2 billion workers in the informal economy — those who earn money that isn't taxed or reported — aren’t typically eligible for payroll protection or unemployment insurance. They include workers like street vendors and housekeepers. And like many workers in the so-called “real” economy, they're losing income right now.
And that’s letting loan sharks thrive.
“The drug gangs in Brazil issued a stay-at-home order in some of the favelas. This, as the government of Bolsonaro is denying that coronavirus is even a problem,” Neuwirth said.
It’s happening everywhere. In Italy, the Mafia has been handing out food. In Mexico, drug cartels are doing the same. In Afghanistan, the Taliban is assisting in quarantine efforts — a move even the U.S. State Department has commended. For workers, it creates a gray area of authority. It means many of them could become indebted to criminal groups as they wait for the economy to recover. But Neuwirth says this isn’t a new phenomenon.
“It’s only because of that vacuum and that government has not been willing to be there that the criminal element has been able to step up as a quasi-government,” Neuwirth said. Reported by Newsy 6 hours ago.
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Coronavirus: EU apologizes to Italy for initial response
The European Parliament is meeting to discuss a joint response from member states to the novel coronavirus pandemic. A draft resolution seeks a uniform strategy for phasing out emergency measures.
Reported by Deutsche Welle 14 hours ago.
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Europe coronavirus death toll tops 90,000
With a total of 90,180 deaths out of some 1,047,279 infections, Europe is the hardest-hit continent by the pandemic, which has killed a total of 137,499 worldwide. The largest number of deaths have been seen in Italy with 21,645 and Spain with 19,130, followed by France with 17,167 deaths and Britain 12,868.
Reported by IndiaTimes 14 hours ago.
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Sport24.co.za | WATCH | Azzurri assistant Marius Goosen on living in Italy during Covid-19 pandemic
WATCH as Italy's assistant coach Marius Goosen talks about living in the country during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Reported by News24 13 hours ago.
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Coronavirus: EU offers 'heartfelt apology' to Italy
The head of the EU Commission says "many were not there" when hard-hit Italy needed help.
Reported by BBC News 13 hours ago.
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Inside a 38,000-person remote work rollout at Goldman Sachs: sleepless nights, assembly lines, and an Amazon-like hub on a Manhattan trading floor
· Goldman Sachs had to bulk purchase monitors, hard drives, and internet-connected phones, put them together, and ship them to employees' homes, according to CTO Atte Lahtiranta. · The bank sent out thousands of these kits during the month of March as part of a plan that allowed 98% of employees to be working from home by early April.
· To create the kits, the bank turned a trading floor in its Manhattan headquarters and then a data center in northern New Jersey into pop-up logistics centers.
· With the first part of the operation complete, Lahtiranta has started thinking about new technologies like virtual reality and ensuring that employee wellness remains a focal point.
· Click here for more BI Prime stories.
Goldman Sachs's six-story trading floor in Manhattan typically hosts traders and engineers, including those who work on an institutional trading platform known as Marquee. Stock and bond traders ply their wares on the floors below.
In early March, the cavernous space hosted a different kind of activity. In the back, overlooking a Manhattan side street, Goldman's technology and operations team was doing some of the early work to enable its 38,000-plus employees to work from home.
The execs were assembling kits of technical gear – large computer monitors, internet-enabled phones, hard drives, and, in some cases, backup power sources and WiFi devices – needed for employees to work remotely. They were then packaging them up and shipping the gear to employees' homes.
A parallel effort was underway across the Hudson River at a facility in Jersey City.
The kit building and other efforts to ready Goldman for an unprecedented shift to working from home fell on the shoulders of Chief Technology Officer Atte Lahtiranta, a newcomer who joined the bank in October from Big Tech.
That experience couldn't prepare him for the speed and breadth of what was needed. His plans to take a year to get Goldman's systems up to speed got compressed into just a few weeks.
"None of us were necessarily experts in logistics," Lahtiranta said in an exclusive interview with Business Insider. "There was a two-week period where nobody slept a wink."
On March 8, the firm sent a staff memo enacting its business continuity plan, which involved moving some staff to backup sites and enabling others to work from home. On March 17, the firm encouraged "most of our people" to work from home. By April 3, CEO David Solomon boasted to CNBC that 98% of the firm's workforce was working from home.
Much like the advertising industry decades ago, when deals were clinched with long lunches off Madison Avenue, Wall Street has depended on face-to-face interactions for much of its 225-year history.
Senior investment bankers fly to meet clients in Missouri or Milan, while junior employees put in 100-hour weeks at the office for the promise of facetime with senior managers. Traders congregate on desks just feet from each other where they can share information by shouting or gesturing.
The coronavirus put an end to all that. In just weeks, the industry found itself scrambling to comply with government shelter-in-place orders as the first positive cases of coronavirus began showing up on US shores.
Goldman's approach is a microcosm of how corporate America sprang into action. And as the first phase of the rollout winds down, Lahtiranta has started to worry about employee wellness and cutting-edge technologies like virtual reality.
*Know your role*
The first thing Lahtiranta did was divide the company's workforce into different roles based on the specific requirements of their remote working setup. Investment bankers, traders, engineers and coders, and operations and compliance people each had different needs.
As the early days of the crisis unfolded, the first of those groups to get his attention were the firm's traders, grappling with a surge in volatility not seen since the 2008 financial crisis. Doing so would require accelerating a number of technology trials already underway.
Goldman purchased software licenses for a complex phone system known as a trading turret. Patterned after the hard-wired command centers used in the office to connect hundreds of phone lines to colleagues, clients, and exchanges, the software versions could accomplish much of the same functionality from home.
The engineering team was still exploring the products' full feature set when the pandemic forced it to accelerate its roll-out, according to Orla Dunne, Goldman's London-based global co-head of engineering deployment, runtime and architecture. So far, the bank has installed more than 1,000.
The software turrets can record phone calls on the system's back end rather than a trader's computer or phone, making them less reliant on the speed or quality of broadband or mobile phone reception, she said. And it's compliant with regulations.
The bank stopped short of hard-wiring physical turrets at traders' homes, which some peers have chosen to do. The reason, Dunne said, is because they wanted to be thoughtful about bandwidth consumption, knowing there would be incredible demands with entire families staying at home. (Some streaming companies have lowered bandwidth requirements or quality in order to continue serving customers.)
Traders have also been using Zoom, the videoconferencing app that has become the de facto way for millions of people trapped at home to communicate. (Goldman helped take the company public last year.) In many cases traders are using video links that stay open all day for colleagues to remain in contact. A Zoom trial had been underway.
As Lahtiranta has started thinking about the future, he says a virtual reality trading desk may be an option for staff who depend on human-to-human interaction to fine tune their intuition and make markets.
"Is there a next step beyond the Zoom call?" he said. "If we go a little bit more, is it that maybe their social hours should be done in VR. We are not there now, but like I said, across the industry, these last few weeks for everybody has changed quite a lot."
The CTO was coordinating all this from his home outside Silicon Valley, where his office has a wall very close to the color of Goldman blue, and white shelves filled with books on software coding. Like many, he is trying to home school his children.
One day, as he was holding a meeting with his direct reports and facilities chief Roy Joseph, he asked a rhetorical question about what else could go wrong. Soon, the rooms of the managers dialing in from Salt Lake City started shaking as a magnitude 5.7 earthquake rippled through the region. Officials from the Utah division of emergency management said it was the largest to hit the state since 1992. No one from Goldman was hurt.
*Softphones*
Next up for remote-work setups were Goldman's investment bankers, the employees who advise on mergers and underwrite debt and equity issues.
The bankers got so-called softphones, which allow for more complicated routing than typical call forwarding techniques. Most importantly, the phones mean that clients can call a Goldman number and have that ring the mobile phones of multiple people, ensuring the call is always answered.
The work wasn't trivial: Goldman's telephone systems weren't set up to handle call forwarding for thousands of people at the same time, and the company had to work closely with its telecom vendors to make the transition.
An ongoing pilot using Cisco Jabber Mobile app for making calls and sending messages was also accelerated. The bankers also got access to Zoom.
To have the hardware when Goldman needed it meant thinking ahead about the potential vulnerabilities in its supply chain.
In a Feb. 25 email, Dunne suggested the engineering team start thinking about its ability to source the equipment it would need if large scale shelter-in-place orders were handed down. By then, Goldman's Asia units had already gone through lockdowns and had some experience to share.
Less than a week after Dunne's email, northern Italy became the first country in Europe to get walloped by the spreading disease.
"It was like the last day of February, I think, when I took the first call and we had to start shipping to Milan," Dunne said. "The closer it gets to your doorstep, that's when it really begins to become very real."
Goldman was ultimately able to continue working with its vendors to get the hardware it needed.
*Ramping up output*
Soon into the kit-making operation, execs realized they needed to increase their output. The operation at 200 West Street and 30 Hudson Street would eventually be merged into a sprawling data center in northern New Jersey, where teams set up huge assembly lines in the space that didn't house the firm's enterprise data servers.
The facility made it easier to take deliveries for pallets of computer screens, for example, and sped up the operation, said Robert Naccarella, head of enterprise tech operations.
In the beginning, Goldman's employees were building a kit in about four hours but over time, the bank was able to achieve a pace of making more than 200 kits a day.
"The first week was a little rough because things were taking long," Naccarella said. So they started thinking about "something that we would build sequentially that would take four hours, how do we build 40 of them at a time in that same four hours? It took us one to two weeks to figure all of that out," he said.
To get them shipped to employees, they relied on everything from the US Postal Service, UPS, FedEx, and even black car service, Naccarella said. In some cases, they had to send it a second time because no one was home to sign for the package.
"Who knew that we were going to have to kind of become a mini version of Amazon, taking in requests, getting suppliers of all the parts, assembling it, and shipping it out through different methods of transport," he said.
With much of the hard part done, Lahtiranta has started considering the long-term effects of working from home. Goldman, like many companies, now provides group fitness classes, read-aloud story time for the children of employees, and mindful breathing and meditation workshops.
"Wellness is becoming the next big question," he said.
"It took 10 years for Big Tech to figure out how to maintain working from home when it comes to work-life balance. Now put that on the constrained time frame of a couple weeks," he said, adding "we have to be thinking about how we make certain, as a finance industry, that we take the learnings of the tech world and apply that super fast so that people can stay efficient, keep their mental balance and remain healthy."
*SEE ALSO: Wall Street's disaster playbook never included work-from-home trading. Insiders explain how banks rapidly adjusted during one of the most chaotic markets in history.*
*SEE ALSO: The CEO of a cloud-based trading tech startup that saw a 30% surge in business last month says the coronavirus is a catalyst for overhauling how Wall Street works*
*SEE ALSO: 'The best run I've ever had': Inside Wall Street's coronavirus-fueled trading frenzy, where historic shocks of volatility are creating massive paydays*
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: How waste is dealt with on the world's largest cruise ship Reported by Business Insider 13 hours ago.
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What you need to know today about the virus outbreak
Even as many leaders hope to reopen stores, factories, airplanes and schools quickly and safely to ease economic pain caused by the coronavirus pandemic, health authorities warned that returning to normal is a distant goal.
The wave of layoffs that has engulfed the U.S. economy since the coronavirus struck forced 5.2 million more people to seek unemployment benefits last week, the government reported Thursday.
President Donald Trump wants to ease guidelines on social distancing, but business leaders caution that they need more coronavirus testing and personal protective equipment before people can safely go back to work.
Here are some of AP’s top stories Thursday on the world’s coronavirus pandemic. Follow APNews.com/VirusOutbreak for updates through the day and APNews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak for stories explaining some of its complexities.
WHAT’S HAPPENING TODAY:
— Ten nurses have been suspended from their jobs at a hospital in Santa Monica, California, after refusing to care for coronavirus patients without being provided protective N95 face masks. They are among hundreds of doctors, nurses and other health care workers across the U.S. who say they’ve been asked to work without adequate protection. Some have taken part in protests or lodged formal complaints. Others are buying — or even making — their own supplies.
— Dr. Giovanni Passeri has worked every day at a hospital since his ward received its first COVID-19 case on March 7 in hard-hit Parma province in northern Italy. An AP photographer documented his day and night, from his tense 12-hour overnight shift to his drastically altered routine at home with his wife and 10-year-old son. What emerges is an intimate portrait of a doctor from a medical staff that well-wishers have affectionately... Reported by SeattlePI.com 12 hours ago.
The wave of layoffs that has engulfed the U.S. economy since the coronavirus struck forced 5.2 million more people to seek unemployment benefits last week, the government reported Thursday.
President Donald Trump wants to ease guidelines on social distancing, but business leaders caution that they need more coronavirus testing and personal protective equipment before people can safely go back to work.
Here are some of AP’s top stories Thursday on the world’s coronavirus pandemic. Follow APNews.com/VirusOutbreak for updates through the day and APNews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak for stories explaining some of its complexities.
WHAT’S HAPPENING TODAY:
— Ten nurses have been suspended from their jobs at a hospital in Santa Monica, California, after refusing to care for coronavirus patients without being provided protective N95 face masks. They are among hundreds of doctors, nurses and other health care workers across the U.S. who say they’ve been asked to work without adequate protection. Some have taken part in protests or lodged formal complaints. Others are buying — or even making — their own supplies.
— Dr. Giovanni Passeri has worked every day at a hospital since his ward received its first COVID-19 case on March 7 in hard-hit Parma province in northern Italy. An AP photographer documented his day and night, from his tense 12-hour overnight shift to his drastically altered routine at home with his wife and 10-year-old son. What emerges is an intimate portrait of a doctor from a medical staff that well-wishers have affectionately... Reported by SeattlePI.com 12 hours ago.
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The supercar graveyard: where Ferraris and Lamborghinis go to die
It’s sad when exotic cars end up in a breakers’ yard, but we meet a man who gives them a life after death
Worth to earth, crashes to ashes, lust to dust… With apologies to the Order for the Burial of the Dead, I ponder the skeletal remains of a Lamborghini Jalpa perched on top of a large metal container at car breaker Eurospares in Essex.
It’s a moving sight awaiting anyone who wanders around the back of the firm’s nerve centre, located in a bustling industrial estate just outside Halstead, near Colchester. However, there’s worse – much worse – inside one of Eurospares’ seven vast storage buildings.
On racks, and looking just like a child’s toy car collection, are the shells of six gorgeous Italian sports cars – three Ferrari 308 GT4s, a 348, a 458 and one Lamborghini. On the floor below, and to the side, is a Ferrari 599 GTB minus its wheels, windows, interior and most of its bodywork. A few mountings are all that remain of its V12.
Nearby stands a deformed Ferrari 612 Scaglietti with half a side missing, a brace of Maserati GTs – although owing to huge impact damage, barely recognisable as such – and a 458 reduced to its roof.
I need a stiff drink. James Pumo, owner of Eurospares, offers me an espresso, before telling me his story.
“My dad was a hairdresser,” he says. I scan the room for bits of Mazda MX-5. “He had a couple of salons in Manchester and used to go back to Italy to buy his hairdryers. One day a Ferrari dealer asked him if he’d pick up some spares from the factory on his next trip. Dad quickly realised that, with his Italian contacts, he could make a business supplying parts for Ferrari and Lamborghinis, which is how we started.”
Although Eurospares salvages lots of parts from the sports cars that it breaks (in the past 10 years, hundreds of Ferraris but only 15 Lamborghinis), many are new items bought from bankrupt dealers and garages – following the 2008 economic crash, the Middle East was a rich source – as well as remanufactured components from a web of global suppliers.
“If a part is no longer available, and there is sufficient demand, we’ll have it made,” says Pumo. “For example, I’m stuck for Ferrari F40 steering wheels at the moment, so I said to Momo: ‘Let’s make 100 of them’.”
I want to talk about his stripped-out 599. “It was flooded in a car park along the coast in Brightlingsea,” he says. “The water came right up to the windows. The engine was wrecked. We took it out, put a glass top on it and put it in reception.”
In another of Eurospares’ huge storage buildings is a rack of salvaged and reconditioned engines, including three Ferrari Testarossa flat 12s (worth around £14,000 each) and a V8 from an F40 (£114,000). There are also Ferrari engines from 360s, Mondials, a 456 GT and an F430. On the floor is a small cluster of Lamborghini engines, including one from a Murciélago (£27,600).
“People want them for parts or occasionally we may sell them whole,” says Pumo. “A whole engine is often the last thing they need, though. Crash repairs and restoration is where the market is. Engines tend to be looked after.”
Wheels, windscreens and panels are Eurospares’ biggest movers, as well as anything for the front end, where most crash damage occurs. For example, the deformed 612 Scaglietti has donated its wings and front panel to a crashed car.
Pumo claims his used parts are about half the price of their new equivalents. You’ll still need deep pockets, though. He points to the front end of a Ferrari Daytona perched on a shelf high above us: “That’s £8000,” he says, simply. A flimsy strip of aluminium on the back of the 458’s shell that is a little longer than a 12in ruler and about as wide is worth £1000.
“There’s often little relationship between the appearance of a part and its value,” he says. “We’d lose a lot of money if we didn’t know what every bit of this stuff is worth.”
The Eurospares team studies car and parts prices daily to see where the market is. It’s not unusual for people to buy parts from the company at a low price and hoard them in the hope their value will rise, just like the cars they were made for.
“Everything is being restored these days,” says Pumo. “Not only are the prices of the cars going up; the prices of their parts are, too, and we have to watch them closely or we’ll lose out.”
Of course, Eurospares is not the only player in the game. For example, Ferrari itself provides parts for cars up to 10 years old through its dealer network. Beyond that age, supply is managed by Maranello Classic Parts in Egham, Surrey, which also has the right to remanufacture parts. Ferrari’s own Classiche department can make parts for seriously old cars that it is restoring for customers.
Although he drives a Ferrari F12 Berlinetta, Pumo is unsentimental about the cars he strips. Occasionally, he’ll take a call from someone who is upset about a Ferrari he’s advertising that looks roadworthy but is being broken for spares.
“I’ve seen too many people go mad restoring these things to get that attached to them,” he says. “One old chap had spent three years rebuilding a 308. He wired the alternator the wrong way and when he started it, it went up in flames. When he rang me to take it away, he was suicidal.”
Not that Pumo is entirely without a heart. He regrets breaking the Maserati Ghibli SS that he bought for £10,000 from a gent in Cornwall in 2002, and the right-hand-drive Lamborghini Countach 5000 QV that he broke in 2003. “They could have been my pension,” he says, between sips of espresso.
Apart from the vehicle store, pretty much every square inch of space in Eurospares’ remaining six buildings is given over to rack upon rack of parts, almost all of them neatly labelled with a unique code. Pumo admits that he suffers OCD.
“I couldn’t run this place without it,” he says. “That, and nerves of steel. It’s the long game. All this stuff in here is worth millions and we’ll be sitting on it for years before it all sells.”
He leaves me to wander among the racks. I pass rows of beautifully enscribed Dino wheelcaps, boxes of switches, new and unvarnished wooden fascia panels still in their greased paper wrapping, boxes of old black cartridge players from a time before even cassettes were invented, bonnet releases, dusty temperature sliders, bright chrome bumper corners…
To the untutored eye, they’re just a jumble of odd bits and pieces, but to Pumo and his team they’re worth money – and if they get it right, lots of it.
*Read more*
*Driving a Ferrari 308 GTB Group B rally car*
*Drive before you die: revisiting the Ferrari F40*
*It's all in the detail: Autocar's favourite car parts* Reported by Autocar 12 hours ago.
Worth to earth, crashes to ashes, lust to dust… With apologies to the Order for the Burial of the Dead, I ponder the skeletal remains of a Lamborghini Jalpa perched on top of a large metal container at car breaker Eurospares in Essex.
It’s a moving sight awaiting anyone who wanders around the back of the firm’s nerve centre, located in a bustling industrial estate just outside Halstead, near Colchester. However, there’s worse – much worse – inside one of Eurospares’ seven vast storage buildings.
On racks, and looking just like a child’s toy car collection, are the shells of six gorgeous Italian sports cars – three Ferrari 308 GT4s, a 348, a 458 and one Lamborghini. On the floor below, and to the side, is a Ferrari 599 GTB minus its wheels, windows, interior and most of its bodywork. A few mountings are all that remain of its V12.
Nearby stands a deformed Ferrari 612 Scaglietti with half a side missing, a brace of Maserati GTs – although owing to huge impact damage, barely recognisable as such – and a 458 reduced to its roof.
I need a stiff drink. James Pumo, owner of Eurospares, offers me an espresso, before telling me his story.
“My dad was a hairdresser,” he says. I scan the room for bits of Mazda MX-5. “He had a couple of salons in Manchester and used to go back to Italy to buy his hairdryers. One day a Ferrari dealer asked him if he’d pick up some spares from the factory on his next trip. Dad quickly realised that, with his Italian contacts, he could make a business supplying parts for Ferrari and Lamborghinis, which is how we started.”
Although Eurospares salvages lots of parts from the sports cars that it breaks (in the past 10 years, hundreds of Ferraris but only 15 Lamborghinis), many are new items bought from bankrupt dealers and garages – following the 2008 economic crash, the Middle East was a rich source – as well as remanufactured components from a web of global suppliers.
“If a part is no longer available, and there is sufficient demand, we’ll have it made,” says Pumo. “For example, I’m stuck for Ferrari F40 steering wheels at the moment, so I said to Momo: ‘Let’s make 100 of them’.”
I want to talk about his stripped-out 599. “It was flooded in a car park along the coast in Brightlingsea,” he says. “The water came right up to the windows. The engine was wrecked. We took it out, put a glass top on it and put it in reception.”
In another of Eurospares’ huge storage buildings is a rack of salvaged and reconditioned engines, including three Ferrari Testarossa flat 12s (worth around £14,000 each) and a V8 from an F40 (£114,000). There are also Ferrari engines from 360s, Mondials, a 456 GT and an F430. On the floor is a small cluster of Lamborghini engines, including one from a Murciélago (£27,600).
“People want them for parts or occasionally we may sell them whole,” says Pumo. “A whole engine is often the last thing they need, though. Crash repairs and restoration is where the market is. Engines tend to be looked after.”
Wheels, windscreens and panels are Eurospares’ biggest movers, as well as anything for the front end, where most crash damage occurs. For example, the deformed 612 Scaglietti has donated its wings and front panel to a crashed car.
Pumo claims his used parts are about half the price of their new equivalents. You’ll still need deep pockets, though. He points to the front end of a Ferrari Daytona perched on a shelf high above us: “That’s £8000,” he says, simply. A flimsy strip of aluminium on the back of the 458’s shell that is a little longer than a 12in ruler and about as wide is worth £1000.
“There’s often little relationship between the appearance of a part and its value,” he says. “We’d lose a lot of money if we didn’t know what every bit of this stuff is worth.”
The Eurospares team studies car and parts prices daily to see where the market is. It’s not unusual for people to buy parts from the company at a low price and hoard them in the hope their value will rise, just like the cars they were made for.
“Everything is being restored these days,” says Pumo. “Not only are the prices of the cars going up; the prices of their parts are, too, and we have to watch them closely or we’ll lose out.”
Of course, Eurospares is not the only player in the game. For example, Ferrari itself provides parts for cars up to 10 years old through its dealer network. Beyond that age, supply is managed by Maranello Classic Parts in Egham, Surrey, which also has the right to remanufacture parts. Ferrari’s own Classiche department can make parts for seriously old cars that it is restoring for customers.
Although he drives a Ferrari F12 Berlinetta, Pumo is unsentimental about the cars he strips. Occasionally, he’ll take a call from someone who is upset about a Ferrari he’s advertising that looks roadworthy but is being broken for spares.
“I’ve seen too many people go mad restoring these things to get that attached to them,” he says. “One old chap had spent three years rebuilding a 308. He wired the alternator the wrong way and when he started it, it went up in flames. When he rang me to take it away, he was suicidal.”
Not that Pumo is entirely without a heart. He regrets breaking the Maserati Ghibli SS that he bought for £10,000 from a gent in Cornwall in 2002, and the right-hand-drive Lamborghini Countach 5000 QV that he broke in 2003. “They could have been my pension,” he says, between sips of espresso.
Apart from the vehicle store, pretty much every square inch of space in Eurospares’ remaining six buildings is given over to rack upon rack of parts, almost all of them neatly labelled with a unique code. Pumo admits that he suffers OCD.
“I couldn’t run this place without it,” he says. “That, and nerves of steel. It’s the long game. All this stuff in here is worth millions and we’ll be sitting on it for years before it all sells.”
He leaves me to wander among the racks. I pass rows of beautifully enscribed Dino wheelcaps, boxes of switches, new and unvarnished wooden fascia panels still in their greased paper wrapping, boxes of old black cartridge players from a time before even cassettes were invented, bonnet releases, dusty temperature sliders, bright chrome bumper corners…
To the untutored eye, they’re just a jumble of odd bits and pieces, but to Pumo and his team they’re worth money – and if they get it right, lots of it.
*Read more*
*Driving a Ferrari 308 GTB Group B rally car*
*Drive before you die: revisiting the Ferrari F40*
*It's all in the detail: Autocar's favourite car parts* Reported by Autocar 12 hours ago.
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Coronavirus: 3,336 Indians infected abroad
According to a break-up of those infected, 785 of them are in Kuwait followed by 634 in Singapore and 420 in Qatar. As many as 308 are infected in Iran, 297 in Oman, 238 in UAE, 186 in Saudi Arabia and 135 in Bahrain. The list also includes 91 in Italy, 37 in Malaysia, 36 in Portugal, 29 in Ghana, 24 in the US, 15 in Switzerland and 13 in France.
Reported by IndiaTimes 11 hours ago.
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3,336 Indians infected abroad: 785 in Kuwait, 634 in Singapore
According to a break-up of those infected, 785 of them are in Kuwait followed by 634 in Singapore and 420 in Qatar. As many as 308 are infected in Iran, 297 in Oman, 238 in UAE, 186 in Saudi Arabia and 135 in Bahrain. The list also includes 91 in Italy, 37 in Malaysia, 36 in Portugal, 29 in Ghana, 24 in the US, 15 in Switzerland and 13 in France.
Reported by IndiaTimes 12 hours ago.
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