North America

WASHINGTON (AP) — The day he declared the COVID-19 pandemic a national emergency, President Donald Trump made a cryptic offhand remark.

“I have the right to do a lot of things that people don’t even know about,” he said at the White House.

Trump wasn’t just crowing. Dozens of statutory authorities become available to any president when national emergencies are declared. They are rarely used, but Trump last month stunned legal experts and others when he claimed — mistakenly — that he has “total” authority over governors in easing COVID-19 guidelines.

WASHINGTON (AP) — For the first three years of his presidency, Donald Trump did not publicly utter the words “pandemic” or “preparedness.” Not in speeches, rallies or his many news conferences, planned and impromptu.

But on Friday, the White House pointed to extensive planning exercises the administration conducted and reports it wrote warning of the threat in 2018.

Still, Trump has repeatedly said that the blame for the federal government having inadequate stockpiles of crucial supplies and machines needed to cope with an outbreak lay with his predecessor, Barack Obama.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The cracked main highway between Las Vegas and Reno reopened Friday, 10 hours after a predawn magnitude 6.5 earthquake that a researcher called the largest to strike the remote area of western Nevada in 65 years.

No injuries were reported, but officials said goods tumbled from market shelves, sidewalks heaved and storefront windows cracked shortly after 4 a.m. People from Salt Lake City to California’s Central Valley tweeted that they felt shaking.

BOSTON (AP) — The U.S. government imposed new restrictions on Chinese tech giant Huawei on Friday, severely limiting its ability to use American technology to design and manufacture semiconductors produced for it abroad.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Friday that the move aims to prevent Huawei from making a run around existing U.S. sanctions.

“There has been a very highly technical loophole through which Huawei has been able to in effect use U.S. technology,” Ross told Fox Business. “We never intended that loophole to be there.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr on Friday submitted the final report in the panel’s three-year Russia investigation to the intelligence community for a declassification review. The move came hours before he was to temporarily step aside as chairman of the panel.

TORONTO (AP) — Canada’s largest airline said Friday it plans to lay off at least 20,000 employees because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Air Canada said the cuts affect more than half of the company’s 38,000 employees.

The airline said the pandemic has forced it to reduce scheduled flights by 95% and it doesn’t expect normal traffic to return anytime soon.

WASHINGTON (AP) — As businesses reopened Friday in more of the U.S., an overwhelming majority of states still fall short of the COVID-19 testing levels that public health experts say are necessary to safely ease lockdowns and avoid another deadly wave of outbreaks, according to an Associated Press analysis.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats powered a massive $3 trillion coronavirus relief bill through the House on Friday, an election-year measure designed to brace a U.S. economy in free fall and a health care system struggling to contain a pandemic still pummeling the country.

Washington, May 15 (AP) Nearly 3 million laid-off workers applied for US unemployment benefits last week as the viral outbreak forced more companies to slash jobs even though most states have begun to let some businesses reopen.

Roughly 36 million people have now sought jobless aid in just the two months since the coronavirus first forced businesses to close down and shrink their workforces, the government said Thursday.

Washington, May 15 (AP) Long-term US mortgage rates were mostly steady this week, hovering near all-time lows.

Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac reported Thursday that the average rate on the benchmark 30-year home loan edged up to 3.28 per cent from 3.26 per cent last week. A year ago, the rate stood at 4.07 per cent.

The average rate on the 15-year fixed-rate mortgage eased to 2.72 per cent from 2.73 per cent last week.