North America

ATLANTA (AP) — Some of the millions of American workers laid off because of the coronavirus are beginning to face a tough choice — return to work and risk infection, or stay home and risk losing unemployment payments.

The decision is most pressing in states where governors have started allowing businesses such as restaurants to reopen with social-distancing restrictions.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday speculated that China could have unleashed the coronavirus on the world due to some kind of horrible “mistake,” and his intelligence agencies said they are still examining a notion put forward by the president and aides that the pandemic may have resulted from an accident at a Chinese lab.

Trump even suggested the release could have been intentional.

NEW YORK (AP) — Bleak new figures Thursday underscored the worldwide economic pain inflicted by the coronavirus: The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits has climbed past a staggering 30 million, while Europe’s economies have gone into an epic slide.

And as bad as the numbers are, some are already outdated because of the lag in gathering data. The true economic picture is almost certainly much worse.

30 April 2020; MEMO: US President Donald Trump is considering all options available to him to make Saudi Arabia pay for the oil price war that it started, Oilprice.com revealed on Tuesday.

30 April 2020; MEMO: US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden will keep the US embassy in Israel in Jerusalem if elected, despite claiming to disagree with US President Donald Trump’s controversial decision to move it out of Tel Aviv.

United Nations, Apr 30 (PTI) Almost 1.6 billion workers in the informal economy, nearly half of the global workforce, face an immediate danger of losing their livelihoods due to the continued sharp decline in working hours because of the COVID-19 outbreak, the International Labour Organization has said.

More than 430 million enterprises in hard-hit sectors such as retail and manufacturing risk "serious disruption", the UN agency added.

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 30 (APP): While the world is focused on the coronavirus pandemic, Myanmar’s military is committing fresh war crimes against ethnic minority populations in two states, a UN human rights expert has warned.

“The Myanmar military continues to escalate its assault in Rakhine State, targeting the civilian population,” Yanghee Lee, the UN’s special rapporteur on Myanmar’s human rights situation, said at the end of her term in a statement on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON, April 30 (NNN-AGENCIES) — US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo criticised South Africa and Qatar for accepting doctors from Cuba to battle the coronavirus, accusing the communist island of profiting from the pandemic.

Cuba’s globe-trotting doctors have long been a source of diplomatic soft power and pride for Havana, but Washington says the medical workers only benefit the government and has encouraged them to defect.

30 April 2020; AFP: Debris from a Canadian military helicopter operating as part of a NATO surveillance force has been found in the sea between Greece and Italy, a Greek military source said Thursday.

The helicopter was attached to the Canadian frigate Fredericton, from which it had taken off for a patrol.

"Debris has been found in Italy's zone of control and intervention" in the Ionian Sea, the military source told AFP, specifying the wreckage belonged to the Canadian helicopter.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Facebook Inc (FB.O) will allow users in the United States and Canada to transfer photos and videos to a rival tech platform for the first time - a step that could assuage antitrust concerns by giving users an option to easily leave the company’s services, the social media network said on Thursday.

The tool lets Facebook users transfer data stored on its servers directly to another photo storage service, in this case Google Photos - a feature known as data portability.