North America

(Reuters) - New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Friday that strains of the novel coronavirus that first infected his state’s residents came from Europe, not China, and that the ban on travelers from China came too late to halt its spread.

“We closed the front door with the China travel ban, which was right, but we left the back door open,” Cuomo told a daily briefing.

24 April 2020; MEMO: In 2020, the world economy will experience its worst recession since the Great Depression, surpassing that seen during the global financial crisis a decade ago, Gita Gopinath, the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) chief economist, said in the latest World Economic Outlook report.

According to the IMF, the global economy is expected to contract by three per cent in 2020.

OTTAWA, April 23 (Xinhua) -- Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on Thursday to allot additional 1.1 billion Canadian dollars (about 782 million U.S. dollars) for national medical research against the COVID-19.

"The better we understand this virus, its spread and its impact on different people, the better we can fight it and eventually defeat it," Trudeau said at a news conference in Ottawa on Thursday.

NEW YORK (AP) — Ulises García went from being a waiter to working at a laundromat. Yelitza Esteva used to do manicures and now delivers groceries. Maribel Torres swapped cleaning homes for sewing masks.

MADILL, Okla. (AP) — Severe weather blew through the South on Thursday after killing at least seven people in Oklahoma, Texas and Louisiana, including a worker at a factory hit by an apparent tornado, a man whose car was blown off the road and a man who went outside to grab a trash can and was swept away in a flood.

More than 150,000 businesses and homes from Texas to Georgia were without power as the severe weather blew eastward, snapping utility lines as trees fell, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks utility reports.

MIAMI (AP) — Opposition lawmakers in Venezuela quietly agreed to pay themselves $5,000 a month when they readied special $100 bonuses for doctors and nurses battling the coronavirus — a large payout for a nation where most workers are scraping by on couple of dollars a month, according to people involved in the process.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The latest demonstration by right-wing groups against measures to contain the coronavirus will be held Friday in Wisconsin, where hundreds, and possibly thousands of people plan to descend on the state Capitol to protest the Democratic governor’s stay-home ordinance.

It’s expected to be among the biggest of the protests that have popped up around the U.S. in recent days. But as with some earlier events, one group will be noticeably absent: the state’s most prominent Republicans.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Announcing plans to begin reopening his state, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster cited the ongoing economic damage from the coronavirus pandemic.

“South Carolina’s business is business,” he declared this week as he lifted restrictions on department stores, florists, music shops and some other businesses that previously had been deemed nonessential.

WASHINGTON (AP) — What if the real “invisible enemy” is the enemy from within — America’s very institutions?

When the coronavirus pandemic came from distant lands to the United States, it was met with cascading failures and incompetencies by a system that exists to prepare, protect, prevent and cut citizens a check in a national crisis.

The molecular menace posed by the new coronavirus has shaken the conceit of “American exceptionalism” like nothing big enough to see with your own eyes.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Calls mounted Thursday for an investigation into the ouster of a senior government scientist who says he’s being punished for opposing widespread use of an unproven drug President Donald Trump touted as a remedy for COVID-19.

Rick Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, says he was summarily removed from his job earlier this week and reassigned to a lesser role because he resisted political pressure to allow widespread use of hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug favored by Trump.