North America

Washington, Apr 11 (PTI) The US has become the world's first country to have registered more than 2,000 COVID-19 deaths in a single day with 2,108 fatalities reported in the past 24 hours, while the number of infections in America has crossed 500,000, the highest in the world, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

China, where the deadly coronavirus disease started in December last year before spreading across Europe and America killing more than 100,000, has so far recorded 81,000 cases of positive infections and 3,339 deaths.

OTTAWA, Apr 11 (NNN-XINHUA) – Canada could see 22,580 to 31,850 COVID-19 cases and 500 to 700 deaths by Apr 16, the Public Health Agency of Canada said.

Even with the strongest control measures in place, COVID-19 could kill between 11,000 and 22,000 Canadians, over the course of the pandemic, the agency said, in its forecast “COVID-19 in Canada: Using Data and Modelling to Inform Public Health Action.”

WASHINGTON, April 10 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday discussed efforts to combat COVID-19 and ensure global energy market stability during a phone conversation, the White House said.

"President Trump and President Putin discussed the latest efforts to combat the coronavirus pandemic and maintain stability in global energy markets. The two leaders also covered critical bilateral and global issues," the White House said in a statement.

WASHINGTON, April 10 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. economy is already in a recession and will remain in contraction for the first half of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a survey released by the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) on Friday.

"The consensus is real GDP (gross domestic product) declined at an annualized rate of 2.4% in the first quarter of 2020, and will shrink at an annualized rate of 26.5% in the second quarter," NABE President and KPMG Chief Economist Constance Hunter said in a statement.

CHICAGO (AP) — The coronavirus pandemic that has crippled big-box retailers and mom and pop shops worldwide may be making a dent in illicit business, too.

In Chicago, one of America’s most violent cities, drug arrests have plummeted 42% in the weeks since the city shut down, compared with the same period last year. Part of that decrease, some criminal lawyers say, is that drug dealers have no choice but to wait out the economic slump.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke is denouncing President Donald Trump for a new campaign ad that seems to falsely imply Locke was a Chinese official.

Trump’s Republican reelection campaign released an ad Thursday that accused former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, of being too cozy with China. It featured an image of Biden and Locke on a stage with U.S. and Chinese flags in the background.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A watchdog has found that the Treasury Department appropriately handled Congress’ request for President Donald Trump’s tax returns, which Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has refused to provide.

But the acting inspector general for Treasury, Rich Delmar, also said he had no opinion on whether the advice Mnuchin followed — which came from Justice Department attorneys — was itself well-founded. In refusing to hand over the returns, Mnuchin decided he was legally bound to comply with that advice, Delmar noted in a letter Wednesday to senior House lawmakers.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President George W. Bush turned to one of the world’s most exclusive clubs for help raising money after an Indian Ocean tsunami killed more than 200,000 people in 2004.

He paired his father, George H.W. Bush, and the man who defeated him to win the presidency in 1992, Bill Clinton. It worked so well that he signed the duo up again after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans less than a year later.

NEW YORK (AP) — As hospitals scour the country for scarce ventilators to treat critically ill patients stricken by the new coronavirus, pharmacists are beginning to sound an alarm that could become just as urgent: Drugs that go hand in hand with ventilators are running low even as demand is surging.

Michael Ganio, of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, said demand for the drugs at greater New York hospitals has spiked as much as 600% over the last month, even though hospitals have stopped using them for elective surgery.

(AP) --- In Santa Barbara, forklifts chug through the warehouse of Direct Relief, hustling pallets of much-needed medical supplies into waiting FedEx trucks. Normally those gloves, masks and medicines would go to desperately poor clinics in Haiti or Sudan, but now they’re racing off to Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, California and the Robert Wood Johnson Hospitals in New Jersey.