USA

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said Friday that Michigan’s stay-at-home order remains in effect through May 15 despite Republicans’ refusal to extend her underlying coronavirus emergency declaration, as she amended it to allow construction, real estate and more outdoor work to resume in person next week.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden on Friday emphatically denied allegations from a former Senate staffer that he sexually assaulted her in the early 1990s, declaring flatly that “this never happened.”

Biden’s first public remarks on the accusation by a former employee, Tara Reade, come at a critical moment for the presumptive Democratic nominee as he tries to relieve mounting pressure after weeks of leaving denials to his campaign.

MIAMI (AP) — The plan was simple, but perilous. Some 300 heavily armed volunteers would sneak into Venezuela from the northern tip of South America. Along the way, they would raid military bases in the socialist country and ignite a popular rebellion that would end in President Nicolás Maduro’s arrest.

What could go wrong? As it turns out, pretty much everything.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. regulators on Friday allowed emergency use of the first drug that appears to help some COVID-19 patients recover faster, a milestone in the global search for effective therapies against the coronavirus.

The Food and Drug Administration cleared Gilead Science’s intravenous drug for hospitalized patients with “severe disease,” such as those experiencing breathing problems requiring supplemental oxygen or ventilators.

NEW YORK (AP) — A New York City nursing home on Friday reported the deaths of 98 residents believed to have had the coronavirus — a staggering death toll that shocked public officials.

“It’s absolutely horrifying,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said. “It’s inestimable loss, and it’s just impossible to imagine so many people lost in one place.”

GRETNA, La. (AP) — More than a dozen states let restaurants, stores or other businesses reopen Friday in the biggest one-day push yet to get their economies up and running again, acting at their own speed and with their own quirks and restrictions to make sure the coronavirus doesn’t come storming back.

1 May 2020; MEMO: US President Donald Trump claimed Thursday that he has seen evidence that the novel coronavirus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, Anadolu reports.

Asked if he has seen anything that gives him a “high degree of confidence” that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was where the virus had originated from, Trump replied: “Yes, I have.”

Washington, Apr 30 (AP) McDonald's says it has likely reached the trough of global restaurant closures due to COVID-19, with 25 per cent still shuttered. But business has been slow to return as lockdown orders continue to disrupt consumers' routines.

McDonald's said Thursday its sales fell 6 per cent to USD 4.71 billion in the January-March period. Declines have persisted in April.

New York, May 1 (AP) May is bringing cautious reopenings from coronavirus lockdowns, from Beijing's Forbidden city to shopping malls in Texas, as the grim economic toll from the pandemic ticks higher.

Many communities around the world are inching toward normalcy without certainty over whether they've vanquished outbreaks of the virus. But bleak new figures released Thursday underscored the pain inflicted by the disease and added to pressure on leaders to end shutdowns.

LANSING (Michigan, US), May 1 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Gun-toting protesters against Michigan’s coronavirus lockdown have rallied in the state capitol building.

Hundreds of demonstrators, a few of them armed, gathered in Lansing and many did not wear masks or socially distance.

Police checked their temperatures before some were allowed into the capitol, where lawmakers were debating.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, extended her stay-at-home mandate earlier this month until May 15.