USA

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump held a call with faith leaders on Friday that included discussion about a phased-in return to broader in-person worship after weeks of religious services largely shifting online in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump’s call with faith leaders came one day after the White House included houses of worship among “large venues” that could be able to reopen while observing “strict physical distancing protocols” in the first stage of a three-part plan to reopen a U.S. economy that’s been frozen by the toll of the highly contagious virus.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s former lawyer and longtime fixer Michael Cohen will be released from federal prison to serve the remainder of his sentence in home confinement because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Cohen is currently locked up at FCI Otisville in New York after pleading guilty to numerous charges, including campaign finance fraud and lying to Congress. He will remain under quarantine for 14 days before he is released. Federal statistics show 14 inmates and seven staff members at the prison have tested positive for the coronavirus.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Frustration boiled over into anger on a private call with Vice President Mike Pence as Democratic senators questioned administration officials about coronavirus testing plans but left without adequate answers.

At one point in the Friday call, Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent and former governor, told Pence the administration’s failure to develop an adequate national testing regime is a “dereliction of duty,” according to a person who joined the hour-long call but was unauthorized to discuss it and granted anonymity.

NEW YORK (AP) — In Wall Street’s tug of war between hope and pessimism about the coronavirus pandemic, hope is fighting back.

U.S. stocks joined a worldwide rally Friday and closed out their first back-to-back weekly gain since the market began selling off two months ago. The S&P 500 jumped 2.7% for the day, following up on even bigger gains in Europe and Asia.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump White House intervened to weaken one of the few public health protections pursued by its own administration, a rule to limit the use of a toxic industrial compound in consumer products, according to communications between the White House and Environmental Protection Agency.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Seeking to avoid the bitter feelings that marred the 2016 Democratic convention, Joe Biden’s campaign is angling to allow Bernie Sanders to keep some of the delegates he would otherwise forfeit by dropping out of the presidential race.

(AP) --- As a clearer picture emerges of COVID-19’s decidedly deadly toll on black Americans, leaders are demanding a reckoning of the systemic policies they say have made many African Americans far more vulnerable to the virus, including inequity in access to health care and economic opportunity.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States is struggling to test enough people to track and control the spread of the novel coronavirus, a crucial first step to reopening parts of the economy, which President Donald Trump is pushing to do by May 1.

Trump on Thursday released a plan to ease business restrictions that hinges on a downward trajectory of positive tests.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump urged supporters to “LIBERATE” three states led by Democratic governors Friday, apparently encouraging protests against stay-at-home mandates aimed at stopping the coronavirus. At least two states under Republican leadership took their first steps toward easing restrictions.

A day after laying out a road map to gradually reopen the crippled economy, Trump tweeted the kind of rhetoric some of his supporters have used to demand the lifting of the orders that have thrown millions of Americans out of work.

NEW YORK, Apr 17 (APP): A decision about the return transportation of some 750 Pakistanis, who are stranded in the United States because of the coronavirus-related suspension of flights, is expected “very soon”, Ambassador Asad Majeed Khan said Friday.

“The issue of stranded Pakistanis is one of the key priorities for the (Pakistan) government, for the embassy and our consulates across the United states,” the Pakistani envoy said in an interview with Pakistan Television, released by the embassy in Washington, DC.