USA

7 April 2020; AFP: Boeing announced Monday it is suspending production of its 787 Dreamliner aircraft "until further notice" due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on workers and suppliers.

Shuttering the South Carolina plant on Wednesday halts production at the last of the aviation giant's US commercial aircraft facilities.

Boeing, which employs more than 161,000 people, the vast majority in the United States, already suspended activity indefinitely at its factories in Washington state.

7 April 2020; AFP: Airbnb on Monday announced it was taking a billion dollars in new investment to endure and, it hopes, thrive in a travel world transformed by the coronavirus pandemic.

Silver Lake and Sixth Street Partners will invest the money into the home-sharing platform in the form of debt and equity, according to Airbnb.

WASHINGTON, April 6 (Xinhua) -- The United States should not externalize the blame on China for its own failings in coping with COVID-19 which has claimed over 10,000 American lives by Monday, said an expert.

"China's initial response to COVID-19 cannot be blamed for the high death toll in the U.S. when the equivalent numbers in East Asia are so much lower," Sourabh Gupta, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Institute for China-America Studies, told Xinhua on Monday.

NEW YORK, April 6 (Xinhua) -- The number of COVID-19 cases in the United States topped 350,000 as of 3:30 p.m. local time Monday (1930 GMT), according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

The fresh figure reached 352,546 with 10,389 deaths, according to the CSSE.

The state of New York recorded 130,689 cases and 4,758 fatalities. Other states with over 10,000 cases include New Jersey, Michigan, California, Louisiana, Florida, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Illinois.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Many former global leaders and other VIPs urged the world’s 20 major industrialized nations to approve $8 billion in emergency funding to speed the search for a vaccine, cure and treatment for COVID-19 and prevent a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Monday disputed the veracity of a federal survey that found hospitals faced severe shortages of coronavirus test supplies, questioning whether its conclusions were skewed by politics.

With coronavirus cases rocketing toward their expected peak, the nonpartisan Health and Human Services inspector general’s office reported Monday morning that a shortage of tests and long waits for results were at the root of mounting problems faced by hospitals.

(AP) --- The first national data on COVID-19 in U.S. children suggest that while the illness usually isn’t severe in kids, some do get sick enough to require hospital treatment.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released Monday shows that fever, cough and shortness of breath were the most common symptoms in kids, but they occurred less often than in adults. The findings mostly echo reports from China about how the new coronavirus affects children.

CHICAGO (AP) — Chicago’s mayor pledged an aggressive public health campaign aimed at the city’s black and brown communities Monday amid alarm that an overwhelming number of African American residents were among the people to die of COVID-19 in early data.

Black residents accounted for 72% of deaths from COVID-19 complications in the city and 52% of positive tests for the coronavirus, despite making up only 30% of the city’s population, according to the city’s public health agency.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump and his administration kept up their out-sized promotion Monday of an anti-malaria drug not yet officially approved for fighting the new coronavirus, even though scientists say more testing is needed before it’s proven safe and effective against COVID-19.

Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro championed hydroxychloroquine in television interviews a day after the president publicly put his faith in the medication to lessen the toll of the coronavirus pandemic.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said he had a “really wonderful, warm conversation” with Joe Biden on Monday about the coronavirus outbreak.

“He gave me his point of view, and I fully understood that, and we just had a very friendly conversation,” Trump said at his daily press briefing.