USA

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A train engineer intentionally drove a speeding locomotive off a track at the Port of Los Angeles because he was suspicious about the presence of a Navy hospital ship docked there to help during the coronovirus crisis, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

The locomotive crashed through a series of barriers and fences before coming to rest more than 250 yards (230 meters) from the U.S. Navy Hospital Ship Mercy on Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a release.

Nobody was hurt.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly 3,000 sailors aboard a U.S. aircraft carrier where the coronavirus has spread will be taken off the ship by Friday, Navy officials said as they struggle to quarantine crew members in the face of an outbreak.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump wants to spend $2 trillion on infrastructure projects to create jobs and help the collapsing economy rebuild from the coronavirus’ stunning blows. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says that seems about right.

Sounds like the prelude to a bipartisan deal. Except that when it comes to trying to upgrade the country’s road, rail, water and broadband systems, Washington frequently veers off the tracks — usually over the bill’s contents and how to pay for it.

(AP) --- Nursing homes across the country have been in lockdown for weeks under federal orders to protect their frail, elderly residents from coronavirus, but a wave of deadly outbreaks nearly every day since suggests that the measures including a ban on visits and daily health screenings of staffers either came too late or were not rigorous enough.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Relatives of Americans who are wrongfully imprisoned abroad or held hostage by militant groups say in a report issued Thursday that the U.S. government still must do better in communicating with them, though improvements have been made over the last five years.

NEW YORK (AP) — New York rushed to bring in an army of medical volunteers Wednesday as the statewide death toll from the coronavirus doubled in 72 hours to more than 1,900 and the wail of ambulances in the otherwise eerily quiet streets of the city became the heartbreaking soundtrack of the crisis.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has held an unequivocal position about China and the coronavirus — several of them.

Trump initially praised China, then excoriated Beijing after it made unsubstantiated claims that the virus originated in the United States. Now, Trump is back to offering niceties.

The diverging messages have generated finger-pointing by both Beijing and Washington that is further destabilizing a critical relationship between countries with the two largest economies and militaries.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is resisting calls to issue a national stay-at-home order to stem the spread of the new coronavirus despite his administration’s projections that tens of thousands of Americans are likely to be killed by the disease. One by one, though, states are increasingly pushing shutdown orders of their own.

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 01 (APP): UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has launched a new plan to counter the devastating socio-economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, calling on everyone to “act together to lessen the blow to people”.

“The new coronavirus disease is attacking societies at their core, claiming lives and people’s livelihoods”, he said Tuesday, pointing out that the potential longer-term effects on the global economy and individual countries are “dire”.

WASHINGTON, April 1 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The total US death toll from the coronavirus pandemic topped 4,000 early Wednesday, more than double the number from three days earlier, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

The number of deaths was 4,076 – more than twice the 2,010 recorded late Saturday, Johns Hopkins data showed.

More than 40 percent of recorded deaths nationally were in New York state, the Johns Hopkins data showed.