North America

WARREN, Mich. (AP) — More than 130,000 autoworkers returned to factories across the U.S. for the first time in nearly two months Monday in one of the biggest steps yet to restart American industry, while an experimental vaccine against the coronavirus yielded encouraging results in a small and extremely early test.

Stocks rallied on the vaccine news and signs that the worst of the crisis has passed in many countries. The Dow Jones Industrial Average soared about 900 points, or nearly 4%.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said he is taking a malaria drug to protect against the coronavirus, despite warnings from his own government that it should only be administered for COVID-19 in a hospital or research setting due to potentially fatal side effects.

Trump told reporters Monday he has been taking the drug, hydroxychloroquine, and a zinc supplement daily “for about a week and a half now.”

18 May 2020; MEMO: A pro-Israel American campus group has failed in its bid to have a professor removed from the position of interim dean of a department at the George Washington University because of her support for the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.

UNITED NATIONS, May 17 (APP): The first case of Rohingya refugee infected by coronavirus in the tightly-packed Bangladeshi Kutapalong settlement in Cox’s Bazar has been confirmed, United Nations refugee agency says, causing fear that it could sweep through camp.

UNHCR Spokesman Andrej Mahecic said that Bangladeshi officials reported that a positive test was also confirmed in one individual who is part of the local Bangladeshi host community.

18 May 2020; AFP: The White House rebuked the top US health agency on Sunday, saying "it let the country down" on providing testing crucial to the battle against the coronavirus outbreak.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been under intense scrutiny since producing a faulty test for COVID-19 that caused weeks of delays in the US response.

(Reuters) - Apple Inc will this week reopen more than 25 of its branded stores in the United States, the company said on Sunday, continuing a gradual process that has unlocked doors at nearly a fifth of its worldwide retail outlets.

The iPhone maker in March shut all its stores outside of Greater China in response to the spread of the coronavirus. It started shutting its more than 50 Greater China stores in January and reopened them by mid-March.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers and officials are crafting proposals to push American companies to move operations or key suppliers out of China that include tax breaks, new rules, and carefully structured subsidies.

Interviews with a dozen current and former government officials, industry executives and members of Congress show widespread discussions underway - including the idea of a “reshoring fund” originally stocked with $25 billion - to encourage U.S. companies to drastically revamp their relationship with China.

(Reuters) - The U.S. auto industry is slowly returning to life, with vehicle assembly plants scheduled to reopen on Monday and suppliers gearing up in support as the sector that employs nearly 1 million people seeks to recover from the coronavirus pandemic.

General Motors Co (GM.N), Ford Motor Co (F.N) and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV (FCA) (FCHA.MI) (FCAU.N) all have been preparing for weeks to reopen their North American factories in a push to restart work in an industry that accounts for about 6% of U.S. economic activity.

NEW YORK, May 17 (Xinhua) -- Confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide topped 4.7 million on Sunday, reaching 4,708,415 as of 6:32 p.m. (2232 GMT), according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

A total of 314,950 people worldwide have died of the disease, the data showed.

The United States suffered the most from the pandemic, with 1,486,375 cases and a death toll of 89,549. Countries with over 200,000 cases also included Russia, Britain, Brazil, Spain and Italy, according to the CSSE data. 

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The Mexican government has cited the coronavirus pandemic as a justification for new rules that will reduce the role of renewable energies like solar and wind power, granting a reprieve to the government’s own ageing, fossil-fuel power plants.