USA

KENSINGTON, Maryland (AP) — In just 50 years, 2 billion to 3.5 billion people, mostly the poor who can’t afford air conditioning, will be living in a climate that historically has been too hot to handle, a new study said.

With every 1.8 degree (1 degree Celsius) increase in global average annual temperature from man-made climate change, about a billion or so people will end up in areas too warm day-in, day-out to be habitable without cooling technology, according to ecologist Marten Scheffer of Wageningen University in the Netherlands, co-author of the study.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The economic paralysis triggered by the coronavirus pandemic is forcing the U.S. Treasury to borrow far more than it ever has before — $2.99 trillion in the current quarter alone.

The amount is more than five times the government’s previous record borrowing for a quarter, $569 billion, set in the depths of the 2008 financial crisis. It also dwarfs the $1.28 trillion the government borrowed in the bond market for all of 2019.

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — The world’s largest hornet, a 2-inch killer dubbed the “Murder Hornet” with an appetite for honey bees, has been found in Washington state, where entomologists were making plans to wipe it out.

The giant Asian insect, with a sting that could be fatal to some people, is just now starting to emerge from winter hibernation.

“They’re like something out of a monster cartoon with this huge yellow-orange face,” said Susan Cobey, a bee breeder at Washington State University.

FLINT, Mich. (AP) — A woman, her adult son and husband have been charged in the fatal shooting of a security guard who refused to let her daughter enter a Family Dollar in Michigan because she wasn’t wearing a face mask to protect against transmission of the coronavirus.

Calvin Munerlyn was shot Friday at the store just north of downtown Flint a short time after telling Sharmel Teague’s daughter she had to leave because she lacked a mask, according to Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton.

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — As the coronavirus spread from the nation’s meatpacking plants to the broader communities where they are located, it burned through a modest duplex in Waterloo, Iowa.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is making ever louder pronouncements casting blame on China for the COVID-19 pandemic, aiming to sidestep domestic criticism of the president’s own response, tarnish China’s global reputation and give the U.S. leverage on trade and other aspects of U.S.-China competition.

4 May 2020; MEMO: The US Court of Appeals of the District of Colombia has dropped a lawsuit filed against the Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organisation, Wafa News Agency reported on Sunday.

The families of US-Israeli dual nationals killed in attacks allegedly carried out by Palestinians filed the case in 2004 and demanded around $900 million in damages.

Washington, May 4 (AP/PTI) President Donald Trump says he believes a vaccine for COVID-19 will be available by the end of the year.

Trump also says the U.S. government is putting its full power and might behind remdesivir, a drug that has shown early promise as a treatment for the disease caused by the new coronavirus.

Trump commented Sunday night during a televised town hall sponsored by Fox News Channel.

WASHINGTON, May 4. /TASS/: Reports claiming that US intelligence first warned US President Donald Trump about the danger of the novel coronavirus in early January are false, Trump said on Sunday on Twitter.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday he now believes as many as 100,000 Americans could die in the coronavirus pandemic, after the death toll passed his earlier estimates, but said he was confident a vaccine would be developed by the year’s end.

Trump alternated during a two-hour virtual town hall broadcast by FOX News between forecasting a rapid recovery for the U.S. economy and casting blame for the pandemic’s spread on China, where the disease is believed to have originated.