May 1, 2020 4:39 pm
WASHINGTON (AP) – U.S. regulators will allow emergency use of an experimental drug that appears to help some coronavirus patients recover faster. It is the first drug shown to help fight COVID-19. The Food and Drug Administration acted Friday after preliminary results from a government-sponsored study showed that the drug remdesivir shortened the time to recovery for hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The drug also might be reducing deaths, although that’s not certain from the partial results revealed so far. Drugmaker Gilead Sciences has said it would donate its currently available stock of the drug and is ramping up production to make more.
May 1, 2020 8:17 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – Joe Biden is denying a former staffer’s allegation of sexual assault, saying the accusation is not true. “This never happened,” Biden says in a statement Friday. It’s Biden’s first public comment on an accusation of sexual assault by his former Senate staffer, Tara Reade. He appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to discuss the allegation for the first time on television. A number of former Biden staffers have defended him. The accusation had taken on fresh attention this week after two of Reade’s associates said she previously told them about elements of her allegations.
May 1, 2020 4:12 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – Vice President Mike Pence has donned a face covering while touring a General Motors/Ventec ventilator production facility in Indiana. He had come under fire Tuesday for failing to wear one at the Mayo Clinic. Pence on Thursday toured the General Motors facility in Kokomo, which has already manufactured hundreds of the units. The visit came hours after Pence’s wife, second lady Karen Pence, defended her husband’s decision to not wear a mask at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. She told Fox News Channel that he had been unaware of Mayo’s coronavirus mask policy until after he left, although the Mayo Clinic said differently in a since-deleted tweet.
May 1, 2020 4:11 am
NEW YORK (AP) – State officials are investigating a New York City funeral home that resorted to storing dozens of bodies on ice in rented trucks after it was overwhelmed by coronavirus deaths. Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker said Thursday that the funeral home in Brooklyn could face civil fines and license suspensions. Authorities responding to complaints about a bad smell found that the home had rented four trucks to hold about 50 corpses. Mayor Bill de Blasio called the actions “unconscionable.” New York City funeral homes have struggled since late March as the number of fatalities linked to the virus has topped 18,000.
May 1, 2020 4:09 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump’s new spokeswoman, Kayleigh McEnany, says she will never lie to reporters. McEnany made her debut at the first White House briefing by a press secretary in more than a year. Asked if she would tell reporters the truth, McEnany said: “I will never lie to you. You have my word on that.” During past administrations, a White House press secretary holding a formal briefing would hardly be news. But it was the first such briefing since March 11, 2019, when Sarah Sanders held the job. Sanders’ successor, Stephanie Grisham, never held a briefing during her entire nine-month tenure. (Photo: CNN)
May 1, 2020 4:08 am
LANSING, Mich. (AP) – The Republican-led Michigan Legislature has refused to extend the state’s coronavirus emergency declaration. It also voted Thursday to authorize a lawsuit challenging Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s authority and actions to combat the pandemic. The unfazed governor issued new orders declaring states of emergency and disaster. A court fight is looming. The emergency is the basis for Whitmer’s stay-at-home order, which she says has saved lives. The Legislature’s steps came as hundreds of conservative activists returned to the Capitol to denounce Whitmer’s stay-home measure. The coronavirus has infected more than 41,000 Michigan residents and contributed to the deaths of nearly 3,800.
May 1, 2020 4:07 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says state and local governments are seeking up to $1 trillion for coronavirus costs. It’s an eye-popping sum for the next relief package that’s certain to run into opposition from Senate Republicans. Pelosi said Thursday the money for “heroes” would help prevent layoffs of nurses, bus drivers and other front-line workers as governors and mayors stare down red ink in their budgets. The new marker comes after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell shifted tone and said he’s “open” to additional funding for the states. But McConnell says any new bill must include liability protections from an “avalanche” of lawsuits against businesses that reopen.
May 1, 2020 4:04 am
Comcast’s net income slid in the first three months of the year as the coronavirus pandemic forced it to shut down its theme parks and its movies were kept out of shuttered theaters. On the cable side, the biggest source of the company’s profits, Comcast lost 409,000 video customers, as cord-cutting accelerated, and added 477,000 internet customers. The virus dented profit and revenue at the NBCUniversal arm, hurting the parks and movie business, and at Sky TV, internet and broadcasting unit in Europe.
April 30, 2020 10:54 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the new coronavirus was “not man-made or genetically modified.” But they say they’re still examining whether the origins of the pandemic trace to contact with infected animals or an accident at a Chinese lab. The statement came Thursday from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the clearinghouse for the web of U.S. spy agencies. It comes as President Donald Trump and his allies have touted the as-yet-unproven theory that an infectious disease lab in Wuhan, the epicenter of the Chinese outbreak, was the source of the global pandemic that has killed more than 220,000 worldwide.
April 30, 2020 7:23 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – More than 3.8 million laid-off workers applied for unemployment benefits last week as the U.S. economy slid further into a crisis that is becoming the most devastating since the 1930s. Roughly 30.3 million people have now filed for jobless aid in the six weeks since the coronavirus outbreak began forcing millions of employers to close their doors and slash their workforces. That is more people than live in the New York and Chicago metropolitan areas combined, and it’s by far the worst string of layoffs on record. It adds up to more than one in six American workers.
