US president again criticises Beijing as European countries prepare to ease lockdown

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Donald Trump has said he is “very confident” there will be a vaccine for coronavirus by the end of the year, revising up his estimate of the final US death toll as several European countries prepare for a cautious easing of lockdowns.

The president used a Fox News “virtual town hall” on Sunday night to repeat his regular virus talking points, including that a vaccine was not far away, Covid-19 was China’s fault and the economy would not only recover but “grow like crazy”.

Related: Mike Pompeo: 'enormous evidence' coronavirus came from Chinese lab

Global coronavirus cases have surpassed 3.5 million with more than 247,000 deaths.

In New York, the centre of the US outbreak, an emergency field hospital erected in Central Park is set to close. Dozens of New Yorkers were fined for violating social distancing guidelines as they flocked to beaches and parks in balmy weekend weather.

China reported three new coronavirus cases, versus two the day before.

Japan’s state of emergency is expected to be extended until the end of the month.

France will not quarantine anyone arriving from the EU, the Schengen area or Britain due to the coronavirus.

New Zealand has reported no new coronavirus cases for the first time.

South Korea plans to ease a ban on some gatherings and events as long as they “follow disinfection measures”.

Brazil has become the first country in Latin America to report more than 100,000 cases.

The Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, announced mosques will reopen across large parts of the Islamic republic after they were closed in early March.

Man found to have had virus a month before government confirmed first cases

A French hospital that retested old samples from pneumonia patients has discovered that it treated a man with the coronavirus as early as 27 December, nearly a month before the French government confirmed its first cases.

Dr Yves Cohen, head of resuscitation at the Avicenne and Jean Verdier hospitals in the northern suburbs of Paris, told BFM TV that scientists had retested samples from 24 patients treated in December and January who tested negative for flu.

Tech firms will benefit, but some companies could find employees don’t want to return to the office

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Covid-19 could permanently shift working patterns as companies forced to embrace remote working by the pandemic find that their employees do not want to return to the office once the closures are lifted.

The sudden increase in working from home is presenting problems as well as opportunities: on the one hand, startups such as Slack and Zoom and established giants including Google and Microsoft are offering their tools for free, in the hope that people who start using them in a crisis may carry on once normality returns.

Related: The art of Skype set-dressing: how to video-call the office when in quarantine | Imogen West-Knights

Gains from the likes of Amazon, Netflix and Microsoft boosted the index as it turned positive

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The technology-heavy Nasdaq index turned positive for 2020 on Thursday, boosted by gains in the share prices of companies such as Amazon, Microsoft and Netflix, which have fared well during the Covid-19 lockdown.

The US index caught up all this year’s losses, taking it back to its level at the beginning of January, after rising 1.4% on Thursday to 8,979.66. It ended last year at 8,972.

Rob Lynch, Papa John's CEO and president, joins CNBC's Kate Rogers to discuss the company's quarterly earnings, how the company was able to lessen the blow from the coronavirus and its supply chain management.

Todd Gordon, Ascent Wealth Partners and John Petrides, Toqueville Asset Management, discuss the stay-at-home stocks they're watching with Seema Mody.

The FDA has approved Moderna's coronavirus vaccine candidate for a phase 2 trial, something the company calls a crucial step in its timeline. Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel joins "Squawk Box" to discuss.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, member of the boards of Pfizer and biotech company Illumina and former FDA commissioner, tells "Squawk Box" that a Covid-19 vaccine could be made available for use in "selected circumstances" before it receives official approval for wider distribution.

CNBC's Tyler Mathisen is joined by Vital Connect CEO Peter Van Haur to talk about how the company's VitalPatch product just got FDA approval to monitor coronavirus patients.

David Deno, Bloomin' Brands CEO, joins 'Closing Bell' to discuss what their reopened restaurants look like, the company's first quarterly earnings, what customers are ordering and the April jobs loss number.

As the novel coronavirus began to take hold on the United States, the Federal Reserve made a number of quick policy actions. The Fed slashed rates to nearly zero, announced a slew of asset purchases, and more, in an effort to stave of economic devastation as businesses shuttered and millions of Americans lost their jobs. Here's what the Federal Reserve has done to preserve a financial system rocked by a global pandemic.

Airbnb is one of the many businesses in the travel industry that has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. In March of 2017, Airbnb was valued at $31 billion. By the end of April 2020 that value dropped to $18 billion. With the threat of more cancelations as the pandemic halts the travel industry, guests, hosts and investors alike are left asking what Airbnb will look like after the novel coronavirus pandemic, or whether the company will survive at all.

• President calls for resumption of football despite crisis
• Brazil has more than 5,900 deaths due to the coronavirus

Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro wants to see football competitions restart soon despite the country’s high number of coronavirus cases, arguing that players are less likely to die from Covid-19 because of their physical fitness.

Bolsonaro is one of the few world leaders that still downplays the risks brought by the coronavirus, which he has likened to “a little flu”.

• Manchester City defender admits visiting sister and parents
• Club will not discipline him due to extenuating circumstances

Kyle Walker believes he is being harassed by the media after contravening lockdown rules again when visiting his parents and sister, with Manchester City deciding against disciplinary action due to extenuating circumstances.

The Sun reported that Walker travelled to Sheffield on Wednesday to visit his sister and parents. This came after the defender apologised following a report he held a party at his house with two sex workers present last month, breaking lockdown rules.

Figures from across the men’s professional game including managers, players and a scout, discuss how football will alter

When life has finally returned to normal, I think football will change for the better. We should see the reversal of a power balance that has swung the wrong way for too long, switching it back in favour of the clubs. I would certainly expect that to happen in the divisions below the Premier League, where the financial implications of Covid-19 are hitting particularly hard. Players and agents will have to lower their expectations, and we will see fewer instances of football clubs being held to ransom over deals and contracts.

Finance Department Post Pandemic (COVID-19)

COVID 19: Impact on newspaper industry

In partnership with RevOps2, we are conducting research on how COVID-19 is impacting SaaS companies. Our goal is to use the collective knowledge and actions of our membership to provide insights and guidance to the overall SaaS industry. All information will be aggregated and anonymized to protect the privacy and confidentiality of every participant.

Keep on reading: COVID-19 SaaS Industry Research

UK’s 800,000 school leavers and graduates need jobs and education offers amid turmoil, says thinktank

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Youth unemployment in Britain will reach the 1 million mark over the coming year unless the government provides job guarantees or incentives for school leavers and graduates to stay on in education, a thinktank warns.

The Resolution Foundation (RF) said that in the absence of action an extra 600,000 people under the age of 25 would swell dole queues, with a risk of long-term damage to their career and pay prospects.

Threadneedle Street says the economy hasn’t been as bad as this for 300 years – so it can only can get better

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It’s hard to be all that cheerful when you are bracing yourself for the biggest annual contraction in the economy since before the South Sea Bubble crisis of 1720, but somehow or other the Bank of England has managed to find some nuggets of hope amid all the gloom.

To be sure, the short-term news from Threadneedle Street was as grim as everybody had expected. Having fallen by 3% in the first three months of 2020, activity is projected to drop by a further 25% in the second quarter and by 14% over the calendar year.

Related: Don't expect a snapback for the UK economy after lockdown is lifted | Larry Elliott

One of the two main definitions of recession in the UK is at least two quarters of negative economic growth. Judged by this yardstick, the UK was last in recession in 2008-09, when there were six consecutive quarters of negative growth. 

Former Bank of England governor attacks government’s response to pandemic

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Mervyn King, the Bank of England governor during the financial crisis, has warned that Britain’s economy will take longer than expected to recover from the coronavirus pandemic.

Launching an attack on the government over its emergency loan guarantee scheme for businesses struggling during the crisis, Lord King said ministers needed to urgently “get a grip” on the situation to prevent lasting damage to the economy.

Related: War and the weather: what caused the huge economic slump of 1706?

Impact of COVID-19 on Indian Economy An Overview Impact on Indian Economy Demand Side Impact Supply Side Impact

नई दिल्ली। भारत में कोरोना संक्रमितों की संख्या 60,000 के करीब पहुंच गई है, देश की राष्ट्रीय राजधानी दिल्ली में महामारी से पीड़ित मरीजों की संख्या तेजी से बढ़ रही है जिसके चलते यहां के निजी अस्पतालों में आइसोलेशन बेड की

President Trump dangerously suggested injecting disinfectants could help patients sick with the coronavirus, then said he was being "sarcastic." But his remarks led to a spike in calls to helplines about taking disinfectants. We look at "What We Know About the Most Touted Drugs Tested for COVID-19" with Tanya Lewis, associate editor for health and medicine at Scientific American.

President Trump has lashed out at the U.S. Postal Service as the pandemic brings it to the brink of collapse and more people than ever are relying on the mail. Trump claims the agency is only losing money because it is undercharging Amazon and other companies for shipping. "It just isn't true," says American Postal Workers Union President Mark Dimondstein.

At least 20 workers at meat processing plants have died from COVID-19, and around 5,000 have tested positive, but President Trump invoked an executive order to bar local governments from closing meat plants. We hear from meat plant workers and organizers about conditions during the pandemic and speak with Sindy Benavides, CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens, which is supporting the workers with a virtual town hall on food worker safety with presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and calling for Meatless May Mondays.

As the Senate reconvenes today, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is demanding that Congress use the next stimulus bill to protect corporations from liability for workers. "He wants to protect their right to engage in egregious misconduct," says Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen.

We speak with Dr. Richard Levitan, an emergency physician based in Littleton, New Hampshire, who volunteered at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan for 10 days at the height of the COVID-19 surge in April. Based on what he saw, he argues patients should be going to hospitals sooner and that medical professionals could use a small device you clip on your fingertip, called a pulse oximeter, to help detect the virus earlier by revealing oxygenation problems and elevated heart rates. "A pulse oximeter is just a measure of identifying how well the lungs are working, and, I believe, can be basically an early warning system in terms of patients to know who has COVID pneumonia," says Dr. Levitan.

After New York and New Jersey, the next highest number of coronavirus infections per capita in the United States is in the Navajo Nation, the largest Indigenous reservation in the country. We go to Kayenta, Arizona, to speak with Robby Jones, a member of the Navajo Nation and the partner of one of those to die from the virus: 28-year-old Valentina Blackhorse, a beloved community leader who promoted Navajo culture and left behind a daughter named Poet.

We get an update from two doctors treating patients with the Navajo Nation, the largest Indigenous reservation in the country, which has been hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic. Dr. Michelle Tom is a member of the Navajo Nation and a family physician treating COVID-19 patients at the Winslow Indian Health Care Center and Little Colorado Medical Center in northern Arizona near the Navajo reservation. In Gallup, New Mexico, Dr. Sriram Shamasunder is leading a medical volunteer group of 21 nurses and doctors from the University of California, San Francisco as part of the HEAL Initiative. He says the coronavirus hit harder on the Navajo Nation due to a "trajectory of an underfunded health system," and notes the Indian Health Service is funded at one-third the rate per capita as Medicare. "The level of inequity that you're seeing … it's part of this pattern."

We get an update on one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the United States, at the Marion Correctional Institution in Ohio, where 11 prisoners and one staff member have died, and at least 80% of prisoners and half of the prison staff tested positive. Despite growing calls to release thousands of Ohio's nearly 50,000 incarcerated people as the coronavirus spreads, Governor Mike DeWine has only approved the release of more than 100 people in the state's prisons. "We're seeing a few people being released … but not anywhere near the 20,000 [we are] demanding," says Azzurra Crispino, whose husband, James, is incarcerated at Marion. She is co-founder of Prison Abolition Prisoner Support.

The spread of COVID-19 threatens the lives of more than 2.3 million people locked up in prisons and jails throughout the United States. We look at how the call to release prisoners during the coronavirus pandemic makes the case for prison abolition, with scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore, co-founder of California Prison Moratorium Project and Critical Resistance and the author of "Golden Gulag: Prison, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California." Her forthcoming book is "Change Everything: Racial Capitalism and the Case for Abolition."

As President Trump starts to reopen the country, Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Laurie Garrett predicts the pandemic will last at least 36 months. Meanwhile, a top government vaccine specialist says he was forced from his job after he resisted the administration's promotion of untested treatments for COVID-19. Garrett predicted the pandemic. In an extended interview, she discusses what's next.

We go to Moscow for an update on the pandemic in Russia, where the coronavirus is spreading rapidly, with at least 10,000 new cases a day and the second-highest infection rate in the world, and more than 100 medical workers have died fighting the virus, and many have reported lack of personal protective equipment. Meanwhile, three Russian healthcare workers mysteriously fell from hospital windows over the past two weeks. Two died, and the one who is hospitalized had posted a video online to note the lack of medical equipment and said he had to keep working despite testing positive. We speak with Joshua Yaffa, Moscow correspondent for The New Yorker magazine.

As the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide approaches 4 million and the pandemic could be with us for months or years, we look at who can access drugs like remdesivir, being developed by pharmaceutical giant Gilead, which has the patent for the drug and is poised to make massive profits. We look at how much drugs like remdesivir will cost, and who can access them, with writer Achal Prabhala, coordinator of the AccessIBSA project, which campaigns for access to medicines in India, Brazil and South Africa.

A 56-foot billboard called the Trump Death Clock was unveiled in Times Square in New York City. The tally of lives lost to government inaction was created by filmmaker Eugene Jarecki, who says, "On behalf of all of those who needlessly lost their lives to this failed leadership in a pandemic, we need a symbol, a symbol that cries out not only for accountability, but also for more responsible and responsive stewardship, going forward." As of the Friday morning broadcast, the death toll count was nearly 47,000 and growing.

We look at the deadly disparate impact of the pandemic on African Americans as told through an in-depth story for The New York Times Magazine by writer Linda Villarosa in her new piece, "'A Terrible Price': The Deadly Racial Disparities of Covid-19 in America," that tells what happened to the Zulu club, a Black social organization in New Orleans, during and after Mardi Gras. She reports that the experience is usually a joy, but the coronavirus made it a tragedy.

Glucose metabolism plays a key role in the cytokine storm seen in influenza, and the link could have potential implications for novel coronavirus infections

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Compassionate use of experimental medicine needs to coexist with scientific rigor to help patients, researchers write in the journal Science

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Clinical trials have begun to test drugs that counter toxic molecular webs linked to lung distress

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

A hotter planet could change the relationship among infectious agents, their hosts and the human body’s defense mechanisms

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Individual differences in genetic makeup may explain our susceptibility to the new coronavirus and the severity of the disease it causes

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Assays that detect prior novel coronavirus infections could reveal the extent of outbreaks. But they may give individuals false security

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Antigen-based assays could be used in the home, but critics say their error rates are still an issue

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Heavy declines for imports at United States-based retail container ports, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, are expected to continue in the coming months, according to the new edition of the Port Tracker report, which was issued today by the National Retail Federation (NRF) and maritime consultancy Hackett Associates.

Originally posted on - blogs by NPG staff

Originally posted on - blogs by NPG staff

Clarification in respect of residency under section 6 of the Income-tax Act, 1961Section 6 of the Income-tax Act, 1961 (the Act) contains provisions relating to residency of a person. The status of an individual as to whether he is resident in India ...

FRANCE 24 takes a three-part look at the women on the front lines of the Covid-19 fight in France and examines the details of the government plan to start lifting lockdown on May 11. We also spoke with Iceland's prime minister about her country's response to the pandemic and examined how art lovers, barred from museum visits, are recreating famous paintings in their homes.