President Trump and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have each said in recent days that there is significant evidence COVID-19 originated in a lab in China’s Wuhan province. At the same time, the Trump administration says it is looking into the cause of the coronavirus outbreak and has not published the evidence referred to. China has vehemently denied the allegations.
The Treasury Department announced on Monday that it expects to borrow $3 trillion during the second quarter this year.
U.S. Attorney General William Barr has directed every U.S. Attorney “to be on the lookout for state and local directives that could be violating the constitutional rights and civil liberties of individual citizens.”
After weeks of closure due to the coronavirus pandemic, churches across America were encouraged to hold in-person services again on May 3, Fox News reports. This date was the first Sunday since the US government launched its reopening plan and allowed congregants to attend church in person.
The 30th anniversary of Hungary’s first freely elected Parliament since the end of Communist dictatorship has been overshadowed by fresh doubts over the government’s democratic credentials. Opposition parties stayed away from this weekend’s ceremony in Parliament, citing concerns about policies by the increasingly autocratic Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
An international pledging marathon has begun where world leaders are to raise at least 7.5 billion euros ($8.2 billion) to find a coronavirus vaccine. With social distancing the world’s new norm, world leaders choose video conferencing to raise the billions of dollars needed for research into a possible vaccine.
A majority of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s 17 spy agencies believe the coronavirus likely originated with an accidental lab escape from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, a senior intelligence official told the Washington Examiner.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he has seen “enormous evidence” indicating the coronavirus pandemic originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
China has refused to cooperate with the World Health Organizations’ efforts to investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, a WHO official told Sky News.
Tensions between China and the United States are rapidly escalating into a possible trade war with Beijing and Washington accusing each other of responsibility for the coronavirus outbreak.
Aid workers say Christians, including pastors and their families, are excluded from government food aid in several parts of India despite an ongoing lockdown to curb the coronavirus pandemic.
Pakistan and Russia have reported their most significant one-day rise in new coronavirus infections. Their announcement Saturday came after some other countries and U.S. states where case numbers are stabilizing allowed businesses and public activities to reopen.
The Philippines faces international pressure to end one of the world’s most repressive coronavirus lockdowns, with 120,000 people detained and some killed or abused for curfew violations in the past month. Witnesses, including Christian single mothers, have told Worthy News of intimidating police and military checkpoints.
The wife of a pastor imprisoned by Chinese authorities has said her husband was arrested for re-posting messages about the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, International Christian Concern (ICC) reports. Zhang Xinghong said she was told by Chinese authorities that her husband Pastor Zhao Huaiguo has been charged with inciting subversion of state power because of these posts.
In his first appearance since surviving COVID-19, Britain’s prime minister expressed hope that his nation is defeating the coronavirus disease pandemic and could “now see the sunlight.” Boris Johnson suggested that figures showed Britain was “past the peak” of its worst health crisis since the 1918 influenza outbreak.
The six-week surge in new unemployment claims continued last week as businesses deemed nonessential by state and local governments reduce staffing in response to COVID-19.
Turkey’s planned deployment of Russian S-400 missile defenses has been delayed by the coronavirus outbreak but will ultimately go ahead, President Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman said on Thursday, despite Washington’s warnings that Ankara risks U.S. sanctions.
The US marriage rate is at its lowest since the federal government began collecting data in 1867, the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) reported on Wednesday. Lead author of the report Sally Curtin told the Wall Street Journal: “Millennials are in peak marriage years, their 20s and 30s, and it’s still dropping. This is historic.”
A survey by the world’s largest journalism group shows three in every four journalists have faced official restrictions, obstruction or intimidation in reporting on the new coronavirus disease COVID-19. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) also noticed that most staff and freelance journalists have “suffered pay cuts, lost revenue, job losses, canceled commissions, or worsening working conditions.”
A senior World Health Organization (WHO) official has praised Sweden for its strategy in managing the coronavirus outbreak, the NY Post reported. Executive director of Emergencies Program Mike Ryan told reporters Wednesday: “I think in many ways Sweden represents a model if we wish to get back to a society in which we don’t have lockdowns.”