BOSTON (AP) — The U.S. government has imposed new restrictions on Chinese tech giant Huawei’s ability to use American technology, stepping up a conflict with Beijing over industry development and security.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Friday that Washington wants to prevent Huawei from evading sanctions imposed earlier on its use of American technology to design and produce semiconductors abroad.
“There has been a very highly technical loophole through which Huawei has been able to in effect use U.S. technology,” Ross told Fox Business. “We never intended that loophole to be there.”
ROME (AP) — Italy’s virus reopening was supposed to be accompanied by a series of measures to limit infections in the one-time epicenter of Europe’s pandemic: the distribution of millions of inexpensive surgical masks to pharmacies nationwide, a pilot project of 150,000 antibody tests and, eventually, the roll-out of a contact-tracing app.
None of these is in place as Italy experiments with its second week of loosening restrictions and looks ahead to Monday’s reopening of shops and, in some regions, bars and restaurants.
Italy’s commissioner for the emergency, Domenico Arcuri, went on the defensive Tuesday to respond to mounting criticism of his Phase II roll-out.
PAKPATTAN, Pakistan (AP) — Muhimman proudly writes his name slowly, carefully, one letter at a time, grinning broadly as he finishes. He’s just 11 years old and was a good student who had dreams of being a doctor.
School frightens him now. Earlier this year, a cleric at the religious school he faithfully attended in the southern Punjab town of Pakpattan took him into a washroom and tried to rape him. Muhimman’s aunt, Shazia, who wanted only her first name used, said she believes the abuse of young children is endemic in Pakistan’s religious schools. She said she has known the cleric, Moeed Shah, since she was a little girl and describes him as an habitual abuser who used to ask little girls to pull up their shirts.
“He has done wrong with boys and also with two or three girls,” Shazia said, recalling one girl the cleric brutalized so badly he broke her back.
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Taliban leaders searched their ranks, including in the much-feared Haqqani network, and on Sunday told The Associated Press they are not holding Mark R. Frerichs, a Navy veteran turned contractor who disappeared in Afghanistan in late January.
“We don’t have any information about the missing American,” Sohail Shaheen, the Taliban’s political spokesman, told the AP.
A second Taliban official familiar with the talks with the United States said “formally and informally” the Taliban have notified U.S. officials they are not holding Frerichs. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says he’s in “no rush” to negotiate another financial rescue bill, even as the government reported that more than 20 million Americans lost their jobs last month due to economic upheaval caused by the coronavirus.
The president’s low-key approach came Friday as the Labor Department reported the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression and as Democrats prepared to unveil what Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer calls a “Rooseveltian-style” aid package to shore up the economy and address the health crisis.
HYDERABAD, India (AP) — A gas leak at a chemical factory owned by a South Korean company in southern India early Thursday left at least 11 people dead and about 1,000 struggling to breathe.
The chemical styrene, used to make plastic and rubber, leaked from the LG Polymers plant in the city of Vishakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh state while workers were preparing to restart the facility after a coronavirus lockdown was eased, officials said.
BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union predicted Wednesday “a recession of historic proportions this year” due to the impact of the coronavirus as it released its first official estimates of the damage the pandemic is inflicting on the bloc’s economy.
The 27-nation EU economy is predicted to contract by 7.5% this year, before growing about 6% in 2021, assuming countries steadily ease their lockdowns.
The group of 19 nations using the euro as their currency will see a record decline of 7.75% this year, and grow by 6.25% in 2021, the European Commission said in its Spring economic forecast.
BANGKOK (AP) — Students across Vietnam started returning to their classrooms Monday that had been closed to curb the coronavirus.
“I am so excited to go back to school, to be with my teachers and my classmates after three months,” said Chu Quang Anh, a sixth-grade student at Dinh Cong secondary school in Hanoi.
Students are required to wear masks, among other measures to minimize the spread of the virus.
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — In Brazil’s bustling Amazon city of Manaus, so many people have died within days in the coronavirus pandemic that coffins had to be stacked on top of each other in long, hastily dug trenches in a city cemetery. Some despairing relatives reluctantly chose cremation for loved ones to avoid burying them in those common graves.
Now, with Brazil emerging as Latin America’s coronavirus epicenter with more than 6,000 deaths, even the coffins are running out in Manaus. The national funeral home association has pleaded for an urgent airlift of coffins from Sao Paulo, 2,700 kilometers (1,700 miles) away, because Manaus has no paved roads connecting it to the rest of the country.
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — China’s warning of trade repercussions from Australia’s campaign for an independent inquiry into the coronavirus has rattled Australian business leaders as President Donald Trump’s administration urges other governments to back such a probe.
China has accused Australia of parroting the United States in its call for an inquiry independent of the World Health Organization to determine the origins of COVID-19 and how the world responded to the emerging pandemic.