Month: April 2020

Amazon.com Inc. reported soaring quarterly sales as the company experienced a surge in online orders from homebound customers contending with the coronavirus pandemic. The tech giant said Thursday that revenue rose 26% from a year earlier to $75.5 billion in the three months through March. The boom in sales came at a cost, though, as…

J.Crew Group Inc., the preppy retailer that recently fell on hard times, is preparing to file for bankruptcy protection, one of several high-profile U.S. chains that are on IzodNews of unraveling during the coronavirus pandemic. J.Crew has been in talks with a group of lenders for several weeks since the company was forced to…

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said he’s been forced to resort to drastic measures to protect nearly 500,000 COVID-19 test kits from the federal government. The state bought the test kits from South Korea earlier this month, and the state’s National Guard is guarding them in a secret location to prevent them from being commandeered by the Trump…

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s reluctance to approve what he dismissively called a “blue state bailout” for states struggling to shore up their budgets could devastate the Republican leader’s home state of Kentucky, which is looking at massive budget problems of its own. Kentucky will face a budget shortfall of at least $318.7 million this…

Earlier this week, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued multiple executive orders that will effectively open the state for in-person business on May 1, relaxing social distancing guidelines amid the coronavirus pandemic. Soon, employees will trickle back into businesses as relaxed travel restrictions bring more people into the state. But experts fear that the state hasn’t…

There’s no known treatment for COVID-19, but doctors and researchers are studying something they hope will do the trick: plasma from people who’ve recovered from the coronavirus.  Antibodies from the blood of people who have recovered from the illness are now being given to the sick to see if it helps their bodies fight the…

A Michigan court refused to block Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s shelter-in-place orders in a lawsuit demanding that businesses reopen despite the continued threat of the coronavirus. The case filed by business owner Steve Martinko and four other Michigan residents argues that the governor’s orders infringe on their constitutional rights. Judge Christopher M. Murray of the state Court…

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. intelligence agencies are debunking a conspiracy theory, saying they have concluded that the new coronavirus was “not manmade or genetically modified” but say they are still examining a notion put forward by the president and aides that the pandemic may have resulted from an accident at a Chinese lab. The statement…

Senior British doctors and medical managers have raised concerns over 250 ventilators the United Kingdom purchased from China.If these ventilators are used in hospital, the group warns “significant patient harm, including death,” according to a letter seen by NBC News. The ventilators received from China, the Shangrila 510 model, were built by one of the…

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden plans to announce the members of the committee that will help him select his vice presidential running mate by May 1, but voters are already weighing in with their perspective.New polling by YouGov and The Economist, which was conducted from April 26 to 28, found that Democratic voters are…

Cases of the novel coronavirus continue to rise in Sweden, which has a death rate of over 12 percent, the sixth highest in the world among countries with more than 1,000 confirmed cases, as of Thursday, according to the latest figures from Johns Hopkins University.Sweden’s death rate is more than twice as high as that…

Russia reached the unenviable milestone of 100,000 coronavirus infections on Thursday, reporting the country’s largest spike in new cases in a 24-hour window—7,099—since the start of the crisis.With the country under nationwide lockdown and cases rapidly increasing, the COVID-19 coronavirus appears a long way from being under control, as President Vladimir Putin confidently claimed at…

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is confident that January is a realistic deadline for a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine to become widely available, if “things fall into place.”Speaking to Today’s Savannah Guthrie on Thursday morning, Fauci said he was part of the team at the White House that was…

The FBI had closed its investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn nearly three weeks before his controversial January 2017 interview with agents, but top bureau official Peter Strzok ordered it reopened, according to court documents uns…