Washington DC

Washington, May 5 (PTI) US President Donald Trump has nominated senior Indian-American diplomat Manisha Singh as his envoy to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Currently Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs at the State Department, Singh will be the US representative to OECD with the rank of an Ambassador, according to the nomination sent to the Senate by the White House.

WASHINGTON, May 5 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The US Navy sent four ships this week to conduct Arctic security operations in the Barents Sea north of Russia for the first time in over three decades, the Pentagon said.

The move came as US officials said rivals like China and Russia were increasingly testing US defense resolve with their own air and sea challenges during the coronavirus pandemic.

Washington, May 4 (AP/PTI) President Donald Trump says he believes a vaccine for COVID-19 will be available by the end of the year.

Trump also says the U.S. government is putting its full power and might behind remdesivir, a drug that has shown early promise as a treatment for the disease caused by the new coronavirus.

Trump commented Sunday night during a televised town hall sponsored by Fox News Channel.

WASHINGTON, May 3 (NNN-AGENCIES) – Economic activity in the U.S. manufacturing sector plunged to an 11-year low in Apr, amid mounting COVID-19 fallout and weak global energy markets, the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) reported.

The Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) fell by 7.6 percentage points to 41.5 percent in Apr, the lowest since Apr, 2009. Any reading below 50 percent indicates the manufacturing sector is generally contracting.

WASHINGTON, May 3 (NNN-XINHUA) – There is “no scientific backing” for the two claims, floated recently by some U.S. politicians and media outlets that, COVID-19 could be human-made and have escaped from a laboratory, scientists said.

“The origin of the novel coronavirus is a legitimate area of scientific inquiry, in which there are still open questions,” said an article posted on Apr 22 on BuzzFeed News.

2 May 2020; MEMO: US President Donald Trump has told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept the deal of the century as one package and recognise the principle of “two states for two nations”.

Washington, May 2 (PTI) The US government has given a grace period of 60 days to H-1B visa holders and Green Card applicants, who have been served notices for submission of various documents, in view of the novel coronavirus outbreak.

1 May 2020; MEMO: US President Donald Trump claimed Thursday that he has seen evidence that the novel coronavirus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, Anadolu reports.

Asked if he has seen anything that gives him a “high degree of confidence” that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was where the virus had originated from, Trump replied: “Yes, I have.”

Washington, Apr 30 (AP) McDonald's says it has likely reached the trough of global restaurant closures due to COVID-19, with 25 per cent still shuttered. But business has been slow to return as lockdown orders continue to disrupt consumers' routines.

McDonald's said Thursday its sales fell 6 per cent to USD 4.71 billion in the January-March period. Declines have persisted in April.

WASHINGTON, May 1 (NNN-AGENCIES) — US President Donald Trump threatened China with fresh tariffs as he stepped up his attacks on Beijing over the coronavirus crisis, saying he had seen evidence linking a Wuhan lab to the contagion.

The diatribe from the Republican incumbent came as data showed the United States shed more than 30 million jobs in six weeks, as lockdown measures began to bite across the nation.