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President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on Tuesday that would prevent migrants who are in the United States illegally from being counted when U.S. congressional voting districts are next redrawn, triggering swift rebukes from Democrats and at least one promise of litigation.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump declined to say the Confederate flag was an offensive symbol in an interview broadcast on Sunday, saying it is a source of pride for people who love the South. The Republican president was asked on “Fox News Sunday,” if the flag, considered a symbol of slavery and oppression by most Americans, was offensive. .....,....Snip.......... "It depends on who you’re talking about, when you’re talking about,” Trump responded. “When people proudly had their Confederate flags they’re not talking about racism. They love their flag, it represents the South. They like the South ... I...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Dozens of Republican former U.S. national security officials are forming a group that will back Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, people familiar with the effort said, in a further sign that President Donald Trump has alienated some members of his own party. The group will publicly endorse Biden in the coming weeks and its members plan to campaign for the former vice president who is challenging Trump in the Nov. 3 election, the sources said. It includes at least two dozen officials who served under Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, with...

Lysol and Dettol maker Reckitt Benckiser warned people against using disinfectants to treat the coronavirus, after U.S. President Donald Trump suggested researchers try putting disinfectants into patients’ bodies. "Under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route)," the company said. Trump said researchers should try to apply their findings to coronavirus patients by inserting light or disinfectant into their bodies. “Is there a way we can do something like that by injection, inside, or almost a cleaning?” he said. “It would be interesting to check that.” Reckitt said due...

Reports in Japanese media citing an undisclosed health ministry projection said fatalities could reach the 400,000-mark without mitigation measures. It also estimated that as many as 850,000 people could need ventilators.

FLORENCE - In the storm of infection and death sweeping Italy, one big community stands out to health officials as remarkably unscathed - the 50,000 ethnic Chinese who live in the town of Prato. Two months ago, the country’s Chinese residents were the target of what Amnesty International described as shameful discrimination. But in the Tuscan town of Prato, home to Italy’s biggest single Chinese community, the opposite has been true. Once scapegoats, they are now held up by authorities as a model for early, strict adoption of infection-control measures. Ethnic Chinese make up about a quarter of Prato’s population,...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission said on Tuesday there was no evidence that a drug touted by U.S. President Donald Trump as a potential miracle cure against COVID-19 was effective against the disease caused by the new coronavirus. Trump had said that hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug, could be among "the biggest game changers in the history of medicine" for its potential effects against COVID-19. "The efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of COVID-19 patients has to date not been proved," a spokesman for the European Commission said on Tuesday, relaying an internal opinion from the European Medicine Agency. The...

The Federal Reserve has offered more than $3 trillion in loans and asset purchases in recent weeks to stop the U.S. financial system from seizing up, but it has not yet directly helped large swaths of the real economy: companies, municipalities and other borrowers with less than perfect credit. That is partly because America’s central bank is not allowed to take much credit risk itself, and loans to lower-rated borrowers have a higher chance of losses. The risk is exacerbated by the spread of coronavirus which have brought economic activity to a screeching halt. To alleviate that constraint, the U.S....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The coronavirus pandemic is forcing President Donald Trump to show empathy to console Americans under siege, and it’s not easy for a brash leader more accustomed to bellicose politics.

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump offered a preview of his re-election campaign playbook last year when he visited the building site of a multi-billion-dollar cracking (sic) unit in western Pennsylvania, hailed as one of the largest construction projects in the country. To Trump, it was a pitch-perfect example of a booming economy. Except today, the site sits largely empty, after the coronavirus outbreak forced oil company Royal Dutch Shell to halt construction. The project’s thousands of workers are now unemployed, adding to the nearly 3.6 million Americans who filed for jobless benefits in the last two weeks. The tension between...

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary has banned the commercial export of hydroxychloroquine sulfate, an ingredient used in drugs for coronavirus treatment in several countries, the government said on Wednesday. The ban applies to hydroxychloroquine sulfate and drugs containing the ingredient. “As Hungary is one of the world’s largest exporters of this ingredient, the protection and medical supply of the Hungarian population is now a priority,” the government said in a statement on its website.

The number of people worldwide struggling with extreme heat and humidity by the end of the century could be more than four times as many as today if planet-warming emissions continue to rise, hiking economic losses and health costs, scientists have warned. Spending on mental health, in particular, could soar as more families have trouble sleeping and working, and heat aggravates existing mental health problems, one of two new studies found. "Heat and humidity extremes have real impacts on health and productivity," said Bob Kopp, director of the Institute of Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences at Rutgers University, and an...

An image circulated on social media makes the claim that a vaccine for coronavirus (COVID-19) has been approved in Israel ( here ) The image, posted on Facebook on March 14, 2020, makes the further claim that the vaccine is already being mass produced and should soon be available in the U.S. for distribution. “A vaccine for CoronaVirus has just been approved in Israel. It is being produced in hundreds of thousands as we speak and expected to be in the US within 14 days!” It is true that scientists at Israel’s Institute for Biological Research—a civilian organization formerly under the Defense...

Several months before the coronavirus pandemic began, the Trump administration eliminated a key American public health position in Beijing intended to help detect disease outbreaks in China, Reuters has learned.

The coronavirus is not as bad as the seasonal flu. President Donald Trump is not worried about having had a direct exposure to the virus. The United States is in far better shape than other countries. Those are some of the messages from Trump to the American public in recent days. They are textbook examples of disastrous communication during disease outbreaks, according to some researchers into the psychology of pandemics and how leaders can most effectively communicate to keep the public safe during them. Trump is known for his informal style in attempts to, for instance, calm markets amid trade...

NEW YORK - As Republican President Donald Trump seeks a second term in November, Americans’ interest in voting is growing faster in large cities dominated by Democrats than in conservative rural areas, according to an analysis of Reuters/Ipsos national opinion polls. If the trend lasts until Election Day on Nov. 3, it would be a reversal from the 2016 election when rural turnout outpaced voting in urban areas, helping Trump narrowly win the White House. The finding, based on responses from more than 88,000 U.S. adults who took the online poll from August to December 2015 or from August to...

WASHINGTON - A federal appeals court on Friday threw out a lawsuit brought by Democratic lawmakers that accused Donald Trump of violating anti-corruption provisions in the U.S. Constitution with his business dealings, capping a week of political victories for the Republican president. A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the more than 210 House of Representatives and Senate Democrats lacked the required legal standing to bring the case, reversing a lower court judge’s decision that had allowed the case to proceed. The ruling came during a week of positives...

FRESNO, Calif. (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic presidential contender Michael Bloomberg vowed on Monday he would not let President Donald Trump bully him as the war of words between the two New York business tycoons and political rivals became nastier.

MEXICO CITY - The United Nations said in a post on Twitter on Friday it is concerned about the impact Mexico’s migrant operation is having on children and vulnerable people, saying the country had a right to protect its borders but not to use excessive force. Mexican authorities have adopted tougher measures against Central American migrants, detaining 800 who had entered Mexico from Guatemala seeking to reach the border with the United States.

MEXICO CITY - Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is facing a barrage of criticism at home that he is doing U.S. President Donald Trump’s bidding after erecting a “wall” of security forces near the Guatemala border to keep out Central Americans. Mexico has bowed to demands from Trump, under the threat of punitive tariffs, to contain mass movements of migrants, most of them from Central America, who have been crossing through Mexico on their way to the U.S. border. Lopez Obrador was questioned at his daily morning news conference for a second day in a row about how the...