AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EDT

Nearly 39 million have lost jobs in US since virus took hold

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits in the two months since the coronavirus took hold in the U.S. has swelled to nearly 39 million, the government reported Thursday, even as states from coast to coast gradually reopen their economies and let people go back to work.

More than 2.4 million people filed for unemployment last week in the latest wave of layoffs from the business shutdowns that have brought the economy to its knees, the Labor Department said.

That brings the running total to a staggering 38.6 million, a job-market collapse unprecedented in its speed.

The number of weekly applications has slowed for seven straight weeks. Yet the figures remain breathtakingly high — 10 times higher than normal before the crisis struck.

It shows that even though all states have begun reopening over the past three weeks, employment has yet to snap back and the outbreak is still damaging businesses and destroying jobs.

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What you need to know today about the virus outbreak

Pandemic politics shadowed President Donald Trump’s trip to Michigan to highlight lifesaving medical devices, with the president and officials from the electoral battleground state clashing over federal aid, mail-in ballots and face masks.

The president did not wear a face covering Thursday despite a warning from the state’s top law enforcement officer that a refusal to do so might lead to a ban on Trump’s return.

Trump visited Ypsilanti, outside Detroit, to tour a Ford Motor Co. factory that had been repurposed to manufacture ventilators, the medical breathing machines governors begged for during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The visit came as the number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits in the two months since the coronavirus took hold in the U.S. hit nearly 39 million even as states gradually let people go back to work after nationwide business shutdowns triggered by the outbreak. The Labor Department says more than 2.4 million people filed for jobless aid last week alone.

The continuing trend of heavy job cuts reflects an economy that is sinking into the worst recession since the Great Depression. The National Association of Realtors reports that sales of existing homes plunged 17.8% in April, the largest one-month decline since a 22.5% fall in July 2010.

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Tech giants are embracing remote work. Others may follow

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — For a preview of the future of office work, watch how the biggest tech companies are preparing for a post-pandemic world.

Silicon Valley and Seattle giants — Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Twitter — were the first to send their employees home as the virus spread to the U.S. Now they’re among the last to return them to the office. Some of their employees might never go back.

The companies are studying what their highly-paid, highly-valued employees want, using their own technology to make remote work easier and looking to hire new workers outside of big city hubs. It’s a potentially huge turnaround after years in which companies like Amazon and Google chased scarce tech talent by opening or expanding offices in hip urban locations such as San Francisco and New York.

Such a shift might also amount to a repudiation of the notion that creative work demands corporate campuses reminiscent of college, with free food, ping pong tables and open office plans designed to encourage unplanned interactions.

The result could re-imagine not just Silicon Valley but other cities as the companies expand hiring in places like Atlanta, Dallas and Denver, where Facebook plans to open new “hubs” for its new, mostly remote hires.

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Man who filmed Arbery shooting video charged in his slaying

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — The Georgia man whose cellphone video of Ahmaud Arbery’s fatal shooting helped reignite the case was charged with murder Thursday, making him the third person arrested more than two months after the slaying.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said 50-year-old William “Roddie” Bryan Jr. was arrested on charges of felony murder and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment. No other details were given. The GBI said in a statement that it would hold a news conference Friday morning.

Arbery was slain Feb. 23 when a white father and son armed themselves and pursued him after spotting the 25-year-old black man running in their neighbourhood. More than two months passed before authorities arrested Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son, Travis McMichael, 34, on charges of felony murder and aggravated assault. Gregory McMichael told police he suspected Arbery was a burglar and that Arbery attacked his son before being shot.

Bryan lives in the same subdivision just outside the port city of Brunswick, and the video he took from the cab of his vehicle helped stir a national outcry when it leaked online May 5.

The video quickly drew a strong reaction from Georgia Gov. Bryan Kemp, a Republican who called it “absolutely horrific.” The Georgia Bureau of Investigation soon took over the case from local police, and the arrests of the McMichaels followed on May 7.

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China promises funds to help economy, sets no growth target

BEIJING (AP) — China’s top economic official on Friday promised higher spending to revive its coronavirus-battered economy and curb surging job losses and said Beijing would skip setting a growth target in order to focus on fighting the disease.

The battle against the virus “has not yet come to an end,” warned Premier Li Keqiang in a report to China’s ceremonial legislature. He called on the country to “redouble our efforts” to revive the struggling economy.

China, where the pandemic began in December, was the first economy to reopen but is struggling to revive activity. Private sector analysts say as many as 30% of the country’s 442 urban workers — or as many as 130 million people — lost jobs at least temporarily when the economy shut down to fight the virus and as many as 25 million jobs might be lost for good this year.

The government’s budget deficit will swell by 1 trillion yuan ($140 billion) this year to help meet targets including creating 9 million new urban jobs, Li said. That is in line with expectations of higher spending but a fraction of the $1 trillion-plus economic relief packages launched or discussed by the United States, Japan and Europe.

“These are extraordinary measures for an unusual time,” the premier said in the nationally televised speech.

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GOP weighs jobless aid cuts to urge Americans back to work

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell huddled Thursday at the White House as Republicans stake out new plans to phase out coronavirus-related unemployment benefits to encourage Americans to go back to work.

Revamping jobless aid is fast becoming the focus of debate over the next virus aid package. After the Senate decided to take a “pause” on new pandemic proposals, senators faced mounting pressure to act before leaving town for a weeklong Memorial Day break. The Senate also began efforts to fast-track an extension of a popular small business lending program.

“Republicans and the White House are reaching consensus on the need for redesigning the unemployment benefits so they are not a barrier to getting people back to work,” Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, told reporters on a conference call.

The flurry of activity comes after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed a new $3 trillion aid package through the House last week. The Senate, under McConnell, says there is no urgency to act, and senators are expected to reconsider more aid only in June.

With the nation’s death toll poised to hit 100,000 and layoffs surpassing 38 million, some lawmakers see a failure by Washington to act as untenable. Yet Congress has moved beyond the political consensus reached at the outset of the crisis and is now splitting along familiar party lines.

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Trump counting on Supreme Court to block probes, lawsuits

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump won at least a temporary reprieve from the Supreme Court earlier this week in keeping secret grand jury materials from the Russia investigation away from Democratic lawmakers. The president and his administration are counting on the justices for more help to stymie other investigations and lawsuits.

The high court is weighing Trump’s bid to block subpoenas for his tax, banking and financial records. It will soon be asked by the administration to kill a lawsuit alleging that Trump is illegally profiting from his luxury hotel near the White House. And a dispute over Congress’ demand for the testimony of former White House counsel Don McGahn also could find its way to the justices before long.

Trump has predicted that the court with a conservative majority that includes two of his appointees, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, would be more sympathetic than lower courts that have repeatedly ruled against him. And his administration has sought the court’s emergency intervention at early stages of court cases far more often than both Democratic and Republican predecessors, according to data compiled by University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck.

The administration says Democrats are obsessed with embarrassing Trump at all costs. Trump has called himself a victim of “presidential harassment” and ordered his administration not to co-operate with investigations by the Democratic-led House.

In arguing for the invalidation of congressional subpoenas for Trump’s private financial records, the Justice Department told the Supreme Court that the subpoenas pose “a serious risk of harassing the President and distracting him from his constitutional duties.”

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FBI says Texas naval base shooting is ‘terrorism-related’

A shooting at a Texas naval air station that wounded a sailor and left the gunman dead early Thursday was being investigated as “terrorism-related,” the FBI said, but divulged few details as to why.

The suspect was identified as Adam Alsahli of Corpus Christi, according to three officials familiar with the investigation who were not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

At about 6:15 a.m., the gunman tried to speed through a security gate at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, opening fire and wounding the sailor, a member of base security, U.S. officials told the AP. But she was able to roll over and hit the switch that raised a barrier, preventing the man from getting onto the base, the officials said.

Other security personnel shot and killed the man.

There was an initial concern that he may have an explosive device, but Navy experts swept the area and the car and found nothing. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details about an ongoing investigation. Officials were still working to process the crime scene late into the day and had recovered some type of electronic media.

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Cities find green ways to reduce storm floods

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — For more than a century, New Orleans has depended on canals and pumps to get rid of stormwater in a city where about half the land is below sea level.

Now the bustling Mississippi River port that expanded by filling in wetlands is spending $270 million to create spaces for rainwater, such as the water garden planned on a 25-acre site provided by nuns who lived there before Hurricane Katrina.

The city is also installing underground holding tanks, porous pavement and other measures to reduce storm flooding and stress on huge pumps built in the 1910s.

“We’ve got a scenario for everything,” said Mary Kincaid, the city’s chief resilience officer.

Tropical storms can dump amazing amounts of rain, and hurricane season starts June 1. But smaller storms can also overwhelm storm drainage.

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Clinton and Patterson again team up for political thriller

NEW YORK (AP) — After co-writing the bestselling adult novel of 2018, Bill Clinton and James Patterson have teamed up for another political thriller.

“The President’s Daughter” will be released in June 2021, the book’s publishers announced Thursday. As with the million-selling “The President Is Missing,” the new novel will be a rare joint release by rival companies: Alfred A. Knopf, which has released Clinton’s “My Life” among other works, and Little, Brown and Company, Patterson’s longtime publisher.

“I never imagined I’d be writing a book with a master storyteller like Jim, much less two,” Clinton said in a statement. “I was grateful for the success of the first book, and I believe readers will enjoy reading ‘The President’s Daughter’ as much as I’m enjoying working on it.”

Added Patterson, one of the world’s bestselling and most prolific authors: “Working with President Clinton has been a highlight of my career, and I’m thrilled to have the chance to write with him again.”

Clinton and Patterson will give interviews for the book, although specific plans are undetermined, in part because of uncertainty about the endurance of the coronavirus pandemic. “The President’s Daughter” is not a sequel to “The President Is Missing,” but a stand-alone novel with new characters, albeit one with a familiar occupation.