USA - President Donald Trump proposed unorthodox new treatments for the coronavirus at Thursday's White House press briefing – including injecting cleaning agents in the body and use of ultraviolet lights. Trump, who studied finance and real estate but touts his gut instincts about medical and scientific issues, brought up possible treatments at Thursday's White House press briefing.

USA - "I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs."

Mr Trump suggests injecting patients with disinfectants might help treat coronavirus. Using a disinfectant can kill viruses on surfaces, but this is crucially only about infected objects and surfaces - not about what happens once the virus is inside your body. Not only does consuming or injecting disinfectant risk poisoning and death, it's not even likely to be effective. Doctors have appealed to people not to ingest or inject disinfectant, as there are concerns people will think this is a good idea and die.

EUROPE - French President Emmanuel Macron has issued an ultimatum to EU members in Northern Europe to spend more to help southern states or risk losing access to the single market. An agreement reached between EU states means aid over coronavirus will come in the form of loans and must be repaid. According to The Telegraph, German Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected handing out grants of money and said if the EU is going to spend vast sums of money, all states will have to submit to tax policies. Mr Macron warned: "If you let part of Europe fall, the whole of Europe will fall.” He said if northern states continued to “profit” from the south, there is a risk that one day the single market will be “no longer there”.

USA - More than 4.4 million laid-off workers applied for unemployment benefits last week, the government said Thursday. In all, roughly 26 million people — the population of the 10 biggest US cities combined — have now filed for jobless aid in five weeks, an epic collapse that has raised the stakes in the debate over how and when to lift the state-ordered stay-at-home restrictions that have closed factories and other businesses from coast to coast. In the hardest-hit corner of the US, evidence emerged that perhaps more than 2 million New Yorkers have been infected by the virus — several times higher than the number confirmed by lab tests. In the US, the economic consequences of the shutdowns have sparked angry rallies in state capitals by protesters demanding that businesses reopen, and President Donald Trump has expressed impatience over the restrictions. Some governors have begun easing up despite warnings from health authorities that it may be too soon to do so without sparking new infections.

USA - Democrat Congress Give US Banks Permission To Keep The Deposits & IRA Accounts To Pay Off Bank Debt & Prevent Bankruptcy. Picture This: Walking Up To Your Bank's ATM, You Know You've Got $1,000's In Your Account, You Find A $0 Balance And Then Discover To Your Horror…Your Bank Emptied Your Checking, Savings, IRA's, Etc., With The Click Of A Mouse And Used The Money To Pay Its Gambling (Derivatives) Debts… Your Money -­ Gone - FOREVER! No FDIC!

IRAN - The Iranian Revolutionary Guards' top commander threatened to target any US 'terrorist' vessels or warships following President Trump's tweet threatening to 'shoot down' all gunboats. Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Major General Hossein Salami made the announcement about the naval directive while speaking with state press.

CLAIM: President Donald Trump suggested injecting people with disinfectant to cure coronavirus.

VERDICT: False. Trump was speaking generally about new information about sunlight, heat, and disinfectant killing the virus.President Trump is being quoted out of context — as usual — by left-wingers on social media who are accusing him of suggesting injecting people with disinfectant as a way of curing coronavirus infections. Apparently there is no accusation too crazy for Trump’s critics to believe.

FRANCE - France has warned it is "disappointed" with the European Union over its failure to come up with concrete measures to support farmers and wine producers facing a sharp fall in sales due to the coronavirus crisis. Brussels expects the bloc to go into a deep recession this year because of the coronavirus outbreak, which has paralysed economic activity across the 27 member states. “We have asked the EU for help but it has not, as yet, responded to all our demands,” Agriculture Minister Didier Guillaume told Europe 1 radio, as he voiced his “disappointment” at the bloc’s failure to take immediate action. Mr Guillaume has repeatedly called on the European Commission, the bloc’s powerful executive arm, to help milk and wine producers who face a surplus of production due to slack demand caused by the health crisis that has cut off vital restaurant and export trade.

ITALY - Italy’s fearsome Mount Etna has burst into life, spewing volcanic debris up to five kilometres into the atmosphere. The volcano, which is located on the Italian island of Sicily, burst into life on Sunday, April 19, releasing ash and hot gas. Volcano Discovery described the blast as a "brief, but intense episode of explosive activity", with the eruption taking place at 7.30am local time. Just 45 minutes later, the eruption had settled down, simmering to a flow of lava down the volcano's steep side. The emission of ash and gases began mildly at first, but had intensified by around 9am and reports said the column of ash ascended five kilometres (3.1 miles) into the air. The column of ash was blown south-east of the volcano and affected Bove Valley and the nearby commune of Zafferana where residents are still on COVID-19 lockdown.

USA - California could be set for the worst drought in recorded history, and experts warn it may have already started. California and the southwest of North America (SWNA) is no stranger to droughts, but scientists warn it could be braced for the worst drought scientists have ever experienced. By analysing precipitation levels since the turn of the current century and cross-referencing them with soil moisture levels recorded by tree rings over the last 1,200 years, researchers said California could be in for the worst drought in recorded history. Columbia University experts stated that precipitation levels since 2000 match up with megadroughts throughout history. The situation is so severe that experts are no longer looking at predictions for the future but where the climate is right now.

USA - The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken. When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills — a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public — had gone untreated for years. We had learned to live, uncomfortably, with the symptoms. It took the scale and intimacy of a pandemic to expose their severity — to shock Americans with the recognition that we are in the high-risk category.

USA - While Bartholet scorns parents who indoctrinate their kids, she praises the school system for doing so. The American education system is wholly responsible for raising a generation of perpetually offended people who think they’re open-minded but who actually are only accepting of those with the same beliefs.

CHINA - China is facing pressure for answers as the world fights the coronavirus pandemic - and science highlighting that the outbreak started via bat-to-human transmission suggests that warnings in the Bible on the consumption of "unclean" meat have been ignored with fatal consequences for humanity.

AFRICA - What the head of the UN’s World Food Program just said should be making front page headlines all over the globe. Because if what he is claiming is true, we are about to see global food shortages on a scale that is absolutely unprecedented in modern history. Even before COVID-19 arrived, armies of locusts the size of major cities were voraciously eating crops all across Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia, and UN officials were loudly warning about what that would mean for global food production.

USA - US route 395 is a geologic master class disguised as a road. It runs north from the arid outskirts of Los Angeles, carrying travelers up to Reno along the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevada. On the way, they pass the black cinder cones of Coso Volcanic Field and the eroded scars of a mighty 19th-century earthquake near Lone Pine. In winter, drivers might see steam rising from Hot Creek, where water boils up from an active supervolcano deep underground. About an hour from the Nevada border, Mono Lake appears, with its bulbous and surreal mineral formations known as tufa towers. Even for someone with no particular interest in rocks, these are captivating, otherworldly sights. But for James Faulds, Nevada’s state geologist, they are something more — clues to a great tectonic mystery unfolding in the American West. If he’s right, all of this, from the wastes of the Mojave Desert to the night-lit casinos of Reno, will someday be beachfront property...