AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT

`Like I just got out of jail!': States ease their lockdowns

GRETNA, La. (AP) — More than a dozen states let restaurants, stores or other businesses reopen Friday in the biggest one-day push yet to get their economies up and running again, acting at their own speed and with their own quirks and restrictions to make sure the coronavirus doesn't come storming back.

People in Louisiana could eat at restaurants again but had to sit outside at tables 10 feet apart with no waiter service. Maine residents could attend church services as long as they stayed in their cars. And a Nebraska mall reopened with plexiglass barriers and hand-sanitizing stations but few shoppers.

“I feel like I just got out of jail!” accountant Joy Palermo exclaimed as she sat down with a bacon-garnished bloody Mary at the Gretna Depot Cafe outside New Orleans.

Meanwhile, the first drug shown to help fight COVID-19 won emergency approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In a major study, remdesivir shortened patients' recovery time from 15 days to 11 on average and may have also reduced deaths.

The virus has killed more than 230,000 people worldwide, including over 64,000 in the U.S. and more than 20,000 each in Italy, Britain, France and Spain, forcing lockdowns that have shuttered factories and businesses, thrown tens of millions out of work and throttled the world's economies.

___

What you need to know today about the virus outbreak

U.S. regulators say they will allow emergency use of an experimental drug that appears to help some coronavirus patients recover faster. President Donald Trump announced the news Friday alongside the head of the Food and Drug Administration.

As America tentatively emerges from weeks of lockdowns, the pandemic has taken its toll on workers who have been on the front lines all along. Women and minorities in particular have been packing and delivering supplies, caring for the sick and elderly, and keeping streets and buildings clean.

Around the world, millions of workers worldwide are marking international labor day worried about pay checks and hunger as more countries and states reopen for business even though the coronavirus pandemic is far from vanquished.

Here are some of AP’s top stories Monday on the world’s coronavirus pandemic. Follow APNews.com/VirusOutbreak for updates through the day and APNews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak for stories explaining some of its complexities.

WHAT’S HAPPENING TODAY:

___

NKorea's Kim Jong Un appears in public amid health rumors

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean state media says leader Kim Jong Un has made his first public appearance in 20 days amid rumors about his health.

The Korean Central News Agency said Saturday that he attended a ceremony marking the completion of a fertilizer factory in Suncheon, near the capital of Pyongyang, with other senior officials, including his sister, Kim Yo Jong.

Photos from the ceremony weren’t immediately released.

Kim Jong Un had been last seen during a ruling party meeting on April 11 to discuss coronavirus prevention. Speculation about his health swirled after he missed the April 15 celebration of the birthday of his late grandfather and state founder, Kim Il Sung, the country’s most important holiday.

South Korea's government had downplayed rumors and unconfirmed reports that Kim was in poor health following a medical procedure, saying it had detected no unusual activity in the North.

___

US allows emergency use of drug shown to help virus recovery

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. regulators on Friday allowed emergency use of an experimental drug that appears to help some coronavirus patients recover faster.

It is the first drug shown to help fight COVID-19, which has killed more than 237,000 people worldwide.

The FDA said in a statement that Gilead Science’s intravenous drug would be specifically indicated for hospitalized patients with “severe disease,” such as those experiencing breathing problems requiring supplemental oxygen or ventilators.

President Donald Trump announced the news at the White House alongside Gilead CEO Daniel O’Day and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn.

“This was lightning speed in terms of getting something approved” said Hahn, calling the drug “an important clinical advance.”

___

Ex-Green Beret led failed attempt to oust Venezuela's Maduro

MIAMI (AP) — The plan was simple, but perilous. Some 300 heavily armed volunteers would sneak into Venezuela from the northern tip of South America. Along the way, they would raid military bases in the socialist country and ignite a popular rebellion that would end in President Nicolás Maduro’s arrest.

What could go wrong? As it turns out, pretty much everything.

The ringleader of the plot is now jailed in the U.S. on narcotics charges. Authorities in the U.S. and Colombia are asking questions about the role of his muscular American adviser, a former Green Beret. And dozens of desperate combatants who flocked to secret training camps in Colombia said they have been left to fend for themselves amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The failed attempt to start an uprising collapsed under the collective weight of skimpy planning, feuding among opposition politicians and a poorly trained force that stood little chance of beating the Venezuelan military.

“You’re not going to take out Maduro with 300 hungry, untrained men,” said Ephraim Mattos, a former U.S. Navy SEAL who trained some of the would-be combatants in tactical medicine.

___

Trump's new press secretary pledges not to lie from podium

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's new spokeswoman, Kayleigh McEnany, vowed on Friday not to lie to reporters from the podium as she made her debut at the first White House briefing by a press secretary in more than a year.

“I will never lie to you,” McEnany told reporters. “You have my word on that.”

McEnany, who joined the White House last month, took the stage behind a podium that had quite literally been collecting cobwebs before the president began the practice of holding his own daily briefings because of the coronavirus.

McEnany said she spends most of the day with the president and is “constantly with him, absorbing his thinking.” She said she sees it as her “mission to bring you the mindset of the president, deliver those facts, so this president gets fair and accurate reporting and the American people get fair and accurate information."

During past administrations, a formal briefing by a White House press secretary would hardly be news. But it was the first such briefing since March 11, 2019, when Sarah Sanders took to the podium for the first time in more than a month and was pressed on comments Trump reportedly made at a fundraiser claiming that Democrats hated Jewish people. Sanders left her post that summer, and her successor, Stephanie Grisham, never held a briefing during her entire nine-month tenure.

___

AP PHOTOS: Global May Day celebrations muted amid lockdowns

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Trapped between fear of an invisible enemy and looming economic ruin and hunger, millions of workers worldwide marked international labor day Friday with vastly muted celebrations amid the coronavirus pandemic.

With lockdown restrictions still in place across the globe, there were only a handful of countries that saw actual May Day demonstrations on the streets. Even then, they looked vastly different to anything that has gone before.

Organizers of a Greek Communist Party-affiliated union were out with tape measures and colored stickers to mark the exact places the masked and gloved demonstrators could stand for their rally — two meters apart, to maintain social distancing. They waved banners and flags calling for more workers’ rights, but didn’t march through the streets as they normally would have.

Delivery workers held their own demonstration, riding their motorcycles and scooters through the streets of the Greek capital, where lockdown measures are to start being relaxed from Monday.

In France, unions called for people to sing on their balconies or out of their windows at midday in a collective shout of protest for more worker protections. Some protesters who took to the streets despite the lockdown were arrested.

___

Biden declares sexual assault 'never, never happened'

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden on Friday emphatically denied all egations from a former Senate staffer that he sexually assaulted her in the early 1990s, declaring flatly “this never happened.”

Biden’s first public remarks on the accusation by a former employee, Tara Reade, come at a critical moment for the presumptive Democratic nominee as he tries to relieve mounting pressure after weeks of leaving denials to his campaign.

“I’m saying unequivocally, it never, never happened,” the former vice president and senator said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

Biden said he will ask the National Archives to determine whether there is any record of a complaint being filed, as Reade has claimed. He said the Archives was the only possible place a complaint would be, and that his Senate papers held under seal at the University of Delaware do not contain personnel records.

“The former staffer has said she filed a complaint back in 1993,” Biden said. “But she does not have a record of this alleged complaint.”

___

Socked by virus, comic book industry tries to draw next page

The pandemic has transformed Christina Blanch, owner of Aw Yeah Comics, into a nightly TV host.

Nine times a week, Blanch leads a livestream from the store she lives above in Muncie, Indiana, to sell some comics and interact with regulars. She holds up issues one by one, usually for $5 or $10, and takes down addresses from buyers. It’s a way to get by but helps keep the shop's community spirit alive. The show has a warm, thank-God-we-have-each-other feel to it. Sometimes Blanch sips a Modelo or vents about a difficult day. She calls it “What We Do in the Comic Shop.”

Long a repository for tales of world-threatening cataclysms and doomsday dystopias, the comic shop in the coronavirus era now finds itself drawn into a fight for its very survival. The crisis, felt across retailers, poses a particular threat to comic book shops, a pop-culture institution that has, through pluck and passion, held out through digital upheaval while remaining stubbornly resistant to corporate ownership.

Even as the pandemic era takes on the appearance of a comic — desolate urban centers, masks everywhere — the ink-and-paper industry is at a standstill that some believe jeopardizes its future, casting doubt on how many shops will make it through and what might befall the gathering places of proud nerds, geeks and readers everywhere.

It won’t go — insert “POW!” bubble — without a fight.

___

For sports, coronavirus testing remains a major hurdle

MIAMI (AP) — Politicians, players and owners are trying to figure out a way to get baseball, basketball and hockey going again, not only for economic reasons but as a welcome diversion for a social distancing nation facing uncertain times.

But to do so would require commandeering thousands of test kits each week for millionaire pro athletes and support staff, something many view as unseemly, especially when ordinary Americans are waiting in line.

Leagues know it would be a terrible look for them to jump the testing line. Acutely aware of the potential backlash, commissioners and owners are saying that, until the public has more access to testing, they don’t want to secure tests for players. The NBA even told teams in a memo Thursday that it would be inappropriate to test asymptomatic players and coaches for now — but the league does expect to have testing available when it's time to return to practices and games.

The NBA plans to allow teams to reopen some facilities May 8, but only for voluntary workouts and in cities where local governments allow. And there is no timetable yet for a return to practices and games, in large part because the testing issue remains unsolved.

“We would have to ensure that testing is widely available and front-line health care workers have access before we begin talking about regular testing in the context of professional sports,” NBA spokesman Mike Bass said.