(Bloomberg) -- Vice President Mike Pence said he is now leading the government’s coronavirus task force instead of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.“I’m leading the task force,” Pence said Thursday at a meeting on the virus at HHS headquarters. “We’ll continue to rely on the secretary’s role as chairman of the task force and the leader of Health and Human Services.”President Donald Trump initially appointed Azar to lead the government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, but on Wednesday, he named Pence to the role at a news conference. The Washington Post reported that Azar was blindsided by the decision, though Azar said he had been consulted and told lawmakers he thought Pence’s appointment was “genius.”“The president has every confidence in the secretary, as I do,” Pence said in response to a reporter’s question about who is in charge. “The President wanted to make it clear to the American people that we’re going to bring a whole-of-government approach to this.”Financial markets were not reassured. The S&P 500 fell 4.4% on Thursday, the biggest plunge since 2011, turning lower after California Governor Gavin Newsom said the state is monitoring about 8,400 people for signs of the disease after they traveled to Asia.Pence added another layer to the government’s management of the virus response on Thursday by appointing the State Department’s top AIDS official, Deborah Birx, to temporarily join his team.Former Obama OfficialBirx is a career government official who was nominated by former President Barack Obama in 2014 as the U.S. global AIDS coordinator responsible for overseeing humanitarian aid programs combating the epidemic. She also served as head of the global HIV/AIDS division at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and was a top research official at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.Trump announced Wednesday during a news conference that Pence would take over the administration’s response to the coronavirus, which has now spread to more than 80,000 people worldwide and sparked a major sell-off on Wall Street.Pence and Azar announced earlier Thursday that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams and Trump’s top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, would join the administration’s coronavirus task force.Pence said in a speech to conservative activists at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in suburban Maryland that it’s not a time for partisanship.“We’re ready,” he said. “We’re ready for anything.”The president sought to calm U.S. fears by appearing Wednesday with public health officials at a news conference, where he said the risk to Americans remains low. But health officials said there are likely to be more cases in the U.S., and Trump acknowledged that the outbreak could become “substantially worse.”“But nothing’s inevitable,” he said.Market TumbleDuring the news conference, he took jabs at Democrats who had criticized his request for $2.5 billion to fight the virus as insufficient. He said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “is trying to create a panic and there’s no reason to panic because we have done so good, these professionals behind me, and over here, and over there, and back here, and in some conference rooms.”Global stocks tumbled to four-month lows on Thursday, government debt yields sunk and crude oil extended declines as anxiety over the spread of the coronavirus surged.Pence’s selection of Birx comes at a time when Trump has focused on rooting out political appointees from government whom he considers disloyal in the aftermath of his impeachment acquittal. Trump allies outside the administration have called for a purge of so-called “deep state” career national security officials.Investors anxious about the spread of the coronavirus from its origins in China have sought assurances that the Trump administration is prepared to confront a potential public health crisis. Trump, who in the past has called for budget cuts at the CDC and other health agencies, said Wednesday he would bring in officials from within the government to help with the virus response.(Updates with market plunge in fifth paragraph.)To contact the reporters on this story: Jennifer Jacobs in Washington at jjacobs68@bloomberg.net;Jordan Fabian in Washington at jfabian6@bloomberg.net;Ryan Beene in Washington at rbeene@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Justin BlumFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

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Powell Jobs, who is worth an estimated $24 billion, said she believes a massive accumulation of wealth is "dangerous for a society."

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The patient did not fit CDC criteria for COVID-19, so a test was not immediately administered.

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Leah Freeman's shoes were the only clue police had in her murder — and the only evidence that her high school boyfriend Nick McGuffin wasn't her killer.

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The bulk of liabilities are judgments that the diocese expects to pay in child sexual abuse claims against its priests, nuns, brothers and deacons.

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Idaho lawmakers moved forward Thursday with legislation banning transgender people from changing the sex listed on their birth certificates despite a federal court ruling declaring such a ban unconstitutional. Ohio and Tennessee are the only other states in the country where transgender people cannot change their birth certificates, according to a law firm that has challenged the practice in court. In Idaho, this is another effort by the conservative state to target the population as Republicans in the House a day earlier advanced legislation to keep transgender women from competition.

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New York health officials are trying to get their own coronavirus testing kits up and running after getting stuck with faulty tests from the federal government that they said left them unable to diagnose people quickly in the nation's most populous city.

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Canadian National Railway Co has started calling back many of the 450 workers it laid off earlier this month in eastern Canada, when blockades crippled operations on strategic rail lines, according to a company email sent to customers on Friday.

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The Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), the biotechnology industry's largest trade association, told Reuters on Friday that former Biogen Inc CEO George Scangos would coordinate its response to the global coronavirus outbreak.

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Congo's military intelligence chief died on Friday after suffering a heart attack, his wife said, following media reports that an investigation had been opened into allegations that he tried to destabilize the country.

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Roman Polanski, who faces accusations of rape, won France's Cesar Award for best directing for his film "An Officer and a Spy" on Friday, prompting several actresses to walk out of the ceremony in protest.

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Henri Michelle Piette kidnapped his victim in 1997 when she was 12 and subjected her to nearly 20 years of physical and sexual abuse before she escaped.

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Ships have been instructed to remain at sea for at least 14 days, the maximum incubation period for the coronavirus.

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Elements of the response outlined by Trump mirror things he specifically criticized President Barack Obama for during the ebola outbreak in 2014. Yahoo News asked Trump about this contradiction and he argued the coronavirus epidemic is “a much different problem than ebola.”

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Five people were killed Wednesday by a gunman during a rampage on the Milwaukee campus of Molson Coors. He has been identified as Anthony N. Ferrill.

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For years, Ibrahim al-Dabba has been saving up money to make the umrah pilgrimage to Islam's holiest sites in Saudi Arabia, which for many Palestinians is the only way to leave the impoverished and isolated Gaza Strip. The outbreak could potentially affect the much larger annual hajj pilgrimage, set to begin in late July. For the 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, the Saudi decision closes one of the last avenues for leaving the narrow coastal strip, which has been ruled by the Islamic militant group Hamas and blockaded by Israel and Egypt since 2007.

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Medical professionals inside the Islamic Republic tell TIME they believe the country is now grappling with an “epidemic”

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Israel on Wednesday became the first country to officially warn its citizens to avoid any international travel amid fears over the coronavirus outbreak.Several airlines have canceled flights to China, where the respiratory virus originated, and governments have issued warnings about travel to certain countries, but no country has actively urged their citizens avoid traveling abroad at large until now. "If you don't genuinely have to fly — don't do so," Israel's health ministry said in a statement.Although the majority of cases remain in China, the virus has spread to several other countries. In response to criticism that the country was stoking panic and could cause both economic and diplomatic damage, the health ministry said they'd rather deal with the inconveniences now than be sorry later, The Times of Israel reports.The only confirmed Israeli cases so far involve people who were on a cruise ship that was quarantined in Japan, although South Korea — which is experiencing one of the larger outbreaks beyond China — reportedly informed Israel over the weekend that a members from a group of pilgrims returned to South Korea from Israel and tested positive for the disease. Read more at The Times of Israel.More stories from theweek.com What it's like to be in Venice during coronavirus lockdown Trump freaks out about all the wrong things Bloomberg campaign reportedly trying to recruit Andrew Yang

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Four doctors in Iran said that the total number of those infected is likely substantially higher than the number released by Iranian health authorities.

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(Bloomberg Opinion) -- When two people gang up, it’s usually bad news for the third. So it was on Tuesday morning in the race to become the next boss of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union, the center-right party of Angela Merkel, which is indirectly also a campaign to replace her as chancellor. The three leading candidates abruptly scheduled back-to-back press conferences in the same room. In the first, two of them showed up as a “team,” as they kept emphasizing. In the other, the third candidate fended for himself, looking rather forlorn.The first event involved Armin Laschet, 58, the premier of North Rhine-Westphalia and leader of the largest CDU delegation, and Jens Spahn, 39, Merkel’s up-and-coming health minister. They’ve been at odds in the past, but now Spahn has sacrificed his own candidacy to support Laschet, who at a stroke becomes the front-runner to clinch the CDU leadership at a party conference slated for April 25.Their surprising alliance amounts to a “cartel to weaken competition,” quipped the third candidate, Friedrich Merz, 64. He, too, had been invited in recent weeks to become part of a Laschet-led team. But Merz, citing his good poll numbers, decided to reach for the top spot.Laschet and Merz would represent fundamentally different directions for the party, country and continent. Laschet is a jovial figure, bordering on lightweight. He wants to show voters that “governing can be fun,” he said. He hasn’t signaled any abrupt policy changes from the Merkel era and gets along well with the present chancellor, which means he could survive the awkward year or so when he would run the party, she the government.From Merz’s point of view, that’s precisely Laschet’s weakness. The choice for the party, he said, is between continuity and stagnation (Laschet) or “a new start and renewal” (Merz). That might seem a bit rich coming from the oldest candidate, one who was last prominent in politics in 2002 when Merkel ousted him from a top job. He’s since had a good career in investment management at BlackRock, but yearns to get even with Merkel and the whole wobbly centrism she represents.What Merz really means is that he would steer the CDU rightward to bring back many former supporters who’ve defected to a party on the extremist fringe, the Alternative for Germany (AfD). Merz’s notion of the right is being: good for business; hawkish on monetary, fiscal and euro-area policy; and above all tough on law and order, specifically anything to do with migrants.In divining Laschet and Merz’s relative chances of success, Spahn has made an interesting choice. He represents a new and woke generation, being youngish and gay. But he’s cultivated a profile as an arch-conservative who’s skeptical of Merkel’s wishy-washy middle course. Ideologically, he should be closer to Merz than to Laschet.So why is he standing beside Laschet instead? Because he’s calculated that Laschet has more hope of going all the way. If his gamble is correct, Spahn can rise alongside Laschet as his deputy, burnishing his stature until his own time comes for the top job.The main reason why Spahn gives better odds to Laschet is that he’s a proven uniter, whereas Merz tends to have a tin ear for other people’s sensitivities. “We had our differences,” Spahn said about Laschet, “but that’s exactly what this is about: building bridges.” He’s talking about bridges between CDU delegates and between rivals, and bridges to potential coalition partners, above all the environmentalist Greens. These will all have to be crossed to get to a Laschet cabinet in 2021 (when Merkel steps down and a national election is held), in which Spahn would be prominent.Even before that, another bridge needs building. It’s to Markus Soeder, the premier of Bavaria and leader of the CDU’s sister party, the CSU. By tradition, the two organizations always form one bloc in national politics, with one joint candidate for chancellor. And Soeder might want to be that candidate himself. He’s already made clear that what gets decided on April 25 is only the leadership of the CDU. The choice of joint candidate happens later, in consultation with him.If Merz becomes CDU leader, he would face a tense standoff with his old nemesis, Merkel, which could weaken him enough for Soeder to claim that the CDU-CSU will only prevail in the 2021 election if it fields Soeder for the chancellery. If Laschet gets the party chair, the transition will be smoother. Above all, Laschet — being Laschet — will immediately embrace Soeder (the two have already been in constant talks) to secure his support in the same way he got Spahn’s. Or, as Laschet put it on Tuesday, the CDU and CSU will jointly make the decision, “as for 70 years, in great love and conviviality.”To contact the author of this story: Andreas Kluth at akluth1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: James Boxell at jboxell@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.Andreas Kluth is a member of Bloomberg's editorial board. He was previously editor in chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist. For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

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Six western German states reported a total of 22 new cases of the coronavirus on Thursday, a day after the federal health minister said the country is at the start of an epidemic.

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