Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Thursday, April 2nd. And this is your F.T. news briefing.

Global Equity Markets sold off on Wednesday as New York State became the new global epicenter of the coronavirus.

The state's death toll is rising faster than any other subnational region at this stage of

its outbreak.

Meanwhile, as bills, including rent are due, debt market signaled new concern

about the creditworthiness of corporate borrowers. I'll talk to the F.T.'s George Hammond

about the tug of war between tenants and commercial landlords.

Plus we'll look at France's proposed EU coronavirus rescue fund,

how Softbank is backing out of a crucial deal with We Work and the alleged conditions at an Amazon call center in the Philippines.

I'm Mark Filipino and here's the news you need to start your day. France is pushing for an EU fund to help Europe through the coronavirus crisis.

It's hoping to head off German and Dutch objections to the creation of common debt

obligations by proposing that the fund has a time limit of five to ten years and is focused on economic

recovery.

Finance Minister Bruno Lamer spoke to our Paris Bureau Chief

Victor Mallet about the proposal. This is one of many proposals that are floating around

at the moment and this would be in addition to all the other EU and Eurozone

measures that are being taken or have been taken to deal with the economic fallout of the

coronavirus crisis. What French finance minister Bruno Lamere is proposing is some kind of

common EU funds that could get into debt, be time limited, you know five or ten years

and focused really on economic recovery and reconstruction.

The reason he's defined it in that relatively narrow way is because for a long time now

the Germans and the Dutch and some others have objected to the idea of common debt obligations

...