Good morning from the Financial Times.

Today is Friday, April 17th,

and this is your FT news briefing.

More than 22 million Americans

have filed for unemployment insurance

since the coronavirus shutdowns began.

But despite Donald Trump's earlier promises to force a quick reopening of the U.S. economy,

the president is softening his stance. Plus why French President Emmanuel Macron thinks the pandemic will transform capitalism

and our Middle East editor, Andrew England, will walk us through the bargains

Gulf Funds are hunting for as asset prices

plunge.

The first, U.S. stock futures were up almost 3% at the time of this recording.

This was after a report suggested a coronavirus drug had shown positive results in clinical trials.

The F.T.'s Hannah Cushler will explain.

I'm Mark Filipino, and here's the news you need to start your day.

So on Thursday there was a report from a well-respected trade publication for the pharmaceutical industry called Stat News that

basically got hold of a leaked video which was of a presentation at the

University of Chicago which is one of the hospitals participating in a trial for Giliads at Remdesivir, which is the drug that everyone hopes may be able to treat the coronavirus.

In this presentation it seemed like the trial was so far going pretty well that there had been rapid recoveries in almost all of a hundred severely ill patients and so even though the trial hasn't reported data yet investors got

excited about the prospect of their being some kind of treatment for the

disease which would obviously help patients but it could also lead to opening up of economies

around the world. So Hannah investors might have gotten excited but what should we

...