Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Thursday, May 6th.

This is your FT News Briefing.

Pharmaceutical stocks were rattled after the US said it would support a plan to suspend

COVID-19 vaccine patents, and Europe's tourism industry is looking for a post-pandemic shift.

Plus, India's coronavirus crisis is adding to the trouble's englobal shipping.

The COVID outbreak in India has been so bad that seafarers who would

due to go on the ships have come down with COVID. Some of them have even got

false negative tests and then gone on board and infected their crew members,

which has caused massive problems for those ship owners.

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

The Biden administration yesterday said it would support a plan from the World Health

Organization to temporarily suspend intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines.

This is to get vaccines out more quickly to countries that need them.

The FT US Trade Correspondent, Amy Williams, says America has been coming under pressure to do

more to help other countries. This is a huge, huge deal. This is something that pharmaceutical

companies have been really lobbying hard against. The wider business community has been lobbying

very hard against it, and so for the Biden administration to come out and annoy

the entire US business community, essentially, is kind of a big deal. The US also is always upheld

intellectual property rights. It says it still is very pro intellectual property rights, but it

recognizes that a global pandemic is a very special scenario. That recognition doesn't come very

often in the statement the USTR Catherine Tide, the US Trade Representative said these are

extraordinary times, so we need to do something extraordinary. Amy, one of the arguments against

...