As business vaporizes, Europe focuses on avoiding layoffs
(WorldNews Business)

BRUSSELS (AP) - As the new coronavirus spreads across Europe, ravaging economies and killing thousands, governments and the European Union are focusing much of their economic rescue efforts on containing a boom in joblessness, particularly by helping companies not fire workers. By one count, at least one million Europeans lost their jobs over the past two weeks as the continent entered a lockdown, with schools, businesses and social gatherings shut down, effectively freezing large parts of the economy. While the rise in unemployment is devastating and is likely to turn out higher than that, it is still far below that of the U.S., where nearly 10 million people applied for jobless benefits in...