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(This May 14 story has been refiled with tweaked wording in paragraph 2 to make clear not all Palestinians marking Nakba were uprooted in 1948)

China is ready to put U.S. companies in an "unreliable entity list," as part of countermeasures against Washington's move to block shipments of semiconductors to Huawei Technologies, the Global Times reported on Friday.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd , the biggest contract chipmaker, said it plans to build a $12 billion factory in Arizona in an apparent win for the Trump administration's efforts to wrestle global tech supply chains back from China.

Chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co's $12 billion investment in the United States will increase U.S. economic independence from China, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement early on Friday.

The U.S. Department of Commerce on Friday announced that it was extending the Temporary General License that allows certain transactions with Huawei Technologies Co Ltd for another 90 days.

The Trump administration on Friday moved to block shipments of semiconductors to Huawei Technologies from global chipmakers, in an action that could ramp up tensions with China.

Foxconn's first-quarter profit plunged to its lowest in two decades, all but wiped out, after the coronavirus pandemic forced the Taiwanese firm to suspend manufacturing operations in China and knocked demand from customers including Apple Inc .

Wuhan, the original epicentre of the new coronavirus outbreak in China, has tested over 3 million residents for the pathogen since April, and will now focus its testing efforts on the rest of its 11 million population, according to state media.

Spain's death toll from coronavirus registered its lowest increase since Monday as health authorities registered 138 new fatalities on Friday, the health ministry reported.

India has lost two weeks in its bid to get a picture of the spread of the coronavirus in its population because of poor Chinese testing kits, a member of a national task force said, complicating a decision on opening up from a lockdown.

Large parts of Japan marked the first day out of a state of emergency on Friday while Tokyo's governor asked residents to prepare for the "new normal" as restrictions stay in place in the capital and major cities.

Japan should boost coronavirus testing and offer more generous cash payouts to households as the epidemic could last for several years, an economist appointed to a government panel on the virus response said on Friday.

Thailand will begin allowing department stores, shopping malls and other businesses to reopen from Sunday as new coronavirus cases dwindle, the government said.

Indonesia reported 490 new coronavirus infections and 33 new deaths, taking the total number of cases to 16,496 and deaths to 1,076, health ministry official Achmad Yurianto said on Friday.

France's Accor , which runs hotels such as Ibis and Movenpick, said on Friday it would offer its clients free access to online medical consultations run by insurer AXA as it prepares for a recovery from the coronavirus crisis.

Japan's Rakuten Inc said on Friday the launch of its 5G services planned for June has been delayed by three months due to disruption caused by the coronavirus outbreak.

The number of novel coronavirus cases in the Philippines' has passed the 12,000 mark, and more than 800 people have now died, the health ministry said on Friday.

Russia on Friday reported 10,598 new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus, pushing its nationwide case tally to 262,843.

The risk of a COVID-19 resurgence in China from so-called imported infections is controllable, an official of the National Health Commission (NHC) said on Friday.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Thursday that Abbott Laboratories’ speedy coronavirus test, which can deliver results within minutes and is used at the White House, could potentially be inaccurate but can still be used to test patients.