The US agriculture giant Monsanto and the German chemical giant BASF were aware for years that their plan to introduce a new agricultural seed and chemical system would probably lead to damage on many US farms, internal documents seen by the Guardian show.

Risks were downplayed even while they planned how to profit off farmers who would buy Monsanto’s new seeds just to avoid damage, according to documents unearthed during a recent successful $265m lawsuit brought against both firms by a Missouri farmer.

Elsewhere, Democratic front-runner Joe Biden has attacked the president as “reckless and ignorant” for accusing New York medical personnel working in the city’s under-siege hospitals of “misusing” masks in response to a hike in demand for more personal protective equipment.

Gavin Newsom had to take actions into his own hands after the government delivered a batch of botched ventilators to his state’s hospitals over the weekend.

The unnamed woman is the youngest victim in the Galicia area of Spain.

There were conflicting reports about whether she had underlying health conditions, which regional health officials said they were not in a position to clarify.

From there he has made speeches that have been largely overlooked as attention shifted to regular White House press conferences by Mr Trump on the coronavirus, and daily briefings by Andrew Cuomo, the governor of the state of New York, which has been hardest hit by the crisis.

One of the pollsters cautioned that Mr Biden’s lead, nationally, had barely grown since his primary victories. Chris Anderson told Fox News that Americans tended to rally behind their president in times of crisis. “There appears to be a modest rallying-to-the-flag effect in response to the pandemic that is rewriting our political and social landscape in still unknown ways.”

The president said the administration would be extending its original 15-day guidelines for another 30 days.

Trump said last week that he was hoping the whole crisis would have blown over by Easter, which is April 12, but admitted Sunday that that deadline was just an ‘aspiration’ and that Easter could end up being the ‘spike’ in deaths.