BBC在线收听下载:特朗普宣布实施欧洲旅行禁令

Hello, I'm Neil Nunes with the BBC news.

President Trump has banned all travel to the United States from Europe for 30 days to try to stop the spread of the coronavirus. In a televised address from the White House in the past hour, Mr. Trump said the European Union didn't act quickly enough to stop the outbreak by restricting arrivals from China, as the US had.

After consulting with our top government health professionals, I have decided to take several strong but necessary actions to protect the health and wellbeing of all Americans. To keep new cases from entering our shores, we will be suspending all travel from Europe to the United States for the next 30 days. The new rules will go into effect Friday at midnight.

Britain has been exempted from the measure. The president also urged Congress to approve a swathe of measures to shore up the virus-hit economy, including $50 billion of loans for small businesses.

Asian stock markets immediately fell on Mr. Trump's announcement, following a downward trajectory, that seen over 20% wiped off New York's Dow Jones index since February. The Nikkei in Tokyo and the Hang Sang in Hong Kong are both around 3% down.

The Italian government has announced that all shops, restaurants and bars are being closed to try to combat the spread of the virus. Italy reported nearly 200 more deaths from COVID-19 on Wednesday. Here's Mark Lowen.

Italy is racing through the stages of its virus containment plan, only starting to adjust to some measures before new ones are being announced. Among the latest is the closure of all shops, except pharmacies and those stocking food. Companies are being ordered to shut non-essential departments. All restaurants and bars will close, except those offering home delivery. Hairdressers and beauty salons, too will be shot. The latest figures here showed the highest daily rise in deaths anywhere in the world since the virus broke out in China.

Two Americans and a British soldier have been killed in a rocket attack on a military base near the Iraqi capital Baghdad, with many injured at Camp Taji. Mark Lobel has this report.

Around a dozen rockets were fired on the base housing coalition forces at around 7:30 PM local time. Camp Taji not only acted as the headquarters for the battle against the Islamic State group, but is where Iraqi forces are trained. As well as the three people killed, around a dozen coalition personnel are reported to have been injured. The attacks bear the hallmarks of pro-Iranian fighters and the fear is that this latest strike will fuel a recent upsurge in skirmishes between the Americans and Iranian-backed forces that have plagued Iraq for many months now.

World news from the BBC.