Japan's health ministry says it plans to approve antigen tests kits on Wednesday that can quickly screen for the new coronavirus.
The test is similar to those used for the flu, where fluid is swabbed from the back of a patient's nostril and placed onto the kit.
The 2020 Infiniti QX50 is a comfortable five-seat luxury crossover that competes with the Audi Q5, Acura RDX, Volvo XC60, Lexus NX and others. If you're interested in a QX50, it's probably got something to do with its impressive, technologically advanced VC-Turbo variable compression engine.
It also has sumptuous swales of bodywork, a long list of driver-assist and safety features, and a solidly luxurious interior with a two-screen infotainment setup. The window sticker for the QX50 we drove recently in Essential trim says the seats were leatherette; if true, it's the most buttery fake leather out there.
The compact coupe is nearly extinct, and one has to assume that the Honda Civic Coupe is just clawing for its future life somewhere in the depths of product planning. For now though, the 2020 Civic Si Coupe still exists, it's still a barrel of laughs to drive, and after a few choice tweaks for 2020 it even manages to look pretty good.
Now, the interior is starting to show its age a bit as various new compacts have managed to up the wow factor for the segment — Mazda3, Nissan Sentra and 2021 Hyundai Elantra, just to name a few. Of course, none of those is available as a coupe and when putting aesthetic aside, the Civic still impresses with its quality and versatility. Let's take a closer look.
A hospital in the western Japanese city of Kobe has found that about 3 percent of its outpatients carry coronavirus antibodies, indicating they were infected at one point.
A group of doctors, mainly from Kobe City Medical Center General Hospital, collected 1,000 blood samples from patients who visited the hospital for reasons other than coronavirus symptoms between late March and early April.
Nobody is going to buy a 2020 Toyota GR Supra because of its luggage-carrying capacity. However, there is a chance that they may not buy such a car because of its luggage-carrying capacity. For instance, you may actually want to take your fun weekend automotive toy on a fun weekend away, but if it can't fit a simple pair of bags for a pair of passengers, forget about it. It's pretty difficult to tell your significant other that "Sorry, you can't pack that. Won't fit in the R8."
In that light, let's see how Supra would do for such a weekend getaway. It has a hatchback trunk lid, albeit a narrow one, that reveals a shallow, yet long space. At first glance, it seems pretty useful and on paper, Toyota says the space is 10.2 cubic-feet. That's more than double the Mazda MX-5 Miata (stay tuned for that car's luggage test in a few weeks).
Valencia Red Pearl. That's the story with the 2020 Acura TLX PMC Edition. We got to see this limited edition TLX sedan at the New York Auto Show last year, but now it's in my driveway. The show lights don't do this paint justice. The setting sun reflecting off the deep and vibrant red ... now that's how this car is meant to be gazed upon.
Like I mentioned in the video walkaround above, the TLX PMC Edition is hand-assembled at the Performance Manufacturing Center in Ohio. The body-in-white is trundled across town to the NSX supercar factory where those technicians do the rest to make it road-worthy. All 360 of them are being wrapped in their own special car covers and delivered to dealers on an enclosed truck to make sure it arrives without a single exterior flaw.
If there's one thing Honda is exceptionally good at, it's packaging. That includes managing to squeeze as much interior space from an exterior footprint as possible, and then from that, as much interior storage space as possible. Cupholders, bins, cupholders that slide to reveal more bins, under-floor storage ... each Honda has some trick up its sleeve to help you store and stuff more stuff inside.
The 2020 Honda CR-V is one such stuff-stuffing champion. Besides its copious cargo capacity, the CR-V;s front center console is cleverly designed to provide more than just a pair of cupholders and a big covered hole. To test its ability, I grabbed a disparate pair of water bottles that should provide a challenge to cupholders, made off with my wife's purse (she hasn't gone anywhere in days), and of course my iPhone.
The Japan Sumo Association says a stable master and five wrestlers have tested positive for the coronavirus.
Stable master Takadagawa, whose ring name was Akinoshima, underwent a test on Thursday after developing a fever. His test result came back positive on Friday.
Officials in Nagasaki, western Japan, have confirmed nearly 60 more coronavirus infections among the crew of a cruise ship docked at a port in the prefecture.
That brings the total number of cases on the vessel to almost 150.
The 2020 Honda CR-V is an all-star; a thoughtfully designed and well-rounded compact crossover that checks off virtually every box families might have. There are no shortage of reasons why Honda manages to sell so many every year, and it actually gets even better for 2020 with the addition of the CR-V Hybrid.
However, it has one major blemish, something that can make you go "yeah, but ..." It's the touchscreen infotainment system found on all but the base LX trim level. Consumer reviews and reliability ratings have shown in abundance that it is a laggy, glitchy system. As just one example, a friend of my mother's even recently said she loved her CR-V but was reluctant to buy another because of the problems she's had with the touchscreen. During my recent week with a CR-V Hybrid (more reviews coming soon), it became completely unresponsive when using Apple CarPlay. When it was functioning as designed, it was still slow to move between menus, and it just isn't as intuitive as rival systems. It's also pretty antiquated in appearance and measures only 7 inches, versus the more common 8 inches of the Toyota RAV4 and others.
The Japanese government is moving a step closer to the introduction of antibody tests that would identify people who have been infected with the new coronavirus.
Health minister Kato Katsunobu said on Friday his ministry has begun checking the performance of several test kits that could be used to see the existence of coronavirus antibodies in blood samples.
Tokyo's Keio University Hospital says roughly six percent of its non-coronavirus patients have tested positive for the virus.
Hospital officials say 67 patients underwent pre-surgery or pre-hospitalization screening last week. None of them had coronavirus symptoms, but four of them tested positive.
Officials in Nagasaki Prefecture, western Japan, plan to carry out coronavirus tests on all the crew members of a cruise ship docked at the port.
The Italian-registered Costa Atlantica is at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries shipyard for repairs. Of the 623 crew members, 61 who showed symptoms were tested, and 34 were confirmed to have the virus.
Japanese police say 11 people who died over the past month have posthumously tested positive for the coronavirus.
The development is raising concerns the true number of cases could be higher than what is being reported.