Wall Street surged on Thursday as investors weighed the prospect of economic recovery against bellicose remarks from President Donald Trump regarding US-China trade and a whistleblower's dire warnings about the US response to the coronavirus pandemic.

While all three major US stock indexes ended the session solidly higher, they see-sawed for much of the day, with reopening state economies and the possibility of additional stimulus doing battle with revived trade war fears and bleak economic data.

Centurion Corp on Thursday posted higher first-quarter revenues on the year for its key student and worker accommodation businesses, but flagged that there have been disruptions due to Covid-19 and that operating costs are set to rise.

Jumbo on Thursday recorded a 71.5 per cent year-on-year fall in half-year net profit to S$2.1 million amid the novel coronavirus outbreak, calling the past few months the "most challenging" since the group was established 33 years ago.

Best World International, which remains under a bourse probe over its sales model in China, on Thursday recorded a 28.6 per cent year-on-year rise in its first-quarter net profit to S$13.3 million.

Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) has launched a call for proposals for short-form video content from all media or production companies.

The chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on Thursday urged US airlines to maintain at least one seat between all passengers and cap seating at 67 per cent of capacity on narrow-body airplanes to address the coronavirus pandemic.

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) trading floor will partially reopen on May 26, over two months after it closed down to control the spread of the coronavirus, NYSE president Stacey Cunningham said in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal.

Asia-focused insurer AIA Group reported a 27 per cent drop in quarterly new business value on Friday for the first time since listing in Hong Kong in 2010, hit by disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic in its main markets.

Source: SGX Masnet, The Business Times, Bloomberg, Channel NewsAsia, Reuters, PSR