QUICK HITS

1 Fed to support banks: The Federal Reserve said it would seek to hold down spiking interest rates in the state and municipal bond markets by supporting banks’ purchase of the bonds. The Fed said Friday that it would loan money to banks that could be used to purchase highly rated muni bonds. Yields in the muni bond market have jumped in recent weeks as money market funds and other investors sell those securities to raise cash.

2 Celebrated painter dies: Wolf Kahn, an artist who was evacuated from Nazi Germany as a child and settled in the United States, where he became renowned for his resplendent landscapes depicting beauty and permanence in an often uncertain world, died at his home in New York City. He was 92. The cause was congestive heart failure, said his daughter Melany Kahn.

3 No spelling bee: The Scripps National Spelling Bee won’t be held as scheduled this year because of the coronavirus. The bee had been scheduled for the week of May 24 at its longtime venue, a convention center in Oxon Hill, Maryland, just outside Washington.

Bloomberg donation: Michael 4 Bloomberg is abandoning plans to form a new super PAC for the presidential race and pay his field organizers through November, instead opting to give $18 million to the Democratic National Committee for the party’s battleground states program.

Doctor cleared: China has 5 exonerated Dr. Li Wenliang, who was officially reprimanded for warning about the coronavirus outbreak and later died of the disease, a startling admission of error by the ruling Communist Party, which generally brooks no challenges to its authority.