| McConnell puts blame for 2020 coronavirus failure on Barack Obama, in office 2009-2017 Posted: 12 May 2020 07:02 AM PDT  The Senate majority leader criticized the former president on a Trump campaign live stream despite the presence of a "Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents."
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| China cuts Australian beef imports after warning against virus probe Posted: 12 May 2020 02:50 AM PDT  China suspended imports from four major Australian beef suppliers Tuesday, just weeks after Beijing's ambassador warned of a consumer boycott in retaliation for Canberra's push to probe the origins of the coronavirus. Analysts said the move raised concerns of a possible standoff between Australia and its most important trading partner that could spill over into other crucial sectors as it struggles to navigate the disease-induced economic crisis. Federal Trade Minister Simon Birmingham said shipments of meat from four abattoirs had been suspended over "minor technical" breaches related to Chinese health and labelling certificate requirements.
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| Federal judge halts the Justice Department's effort to drop its case against Michael Flynn Posted: 12 May 2020 09:24 PM PDT  Judge Emmet Sullivan said that because of the political nature of the case, he expected third parties to weigh in on the matter in the coming days.
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| First tropical storm of hurricane season may develop near Florida, Bahamas by this weekend Posted: 12 May 2020 12:06 PM PDT  Weeks ahead of schedule, the season's first tropical system could develop near Florida and the Bahamas this weekend, forecasters say.
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| Angela Merkel says Germany has 'hard evidence' Russia hacked her emails Posted: 13 May 2020 04:49 AM PDT  Angela Merkel threatened Russia with consequences yesterday on Wednesday as she accused Vladimir Putin's intelligence services of hacking her emails. "We always reserve the right to take measures, including against Russia," Mrs Merkel told the German parliament. Germany has "hard evidence" Russian intelligence was behind a 2015 hacking attack in which her emails were compromised, she said. It was the first official confirmation of claims that have been extensively reported by the German press in recent days. "I can honestly say that it pains me," Mrs Merkel said, voicing her frustration at what she called Russia's "outrageous" behaviour. "Every day I try to build a better relationship with Russia, and on the other hand there is hard evidence that Russian forces are doing this." The allegations centre on a 2015 hacking attack on the German parliament's internal computer system in which several MPs' email accounts were compromised. It emerged last week in a report in Spiegel magazine that one of Mrs Merkel's email accounts was among those affected.
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| South Dakota tribes defy governor and maintain checkpoints in coronavirus fight Posted: 11 May 2020 03:36 PM PDT  "We have every legal right to do what we're doing," said Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Chairman Harold Frazier. "We're just doing preventative action."
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| India's prime minister announces huge virus relief package Posted: 12 May 2020 08:12 AM PDT  Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced Tuesday that the government will spend more than $260 billion, the equivalent of nearly 10% of the country's GDP, on a coronavirus economic relief package designed to make the world's second most populous nation more self-reliant. "The package's main aim is to build a self-reliant India," Modi said in a televised speech, adding that it will help the country compete globally. India entered its sixth week of a stringent nationwide lockdown on Tuesday, pushing an economy already enfeebled before the pandemic to the brink of collapse.
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| Progressives may block Democrats' coronavirus bill after it leaves out payroll funding for small businesses Posted: 12 May 2020 02:39 PM PDT  House Democrats released a $3 trillion COVID-19 relief bill on Tuesday, which includes a combined $875 billion for state and local governments. But one progressive priority didn't make it into the bill's 1,815 pages, and members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus say they'll disrupt a scheduled Friday vote on the bill to try to make sure it does.Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.), as well as 58 other Democrats, had pushed for the HEROES Act to include what they called a "Paycheck Guarantee" program. It would've extended $600 billion in funding to small businesses over the next six months to help cover their payroll costs. But Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) turned it down, saying it was too expensive. The HEROES Act will extend an already implemented tax credit to businesses, at an additional cost of $200 billion to the government.Jayapal and Pocan responded to Tuesday's HEROES Act rollout by saying Friday was too soon for a vote. "We must have more time to determine what is in and what is not in this legislation," they said in a letter to House Democratic leadership. They'd like the vote to pushed off until next week, after a "full caucus meeting and conversation ... to ensure that it truly reflects the priorities and the work of the entire caucus." > In letter to Pelosi and Hoyer, the heads of the Congressional Progressive Caucus - Jayapal and Pocan - say more time is needed to review the 1,800-page bill and say there should be a meeting when they return to Washington. pic.twitter.com/A9EeAqILJa> > -- Manu Raju (@mkraju) May 12, 2020More stories from theweek.com Coronavirus will win. America needs to make a plan for failure. 1 of these 7 women will likely be Joe Biden's running mate Which countries are the unsung coronavirus stars?
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| Trump calls Ahmaud Arbery killing 'heartbreaking' but cautions about 'empty spot on the tape' Posted: 11 May 2020 03:28 PM PDT  President Trump said Monday that a video showing two white men in Georgia gunning down and killing an African-American jogger is "heartbreaking," though he left open the possibility that "an empty spot on the tape" might reveal more information in the case.
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| CIA Believes China Tried to Prevent WHO from Declaring Coronavirus ‘Global Health Emergency’: Report Posted: 12 May 2020 03:59 PM PDT  The CIA reportedly believes that China attempted to prevent the World Health Organization from declaring a global health emergency during the beginning stages of the coronavirus pandemic in January.In a report titled "U.N.-China: WHO Mindful But Not Beholden to China," the CIA detailed that China threatened to cease cooperating with the WHO's coronavirus investigation if the agency declared a global health emergency, Newsweek reported on Tuesday. The threats came at the same time that China reportedly "intentionally concealed the severity" of the outbreak in order to hoard medical supplies.U.S. officials told Newsweek that they could not say whether Chinese premier Xi Jinping was personally involved in the effort to pressure the WHO. A German intelligence report published by Der Spiegel last week concluded that Xi was indeed involved in the effort.The WHO declared a global health emergency on January 30, about one month after China confirmed the emergence of the then-unidentified pathogen in the city of Wuhan."Let me be clear: This declaration is not a vote of no confidence in China. On the contrary, WHO continues to have confidence in China's capacity to control the outbreak," WHO Director-General Tedros Anhanom told reporters at the time. The coronavirus outbreak has since become a pandemic, causing over 4,000,000 confirmed infections and killing almost 300,000 worldwide as of Tuesday.Accusing the WHO of mishandling the crisis and kowtowing to China, President Trump in April announced he would suspend U.S. funding for the organization."I'm instructing my administration to halt funding of the WHO while a review is conducted to assess the WHO's role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus," Trump said at a White House press conference. "The WHO failed in this basic duty and must be held accountable."
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| New Zealand still supports Taiwan at WHO despite Chinese rebuke Posted: 11 May 2020 08:23 PM PDT  New Zealand's foreign minister on Tuesday said the country has to stand up for itself after China warned its backing of Taiwan's participation at the World Health Organization (WHO) could damage bilateral ties. Taiwan, with the strong support of the United States, has stepped up its lobbying to be allowed to take part as an observer at next week's World Health Assembly (WHA), the WHO's decision-making body - a move which has angered China. Taiwan is excluded from the WHO due to the objections of China, which views the island as one of its provinces.
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| Hong Kong risks new unrest with China anthem bill: opposition Posted: 12 May 2020 03:31 AM PDT  Hong Kong's government risks reigniting last year's political unrest by pushing ahead with a controversial bill outlawing insults to China's national anthem, opposition lawmakers said Tuesday. Pro-democracy lawmakers warned history was repeating itself, noting that the fast-tracking of a bill last year to allow extraditions to the authoritarian mainland was the spark that lit seven straight months of pro-democracy protests. On Tuesday Hong Kong's leader Carrie Lam -- a pro-Beijing appointee -- said the national anthem bill would now be "given priority".
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| The Supreme Court just heard a pair of cases that could decide whether anyone will see Trump’s tax returns Posted: 12 May 2020 02:23 PM PDT  The Supreme Court on Tuesday met by teleconference to hear a pair of cases that will likely determine whether anyone sees Trump's tax returns and related financial records.
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| Afghan attack: Babies killed as gunmen storm Kabul maternity ward Posted: 12 May 2020 04:02 PM PDT  Fourteen people, including two infants, died in the militant attack in the Afghan capital Kabul.
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| Suspect arrested in 30 year old apparent homophobic cold case death of American man in Sydney Posted: 12 May 2020 07:31 AM PDT  An arrest has been made in a cold case killing of a gay man in Australia, more than 30 years after it occurred.American Mathematician Scott Johnson, 27, died in Sydney, Australia, in 1988 after falling off a cliff in what was categorised at the time as a suicide.
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| Serbia protests priests' detention in Montenegro Posted: 13 May 2020 04:25 AM PDT  Serbia on Wednesday strongly protested the detention of eight Serbian Orthodox Church priests in Montenegro after thousands of people attended a religious procession despite a ban on gatherings because of the coronavirus. Montenegrin prosecutors said that the priests are facing charges of violating health regulations during the virus outbreak by organizing the procession on Tuesday in the western town of Niksic. Most people participating in the procession didn't wear face masks or keep a safe distance from each other.
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| China plans to test the entire city of Wuhan in just 10 days after new COVID-19 cases Posted: 12 May 2020 04:08 AM PDT  Wuhan, the Chinese city of 11 million where the COVID-19 pandemic originated, reported six new cases over the weekend, its first new infections in 35 days. None of the new cases were imported, and China plans to get to the bottom of this cluster, announcing a plan to test the entire city in 10 days, CNN reports. Wuhan authorities plan to use nucleic acid tests, which are more effective and complicated to perform than tests that look for a body's immune response.If all 11 million people in Wuhan are tested, that would require producing and processing tests for a population greater than the entire country of Greece — in 10 days. The U.S. has conducted 9.4 million tests during the entire pandemic, the COVID Tracking Project reported Monday.China's official coronavirus figures have always had an asterisk by them, and a large number of positive results from a city-wide testing program would reflect poorly on Wuhan's previously reported data, CNN notes. The head official of Wuhan's Changqing area, where the new cases were found, was already removed from his post for failing to prevent the outbreak, China Daily reported Monday.South Korea and Germany have also reported setbacks in their largely successful efforts to beat back the coronavirus, highlighting the tenacity of the new virus and the risks of relaxing mitigation efforts.More stories from theweek.com 1 of these 7 women will likely be Joe Biden's running mate Coronavirus will win. America needs to make a plan for failure. The dark decade ahead
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| WHO: There's 'potentially positive data' in treating COVID-19 Posted: 12 May 2020 11:46 AM PDT  The World Health Organization said on Tuesday that some treatments appear to be limiting the severity or length of the COVID-19 disease and that it was focusing on learning more about four or five of the most promising ones.
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| Germany's coronavirus reproduction rate dips below critical threshold Posted: 12 May 2020 10:32 AM PDT  The reproduction rate for the coronavirus pandemic in Germany fell below the critical threshold of 1 to an estimated 0.94 on Tuesday after a 1.07 reading on Monday, the Robert Koch Institute for public health and disease control said. "So far, we do not expect a renewed rising trend," the RKI said in its daily report, adding the overall number of cases in Germany was diminishing, meaning local outbreaks had a greater impact on 'R' than with higher case numbers. Confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased over the latest 24-hour period by 933 to 170,508, RKI data showed.
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| House Democrats push new round of stimulus checks in coronavirus bill Posted: 13 May 2020 05:37 AM PDT  The Democratic legislation would provide for another $1,200 per person with income thresholds similar to those in the CARES Act.
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| A train station worker has died after a man who said he had the coronavirus spat at her Posted: 12 May 2020 04:44 AM PDT  Ticket office worker Belly Mujinga died with Covid-19 two weeks after a member of the public who claimed he had the disease approached her and spat at her.
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| Virus-hit Iran reopens mosques for holy Ramadan nights Posted: 13 May 2020 04:44 AM PDT  In spite of their fears over the coronavirus, hundreds of pious Iranians took advantage of the temporary opening of mosques Wednesday to pray at one of the holiest times of year. The mask-clad faithful for the most part adhered to social distancing guidelines as they sat in designated areas of Reihanat al-Hussein mosque, in west Tehran. Worshippers spilled out into grounds outside the mosque were disinfected by a sanitary worker in a hazmat suit who sprayed them as he walked among them.
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| Joe Biden needs his Joe Biden. Here's a look at the women who could be on his vice presidential shortlist Posted: 11 May 2020 12:11 PM PDT  After Sen. Bernie Sanders' exit from the race, the former vice president will soon begin the process of selecting a running mate as the Democratic primary nears its end.
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| Group says Iraqi women fighting to return home face hurdles Posted: 11 May 2020 11:24 AM PDT  Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi women who fled war and conflict are facing systemic inequalities in their fight to return to their homes, a rights report published Monday revealed about Iraq's internally displaced population. The Norwegian Refugee Council's findings show that up to 11% of Iraq's female internally displaced population are facing barriers that include the inability to access property, establish ownership and seek compensation for homes damaged during the war against the Islamic State. Sabaha Ahmad, 73, is one of thousands of internally displaced Iraqi women who say they are facing discriminatory practices as Iraq seeks to recover from years of conflict.
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| Immigrants Are Essential: a vital art project shining a light on the frontline Posted: 13 May 2020 01:15 AM PDT  A new campaign aims to celebrate immigrant workers providing essential services throughout the ongoing pandemicWhooping and clanking has become a familiar evening ritual to New Yorkers, as every night over the past two months the city has been saluting its healthcare workers with applause and saucepans at 7pm.After it's over, most people return to their homes, scroll their phones, watch TV and fall asleep. While it's undeniably well-intentioned, is it enough?To shed light on the essential workers who are healing the sick, stocking our groceries, delivering our packages and cleaning our streets, there is a new political art campaign called Immigrants Are Essential. It's a project of non-profits Resilience Force and the National Immigration Law Center, who are sharing the hashtag ImmigrantsAreEssential alongside artworks that put a face to these workers, across social media."When the pandemic hit, people who were deemed unskilled became essential almost overnight," said Saket Soni, the founder of Resilience Force. "A cultural celebration for them every night is extraordinary, but applause isn't enough. What is the political will of what these workers need?"Their main goal is to shift the conversation from applause to urging politicians to create policy change to protect immigrant workers, who are risking their lives on the frontlines of this pandemic."There is no essential workforce without immigrants," says Marielena Hincapié, the director of NILC."What we're seeing in this public health crisis is how interdependent we are as a society," says Hincapié. "This is a moment where people are truly seeing immigrants and essential workers as human beings, it's about their humanity and dignity."The main problem is how the country has underestimated and taken advantage of immigrant workers. "It's only from the business perspective of, 'How can we get cheap labor?'" she said."Immigrants are a great proportion of healthcare workers, food delivery personnel and farm workers," said Hincapié. "We are arguing that safety, financial support and legal status, are real things that America needs to deliver these essential immigrant workers. This is the time to make the invisible visible. They need to be recognized more."It also taps into President Trump's recent signing of an order that would force meat-processing plants to continue operating during the pandemic. "It forces meatpackers to go to work, undocumented workers," said Soni."In politics, we talk about immigrants as being in the shadows," he said. "It's actually immigrants who are on the frontlines, while elected officials are hiding in the shadows, hiding from the truth, which is that immigrants are essential."If they are keeping America alive, they deserve to be treated as Americans," said Soni.The project, which kicked off on international workers day on 1 May, is slowly adding artists – including immigrant artists – to draw attention to the immigrants on the frontlines of the pandemic.They are working with Soze creative agency, which is helping expand the roster of artists in the coming weeks and months (last year, the agency created a similar campaign called the I Stand With Immigrants Initiative).> View this post on Instagram> > Immigrant workers on the front lines are risking their lives to keep the country running, while their basic humanity is overlooked. It's time to provide paid sick leave, health care, and proper PPE to them. Their work is essential. They are essential. ImmigrantsAreEssential Learn more at immigrantsareessential.org.> > A post shared by Resilience Force (@resilienceforce) on May 1, 2020 at 3:02pm PDTThe artworks range from portraits of nurses to emergency workers, and beyond."We need Congress to catch up with culture," said Hincapié. "Hopefully, through art, we'll reach more Americans to recognize immigrants as essential to our society, and to help change the conversation about immigrants, who are safeguarding our democracy."One of the pieces is a digital drawing by Nikkolas Smith, who has created a portrait of Jesus Contreras, a Daca recipient who lives in Houston working as an emergency medical technician."I believe that anyone who is willing to put their life on the line for American citizens should be recognized as a hero and should never be treated as an alien," said Smith, who is selling prints of the artwork on his website, with a portion of proceeds going to an immigrant rights organization."This piece speaks to his service during these crazy times," he said. "I haven't met him in person, but we've chatted through social media; I went through articles that featured him, and his Instagram, to get an idea of his passion and mission in life."Another artwork in the portrait series shows Jose Aguiluz, a nurse who risks his life every day to help patients suffering from the virus in Maryland."He's risking his life to save ours," said the artist, Tracy Hetzel. "Jose might have a hand in saving your life – he is essential to the health and safety of this country. He's a dreamer, a hero and, in my mind, an angel, and I wanted to portray him as such."
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| Team Trump Pushes CDC to Revise Down Its COVID Death Counts Posted: 13 May 2020 12:53 AM PDT  President Donald Trump and members of his coronavirus task force are pushing officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to change how the agency works with states to count coronavirus-related deaths. And they're pushing for revisions that could lead to far fewer deaths being counted than originally reported, according to five administration officials working on the government's response to the pandemic.Though he has previously publicly attested to the accuracy of the COVID-19 death count, the president in recent weeks has privately raised suspicion about the number of fatalities in the United States, which recently eclipsed 80,000 recorded deaths. In talks with top officials, Trump has suggested that those numbers could have been incorrectly tallied or even inflated by current methodology, two individuals with knowledge of those private comments said. The White House has pressed the CDC, in particular, to work with states to change how they count coronavirus deaths and report them back to the federal government, according to two officials with knowledge of those conversations. And Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the administration's coronavirus task force, has urged CDC officials to exclude from coronavirus death-count reporting some of those individuals who either do not have confirmed lab results and are presumed positive or who have the virus and may not have died as a direct result of it, according to three senior administration officials. Officials inside the CDC, five of whom spoke to The Daily Beast, said they are pushing back against that request, claiming it could falsely skew the mortality rate at a time when state and local governments are already struggling to ensure that every person who dies as a result of the coronavirus is counted. Scientists and doctors working with the task force, including Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, have said the U.S. death-toll count is likely higher than is being reflected in government data sets. And several local officials in hot spot areas said they've seen hundreds if not thousands more deaths over the last two months than in the same time period over the last several years. They presume many of those individuals contracted the coronavirus. "I don't worry about this overreporting issue," Bob Anderson, the chief of the Mortality Statistics Branch in CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, told The Daily Beast. Anderson's team is in charge of aggregating, calculating, and reporting coronavirus deaths for the agency. "We're almost certainly underestimating the number of deaths [in the country]."'Lightning Fast' Coronavirus Test Hyped by Trump Is Actually 'Slow,' Officials SayThe pressure being placed on the CDC is yet another tension point between the agency and the White House that has erupted over its handling of the coronavirus. Those tensions have reached a boiling point over the last several weeks as the CDC has worked to publish its guidelines for states working to reopen their local economies. The guidelines, which provide detailed information about how local officials can begin to allow some residents to attend religious gatherings and summer camps, were contested by White House officials who sought to shelve many of the agency's recommendations. The emerging fight over death counts represents a new front line in these battles—one that's attracted the direct interest of the president himself. Though Trump has quietly suggested that the U.S. is inflating the COVID-19 death tolls, one task-force official told The Daily Beast that any discussion about mortality rate is merely a small part of a broader dialogue about how to improve the quality of data at the local, state, and federal level. That official called the mortality rate a "far-lagging indicator" of the spread of the virus and argued that it was "not a real-time indicator of how the virus is affecting the population." The official said it was the task force's view that the mortality rate doesn't "inform the response efforts as other data could, like hospitalizations" and that the virus moves through populations "like nursing homes and prisons," as well as populations with comorbidities.But according to other knowledgeable sources, there is broader skepticism within the White House over how the CDC is compiling its data. In a task-force meeting last week, officials relayed that Birx said she couldn't trust the CDC's numbers—on both case and death counts—because the reporting system it relied upon was flawed. She argued that the agency was likely overcounting. The Washington Post was the first to report on the meeting. Officials in the CDC said they were confused by the argument. "The system can always get better. But if we've learned anything it's that we're seeing some of these individuals who have died of the virus slip through the cracks," one official told The Daily Beast. "It's not that we're overcounting." But according to one of the sources with knowledge of Trump's private remarks, the president recently said that he'd like a "review" of how the coronavirus deaths are counted and studied by the government, citing hypothetical cases in which a person has the virus but is killed by other unnatural means, such as falling down a flight of stairs. The other source said that Trump pointed out that death estimates for other incidents—such as natural disasters and wars—are revised down or up "all the time," and that the coronavirus pandemic could have similar fluctuations in the numbers published by public and private entities. (This month, Axios was first to report on Trump voicing doubts behind closed doors about current body counts.)Trump Sabotages His Own Coronavirus 'Mission Accomplished' MomentIt's an argument that has gained traction in various pro-Trump circles, as well, and is mirrored by the complaints of some of the president's closest advisers."My view is the president is totally correct that we need to have medical transparency," said Art Laffer, a longtime conservative economist who has counseled Trump and other key administration officials on coronavirus response and how to "open" the economy amid the pandemic. "When you attribute a death to the coronavirus today, what that means is that the guy had the coronavirus and died. It doesn't matter if he got hit by a car and died, and he would still be categorized as a coronavirus death... You need the whole transcribed medical records on a disk so people can sit there, maybe without names, and look for causes and correlations."Anderson said Laffer's assessment was incorrect and that the form used by physicians to report coronavirus deaths specifically asks them to answer: "Did the patient die as a result of this illness?" "It doesn't say 'Did this patient die?'" Anderson said.Anderson's division at the CDC keeps tabs on novel coronavirus deaths through two parallel tracking systems. It relies on the data it receives from local departments of health and through information it gathers from states through a death-certificate digital coding system. Anderson said the death count is normally higher from states' health systems than the death certificate system data. "But those numbers aren't necessarily inconsistent," he said, adding that the death-certificate death count usually lags anywhere from two to eight weeks. Meanwhile, local officials and doctors say any disruption in the way they count coronavirus deaths could lead to a significant undercounting. One study by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene published Monday said that there were thousands of "excess deaths" in the city from March 11 to May 2. About 18,879 of those deaths were explicitly tied to the coronavirus. But the study said there were also an additional 5,200 that were not identified as either laboratory-confirmed or probable COVID-19-associated deaths, but could have been tied to the virus in some other way.The COVID-19 Death Undercount Is Scarier Than You ThinkGretchen Van Wye, the assistant commissioner of the Bureau of Vital Statistics at New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said her team matches individuals coded as having died from the coronavirus with the lab results to get a "confirmed" category of people daily. Then, with individuals that aren't coded, the team uses an algorithm to search for words such as "Covid" or "Covid-19" on their death certificate to create a "probable" category. Unlike other cities across the country, New York City includes this probable count in its reporting. The rest of the results are considered as "other" deaths.In New Jersey, officials told The Daily Beast that they have seen an uptick in the number of patients arriving at the hospital already deceased who were never tested for the virus. Two doctors—one in New York City and one in Jersey City—said that they have not tagged certain individuals as having died as a result of the coronavirus because families requested it be kept off the death certificate so they could more easily collect the remains.Even with the death-certificate coding system, doctors and local officials say they are running into problems where some of their patients are not being counted in the total coronavirus death tally. State officials are required to enter a specific code—a seven-digit number—on a death certificate to identify whether an individual has died as a result of COVID-19, Anderson said. The CDC requires doctors to input "COVID-19" in order for an individual to be counted in the national system as having died as a result of the coronavirus. Several doctors in New York City who spoke with The Daily Beast said in high intensity situations human error could result in a physician not coding a patient correctly. Doctors were coding patients as simply "coronavirus" or some variation of that without indicating that the virus was specific to the 2020 pandemic. In some instances they were forgetting to input "-19" after "COVID"."Now we're having to go back and recode those deaths," Anderson said, adding that there were more than 1,500 individuals who were mistakenly overlooked in the first few weeks the CDC was calculating the coronavirus death count. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Rand Paul: Pandemic Response Marred by ‘Wrong Prediction after Wrong Prediction’ Posted: 12 May 2020 02:19 PM PDT  Senator Rand Paul said Tuesday that the response to the coronavirus pandemic has been hampered by "wrong prediction after wrong prediction" as he advocated for schools to reopen in the fall."The history of this when we look back will be of wrong prediction after wrong prediction after wrong prediction," Paul said during a Senate hearing Tuesday at which Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to the Trump administration's coronavirus task force, testified."I think we ought to have a little bit of humility in our belief that we know what's best for the economy," the Kentucky Republican said. "As much as I respect you, Dr. Fauci, I don't think you're the end all. I don't think you're the one person who gets to make a decision,"Paul said he believes it would be a "huge mistake" not to open schools in the fall and noted that the mortality rate from the coronavirus for children "approaches zero."Keeping children out of school would have a disproportionate effect on "poor and underprivileged kids" who do not have a parent who is able to homeschool them and will end up not learning for a full year, the senator said."In rural states we never really reached any sort of pandemic level," Paul continued. "It's not to say this isn't deadly, but really, outside of New England we've had a relatively benign course for this virus nationwide."Fauci said he agreed with Paul that the coronavirus has not proven as deadly to children as to others, but argued that the virus is still relatively mysterious and noted that some children with the virus developed a "very strange inflammatory syndrome."Paul himself tested positive for the coronavirus in March. As of Tuesday afternoon, the U.S. has seen more than 1.3 million cases of the virus and 80,000 people have died from it.
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| Putin's spokesman becomes fifth senior Russian official to get coronavirus Posted: 12 May 2020 02:10 AM PDT  Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday he had tested positive for the novel coronavirus, as a new surge in infections gave Russia the third highest number of reported cases in the world after the United States. Peskov, the fifth senior official to contract the virus, said he had last met Putin in person more than a month ago, the TASS news agency reported. Putin, who has been working remotely from his residence outside Moscow and holding many meetings via video conference, held a face-to-face meeting earlier on Tuesday with Igor Sechin, the head of oil giant Rosneft.
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| Gunmen storm Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kabul, killing two newborns Posted: 12 May 2020 01:15 PM PDT  Several doctors leapt to an adjacent building after at least three attackers wearing police uniforms entered the hospital, according to officials.
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| Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky predicts a wildly different future of travel and living, and it sounds pretty great Posted: 13 May 2020 05:45 AM PDT  Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, is predicting that more people will choose to live in different places around the world once the pandemic subsides.
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| Coronavirus: China’s new army of tough-talking diplomats Posted: 12 May 2020 04:06 PM PDT  How Beijing is mounting an aggressive campaign to defend its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
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| Lebanon to reinstate total lockdown amid spike in infections Posted: 13 May 2020 04:33 AM PDT  Lebanese rushed to food stores to stock up on vegetables and basic items, hours before the government reinstated a nationwide lockdown Wednesday, following a spike in reported coronavirus cases. The government called on the public to stay home for four days starting Wednesday evening and until dawn on Monday, reversing measures that were gradually implemented since last month that phased out restrictions imposed since mid-March. The new shutdown is a rare reversal and comes as many countries have started easing restrictions despite grave concerns of a setback as they seek to balance economic and health care needs.
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| Man who wore KKK hood as mask won't be charged Posted: 12 May 2020 01:38 PM PDT  The man claimed the hood was not intended to be a racial statement, saying, "It was a mask, and it was stupid."
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| Maddow: Trump Is ‘Visibly Struggling’ and Can’t ‘Keep It Together’ Right Now Posted: 11 May 2020 08:25 PM PDT  MSNBC host Rachel Maddow expressed concern for President Donald Trump's emotional well-being on Monday night, claiming the president was "visibly struggling" and unable to "keep it together" after he stormed out of a press briefing earlier in the day amid tough questioning by female reporters.At the tail end of a Monday afternoon press conference in which the president misleadingly boasted about the nation's coronavirus testing capacity, Trump fumed after Asian-American CBS reporter Weijia Jiang confronted him over his answer to her question about America's rising death toll, wondering aloud why he told her to go "ask China." He then huffed off after CNN's Kaitlan Collins, whom he had just called on, attempted to ask him a question.Maddow, kicking off her primetime broadcast by noting that she typically follows a "general rule" of concentrating on what the administration does and not what the president says due to his propensity for falsehoods, told her audience she was "going to make a little bit of an exception" this time."Because I think this is something we should all see," the progressive anchor declared. "Just because I think it is worth knowing, in all seriousness, that the president, right now, in the midst of this crisis, is visibly struggling."Adding that there is "something wrong or he's just not doing OK," Maddow said that "the president apparently just is not able to keep it together right now in his public appearances" before playing a clip of him leaving the presser."What is wrong with the president today?" Maddow later asked. "We don't know. Something is wrong.""Whether or not you like the president or not, whether you enjoy his public affect or not on a regular basis, it is clear that there is something wrong," she continued, adding: "And that's important whenever the president of the United States is visibly unwound like that."After saying it could possibly just be stress getting to the president, Maddow concluded by pointing out that even though Trump and his administration have been pushing the narrative that the pandemic is in the past, there's now an outbreak of the coronavirus in the White House itself.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| DOT warns airlines – again – to issue refunds for canceled flights after receiving 25,000 complaints Posted: 12 May 2020 11:27 AM PDT  After receiving 25,000 complaints this spring, the Department of Transportation is warning airlines they must issue refunds for canceled flights.
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| Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman tests positive for coronavirus Posted: 12 May 2020 05:39 AM PDT  Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday he had tested positive for the novel coronavirus and was receiving treatment at hospital, Russian news agencies reported. Peskov said he had last met Putin in person over a month ago, the TASS news agency reported. The Kremlin says Putin's health is rigorously protected and that he gets the best medical treatment Russia has to offer.
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| Whitmer 'very disappointed' after Michigan panel delays move to ban guns from Capitol Posted: 11 May 2020 02:12 PM PDT  The state is looking at the issue after armed protesters against the governor's stay-home order entered the building.
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| Russia now has the 2nd most coronavirus cases in the world Posted: 12 May 2020 08:50 AM PDT  Russia now has the second most confirmed coronavirus infections in the world, though its 232,000-plus confirmed cases is still far fewer than the United States.The country's cases continue to rise significantly day-to-day, although the rate is mostly stable. BBC News notes that there have now been 10 consecutive days with new infections above 10,000, most of which are in Moscow, which is home to around 12 million people.Despite the high number of cases, Russia has reported only 2,116 COVID-19 fatalities, giving the country a low death rate. The Kremlin attributes that success to a mass testing program, but many people are skeptical of the figure, believing the true total to be much higher, BBC reports.There are some high profile cases within the government, including President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who is hospitalized with the virus.None of this news has deterred Putin from beginning to ease lockdown measures, however — factory and construction workers were allowed back on the job Tuesday, although the president granted regions the authority to set their own restrictions depending on their status. Read more at BBC News.More stories from theweek.com Coronavirus will win. America needs to make a plan for failure. 1 of these 7 women will likely be Joe Biden's running mate Which countries are the unsung coronavirus stars?
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| Sudan rejects Ethiopia's proposal to fill mega-dam Posted: 12 May 2020 08:37 AM PDT  Sudan on Tuesday rejected an Ethiopian proposal to sign an initial agreement greenlighting the filling of a controversial mega-dam it is building. "I cannot accept the signing of a draft agreement to the first phase (filling the dam) because it poses legal and technical problems that must be addressed," Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok said in a statement. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed had urged him to sign the agreement.
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| Schumer calls Biden denial of Tara Reade assault allegation ‘sufficient’ Posted: 12 May 2020 01:04 PM PDT  The Senate minority leader's comments continue a pattern of top Democrats standing by the former vice president heading into the election.
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| Norway's top military official in Iraq says virus helps IS Posted: 13 May 2020 04:09 AM PDT |
| Man who took video of Ahmaud Arbery's death is a 'pawn in a larger game', attorney says Posted: 12 May 2020 09:25 AM PDT  The man who took the video of the killing of Ahmaud Arbery is a "pawn in a larger game" and the subject of a campaign of misinformation, according to his attorney.Appearing on CNN on Monday night, William Bryan and his attorney Kevin Gough stated that he was just a bystander to the incident, in an attempt to counter accusations that Mr Bryan is complicit in the crime, and involved in a wider conspiracy.
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| The New York Times said a senior reporter 'went too far' after he slammed Trump and said the CDC director should resign Posted: 13 May 2020 02:21 AM PDT  The science reporter Donald G. McNeil Jr. had told CNN the US should stop blaming China for the coronavirus outbreak and start taking responsibility.
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| Ready to fly again? Southwest touting summer fare sale with one-way fares starting at $49 Posted: 12 May 2020 11:15 AM PDT  Southwest Airlines says the month-long summer fare sale is aimed at travelers eager to fly again and "recapture the magic of travel."
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| On tape, Bolsonaro cites protecting his family in push to swap top Rio cop: source Posted: 12 May 2020 12:48 PM PDT  Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said in an April cabinet meeting that he needed to change Rio de Janeiro's chief of the federal police to protect family members under investigation, a person with knowledge of a video of the meeting told Reuters. The video was shown on Tuesday to investigators looking into accusations by former Justice Minister Sergio Moro, who resigned two days after the cabinet meeting, alleging Bolsonaro was trying to interfere in law enforcement for personal motives. The fresh evidence in the federal investigation of the president fanned a political crisis distracting Bolsonaro from a widely criticized response to the coronavirus pandemic, eroding his popularity and rattling financial markets.
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| Turkey says nations forming 'alliance of evil' Posted: 12 May 2020 10:36 AM PDT  Turkey on Tuesday accused Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, France and the United Arab Emirates of seeking to form an "alliance of evil" after these countries issued a joint declaration denouncing Ankara's policies in the eastern Mediterranean and Libya.
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| As COVID-19 looms, conditions for migrants stalled at U.S. border are a 'disaster in the making' Posted: 12 May 2020 02:01 AM PDT  Migrant health care workers operating in the border cities of Juarez, Matamoros and Tijuana say the conditions are right for a coronavirus outbreak.
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