| Trump considers travel restrictions to California and Washington in attempt to stop coronavirus spread Posted: 12 Mar 2020 01:46 PM PDT  President Trump said Thursday that travel restrictions to California and Washington, two states hit hard by the coronavirus outbreak, were possible "if an area gets too hot."
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| CDC tested only 77 people this week; coronavirus testing slow around the nation Posted: 12 Mar 2020 08:36 AM PDT  Coronavirus testing in the United States appears to be proceeding with a marked lack of urgency. An examination of state and federal records by Yahoo News finds that American states are, on average, testing fewer than 100 people per day — while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had tested fewer than 100 people total in the first two days of this week.
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| Burial pits from Iran's coronavirus outbreak have grown so large you can see them from space Posted: 13 Mar 2020 10:54 AM PDT  Along with China and Italy, Iran has been hit especially hard by coronavirus. Burial pits have grown so fast in Qom, Iran, they're visible from space,
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| Biden reveals coronavirus plan, calls Trump's handling a 'colossal' failure Posted: 12 Mar 2020 12:13 PM PDT  Former Vice President Joe Biden announced his campaign's plan to combat the coronavirus while slamming the Trump administration's handling of the spread of the outbreak during a speech Thursday afternoon.
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| Coronavirus: British Airways boss tells staff jobs will go Posted: 13 Mar 2020 01:25 PM PDT  Airline boss spells out the crisis caused by coronavirus in a memo to staff titled "The Survival of BA".
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| Ethiopia will not be pressured on Nile River dam, foreign minister says Posted: 13 Mar 2020 08:22 AM PDT  Ethiopia will not be pressured by the United States to sign any deal with the Sudan or Egypt over a dam on the Nile River, says Ethiopia's foreign minister.
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| 22 Beautifully Designed Tea Shops From Around the World Posted: 13 Mar 2020 01:00 PM PDT |
| 'The virus is already here': Trump accused of xenophobia and shifting blame in historic coronavirus address Posted: 11 Mar 2020 08:19 PM PDT  Donald Trump has drawn fire for his reference to the coronavirus as a "foreign virus" and for focusing on a ban on European travel despite repeated warnings from health officials that the Covid-19 outbreak's inevitable surge throughout the US is coming through community spread that's already in the country.In his address to the nation on Wednesday, the president asserted that "the virus will not have a chance against us" as he blamed Europe for failing to contain the outbreak and said the administration's ban on China travel was effective in limiting its spread.
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| A JetBlue ad joked about $39 flights for 'remote work or study' as news broke that one of its passengers tested positive for coronavirus Posted: 12 Mar 2020 08:32 AM PDT  "As if you needed another excuse to work or study remotely," JetBlue wrote in its email announcing the extended sale on flights.
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| Revolutionary Guards to enforce coronavirus controls in Iran Posted: 13 Mar 2020 09:30 AM PDT  Streets, shops and public spaces to be cleared in next 24 hours after virus kills hundreds * Coronavirus latest – live updatesIran's Revolutionary Guards are to clear streets, shops and public places in the country within the next 24 hours, in a dramatic escalation of efforts to combat the spread of coronavirus.The near-curfew follows growing exasperation among MPs that calls for Iranian citizens to stay at home had been widely ignored, as people continued to travel before the Nowruz new year holidays. Shops and offices have largely remained open.Controversy over the health ministry's authority within government and the haphazard way in which Iran's provinces were implementing its advice has led to the change in tactics, and a clearer role for the army. The failure to impose a quarantine around the spiritual city of Qom, seen as the centre of the outbreak, has caused anger on social media.There have also been complaints that the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, has not been taking a sufficiently hands-on role in the crisis.Official figures, disputed by foreign media and opponents of the regime, show the numbers of dead in Iran have climbed to 514 and the numbers infected to 11,634. Hospitals in some provinces have been overwhelmed by the demand for treatment.Satellite images released this week showed what appeared to be mass graves in Qom, suggesting Iran's coronavirus epidemic is more serious than authorities are admitting.The pictures show the excavation of a new section in a cemetery on the northern fringe of the city in late February, and two long trenches dug by the end of the month.The new steps, reflecting a transfer of power from political to military rulers, and ordered by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was announced by the armed forces commander-in-chief, Mohammad Baqeri. He said the intervention would start in the next 24 hours and last as long as a week. The volunteer Basij force will be involved in the programme, which will include phone calls, internet contact and house-to-house visits.Baqeri said the army would be working alongside the health ministry, and not supplanting it, but pictures show the army meeting at a separate headquarters to discuss the new action plan. He urged people "to follow the recommendations and requests of the ministry of health and so help break this chain of transmission", adding: "If the chain continues, disease control [measures] will be prolonged."As many as 1,000 fixed and mobile detection clinics were being set up as part of the plan. He said the army would step in alongside nurses to set up a corps of staff, including volunteers that could work alongside exhausted medical workers. Army factories were producing face masks and gloves, and 6,000 army hospital beds were being made available, he said. The health ministry said it was setting up a national coronavirus mobilisation programme to increase early detection and had already piloted implementation of it in five provinces.A spokesman claimed the pilot scheme had already reduced the scale of infections in Qom and Guilan provinces so that the total number of new cases for the first time was exceeded by the numbers recovering.The aim was to identify patients at the first stage of the disease and prevent them from circulating in the community, as well as those associated with them, so cutting the transmission chain.Despite Iran's reputation as an authoritarian state in which human rights are ignored, the opening fortnight of its fight against coronavirus has been marked by citizens demanding the state take more draconian and consistent steps to bring the disease under control. An earlier proposal for a house-to-house detection system was criticised on the grounds that it might lead to the spread rather than the containment of the disease.The crackdown came as the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, sparred with Khamenei on Twitter over claims the US had launched a biological war on Iran. Pompeo tweeted: "As Khamenei knows, the best biological defense is to tell the truth to the Iranian people about how the virus came from Wuhan, China. He [Khamenei] allowed Mahan Air's flights to and from China, the centre of the epidemic, to continue, and imprisoned those who talked about it."Khamenei had tweeted the day before: "Evidence suggests this could be a biological attack. So the fight against the coronavirus can be left to the armed forces, and it can also be a biological defense combat exercise and increase our national authority and capability."Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, Abbas Mousavi, joined in the row, saying: "Instead of hypocritical compassion and disgusting boasting, stop economic and medical terrorism so that medicine and medical equipment reach the medical staff and people of Iran.""By the way, pay attention to the American people too!" the spokesman advised US officials.Iran has asked the International Monetary Fund for $5bn in aid to help combat the crisis but may well find the request is blocked by the US. Any hopes the crisis would lead to a temporary truce between Tehran and Washington appear to have been dashed by an Iraqi militia attack on a US army base in Iraq.
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| Cory Booker Could Have Been the Nominee Posted: 12 Mar 2020 08:50 AM PDT  With decisive victories in Michigan and Missouri on Tuesday, Joe Biden widened his lead over Bernie Sanders in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. With looming primary contests in Biden-friendly, delegate-rich Florida, Ohio, and Illinois, Sanders could be forced to concede sooner than he'd like.A number of factors have aided Biden's ascent. The dearth of debates before the Super Tuesday primaries helped to shield him from voters. Moderate Democrats and the party establishment coalesced around him after South Carolina, fearful of losing the House with a Sanders-led ticket. And as the race narrowed, Sanders struggled to win votes outside his base of young progressive supporters.One move that almost certainly had no bearing on Biden's step to the cusp of the nomination Tuesday? New Jersey senator Cory Booker's endorsement, which he offered Monday over Twitter.In one sense, the contrast between Booker and Biden could not be clearer. Booker, for all of his insipid theatrics as a senator — from the "I am Spartacus" gambit to the "tears of rage" performance — is a young, capable politician in control of his faculties. He is also a black man in a party eager to project diversity. Biden, by contrast, is an old white man who can hardly finish a paragraph without slurring his speech or succumbing to some cringe-inducing gaffe that betrays his cognitive decline.In another sense, though, both Booker and Biden are ostensible "moderates" at a moment in which — if recent electoral results are to be believed — a significant faction of Democratic voters are hankering for a centrist figurehead.Why did Booker fail where Biden succeeded? The Occam's-razor explanation is probably the right one: Biden was Barack Obama's vice president, while Booker has been an unremarkable senator with few legislative achievements.But even with his inherent advantages, the former vice president's vulnerabilities would be insurmountable in a normal primary cycle. His mental lapses — mistakenly declaring his candidacy for the Senate, calling the most popular rifle in America the "AR-14," failing to remember the preamble to the Declaration of Independence — are less anomalous mistakes than a window into a receding mind, one that is poorly equipped to lead the free world, the current president's relative fitness (or lack thereof) notwithstanding.If Biden was eminently beatable, could Booker have beaten him? On paper, the New Jersey senator figured to be well primed to challenge Biden for the "moderate" vote. His heterodox views on school choice and relatively pro-business Senate record could have enamored him to centrist Democrats, who were resigned to a choice between an enfeebled septuagenarian, a small-time mayor, and a lamp-throwing senator with narrow appeal. But Booker, no doubt wary of being attacked as a moderate, Wall Street–friendly candidate in a field whose progressive wing included class warriors such as Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, chose to tack left, taking positions that made him appear unelectable to lunch-bucket Democrats more interested in lowering health-care costs than in upending the patriarchy.Last year Booker wrote "An Open Letter to Men on Abortion" for GQ, exhorting men "to acknowledge that they benefit from abortion rights and reproductive health care" and waxing poetic about his efforts "to be the best ally and partner I can be" in the fight for legal abortion. Normal people — whose votes Booker, even in a Democratic primary, would presumably need — do not use the word "ally" that way. They almost certainly never make consecutive use of the words "reproductive health care" in casual conversation. That language appeals to Wesleyan professors and wine-track moms in the suburbs, sure. But Elizabeth Warren already had a stranglehold on such voters, who in any event, are not the ones fueling Biden's rise. Meanwhile, the voters who did eventually flock to Biden were likely also put off by Booker's proposal to decriminalize unauthorized border crossings into the United States, an idea that polls terribly across almost every demographic in America, including self-described moderate Democrats.In short, Booker ran as a progressive and willingly forfeited the moderate voters he needed to win the nomination. The shame for Democrats it that unlike Biden, he is lucid and presentable. Had he focused his campaign on winning over Biden voters — "O'Biden-Bama" Democrats, as the former vice president has called them — he could well have been standing in the position of the doddering old warhorse he just endorsed.
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| How Deadly Is Coronavirus? What We Know and What We Don't Posted: 12 Mar 2020 05:08 AM PDT  When the head of the World Health Organization said this week that the new coronavirus' death rate was an estimated 3.4%, the figure seemed to shock both experts and President Donald Trump."I think the 3.4% number is really a false number," Trump said in a Fox News interview. "Now, this is just my hunch, but based on a lot of conversations," he added, "I'd say the number is way under 1%."By definition, the case fatality rate is the number of deaths divided by the total number of confirmed cases, which appears to be what the WHO did to arrive at its rate.Is 3.4% a misleading number? We spoke to a number of experts in epidemiology, and they all agreed that 1% was probably more realistic (the WHO has also said the number would probably fall). But they also said evidence about the spread and severity of the disease was still too new and spotty to know for sure.The fatality rate is a key figure that public health officials use to respond to disease outbreaks. The more deadly a disease, the more aggressive they're willing to be in disrupting normal life. But current data allows scientists to measure only a crude statistic called the case fatality rate, which is based on reported cases of an illness."It's essential for understanding how big our response should be," said Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard. "All responses have costs. If we think the risk is higher, then we should be willing to tolerate bigger costs, more inconvenience and the mental health loss from social distancing."There are several reasons we still don't know the right number. Insufficient testing, for example, may be making the fatality rate look larger than it actually is -- but deaths where a coronavirus infection was never diagnosed could make it look smaller. These are the key biases that epidemiologists and public health officials think about when looking at the case fatality estimates so far, and how they might change in coming weeks and months.-- Not enough people have been testedThe fewer people you test for a disease, the fewer infections you are going to measure. In the United States, until last week, the only people being tested for the disease were those who had traveled to China or were known to have had contact with other ill people. Those strict standards were driven in part by a shortage of reliable tests. But we now know that there were many infected people in the country who weren't being counted.Think about that problem on a much larger scale. If there were a magical way to test everyone in the world for the disease, we would know exactly how many people have the infection. Discovering every case would tend to drive down the fatality rate, since the number of deaths would be divided over a much larger number of living infected people. There is increasing evidence that some people infected with coronavirus have few or no symptoms. Those people are the least likely to seek or receive tests.-- Limited testing in many countries means that the reported death rates probably skew high."Since most cases are mild, and testing has not been universal, almost by definition we are failing to detect and therefore count all of the cases," said Mark Lurie, an associate professor of epidemiology at Brown University.Over the long term, epidemiologists often do a kind of blood testing of large numbers of people in a given community. By testing their immune systems, they can measure how many people have been exposed to a disease. That type of research is often the gold standard for getting a real infection rate and a better fatality rate, called the infection fatality rate. The infection fatality rate for the flu, for example, is about one tenth to two tenths of 1% -- far lower than any of the estimates for the coronavirus. But that measurement technique is most useful after a disease has already spread widely, so it can't be easily used now.-- The number of deaths could be wrongCompared with infections, deaths are relatively easy to count, especially now that we know that this disease exists and what its symptoms look like. But public health experts say we still may not have a complete count of all coronavirus deaths. In some countries, frail people have died of pneumonia and weren't tested, including an elderly Spanish patient who was tested for the coronavirus only after his death. If sick people are dying without going to a hospital, they could be missed.But the biggest challenge for measuring deaths right now is that people can be infected with coronavirus for a long time before becoming sick enough to be at risk of death. Currently, we are counting everyone who tests positive for the virus as infected and alive. But, in the future, some of those people will die of COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.Justin Lessler, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins, was part of a team of scientists who studied a group of COVID-19 cases in Shenzhen, China. He found that most people who died had been sick for longer than 30 days. "Think of when all the cases outside of Hubei have occurred," he said of the province whose capital is Wuhan. "If it's 30 days or even two weeks, we're really at the tip of the iceberg."Generally, epidemiologists like to measure the fatality rate for a disease over a set period. They look at everyone who gets sick and see how many are still alive over weeks, months or years, depending on the disease. So far, scientists have been unable to do those kinds of studies for the novel coronavirus.Conditions in countries varyRight now, the global estimates are combining deaths and cases from countries around the world with very different populations and different health systems. But experts say differences between populations in each country and in the nations' health systems may make death rates higher in some places than in others.The risk factors for death or severe illness from coronavirus are still being studied, but there is strong evidence that older people are at a higher risk of dying. There are very few documented cases of children who have developed serious illness. A disproportionate number of deaths have been among patients older than 65. The share of people over 65 in China is 11%, and in Italy it's 23%.In the United States, it's 16%. Countries like Italy, with more older people, may end up with a higher rate of death.Smoking may also play a role, evidence suggests, and the smoking rates in different countries vary considerably. Smoking among men in China is common. In the United States, smoking rates are substantially lower. Other health problems, like diabetes, cardiovascular disease and lung ailments like asthma, may also predispose people to a greater chance of severe illness, though the effects are still being studied.The sophistication and capacity of the health care system most likely matters a lot, too. Patients with severe COVID-19 often need complex care for pneumonia and respiratory failure, sometimes including mechanical ventilation. The quality of that care will probably depend on the availability of ventilators and trained staff to monitor them."When facilities got overwhelmed, there were more deaths," said Dr. Thomas Frieden of the experience in China. Frieden, who was the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the Obama administration, said that when he was in government, he worked to expand the country's strategic reserve of ventilator machines. Whether there will ultimately be enough hospital capacity for everyone with serious illness in the United States depends on how quickly and broadly the virus spreads.Researchers are racing to develop treatments for the disease, as well as a vaccine. Once there are better ways to help people who are infected, the fatality rate may go down for everyone.Eventually, scientists should be able to offer still more granular estimates of risk. This would allow people of different ages and health histories, in different countries, to estimate their risk of serious illness or death."When I looked at the 3.4% number and where they got it, I thought this is both wrong and irrelevant," said Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. "It's not relevant to nearly any single person. This is a worldwide average."As Jha noted, most people want to know their personal risk, not the risk for the average person worldwide. Developing estimates with that level of nuance will take even longer than building a more reliable infection fatality rate.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| Some Rome churches reopen after angry pope steps in Posted: 13 Mar 2020 04:42 PM PDT  Some of Rome's Catholic churches reopened Friday after Pope Francis voiced displeasure with the Italian authorities' push to shut them because of the coronavirus pandemic. The rare standoff between the 83-year-old pontiff and Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte's government came as Italy's death toll reached 1,266. Conte has responded by shuttering most shops and all restaurants and other public places in the hope of stemming contagion and easing the burden on overstretched hospitals.
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| Mexico frets about U.S. coronavirus spread, could restrict border Posted: 13 Mar 2020 08:04 AM PDT  Mexico could consider measures at its northern border to slow the spread of the coronavirus into its relatively unaffected territory, health officials said on Friday, with an eye to containing a U.S. outbreak that has infected more than 1,800 people. Mexico so far has confirmed 16 cases of the coronavirus, with no deaths. In the United States, 41 people have died.
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| Chinese official suggests U.S. Army to blame for outbreak Posted: 13 Mar 2020 08:50 AM PDT  "It might be U.S. army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan," tweeted Zhao Lijian. "Be transparent! Make public your data! U.S. owe us an explanation!"
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| Police: Gov. candidate in room where crystal meth was found Posted: 13 Mar 2020 10:10 AM PDT  Former Florida Democratic candidate for governor Andrew Gillum is named in a police report Friday saying he was "inebriated" and initially unresponsive in a hotel room where authorities found baggies of suspected crystal methamphetamine. The Miami Beach police report says Gillum was allowed to leave the hotel for home after he was checked out medically. Gillum, 40, said in a statement that he was in Miami Beach for a wedding and did not use illegal drugs.
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| Trump Says He’s Open to Travel Limits for U.S. Virus Hot Spots Posted: 12 Mar 2020 10:09 AM PDT |
| Why a media mogul was arrested in Pakistan Posted: 13 Mar 2020 08:46 AM PDT  The detention of Jang group's editor-in-chief by an anti-corruption agency prompts deep concern.
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| Conspiracy Theorist Alex Jones Must Stop Hawking Phony Coronavirus Treatments, NY Attorney General Demands Posted: 13 Mar 2020 05:22 AM PDT  Jones claims toothpaste, dietary supplements and other products sold on his website can prevent and cure COVID-19
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| Johns Hopkins develops its own coronavirus test Posted: 13 Mar 2020 05:57 AM PDT  The famous Baltimore hospital is one of several private institutions going that route in an effort to fill the current testing void in the U.S.
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| Project Python: More than 600 suspected Mexican drug cartel members arrested in US Posted: 12 Mar 2020 10:32 AM PDT  The Department of Justice (DOJ) and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) have made more than 600 arrests as part of 'Project Python', an interagency operation targeting Mexican drug cartel activity.The DEA-led initiative focused on members of Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG), one of the most dangerous drug cartels in the world, who were monitored by federal law enforcement officials over a six month period.
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| Saudi Arabia floods markets with $25 oil as Russia fight escalates Posted: 13 Mar 2020 06:48 AM PDT  Saudi Arabia is flooding markets with oil at prices as low as $25 per barrel, specifically targeting big refiners of Russian oil in Europe and Asia, in an escalation of its fight with Moscow for market share, five trading sources said on Friday. The sources, from oil majors and refiners which process crude in Europe, said Saudi state oil company Aramco told them it would supply all requested additional volumes in April. Sources previously told Reuters Saudi Arabia is also seeking to replace Russian oil with Chinese and Indian buyers, although not all refiners received volumes they had asked for.
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| 'This is unacceptable': New York City mayor denounces coronavirus discrimination Posted: 12 Mar 2020 01:01 PM PDT  "Right now, we've seen particularly troubling instances of discrimination directed at Asian communities, particularly in Chinese community," de Blasio said.
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| Ethiopia, Kenya confirm first virus cases in East Africa Posted: 13 Mar 2020 06:24 AM PDT  Kenya and Ethiopia on Friday announced their first confirmed cases of coronavirus, as East Africa, which has so far been unscathed by the global pandemic, scaled up emergency measures to contain its spread. In Kenya, a 27-year-old Kenyan woman tested positive for the virus on Thursday in Nairobi, a week after returning from the United States via London. The government had traced all the contacts of the patient since she arrived back in Kenya on March 5, he said.
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| Germany has offered companies 'unlimited' loans to stop them from collapsing because of the coronavirus pandemic Posted: 13 Mar 2020 06:46 AM PDT  "There is no upper limit on the amount of loans that [we] can issue," German finance minister Olaf Scholz said.
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| Pregnant 19-year-old, child die trying to climb U.S. border wall Posted: 12 Mar 2020 12:48 PM PDT  A 19-year-old pregnant woman from Guatemala died this week from injuries suffered when she fell trying to climb the U.S. border wall near El Paso, Texas, U.S. and Guatemalan authorities said Thursday.
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| Fauci Concedes Shortage of U.S. Coronavirus Tests Is ‘A Failing’ Posted: 12 Mar 2020 09:52 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- The lack of widespread testing for the coronavirus is "a failing" of the U.S. public health system, the government's top infectious disease scientists told lawmakers, even as the nation's surgeon general said separately that not everyone needs to get tested."The system is not really geared to what we need right now -- what you're asking for -- that is a failing," said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "It is a failing. Let's admit it."Fauci said the U.S. system isn't set up to facilitate rapid distribution of testing for a disease that hasn't been previously encountered. He spoke as lawmakers expressed frustration that the U.S. wasn't able to match the response of nations such as South Korea, which is testing 10,000 a day."The idea of anyone getting it easily, the way people in other countries are doing it, we're not set up for that," Fauci told the House Oversight and Reform Committee. "Do I think we should be? Yes. But we're not."Fauci did deliver some good news: he said the first human test of a novel coronavirus vaccine could begin in a few weeks, faster than expected, though he added it still would be a year or 18 months before it's available to the public.Separately, Surgeon General Jerome Adams said limited testing resources meant people who weren't feeling well needed to talk with their doctors about whether they were at such a high risk and needed to be tested."Not everyone should be getting tested right now," Adams said at a news conference in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.The nation has reached "an inflection point" and is "shifting from a containment posture to a mitigation posture," he said.Before Fauci testified, he privately briefed members of Congress. Republicans and Democrats emerged from those sessions saying they are frustrated by the limitations and lack of details on when more testing will be available.Deep FrustrationSenator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, said there was deep frustration from senators in the meeting about the lack of better answers about the availability of test kits."I'm appalled and stunned by the lack of planning and strategy, particularly no timetable for the availability of testing at the scale it has to be done," Blumenthal said. "We lost two months because of the failure of this administration to face the truth."Representative Jim Himes, a Connecticut Democrat, said the officials told lawmakers the U.S. can now test 16,000 people a day, although he noted that South Korea, a smaller nation, handles 10,000 a day."So that makes you nervous that people who should get tested won't be able to," Himes said Thursday after the closed-door briefing.Several lawmakers said the officials told them the health-care system isn't set up to handle testing on the scale of South Korea."It's not just developing tests. It's a matter of if we have enough cotton swabs in our stockpiles to do them," Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, said.The Trump administration is briefing Congress on steps to combat the coronavirus, which has killed more than three dozen in the U.S. as confirmed cases top 1,200. Stumbles over testing for infections has been a focus for lawmakers on Capitol Hill as well as state and local officials.'Coated With Confusion'Representative Anna Eshoo, a California Democrat, came out of the meeting saying the briefing "was coated with confusion."Senator Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican, said the administration's explanation for testing flaws was "not satisfactory" and the officials blamed the private sector for not delivering on the tests."Our testing process has been lacking," Romney said. "Our system has just not been up to snuff and I think a lot of people are frustrated by it and I'm one of them."Himes said the officials also were unable to answer on what he said is the critical question he and other lawmakers get asked every day."Which is, am I going to be able to get tested?" he said of constituent concerns. "So, I don't think we have confidence in an answer there."A spokesman for Representative Don Beyer, a Virginia Democrat, said the lawmaker, who is self-quarantining after coming into contact with an infected person, was unable to get tested because there weren't enough kits.\--With assistance from Steven T. Dennis and Billy House.To contact the reporters on this story: Daniel Flatley in Washington at dflatley1@bloomberg.net;Erik Wasson in Washington at ewasson@bloomberg.net;Laura Litvan in Washington at llitvan@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Steve GeimannFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Trump reportedly rejected aggressive coronavirus testing in hopes it would help his re-election Posted: 13 Mar 2020 05:18 AM PDT  The U.S. government's response to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak has been "much, much worse than almost any other country that's been affected," Ashish Jha, who runs the Harvard Global Health Institute, told NPR on Thursday. "I still don't understand why we don't have extensive testing. Vietnam! Vietnam has tested more people than America has." Without testing, he added, "you have no idea how extensive the infection is," and "we have to shut schools, events, and everything down, because that's the only tool available to us until we get testing back up. It's been stunning to me how bad the federal response has been."There are a lot of reasons why the U.S. lags other countries in testing for the new coronavirus -- defective early tests by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the decision not to adopt an effective German test adopted by the World Health Organization -- but Politico's Dan Diamond told Fresh Air's Terry Gross on Thursday that politics also seems to have played a role, along with mismanagement and infighting between, for example, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Seema Verma, the Medicare chief.In January, Azar "did push past resistance from the president's political aides to warn the president the new coronavirus could be a major problem," Diamond said, but he "has not always given the president the worst-case scenario of what could happen. My understanding is [Trump] did not push to do aggressive additional testing in recent weeks, and that's partly because more testing might have led to more cases being discovered of coronavirus outbreak, and the president had made clear -- the lower the numbers on coronavirus, the better for the president, the better for his potential re-election this fall."CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta discussed America's "sad" testing failure, the "provincial" decision not to use the WHO test, and other missteps and positive moves with Stephen Colbert on Thursday's Late Show. You can watch that below. More stories from theweek.com Trump just gave the worst speech of his presidency Why Trump fears Biden Trump says he doesn't 'take responsibility at all' for lack of coronavirus testing
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| Delta, American, United in White House talks to receive government support Posted: 13 Mar 2020 09:30 AM PDT  WASHINGTON/CHICAGO (Reuters) - Delta Air Lines , American Air Lines and United Airlines , the three largest U.S. airlines, are in talks with the U.S. government about potential assistance amid a dramatic drop-off in air travel demand due to the coronavirus outbreak, the carriers said on Friday. United CEO Oscar Munoz has spent two days in Washington this week meeting with lawmakers and senior officials in the Trump administration, while United President Scott Kirby has been in close touch with bank executives to assess the deepening impact of the crisis on the broader economy, the two told employees in a memo on Thursday. "We will be helping the airline industry if we have to," U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday.
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| Prosecutor Kim Foxx touts record as Smollett case engulfs Illinois primary Posted: 13 Mar 2020 05:22 AM PDT  Foxx seeks a second term as three Democratic primary challengers seize on the Smollett case and a fractured relationship with police.
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| China, US spar over origin of coronavirus Posted: 13 Mar 2020 01:52 AM PDT  A Chinese government campaign to cast doubt on the origin of the coronavirus pandemic is fuelling a row with the United States, with a Beijing official promoting conspiracy theories and Washington calling it the "Wuhan virus". The spat comes as China tries to deflect blame for the contagion and reframe itself as a country that took decisive steps to buy the world time by placing huge swathes of its population under quarantine. With cases falling in China and soaring abroad, Beijing is now rejecting the widely held assessment that the city of Wuhan is the birthplace of the outbreak.
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| Senate Republicans were for Biden's anti-corruption efforts before they were against them Posted: 12 Mar 2020 12:15 AM PDT  They're using their oversight authority to smear Biden's name in the hopes of delivering Donald Trump a second term.
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| Japan unveils its hypersonic weapons plans Posted: 13 Mar 2020 09:06 AM PDT  The government also provided more details regarding warhead payloads, with different warheads planned for both seaborne and land targets.
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| Terrifying security camera footage shows Tennessee tornado's rampage through Nashville Posted: 13 Mar 2020 08:17 AM PDT  A dramatic video captured by an MNPD camera shows a tornado ripping through a Germantown intersection in Nashville.
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| Multiple experts say up to 70% of Americans could be infected with the coronavirus and 1 million could die if no treatment is found — so people over 60 should 'stay home unless it's critical' Posted: 13 Mar 2020 01:18 PM PDT  In a panel, experts at UC San Francisco urged everyone over age 60 to stay home and not fly. They predict up to 70% of Americans will get infected.
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| Italian businesses count heavy cost of coronavirus lockdown Posted: 12 Mar 2020 03:02 AM PDT  MILAN/ROME (Reuters) - Even if Italy's draconian measures to stop the spread of coronavirus prove successful, they will leave an economy in tatters, with small and medium-sized businesses the hardest hit. Responding to the spread of the disease in Europe's worst affected country, the government has banned all non-essential travel and public gatherings until April 3 and closed schools and universities nationwide. "The right decision is to stay at home," Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said when he imposed the lockdown on Monday.
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| Wisconsin man who plowed truck into Girl Scout troop, killing 4, gets 54 years in prison Posted: 13 Mar 2020 10:48 AM PDT  "You know it's been called a tragedy — that doesn't seem to be enough," said the judge who handed down 23-year-old Colten Treu's sentence.
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| In Albania, Iranian dissidents plot a revolution Posted: 12 Mar 2020 07:20 PM PDT  In a gleaming compound built from scratch on an Albanian hillside, thousands of Iranians dedicate their waking hours to toppling the regime in Tehran 3,000 kilometres away. "I think this year will be very decisive," says Zohreh Akhiani, the 56-year-old mayor of "Ashraf 3", a mini-city of some 2,800 exiled Iranians from the opposition movement the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI). The dissidents hope an onslaught of crises in their homeland will aid their cause, from increasingly harsh US sanctions to recent anti-government protests and the new coronavirus, which has infected top officials.
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| Bernie or Bust: the Sanders fans who will never vote for Biden Posted: 13 Mar 2020 03:00 AM PDT  Supporters distrust the Democratic party and are frustrated with an election system they say works against their candidate Ekene Okonkwo studies political science, advocates for gun control and reproductive rights, and is voting in a presidential election for the first time this year. But only if she can vote for Bernie Sanders.The 19-year-old, who studies political science and lives in the Bronx, said the Vermont senator is the only candidate she trusts to deal with the issues she cares most about – on climate change, for instance, she called former vice-president Joe Biden's plan "unfeasible". A vote for Biden, who is likely to be the Democratic nominee in November, would only give the party more reason to take her vote for granted, she said."If we lose to Trump then hopefully within the next four years maybe an AOC or Rashida Tlaib would be able to run," Okonkwo said, referring to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and another progressive politician who has gained popularity in the last two years. "Maybe there would be a better chance to save the planet."Okonkwo is not alone in her unequivocal and uncompromising support for Sanders. She is part of a loosely connected but vocal group, sometimes uniting under hashtags like BernieorBust or NeverBiden who say they will not vote for Biden if he wins the nomination. While it's nearly impossible to know how large the group is, hundreds of people have shared this sentiment, including progressive political candidates.It may be impossible to quantify their number, but not their influence. Those Democrats who will not yield to a moderate and vote for Biden if he wins the nomination are the same group who are sometimes blamed for Donald Trump's victory in 2016 when disappointed Sanders fans sat out the general election.And the past few weeks have been hard to swallow for Sanders fans. After a strong early showing in Iowa, Nevada and New Hampshire his star faded on Super Tuesday. Supporters were left disappointed again this week when he lost to Biden in Michigan, where he edged out Hillary Clinton in 2016. This poor performance is partly due to an unexpectedly weak youth vote – despite Sanders' vaunted ability to mobilise younger Americans.As the Sanders campaign reckons with the fallout, and former Democratic candidates rush to endorse Biden, the BernieorBust fans are grappling with a repeat of 2016. It's hard to tell how their decision could affect the election, but in 2016, a similar group of people who boycotted Hillary Clinton on election day contributed to her loss in swing states like Florida, where more than 200,000 people voted for independent candidates such as Gary Johnson or Jill Stein."If you distrust something, you are more likely to opt out of it," said Rashawn Ray, a governance fellow at the Brookings Institution. And Sanders supporters don't trust the Democratic party. "They think its political sabotage, and not allowing Bernie to have a fair shot. So what do people do? They opt out."Martha Baez, a 54-year-old who works in finance, is one of those voters. She is registered as an independent and voted for Jill Stein in 2016. "There was failure in getting me out to the polls with the 'lesser of two evils' theory", she said of the argument that whatever Clinton's perceived flaws, she was better than Trump.This year, Baez is planning to vote for Sanders in the New York primary, and will not vote for Biden if he is the nominee in November. But she said her real issue was not with the specific candidate, but losing trust in the Democratic party. "I don't think that I should put aside my values and vote out of fear," she said. "The DNC needs an overhaul, it lacks values, real leaders that represent the people not its donors."The impact on the supreme court or other policies, she said, was not her responsibility."Why is that my problem?" she said. "Shouldn't it have been considered before selecting the 'chosen one'? Will they try and flip the script and make it my issue or fault?"Jessica Wright, an avid Sanders supporter in east Texas, tweeted that she was BernieorBust after his Super Tuesday defeat in her state. She said she was angry that other Democratic candidates had dropped out just before the big primary day to endorse Joe Biden, and wanted the "so-called Democratic establishment" to know they were letting down people like her.Wright, 37, works at a hospital and said she and her husband live paycheck to paycheck. She said Sanders' policies would be the best for her family, including family members married to immigrants struggling to gain citizenship status in the US. But given that a Trump election could be worse, and herald new conservative court appointees and other harmful policies, she is still considering voting for Biden, or at the very least, voting down ballot in other, non-presidential races on election day."For me not voting would be to send a message: what you've done is not OK," Wright said. "I wish there was a way to vote for [Biden] and still send that message."Stephen Ansolabehere, a Harvard government professor who studies political campaigns, said there is a similar "sour grapes" group during every election, even if it's not a big enough group to swing the result. But he said what determines whether or not Sanders supporters will show up for Biden depends on how the latter treats them in the coming months."When you lose [your candidate] it's like a death in the family," he said. "That's the bitterness of the emotions. Biden knows that bitterness so he could be empathetic and bring those people back to the fold." He gave the example of the 1988 Democratic primary, when frontrunner Michael Dukakis reached a compromise with his opponent Jesse Jackson by changing party rules to tie the delegate vote more closely to the popular vote, giving Jackson a partial victory.Ansolabehere also pointed out that Sanders' progressive movement relies heavily on young people going to the polls. But even if they are politically engaged, this subset of voters consistently deals with more hurdles to register to vote because of restrictive voting policies around address changes and identification. In New Hampshire, for example, a Republican-backed law requires that many young voters have a driver's license to vote."It's hard to organize a campaign around younger generations," Ansolabehere said. "You only have 50% chance of being registered when you're 18 years old." And that could have played a role during Super Tuesday, when youth turnout (ages 18 to 29) was only an estimated 14% in Virginia, and 5% in Tennessee, according to a Tufts University exit poll.Ray also said "voter suppression is alive and well" and probably affected turnout for Sanders. But he said that the group that is more likely to determine the election is the 11% of white voters, mostly suburban and often women, who switched from Barack Obama in 2012 to Trump in the last election.For Sanders' supporters, these obstacles only drive home the frustration around an election system that they say works against their candidate.Habiba Choudhary, a Sanders supporter who was canvassing in Michigan, saw the long polling station lines firsthand on Tuesday in Sanders-friendly communities like Dearborn and perceived this as a way to rig the election in favor of Biden. The New York-based 28-year-old, who identifies with the BernieorBust movement, said the senator's message resonated with her family, Bangladeshi immigrants who share a one-bedroom apartment in Queens.Sanders seemed to be the only candidate whose policies could ease the plight of her father, a taxi driver dealing with healthcare issues, and her sister, who is straining to pay back student loans. "Enough is enough – we tried the neoliberalism and we're sick and tired of it," she said. "[Sanders] gave me and other people that voice."Nevertheless, Choudhary said, she would follow Sanders' lead when it came to voting in November. In 2016, the senator accepted defeat after the primary, and went on to endorse Hillary Clinton in the presidential election."I know Bernie is super consistent," she said. "His supporters are gonna come out for Biden."
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| CDC advises Americans to avoid 'nonessential' Europe trips. State Department urges no foreign travel. Posted: 12 Mar 2020 12:51 AM PDT  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued its strongest travel warning late Wednesday, urging Americans to avoid all "nonessential travel" to Europe. Shortly before the CDC issued its level 3 warning, President Trump had announced a presidential proclamation barring most foreign nationals who had recently been in Europe from entering the U.S. Like Trump's proclamation, the CDC warning did not cover the United Kingdom or Ireland, both of which also have coronavirus outbreaks. The CDC had previously issued similar warnings for China, South Korea, Iran, and Italy.The State Department went a step further Wednesday night, issuing a level 3 (of four) global health advisory urging Americans to "reconsider travel abroad due to the global impact" of the novel coronavirus pandemic. Separately, the Pentagon suspended travel to several coronavirus-hit countries for 60 days, affecting all service members, employees, and their families.More stories from theweek.com The entire country of Norway is 'shutting down' Girl Scout sets up libraries at hospitals so parents can read to their premature babies Betty White's representative reassures fans she's 'fine' amid coronavirus outbreak
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| Law firm pushes state Supreme Court to overturn ruling that stopped the blockage of 200,000 voters in Wisconsin Posted: 12 Mar 2020 12:38 PM PDT  A conservative law firm in Wisconsin is pushing the state Supreme Court to overturn an appeals court ruling that stopped the purging of more than 200,000 people from the state's voter rolls.
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| Zimbabwe Gives Land Back to White Farmers After Wrecking Economy Posted: 13 Mar 2020 08:05 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Two decades after President Robert Mugabe wrecked Zimbabwe's economy by urging black subsistence farmers to violently force white commercial farmers and their workers off their land, his successor has thrown in the towel.Emmerson Mnangagwa's government has proposed settling all outstanding claims against it by farmers by offering them land."The object of the regulations is to provide for the disposal of land to persons entitled to compensation," Land Minister Perence Shiri said in regulations published in the Government Gazette Friday.The seizures that began in 2000 were ratified by the government, which said they were needed to redress colonial imbalances. A vibrant agricultural industry that exported tobacco and roses and grew most of the food the nation needed collapsed. Periodic food shortages ensued, inflation became the world's highest and the manufacturing industry was decimated. What was one of Africa's richest countries became one of its poorest.Almost 4,500 white-owned properties and others protected under government-to-government agreements were affected by the program.The southern African nation this year budgeted about Z$380 million ($21 million) for compensation. Several farms that were protected under so-called Bilateral Investment Protection Agreements belonged to nations including the U.K., South Africa, Australia, the Netherlands and Denmark.To contact the reporters on this story: Godfrey Marawanyika in Harare at gmarawanyika@bloomberg.net;Antony Sguazzin in Johannesburg at asguazzin@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Gordon Bell at gbell16@bloomberg.net, Paul Richardson, Karl MaierFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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