| Trump’s WHO attacks: Fair criticism or scapegoating? Posted: 20 Apr 2020 08:06 AM PDT  President Trump has called for cutting off funding for the World Health Organization over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Are his criticisms fair or is he searching for someone else to blame?
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| Putin warns Russia's coronavirus crisis yet to peak as cases surpass 47,000 Posted: 20 Apr 2020 04:26 AM PDT  President Vladimir Putin said Russia had managed to slow the spread of the new coronavirus but warned the peak of the outbreak still lay ahead after the number of confirmed infections surged past 47,000 nationwide on Monday. Russia reported 4,268 new confirmed coronavirus cases on Monday, down from more than 6,000 the day before. Forty-four people died overnight, bringing the death toll to 405, Russia's coronavirus task force said.
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| Cuomo calls on the federal government to provide hazard pay to frontline workers: 'Give them a 50% bonus' Posted: 20 Apr 2020 11:19 AM PDT  Frontline workers, who have kept the state running while others have been on lockdown, should be rewarded, New York Gov, Andrew Cuomo said Monday.
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| How many people have had coronavirus with no symptoms? Posted: 20 Apr 2020 06:01 AM PDT  More mild or asymptomatic cases means the death rate may be lower than initially feared.
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| Supreme Court Rules Juries Must Convict by Unanimous Consent in Criminal Trials Posted: 20 Apr 2020 08:26 AM PDT  The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that defendants in criminal trials must be convicted by unanimous consent of the jury, outlawing a practice that has already been prohibited in all states except Oregon.The 6-3 ruling in the case, Ramos v Louisiana, was delivered with an unusual alignment in which conservative Justices Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh joined with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor for the majority opinion. Justices Samuel Alito, Elena Kagan, and John Roberts dissented."Wherever we might look to determine what the term 'trial by an impartial jury trial' meant at the time of the Sixth Amendment's adoption—whether it's the common law, state practices in the founding era, or opinions and treatises written soon afterward—the answer is unmistakable," Gorsuch wrote in an opinion for the majority. "A jury must reach a unanimous verdict in order to convict."While unanimous verdicts had previously been required for convictions in federal trials, most states have banned convictions by supermajority of a jury. The ruling applies a unanimous-conviction requirement in the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution to state law. Currently, Oregon is the only state which allows conviction of criminal defendants even if up to two jurors dissent. Louisiana outlawed the practice in 2019.The current Supreme Court case was brought by Evangelisto Ramos, who was convicted of murder in Louisiana court in 2016 by a 10-2 jury verdict. The Supreme Court's case could allow Ramos to receive a new trial.
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| Coronavirus lockdown: NZ to ease restrictions after 'stopping explosion' Posted: 20 Apr 2020 05:57 AM PDT  The country, which has relatively few cases, has been praised for its quick and strict response.
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| Experts: Coronavirus brings spike in anti-Semitic sentiments Posted: 20 Apr 2020 02:04 AM PDT  Israeli researchers reported Monday that the global coronavirus outbreak has sparked a rise in anti-Semitic expression blaming Jews for the spread of the disease and the economic recession it has caused. The findings, which came in an annual report by Tel Aviv University researchers on anti-Semitism, show an 18% spike in attacks against Jews last year. "Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a significant rise in accusations that Jews, as individuals and as a collective, are behind the spread of the virus or are directly profiting from it," said Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, an umbrella group representing Jewish communities across the continent.
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| In Germany, Syrians take their torturers to court Posted: 19 Apr 2020 07:49 PM PDT  When Anwar al-Bunni crossed paths with fellow Syrian Anwar Raslan in a DIY store in Germany five years ago, he recognised him as the man who had thrown him in jail a decade earlier. On Thursday, the two men will face each other in a German court, where Raslan will be one of two alleged former Syrian intelligence officers in the dock accused of crimes against humanity for Bashar al-Assad's regime. In the first legal proceedings worldwide over state-sponsored torture in Syria, Raslan will be tried under the principle of universal jurisdiction -- which allows a foreign country to prosecute crimes against humanity.
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| Landlords on the pandemic: 'Everyone has an impression of us as rich and greedy' Posted: 20 Apr 2020 09:41 AM PDT  Many renters can't afford to pay – and some are threatening rent strikes. But some landlords say they're being unfairly punished * Coronavirus – live US updates * Live global updates * See all our coronavirus coverageThe coronavirus pandemic has brought mass unemployment . To prevent a spate of homelessness, governors across the US have promised moratoriums on evictions, and mortgage forgiveness for those who can't keep up with their payments. But many renters say the protections do not go far enough, and some are threatening rent strikes.Ricardo Reis, who owns 16 properties in Michigan, says there is a stigma against landlords, which means people are less empathetic about their needs during such times."Everyone has an impression of us as being rich and greedy. A lot of tenants will be thinking, how can they ask [us to pay] during this time? But in reality, there are costs involved," says Reis.Those costs include property taxes, insurance, maintenance and mortgage payments. Although homeowners will be provided with mortgage relief during the pandemic, many renters are wondering why they should still pay rent. But plenty aren't aware that commercial property owners – landlords, in other words – are not entitled to this benefit. Furthermore, forbearance programs only defer mortgage payments, rather than completely forgiving the cost."They are seeing this as an opportunity, as opposed to asking for help and relief … to inflict damage on the landlord as some sort of a class warfare," says Jay Martin, the executive director of the community housing improvement project (Chip) in New York.Many landlords say this class-warfare view – the moneyed landlord versus the renter – is misguided. Reis, who also manages properties on behalf of a property management company, says that renters are used to a faceless landlord and don't realize that on the other side is a family looking to pay the mortgage."Tenants have a misconception that landlords make a lot of money, because they think what they pay goes straight into the landlord's pocket," says Reis. In his state,he says most make less than what is presumed."In Michigan, landlords make around $200 to $300 per month for each property, after expenses are accounted for."He adds that the risk landlords take on is high: they take the loan , risk foreclosure if they can't pay the mortgage, and could potentially lose everything. "It's an extremely risky position. And as they say, with risk comes a little bit of reward … and in this case that's dependent on their tenant making their payment on time."Reis believes most tenants won't pay rent if they don't have to, and so criticizes the government for leaving landlords with that risk by offering eviction moratoriums."The state is trying to put it on landlords to house individuals for free," he says. Reis says the government "should instead bolster social housing if they believe that people should live rent-free".He says understands people might look at his 16 homes as a lot. But he says: "For a true real estate investor, it's not a lot. My wife is a school teacher."Greg Margulies, a landlord in LA, is not worried about rent strikes. He says most people understand the consequences of not paying rent.> What could be more greedy than withholding rent that you have the ability to pay?> > Jay Martin"They'll only band together for a very short time – until the first eviction paper comes [through]. Then I think it will hit home," said Margulies. He owns four properties in LA and still has a mortgage on each of them, and he says his property taxes on each building costs him between $500-$1,000 per property.While eviction moratoriums prevent them from being evicted now, in the long term, landlords still have the upper hand: "I can't imagine most landlords are going to look favorably on renters who band together like that. I expect they will get their leases non-renewed, even if they don't get evicted."Margulies empathizes with the fact that there are currently millions out of work. He stresses that most landlords want to work with tenants, to keep them in their properties, not to work against them – he has allowed one tenant who could only pay partial rent, and another who has had to defer payment.But that sympathy can only go so far, he says. "At the same time, [they] still get to stay in the unit: you have a safe place to sleep, you're away from the virus."It's unfortunate you're not working, but that should have nothing to do with paying for what you used. You still have to pay for gas, you still have to pay for groceries."Asked what message he would give to renters thinking of striking, Margulies advises them to keep in contact with their landlord. "We are not blind to what's going on in the world – we see that the world has been turned upside down. We are willing to work with tenants, but if you ignore the landlord, thinking it's going to go away, it's not."But Reis warns that reforms such as moratoriums or rent caps, which are intended to help the tenant, will always ending up costing them as landlords cut corners to seek to make costs back."Moratoriums sound great right now, but come fall [we will have to start changing] how we screen tenants," he says. "It's opened up our eyes, we realize there is just not enough security if the government can freeze rents or put a moratorium in place and just leave us stranded."Martin says it is the behavior of renters rather than landlords that should concern people at the moment."What could be more greedy than withholding rent that you have the ability to pay? [You will] damage the entire housing market, push it towards collapse. To me, it's incredibly short-sighted."
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| Trump Is Breaking the Presidency to Save His Re-Election Posted: 20 Apr 2020 02:00 PM PDT  (Bloomberg Opinion) -- President Donald Trump's encouragement of protests against states' stay-in-place orders is un-presidential in the colloquial sense: it's unbecoming of a president. But Trump's latest gambit is un-presidential in a much deeper sense, too. It contradicts the very constitutional justification for why we have a president in the first place.The whole point of the presidency is to have an elected official who represents the interests of the entire country, not of a specific state or electoral district. That is, the purpose of the presidency is unification. Trump's goal, to the contrary, is to drive state-by-state division. He's undermining the very ideal of a unified United States in pursuit of electoral advantage.To understand why we have a president, it's useful to consider why we don't have a prime minister. After all, the founding fathers were creating a republic, in which all officials would be elected and nobody would be above the law. If the United States of America was not to have a king, it would have made logical sense for its executive to be a member of the legislature, first among equals.But the framers of the Constitution wanted to create a different version of the separation of powers than Britain's. The president would not be a king, but he and his executive branch would play some of the role that the king played in the British constitution.And the chief advantage of a king, according to a theory that had gained prominence in 18th century Britain, was that he would promote the interests of not merely one faction of the people, but of the whole country. A king who stood for everybody was a "patriot king," ruling for the greater good of the patria, or nation. "To espouse no party, but to govern like the common father of his people, is so essential to the character of a Patriot King, that he who does otherwise forfeits the title," wrote Henry St. John, First Viscount Bolingbroke, in his aptly named book, "The Idea of a Patriot King."The framers of the U.S. Constitution designed a system in which members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate were chosen from the states. Although the framers expressed the hope that these legislators would think of the whole nation, not just the districts they represented, they were also realists. They understood that members of Congress would want to be re-elected, and would therefore favor the interests of their home states and districts.The president, in contrast, was elected nationally. He (along with the vice-president) was the only elected official who could claim to have been chosen by the whole people. The president was therefore supposed to be a patriot president, above party or regional faction.It turned out to be too much to ask for presidents to eschew political parties. Even George Washington, whom the framers expected to pull off that lofty goal, came to be seen as a partisan Federalist by his second term in office.Yet presidents have, for the most part, managed to govern with an eye to national interests, rather than regional ones. That may be attributed mostly to their desire to be re-elected, which ordinarily takes a national coalition. But it also stems from the nature of the office itself: The president is the chief executive of the whole country, and usually understands himself as such.The classic example is Andrew Jackson, whom Trump claims to consider a hero. Jackson was partisan and ideological, not to mention an advocate of killing Native Americans and driving them from their ancestral lands. But when South Carolina tried to nullify federal law, threatening the union, Jackson firmly rejected the very idea, going so far as to intimate that any serious attempt at disunion would be met with vigorous force. Jackson put union first.Trump, however, is now doing the very opposite. Instead of embracing the idea of a unified national policy on stay-in-place orders, he is fomenting protests that are meant to force certain states to break the mold by opening sooner than others. The aim of the protests is precisely to create a national patchwork, with different states adopting different policies. And Trump's motives seem straightforwardly partisan: he wants to motivate his base, and he wants to take credit for any opening that eventually occurs.The problem isn't that Trump wants to get re-elected. It's that to get there, he is actively seeking to break any semblance of coordinated, unified national policy. He is, it seems, prepared to break the traditional presidency in order to hold onto the office.If the presidency becomes a bully pulpit not to hold the country together but to break it apart, we'd be better off having no president at all. Somewhere, the shade of Andrew Jackson is roiling with disapproval.This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and host of the podcast "Deep Background." He is a professor of law at Harvard University and was a clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter. His books include "The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President." For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| North Korea's Kim getting treatment after cardiovascular procedure: report Posted: 20 Apr 2020 05:20 PM PDT  North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is receiving treatment after undergoing a cardiovascular procedure early this month, a South Korean media report said, amid speculation over Kim's health following his absence from a key anniversary event. Daily NK, a speciality website run mostly by North Korean defectors, cited unidentified sources inside the isolated state saying Kim is recovering at a villa in the Mount Kumgang resort county of Hyangsan on the east coast after getting the procedure on April 12 at a hospital there. Reporting from inside North Korea is notoriously difficult, especially on matters concerning the country's leadership, given tight controls on information.
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| Elon Musk claims in a tweet that Tesla's Cybertruck can float "for a while" Posted: 20 Apr 2020 10:55 AM PDT  Musk has a history of dropping vague references on Twitter to obscure Tesla car capabilities without offering much detail.
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| Yahoo News/YouGov coronavirus poll: Most Americans reject anti-lockdown protests Posted: 20 Apr 2020 06:32 AM PDT  An overwhelming majority of Americans, Republicans included, are rejecting right-wing protests — encouraged by President Trump — to immediately "reopen" the country in the midst of the world's largest and deadliest coronavirus outbreak, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll.
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| U.S. crude oil futures for May plummet to minus $37 — lowest price in history Posted: 20 Apr 2020 12:47 PM PDT  With demand at near-paralysis, oil and fuel tanks around the world are close to brimming.
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| Coronavirus: Ecuador sees massive surge in deaths in April Posted: 20 Apr 2020 01:09 AM PDT  Guayas province, home to the city of Guayaquil, sees nearly 6,000 extra deaths in a two-week period.
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| 20 Weird Facts About Earth To Remind You Why It's The Best Posted: 20 Apr 2020 02:52 PM PDT |
| The Next Coronavirus Nightmare Is What Happens After the ICU Posted: 19 Apr 2020 02:01 AM PDT  When Janet Mendez first got off the ventilator, she had no idea who she was. "[The hospital staff] kept calling me Maria," she told The Daily Beast. "I said, OK, that's my name.'"Except, of course, it wasn't. Maria is her mother, who had been anxiously calling Mount Sinai in upper Manhattan every day since her 33-year-old daughter was hospitalized with COVID-19. Somewhere along the way, the staff had misplaced Mendez's ID tag—maybe they'd never given her one at all—and mixed up her name with her mother's. After 10 days in the intensive care unit, Mendez was too confused to correct them.Mendez is one of the lucky ones—part of the minority of novel coronavirus patients who require mechanical breathing and still make it out of the hospital alive. She is recovering quickly, and one Mount Sinai doctor described her as a "success." But for many patients like her, getting out of the ICU is only half the battle. "There's surviving and there's returning to your normal life," Mekeleya Yimen, a critical care physician at Mount Sinai, told The Daily Beast. "That's not always possible."A Coronavirus ICU Nurse on 'Dying Alone Behind Sliding Glass Doors'Decades of research shows many of the sickest ICU patients will never return to their former selves. An ailment called Post-Intensive Care Syndrome (PICS) causes cognitive, physical, and psychological problems in up to 80 percent of all critical-care survivors. About a third never return to work. Now physicians say they are witnessing many of these effects in COVID-19 survivors, at a scale they've never seen before. And some are not sure we're ready for the influx of ICU survivors this crisis will bring."I believe and I feel this with every part of me, that the same way there's been a surge in need for hospital beds, there's going to be a surge in need for rehab beds," said Miguel Escalón, the vice chair of the rehabilitation department at Mount Sinai. "The question is, how will the system step up to meet this?"Of the hundreds of thousands of Americans projected to contract the coronavirus, a small percentage will require hospitalization. An even smaller percentage will require care in the ICU—often because of a lung condition called acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Many of them will require mechanical breathing devices called ventilators to keep them alive.The confusion Mendez felt coming off of the ventilator is common for patients with extended ICU stays—so common it has a name: "ICU delirium." The extreme stress of critical illness on the body, combined with the sedative drugs and the foreign surroundings of the ICU, leave many people feeling confused and disoriented, occasionally plagued by memories of things that never happened.Mendez says she spent 10 days on the ventilator thinking she was a character in the Netflix show On My Block. Her imagined exploits on the "show" felt real, but everything happening in real life felt like a dream. When she finally came to, the hospital wing was covered in Christmas decorations. She assumed she'd been in a coma for almost a year, until a nurse told her they were only an April Fools prank. According to the Society of Critical Care Medicine, between 30 and 80 percent of ICU survivors struggle with some sort of cognitive impairment after their stay. A year after being released from the ICU, a third of patients have cognitive test scores consistent with someone who suffered a traumatic brain injury, like a car crash. A quarter have test scores in the range of mild Alzheimer's. Others will suffer from lasting mental health effects. Almost a third of all ICU survivors show clinically important symptoms of depression, and a quarter show signs of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder—nightmares, flashbacks, fear of going back to the doctor. A study of ARDS survivors found that a third were never able to return to work."We talk about physical cognitive and mental health, but it becomes very understandable to everyone when you talk about not returning to work and the lost income," said Dale Needham, medical director of the critical care and rehabilitation program at Johns Hopkins Hospital. "The impact that this has not just on the patient but their entire family is profound."While it's too early to know the lasting effects of COVID-19 on survivors, doctors told The Daily Beast these patients often awoke confused and disoriented, with no idea what happened to them. Benjamin Seidel, a rehabilitation physician at Burke Hospital in New York, said some of his patients had noticeably different MRI results compared to when they were admitted. "Some of these COVID patients that we see, if I get my neurologic expert therapist to evaluate them, they say, 'This person must have had a brain injury,'" said Kyle Ridgeway, an inpatient acute physical therapist at University of Colorado Hospital. For those who have been in the ICU for weeks, he said, "this is going to be a life-altering situation for them."Generally, the level of impairment depends on how healthy the patient was before they entered the ICU and how long they had to stay there. But some coronavirus patients who were not admitted to the ICU still show signs of severe mental distress, according Sean Smith, a rehabilitation physician at the University of Michigan."A lot of these patients are pretty mentally shaken up," he said. "I think [overarching] all of this is going to be some element of PTSD for the patients—and for the doctors—who were in the emergency rooms and ICUs."For Mendez, the cognitive issues ended mercifully fast. A born-and-bred New Yorker, she said she remembered her name as soon as someone reminded her what street she was on. "The minute they told me it was 114th, I said, 'Hey I'm close to the house!'" she recalled. Later, she entertained herself and stayed sharp by counting, multiplying and dividing the ceiling tiles above her bed.But regaining her physical bearings was another story. A formerly healthy 33-year-old, Mendez could not even sit up on her own when she first woke up. Her first task—moving from her bed to a chair—made her feel dizzy and required an oxygen mask. It took her four days to muster the strength to walk to the bathroom on her own; even then, using it on her own was beyond her ability. She took a three-hour nap the first time she tried.The experience tracks with what many physicians have seen in their post-ICU coronavirus patients. Every doctor who spoke with The Daily Beast said their patients showed significant muscle loss, reduced lung capacity, and decreased endurance. Some of the most severe patients suffered a temporary paralysis called neuropathy in their hands, feet or limbs.Ridgeway said what struck him about COVID-19 patients compared to other ARDS survivors was their profound exhaustion. Some of his more muscular patients still struggled to stand for more than 30 seconds without getting fatigued. "Not an insignificant proportion of them really do feel—even if their oxygen is stable—they just feel profoundly short of breath, especially if they're trying to exert," he said. "And for some of these patients, 'trying to exert' is sitting up to the side of the bed."While most of the coronavirus patients who require rehabilitation are older, Ridgeway said he had treated patients in their thirties and forties, some of whom were unable to walk when they entered his care. Heidi Engel, an intensive care physical therapist at the University of San Francisco, described a man in his fifties who caught the virus while on an active outdoors vacation. It took the man a week to relearn how to walk—a progression Engel described as surprisingly fast.For many of these patients, there is a psychological burden in suddenly waking up with a body that cannot do what it used to. Engel said she'd seen several patients try to walk and fall, forgetting that their legs could not support them."I spend a lot of time explaining to people, 'You have this new body you're inheriting,'" she said. "'You're a fragmented person, and you need to now start to bring all these fragmented pieces back together.'"Bringing these patients back together is hard to begin with, and even harder when they're on the heels of a highly contagious virus. Responsible disease prevention requires limiting how many people are exposed to the patient, meaning therapists sometimes don't get in the room with their patients at all. Ridgeway said he'd started treating some patients through a window in the hospital, with a nurse inside the room to help the patient move.At Burke, Seidel said they are no longer using shared equipment like treadmills with COVID-positive patients, instead making due with whatever props can be left in the patient's room. When a therapist does make it into the room, they are decked out in head-to-toe personal protective equipment, which makes hands-on treatment difficult. "When you're basically wearing a hazmat suit it becomes a little more difficult to do some of the therapies," he said.At some hospitals in New York City, the epicenter of the disease, inpatient rehab floors have been entirely repurposed into beds for coronavirus patients. At Mount Sinai, rehabilitation doctors are making rounds as general medicine doctors. And at NYU Langone, a rehab physician said he was sending patients home sooner than he'd like, simply because the hospital was not considered safe.The constraints left a number of doctors worried about how their patients would fare long-term."The focus has shifted from usual care to emergency care, meaning things like physical therapy and rehabilitation are taking a back seat, rightfully so, to oxygen status and things like that," said Smith from the University of Michigan. "But you suffer when you do that. There are patients that aren't going to get out of bed."Still, most of the doctors agreed they hadn't seen the worst of the crisis yet. That will come after the surge in hospitalizations has flattened, and more recovered patients start flooding rehabilitation centers and floors. In New York, where hospitalizations have fallen in the last few days, that could be coming sooner rather than later.Long-term rehabilitation centers in the state, which take patients who are ready to leave the hospital but not strong enough to go home, are already struggling with the same constraints as major hospitals. Brian Im, a rehabilitation doctor at NYU Langone, said some long-term centers are running with limited personal protective gear and less than half the usual number of staff, making him think twice about where to send his patients."You have an already stretched-thin system now reduced beyond that," he said. "You can just see the safety and the ability to care for patients is severely limited."At the same time, home health aides are reluctant to visit former coronavirus patients in their houses, and many outpatient physical therapy clinics are closed for the foreseeable future. Even after the pandemic ends, the national shortage in home-care workers and physical therapists could make it difficult to treat everyone who needs help.Needham, who has studied PICS for years at Johns Hopkins, said many of these workers will have to be trained in how to treat critical illness survivors, rather than the survivors of heart attacks or brain injuries they are used to."Because of COVID, we now have this massive influx of critically ill patients," he said. "We need to think about the survivorship wave we're going to face."Mendez appears to be on her way to a full recovery. When she finally made it home, it was in an ambulance. After 10 days of recuperation in the hospital, she still cannot get around without a walker. The hospital had to send her home in an ambulance because she couldn't manage the subway stairs.. Mendez said she plans to return to work as an office administrator at Dominos when she can walk on her own, but doesn't know when that will be."It took a toll on my body," she said of the virus. "Right now, I'm like a newborn trying to walk again."For some reason, Mendez still hasn't regained her sense of taste—a bitter pill for the daughter of a chef, who has a passion for Italian food. She's also struggling with another problem: her hair. After nearly a month of not showering in the hospital, it took her two hours at home to get knots out of her curls. At this point, she's thinking of cutting it all off and starting again. "I'm in quarantine anyway," she said. "Nobody's going to see me."Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. 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| 4/20 uncertainty: Marijuana industry tested in virus crisis Posted: 19 Apr 2020 09:06 PM PDT  The unofficial holiday celebrating all things cannabis arrives Monday as the nation's emerging legal marijuana market braces for an economic blow from the coronavirus crisis, with many consumers reducing spending or going underground for deals. It was supposed to be a long weekend of festivals and music culminating on April 20, or 4/20, the code for marijuana's high holiday. Virtual parties and video chats are replacing vast outdoor smoking sessions to mark the rise of legalization and celebrate cannabis culture.
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| President reels off coronavirus headlines after attacking Republican governor, as Georgia plans to begin reopening state Friday Posted: 20 Apr 2020 01:54 PM PDT  Donald Trump has reeled off coronavirus-related headlines during his White House press briefing in a bid to show viewers what his administration has done amid the pandemic.At the start of the press briefing, the president help up a number of articles focused on the lack of ventilators the states needed compared to what was originally anticipated. He claimed testing was now becoming the new ventilator situation where governors and the media claimed more was needed than in reality.
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| New York governor says 'don't need protests to convince anyone' of anxiety over lockdowns Posted: 20 Apr 2020 09:31 AM PDT  Cuomo, who has emerged as a leading national voice on the pandemic, called for federal hazard pay for hospital staff, police officers and other frontline workers and repeated a plea for federal funding to ramp up testing for the virus. Cuomo said total hospitalizations of COVID-19 patients in the state reached 16,103, down from 16,213 the day before, while 478 people died over the past 24 hours, the lowest daily fatality number since April 1. Cuomo said the data added to evidence that New York, the epicenter of the crisis in the United States, had passed the worst stage of the crisis and remained on a path toward stabilization of its healthcare system.
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| 'Don't shoot him no more!' California police face backlash over killing of man in Walmart Posted: 20 Apr 2020 02:27 PM PDT  Steven Taylor was experiencing mental health crisis when he wielded a baseball bat inside San Leandro store, family lawyer saysThe police shooting of a 33-year-old man in a California Walmart over the weekend has led to intense backlash from civil rights activists, calls for protests and a Facebook video from the local police chief to "dispel some rumors" about the incident.Police in San Leandro in the Bay Area shot Steven Taylor on Saturday afternoon after he wielded a baseball bat inside a local Walmart. A video shot by a bystander captured two officers pointing their weapons at Taylor holding a bat near the doors on the Walmart floor.The footage appears to show one of the officers deploying a Taser after Taylor had dropped the bat on the floor and was lying on the ground. One witness is heard shouting, "Don't shoot him no more!" Police said one of the officers hit Taylor with a bullet in the upper torso, and the officers tried to use their Tasers multiple times during the confrontation.Lee Merritt, an attorney for Taylor's family, said Taylor was going through a mental health crisis on Saturday afternoon, and that he has previously suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and bipolar depression. "He was shot after he had become completely helpless and no longer represented a threat," Merritt told the Guardian on Monday.Merritt said he wasn't sure yet whether police shot Taylor with a Taser or bullet after he was already down, and that an autopsy was now underway.Merritt also alleged that the officers provided insufficient care once Taylor was shot. "Their job, according to standard operating procedures, was to get Mr Taylor help. He had been seriously wounded and was suffering from a mental health crisis. They had to treat him quickly. They did the opposite and exacerbated his injuries," Merritt said.The San Leandro police department said Taylor had not complied with officers' commands to drop the bat and had walked toward police. At this point, one officer discharged his Taser "which was not effective", according to the department. Then, police said, the officer fired his gun at Taylor, hitting him in the "front of his upper body". Seconds later, another officer discharged his Taser at the man, according to the department. Taylor died at the scene.Taylor's family is calling for charges against the officers. Merritt, who represents families of those killed by police in federal litigation, said the officers should face homicide charges for targeting Taylor after the threat was "neutralized". He said police should have de-escalated by clearing the Walmart, surrounding Taylor and trying to talk him down, instead of quickly using lethal force.The San Leandro police chief, Jeff Tudor, said in an interview that the "pop" heard on the video after Taylor was already on the ground came from a Taser, and that it was too early to speculate whether that shot had hit Taylor or whether it was justified and in line with department policy. One officer was initially "trying to deescalate the situation and grab the bat", Tudor said, adding, "It's very tragic."On Sunday, Tudor publicly acknowledged that the shooting had upset many. "Our community is hurting right now," Tudor said in a Facebook video. "But protecting the sanctity of life is extremely important. I know there are a lot of questions and concerns."Few details have emerged about Taylor since he was killed. Merritt said Taylor had three children, including an 11-year-old, and that he leaves behind three siblings. "I hope they don't see their father executed like that," Merritt said.He added that Taylor "was best known for trying to make people laugh". The fatal shooting happened just south of Oakland, in a region where residents for years have organized Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality and police shootings.Last year, California adopted the strictest law in the US limiting when police can kill, dictating that law enforcement must "reasonably believe … deadly force is necessary to defend against an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury". Typically, courts across the US have long ruled that shootings are justified if officers claimed they feared for their lives and were acting in self defense, a bar that advocates have said was too low and allowed police to kill civilians with impunity, particularly unarmed black Americans.
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| The head of the WHO warns that 'the worst' of the coronavirus is 'ahead of us' Posted: 20 Apr 2020 12:03 PM PDT  The WHO chief compared the virus to the 1918 flu that killed 675,000 people in the US and tens of millions around the world.
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| Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps says its handheld device can detect coronavirus, scientists scoff Posted: 20 Apr 2020 11:09 AM PDT  Iranian scientists have rejected the claim and other government officials have distanced themselves.
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| Chinese Oil Refiners Snap Up Bargains as Activity Resumes Posted: 19 Apr 2020 05:38 PM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Chinese refiners are snapping up low-price oil from all over the world as Asia's largest economy emerges from a virus-driven slump.Varieties such as Alaska North Slope, Canada's Cold Lake and Brazil's Lula have been offered at steep discounts to global benchmark prices over the past week as sellers scrambled to secure buyers. Processors in China -- where throughput is back to pre-virus levels -- are snagging many of the bargains as much of the rest of the world remains in lockdown.See also: Oil Demand Slumps 70% in Third-Biggest Buyer as India ShutsSpot supplies of Cold Lake were sold by a European trader at a discount of between $8 and $9 a barrel to Brent on a delivered basis, while an oil major sold a shipment comprising Alaskan North Slope and Brazilian grades at a $5.50 to $6 discount, said traders who buy and sell crude in Asia. The cargoes were purchased by Chinese independent refiners, known as teapots, which have staged a strong comeback from run-rate cuts and closures in February.As for oil that's produced closer to Asia, Chinese state-owned refiners have been buying Russia's Sokol crude for significantly less than Dubai benchmark prices. The spot purchases were made on top of crude bought via long-term supply contracts with Saudi Arabian, Iraqi and Kuwaiti producers. At least five Chinese processors sought full contracted volumes from Saudi Aramco this week after it slashed official prices for Asian customers for a second month.Major producers are still struggling with a large overhang of physical cargoes despite the agreement this month by OPEC and its allies to curb output by almost 10%. In Nigeria, one of the country's benchmark grades, Bonny Light, fell to about $12 or $13 a barrel as swathes of Europe, the staple market for the West Arican nation, have gone into lockdown to combat the coronavirus.Meanwhile, storage across the world -- both on land and at sea -- is rapidly filling up. Brent crude has remained in a steep contango, a bearish market structure where prompt oil is cheaper than later supplies, even after the OPEC+ deal.(Updates with details on Nigeria's benchmark grade in 5th paragraph.)For 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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| Coronavirus nightmare in Ecuador's port city Guayaquil - pictures Posted: 20 Apr 2020 01:13 AM PDT  Guayaquil is one of the worst-hit places in Latin America in the pandemic.
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| Netanyahu, Gantz Form Government after Year of Political Stalemate in Israel Posted: 20 Apr 2020 10:13 AM PDT  Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and rival Benny Gantz on Monday signed an agreement to form a government after three successive national elections and a year of political stalemate in the country.The agreement comes after Gantz broke up his centrist Blue and White party to join Netanyahu in a so-called "unity government," following the spread of coronavirus to Israel and the subsequent shutdown of much of the country. Gantz had initially campaigned to unseat Netanyahu and vowed not to sit with the prime minsiter due to looming corruption charges against the incumbent."I am at peace because I did what my nation needs," Gantz said in a Facebook post in late March, explaining his decision to try to join Netanyahu. "These are unusual times. Israel is in a state of emergency. Hundreds of thousands of families are hunkering down in their homes….This is the time for leaders to choose what is right and put the lingering issues and personal scores aside."The coalition deal, reached after weeks of parliamentary haggling, will now be sent to the smaller right-wing religious parties in Netanyahu's camp, who are generally expected to sign it. According to the agreement, Netanyahu will serve as prime minister for the next 18 months, at which point Gantz will assume the post.The agreement follows successive elections in which Netanyahu failed to obtain a majority of seats in Israel's parliament. The country has been led by a "caretaker" government throughout the deadlock, with Netanyahu at its head.
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| 30 Dining Chairs That Make a Statement Posted: 20 Apr 2020 06:40 AM PDT |
| Fauci warns protesters about dangers of ending lockdowns prematurely: 'It's going to backfire' Posted: 20 Apr 2020 06:56 AM PDT  Dr. Anthony Fauci is warning about the dangers of reopening the United States too quickly in a message to those protesting stay-at-home orders.Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and member of President Trump's coronavirus task force, appeared on Good Morning America on Monday after protests in some cities against stay-at-home orders; at one in Texas, video captured protesters calling for Fauci to be fired. Polls, however, have found that more Americans are worried about restrictions being loosened too soon than not soon enough.Asked for his message to those protesting, Fauci told ABC, "The message is that clearly this is something that is hurting from the standpoint of economics ... but unless we get the virus under control, the real recovery, economically, is not going to happen."Fauci went on to stress the importance of a gradual reopening."If you jump the gun, and go into a situation where you have a big spike, you're going to set yourself back," he said. "So as painful as it is to go by the careful guidelines of gradually phasing into a reopening -- it's going to backfire. That's the problem."These comments come after President Trump on Friday appeared to express support for stay-at-home protesters in some states on Twitter. During a White House briefing on Sunday, Trump said those protesting stay-at-home orders have "cabin fever" and "want their life back." > "Clearly this is something that this is hurting …. but unless we get the virus under control, the real recovery, economically, is not going to happen." -- NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci on protests against stay-at-home orders. pic.twitter.com/n7x3cunEAm> > -- Good Morning America (@GMA) April 20, 2020More stories from theweek.com What do animals think? A parade that killed thousands? The new coronavirus may be mutating to a less deadly form
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| Nigerian oil union suspends industrial action after Exxon Mobil workers freed Posted: 19 Apr 2020 06:21 AM PDT  A major Nigerian oil union has suspended planned industrial action after 21 Exxon Mobil Corp. employees quarantined last week after their arrest for violating coronavirus-related movement restrictions were freed, it said on Sunday. The governor of southern oil hub Rivers State, Nyesom Wike, on Friday said Exxon Mobil workers were arrested after entering the state from neighbouring Akwa Ibom State in violation of an executive order restricting movement into the state as part of measures imposed last month. The union said its statement referred to 21 Exxon Mobil workers who were union members, whereas Rivers State included the driver in its tally to total 22 people.
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| India and Singapore see biggest single-day spikes in coronavirus cases Posted: 20 Apr 2020 07:21 AM PDT  India and Singapore announced their biggest single-day spikes in new coronavirus cases on Monday, as the crisis intensifies in parts of Asia. India's spike came after the government eased one of the world's strictest lockdowns to allow some manufacturing and agricultural activity to resume.
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| 110 arrested over latest deadly lynch mob attack in India Posted: 20 Apr 2020 09:06 AM PDT  2 police officers have also been suspended after viral videos showed them unable or unwilling to control the mob, apparently fuelled by a rumor.
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| She's a doctor on the front lines of the coronavirus. At home, she has no running water. Posted: 19 Apr 2020 01:53 AM PDT  "You're saying 20 seconds of wash your hands with water," a Navajo doctor in Arizona said. "We do not have plumbing. And that's how I grew up."
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| Cuomo Says New York Appears on ‘Other Side’ as Deaths Drop Posted: 19 Apr 2020 11:52 AM PDT |
| US lockdown: Three brothers appear to be behind online network of far-right gun owners calling for protests Posted: 20 Apr 2020 02:28 AM PDT  A trio of far-right, pro-gun provocateurs is behind some of the largest Facebook groups calling for anti-quarantine protests across the country, offering the latest illustration that some seemingly organic demonstrations are being engineered by a network of conservative activists.The Facebook groups target Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York, and they appear to be the work of Ben Dorr, the political director of a group called Minnesota Gun Rights, and his siblings Christopher and Aaron. By Sunday, the groups had more than 200,000 members combined, and they continued to expand quickly, days after President Donald Trump endorsed such protests by suggesting citizens should "liberate" their states.
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| Syria: Israel fired missile on areas near historic Palmyra Posted: 20 Apr 2020 01:33 PM PDT |
| Medical detection dogs able to sniff 750 people an hour could help identify coronavirus cases, researchers say Posted: 19 Apr 2020 08:01 AM PDT  Dogs have already been taught to detect diseases such as cancer. UK health experts believe they could be trained to sniff test the coronavirus.
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| Report: Trump administration received real-time information on coronavirus from Americans working at the WHO Posted: 19 Apr 2020 09:33 PM PDT  As the novel coronavirus first emerged in China late last year, more than a dozen U.S. researchers, doctors, and public health officials were working at the World Health Organization's Geneva headquarters, relaying back real-time information on the virus and its spread to the Trump administration, several U.S. and international officials told The Washington Post. President Trump has accused the United Nations' health agency of not clearly communicating early on how big a threat the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic was, in an attempt to protect China. Last week, he said the U.S. will halt funding to the WHO and conduct a review "to assess the WHO's role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus."Caitlin Oakley, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), confirmed to the Post that in January, 16 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employees were at the WHO "working on a variety of programs, including COVID-19 and Ebola." She added that "just because you have Americans embedded in WHO providing technical assistance does not change the information you are getting from WHO leadership. We have learned now that WHO information was incorrect and relied too heavily on China."Officials told the Post that from the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, CDC staffers consulted with their WHO counterparts on the disease, and that CDC Global Disease Detection Operations Center Director Ray Arthur has participated in daily "incident management" calls, sharing information gleaned from WHO officials. That information is sent to HHS via telephone calls and written reports, one official said.Sensitive information, including details on actions the WHO is planning on taking, was shared in a secure facility at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, the official told the Post, with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar among those receiving updates in the early days of the outbreak. Read more at The Washington Post.More stories from theweek.com What do animals think? A parade that killed thousands? The new coronavirus may be mutating to a less deadly form
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| Taiwan virus cases jump after ship visit, Palau says not the source Posted: 20 Apr 2020 03:10 AM PDT  Taiwan reported 22 new coronavirus cases on Sunday, almost all of them sailors who were on a navy visit to the small Pacific islands state of Palau, which said there was "little chance" it was the source of the infection. Taiwan's government on Sunday said 700 navy personnel were being quarantined and tested and there were 24 positive cases altogether. Of those, three cadets had been to Palau, one of only 15 countries to maintain formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, and one of the last states in the world yet to report a coronavirus outbreak.
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| How MI5 is adapting to fight coronavirus Posted: 19 Apr 2020 11:54 PM PDT  The head of MI5 speaks to the BBC as he steps down after seven years leading the Security Service.
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| China accused of discriminating against Africans as part of coronavirus fight Posted: 20 Apr 2020 05:03 AM PDT  Ambassadors to Beijing and others say Africans have been harassed, denied basic services and even evicted despite adhering to mitigation guidelines.
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| Cleaning wipes are hard to find—here's where you can still buy them Posted: 20 Apr 2020 05:01 PM PDT  Cleaning wipes are hard to find online, but you can still buy them at retailers like Staples, Target, and Office Depot.
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| Mexico City Hospitals at Near Full Capacity as Virus Spreads Posted: 19 Apr 2020 10:05 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Hospitals in Mexico City are nearing saturation point after they received 100 more Covid-19 patients requiring intubation in just two days, newspaper El Norte reported, citing Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum.Of the city's 16 municipalities, the most affected is Iztapalapa. The General Hospital there is at capacity and is turning away patients, Sheinbaum said. As more people are redirected to the two other hospitals in the same neighborhood, they're also now full. The city, which is home to 8.8 million people, had 2,299 cases as of yesterday and 178 deaths. The country reported 650 deaths and 7,497 confirmed cases.Mexico was slow to implement measures in response to the coronavirus outbreak. Less than a month ago, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was posting videos of himself surrounded by children, and urging citizens to go out and visit restaurants. The country has now started to react. While it says it has tested more people, Mexico's ratio of deaths to confirmed cases is the highest in Latin America, suggesting it's not doing enough in identifying cases.While Mexico has fewer confirmed cases per capita than other countries in the region that are at the same stage of the outbreak, its ratio of deaths to population is expanding at a similar rate. U.S. President Donald Trump has promised to send the country another 1,000 ventilators by the end of the month, Lopez Obrador said on his Twitter account on Friday.Hospitals in Mexico City have now intubated 468 patients, El Norte reported. The National Institute for Respiratory Diseases, the main center for Covid-19 treatment, has 70, a record. Sheinbaum urged Mexicans to stay in their homes.Mexico Warns No. 2 TV Network After Anchor Attacks Health CzarFor 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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| AOC says she won't vote for interim coronavirus relief bill in its current reported form Posted: 20 Apr 2020 10:14 AM PDT  Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doesn't plan to throw her support behind the interim coronavirus relief package congressional leaders have been negotiating for nearly two weeks that is expected to have a price tag of roughly half a trillion dollars.Ms Ocasio-Cortez said while she has not seen any draft legislation of the follow-up package to the $2.2trn so-called CARES Act from March, she is not inclined to vote in favour of it.
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| 35 Ways to Use Overripe Bananas That Aren't Banana Bread Posted: 20 Apr 2020 10:55 AM PDT |
| North Korean defectors, experts question zero virus claim Posted: 19 Apr 2020 06:11 PM PDT  As a doctor in North Korea during the SARS outbreak and flu pandemic, Choi Jung Hun didn't have much more than a thermometer to decide who should be quarantined. Barely paid, with no test kits and working with antiquated equipment, if anything, he and his fellow doctors in the northeastern city of Chongjin were often unable to determine who had the disease, even after patients died, said Choi, who fled to South Korea in 2012. Local health officials weren't asked to confirm cases or submit them to the central government in Pyongyang, Choi said in an interview with The Associated Press.
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| F-16 fighter intercepted even more Russian jets 'overflying' a US warship, NATO says Posted: 20 Apr 2020 12:37 PM PDT  After Russian jets flew over a US warship, NATO said a F-16 fighter "conducted a professional intercept and left the scene"
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| Coronavirus to impoverish millions of children in Middle East: UNICEF Posted: 20 Apr 2020 05:57 PM PDT |
| Senators propose a $500 billion rescue package Posted: 20 Apr 2020 01:04 PM PDT  A U.S. Senate Republican and a Democrat proposed a $500 billion rescue package for state and municipal governments on Monday, as it became increasingly clear that the next coronavirus relief bill would not include money for reeling local authorities.
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| Six months out, here's where the 2020 race between Trump and Biden stands Posted: 20 Apr 2020 05:31 AM PDT  First Read is your briefing from "Meet the Press" and the NBC Political Unit on the day's most important political stories and why they matter.
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| Trump administration will require nursing homes to report Covid-19 cases Posted: 19 Apr 2020 05:50 PM PDT  "It's important that patients and their families have the information that they need, and they need to understand what's going on in the nursing home," CMS Administrator Seema Verma said.
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