| In Trump-Cuomo spat on coronavirus, the gloves come off Posted: 17 Apr 2020 10:46 AM PDT  The New York governor, who has been reluctant to engage with Trump during the crisis, turned the president's criticisms back on him.
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| Doctors who contract coronavirus prepare for the worst, and return to work in fear after recovering Posted: 17 Apr 2020 03:29 AM PDT  Amidst the coronavirus pandemic, emergency room workers are encountering a harsh new reality, often going from caregiver to patient when they contract the virus themselves.
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| Hong Kong activists arrested over last year's democracy rallies Posted: 18 Apr 2020 03:03 PM PDT  Police in Hong Kong carried out a sweeping operation against high-profile democracy campaigners on Saturday, arresting 15 activists on charges related to massive protests that rocked the Asian financial hub last year. Among those targeted was 72-year-old media tycoon Jimmy Lai, founder of anti-establishment newspaper Apple Daily, who was arrested at his home. The group also included former lawmakers Martin Lee, Margaret Ng, Albert Ho, Leung Kwok-hung, Au Nok-hin and current lawmaker Leung Yiu-chung.
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| Jeff Bezos Buys a Fourth Apartment in a Luxe Manhattan Building Posted: 17 Apr 2020 02:01 PM PDT  It seems the Amazon CEO has plans to create a multi-floor dream home overlooking Madison Square Park
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| Pakistan lifts limit on mosque congregations as Muslim holy month approaches Posted: 18 Apr 2020 08:08 AM PDT |
| 25 years after Oklahoma City bombing, anxiety remains high Posted: 16 Apr 2020 08:52 PM PDT  In the 25 years since a truck bomb ripped through a federal building in downtown Oklahoma City and killed 168 people, the United States has suffered through foreign wars, a rise in mass shootings and a much deadlier act of terror, the Sept. 11 attacks. Ordinarily, survivors and victims' families would gather Sunday at the memorial where the Alfred P. Murrah Building once stood to pay tribute to the lives that were lost and tragically altered, as they have every year since the bombing. Instead, the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum will offer a pre-recorded video that will air online and on TV and will include the reading of the names of everyone killed followed by 168 seconds of silence.
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| Trump blasts new coronavirus message: 'LIBERATE' swing states that have Democratic governors Posted: 17 Apr 2020 10:30 AM PDT  President Trump fired off a series of tweets Friday that appeared to encourage citizens in states protesting strict coronavirus lockdown orders to "LIBERATE" themselves from their governors.
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| Gifts to Thank Health Care Workers for Their Hard Work Posted: 18 Apr 2020 11:55 AM PDT |
| Mexico Downgraded to Baa1 by Moody’s on Weak Growth Outlook Posted: 17 Apr 2020 02:35 PM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Mexico received a long-anticipated downgrade by Moody's Investors Service after a year of economic contraction and persistent uncertainty.The nation's sovereign debt was downgraded one notch to Baa1 with a negative outlook, the rating firm said in a statement. Mexico has held a solid A3 investment-grade rating since 2017, but Moody's lowered the country's outlook from stable to negative in June 2019."Mexico's medium term economic growth prospects have materially weakened," analyst Ariane Ortiz-Bollin wrote in the decision. "The continued deterioration in Pemex's financial and operational standing is eroding the sovereign's fiscal strength."Moody's also cut Pemex's rating two notches to Ba2, well into junk levels, fueling concerns that the state oil company's bonds could be in line for a forced sell-off. The outlook on Pemex's rating remains negative.The decision follows a downgrade by Fitch Ratings Inc. on Wednesday to BBB-, the lowest investment grade score, and a downgrade by S&P Global Ratings on March 26 to BBB.Mexico has been in a precarious position since the election of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in 2018. He canceled an airport project in Mexico City before even assuming office, buffeting markets and ushering in a year and a half of persistent uncertainty that has weighed on the country's economic prospects. In 2019, Mexico's gross domestic product contracted 0.1%, the product of a dismal investment climate domestically and global trade uncertainties.Mexico's Finance Ministry sought to downplay the rating cut."The institutional and economic foundations of our country are solid," the ministry said in a statement. "In their evaluations, the rating agencies reiterate that the country has a highly credible and prudent fiscal policy record."Additional pressure was put on the sovereign rating by state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos, better known as Pemex. While the company doesn't have an official government debt guarantee, investors worried that an effort to support the firm with continuous capital injections could undermine Mexico's fiscal position.Still, Lopez Obrador's government staved off a downgrade by defying market expectations and maintaining fiscal prudence. The government posted a primary budget surplus in 2019, only the third time Mexico has done so in a decade.But in the lead up to the downgrade, Mexican markets got hammered by a slide in global oil prices and fears of a continued spread of the coronavirus.(Updates with Finance Ministry comments in seventh 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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| Tens of thousands defy Bangladesh lockdown for imam's funeral Posted: 17 Apr 2020 05:44 PM PDT  Tens of thousands of people defied a nationwide coronavirus lockdown in Bangladesh on Saturday to attend the funeral of a top Islamic preacher, even as authorities battle a surge in virus cases. Police had agreed with the family of Jubayer Ahmad Ansari, that only 50 people would attend the funeral in the eastern town of Sarail because of the risk of spreading the disease. Aide to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Shah Ali Farhad, also said more than 100,000 were present.
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| Ecuador's death rate soars as fears grow over scale of coronavirus crisis Posted: 17 Apr 2020 03:09 PM PDT  Mortalities in one province leap from 3,000 to 11,000 in six weeks, with health and mortuary services overwhelmed New data suggests that Ecuador's coronavirus toll may be much higher than previously indicated, after figures revealed a massive jump in deaths in the province at the centre of the country's devastating outbreak.Since the beginning of March six weeks ago, 10,939 people have died in Guayas province, which includes Ecuador's largest city, Guayaquil, according to figures released late on Thursday.The region would usually see about 3,000 deaths in a six-week period, with the new figures suggesting that the local death rate has almost quadrupled.In Ecuador as a whole, coronavirus has been confirmed as the cause of only 421 deaths, and is suspected in a further 675, but interior minister María Paula Romo said the true number was probably much higher."The number of deaths is totally out of the ordinary," she told the Guardian.Ecuador has been one of worst-affected countries in Latin America, overwhelming medical and mortuary services in Guayaquil, where grieving families have been forced to live alongside corpses of loved ones or abandon them in the street."We've wanted to be open about the statistics for deaths to show a more complete panorama," Romo said, adding that the full statistics would explain "why the funeral services and cemeteries simply could not cope in recent days in Guayaquil and Guayas".The crisis in Ecuador's commercial capital has become a warning to Latin America, where many countries have poor health services and high inequality.Last week, authorities in Guayaquil started handing out thousands of cardboard coffins and created a helpline for families who need corpses to be removed from their homes.Nearly 70% of Ecuador's coronavirus cases have been concentrated in Guayas province, which had 5,777 of the national total of 8,450 cases on Friday.Authorities said nearly 30,000 coronavirus tests had been administered in the country. There are plans to increase capacity to 1,400 tests a day.However, some regional authorities say the death toll will continue to rise. Andrés Guschmer, a Guayaquil councillor who has been leading the fight against the virus in the city, has predicted the number of people infected will exceed 35,000.
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| Cuomo says New York is 'past the plateau' as coronavirus hospitalizations continue to fall Posted: 18 Apr 2020 10:56 AM PDT  Despite the good news, another 540 New Yorkers died as a result of the virus on Saturday, and 2,000 more were admitted to hospitals in the state.
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| Italy's daily coronavirus death toll lowest since April 12 Posted: 18 Apr 2020 09:16 AM PDT  Deaths from the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy rose by 482 on Saturday, the lowest daily increase since April 12, while the number of new cases was stable at 3,491, the Civil Protection Agency said. The death toll had risen by 575 on Friday, up from 525 the day before, with 3,493 new cases recorded.
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| Landlords are soliciting sex in exchange for rent, advocates say Posted: 17 Apr 2020 02:41 PM PDT  "Landlord coercion has always been a reality, but we've never seen anything like this," Jabola-Carolus said.
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| John Kerry: New Trump environmental rules will 'kill more Americans' Posted: 17 Apr 2020 04:56 AM PDT  Former Secretary of State John Kerry charged Thursday that the Trump administration was using the coronavirus pandemic as a cover to weaken key environmental regulations that will "kill more Americans."
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| Coronavirus: Mother puts sign on daughter’s back while out shopping to avoid strangers’ judgement Posted: 17 Apr 2020 10:13 AM PDT  A single mother fearing judgement for taking her five-year-old daughter shopping with her during the coronavirus pandemic has come up with a creative solution to avoid criticism from strangers.In an attempt to make people aware of her reasons for taking her daughter shopping, MaryAnn Fausey Resendez shared a photo of her daughter with a sign on her back explaining her situation to strangers.
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| Asia virus latest: China revises death toll, Duterte threatens crackdown Posted: 17 Apr 2020 08:24 AM PDT  The Chinese city where the coronavirus first emerged raised its death toll by 50 percent to a total of 3,869. The revision came as a growing chorus of world leaders suggested China had not been entirely open about the full domestic impact of the virus. The additional deaths in Wuhan were cases that were "mistakenly reported" or missed entirely, according to the official announcement.
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| 'I pray to God it never happens again': US gulf coast bears scars of historic oil spill 10 years on Posted: 18 Apr 2020 07:36 AM PDT  The Deepwater Horizon devastated the ecology and economy from Texas to Florida but BP-funded recovery programs are ongoing and the sector is a big employerWhen the explosion ripped through the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, Leo Linder was standing in his living quarters in his underwear. He suddenly found himself facing a fellow rig worker in what had been a separate room because the force of the explosion had blown the walls away.Linder wasn't to know it at the time but the blast was to trigger the worst environment disaster in US history, with the BP operation spewing more than 4.9m barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, fouling hundreds of miles of shoreline from Texas to Florida, decimating wildlife and crippling local fishing and tourism industries.The spill also had a human cost, with 11 workers dying in the disaster. One of them, Gordon Jones, had relieved Linder around an hour before the explosion. "He said, 'What the hell are you doing, go home,'" Linder said. "In many ways he saved my life. The guilt from surviving, as well as the damage done, still gnaws at me. It kills me."The 10th anniversary of the disaster, which began on 20 April 2010, marks a period of devastation and partial recovery, with billions of dollars extracted from BP to aid a clean-up that is still under way. Projects to replenish damaged oyster-catching areas and restore degraded marshland are ongoing. An enduring image of the spill was a brown pelican, the state bird of Louisiana, struggling in oily gunk. But a project to restore Queen Bess island, a crucial rookery for thousands of the birds, is only now nearing completion.The recovery has been patchy, with some businesses unable to recover and some people forced to move away."It was a bit like a bad dream," said Albertine Kimble, a retiree who has spent the past two decades in Carlisle, a small town south of New Orleans. "It was impending doom, it affected the fisheries and the birds. It was even more depressing than Hurricane Katrina and that flooded my house."Kimble has had to raise her house twice on stilts due to the threat of flooding in an area prone to storms and coastal erosion accelerated by the climate crisis. The process has also been worsened by the oil and gas industry's practice of forging canals through wetlands, which has introduced corrosive salt water. The nearby town of Pointe à la Hache was turned into a "ghost town" as fishing opportunities vanished, Kimble said."It was a bit like the coronavirus, just dead," she said. "I don't think it's recovered, to tell you the truth."The fishing industry is a major constituent of life in southern Louisiana and shutting down the ability to catch fish, oysters and shrimp was a major blow to communities. Many of the fishermen and women used their boats to help the clean-up effort by deploying booms and spreading oil dispersant.Even after the Gulf was declared safe to fish in again, crews initially reported pulling in smaller catches of oddly deformed fish with oozing sores. Dolphins started dying in record numbers, tuna and amberjack developed deformities to their heart and other organs. Scientists have also found lingering problems within the web of marine life.Recent research by the University of Florida found the richness of species in the Gulf has declined by more than a third due to direct and indirect impacts of the spill. A separate study of 2,500 individual fish from 91 species by the University of South Florida found oil exposure in all of them.Many of the species are popular types of seafood. The extent of the exposure has startled researchers."We were quite surprised that among the most contaminated species was the fast-swimming yellowfin tuna as they are not found at the bottom of the ocean where most oil pollution in the Gulf occurs," said lead author Erin Pulster, a researcher at the university's college of marine science.The seafood industry lost nearly $1bn, while house prices in the region declined by as much as 8% for at least five years, according to a report by the conservation group Oceana."It was an entire Gulf of Mexico-wide event," said Tracey Sutton, a marine scientist at Nova Southeastern University. told Oceana. "Nobody was ready for this scale of pollution. As far as we know, the actual impact of the spill is not over yet."Deepwater Horizon exploded 40 miles off the coast and shot out oil that proved devilishly difficult to clean from the nooks and crannies of Louisiana's marshland. An initial attempt to cap the spill was unsuccessful, necessitating the drilling of a secondary relief well to stem the flow. It took four months to completely stop the gushing oil.In all, BP paid out about $65n in compensation, legal fees and clean-up costs, which includes billions for affected states. A judge ruled the petrochemical giant was "grossly negligent" in the lead-up to the disaster. Subcontractors Transocean and Halliburton were "negligent", the judge said.The payment of the compensation money adds to the complex relationship states like Louisiana, which bore the brunt of the spill, have with the oil industry. The industry caused an environmental and societal catastrophe along the coast and is contributing towards the climate crisis that threatens more and more of the state with inundation each year.But the compensation paid has helped fund various coastal conservation projects and oil and gas remain major, and largely popular, employers in the region. Linder was only on Deepwater Horizon because the pay was four times the $28,000 a year he was earning as an English teacher."I don't think anyone realized right off the bat we'd have this unprecedented natural disaster," said Chip Kline, an assistant to Governor John Bel Edwards and chairman of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA)."During the spill there were some intense moments with BP but in Louisiana we have an economy largely driven by oil and gas; it employs a lot of Louisiana residents. We try to strike a balance."A decade on, with an incomplete recovery, coastal Gulf communities face a Trump administration that is attempting to reverse many of the safety-based regulations imposed after the oil spill. Residents are hoping this won't lead to a repeat."It made me sick to the stomach thinking about all the oil out there in the beautiful Gulf of Mexico," said Kimble. "I hope and pray to God it never happens again."
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| To know the real number of coronavirus cases in the US, China, or Italy, researchers say multiply by 10 Posted: 17 Apr 2020 05:11 AM PDT  Nations with severe outbreaks may only be confirming around 10% of coronavirus cases, research suggests.
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| New York Governor sounds optimistic note as coronavirus numbers improve Posted: 18 Apr 2020 09:20 AM PDT  Cuomo's cautiously upbeat report at a daily briefing came as the daily death toll across the state, the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States, dropped to 540 on April 17, down from 630 a day earlier and the lowest in more than two weeks. The governor said total hospitalizations of patients being treated for COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus, came to 16,967, a drop of more than 1,300 over the past three days. "If you look at the past three days, you could argue that we are past the plateau and we're starting to descend which would be very good news," Cuomo said.
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| Escaped prisoners caught in other state after homeless center recognizes them Posted: 17 Apr 2020 10:22 PM PDT  A Wisconsin prison kitchen employee accused of being potential accomplice; more arrests expected.
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| Trump Hijacks Dr. Deborah Birx’s Coronavirus Presentation Posted: 18 Apr 2020 04:01 PM PDT  During her presentation at the White House COVID-19 briefing on Saturday, Dr. Deborah Birx was cruising along until she waded into one of President Donald Trump and the GOP's sorest spots: the Chinese government's apparent undercounting of coronavirus casualties. As Birx, the White House's coronavirus coordinator, explained a slide showing COVID-19 deaths per capita for various countries, China's was marked with an asterisk at the very bottom.Trump, standing on the sidelines, couldn't help but interject. "Excuse me, does anybody really believe this number?" he said, interrupting an apparently startled Birx—who then wheeled around, smiled, and coolly explained she put China's number on the chart to demonstrate "how unrealistic this could be."Though Birx tried to move on, Trump still couldn't keep quiet. He soon interrupted her again, to make a similar point, this time on the numbers shown for Iran. "Does anyone really believe that number?" Trump asked again. "You see what's going on over there." He then asked to return to the previous slide and walked over to the screen, hovering and pointing incredulously to China and Iran's numbers.The moment was a fitting one for Saturday's roughly 70-minute briefing, which was absent familiar figures like Vice President Mike Pence and Dr. Anthony Fauci.Trump did the lion's share of the talking, veering between lambasting Democratic politicians and the media—in particular New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman—and embracing comfortable topics. He repeatedly mentioned a phone call with unnamed world leaders who, he said, had offered effusive praise for his handling of the outbreak.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Royal Caribbean, Celebrity halt cruises through June 11; Carnival, Princess cancel through June Posted: 16 Apr 2020 08:51 PM PDT  Royal Caribbean and Celebrity Cruises have extended their sailing suspension through June 11 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
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| An island off the coast of Estonia has been labeled 'corona island' after half of its population is presumed to have contracted COVID-19 Posted: 17 Apr 2020 12:17 PM PDT  COVID-19 cases emerged after an Italian volleyball team came to the island to play a match in front of 1,000 people.
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| Coronavirus forced schools online, but many students didn't follow Posted: 17 Apr 2020 10:33 AM PDT  Teachers across the U.S. report their attempts at distance learning are failing to reach large numbers of students.
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| 44 jihadists found dead in Chad prison: prosecutor Posted: 18 Apr 2020 03:09 PM PDT  N'Djamena (AFP) - A group of 44 suspected members of Boko Haram, arrested during a recent operation against the jihadist group, have been found dead in their prison cell, apparently poisoned, Chad's chief prosecutor announced Saturday. Speaking on national television, Youssouf Tom said the 44 prisoners had been found dead in their cell on Thursday. The dead men were among a group of 58 suspects captured during a major army operation around Lake Chad launched by President Idriss Deby Itno at the end of March.
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| 10 nurses were suspended from a California hospital for refusing to treat coronavirus patients without N95 masks Posted: 17 Apr 2020 03:03 AM PDT  The nurses at Providence St. John's Medical Center in Santa Monica started to make the demands after a colleague tested positive for the coronavirus.
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| Turkey's coronavirus cases overtake Iran, highest in Middle East Posted: 18 Apr 2020 10:46 AM PDT  Turkey's confirmed coronavirus cases have risen to 82,329, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Saturday, overtaking neighbouring Iran for the first time to register the highest total in the Middle East. An increase of 3,783 cases in the last 24 hours also pushed Turkey's confirmed tally within a few hundred of China, where the novel coronavirus first emerged. Koca said 121 more people have died, taking the death toll to 1,890.
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| China announces jump in death toll in pandemic's original epicenter Posted: 17 Apr 2020 05:01 AM PDT  Rumors of more victims in China have been fueled by pictures of long lines of people waiting to collect ashes of cremated relatives.
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| Hong Kong: High-profile democracy activists arrested Posted: 18 Apr 2020 04:41 AM PDT  A media tycoon and a number of lawmakers are among those arrested over last year's mass protests.
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| Mexico’s Pemex Has Too Much Fuel and Nowhere to Store It All Posted: 18 Apr 2020 04:00 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Mexico's Pemex has too much gasoline and nowhere to store it, potentially racking up significant ship fees as demand wanes because of the fast-spreading coronavirus.A lack of storage capacity in Mexico is forcing the state-owned oil company to leave its fuel purchases in ships off the coast of Mexico, according to three people familiar with the situation and ship-tracking data. Now as much as 3 million barrels of refined products are sitting in tankers off of Mexico's coast.Mexico has been late to experience the demand slump that has hit other nations because President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador initially refused to enact stringent measures in response to the coronavirus pandemic. But now sales have fallen between 40% and 50% at some of Mexico's biggest privately-owned gas stations in the past two weeks, according to three major fuel importers and retailers in Mexico, who asked to remain anonymous because the information is private.The squeeze is especially tough for Pemex, whose bonds were cut to junk by Moody's Corp. on Friday after 15 years of oil production declines and losses that almost doubled last year. Pemex's debt load is the highest of any oil major. With Pemex's six refineries operating at less than 30% of their capacity, it imports about 65% of Mexico's gasoline needs, mostly from the U.S. The country was American refiners' biggest customer, bringing in about 500,000 barrels a day last year.Pemex didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.Last December, Mexico's Energy Ministry changed regulations that would have gradually raised the country's minimum fuel inventory requirement, which is currently set at five days for gasoline and diesel. Pemex has fuel storage capacity for about three to five days.Heavy costsThe current cost of holding a cargo in a ship off major Mexico ports past the delivery date, known as demurrage, is $25,000 a day, according to shipping rates provided to Bloomberg by a person familiar with the market.There are at least six tankers carrying fuel anchored near the port of Pajaritos on Mexico's east coast, while several more tankers are waiting at the ports of Tuxpan, Altamira and Dos Bocas, according to ship-tracking data, and two of the people.One tanker, the British Seafarer, has been anchored near Pajaritos for a month because there's no demand, or storage space, for its cargo of regular gasoline, said one of the people.Demand slumpMexico's gasoline demand has fallen by about 60% and diesel 35% in the first half of April, according to a preliminary study by Onexpo, the national fuel retailer association. In some metropolitan areas sales have been reduced by as much as 70% because of social distancing to combat the coronavirus pandemic, Onexpo said. In rural areas, the drop is less pronounced, at about 30%, since diesel is still necessary for agricultural machinery and product transport.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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| Why Amy Klobuchar Is the Front-runner in the Democratic Veepstakes Posted: 17 Apr 2020 12:32 PM PDT  In normal times, the vice presidency is not supposed to be worth a warm bucket of, um, spit. But these are not normal times.A global plague has shut down much of American society. The virus is particularly deadly to the elderly, and the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee will turn 78 later this year. In November, voters will want more than anything a VP who is ready on a moment's notice to lead the country out of a crisis. So the Democratic veepstakes is suddenly much more important than it otherwise would be.Joe Biden has pledged to name a woman as his running mate, and he has indicated that he would very much like that woman to be an African American. Stacey Abrams checks both boxes, and she is auditioning for the job. But while she might excite the Democratic base, a failed gubernatorial candidate who has never held a public office more powerful than state legislator obviously has no chance of getting the nod during the present pandemic. Maybe the coronavirus will, against all odds, abate in the coming months. But it would be an act of political insanity for a geriatric presidential nominee to select a former state legislator as his running mate under the current circumstances.If Biden wants his VP to be a black woman, then, he is left with only one real choice: Kamala Harris. While the California senator has three years of experience as a senator and six years more as her state's attorney general, her presidential campaign was a disaster, doomed by vacillation and equivocation on important matters of policy. She proved herself capable of delivering scripted attacks during debates, but her most famous such attack came at Biden's expense: She hit him on his past opposition to forced busing, practically calling him a racist. That would be difficult, to say the least, for her to explain away were Biden to choose her. It shouldn't be an insurmountable obstacle, and she still makes sense on paper. But her primary performance failed to generate much enthusiasm among Democrats, and her indecisiveness made her seem unready to step up in a crisis.What about Elizabeth Warren? If Biden wants ideological balance on the ticket, the senator from Massachusetts makes the most sense. But does he really need ideological balance?For most of the left, Biden's pledges to lower the Medicare-eligibility age to 60, establish a public option for health care, and defeat Donald Trump will be enough. Bernie Sanders's most alienated, angry, hardcore supporters are not going to turn out because of Warren; they hate her just as much as they hate Biden. The greater number of 2016 Sanders voters who didn't turn out for Hillary Clinton in key Midwestern states could be swayed by Warren, but my hunch is that they were turned off more by Clinton's persona than her ideology, and it's hard to see how Warren would connect with them on a cultural level. More importantly, Warren's pledges to radically transform the nation's economy could scare away the moderate suburbanites who powered Democrats' successful 2018 effort to retake the House — and Biden really can't afford to lose those voters in 2020.All of which suggests that a relatively moderate woman from the Midwest would make much more sense as Biden's VP.Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer has gotten a lot of attention in recent weeks, but a fair amount of it has been negative. Whitmer only has one year of experience as governor, and voters may come to view Michigan's especially stringent lockdown restrictions as arbitrary and excessive in the coming months. She seems like a long-shot for the second spot on the national ticket.The darkhorse VP nominee from the Midwest is Tammy Baldwin, who has been a senator from the potentially decisive, perpetually polarized swing state of Wisconsin for the last seven years, and won re-election in 2018 by eleven points even as GOP governor Scott Walker lost his bid for a fourth term by just one point. The existence of Baldwin–Walker voters, plus the fact that Baldwin was the first openly gay women in Congress, must be attractive to Democrats. The major drawback is that Baldwin has never endured the national spotlight.That leaves just one name: Amy Klobuchar, the Minnesota senator who is still the leading contender for the job. She won't scare away crucial suburban voters the way that Warren would and Harris might. She is serving her 14th year in the Senate, so she has experience, and having run for the presidency this cycle, she has survived the scrutiny of a national campaign.There are other senators Biden could select, of course: Tammy Duckworth of Illinois is a veteran and a Purple Heart recipient. Catherine Cortez-Masto of Nevada makes a fair amount of sense if Biden decides his path to victory depends more on the Southwest than on Wisconsin.But neither Duckworth, Cortez-Masto, nor Baldwin has been tested on a national stage the way Klobuchar was. The Minnesota senator was far from flawless during the primaries, and she had some (literally) shaky performances. But she also proved herself more than capable of knifing an earnest and smooth-talking Indiana politician on the debate stage when it counted, a skill that might come in handy this fall.Biden has four months to make a final decision, but at the moment Klobuchar remains his most logical pick.
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| My father is a top virologist who believes the coronavirus vaccines won't be ready for distribution until 2021 — here's why Posted: 18 Apr 2020 06:00 AM PDT  "SARS-CoV2 vaccines will not be realistically available for another 12-18 months. And even then, we must be lucky every step of the way."
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| UK tells doctors to treat COVID-19 patients without full-length gowns due to shortage: report Posted: 17 Apr 2020 10:33 AM PDT  British healthcare staff have been advised to treat COVID-19 patients without full-length protective gowns due to shortages of equipment, the Guardian newspaper reported on Friday. Health minister Matt Hancock told a committee of lawmakers earlier that Britain was "tight on gowns" but had 55,000 more arriving on Friday and was aiming to get the right equipment where it was needed by the end of this weekend. The Guardian reported that with hospitals across England set to run out of supplies within hours, Public Health England had changed guidelines which stipulated full-length, waterproof surgical gowns should be worn for high-risk hospital procedures.
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| Every deportation flight from the U.S. is an 'alarm bell' as Central American countries brace for coronavirus Posted: 18 Apr 2020 10:49 AM PDT  Central American countries are on edge as deportation flights from the United States arrive in the region with passengers who have tested positive for the novel COVID-19 coronavirus, The Associated Press reports.Because the United States has only tested a limited number of detained immigrants for the virus, there are fears that its spread throughout the U.S. detention centers is much wider than has been reported. Subsequently, that could mean that countries like Guatemala, where more than 1,600 people have returned after being deported from the U.S., could have an unknown number of undetected cases.Earlier this week, Guatemala's Health Minister Hugo Monroy said at least half of all deportees from the U.S. tested positive, including many who did not exhibit symptoms, while President Alejandro Giammattei said Friday he was suspending deportation flights after numerous passengers that arrived this week were confirmed to be carrying the virus.Guatemala and other countries like Honduras and El Salvador have instituted quarantine measures, to varying degrees, but there's still a fair amount of worry because of the vulnerable state of their health-care systems. César Ríos, the director of the non-governmental Salvadoran Institute of Migration, said every arriving deportation plane is "an alarm bell" for the region. Dr. Michele Heisler, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan, warned Guatemala "will be overwhelmed" because of the U.S.'s "irresponsible" actions. Read more at The Associated Press.More stories from theweek.com A parade that killed thousands? President Trump might never hold another rally Hong Kong police arrest pro-democracy activists in biggest crackdown since protests began
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| Donald Trump denies US has most coronavirus deaths and says 'strange things are happening' in China Posted: 17 Apr 2020 06:03 PM PDT  President Donald Trump says that "a lot of strange things are happening" regarding the origins of the coronavirus and claims that China has far more deaths than its figures suggest. Mr Trump cast doubt on China's official death toll, which was revised up on Friday. China said 1,300 people who died of the coronavirus in the Chinese city of Wuhan - half the total - were not counted, but dismissed allegations of a cover-up. The US president said on Friday that many more people must have died in China than in the US, which is currently the epicentre of the global pandemic and has reported the largest number of deaths in the world linked to the virus. "We don't have the most in the world deaths," Mr Trump said. "The most in the world has to be China. It's a massive country. It's gone through a tremendous problem with this, a tremendous problem - they must have the most."
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| Black Miami doctor handcuffed while helping homeless during pandemic Posted: 17 Apr 2020 07:46 AM PDT  "Situations like this have escalated into black men being shot all across the country," Dr. Armen Henderson said.
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| Coronavirus: Japan doctors warn of health system 'break down' as cases surge Posted: 18 Apr 2020 04:43 AM PDT  It comes as coronavirus cases in the country surge, leaving its doctors and hospitals stretched.
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| Homeless man posed as CDC employee to steal COVID-19 sample, court docs say Posted: 16 Apr 2020 05:37 PM PDT  The man accused of stealing a coronavirus test sample from Sutter Davis Hospital allegedly impersonated a CDC employee to obtain the specimen, according to court documents obtained by KCRA. According to a motion to deny bail filed by the Yolo County District Attorney's Office, Shaun Moore walked into the hospital posing as a "federal employee from the Center for Disease Control" and gave staff his real name. Moore allegedly said "he was there to pick up a sample of the COVID-19 virus." Get the full story in the video above.
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| Chinese help for virus gets wary reception in France Posted: 17 Apr 2020 09:34 PM PDT  An operation by France's Chinese community to help the diaspora during the coronavirus outbreak by distributing masks, disinfectant and gloves has prompted questions and legal problems for some of its backers. Sceptical of the French government's response to the epidemic, the Chinese embassy, business leaders and ex-pat associations have handed out so-called "COVID kits", masks and other protective equipment to their compatriots. Among the masks given out were the highly sought-after FFP2 type, which in times of critical supply shortages have been reserved for medical personnel on the frontlines of France's coronavirus battle.
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