| Trump says he has evidence coronavirus came from a Chinese lab, but he can't reveal it Posted: 30 Apr 2020 04:29 PM PDT  President Trump said Thursday that he had seen evidence to prove that the coronavirus pandemic had spread from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, but he declined to detail what that evidence was.
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| Records Show Strzok Intervened when FBI Moved to Close Flynn Investigation Due to Lack of ‘Derogatory Information’ Posted: 30 Apr 2020 12:32 PM PDT  New unsealed FBI memos show that the Bureau found "no derogatory information" on former national security adviser Michael Flynn while investigating his alleged Russian contacts, and moved to close their investigation of him in early January 2017 before former FBI agent Peter Strzok intervened, asking to keep the case open.The documents, which were released Thursday by the Department of Justice, show that Flynn was given the codename "Crossfire Razor" and investigated in a spinoff case predicated by the FBI's "Crossfire Hurricane" surveillance of the 2016 Trump campaign — a case in which the infamous Steele dossier played a "central role," according to DOJ inspector general Michael Horowitz's December report.Flynn, who pled guilty to lying to the FBI about Russian contacts in January 2017, has since moved to withdraw his guilty plea, saying he "never lied" to federal investigators. In February, attorney general William Barr asked an outside prosecutor from the office of the U.S. attorney in St. Louis to review the DOJ's handling of Flynn's prosecution. Flynn's defense has argued that the retired Army general was "deliberately set up and framed by corrupt agents at the top of the FBI."But the FBI moved to close the Flynn case on January 4, 2017, after finding that Flynn had "no contact" with a Russian individual whose name is redacted from the release, and that "CROSSFIRE RAZOR was no longer a viable candidate as part of the larger CROSSFIRE HURRICANE umbrella case.""The writer notes that since CROSSFIRE RAZOR was not specifically named as an agent of a foreign power by the original CROSSFIRE HURRICANE predicated reporting, the absence of any derogatory information or lead information from these logical sources reduced the number of investigative avenues and techniques to pursue," the FBI concluded. "Per the direction of FBI management, CROSSFIRE RAZOR was not interviewed as part of the case closing procedure."The FBI's closing communication was filed in the D.C. field office on January 4, 2017. But that same day, Strzok — who interviewed Flynn in the White House later that month on January 23 — texted a redacted individual, apparently Flynn's case agent, to ask "if you havent closed RAZOR, don't do so yet.""Pls keep it open for now," Strzok asked. He then messaged former FBI colleague Lisa Page, with whom he was having an affair, telling her that it was "serendipitously good" that the case was still open."Phew." Page responded.Strzok also implied that James Comey and Andrew McCabe were personally involved in the Flynn case — telling a redacted individual on January 4 that "7th floor involved," an apparent nod to the floor in Bureau headquarters that houses senior FBI leadership.Horowitz faulted the FBI's "entire chain of command" during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on his report in December, saying he was "deeply concerned" over the "many basic and fundamental" mistakes made during the investigation.New documents released Wednesday in the Flynn case show that at least one FBI official — widely judged to be the FBI's former head of counterintelligence Bill Priestap — questioned the basis of the Flynn interview that led to his guilty plea.Further texts released Thursday show Strzok and Page were concerned about the involvement of someone named "Bill.""We'll see, about Bill," Strzok texted Page on January 23, the day before the Flynn interview. " . . . I worry Bill isn't getting the underlying distinction that I think is clear. But maybe I'm wrong."
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| Governor closes all roads into a New Mexico city Posted: 01 May 2020 01:26 PM PDT  Effective immediately, all roads into Gallup, New Mexico, are closed.
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| No arrests after black man shot dead while jogging Posted: 30 Apr 2020 02:06 PM PDT  Ahmaud Arbery's mother says she feels "very discouraged" by the investigation into her son's death.
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| Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin tells tells President Vladimir Putin he has the coronavirus Posted: 01 May 2020 06:48 AM PDT  Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin told President Vladimir Putin on Thursday that he had been diagnosed with the coronavirus and was temporarily stepping down to recover.
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| 30 Easy Side Dishes For Lasagna Posted: 30 Apr 2020 11:46 AM PDT |
| Gov. Cuomo Is Blaming the New York Times for His Own Coronavirus Mistakes Posted: 30 Apr 2020 06:52 PM PDT  New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has an answer for critics who say the state didn't react to the novel coronavirus quickly enough: Blame The New York Times.Over the past several days, the governor has repeatedly used his press conferences to take shots at the self-described "Paper of Record," lumping the publication in with other official organizations that were slow to react to the spread of COVID-19."Where were all the experts?" Cuomo said during a press conference earlier this week. "Where was The New York Times? Where was The Wall Street Journal? Where was all the bugle blowers who should say, 'Be careful, there's a virus in China that may be in the United States.'"On Thursday, the governor got more specific. When asked about his response to critics who said other states were quicker to adopt measures to curb the spread of the virus, Cuomo instead said the paper's editorial writers should be blamed along with other organizations including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that supposedly did not sound the alarms early enough about the dangers of the virus."They didn't write an editorial saying I should close down until after I closed down, right?" he complained. "Where was The New York Times editorial board?" Cuomo continued moments later. "Everybody missed it. Governors don't do global pandemics, that's not in my job description."Either Cuomo didn't actually read the Times' coverage, or he has selective amnesia about the paper's articles and the recommendations in op-eds when contrasted with his own response. Beginning in mid-January, the Times has run multiple stories daily about the spread of the virus, tracing the pandemic from its initial outbreak in Wuhan, China, and chronicling scientists' warnings about the disease and the first cases and deaths in many countries. Later that month, the paper was running at least half a dozen increasingly alarming items per day about the spread of the virus, particularly in Asia, and its effects on global markets.At the time, some of the paper's opinion columnists had a message as well: The threat of the virus is real, and scientists need to be driving policy. In one column that ran on January 23, the same day Wuhan was sealed off from the rest of China by its government, Dr. Saad B. Omer, the director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, warned about the danger of the novel virus. He argued that politicians need to let scientists dictate policy on issues: "border screenings, travel restrictions and potential quarantine have major public health consequences, and they should be driven by science and emerging biological and epidemiological evidence.""We are once again faced with the outbreak of an emerging pathogen with potentially global implications," he wrote. "We don't know how bad it will get. But there is no excuse for not getting ready for the worst. We already know the consequences of inaction."In January, before there were any confirmed known cases in New York, the Times ran at least ten opinion pieces speculating about the dangers of the virus and how the U.S. should react. The editorial board itself warned about the risks of the virus on Jan. 28, saying the U.S. needed to heed the concerns of health experts. And by mid-February, the Times opinion section ran op-eds arguing how "the rapid—sometimes necessarily draconian—response of governments and health authorities has made a dent in transmission."In an email to The Daily Beast, the governor's senior adviser Rich Azzopardi reiterated Cuomo's claim that the paper's editorial board did not call for travel bans or a shutdown order until five days after the governor put New York on "pause.""For all of the Monday morning quarterbacking, it's important to acknowledge the role everyone played, and didn't play," he said. "No one is saying articles weren't written on the topic generally, but the point is, no one—not the experts, not the major health organizations, not the media who covered them, even The New York Times—were sounding the alarm on the potential for thousands of cases in the New York Metropolitan area before any testing confirmed a single case."While there were certainly mixed messages and little outright direction from the U.S. government, New York was still slower to react than other states and countries. Infectious disease experts and doctors urged the closing of schools for days before the state eventually announced such action (Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases said in late February that states should be prepared to close schools). The state government also dragged its feet as top health officials suggested that it was possible that many states would see stay-at-home measures. By the middle of the month, as New York attempted to mount a response to the virus, Cuomo was still feuding with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, declaring, "There's not going to be any 'you must stay in your house' rule" (which he, in effect, reversed course on three days later when he put the state on "pause").And while Cuomo's public approval rating has jumped and he has become a media darling and Democratic Party hero, in the months after the Times' coverage, New York state still lagged behind some of the other localities affected by the coronavirus. Though the state's cases were growing, New York waited until after Washington and California had adopted widespread social-distancing measures to institute similar policies. In public statements, Cuomo attempted to reassure the public by proclaiming that the virus would not hit New York as particularly hard. "When you're saying, what happened in other countries versus what happened here, we don't even think it's going to be as bad as it was in other countries," Cuomo said in early March."New York City as a whole was late in social measures," the city's former deputy health commissioner Isaac B. Weisfuse said in a recent interview. "Any after-action review of the pandemic in New York City will focus on that issue. It has become the major issue in the transmission of the virus."Cuomo's complaints about the press have not, however, reached the level of pettiness displayed daily by President Donald Trump, who continues to use the pandemic as an opportunity to complain about media coverage of his administration. As The Daily Beast reported this week, the president even encouraged his friend and unofficial adviser, Fox News host Sean Hannity, to explore legal action against the paper for its critical coverage.And certainly Cuomo realizes the paper's editorial board and opinion section have become easy punching bags for public figures of all political persuasions.Over the past year several years, the paper's op-ed section has been admonished for serious errors and bizarre editorial decisions. The Times opinion section hired and quickly fired a tech columnist who had a public friendship with a neo-Nazi. Another op-ed columnist was widely ridiculed for tweeting that an American-born Olympic ice skater was an immigrant. Climate-change skeptic Bret Stephens has repeatedly generated controversy from his perch at the Times, from peddling arguments with whiffs of race-science to attempting to get a George Washington University professor reprimanded by his bosses for mean tweets. The editorial board's unprecedented endorsement of two Democratic presidential primary candidates (who both went on to lose without winning a single state) was also widely criticized for its lack of relevance or teeth in a crucial election year. The Times was also far from perfect on the issue of the virus. The opinion section has published several columns downplaying the severity of the virus or suggesting that the measures pushed by top global epidemiologists were useless. But the depth of reporting on the virus on the paper's news side, coupled with the warnings on the opinion side, do not make fair scapegoats for questions about the governor's response to the virus."Public health professionals will also need to work with political leaders to make hard decisions on if or when large events should be canceled, workers should be told to telecommute, schools should change the way they operate or schools should close," the Times opinion section warned in March, weeks before the governor put his state on "pause." Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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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| Kim Jong-un and the brutal North Korea rumour mill Posted: 01 May 2020 09:49 PM PDT  Kim Jong-un is not dead, but that won't stop the rumour mill in future. Here is how it works.
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| If flu deaths were counted like COVID-19 deaths, the worst recent flu season evidently killed 15,620 Americans Posted: 30 Apr 2020 10:34 PM PDT  The U.S. now has more than 63,000 confirmed COVID-19 deaths, and most experts say that's almost certainly an undercount. Still, if you compare that number to the 2017-18 flu season, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates killed 61,000 people, it looks like COVID-19 might be similar to a bad flu — President Trump has made this point, as have many conservative media personalities. But the data so far show that this new coronavirus is much more lethal than the flu, and Dr. Jeremy Samuel Faust has an explanation.Faust, a Harvard Medical School instructor and emergency physician at Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston, wrote in Scientific American that he started wondering about the flu-to-COVID comparisons when it occurred to him that in nearly eight years of hospital work, "I had almost never seen anyone die of the flu." Neither had any of the colleagues he called around the country. So he did some research, and this is what he found:> The 25,000 to 69,000 numbers that Trump cited do not represent counted flu deaths per year; they are estimates that the CDC produces by multiplying the number of flu death counts reported by various coefficients produced through complicated algorithms. These coefficients are based on assumptions of how many cases, hospitalizations, and deaths they believe went unreported. In the last six flu seasons, the CDC's reported number of actual confirmed flu deaths — that is, counting flu deaths the way we are currently counting deaths from the coronavirus — has ranged from 3,448 to 15,620. [Jeremy Faust, Scientific American]So in an apples-to-apples comparison, matching the second week of April's COVID-19 deaths to the worst week of the past seven flu seasons, "the novel coronavirus killed between 9.5 and 44 times more people than seasonal flu," Faust writes. Read his entire essay at Scientific American.More stories from theweek.com The smoke-filled room that could oust Joe Biden 5 scathingly funny cartoons about Mike Pence's unmasked hospital visit Elon Musk declares he's 'selling almost all physical possessions' because he's 'devoting myself to Mars and Earth'
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| New Trump press secretary promises never to lie Posted: 01 May 2020 01:15 PM PDT  Promising "never" to lie and saying she prays for coronavirus victims, new White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany hit a strikingly sunny tone on Friday in her debut press conference. The White House briefing room has symbolized the tempestuous, often outright hostile relationship between the media and President Donald Trump, who has broken with convention to act as his own spokesman -- and lead a relentless campaign of insults against the media. Things got off to a bad start right after Trump was sworn in, when then-chief spokesman Sean Spicer made the laughably false boast that the president attracted the "largest audience to ever witness an inauguration."
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| Biden Has Ties to Univ. of Delaware Board Members Keeping His Archive Secret amid Reade Allegations Posted: 30 Apr 2020 05:15 AM PDT  Some members of the University of Delaware Board of Trustees, which has sole authority over Joe Biden's Senate archive, have close ties to the former vice president, Fox News reported.Calls to make the archive public have grown over the past week as former Biden staffer Tara Reade's allegations of sexual assault, which Reade says occurred in 1993 when Biden was a senator for Delaware, have garnered increasing media coverage. The Biden campaign has denied the allegations.Biden deposited his Senate archive at the University of Delaware in 2012. Initially, the university promised to open the archive two years after Biden's last day in public office. However, in April 2019 hours before Biden announced his presidential campaign, the university decided to keep the archive closed until December 31, 2019 or until Biden retires from public life.The chairman of the university's Board of Trustees is longtime Biden donor John Cochran. In 1996, Cochran bought Biden's home for $1.2 million, shortly after which Biden's son Hunter was hired by MBNA, where Cochran was vice chairman at the time.Board member Terri Kelly, former CEO of W.L. Gore & Associates, donated the maximum legal amount to the Biden presidential campaign in 2019. Carol Ammon, another board member, has given $10,000 to the campaign and related PAC's. Five additional board members have donated upwards of $1,000 to Biden and affiliated PAC's.While the Biden campaign has denied the allegations from Reade, Biden himself has not directly addressed the allegations, including at a virtual town hall on Tuesday on women's issues during which he received the endorsement of Hillary Clinton. Democratic politicians including Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams have up to now backed Biden."I think the [Democratic National Committee] is a sham and their silence around what happened to me as a Democratic staffer is unconscionable," Reade told National Review on Wednesday.
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| Top CDC official says there's 'not a lot of science' to back-up theory that 'farting' spreads coronavirus Posted: 01 May 2020 10:54 AM PDT  Though coronavirus has been found in the fecal matter of some infected people, there's currently no evidence it can spread from feces to a person.
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| Black Georgia man chased and killed while jogging, mom says Posted: 01 May 2020 06:09 AM PDT  Gregory McMichael told police he saw Ahmaud Arbery run by and said he recognized him from recent break-ins.
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| Jordan ends historic arrangement with Israel as West Bank annexation tensions rise Posted: 30 Apr 2020 12:41 PM PDT  Jordan's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ambassador Dhaifallah Al-Fayez, said the additional harvesting period "will end this evening."
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| People of black African origin three times more likely to die of coronavirus than white Britons, study finds Posted: 30 Apr 2020 12:31 PM PDT  People of black African origin are three times more likely to die of coronavirus in the UK than white Britons, analysis by the Institute of Fiscal Studies has shown. A report into the disproportionate Covid-19 death toll among black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people in the UK found deaths among people of black Caribbean origin are 1.8 times those of white British people. Deaths among those of Pakistani heritage are 2.7 times as high, and black African fatalities three times higher. The higher tolls come after predictions that BAME groups should theoretically experience fewer deaths per capita than white Britons because of average age profiles. Although many BAME groups live in major cities such as London and Birmingham, which have higher overall coronavirus death rates, most are younger on average than the population as a whole – in theory making them less vulnerable to the virus.
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| Kroger limiting ground beef, pork purchases in some stores Posted: 01 May 2020 12:41 PM PDT  The world's biggest meat companies, including Smithfield Foods Inc, Cargill Inc, JBS USA and Tyson Foods Inc, have halted operations at about 20 slaughterhouses and processing plants in North America as workers fall ill, stoking global fears of a meat shortage. Earlier this week, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered meat-processing plants to stay open to protect the food supply in the country.
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| Tucker Carlson Guest Shares Maine Governor’s Cellphone Number On the Air Posted: 30 Apr 2020 06:25 PM PDT  Chaos ensued on Thursday night when a guest on Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight shared the private cellphone number of Maine Gov. Janet Mills and asked for the show's millions of viewers to spam her line.Host Tucker Carlson welcomed on restaurant owner Rick Savage ostensibly to talk about Mills' recent decision to extend the state's coronavirus stay-at-home orders until May 31. Savage, who was prepping his restaurant for a May 1 re-opening, insisted that he will defy the orders and open back up on Friday."If you don't like it, take me to court," he exclaimed. "And if they do take me to court, I will save my tax money that I collect this month and I'll use that to find a lawyer."Carlson, who has been a vocal advocate for reversing social distancing restrictions and opening the country back up, applauded Savage while blasting Mills, calling the Democrat "the most incompetent dictatorial governor that I've seen in a long time."Savage, meanwhile, didn't want to just leave it there. Instead, the restaurateur said that he would "love to share Janet Mills' cellphone number with everybody so they can give her a call directly," claiming that the governor has all the government's phone lines shut down.As Savage began reading off the number, Carlson began waving his hands into the camera while yelling: "Wait, wait!" After his guest finished, the Fox News host apologized to Savage for possibly cutting him off before quickly plugging the restaurant and ending the segment, all while Savage continued talking about "starting a revolution." 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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| Dr. Fauci says it's 'doable' to have coronavirus vaccine with hundreds of millions of doses by January Posted: 30 Apr 2020 07:15 AM PDT  Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, believes it's "doable" to have hundreds of millions of doses of a coronavirus vaccine ready by January 2021.Fauci appeared Thursday on Today after Bloomberg reported that a Trump administration program, Operation Warp Speed, aims to speed up development of a COVID-19 vaccine with the goal of having 300 million doses available by January. Asked if this rapid timeline is actually possible, Fauci told Today that he believes it is, explaining that the plan is, as Bloomberg reported, to quickly move to ramp up production of some potential vaccines while they are undergoing trials but before it's clear if they work."We're going to start ramping up production with the companies involved, and you do that at risk," Fauci said. "In other words, you don't wait until you get an answer before you start manufacturing. You, at risk, proactively start making it assuming it's going to work. And if it does, then you could scale up and hopefully get to that timeline." Fauci added of this quick timeline, "I think that is doable, if things fall in the right place." In its report on Operation Warp Speed, Bloomberg noted that "there is no precedent for such rapid development of a vaccine." > "We want to go quickly, but we want to make sure it's safe and it's effective. I think that's doable if things fall in the right place." -Dr. Anthony Facui on the possibility of coronavirus vaccine being widely available by January. pic.twitter.com/SIHeucVuTK> > -- TODAY (@TODAYshow) April 30, 2020More stories from theweek.com The smoke-filled room that could oust Joe Biden 5 scathingly funny cartoons about Mike Pence's unmasked hospital visit The self-inflicted derangement of the conservative intellectuals
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| Trump news: President claims to have saved 'thousands of lives' as he revises down predictions of death toll Posted: 01 May 2020 01:45 PM PDT  Donald Trump's new White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany held her first press briefing on Friday after more than 400 days without a scheduled press briefing by the Trump administration.The last briefing was held by Sarah Sanders in March 2019, though the president has held his own free-wheeling briefings through the coronavirus pandemic and reporters scramble to get statements during Oval Office visits.
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| House Oversight Republicans Urge Democrats to Investigate China’s Influence over WHO Posted: 30 Apr 2020 12:20 PM PDT  Republicans on the House Oversight Committee on Thursday urged Democrats leading the committee to investigate the Chinese government's influence over the World Health Organization.Ranking member Jim Jordan along with five Republican ranking members on oversight subcommittees sent a letter to Democratic Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney calling on Democrats to investigate China's sway over the WHO."The potential misuse of taxpayer dollars is at the heart of the Committee's jurisdiction, and we owe it to the American people to evaluate how the WHO has been spending their hard-earned money," the letter read, noting that American taxpayers are "the single largest contributor to the WHO," contributing many times China's contribution."Notwithstanding this drastic imbalance in funding, the United States should not support organizations that promulgate communist propaganda instead of the facts. Our republic is not obligated to hand money to an entity that espouses ideals of international cooperation while furthering the Chinese government's machinations," the letter continued.The GOP committee members noted Maloney's own statement acknowledging that "the WHO has shortcomings that must be corrected," although she opposed the decision by the Trump administration to suspend U.S. funding of the organization until a review is conducted to assess the WHO's role in "severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus.""In light of such an admission, coupled with multiple media reports of WHO's failures, we request immediate briefings, and hearings next month, on the WHO's relationship with the Community Party of China and its widely criticized response to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis," the Republicans wrote.The WHO also attracted harsh criticism after it praised China for its transparency and willingness to share information regarding the nature and spread of the virus. The Trump administration and U.S. lawmakers have since cast doubt on China's good faith in sharing information about the outbreak and have criticized the WHO for apparently taking the communist country at its word.The GOP lawmakers also commended the president's decision to pause WHO funding temporarily, saying the organization's "inaction and delay undoubtedly cost American lives.""If Democrats were serious about oversight of American tax dollars, they'd investigate the WHO's ties to China. It's no secret that the WHO has been using American tax dollars to peddle Communist China's talking points about COVID-19 for months," A senior Republican aide told National Review. "This practice should offend every American, no matter the party. The United States Congress should lead the way in opposing such propaganda."As of Thursday afternoon, the U.S. has over a million positive cases of the coronavirus, and over 61,700 people have died after being infected.
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| Georgia businesses reopen to early success amid coronavirus pandemic Posted: 01 May 2020 08:51 AM PDT  Exactly one week since Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp began reopening the state's economy, small businesses shared early success stories as customers welcomed their return. But at what cost? Business owners say only time will tell.
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| Prison sentence for 'Hot Pockets' heiress delayed amid coronavirus Posted: 01 May 2020 01:44 PM PDT  Judge denies bid for house arrest but won't have surrender this month, as originally scheduled.
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| Fact Check: CDC has not stopped reporting flu deaths, and this season's numbers are typical Posted: 30 Apr 2020 02:57 PM PDT  A claim that the CDC has stopped tracking flu deaths because the number of deaths is so low is false.
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| Inside an ICE facility in Louisiana, detainees say ICE is depriving them of masks, under-testing for COVID-19, and moving migrants around the country Posted: 01 May 2020 10:49 AM PDT  About 48% of detainees tested for in ICE facilities are positive for COVID-19. Detainees told Business Insider they're not getting basic supplies.
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| Editorial: Tara Reade's allegation that Joe Biden assaulted her demands an independent investigation Posted: 30 Apr 2020 03:43 PM PDT  Believe all women? No, but take serious accusations seriously.
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| You may be required to take a blood test before your next flight Posted: 01 May 2020 06:38 AM PDT  Bad news for needle-phobes: You may soon be required to take a blood test before you're allowed to board a plane.Airlines have been hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic, with passenger traffic down up to 95 percent during the outbreak. As air travel begins to ratchet back up in the coming months, though, the health of passengers is going to be paramount — already a number of airlines are requiring passengers wear masks on board. A new report by Axios suggests measures post-coronavirus could go even further than that, with travelers potentially required "to have your blood tested" via finger-prick "to prove you're in good health before boarding."It would not be a totally unprecedented move. Emirates has already rolled out an on-site "quick blood test" for travelers passing through Dubai International Airport, which returns results within 10 minutes. The blood test, though, doesn't check for "active coronavirus infections," CNN Travel clarifies, but rather for "proteins in the immune system, known as antibodies … Their presence means a person was exposed to the virus and developed antibodies against it." However, such a test would not catch everyone who's just getting sick because in the early days of an infection, antibodies are not yet being produced at a detectable level.Still, blood tests may be one of many changes coming to protect travelers as the country begins to slowly reopen. Other possible changes could include requiring passengers to arrive at the airport four hours early to pass through a "disinfection tunnel" prior to entering the airport, a required proof-of-antibodies certificate, or extreme social distancing measures at boarding gates. Read more about what could be coming for air travelers at Axios.More stories from theweek.com The smoke-filled room that could oust Joe Biden 5 scathingly funny cartoons about Mike Pence's unmasked hospital visit Elon Musk declares he's 'selling almost all physical possessions' because he's 'devoting myself to Mars and Earth'
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| Coronavirus: President Trump’s testing claims fact-checked Posted: 01 May 2020 02:06 AM PDT  President Trump has made several claims about coronavirus testing in the US - is he right?
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| Australian PM says no evidence coronavirus originated in China laboratory, urges inquiry Posted: 30 Apr 2020 05:08 PM PDT  Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who has angered Beijing by calling for a global inquiry into the coronavirus outbreak, said he had no evidence to suggest the disease originated in a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan. U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he was confident the coronavirus may have originated in a Chinese virology lab, but declined to describe the evidence he said he had seen. Morrison said on Friday that Australia had no information to support that theory, and said the confusion supported his push for an inquiry to understand how the outbreak started and then spread rapidly around the world.
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| Woman spots 12-foot-long alligator in South Carolina Posted: 01 May 2020 08:46 AM PDT  The woman was with her dog when she came across this giant beast.
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| Jewish leadership organisation hits out at Sir Keir Starmer after two Labour MPs attend conference call with expelled activists Posted: 30 Apr 2020 08:20 AM PDT  A Jewish leadership organisation has hit out at Sir Keir Starmer after it emerged that two Labour MPs had taken part in a conference call which included activists expelled from the party over alleged anti-Semitism. The Board of Deputies of British Jews has called on the new Labour leader to take "swift and decisive action" after former shadow home secretary Diane Abbott and serving frontbencher Bell Ribeiro-Addy took part in the event. Marie van der Zyl, the Board's president, claimed the pair's actions were a breach of the 10 anti-Semitism pledges that Sir Keir had signed up to during the Labour leadership contest earlier this year. One of the pledges states clearly that any Labour politician or member that campaigns or provides a platform for people suspended or expelled over anti-Semitism should themselves be suspended. In a clear warning to Sir Keir, Ms van der Zyl added: "It is completely unacceptable that Labour MPs, and even ordinary members, should be sharing platforms with those that have been expelled from the Party for anti-Semitism. "We would urge Labour to take swift and decisive action to show that this is a new era, rather than a false dawn."
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| 17 guns, thousands of ammo rounds found at home of suspect in Alabama bike gang murders Posted: 30 Apr 2020 05:25 PM PDT  Tyrone Johnson, 37, was arrested in Nashville in connection to the fatal shootings of two men outside a motorcycle club in Huntsville, Alabama.
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| We found and tested 47 old drugs that might treat the coronavirus: Results show promising leads and a whole new way to fight COVID-19 Posted: 30 Apr 2020 11:26 AM PDT  The more researchers know about how the coronavirus attaches, invades and hijacks human cells, the more effective the search for drugs to fight it. That was the idea my colleagues and I hoped to be true when we began building a map of the coronavirus two months ago. The map shows all of the coronavirus proteins and all of the proteins found in the human body that those viral proteins could interact with.In theory, any intersection on the map between viral and human proteins is a place where drugs could fight the coronavirus. But instead of trying to develop new drugs to work on these points of interaction, we turned to the more than 2,000 unique drugs already approved by the FDA for human use. We believed that somewhere on this long list would be a few drugs or compounds that interact with the very same human proteins as the coronavirus. We were right. Our multidisciplinary team of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, called the QCRG, identified 69 existing drugs and compounds with potential to treat COVID-19. A month ago, we began shipping boxes of these drugs off to Institut Pasteur in Paris and Mount Sinai in New York to see if they do in fact fight the coronavirus. In the last four weeks, we have tested 47 of these drugs and compounds in the lab against live coronavirus. I'm happy to report we've identified some strong treatment leads and identified two separate mechanisms for how these drugs affect SARS-CoV-2 infection. Our findings were published on April 30 in the journal Nature. The testing processThe map we developed and the FDA drug catalog we screened it against showed that there were potential interactions between the virus, human cells and existing drugs or compounds. But we didn't know whether the drugs we identified would make a person more resistant to the virus, more susceptible or do anything at all.To find those answers we needed three things: the drugs, live virus and cells in which to test them. It would be optimal to test the drugs in infected human cells. However, scientists don't yet know which human cells work best for studying the coronavirus in the laboratory. Instead we used African green monkey cells, which are frequently used in place of human cells to test antiviral drugs. They can be readily infected with the coronavirus and respond to drugs very closely to the way human cells do. After infecting these monkey cells with live virus, our partners in Paris and New York added the drugs we identified to half and kept the other half as controls. They then measured the amount of virus in the samples and the number of cells that were alive. If the samples with drugs had a lower virus count and more cells alive compared to the control, that would suggest the drugs disrupt viral replication. The teams were also looking to see how toxic the drugs were to the cells. After sorting through the results of hundreds of experiments using 47 of the predicted drugs, it seems our interaction predictions were correct. Some of the drugs do in fact work to fight the coronavirus, while others make cells more susceptible to infection. It is incredibly important to remember that these are preliminary findings and have not been tested in people. No one should go out and buy these drugs.But the results are interesting for two reasons. Not only did we find individual drugs that look promising to fight the coronavirus or may make people more susceptible to it; we know, at a cellular level, why this is happening.We identified two groups of drugs that affect the virus and they do it two different ways, one of which has never been described. Disrupting translationAt a basic level, viruses spread by entering a cell, hijacking some of the cell's machinery and using it to make more copies of the virus. These new viruses then go on to infect other cells. One step of this process involves the cell making new viral proteins out of viral RNA. This is called translation. When going through the map, we noticed that several viral proteins interacted with human proteins involved in translation and a number of drugs interacted with these proteins. After testing them, we found two compounds that disrupt the translation of the virus.The two compounds are called ternatin-4 and zotatifin. Both of these are currently used to treat multiple myeloma and seem to fight COVID-19 by binding to and inhibiting proteins in the cell that are needed for translation.Plitidepsin is a similar molecule to ternatin-4 and is currently undergoing a clinical trial to treat COVID-19. The second drug, zotatifin, hits a different protein involved in translation. We are working with the CEO of the company that produces it to get it into clinical trials as soon as possible. Sigma receptorsThe second group of drugs we identified work in an entirely different way. Cell receptors are found both inside of and on the surface of all cells. They act like specialized switches. When a specific molecule binds to a specific receptor, this tells a cell to do a specific task. Viruses often use receptors to infect cells.Our original map identified two promising MV cell receptors for drug treatments, SigmaR1 and SigmaR2. Testing confirmed our suspicions. We identified seven drugs or molecules that interact with these receptors. Two antipsychotics, haloperidol and melperone, which are used to treat schizophrenia, showed antiviral activity against SARS-CoV-2. Two potent antihistamines, clemastine and cloperastine, also displayed antiviral activity, as did the compound PB28 and the female hormone progesterone. Remember, all these interactions have so far only been observed in monkey cells in petri dishes.At this time we do not know exactly how the viral proteins manipulate the SigmaR1 and SigmaR2 receptors. We think the virus uses these receptors to help make copies of itself, so decreasing their activity likely inhibits replication and reduces infection.Interestingly, a seventh compound – an ingredient commonly found in cough suppressants, called dextromethorphan – does the opposite: Its presence helps the virus. When our partners tested infected cells with this compound, the virus was able to replicate more easily, and more cells died. This is potentially a very important finding, but, and I cannot stress this enough, more tests are needed to determine if cough syrup with this ingredient should be avoided by someone who has COVID-19. All these findings, while exciting, need to undergo clinical trials before the FDA or anyone else should conclude whether to take or stop taking any of these drugs in response to COVID-19. Neither people nor policymakers nor media outlets should panic and jump to conclusions. Another interesting thing to note is that hydroxychloroquine – the controversial drug that has shown mixed results in treating COVID-19 – also binds to the SigmaR1 and SigmaR2 receptors. But based on our experiments in both labs, we do not think hydroxychloroquine binds to them efficiently.Researchers have long known that hydroxychloroquine easily binds to receptors in the heart and can cause damage. Because of these differences in binding tendencies, we don't think hydroxychloroquine is a reliable treatment. Ongoing clinical trials should soon clarify these unknowns. Treatment sooner rather than laterOur idea was that by better understanding how the coronavirus and human bodies interact, we could find treatments among the thousands of drugs and compounds that already exist.Our idea worked. We not only found multiple drugs that might fight SARS-CoV-2, we learned how and why.But that is not the only thing to be excited about. These same proteins that SARS-CoV-2 uses to infect and replicate in human cells and that are targeted by these drugs are also hijacked by related coronaviruses SARS-1 and MERS. So if any of these drugs do work, they will likely be effective against COVID-22, COVID-24 or any future iterations of COVID that may emerge. Are these promising leads going to have any effect?The next step is to test these drugs in human trials. We have already started this process and through these trials researchers will examine important factors such as dosage, toxicity and potential beneficial or harmful interactions within the context of COVID-19.[The Conversation's most important coronavirus headlines, weekly in a new science newsletter.]
Este artículo se vuelve a publicar de The Conversation, un medio digital sin fines de lucro dedicado a la diseminación de la experticia académica. Lee mas:
Nevan Krogan receives funding from NIH, DARPA and Roche Pharmaceuticals.
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| United is boarding economy passengers first and business class last on all flights to promote social distancing Posted: 01 May 2020 08:06 AM PDT  Among the benefits for economy passengers: they will no longer have to endure the walk past first-class passengers in the exclusive cabin.
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| Stacey Abrams’ Formidable Political Machine Could Be Used Against Her as Biden’s Veep Posted: 30 Apr 2020 01:46 AM PDT  Stacey Abrams is lobbying hard to be Joe Biden's presidential running mate, and she brings to the table an asset few other contenders do: an extensive, battle-hardened organizing apparatus that she can bring to bear on behalf of the Democratic presidential ticket in November.But with that asset comes a liability. The extensive work done on Abrams' behalf by a network of political and nonprofit groups that she founded has raised persistent questions about her use of ostensibly apolitical voter-registration and canvassing outfits to boost her own political profile.The advocacy work and more nonpartisan activities of Abrams' network of nonprofits take place parallel to each other, as required by her groups' varying legal classifications. But their work also bleeds together in notable ways. Her political outfit and its sister dark-money nonprofit share a website and social-media pages, for instance. They also lean heavily on the same cadre of organizations to execute their missions. A Daily Beast analysis of public records shows that two of Abrams' groups, a tax-exempt voter-registration organization and a more aggressive advocacy group, have steered millions of dollars to the same political consultants that helped elect Abrams to the Georgia statehouse and tried to win her the governorship in 2018.The data portray an organizing apparatus that is primed to advance Abrams' political prospects in 2020 regardless of the form they take, but which could force her—and, if she gets her wish, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden—to address questions, albeit many posed by political adversaries, about her use of groups legally bound to remain legally independent and politically neutral.They're largely questions that Abrams and some of her top allies write off as baseless attacks from political opponents. "The organizations founded by Leader Abrams give a voice to marginalized communities and empower people of color and low-income Americans across the country," her spokesperson, Seth Bringman, told The Daily Beast in an emailed statement. "This critical work has been the target of allies of [Georgia Gov.] Brian Kemp and Donald Trump, because they are desperate to hold on to their power, and they know they can only maintain their power if voters and people in this country are not counted. She will not be deterred from her critical work by fishing expeditions and made-up accusations from Kemp and Trump cronies."Publicly and privately, Democrats frequently point to Abrams' organizational prowess as the leading reason that she would be a formidable vice-presidential nominee for Biden. The Georgia Democrat, the thinking goes among some of her closest allies, Democratic Party strategists, and some within Biden's own campaign, would fill in key gaps that the presumptive nominee lacks, particularly with younger voters. Abrams is also considered to be someone who can turn out black voters at a large scale for the general election, a key argument used among some in the party who believe that's the best approach to beating President Donald Trump."When Stacey ran for governor, she mobilized hundreds of thousands of African-American and younger voters to vote for her. That shows just the personal appeal of her and how strong she is with turnout," Freg Yang, Abrams' pollster during the 2018 governor race, told The Daily Beast. "More than a year ago, she knew turnout was going to be important in 2020, based on her own experience in 2018. It makes her even more relevant now given all this uncertainty."Pressure Mounts for Biden to Select a Black Woman as VPNikema Williams, the head of the Georgia Democratic Party, said Abrams and her organizational structure transcend racial, geographic, and socio-economic lines, and can help boost turnout more broadly. "If you speak with progressives, they think she's the most progressive person ever because she connects with them," Williams said. "And if you speak with people that are moderate, they're able to connect with her because she speaks their language as well."When Biden pledged to nominate a female Democrat to be his running mate in March, Abrams again shot to the top of many elected officials' and operatives' lists. At least two high-ranking officials in Biden's campaign have been praising Abrams internally as recently as last month, before her public push for VP ramped up in earnest. Her core draw, in that instance, was a sense that she, and the network she's built, have a broad reach well beyond her home state. But Abrams' network has also faced allegations that it exists primarily to advance her public profile and political agenda. In 2019, the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, a right-leaning watchdog group, filed a complaint to the Internal Revenue Service alleging illicit politicking by Fair Fight Action, a dark-money nonprofit group that Abrams leads."By providing support for an individual's personal political activities," FACT wrote in its IRS complaint, "Fair Fight Action is in violation of the requirement that a social-welfare organization serve general community purposes rather than provide a private benefit to an individual or political group."The group wrote off the complaint at the time as a "bogus attack" from "right-wing hit groups allied with Donald Trump."Similar allegations are at the heart of an investigation by the Georgia Ethics Commission into the activities of another Abrams-founded nonprofit, the New Georgia Project Action Fund, during the 2018 campaign. David Emadi, the commission's executive director and an appointee of Gov. Kemp, Abrams' Republican opponent in 2018, suggested that New Georgia may have illicitly acted as a political committee on Abrams' behalf, an allegation that Abrams and her team have flatly denied.Neither the FACT complaint nor the investigation in Georgia have resulted in findings of wrongdoing by any Abrams group, though the ethics commission said last week that its investigation was still ongoing. As it did with FACT, Abrams' team has largely written it off as politically motivated.After Abrams' 2018 defeat, she alleged that Kemp, Georgia's former secretary of state, used his position to suppress votes that might have swayed the election. After Abrams conceded in mid-November, her campaign donated more than $1 million in leftover funds to Fair Fight Action, which continued litigation and advocacy efforts to address those voter suppression allegations. The group did so under the new leadership of Abrams' former campaign manager.At the time, Fair Fight Action was still officially called the Voter Access Institute. But it amended its corporate structure on Dec. 5, 2018, to reflect its new moniker. It also made a significant change to the group's corporate bylaws: It deleted language saying it would not get involved, "directly or indirectly," in political contests.Just days later, Fair Fight Action began running television ads. And it did so through the same media buyer, Chicago-based AL Media, that the Abrams campaign had been using just weeks earlier. Campaign-finance records show the Abrams campaign had already paid the firm more than $4.7 million. By the end of 2018, Fair Fight Action had steered it an additional $165,000. Federal Communications Commission records show that the same AL Media employee handled media buys for both the nonprofit and the campaign.More recent FCC filings show that AL Media continues to buy ads for Fair Fight Action. So far this year, the group has purchased about $155,000 in broadcast ad time, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, for a pair of ads going after Kemp, whom Abrams has pondered challenging in 2022. AL Media is simultaneously handling ad buys for Fair Count, Abrams' 501(c)(3) charitable group.There's nothing legally problematic with that relationship; such vendors often work for both political entities and nonprofit and advocacy groups, and are free to do so as long as the proper firewalls are in place to ensure that work remains separate. But it underscores how complementary the electoral and apolitical nodes of Abrams' network are.Since 2014, Fair Fight Action has paid more than $2 million to five different vendors that also worked for Abrams' campaign or Georgia Next, her state-level political action committee, including fundraising firm G Strategies, phone-banking vendor Control Point Group, and direct-mail firm Deliver Strategies.During the same time period, Fair Count paid G Strategies for fundraising services as well. In 2014 and 2015, Fair Count and Fair Fight Action paid more than $2.7 million combined to a voter contact and communications firm called Field Strategies. In 2017, a partner at that firm, founded a new consulting firm called New Ground Strategies, which received more than $5.5 million from Abrams' gubernatorial campaign. According to its website, New Ground has worked for years with the New Georgia Project, which Abrams founded and led prior to her gubernatorial run. All told, Abrams' 2018 gubernatorial campaign, her past statehouse campaigns, and Georgia Next paid more than $14.7 million to political vendors that have also worked for one or more of Abrams' nonprofit groups.Do Stacey Abrams and Steve Bullock Want to Make Mitch McConnell President?Even among the nonprofit groups themselves, that division of labor can be difficult to distinguish. Fair Fight Action, for instance, shares a website and a Facebook page with Fair Fight, Abrams' PAC. Both advise that the web properties are joint projects of the PAC and the dark-money group, a rare move for organizations with different legal structures—and different limits on how explicitly political their work can be.The website's donation link directs visitors to the PAC's contribution page. The PAC, in turn, passes along funds to the dark-money group. It's provided about $1.8 million in contributions to Fair Fight Action since last year, and paid it another $2 million in reimbursements for shared overhead and expenseNone of that is inherently problematic from a legal perspective. But the common thread among all parties—the political action committees, the nonprofits, and their vendors—is a drive to promote Abrams, the woman whose drive to enfranchise and turn out communities of color have animated their work for years.Abrams, in turn, is front and center as they carry out that work. Since December, Fair Fight Action has paid tens of thousands of dollars to run scores of Facebook ads promoting its voter registration and turnout activities. Every one of the ads has featured a photo or a video of Abrams herself.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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| A former bodyguard for Ellen DeGeneres said his experience with the host was 'kind of demeaning' Posted: 01 May 2020 10:37 AM PDT  The former security official said DeGeneres never said hello to him when he worked with the talk-show host at the 2014 Oscars.
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| North Korean media says Kim Jong Un appeared in public, though there was no independent confirmation Posted: 01 May 2020 05:49 PM PDT  President Trump declined to comment on Kim Jong Un's health as North Korea's state-run media reported the leader's first public appearance in weeks.
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| President's 'So what?' as 5,000 die sparks fury in Brazil Posted: 01 May 2020 06:29 PM PDT  "So what?" said Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday when a journalist asked him about the fact that more than 5,000 Brazilians had died of the coronavirus. The far-right leader's off-the-cuff comment has been sparking anger ever since, with governors, politicians, healthcare professionals and media figures all weighing in to express their outrage at his lack of empathy. Bolsonaro is no stranger to controversy.
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| Reporter: Pence's office punished me for saying VP ignored mask rule Posted: 01 May 2020 10:25 AM PDT  Photos showed Pence was the only person not wearing a mask during his visit to the Mayo Clinic
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| Prisoners in Iran 'disappearing', British inmate claims Posted: 01 May 2020 12:44 PM PDT  Prisoners with suspected coronavirus in Iran are "disappearing" due to illness or being given sleeping pills and sent back to crowded cells where the virus can easily spread, a British-Iranian father who is jailed on spying charges has claimed. Retired engineer Anoosheh Ashoori, 66, secretly recorded an audio diary detailing the chaotic conditions in Evin prison, Tehran, where he is serving a 10-year sentence for "spying for Israel", which he strongly denies. Several inmates have fallen ill due to suspected coronavirus, Mr Ashoori claims, adding that once a sick prisoner goes to the prison's medical centre, "he does not return… nobody knows any more about his fate." Another prisoner complained of Covid-19 symptoms but was not tested, he added. Instead, he was given sleeping pills and told by a prison doctor to "go back and rest" in a cell shared with 11 other men. Iran has been the epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic in the Middle East and has recorded more than 95,000 cases and 6,000 related deaths, although the official figures are heavily disputed. As a precaution in March, the Islamic Republic temporarily released thousands of prisoners from its over-crowded jails, including British-Iranian mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe who has been allowed to stay with her parents in Tehran while being monitored by an ankle tag. But other dual nationals accused of espionage, including Mr Ashoori and the British-Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert, have remained behind bars in Evin, while other inmates are now returning following their temporary release. "It is just enough for one contaminated person to arrive and the rest will soon contract the virus," Mr Ashoori said in the diary, recorded last month [April] during phone calls to his wife, Sherry Izadi. Ms Izadi, from South London, today [Friday] criticised the Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab for a lack of action to release her husband, saying he had become "forgotten" since being arrested in August 2017 while visiting his family in Iran. "Every time I hear Dominic Raab talk about returning Britons who have been trapped on holiday by coronavirus, I wonder why he is not giving the same priority to those, like my husband, who are held unlawfully in a foreign prison", she said. "Other countries are doing deals to free their citizens, but the government that is showing the least action has to be the British. It's as if they have forgotten my husband exists." A Foreign Office spokesperson said: "We strongly urge Iran to reunite British-Iranian dual national Mr Ashoori with his family. Our Embassy in Tehran continues to request consular access and we have been supporting his family since being made aware of his detention. The treatment of all dual nationals detained in Iran is a priority and both the PM and Foreign Secretary have recently raised this issue with their Iranian counterparts."
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| The U.K. bought 250 ventilators from China. Doctors warn they could kill. Posted: 01 May 2020 07:41 AM PDT  Exclusive: "We believe that if used, significant patient harm, including death, is likely," British doctors said in a letter.
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| 4 women arrested after Arizona mom found dead, blood found in bathroom Posted: 01 May 2020 04:36 AM PDT  Detective Jason Flam, a department spokesperson, confirmed in an email the arrest of the four women is related to Melissa Valenzuela's case.
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| Mysterious strokes among young COVID-19 patients may reveal how 'a virus can cause strokes in ways we never knew before,' a doctor says Posted: 30 Apr 2020 04:18 AM PDT  Between March 23 and April 7, five young New Yorkers with COVID-19 had stokes. They may be caused by clots due to swelling in blood vessels.
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| We Asked 30,000 Black Americans What They Need to Survive. Here’s What They Said Posted: 01 May 2020 10:05 AM PDT  The coronavirus has laid bare the disparities that have been ravaging Black communities for decades. Sure, we're all in this together, but we're not all…
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| This Is How Horribly They’re Treating the Dead in Brooklyn Posted: 01 May 2020 01:40 AM PDT  Zeqway Clarke was in the back pew in the upstairs chapel at the Andrew D. Cleckley Funeral Home in Brooklyn when he chanced to gaze under the coffin and see what looked like a bare foot."You could see it," he later told The Daily Beast. "You could actually look under the casket and see it. I asked somebody else, 'Is that a foot?'" Clarke was there on April 9 with his wife and daughters and a small number of relatives in masks and gloves, bidding farewell to her grandfather, 88-year-old Francois Jules. The pastor continued conducting the service as Clarke gazed at what was indeed a bare foot visible beneath the hem of the cloth backdrop closing off the front of the room. At the end of the service, Clarke went up for a final parting moment with Jules, a military veteran and retired graveyard security guard, who was recovering from a stroke in Kings County Hospital when he was fatally struck by COVID-19. Clarke used the moment by the coffin to raise his cellphone above the cord on which the backdrop hung. "I stuck the phone up and took a picture," the 39-year-old entrepreneur recalled.He did not see the result until he returned to his seat and checked his phone."It was just bodies, bodies on the floor, people on top of each other," he said. The picture, which he later shared with The Daily Beast, showed at least eight bodies had been left haphazardly on the floor. They were only partly covered by sheets or quilts and appeared to be unclothed. Three of the faces were visible."Horrified," Clarke said of his reaction.Twenty days later, the whole city was horrified when police responded to complaints of a foul odor coming from two trucks parked in front of this same funeral home. They discovered dozens of bodies decomposing inside.The owner, 41-year-old Andrew Cleckley, told police that he had been unable to get cemeteries and crematories to accept enough bodies to keep his facility from overflowing."I am out of space," he was quoted telling The New York Times. "Bodies are coming out of our ears."Clarke lives in the neighborhood, and he had walked past the funeral home with his daughters, aged 15 and 16, as the pandemic was intensifying. He noticed that the usual hearse and men in suits and ties had been replaced by rental trucks and men in work clothes."It looked like they just picked up some winos off the street: 'Yo, we'll give you some money,'" Clarke recalled. "I said to my kids, 'It looks like they're bringing these bodies in U-Haul trucks.' It looked like they were bringing in more and more bodies and the place is not even that big."'It's Never Been Like This': Coronavirus Deaths Overwhelm New York Funeral WorkersThe daughters now saw their father's cellphone photo of what lay just beyond the backdrop behind the coffin."My daughters said, 'What?'" Clarke reported. "That's the first time my children actually seen something like that.""As a parent you want them to know that's not right," he later said. "You want them to know people should be treated with respect."He noted to himself that there was no air conditioning in the chapel."Not cool," he said in more than one sense. "In regular room temperature like that, what's going to happen?"As he and his family resumed sheltering in place, Clarke considered reporting to the authorities what he had photographed. "[But] there was so much going on with the pandemic, social distancing, I figured it hell or high water to get in contact with somebody," he recalled.He decided just to post the photographic evidence on Facebook. Some commenters noted that funeral homes were overwhelmed. Most comments were unalloyed outrage.Then came the discovery of the decomposing bodies in the trucks outside the funeral home. Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams responded to the scene. He later said that much the same is happening throughout New York as the usual progression from hospital and morgue to funeral parlor to cemetery and crematorium has backed up. "We have an emergency going on right now," Adams told The Daily Beast. "I'm surprised we don't have cars stuffed with bodies."He added, "There is so much more we could do to better move this situation forward."To that end, he is establishing a Bereavement Task Force that will begin meeting next week. "We're going to bring people in the room in every aspect of this industry and sit down and hear directly from them what we should be doing to coordinate this operation," he said.Cleckley hung up twice when The Daily Beast sought comment, the second time suggesting the reporter ask crematories why they are not taking more bodies from funeral directors. Cleckley no doubt was facing problems the death industry could not have imagined before COVID-19 turned the city into the global epicenter. But he could have been more easily forgiven were it not for the photo Clarke blindly took of what was going on behind the backdrop. NYC Is Taking Hundreds of Body Bags Out of Houses—and Soon They Will Be CountedNo matter how inundated the funeral home may have been, and no matter how frightened the workers may have been of catching the virus themselves, there is no excuse for just leaving bodies every which way. Only a moment would have been needed to pull a sheet up over a face or cover bare limbs. "I BEEN TELLING Y'ALL ABOUT THIS PLACE AND WHAT THEY DOING," Clarke declared on Facebook after the Wednesday raid. I'M HAPPY ITS FINALLY ALL OVER THE NEWS!!!!!...������RESPECT PEOPLE FAMILY...SAD SAD SAD."And the photo he blindly took with his upraised phone now teaches us what his daughters learned regarding the importance of simple respect even when overwhelmed at the global epicenter of the pandemic. 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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| Michael Cohen reportedly has his early prison release rescinded Posted: 01 May 2020 12:01 PM PDT  Michael Cohen will reportedly not be getting out of prison early after all.Cohen, the former personal lawyer to President Trump who pleaded guilty to charges of tax fraud, campaign finance violations, and lying to Congress, was informed earlier this month he would be able to serve the remainder of his three-year sentence at home due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, his attorney said.But on Friday, ABC News reported that Cohen's early release has been rescinded, and other inmates at the New York prison reportedly appear to have had their home confinements rescinded as well. Cohen, The Daily Beast reports, had spent 14 days in quarantine and was expected to be released on Friday, but it's "unclear what prompted the last-minute decision." In a press conference on Friday, asked if the White House intervened, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said, "Absolutely not."Cohen has reportedly been working on a tell-all book about his time working for Trump, as The Daily Beast reported, and on Friday, ABC reported that Trump Organization lawyers had sent a letter to Cohen demanding he stop writing it, citing a nondisclosure agreement he signed. The Beast previously quoted a source close to Cohen as saying "the stories that will be in the book aren't privileged" but would be "about what it's like being around this man and things that he did that most people typically do not do." Cohen is scheduled to be released from prison in November 2021.Update 4:12 p.m.: The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that while Cohen did not return home on Friday, his "early release hasn't been rescinded, and he will be eligible at the end of the month." More stories from theweek.com The smoke-filled room that could oust Joe Biden 5 scathingly funny cartoons about Mike Pence's unmasked hospital visit Elon Musk declares he's 'selling almost all physical possessions' because he's 'devoting myself to Mars and Earth'
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| Syrians in Idlib protest opening of trade link with regime Posted: 01 May 2020 11:18 AM PDT  Maarat al-Naasan (Syria) (AFP) - Protests broke out across opposition-held parts of northwest Syria Friday against an al-Qaeda-linked jihadist group after it opened a trade crossing into regime territory, an AFP correspondent and a war monitor said. "Mass protests broke out in several towns and villages in the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo to denounce the practises of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham alliance" said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor. Led by Syria's former al-Qaeda affiliate, HTS and allied rebel groups dominate large swathes of Idlib province and slivers of neighbouring Aleppo.
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| People are getting this unexpected stimulus check. Should you keep it? Posted: 01 May 2020 02:42 PM PDT  The IRS uses the most recent tax information it has on file to determine eligibility and send out payments.
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| Trump slams Obama administration over COVID-19 testing, even though it first appeared in humans last year Posted: 30 Apr 2020 11:00 AM PDT  Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, President Trump attacked the Obama administration for its lack of preparedness for the coronavirus pandemic, including inadequate testing. The COVID-19 virus first appeared in humans late last year, almost three years after President Obama left office.
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