The unfounded claims about 5G spreading across social media appear to be contributing to real-world attacks on cellphone towers in the United Kingdom.
Four of Vodaphone’s towers were attacked in this past weekend, according to the multinational telecommunications company. This comes after several cell towers across Britain recently were set on fire. They weren’t necessarily delivering 5G.
A tower owned by BT, Britain’s biggest telecom company, that was damaged in an arson attack provided 2G, 3G and 4G services but did not have 5G capability, the company told Reuters.
Several U.K. telecommunications companies joined Vodafone in condemning the latest attack.
“Please help us make this stop,’’ the companies said in its joint statement, asking for public assistance.
Stopping the attacks is critical to keeping communities connected, said Vodafone and the three other companies that serve British cellphone customers. The companies said the baseless claims about the link between 5G and coronavirus have led to abuse of company engineers and, in some cases, prevented essential network maintenance from taking place.
A video has surfaced on social media of workers being harassed by a woman claiming the technology “kills people.”
Charlie Haynes
✔@charliehtweets
This is the consequence of those bonkers Facebook conspiracy theories about 5G. Key workers getting harassed on the street.
Vodafone, the world’s second-largest mobile operator, has said the attacks were now a matter of national security, harming “the very networks that are providing essential connectivity to the emergency services…during this difficult lockdown period,” UK head Nick Jeffery said.
elebrities are adding fuel to the unfounded theory that 5G wireless technology has any connection to the coronavirus pandemic, itself spreading like a virus across social media.
President Trump said Tuesday that he did not learn of two memos written in January and February by his own economic adviser warning that a COVID-19 pandemic could kill as many as 2 million Americans until “maybe a day ago.” On Jan. 29, Peter Navarro warned his colleagues at the White House that if the administration did not mount an aggressive containment strategy for the coronavirus, it could kill more than half a million Americans and cost the country nearly $6 trillion. Nearly a month later, on Feb. 23, Navarro distributed an even more dire second memo in which he said as many as 100 million Americans could be infected with COVID-19, which might kill upwards of 2 million U.S. citizens.
Many are concerned that as cases increase, COVID-19 will make its way to vulnerable populations in war zones, slums and sprawling refugee camps across the continent. Princeton University professor Jessica Metcalf, who specializes in infectious diseases and public policy and who has worked in Africa, warns that the introduction of the coronavirus into the “tsunami of other infectious diseases” across vulnerable populations in Africa might be catastrophic.
MILWAUKEE – Two suspects have been arrested in the double homicide of a University of Wisconsin doctor and her husband. Ali’jah J. Larrue, 18, was taken into custody Friday evening and booked into the Dane County Jail on two counts of party to a crime of first-degree intentional homicide. Early Friday, UWPD arrested Khari Sanford, 18, who also was charged with two counts of party to a crime of first degree intentional homicide.
Federal agencies are concerned that domestic extremists could use the coronavirus pandemic to attack Asians and Jews, according to a joint intelligence bulletin obtained by Yahoo News. That bulletin mirrors what organizations that monitor online hate content are also finding. The bulletin, a joint effort of the Department of Justice, the National Counterterrorism Center and the Department of Homeland Security, is dated April 7.
News updates on coronavirus in Africa Coronavirus live tracker Whipping, shooting and snooping during Africa lockdowns Earlier this week, an African Union report said that nearly 20 million jobs on the continent “are threatened with destruction”. There are currently more than 11,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, and there have been more than 570 confirmed deaths across Africa. South Africa, one of the continent’s largest economies, has been the worst hit and is about to enter the third week of a strict lockdown.
At a press conference on Wednesday, New York state Health Commissioner Howard Zucker and Gov. Andrew Cuomo responded to a question about whether coronavirus patients may need another form of treatment instead of ventilators.
Georgia’s governor is “considering new options” after being criticized by local officials for his order that reversed beach closures and other restrictions imposed by cities and counties to battle the coronavirus, the governor’s spokeswoman said Tuesday. Gov. Brian Kemp’s executive order last week requiring Georgia residents to shelter at home, except under prescribed exceptions, drew an outcry. Tybee Island Mayor Shirley Sessions over the weekend blasted Kemp’s action as a “reckless mandate” that encouraged tourism as infections and deaths keep rising in Georgia.
Diplomats from the 27-nation EU approved an upgrade to European legislation on enforcing international commercial rules. The envoys decided to let the EU impose penalties against countries that illegally restrict commerce and simultaneously block the World Trade Organization’s dispute-settlement process. The deal on Wednesday in Brussels advances a proposal made by EU Trade Commissioner Phil Hogan in December — before Europe became the epicenter of the deadly Covid-19 pandemic and governments across the region unleashed unprecedented economic stimulus.
Former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis issued a rare public rebuke of President Trump Tuesday over his decision to fire Glenn Fine, the Pentagon inspector general charged with overseeing implementation of the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package. “Mr. Fine is a public servant in the finest tradition of honest, competent governance,” Mattis told Yahoo News in an email. “In my years of extensive engagement with him as our Department of Defense’s acting Inspector General, he proved to be a leader whose personal and managerial integrity were always of the highest order.”
At Sunday’s White House briefing, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, suggested that hundreds of thousands — or even millions — of “silent carriers” may be unwittingly spreading the coronavirus across the United States because they don’t realize they’re infected. “It’s somewhere between 25 and 50 percent” of the total, Fauci said. The first thing to note is that Fauci himself expressed a high degree of uncertainty about his own numbers.
The same day he died, the Israeli Cabinet declared Bnei Brak a restricted zone, instituting a military closure on one of the world’s most densely populated communities. Israeli medical authorities fear that close to 40% of Bnei Brak’s 200,000 residents, who live in a 2.7-square-mile warren of tightly packed apartments, schools and stores, may be infected. As the closure took effect, police helicopters buzzed overhead, paramilitary police patrolled residential streets, and soldiers controlled all entry points at roadblocks.
“At this point, I am ready to go home,” said Wesley James, a music director aboard Norwegian Cruise Lines’ Norwegian Sun said in an interview from the ship to which he was transferred when the guests left, the Norwegian Epic, where he had stayed since March 21. “We’ve been following the same routine day in and day out.” He’s hardly alone.
One doctor who has been treating COVID-19 patients at a New York-area hospital says there’s no reason to believe it would work. Marik acknowledged that the World Health Organization has advised against the use of corticosteroids to treat viral pneumonia in patients with COVID-19 (except in clinical trials) citing previous studies on other viral diseases like SARS and MERS, which found insufficient evidence that the drugs were effective. But Marik’s view encapsulates a growing suspicion among doctors treating COVID-19 that the disease has some novel features that may require a unique approach.
Pakistan’s army said Thursday it had shot down a small Indian surveillance drone in Kashmir, as tensions rose over continued cross-border shelling in the disputed territory. According to a statement from the army media wing, the Indian quadcopter — about the same size as a commercially available hobby drone — had crossed 600 metres (650 yards) over the de facto border known as the Line of Control (LoC). “This blatant act was aggressively responded to by Pakistan Army troops shooting down Indian quadcopter,” the statement read.
Iran demanded on Wednesday that U.S. oil production levels must be known before an upcoming OPEC meeting with Russia and others seeking to boost global energy prices. The meeting of the so-called OPEC+ is scheduled to be held Thursday after officials delayed it following Saudi Arabia criticizing Russia over its comments about the price collapse. A meeting in March saw OPEC and other nations led by Russia fail to agree to a production cut as the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has drastically cut demand for oil.
The U.S. state has 149,316 reported cases compared with Spain at 146,690. In total, the United States has recorded over 417,000 cases and 14,100 deaths, according to the Reuters tally. European countries, including hardest-hit Italy and Spain, have started looking ahead to easing lockdowns but their coronavirus-related fatality rates have fluctuated after initially showing a decline.
The coronavirus pandemic is affecting nearly everyone in the world in different ways, but for one Louisiana family, the deadly virus inflicted a particularly devastating blow. Four members of the same family died after contracting the virus, including the 86-year-old matriarch. Antoinette Franklin and three of her sons all died within days of each other.
President Donald Trump said at his Wednesday press briefing that he would “take a look” at pardoning Joe Exotic from Netflix’s “Tiger King.” The now-famous zookeeper is serving 22 years in prison after a federal jury convicted him of wildlife crimes and hatching a murder-for-hire plot against his rival Carole Baskin. President Donald Trump said he’d look into pardoning Joe Exotic from the hit Netflix series “Tiger King” after the question came up at a press conference on Wednesday.
Top congressional Democrats are all for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky. next coronavirus relief bill — with a few additions. On Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.
The top human rights court in the Americas has found Peru responsible for the arbitrary detention and rape of an LGBT person. Azul Rojas Marín was stripped, hit and raped with a truncheon by three officers while in custody in 2008, her legal team said. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights said it was an act of torture.
LOS ANGELES — The “Love Boat,” caught up in the coronavirus pandemic, is coming to the port that made it famous. The Pacific Princess, the next generation of the cruise ship that gained fame from the popular “Love Boat” television series in the 1970s and 1980s, is sailing to Honolulu and then on to Los Angeles, Princess Cruises said Wednesday. Its voyage ended prematurely March 21 in Freemantle, Australia.
Ashita S. Batavia, MD, MSc, is a board-certified infectious diseases specialist and public health expert with extensive experience in treating epidemics. In my state, New York, our hospital systems are being strained in unprecedented ways. As a frontline infectious diseases doctor, this is what I want my friends and neighbors to do if they have COVID-19 symptoms and are asked to go to the emergency room.
More than 3,300 people reportedly have died in China due to COVID-19, including nearly 2,600 in the city of Wuhan alone. The official tallies are deemed by medical professionals in China and abroad to be much lower than the actual count. Intensive care units were, of course, where the most recorded deaths occurred; the mortality rate in Wuhan’s ICUs was between 25 and 30 percent, according to Dr. Peng Zhiyong, who led two ICU teams in the city and maintained the lowest rates of fatalities and hospital transmissions at the facilities where he worked.
Iran’s supreme leader suggested Thursday that mass gatherings may be barred through the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan amid the coronavirus pandemic, as Amnesty International said it believed at least 35 Iranian prisoners were killed by security forces amid rioting over the virus. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made the comment in a televised address as Iran prepares to restart its economic activity while suffering one of the world’s worst outbreaks. He is also the highest-ranking official in the Muslim world to acknowledge the holy month of prayer and reflection will be disrupted by the virus and the COVID-19 illness it causes.
Chinese doctors at the primary hospital treating severe coronavirus patients in the city of Wuhan said they have been using the HIV drug Kaletra since January and believe it is beneficial, despite a previous study that it was ineffective. They have been prescribing Kaletra, an off-patent version of lopinavir/ritonavir produced by AbbVie, as well as a second drug, bismuth potassium citrate, said Zhang Dingyu, the president of the Jinyintan Hospital in Wuhan, where the disease originated last year. “We believe taking this drug is beneficial,” Zhang told reporters on Thursday in reference to Kaletra.
Dr. Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus response coordinator, said Wednesday that there are encouraging signs that parts of the U.S. may be flattening their curves, but she warned that people shouldn’t start going out and socially interacting. In an interview with Savannah Guthrie on the “TODAY” show, Birx said that California and Washington state began social distancing very early and that their “curves” — the lines on graphs projecting the number of people who will contract COVID-19, the disease associated with the virus, over time — are “persistently flat, and that’s very encouraging.” “We’re seeing that stabilizing, and that gives us great encouragement,” Birx said.
Misha Friedman/Getty Images The coronavirus outbreak in New York originated mainly in travelers from Europe, not Asia, according to new studies cited by The New York Times on Wednesday. Researchers also found the novel coronavirus was circulating in New York City as early as mid-February, The Times said, weeks before a European travel ban was imposed by President Donald Trump on March 11. “People were just oblivious,” Adriana Heguy, a member of a research team from New York University, told The Times.
While most of Latin America is bracing for the worst of the coronavirus pandemic, Ecuador is already overwhelmed. The Andean nation of 17.5 million people is proportionately South America’s most afflicted: Only Brazil has a higher death count, with three times the fatalities for a population 12 times larger than Ecuador’s. (But as Bloomberg News reports, the continent is woefully behind in testing populations for the virus.) In Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, with 70% of the nation’s stricken, coffins are scarce, families wait days for funeral homes to collect their dead and morgues are overflowing, forcing city authorities to store the bodies in industrial refrigerators. This is not just a tragedy of human health. While emerging markets everywhere are in trouble, Ecuador comes to the pandemic with some serious co-morbidities: a huge foreign debt, sinking oil prices, deepening poverty and political fratricide.
Alton, Illinois, Mayor Brant Walker wrote a lengthy apology statement to his constituents and berated his wife, Shannon, for her “stunning lack of judgment.” Walker said he told Alton’s police chief that his wife did not deserve any special treatment and should receive the same punishment as any other citizen who violated the state’s stay-at-home order. Shannon Walker will face a criminal complaint of reckless conduct, along with each person at the party for violating the stay-at-home order.
As Americans rushed to buy face masks amid the early but growing threat of coronavirus, U.S. February imports of the product from its biggest supplier – China – plummeted to its lowest level in years, a USA TODAY analysis of trade data found. Combined with a sky-high increase in U.S. mask exports to China the same month, the trade data suggest a double whammy: fewer masks coming in and more masks going out, just as U.S. medical workers were about to need as many as they could get.
On Friday, the mayor of an Illinois city announced that he had directed the police department to “more strictly enforce” the statewide stay-at-home order, which was put in place to stem the spread of coronavirus. “I have directed the police department to use their discretion in issuing citations or making arrests for those refusing to follow the state-issued stay at home mandate,” said Alton, Illinois Mayor Brant Walker during a coronavirus update posted Friday on Facebook. It detailed the individuals, who were not explicitly named, were “clearly disregarding the executive order and public pleas for compliance.”
California Sen. Kamala Harris made two notable fundraising moves Wednesday that are sure to fuel speculation about her prospects to be Joe Biden’s running mate on the Democratic presidential ticket. Harris, who dropped out of the White House race in December, set up a joint fundraising operation with the Democratic National Committee, an arrangement that is typically reserved for nominees trying to attract large donations from the party’s biggest boosters. Hours later, she made a surprise appearance on a virtual fundraiser, introducing Biden to donors.
Mexican authorities said on Wednesday that about 60 personnel across two more hospitals have tested positive for the coronavirus, adding to a wave of infections among medical workers, according to local authorities and media reports. The two outbreaks struck a hospital outside Mexico City and one in the western state of Baja California Sur. The coronavirus was first detected at the hospital in Tlanepantla de Baz, in Mexico state just outside the capital, on March 10, the head of Mexico’s social security institute (IMSS), Zoe Robledo, said at the president’s regular news conference on Wednesday.
A truck driver accused in the deaths of 39 Vietnamese migrants whose bodies were found inside a refrigerated container that had been hauled to England pleaded guilty to manslaughter Wednesday. Maurice Robinson, 25, of Craigavon in Northern Ireland, entered the plea at Central London Criminal Court. Police investigating the case found the 31 male and eight female victims were all from Vietnam and ranged in age from 15 to 44, including 10 teenagers.
Throughout Tuesday night’s primetime stretch, Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham were in lockstep in telegraphing to Trump a message that the pandemic’s threat has been overstated, death counts have been inflated, and the U.S. is already on the downside of the curve. Carlson, who received mainstream plaudits for his “admirable” early coronavirus coverage, kicked off his show by declaring that the crisis “may have passed,” noting that health-care systems across the country haven’t come close to collapsing—“except in a handful of places. Patients are not dying alone in the hallways of emergency rooms with physicians too overwhelmed to treat them,” he asserted.
Sweden is resisting international trends by not implementing a lockdown or strict social distancing measures to fight the coronavirus. Researchers and scientists in Sweden have criticized the government’s decision to allow businesses to remain open. More than 2,000 experts signed an open letter calling for stronger action, and some fear that a surge in coronavirus deaths is imminent.
On March 24, Timothy Wilson, 36, was shot and killed by the FBI as he prepared to attack a hospital in the Kansas City area where patients with the coronavirus were being treated. The FBI had previously identified Wilson as a “potentially violent extremist” who had considered attacking a mosque, a synagogue, and a school with a large number of black students before settling on the hospital. Hours before his death, Wilson had posted anti-Semitic messages on two white supremacist groups on the messaging app Telegram.
As the coronavirus spreads around the world, U.S. officials who downplayed the risk have repeatedly blamed China’s fake data and deceptive practices for the outbreak. China’s data very likely understate the true number of infections and deaths, and Chinese-style authoritarianism silenced early reports of the outbreak, costing China and the world valuable time to stop the coronavirus’ spread. While China’s reporting delays and obfuscations now make it a convenient scapegoat for inadequate preparation in the U.S., its numbers and actions made clear that the coronavirus was communicable and dangerous enough to overwhelm a country’s health system if not swiftly contained.
Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner is leading an effort to develop a national coronavirus surveillance system in order to track patient data almost in real time, Politico reported on Tuesday based on conversations with four people involved in the ongoing effort. Ideally, this would provide government officials with the data needed to determine which areas of the country should implement coronavirus mitigation measures and which can safely lift those measures to open up businesses. Three people working on the project said the data would be handled in such a way as to protect patient privacy.
Since his ouster last year, Sudan’s veteran leader Omar al-Bashir has been detained and convicted of corruption, becoming the Middle East’s latest fallen strongman. The 76-year-old, held in Khartoum’s Kober prison where many of his opponents were detained during his rule, had ruthlessly crushed dissent after his rise to power in a 1989 Islamist-backed coup. For three decades, he tenaciously held onto power through several bouts of protests, even after the 2011 Arab Spring revolts that toppled Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi.
Russia on Thursday reported a record one-day rise in cases of novel coronavirus, pushing the official tally to more than 10,000, a day after President Vladimir Putin said the coming weeks would prove decisive in the fight against the virus. The number of cases jumped by 1,459 and 13 more people died, the national coronavirus crisis response centre said on its website. Moscow, the worst-affected region, and many other regions are in their second week of a partial lockdown.
A Texas teenager who police said announced on social media she would intentionally spread the coronavirus has been arrested and charged with making a terroristic threat. Police in Carrollton, near Dallas, arrested Lorraine Maradiaga, 18, late Tuesday morning after arranging her surrender to the city jail. “Maradiaga has stated that she is COVID-19 negative, and we currently have no proof that Maradiaga has tested positive,” Carrollton police said in a statement.
The US recorded the most coronavirus deaths in a single day with more than 1,800 fatalities reported on Tuesday. It brings the total number of deaths in the country to nearly 13,000, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The US has more than 402,000 confirmed cases, the highest number in the world.
New research reveals that 90% of Americans hospitalized with COVID-19 in March had underlying health conditions. Americans older than 65 had the highest rate of hospitalization per capita. Connecticut and Michigan had the highest number of hospitalizations per capita.
The typically frenetic streets of Iran’s capital, Tehran, have fallen silent and empty over recent days due to the new coronavirus outbreak that’s gripped the Islamic Republic. The now-deserted cafes where waitstaff lounge around with no customers to serve, or the closed bookstores and stadiums, are such a sharp contrast to the way things were. Iran’s government for days downplayed the effects of the virus.
A Nevada man is facing charges for the murder of Britney Ujlaky, a 16-year-old cowgirl who disappeared last month after getting a lift from the suspect. Bryce Dickey, 18, of Spring Creek, is charged with sexual assault and open murder with the use of a deadly weapon. Elko County prosecutors have also proposed the alternative charge of felony murder during a sexual assault or attempted sexual assault, and they’re reserving the option of seeking the death penalty.
Singapore reported its largest daily increase in coronavirus cases on Wednesday, just as the city-state started a partial lockdown set to last several weeks to contain the spread of the infection. Of the new cases, 40 are linked to clusters at foreign worker dormitories, and 28 are linked to non-dormitory clusters or other cases. Contact tracing is pending on the remaining 72.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday placed on special leave a minister seen lunching at a friend’s house in violation of the coronavirus lockdown. Ramaphosa has ordered a three-week national lockdown to try to brake the virus, which has infected 1,749 people, killing 13 of them, according to an official tally. But a picture posted on Instagram on Sunday showed Communications and Digital Technologies Minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams having lunch with five other people at the home of a former deputy minister earlier that day.
In an unprecedented move, the Italian government has declared its seaports “unsafe” due to the coronavirus pandemic, and will not authorise the landing of migrant rescue boats until the end of the emergency. In a decree issued late on Tuesday, the government wrote that “for the entire duration of the health emergency, due to the outbreak of coronavirus, Italian ports cannot be classified as ‘safe places’ for the landing of people rescued from boats flying a foreign flag”. The measure – the first of its kind in Italian history – appeared designed to prevent rescue boats from disembarking migrants in the upcoming weeks, as departures from Libya have increased in recent days with the arrival of good weather.
The Chinese city where the new coronavirus emerged ended its more-than two-month lockdown on Wednesday, even as a small northern city ordered restrictions on residents amid concern about a second wave of infections.
Taiwan on Thursday angrily condemned accusations from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) boss that racist slurs against him had come from the island, saying racism did not exist in Taiwan. Taiwan’s exclusion from the WHO, due to objections from China which claims the island as its own, has infuriated the Taipei government during the coronavirus outbreak. Taiwan says it has been unable to get timely information and that Taiwanese lives have become political pawns.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday directed Republicans to “fight very hard” against efforts to expand mail-in voting amid the coronavirus pandemic, suggesting that such a shift in ballot-casting practices would yield unfavorable electoral results for the GOP. The president’s social media post comes amid escalating anxiety among national Democrats, election officials and voting rights activists regarding the coronavirus’ effects on upcoming state primaries and November’s general election. Although more than a dozen states have delayed their primary contests as a result of the public health crisis, Wisconsin controversially forged ahead with its election Tuesday after the state Supreme Court blocked Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ last-minute executive order postponing in-person voting.
Alex Brandon/AP Dr. Anthony Fauci says people who recover from the coronavirus will likely be immune should a second wave of infection spread in the early fall. He explained that because the virus has not mutated much, people who develop immunity will likely maintain it at least for the next few months. Preliminary studies about coronavirus immunity and antibodies have shown that most, but not all, recovered patients develop antibodies.
The White House has began to investigate whether or not some social distancing measures might be able to be relaxed in some states by the end of April. Dr Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House response to the coronavirus, said officials are looking at areas across the country where social-distancing measures have been successful. In an interview on ABC’s Good Morning America, Dr Birx was asked if it was realistic to think that the guidelines could actually be relaxed by 1 May, or if the restrictions would continue.
The mother of a 5-year-old girl found dead in Alabama last year pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to child abuse and other charges in the case. Breanna Williams, 27, was arraigned via videoconference before a judge in Duval County, Florida, on charges of child neglect, aggravated child abuse, providing false information to police and tampering with evidence, news outlets reported. She initially told police that her daughter, Taylor Rose Williams, went missing the night of Nov. 6 from their Jacksonville home, but the woman stopped cooperating with detectives after being questioned about inconsistencies in her account, investigators said.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar and her husband on Tuesday recounted the battle with the coronavirus that landed him in the hospital on oxygen — and forced her to stay away while he fought the illness. “I’m on my own, and I’ve got to just keep calling and understand that the people in the hospital are doing the best they can,” Klobuchar, D-Minn., said in an interview with “NBC Nightly News” from her Minnesota home with her husband, law professor John Bessler, who has recovered, at her side. “It’s one of the hardest, hardest things — and I can’t even imagine those families where they hear the opposite news, you know — after he’s there for five days and it turns for the best,” Klobuchar told correspondent Stephanie Gosk.
Normally this means the ship is ready to start cruising again within a matter of weeks, but this time “governments forced them to keep people on board”, adds Prof Muller. “This was not the industry’s fault, they would not normally have done this.” The problem was made worse by the fact that many modern cruise liners have relatively small cabins, as the industry’s economic model depends on getting as many passengers as possible spending money in the ship’s spas, restaurants, bars and shops.
The foreign ministry’s plans were leaked to the press after Yoshihide Suga, the cabinet spokesman of the Abe regime, expressed his disappointment with a statement that had come from the U.S. embassy in Japan. On April 3, the embassy issued an uncharacteristically blunt health alert sent to American citizens by email. It was then picked up by local media: As compared to the number of positive cases and hospitalizations in the United States and Europe, the number of reported COVID-19 cases in Japan remains relatively low.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday that no victim of the coronavirus has died because the state could not provide health care for them, even as New York posted its highest number of deaths in one day. A record 731 New Yorkers died between Monday and Tuesday, Cuomo reported. The governor warned Thursday that New York state only had enough ventilators for six days and was considering how to increase the supply.
Driving to a factory in China’s southeastern province of Fujian to meet a friend, Ye Jing was stopped by a security guard soon after returning from two months of lockdown in Hubei, the province hardest hit by the coronavirus outbreak. “His whole manner and actions changed,” the shoe factory manager said, after the guard spotted her Hubei licence plate and asked where she was from.
The World Health Organization on Wednesday pleaded for global unity in fighting the coronavirus, following US President Donald Trump’s stinging attack on its handling of the pandemic. As the WHO prepares to mark 100 days on Thursday since it was first notified of the outbreak in China, director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus hit back at accusations that it had been too close to Beijing. The UN’s health agency has faced criticism in the past both for overreacting and for moving too slowly in fighting epidemics, but it has rarely faced as much scrutiny as with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Banning masks at authorized assemblies violates Hong Kong citizens’ rights, the court ruled in a case that began late last year when the former British colony was still battered by regular anti-government protests. The court handed its verdict down Thursday, saying that although the government was within its rights to use the colonial-era Emergency Regulations Ordinance to ban the use of face masks during protests, parts of the order were unconstitutional. The mask ban “directly interferes with these participants’ right of privacy or freedom of expression while taking part in perfectly lawful activities in the exercise of their right of peaceful assembly,” the judges wrote.
Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, recently told NPR that symptomatic patients appear to be “shedding significant virus” up to 48 hours before their symptoms start. A study of 94 coronavirus patients in Guangzhou, China, determined that 44% of viral transmission occured before a person saw their first symptoms. The patients had the highest viral loads — released the most viral particles, in other words — around the time that their symptoms started, meaning that’s when they were most contagious.
Afghanistan released 100 Taliban prisoners Wednesday, claiming they were among 5,000 detainees to be freed under a deal between insurgents and the U.S. The Taliban said, however, they have yet to verify those released were on the list they handed over to Washington during negotiations. The prisoner release is a critical first step to intra-Afghan negotiations aimed at bringing an end to decades of war in Afghanistan. The U.S.-Taliban deal signed in February also calls for the Taliban to free 1,000 government personnel they hold hostage.
New York Police Department has released footage of the moments before a $1.3 million jewellery burglary in the Bronx. Four individuals broke into 50 East Fordham Road on the 31 March at around 1am, police said. The group removed jewellery from a display case & safe that totalled $1.3 million dollars, according to police.
Record numbers of people in the UK are looking for farming jobs, according to figures released by job search engines. Totaljobs says it has seen 50,000 searches for farming jobs in the past week alone. Steve Warnham of Totaljobs said workers “who have been temporarily displaced due to Covid-19 are now looking for roles in other sectors”.
The CDC says that humidifiers—besides keeping your home cozy and comfortable—can also help relieve symptoms of the coronavirus like a sore throat and cough. Based on our experts’ thorough testing, these are the five best humidifiers you can buy right now. There’s more than one reason why we chose the Vicks Warm Mist Humidifier as the number one humidifier out there.
A 2017 NORTHCOM report correctly anticipated many aspects of the 2020 novel coronavirus pandemic. The report predicted the pandemic could seriously affect American society for up to two years and incapacitate up to 40 percent of the workforce. A 2017 report created by U.S. Northern Command warned that a future pandemic could have grave consequences for the military and the entire nation.
The Chinese city where the new coronavirus emerged ended its more-than two-month lockdown on Wednesday, even as a small northern city ordered restrictions on residents amid concern about a second wave of infections. China sealed off Wuhan, a central city of 11 million people, on Jan. 23, a drastic step that came to symbolise its aggressive management of the virus. More than 50,000 people in Wuhan were infected, and more than 2,500 of them died, about 80% of all deaths in China, according to official figures.
Diseases such as the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the globe could become more common as human activity destroys habitats and forces disease-carrying wild animals into ever-closer proximity with us, a major study showed on Wednesday. Illegal poaching, mechanised farming and increasingly urbanised lifestyles have all led to mass biodiversity loss in recent decades, devastating populations of wild animals and increasing the abundance of domesticated livestock. Around 70 percent of human pathogens are zoonotic, meaning they at some point make the leap from animals to humans as with COVID-19.
As the coronavirus pandemic devastates the global economy, U.S. President Donald Trump, Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman are engaged in a high-stakes poker game over ending the oil-price war in a world awash with crude. Putin, who sought to bankrupt U.S. shale producers when he walked away from the previous OPEC+ deal, is now ready to cut production, with the reductions reaching about 15% according to a source. This underlines the risk to Russia’s economic dependence on oil with prices near 18-year lows.
The former wife of Anne McClain, a NASA astronaut, was charged with making false statements to federal authorities, the Justice Department said. In her initial complaint, Summer Worden claimed that McClain, whom she married in 2014 and later filed for divorced, had improperly accessed her bank account. The former wife of US Army Lt. Col. Anne McClain, a NASA astronaut, was charged with two counts of making false statements to federal authorities, the Justice Department announced Monday.
A girl with a rare form of epilepsy whose recovery inspired the name of a medical marijuana oil that drew families of children with similar health problems to Colorado for treatment has died after being hospitalized and treated as a likely coronavirus patient, her mother said Wednesday. Charlotte Figi was 13. Charlotte, who lived in Colorado Springs, died Tuesday after suffering a seizure that resulted in cardiac arrest and respiratory failure, her mother, Paige Figi, said in a statement.
An Islamic missionary movement is at the centre of a growing controversy in South Asia after it repeatedly held massive gatherings despite warnings about the coronavirus. Hundreds of followers of the fundamentalist Tablighi Jamaat have tested positive for COVID-19 since attending congregations last month, but the group is still sending proselytisers door-to-door — sometimes without observing social distancing guidelines. The Tablighi movement — which espouses a return to “true” Islam as observed by the Prophet Mohammed — held an event outside Lahore in eastern Pakistan with about 100,000 participants.
The Marine Corps wants to know whether the defense industry can transform its heavy weapons-mounted Joint Light Tactical Vehicles into mobile air defense systems for tracking and killing enemy drones, helicopters and fighters. Marine Corps Systems Command recently invited defense firms to submit ideas for creating the Direct Fire Defeat System being developed by Program Manager Ground Based Air Defense, according to a March 27 request for information. The program is designed to arm Marine air-ground task force commanders with JLTVs equipped with anti-aircraft missiles, 30mm cannons and electronic warfare technology to “detect, track, identify, and defeat aerial threats,” the solicitation states.
A 16-year-old is using his skills as a budding pilot to bring desperately needed medical equipment to rural hospitals. TJ Kim carries a variety of supplies including gloves, masks and gowns to small hospitals during his flying lessons, The Associated Press reported. The teenager undertook his first delivery on 27 March to a 25-bed hospital in Luray, where he was overwhelmed by the gratefulness at his efforts, AP said.
The campaigns, using networks of bots, accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram as well as a bevy of sites purporting to be local news agencies, have become another weapon in authoritarian governments’ arsenals as they tussle for regional dominance. The campaigns come as part of a larger wave of inaccurate news — an “infodemic of misinformation and disinformation,” said European Commission spokesman Peter Stano, used “simply for economic profit for companies selling products but also by those who want to undermine … for political reasons. The European Union in 2015 had established a project called EUvsDisinfo, meant to counter Russian disinformation targeting Europe.
Russia on Wednesday labeled the U.S. research and analysis institute the Jamestown Foundation an “undesirable organisation”, potentially paving the way for the group to be banned in the country. The General Prosecutor’s Office said it had studied the Washington-based group’s publications and concluded that they aimed to fan separatism in some Russian regions, particularly in the North Caucasus, and constituted a security threat. It was not immediately clear what, if any, activities the Jamestown Foundation currently has in Russia.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif. says he is considering using the teleconferencing software Zoom to hold hearings into foreign election interference and other key issues, including the firing of intelligence community inspector general Michael Atkinson, while social distancing restrictions remain in place due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Americans reported bipartisan distrust of the Chinese government’s public statements about the coronavirus pandemic as well as support for reinstating tariffs on Chinese goods in certain circumstances, according to a new Harris poll. Ninety percent of Republican respondents said that China was to blame for the spread of the coronavirus, and 67 percent of Democrats concurred. A majority of Republicans (66 percent) said President Trump should take a harder line against China, with 25 percent saying Trump’s policies regarding China should remain as they are.
Researchers have been investigating the stability of the novel coronavirus on different surfaces to try and figure out how it can be transmitted. A new report published in the journal Lancet found the virus lasted on the outside of a surgical mask for 7 days. The study reinforced existing recommendations for people to not touch the outside of their masks after putting them on.
A California appeals court ordered the dismissal of a criminal case Tuesday against a Mexican megachurch leader on charges of child rape and human trafficking on procedural grounds. Naasón Joaquín García, the self-proclaimed apostle of La Luz del Mundo, has been in custody since June following his arrest on accusations involving three girls and one woman between 2015 and 2018 in Los Angeles County. While being held without bail in Los Angeles, García has remained the spiritual leader of La Luz del Mundo, which is Spanish for “The Light Of The World.”
John Fage, spokesman for the U.S. 3rd Fleet, said the sailor’s test is still inconclusive and no sailors aboard the Nimitz have tested positive. “There are no confirmed positive cases of COVID-19 on board USS Nimitz at this time,” Fage said. Another aircraft carrier has confirmed a case of coronavirus in a crew member, according to a news report.
Neighboring Indonesia ordered citizens to wear face masks when they leave the house, while Singapore changed its advice last week to say it will stop discouraging people from wearing face masks in public. The World Health Organization maintains medical masks should be reserved for healthcare workers. Malaysia has imposed an increasingly restrictive lockdown until April 14 to contain the pandemic.
To some, Israeli Health Minister Yaakov Litzman is guilty of a “catastrophic failure” of leadership for not urgently conveying the coronavirus threat to the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community that elected him. Milder critics have described Litzman as a “tragic” leader, whose limited authority compared to ultra-Orthodox rabbis’ hindered his ability to persuade constituents to embrace science-based protections against the outbreak. The coronavirus crisis presented the 71-year-old Litzman, himself ultra-Orthodox, with daunting challenges — even before he and his wife tested positive for the virus.
New York state, epicenter of America’s coronavirus crisis, set another single-day record of COVID-19 deaths on Wednesday, as veteran doctors and nurses voiced astonishment at the speed with which patients were deteriorating and dying. The number of known coronavirus infections in New York state alone approached 150,000 on Wednesday, even as authorities warned that the official death tally may understate the true number because it omits those who have perished at home. “Every number is a face, ” said New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who ordered flags flown at half-staff across New York in memory of the victims.
Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University, said on Wednesday that arrest warrants had been issued for journalists from The New York Times and ProPublica after both outlets published articles critical of his decision to partially reopen Liberty’s campus amid the coronavirus pandemic. Photocopies of the two warrants published on the website of Todd Starnes, a conservative radio host, charge that Julia Rendleman, a freelance photographer for the Times, and Alec MacGillis, a ProPublica reporter, committed misdemeanor trespassing on the Lynchburg, Va., campus of the college while working on their articles. Falwell and Liberty, one of the most high-profile evangelical schools in the country, have come under fire for welcoming students back to campus after the school’s spring break despite the pandemic, while nearly every other college in the country has ordered students off campus.
Attorney General William Barr Wednesday called the restrictions in effect in many states to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus “draconian” and said they should be revisited next month. Asked by Fox News host Laura Ingraham about the balance between religious freedoms and the need to protect people from the coronavirus with restrictions like stay-at-home orders, Barr said the federal government would be “keeping a careful eye on” states’ use of broad powers to regulate the lives of their citizens. Officials, Barr said, should be “very careful to make sure…that the draconian measures that are being adopted are fully justified, and there are not alternative ways of protecting people.”
Mount Sinai New York is running short on ventilators, the breathing machines that could be the difference between life and death for some coronavirus patients. Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan has figured out a way to turn sleep apnea machines into ventilators after receiving a donation from Tesla CEO Elon Musk in March Dr. Hooman Poor, who helped convert the machines, told Business Insider that after a few tweaks, “there was really no reason why this couldn’t work.”
Coronavirus claimed 1,973 lives in the U.S. on Wednesday, the largest one-day death toll in the country since the start of the pandemic, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker. Earlier on Wednesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, indicated that, while deaths may continue to rise, there actually may be reason to hope the outbreak in the U.S. is slowing. “At the same time as we’re seeing an increase in death, like typically what we are seeing now from New York, over the last few days, there’s been a stabilization and a decrease in the hospitalizations, admissions to intensive care and of the requirements for intubations,” Fauci told Fox News.
Russia’s defense minister called on law enforcement officials Wednesday to consider filing criminal charges against representatives of other countries where World War II memorials commemorating the actions of the Soviet Union are demolished. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made the appeal to the head of the Investigative Committee, Russia’s top criminal investigation body. Russia takes offense at any criticism of the Soviet role in the war.
The street gangs that have long terrorized El Salvador have now turned their attention from extortion and killing to a more pressing matter: enforcing social distancing restrictions, often with threats and baseball bats. The gangs assumed their role as public health thugs after President Nayib Bukele ordered a 30-day lockdown that started March 22. In many parts of the country, the gangs are more effective than government authorities, with tactics that include circulating recordings on messaging applications threatening people who break the rules.
The extra budget, compiled to try to offset the devastating effects of the pandemic, includes 220 billion yen ($2 billion) for companies shifting production back to Japan and 23.5 billion yen for those seeking to move production to other countries, according to details of the plan posted online. Chinese President Xi Jinping was supposed to be on a state visit to Japan early this month. China is Japan’s biggest trading partner under normal circumstances, but imports from China slumped by almost half in February as the disease shuttered factories, in turn starving Japanese manufacturers of necessary components.
Cancellation of citizenship oath ceremonies and in-person interviews because of coronavirus means hundreds of thousands of people may not naturalize in time for November’s elections. If ceremonies and interviews remain shut down until October without remote alternatives created by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, about 441,000 people who would have been citizens would be deprived of the chance to vote, according to Boundless Immigration, a technology company that helps immigrants apply for green cards and citizenship. “USCIS did the right thing by pausing live oath ceremonies and live interviews, there’s no dispute about that,” said Doug Rand, cofounder of Boundless Immigration.
Vietnam has expedited the shipment of 450,000 DuPont protective suits to the United States to help healthcare professionals there fight the coronavirus, the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi said on Wednesday. “The first of two initial shipments of over 450,000 made-in-Vietnam DuPont protective suits arrived in U.S. Strategic National Stockpile on April 8,” the Embassy said in a statement. “This shipment will help protect healthcare professionals working on the front lines against COVID-19 in the United States and demonstrates the strength of the U.S.-Vietnam partnership,” it added.
California officials this week described a “slow and steady increase” in confirmed coronavirus infections, predicting that the peak of the state’s outbreak will occur in mid to May. California has recorded more than 370 deaths due to Covid-19 and 15,800 confirmed cases, nowhere near as bad as the surge ravaging New York. Andrew Noymer, an associate professor of public health at the University of California, Irvine, explained what was behind the state’s projections – and what Californians can expect next.
With concerns mounting over how the country can conduct elections during a pandemic and Democrats pressing for alternatives to in-person voting, President Donald Trump has begun pushing a false argument that has circulated among conservatives for years — that voting by mail is a recipe for fraud. “Mail ballots, they cheat,” Trump said at the White House on Tuesday afternoon. The president spoke as Wisconsin voters, many wearing protective masks, were going to the polls on a fraught Election Day, after the Republican-led legislature refused Democratic demands to delay the election and allow for expanded mail-in voting.
Alex Brandon/AP US Surgeon General Jerome Adams adopted a positive note Tuesday, saying he felt “a lot more optimistic” that the United States would emerge “stronger” from its battle with the coronavirus. On Sunday, he said he expected the virus “to be our Pearl Harbor moment and our 9/11 moment, only it’s not going to be localized, it’s going to be happening all over the country.” Adams credited social distancing for his hopeful demeanor, stressing that Americans “have the power to change the trajectory of this epidemic if we come together like we have after past tragedies in this country.”
The coronavirus can spread like wildfire through nursing homes, and Dr. Barbara Ferrer, Los Angeles County’s public health director, said on Tuesday if families are able, it would be “perfectly appropriate” for them to pull their elderly relatives out of such facilities. The COVID-19 coronavirus is able to cause devastation at nursing homes because many of the elderly residents have underlying health conditions; one of the country’s first outbreaks was at a nursing home in Kirkland, Washington, where two-thirds of residents and 47 workers became infected, and 35 people died.
At the construction site in Tel Aviv, Jamal Salman and the other Palestinian workers wore gloves and masks, and their employer provided apartments for them to stay overnight. The coronavirus outbreak poses a dilemma for tens of thousands of Palestinian laborers working inside Israel who are now barred from traveling back and forth. Both Israel and the Palestinian Authority imposed sweeping lockdowns in mid-March, largely sealing off the occupied West Bank and heavily restricting travel within the territory.
Streaming on Netflix can become a nightmare, and downloading media can be an hour-long process! Hunting for a new WiFi set-up is well-warranted at a time like this, so allow me to draw your attention to the NETGEAR Orbi AX6000 Tri-Band Mesh WiFi 6 System 2-Pack. Four ethernet LAN ports are located on the router and satellite, making it perfect for entertainment areas or home offices, and it comes complete with a router, a satellite, an ethernet cable, and two power adapters, so you won’t need to purchase any other accompanying parts.
Singapore announced its largest daily increase. The crisis will escalate if countries don’t start showing more solidarity, the head of the World Health Organization said, urging the U.S. and China to show “honest leadership” and stop bickering. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is stable and responding to treatment at a London hospital.
Charlie Haynes
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