| White House unveils $2.5B emergency coronavirus request Posted: 24 Feb 2020 05:15 PM PST  The White House on Monday sent lawmakers an urgent budget request for $2.5 billion to address the deadly coronavirus outbreak, whose rapid spread and threat to the global economy rocked financial markets. The White House budget office said the funds are for vaccines, treatment, and protective equipment. The request could advance quickly through Congress and came as coronavirus fears were credited with Monday's 1,000-plus point drop in the Dow Jones Industrials and are increasingly seen as a potential political threat to President Donald Trump.
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| China reports 508 more virus cases, South Korea has 60 more Posted: 24 Feb 2020 05:09 PM PST  China reported 508 new cases Tuesday in an outbreak of a viral illness that has spread to the Middle East and Europe. The updates bring mainland China's totals to 77,658 cases and 2,663 deaths. South Korea reported 60 more cases of the new virus, bringing its total to 893.
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| US to stop aid in Yemen's Houthi areas if rebels don't budge Posted: 24 Feb 2020 02:45 PM PST |
| The coronavirus recession? Posted: 24 Feb 2020 02:00 PM PST  It was clear earlier this month that the coronavirus outbreak could severely damage the global economy.On Feb. 12, I wrote that American and Chinese demand had been sustaining the world economy for the last few years, and if China were shut down due to the virus, the ripple effect through global supply chains could drag down the rest of world with it. And sure enough, this week began with news of how the disease is throttling trade flows in and out of China.Technically called COVID-19 ("coronavirus" actually being the name for a whole family of viruses), the disease has now infected at least 77,150 people in China, with 2,592 deaths. On Monday, stock markets plunged on news that new and rapidly spreading outbreaks are now popping up in South Korea, Iran, and Italy. The Dow Jones dropped 3.5 percent — or 1,000 points — the S&P 500 fell 3.7 percent, and the Nasdaq plunged 3.7 percent.The possibility of the virus spreading across the world is certainly unnerving. And while the World Health Organization has so far avoided declaring the disease an official pandemic, the organization did say it has "pandemic potential." But we don't even need to posit a pandemic to see how the virus could tank economies around the world.An example: Reliable trade data out of China is hard to come by, but a Boston company named CargoMetrics has been trying to keep tabs. Their data covers not just shipping traffic but how full the cargo vessels are. And their index shows a 27 percent decline in Chinese imports from Feb. 7 to Feb. 17 — a massive deviation from the average trend in prior years. Dry cargo imports — things like metals, ores, grains, wood, coal, and steel products — are down 40 percent.China's imports "are totally in freefall," as CargoMetrics' CEO Scott Borgerson put it. Basically, over the last month, the country has bought way less stuff from the rest of the world than normal. And while China's exports to the rest of the world aren't suffering quite as badly, the situation is still "ugly," and down from the historical trends.At this point, it is well-known that major players like Nike, Hyundai, Apple, and General Motors are having to curtail some operations, because they rely on Chinese manufacturers for goods and parts. But smaller businesses are getting hit, too. Everyone from shoe and blue jean manufacturers, to electric bicycle makers and outdoor fireplace suppliers and 3D printed toymakers for children are feeling the pinch, as imports from China they depended on suddenly dry up — in some cases, forcing them to switch to other Asian suppliers that are now shutting down as well, in fear of the spreading disease. In a particularly unpleasant irony, there are roughly 150 prescription drugs — "antibiotics, generics, and some branded drugs without alternatives," according to Axios — that may well experience shortages because of how dependent we are on Chinese manufacturers to produce them. Even the fashion industry is not immune. And it's the same story in other countries that rely on China for their supply chains, from Australia to Japan."The second-largest economy in the world is completely shut down. People aren't totally pricing that in," Larry Benedict, CEO of The Opportunistic Trader, told CNBC. According to the New York Times, an analysis from JPMorgan concluded that "the immediate impact of a large China demand and supply shock will be substantial." China's own President Xi Jinping called the coronavirus a "crisis," as the country reneged on its earlier plans to ease travel restrictions out of the city of Wuhan, an epicenter of the outbreak.The basic problem is that the way to contain a disease is to prevent people from traveling and from interacting in large groups. Which is not limited to, but certainly includes, keeping them from working — many factory employees in China, for example, remain stuck at home and unable to commute to work. "Because the remedies are extreme, even small risks of infection and of death can have a drastic effect on economic activity," as economist Olivier Blanchard put it.And there's no way "stimulate" a country out of this situation: China has announced various efforts to prop up its economy, from a hose of new loans to keep companies afloat to a raft of new tax breaks. But no amount of money can compensate a business model when workers literally aren't allowed to go to work.The good news is that, in an already-depressed world economy, economic stimulus can increase demand throughout the world in the places that haven't been physically hit by the virus yet, and that could at least provide a cushion as supply chains transition.Beyond that, the global economy's best hope is that the virus can be contained relatively soon. The growth of new cases of COVID-19 in China actually peaked earlier this month, according to World Health Organization data. And in China itself, six provinces that were more or less shutdown have relaxed their emergency ratings, and are allowing companies to bring their workers back in. (The problem is that it's hard to know precisely what to make of this given given how untrustworthy the Chinese government has proven itself to be.) Experts also predict world economic growth will slow to a measly 1 percent this quarter, but recover soon after.Of course, all that depends on virus peaking already or soon. Given the outbreaks in Italy and elsewhere, that doesn't sound like a safe bet.There's no way to predict the future in a situation like this. But if the outbreak grows around the world while continuing to drive the Chinese economy into the ground, it's not hard to see how the world's already-limping economic growth could go negative. In which case, we've got a coronavirus recession on our hands.More stories from theweek.com The real third way in 2020 Top member of Trump's coronavirus task force asks Twitter for help accessing map of virus
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| How The Revolutionary Guards Could Reshape Iran Posted: 24 Feb 2020 01:52 PM PST  Iran's clerical army could decide that an internal transition is the best answer, and move to remove (or at least subordinate) the country's current clerical elite. Such a step, after all, would allow the IRGC to preserve its current, extensive grip on national power while simultaneously working to alleviate economic pressure from the U.S. and reintegrate into the international community.
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| The coronavirus death toll is still rising, but US interest in the outbreak is plummeting Posted: 24 Feb 2020 01:39 PM PST  Serious outbreaks outside of China have been reported in Italy, Iran, and South Korea in the last week.
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| Sanders’s Praise of Castro Makes Him a Target: Campaign Update Posted: 24 Feb 2020 01:06 PM PST |
| Iran Prepares to Suffer the Wrath of the Coronavirus Posted: 24 Feb 2020 01:01 PM PST  Iran has sought to deny that the coronavirus is spreading within its borders. Now, the Middle East is facing a new type of crisis—one that could further exacerbate tension in the region.
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| Kim Yo-jong: North Korea’s Second-In-Command? Posted: 24 Feb 2020 12:57 PM PST  The sister of Kim Jong-un has been rising in the leadership ranks since she was a teenager, and might be considered North Korea's second-in-command. The Center for the National Interest's Korean Studies team presents a look into her ascent to power (part two of a two-part series).
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| FBI official: Russia wants to see US 'tear ourselves apart' Posted: 24 Feb 2020 12:42 PM PST  Russia wants to watch Americans "tear ourselves apart" as the United States heads toward elections, an FBI official warned Monday. David Porter, an assistant section chief with the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force, accused Russia of conducting brazen operations aimed at spreading disinformation, exploiting lines of division in society and sowing doubt about the integrity of U.S. elections and the ability of its leaders to govern effectively. Porter spoke at an election security conference on Capitol Hill just days after conflicting accounts emerged of a closed-door briefing intelligence officials had given to House lawmakers on threats from Russia and other nations in the 2020 election.
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| Foreign leaders restrained in gifts to Trumps in 2018 Posted: 24 Feb 2020 12:27 PM PST  Foreign leaders appear to have scaled back their generosity when it comes to gifts given to President Donald Trump, his family and top officials. The list shows that Trump, his wife, Melania, his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner reported receiving $88,420 worth of gifts from foreign leaders in 2018. As in 2017, Melania Trump received the single most valuable item on the list.
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| Heavy rains, flooding pummel Cairo and parts of Egypt Posted: 24 Feb 2020 12:27 PM PST |
| Generational split among SC black voters could hurt Biden Posted: 24 Feb 2020 12:23 PM PST  For James Felder, the question of which presidential candidate to support in the South Carolina primary has never been terribly complicated. The 80-year-old civil rights activist has always backed Joe Biden, appreciative of the eight years he spent as the No. 2 to the first black president. J'Kobe Kelley-Mills, a junior English major, said he was torn between Biden and Bernie Sanders, the progressive Vermont senator who is now the Democratic front-runner after strong performances in the first three primary contests.
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| As Fears of a Pandemic Mount, WHO Says World Is Not Ready Posted: 24 Feb 2020 12:11 PM PST  BEIJING -- As new cases of the coronavirus spiked on two continents, the World Health Organization warned Monday that the world was not ready for a major outbreak, even as it praised China's aggressive efforts to wrest the epidemic under control.After two weeks on the ground in China, a team sent by the WHO concluded that the draconian measures China imposed a month ago may have saved hundreds of thousands of people from infection. Such measures -- sealing off cities, shutting down businesses and schools, ordering people to remain indoors -- have provoked anger in China and could be difficult to replicate in democratic countries with a greater emphasis on protecting civil liberties."There's no question that China's bold approach to the rapid spread of this new respiratory pathogen has changed the course of what was a rapidly escalating and continues to be a deadly epidemic," said Bruce Aylward, a Canadian doctor and epidemiologist who has overseen international campaigns to fight Ebola and polio and who led the WHO delegation.The epidemic has already killed more than 2,500 people in China, mostly in Hubei province, where the outbreak began in December, and infected more than 77,000 people. But the number of new infections in China has been steadily dropping, giving officials in the country confidence that the extraordinary measures have been effective in blunting the virus's spread.There are concerns, however, that as people begin returning to work in China, the virus could flare up again.At the same time, new cases are escalating outside China. In Italy, where there has been an eruption of more than 150 cases, authorities have locked down at least 10 towns, closed schools in major cities and canceled sporting events -- all moves that are echoes of China's tactics, if not quite as draconian.In Iran, the outbreak has killed at least 12 people as of Monday, the largest number of coronavirus-linked deaths outside China. South Korea on Monday reported 231 additional cases, bringing the nation's total to 833 cases and seven deaths. Aylward said responding swiftly and aggressively to contain outbreaks and treat those infected was paramount."We have all got to look at our systems because none of them work fast enough," Aylward said.The virus that has crippled China for more than a month now threatens to become a pandemic that could touch virtually every part of the globe. Stock markets in Asia, Europe and North America plunged Monday as investors worried that the economic disruption the outbreak has already caused in China is all but certain to have a wider effect.The S&P 500 dropped nearly 3% in early trading Monday, after European markets recorded their worst day since 2016, and major benchmarks in Asia closed sharply lower. The Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 900 points in the first hours of trading.China, which was the source of the outbreak, might also offer solutions, according to Chinese officials and the WHO's assessment, despite the confusion and obfuscation that slowed the government's initial efforts to respond to what was then a mysterious new illness appearing in hospitals in Wuhan, the epicenter, in December.Since late January, the Chinese government has put at least 760 million people -- more than half of its population -- under residential lockdowns of varying strictness, from checkpoints at building entrances to hard limits on going outdoors, according to a New York Times analysis of government announcements in provinces and major cities.While China's reporting has been at times confused -- with changes to its method of counting causing huge swings in daily tolls -- the overall trend since the middle of this month has indicated a slowing in the rate of infections.On Sunday, 24 Chinese provinces reported no new cases. Six of them lowered their emergency response measures. In Hubei province there were 398 new cases, the second consecutive day in which the number of new cases declined."The decline we are seeing is real," Aylward said.Even so, the death toll continues to rise, with 150 deaths reported Sunday, the highest in nearly three weeks. In total, 2,592 people in China have been killed by the virus.Liang Wannian, a senior official with China's National Health Commission, said China was not ready to declare victory yet."The situation is still very grim," he said at a news conference. "We haven't stopped the epidemic in Wuhan yet."Many health experts agree it is premature to celebrate given the highly contagious nature of the virus and the potential for a new surge in cases when millions of people go back to work in China or when travel restrictions are lifted.But they generally agreed with the WHO's assessment on China's measures."The containment definitely worked in China," said Leo Poon, head of the public health laboratory sciences division at the University of Hong Kong. "The question now is whether similar policies can be applied in other countries."Clarence Tam, an assistant professor of infectious diseases at the School of Public Health at the National University of Singapore, said it was difficult to interpret the case numbers from China, particularly from Hubei. That is because the total number of infections jumped when authorities expanded the methods used to diagnose them twice in two weeks."Trying to look at the case numbers is very difficult," Tam said. "We don't really know what is influencing those case numbers.''Adding to the confusion, Chinese media outlets reported Monday that Wuhan would begin easing a sweeping lockdown by allowing some people to leave. But just hours after news of the change emerged, authorities backtracked, saying the announcement had been made in error.What is unclear to many public health experts is whether a shortage of testing kits is causing a large number of cases to remain undetected. Hospitals in China remain overstretched, and many patients say they have been turned away. Health care workers are still coming down with the virus despite official pledges to protect them. Liang, the health official, said more than 3,000 health care workers have been infected.Another problem is that China does not disclose how many people are being tested. If the proportion of people being tested is really declining, it would suggest there is a downturn in the rate of transmission. "But we don't have that yet," Tam said."From my perspective, it's 'watch and wait and see,' " he said. "It looks positive, but it's difficult to interpret what those numbers mean at the moment."In a speech Sunday, China's leader, Xi Jinping, called the epidemic the country's most serious public health crisis and said it was "the most difficult to prevent and control" since the founding of the People's Republic.The epidemic has already severely disrupted life and commerce -- as well as the Communist Party's annual legislative conferences that had been scheduled to begin in Beijing in early March. The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress announced Monday that it had postponed the conferences indefinitely.Xi said controlling the outbreak in Wuhan and Hubei as well as preventing the epidemic from spreading to Beijing, the capital, were the country's top two strategic goals. He pledged more pro-growth policies to help overcome the epidemic.David Heymann, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the case numbers from China suggest that there "may be a decrease in transmission."China was following its playbook from the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak of 2002-03, said Heymann, a former chief of communicable diseases at the WHO, when it was "able to stop outbreaks outside the epicenter in Guangdong province by meticulous outbreak containment and control."The real test could be yet to come. As China moves to restart its economy, the coronavirus could flare up again."There is an acute recognition here that just as we -- the Chinese -- forced the tail of this outbreak down, it could come back up again as people start to move again, the shops start to open, the restaurants open, the schools open," Aylward said. "It's a risk."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| As Trump Barricades the Border, Legal Immigration Is Beginning to Plunge Posted: 24 Feb 2020 12:09 PM PST  WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump's immigration policies -- like travel bans and visa restrictions or refugee caps and asylum changes -- have begun to deliver on a long-standing goal: Legal immigration has fallen more than 11% and a steeper drop is looming.While Trump highlights the construction of a border wall to stress his war on illegal immigration, it is through policy changes, not physical barriers, that his administration has been able to seal the United States. Two more measures took effect Friday and Monday, an expansion of his travel ban and strict wealth tests on green card applicants."He's really ticking off all the boxes. It's kind of amazing," said Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group. "In an administration that's been perceived to be haphazard, on immigration they've been extremely consistent and barreling forward."The number of people who obtained lawful permanent residence, besides refugees who entered the United States in previous years, declined to 940,877 in the 2018 fiscal year from 1,063,289 in the 2016 fiscal year, according to an analysis of government data by the National Foundation for American Policy. Four years ago, legal immigration was at its highest level since 2006, when 1,266,129 people obtained lawful permanent residence in the United States.Although the data provides only a glimpse of the effect of Trump's agenda, immigration experts said they are first sign and that coming policies will amplify them. A report released Monday projected a 30% decline in legal immigration by 2021 and a 35% dip in average annual growth of the U.S. labor force.The numbers reflect the breadth of the Trump administration's restrictionism, and they come as record low unemployment has even the president's acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, confiding to a gathering in Britain that "we are desperate, desperate for more people."But the doors have been blocked in multiple ways. Those fleeing violence or persecution have found asylum rules tightened and have been forced to wait in squalid camps in Mexico or sent to countries like Guatemala as their cases are adjudicated. People who have languished in displaced persons camps for years face an almost impossible refugee cap of 18,000 this year, down from the 110,000 that President Barack Obama set in 2016.Family members hoping to travel legally from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Somalia were blocked by the president's travel ban.Increased vetting and additional in-person interviews have further winnowed foreign travelers. The number of visas issued to foreigners abroad looking to immigrate to the United States has declined by about 25%, to 462,422 in the 2019 fiscal year from 617,752 in 2016.But two more tough policies were to take effect by Monday. The expansion of Trump's travel ban to six additional countries, including Africa's most populous, Nigeria, began Friday, and the public charge rule, which effectively sets a wealth test for would-be immigrants, was to start Monday. Those will reshape immigration in the years to come, according to experts.The travel and visa bans, soon to cover 13 countries, are almost sure to be reflected in immigration numbers in the near future. Of the average of more than 537,000 people abroad granted permanent residency from 2014 to 2016, including through a diversity lottery system, nearly 28,000, or 5%, would be blocked under the administration's newly expanded travel restrictions, according to an analysis of State Department data.But the public charge rule may prove the most consequential change yet. Around two-thirds of the immigrants who obtained permanent legal status from 2012 to 2016 could be blocked from doing so under the new so-called public charge rule, which denies green cards to those who are likely to need public assistance, according to a study by the Migration Policy Institute.Before Monday, immigrants were disqualified from permanent resident status only if they failed to demonstrate a household income above 125% of the federal poverty line, a threshold set by Congress. Now, immigration officials will weigh dozens of factors, like age, health, language skills, credit score and insurance as well as whether an applicant has previously used public benefits, to determine if the applicant is likely to use them in the future. One factor that could also count against an applicant is the action the immigrant is undertaking: applying for a green card. Applying for the legal status is one of the negative factors that immigration officials could use to determine if someone will be a public charge, a Catch-22 that has been a key criticism from immigration advocates.Even before the policy went into force, it discouraged immigrants and citizens in immigrant families from seeking public assistance they qualify for, such as Medicaid, food stamps, free or reduced-price school meals or housing help, according to immigration analysts."Data suggest that millions of people, including U.S. citizens, have already pulled out of safety net programs they're legally entitled to, based on fear of the public charge rule -- even though it doesn't apply to them and never will," said Doug Rand, a founder of Boundless Immigration, a technology company in Seattle that helps immigrants obtain green cards and citizenship. "That's not a 'chilling effect' -- that's a fraud upon the American people."The State Department's enforcement of a far more limited form of the public charge rule in recent years may offer insight into how aggressively the Homeland Security Department is likely to use the new policy. In 2016, the last year of the Obama administration, 1,076 immigrants were found to be ineligible for visas under the rule. In 2018, 13,450 were, according to State Department data.As the State Department moves forward Monday with the expanded public charge rule, the wealth test will be applied to green card applicants both inside and outside the United States.Broadening the rule has been a long-sought after goal of the White House and specifically, the president's senior adviser Stephen Miller, who admonished career officials for taking too long to enforce the policy.After the Supreme Court on Friday lifted an injunction that blocked the policy in Illinois, the White House praised the plan the next day."This final rule will protect hardworking American taxpayers, safeguard welfare programs for truly needy Americans, reduce the federal deficit," it said in a statement, "and reestablish the fundamental legal principle that newcomers to our society should be financially self-reliant and not dependent on the largess of United States taxpayers."Other more subtle steps have also helped trim the number of immigrants arriving on U.S. shores, such as requiring in-person interviews for most immigration visas and a proposed 60% increase in citizenship fees for most applicants.Tara Battle, 42, a nurse in Chicago, now finds multiple policies are burdening, if not outright dividing, her family. After meeting Daberechi Amadi Godswill, a Nigerian, in 2016 while on vacation in Gambia, Battle struck up a relationship and they married in 2018.Since then, Battle, who supports a 12-year-old daughter on a $35,000 annual salary, said she and Godswill had spent around $1,000 on lawyer and processing fees, trying to bring him to the country. She believed she had taken the last step when she submitted her financial documents on his behalf this month.Then her lawyers told her Trump had banned immigration from Nigeria. She said she would wait to see if the president lifted the ban, but if he does, she is likely to be saddled with much higher processing fees."Everything is up and running, the ball is already rolling. Why is it now on hold?" Battle asked in exasperation. "They've already done the background checks. They already did everything. The money, the fees, everything's paid for."There is little sign that Trump will relent. He is already using his immigration agenda to incite supporters as the election nears. While the administration recorded 36,679 arrests at the border last month, slightly up from the 33,657 arrests in January 2016, the president has been celebrating an eight-month decline in border crossings since a surge of Central American families approached the border last year.He has built only about 120 miles of his border wall, but his administration quelled last year's surge with a less visible policy known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, which have forced roughly 60,000 migrants to wait in Mexico as their immigration cases are processed in the courts. That measure, as well as a deal with Guatemala to deport asylum-seekers to the Central American country, has virtually ended asylum along the southwestern border."They want literally millions of people to flow into our country," Trump said of Democrats at a recent tribute for members of the Border Patrol union. "And of those millions of people, tremendous numbers of them, are people you don't want in this country."Mulvaney struck a different tone to a crowd of several hundred during a question-and-answer session with the Oxford Union in Britain, a tape of which was obtained by The New York Times."We created 215,000 jobs last month," he said. "We are running out of people to fuel the economic growth."One aspect of Trump's stringent immigration policies has not happened yet: The president has not deported "millions" of immigrants, as promised this year. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested about 143,000 immigrants in the country from October 2018 to September 2019, 10% fewer than the previous fiscal year and the lowest level since Trump took office.The administration has tried to change that trend by threatening retaliation against localities that embrace the policies of so-called sanctuary cities. Tactical units from Border Patrol have been deployed to assist ICE agents. Trump took aim at those cities, including New York, in his State of the Union address, claiming they allowed "dangerous criminal aliens to prey upon the public."Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, said that the president's aggressive immigration measures had actually put people in danger. The "zero tolerance" policy to prosecute parents caught illegally crossing the border, he said, led to thousands of children being separated from their parents."By any reasonable measure that's not success," he added. "That's abject failure."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| Americans Show Fresh Signs of Panic as Coronavirus Cases Jump Again Posted: 24 Feb 2020 11:50 AM PST  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Monday that the number of 2019 novel Coronavirus cases in the United States rose from 34 on Friday to 53 as more passengers from the Diamond Princess cruise ship tested positive for the sickness. The virus quickly spread among 695 passengers aboard the Carnival cruise ship docked in Yokohama, Japan, and has since killed at least two and forced many of the rest into quarantine and isolation. The U.S. State Department eventually repatriated those who wished to come home, though local officials across America have shown signs of resistance to housing the potentially infected in state or federal facilities. COVID-19, as the virus is officially known, has infected more than 79,000 people in two dozen countries and killed at least 2,600. Businesses across the world have responded by cancelling conferences and restricting travel, especially to China. U.S. financial markets plunged Monday as the number of confirmed cases rose in South Korea, Italy, and Iran. Meanwhile, at least one man in Miami was facing a medical bill for up to thousands of dollars after a Coronavirus scare. He was ultimately diagnosed with the flu, but the case showed the potential for people with high-cost health plans to rack up fees as panic spreads in a country without universal healthcare.The Ticking Coronavirus Time Bomb: America's UninsuredEven as the Petri dish of the Diamond Princess and the surge in cases in Europe and the Middle East have captured the world's attention, the vast majority of cases remain in China, where the virus was first documented in December.Still, the emergence of the virus has produced a range of emotional responses across American professions and demographic groups. The possibility of infection has previously caused panic among ride-share drivers, while teenagers have pretended to be infected with the virus to prompt others to share their videos. There have also been reports of bullying and discrimination against students of Asian descent.Now residents of Salt Lake City appear to be projecting their fears of the virus onto Shen Yun, a dance troupe known as much for its ubiquitous marketing as for its traditional Chinese performances. The group was slated to perform Feb. 25 and 26 in Salt Lake, and residents began calling the local and state public health departments to ask whether dancers might be contagious.Nicholas Rupp, a spokesman for the Salt Lake City health department, said his agency had received four calls since Friday from residents concerned over the risk of infection because of rumors they saw on social media. There is, he said, no basis for the rumors, as the group's North American branch only tours in North America and therefore would not be likely to come into contact with coronavirus patients."We've investigated, and we have no reason to believe that anyone associated with the troupe is ill," he told The Daily Beast.The Utah State Department of Health has also received calls about this week's Shen Yun performance and coronavirus, according to spokeswoman Charla Haley, though she did not know how many. She reiterated Rupp's point that they have no basis.Staffers at Shen Yun appear to be aware of the perception, however baseless, that dancers might be infected, as well. The group published an undated press release dispelling the whispers: "Shen Yun Is Not From China, Shows In No Way Affected By Coronavirus."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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| Coronavirus cases spike in South Korea and Italy, sparking new fears Posted: 24 Feb 2020 11:49 AM PST  Less than a month after world leaders told the public that the coronavirus would be contained quickly and swiftly, the virus has not only escaped mainland China but has also wreaked havoc throughout other Asian countries and claimed lives around the world.On Feb. 14, an 80-year Chinese tourist died in a hospital in Paris, the first coronavirus death outside of Asia. At the time, the man's life was the fourth claimed by the virus outside of mainland China.As of Feb. 24, the virus, officially recognized as 2019-nCoV or COVID-19, has claimed 2,622 lives across 32 countries. Some 79,407 total cases have been confirmed across 32 countries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). More than 77,000 of those cases have come from China, but in other countries, the numbers of cases have made shocking leaps in recent days."So how should we describe the current situation? What we see are epidemics in different parts of the world, affecting countries in different ways and requiring a tailored response," said WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a press conference on Monday. "The sudden increase in new cases is certainly very concerning." A worker wearing a protective suit sprays disinfectant as a precaution against the coronavirus at the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Feb. 24, 2020. South Korea reported another large jump in new virus cases Monday a day after the president called for "unprecedented, powerful" steps to combat the outbreak that is increasingly confounding attempts to stop the spread. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon) In less than a week, South Korea went from having 20 confirmed cases in the country to 833. Similarly, an eruption of cases in Italy drove fear throughout Europe. Italian health officials reported more than 219 cases of the virus in the country and a death toll of five.The spike prompted officials to lock down 10 towns near Milan, potentially impacting at least 50,000 people. In the region of Lombardy, more than 170 cases and at least four deaths have been recorded.While officials and experts have both hoped that warmer weather would stem the spread of the virus, recent weather around Milan and the South Korean capital of Seoul doesn't paint a clear picture of the weather's current impact. Both regions have recorded daily temperatures warmer than historical averages in recent weeks, but neither is close to reaching the 86-degree-Fahrenheit threshold that some pathologists have predicted would lead to the disease inactivating.CLICK HERE FOR THE FREE ACCUWEATHER APPIn similar measures, countries around the world are barring entry to foreign visitors who have recently visited China. On Sunday, South Korean President Moon Jae-in enacted the highest level of alert available, allowing the government to ban visitors from China. On Monday, the country reported another 231 new cases.Fears that the virus will become a global pandemic were further heightened when 50 people in Iran were killed by the virus in recent weeks. The updated death toll was reported on Monday by Iran's ILNA news agency and represented a stark rise from the 12 deaths that were reported by state TV earlier in the day.However, at Monday's press conference, Ghebreyesus refuted the pandemic claims and worked to assure the public that progress was being made. A tourist from South Korea wears protective mask while waiting for a flight back to South Korea at the Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, Israel, Monday, Feb. 24, 2020. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit) "For the moment, we are not witnessing the uncontained global spread of this coronavirus, and we are not witnessing large-scale severe disease or death," he said. "What we see are epidemics in different parts of the world, affecting countries in different ways and requiring a tailored response."The tally for total cases in the United States reached 53 on Monday, according to an announcement from the Center for Disease Control (CDC). Two of those cases were spread person to person while 12 were travel-related. Another 36 of those cases came via the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which has been docked at a port in Yokohama, Japan, for weeks.According to data from Johns Hopkins University, there have been more worldwide new recoveries than new confirmations of coronaviruses cases for six straight days. On Feb. 22, more than 4,000 cases were deemed recovered, the highest recovery day on record for the virus. Around the world, there have been over 25,000 cases of recovery since the beginning of the outbreak.For comparison, there have been an estimated 16 million cases, 160,000 hospitalizations and 9,400 deaths from the flu in the United States, according to CDC data, since Jan. 11, the date of the first reported fatality from COVID-19, as recorded by the China state media and shared by the Xinhua news agency. Bruce Aylward, an assistant director-general of the World Health Organization speaks with a chart during a press conference in Beijing on Monday, Feb. 24, 2020. Aylward said in Beijing on Monday that China's actions had probably prevented tens of thousands and possibly hundreds of thousands of cases of the COVID-19 virus. (AP Photo/Sam McNeil) In Monday's press conference, assistant director-general Bruce Aylward said that recovery and prevention efforts in China are beginning to prove fruitful."Very rapidly, multiple sources of data pointed to the same thing: This is falling, and it's falling because of the actions that are being taken," said Aylward. "China was the first line of defense to prevent the international spread of this virus, because they feared and felt the responsibility to protect the world from this virus ... Other countries should think about whether they apply something, not necessarily through lockdowns, but the same rigorous approach."The worldwide fear has also dealt some economic blows. On Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 1,000 points by noon, erasing all of its gains for the year, according to CNBC \-- largely due to fears about Chinese disruptions on the global supply chain. According to the S&P, the drop would represent the third-largest total point plunge in U.S. history if it holds through Monday.Keep checking back on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier and Verizon Fios
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| UN reiterates support for 2-state Israel-Palestine solution Posted: 24 Feb 2020 11:38 AM PST  The U.N. Security Council on Monday reiterated its support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in its first statement following the unveiling of the U.S. plan for resolving the decades-old struggle three weeks ago. President Donald Trump 's plan sided with Israel on most of the conflict's main sticking points, and the Palestinians rejected it outright. The U.N. statement, which was approved by all 15 council members including the U.S., made no mention of Trump's plan.
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| Islamic Jihad renews rocket fire on Israel amid ongoing air strikes Posted: 24 Feb 2020 11:16 AM PST  Islamic Jihad resumed firing rockets at Israel from Gaza Monday night amid ongoing Israeli air strikes, damaging hopes for an end to a two-day flare-up a week before the Jewish state's election. The militant Islamist group announced Monday evening it had ceased firing rockets but backtracked about an hour later after Israel continued striking its forces in the Gaza Strip. Islamic Jihad, which is allied to Gaza's Islamist rulers Hamas, has fired some 60 rockets towards Israel since the killing of one of its fighters Sunday morning, according to the United Nations.
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| World must avert 'dramatic' effects of coronavirus on health, economy -U.N.'s Guterres Posted: 24 Feb 2020 11:02 AM PST  United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday urged countries to prevent the novel coronavirus epidemic from spiralling into a crisis with "dramatic consequences" for global health and the world economy. Guterres, speaking to reporters during a visit to the World Health Organization centre for managing emergencies, called for fully funding the WHO's appeal of $675 million to cover its overall response for three months. "All countries - and this is now a problem that is affecting many countries in the world - all countries must do everything to be prepared," Guterres said after a briefing by WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and other senior officials.
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| Johnson Faces Complaints of Bad Faith Ahead of Trade Talks Posted: 24 Feb 2020 11:01 AM PST  (Bloomberg) -- The U.K. and the European Union are increasingly at odds ahead of next week's trade talks, with each side accusing the other of backing away from past promises.Regaining political independence and freedom from the EU's legal system will take priority over securing a trade deal by the Dec. 31 deadline, Prime Minister Boris Johnson's spokesman, James Slack, told reporters on Monday. And in a move that risks stirring concerns in Dublin, the U.K. is refusing to ask ports to get ready to implement new checks on goods moving between Britain and Northern Ireland, he said.That position appears to defy the deal that broke the Brexit deadlock last year. Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said "there can be no backsliding" on the Northern Ireland protocol in the Withdrawal Agreement, broadcaster RTE reported on Monday. Varadkar, who is acting as caretaker premier after losing this month's election, said the withdrawal agreement is an international treaty and "we expect the British government to honor that in full."On Monday, EU ambassadors finalized the bloc's negotiating mandate for the talks, including a demand that EU rules should be a "reference point" for the level playing field in an apparent concession to the hard line French. Ministers from member states are due to sign it off on Tuesday, with the U.K. expected to follow with its own paper on Thursday. Those documents will set out the parameters for different areas of discussion.'What's Changed?'But the background noises are already bad-tempered, and Johnson -- who is ideologically committed to Brexit and has a significant majority to rely on in Parliament -- is taking a negotiating position that raises the risk that no trade agreement will be reached before the Brexit transition period expires at the end of the years.The U.K. is also pushing back against the bloc's insistence that Britain should follow European rules on employment and manufacturing standards if it wants a trade deal. Last week Johnson's office tweeted a picture of an EU-generated slide suggesting the different kinds of trading arrangement available to the U.K., which concluded that a free-trade deal along the lines of the one done with Canada was the only likely option. "Now they say it's not on offer after all," the tweet said. "What's changed?"Over the weekend, the U.K. seized on the time it's taking the 27 member states to agree their joint position, with Johnson's office accusing the EU of being "hamstrung by indecision and delay due to the competing interests of different member states." French Europe Minister Amelie de Montchalin did nothing to calm the tension, accusing the U.K. of trying to use "the pressure of blackmail or time" to push a deal through.While much of this is simply rhetoric, the Irish border issue has been one of the key problems of Brexit for the last three years. Under the Withdrawal Agreement reached by the two sides, goods moving from Northern Ireland to Britain should be largely free from checks -- but that's not the case when goods move in the other direction. In order to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland after Brexit, the U.K. agreed to apply the European Union's rules on customs and regulations in Northern Ireland.In effect, that means customs controls on goods considered at risk of moving into the EU from Great Britain through Northern Ireland, according to the Institute of Government. It also means regulatory checks on goods moving into Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K. to make sure they meet EU standards.Although the U.K. is talking tough, its language is slightly different depending on the direction of trade that it's discussing. Slack said on Monday that goods moving from Northern Ireland to Britain would have "unfettered access." He declined to say that same about goods moving in the opposite direction.Not About "Bespoke Agreement""We will comply with our obligations," he said.After leaving the EU on Jan. 31, Britain has until Dec. 31 to sign a trade deal with the EU -- or face crashing out of the bloc and trading on terms set by the World Trade Organization. Johnson has ruled out any extension of this transition period.In a statement outlining a call between Johnson and Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic on Monday afternoon, Johnson's office underlined that commitment."The Prime Minister highlighted that we are not seeking a special or bespoke agreement, but rather one like those the EU has already struck with other friendly countries like Canada," the readout said. "He emphasized that the U.K. will not extend the transition period or accept any arrangements which subordinate us to EU rules."(Updates detail of mandate in fourth paragraph.)\--With assistance from Dara Doyle and Samuel Dodge.To contact the reporters on this story: Robert Hutton in London at rhutton1@bloomberg.net;Ian Wishart in Brussels at iwishart@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson at fjackson@bloomberg.net, Thomas Penny, Stuart BiggsFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| US appeals court upholds Trump rules involving abortions Posted: 24 Feb 2020 10:42 AM PST  In a victory for the Trump administration, a U.S. appeals court on Monday upheld rules that bar taxpayer-funded family-planning clinics from referring women for abortions. The 7-4 ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned decisions issued by judges in Washington, Oregon and California. Beginning March 4, the rules will also prohibit clinics that receive federal money from sharing office space with abortion providers, which critics said would force many Title X providers to find new locations, undergo expensive remodels or shut down — further reducing access to the program.
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| Airlines plunge as Italian coronavirus outbreak threatens longer crisis Posted: 24 Feb 2020 09:55 AM PST  PARIS/LONDON, Feb 24 (Reuters) - European budget airlines bore the brunt of Monday's plunge in global stock markets as the arrival of the coronavirus in Italy pointed to a longer, deeper crisis than many have banked on. EasyJet dropped 16.4% and Ryanair 13.5% as airlines were forced to reassess the fallout from the rapid spread of the COVID-19 virus across Asia and beyond, with South Korea, Italy and Iran now struggling to contain outbreaks. "Concerns are growing that COVID-19 continues to spread and will impact demand to and from other European countries," Credit Suisse analysts said.
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| Meghan McCain: ‘Really Hard’ to Decide if Bernie or Trump Is ‘More in the Tank for Russia’ Posted: 24 Feb 2020 09:50 AM PST  Meghan McCain, The View's resident conservative co-host, said on Monday that she had a "really hard" time deciding whether President Donald Trump or Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is "more in the tank for Russia."Discussing recent revelations that Sanders was briefed last month that Russia was attempting to aid the democratic socialist senator in his 2020 presidential bid, co-host Sunny Hostin grumbled that Sanders "wasn't that forthright with the public." She went on to note that Trump would likely use Russia's meddling to contest the results of the election if Sanders were to win."That's a far jump into the future," McCain responded.The conservative personality, who has been extremely critical of Sanders and his supporters recently, proceeded to take her own show to task for only devoting airtime last week to reports that Congress was briefed that Russia was looking to interfere on Trump's behalf in 2020. "We didn't mention that Bernie was also briefed at the same time," she said. "That was completely omitted from reports.""We also didn't mention that now it's come out that maybe people that had briefed those people, briefed the campaigns, may have overstepped it a little bit," McCain continued. "And I just always think it's interesting that when we're talking about Russia, we only talk about Trump when it comes out that Bernie has just as serious a problem as Trump does. Why aren't we talking about that? Why is that something we are omitting from our Hot Topics?!"Later in the segment, the table tied Russia seemingly preferring Sanders in the Democratic primary to Trump excitedly hyping up the Vermont senator's "great win" in the Nevada caucuses."He usually reserves this enthusiasm for dictators and porn stars," liberal co-host Joy Behar exclaimed."So Bernie is like a dictator or a porn star in the eyes of Trump?" McCain, confused, wondered aloud. "I mean, he's super excited.""No. The enthusiasm that he's showing is because he thinks he can beat Bernie," Behar replied. "He went, he went to the Ukraine to try and hurt [Joe] Biden."McCain, meanwhile, co-opted one of Team Trump's new lines of attack on Sanders to tie him to Russia and Vladimir Putin."I mean, Bernie spent his honeymoon in Soviet Russia," she declared. "I mean, I think if you're going to go back and forth over who is more in the tank for Russia, it's a really hard one between Bernie and Trump."McCain's comments resulted in a single audience member applauding her, prompting the former Fox News star to sarcastically react: "Thank you very much, sir, in the blue shirt."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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| Merkel's crisis-hit CDU launches leadership race Posted: 24 Feb 2020 09:44 AM PST  Germany's centre-right CDU said Monday it would choose a new leader at a special congress on April 25, as the crisis-racked party hopes to halt a slide in the polls and end speculation about who could succeed veteran Chancellor Angela Merkel. Merkel's Christian Democratic Union has been in turmoil after her heir apparent, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, resigned as party leader this month over her supposed failure to stop regional MPs from cooperating with the far right. Speaking after talks with party grandees in Berlin, Kramp-Karrenbauer said they had agreed to hold an extraordinary congress to elect the next leader of the CDU, a party that has dominated politics in Germany for 70 years.
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| Crackdown on immigrants who use public benefits takes effect Posted: 24 Feb 2020 09:34 AM PST  Pastor Antonio Velasquez says that before the Trump administration announced a crackdown on immigrants using government social services, people lined up before sunrise outside a state office in a largely Latino Phoenix neighborhood to sign up for food stamps and Medicaid. "You had to arrive at 3 in the morning, and it might take you until the end of the day," he said, pointing behind the office in the Maryvale neighborhood to show how long the lines got. With new rules taking effect Monday that disqualify more people from green cards if they use government benefits, droves of immigrants, including citizens and legal residents, have dropped social services they or their children may be entitled to out of fear they will be kicked out of the U.S., said Velazquez and other advocates.
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| Coronavirus Cases Soar to Alarming Numbers in Italy, South Korea and Iran with Hundreds Infected Posted: 24 Feb 2020 09:18 AM PST  Coronavirus Cases Soar in Italy, South Korea and Iran
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| PewDiePie spoke in mock-Chinese and made coronavirus jokes in his comeback video, and he doubled down in his latest post Posted: 24 Feb 2020 09:05 AM PST  In a video, Kjellberg made jokes about the outbreaks threatening lives in China, South Korea, Italy, and Iran. Now he's facing backlash.
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| Car hits crowd at Carnival in German town; dozens injured Posted: 24 Feb 2020 08:23 AM PST  German police say that dozens of people were injured, several of them seriously when a car slammed into a car at a Carnival parade in a small town. A car slammed into a crowd at a Carnival procession in a German town on Monday, injuring several people, police said. Police told the dpa news agency that no deaths have been reported in the crash in Volkmarsen, about 280 kilometers (175 miles) southwest of Berlin.
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| Dow Plunges Amid Global Freakout Over Coronavirus Outbreaks Posted: 24 Feb 2020 07:46 AM PST  ROME–The sharp jump in the number of coronavirus cases outside China has caused panic attacks around the world. The Dow plummeted nearly 1,000 points on Monday, countries are slamming borders shut and quarantining people based on racial profiling, and hand sanitizer and face masks are impossible to find.But authorities have something far more worrying on their minds. They are increasingly focused on clusters of coronavirus with untraceable, or at least so far untraced, beginnings. Coronavirus Explodes in Italy, Threatening Europe. Can It Be Contained?That's the case in Italy, where infections shot from four on Friday to 230 and climbing fast on Monday, including at least six fatalities. In the north of the country, where all of the current cases are concentrated at the moment, authorities still have not identified "patient zero," the first carrier of the virus who sparked the outbreak. That is also the case in South Korea, where infections rocketed past the 800 mark on Monday with seven confirmed deaths, and where the outbreak is closely tied to members of the Shincheonji religious sect in the city of Daegu. There, too, officials have not identified what they are calling the "index case," or the first church member to introduce the virus to the rest of the flock.What makes these clusters so worrisome is that without identifying the primary source who set off the contagion in a cluster, authorities say they cannot effectively predict the trajectory of the spread or, more importantly, stop it. If they don't know where it started, they don't know how it got there, and theoretically at least the carrier could still be spreading the disease and could even set off another cluster. In Italy, two major clusters are miles apart, and health officials have no idea if they are related. "We don't have primary contagion," Luca Zaia, head of the Veneto region, site of the smaller of two major clusters. Veneto also is home to Venice, which has just canceled Carnival celebrations set for Tuesday night."We are faced with secondary infections in people who have not had relationships with citizens from infected areas or who have been to infected areas," said Zaia.But there is an upside to the cluster outbreaks, too. In Italy, the civil protection authorities have locked down the infected areas entirely as armed guards try to contain the outbreak. Anyone defying the order to stay indoors until every single person in the area is tested risks jail time and fines. The same is true in South Korea, where containment has meant infected people are prohibited from leaving large metropolitan areas and carrying the virus farther afield.Attempts to control the outbreak nodes within countries dealing with the crisis have done little to calm nerves.Japan Shows Coronavirus May Be a Gift—for Would-Be DictatorsAustrian authorities stopped a train leaving Italy through the Brenner pass Sunday while they tested a passenger with a fever. Italians on an Alitalia flight to Mauritius were also turned back to Rome on Monday after being told those from Milan onboard would face quarantine. The French Health Ministry also added Italy's Lombardy and Veneto regions to the list of high-risk coronavirus areas, now requiring all people who visit there to stay quarantined at home for at least two weeks upon entering France, according to a spokesperson for the General Health Directorate.Israel has acted similarly, refusing admittance to 180 non-Israeli passengers on a Korean Air flight to Tel Aviv. Jordan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Bahrain, and Samoa soon followed suit, banning all air traffic from Korea.There is also a growing concern that some countries are underreporting, or not even testing for the virus at all. Iran has reported 61 cases and 12 deaths, a much higher percentage of death to infection than seen elsewhere, meaning infections are not being recorded. And there is speculation that the true death toll could be much closer to 50. The outbreak started in the city of Qom, the most important religious center in the country, filled with students and pilgrims. There, too, authorities have not identified who introduced it. The World Health Organization has warned that as these clusters emerge, they will soon force it to declare a "global pandemic," defined as a disease spreading on two continents. "What we see is a very different phase of this outbreak depending where you look," Dr. Sylvie Briand of WHO said at a press conference Monday. "We see different patterns of transmission in different places."But what is most troubling of all is the situation—or curious lack thereof—in Africa, where just one case has been confirmed in Egypt, and in North Korea, where no cases have been announced. China has a robust relationship with several African nations, which makes the lack of cases very hard to understand. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, said Saturday that in other places "the number of cases with no clear epidemiological link, such as travel history to China or contact with a confirmed case," is worrying. But the opposite is even more so, and the prevailing theory about Africa is that a lack of medical facilities and testing capacity may mean the virus is spreading silently. The WHO has been working to get testing kits and other preparedness measures in place in Africa for when, not if, the virus takes hold. "Our biggest concern continues to be the potential for COVID-19 to spread in countries with weak health systems," said Tedros. "We know a little bit more about this virus and the disease it causes. We know that more than 80 percent of patients have mild disease and will recover, but the other 20 percent of patients have severe or critical disease, ranging from shortness of breath to septic shock and multi-organ failure. These patients require intensive care, using equipment such as respiratory support machines that are, as you know, in short supply in many African countries."With additional reporting from Donald Kirk in Seoul.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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| Iran denies virus coverup after claim of 50 deaths Posted: 24 Feb 2020 07:45 AM PST  Iran's government vowed Monday to be transparent after being accused of covering up the deadliest coronavirus outbreak outside China, dismissing a lawmaker's claim the toll could be as high as 50. The authorities in Iran have come under mounting public pressure since it took days for them to admit to "accidentally" shooting down a Ukrainian airliner last month, killing 176 people. The government announced Iran's coronavirus death toll had jumped by four to 12 -- by far the highest outside China -- as several regional countries reported their first cases on Monday, even after imposing travel restrictions and strict quarantine measures.
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| Fashion Stocks Caught in Coronavirus Fears Posted: 24 Feb 2020 07:41 AM PST  A global selloff pushed fashion stocks lower Monday as investors reacted strongly to fresh outbreaks in Italy and South Korea. The Dow Jones Industrial Average opened the U.S. trading day with a sharp decline, dropping 2.8 percent, or 813.11 points, to 28,179.30. Among those hardest hit were Farfetch, down 10.2 percent to $11.03; Tapestry Inc, 7.8 percent to $25.82; Fossil Group Inc., 7.2 percent to $5.57; Ralph Lauren Corp., 6.9 percent to $109.36; Revolve Group, 5.9 percent to $19.75; Lululemon Athletica Inc., 5.6 percent to $241.63; Capri Holdings, 5.1 percent to $26.25, and PVH Corp. 5 percent to $80.48. Until now, investors have largely taken a wait-and-see approach to the coronavirus, trying to gauge the potential impact — to both retail sales and supply chains — and hoping that the troubles pass. But now, with the virus spreading, the market is reorientating to a potentially worse and longer lasting fallout.Analysts at stock research firm Cowen said outbreaks in Italy (with 150 new cases over the weekend) as well as South Korea and Iran suggest the coronavirus has become a global pandemic, although the World Health Organization has not officially applied that label. "It has been four-and-a-half weeks since the Hubei quarantine began and three-and-a-half weeks since the U.S. and a number of other countries around the world began restricting inbound travel from China," Cowen said, illustrating how quickly the outbreak is moving. In Milan, the Giorgio Armani runway show was held behind closed doors, filmed in an empty theater without press and buyers. It was distributed through the brand's web site and social media. Other events were canceled while others were postponed, including the international eyewear trade show Mido, which was slated to run Feb. 29 to March 2 at Milan's Rho-Fiera fairgrounds. European markets took the brunt of Monday's global sell off, with the FTSE MIB in Milan dropping 5.9 percent to 23,303.18, followed by the CAC 40 in Paris, down 4.1 percent to 5,783.29, and the FTSE 100 in London, off 3.5 percent to 7,144.31. Among those posting the steepest declines were Tod's, down 11.1 percent to 31.24 euros; Salvatore Ferragamo Italia, 9.2 percent to 14.49 euros; Safilo Group, 8.2 percent to 1 euros; Moncler, 5.8 percent to 34.99 euros; Kering , 4.5 percent to 536.40 euros; Burberry Group, 4.1 percent to 17.94 pounds, and LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, 4.1 percent to 387.95 euros. The European Commission said it is "working around the clock to support EU Member States and strengthen international efforts to slow the spread" of the outbreak. To that end, the commission revealed a 232 million aid package. "As cases continue to rise, public health is the number one priority," said Ursula von der Leyen, president of the Commission. "Whether it be boosting preparedness in Europe, in China or elsewhere, the international community must work together. Europe is here to play a leading role."More from WWD * Fashion Once Again Enters a Museum in Milan * Coronavirus Impacts Milan Fashion Week * How to Watch Giorgio Armani's Fall 2020 Show Live
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| Iran’s Supreme Leader Faces Some Supreme Problems Posted: 24 Feb 2020 07:30 AM PST |
| Iran’s Supreme Leader Faces Some Supreme Problems Posted: 24 Feb 2020 07:30 AM PST |
| Pioneering black NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson dies Posted: 24 Feb 2020 07:17 AM PST  Katherine Johnson, a mathematician who calculated rocket trajectories and earth orbits for NASA's early space missions and was later portrayed in the 2016 hit film "Hidden Figures," about pioneering black female aerospace workers, has died. Johnson died Monday of natural causes at a retirement community in Newport News, Virginia, family attorney Donyale Y. H. Reavis told The Associated Press. Johnson was one of the "computers" who solved equations by hand during NASA's early years and those of its precursor organization, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.
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| The Dow is on pace for its biggest 1-day drop in 3 years Posted: 24 Feb 2020 07:17 AM PST  Coronavirus fears have led to a stock plunge.The Dow Jones Industrial Average traded 979 points, or 3.4 percent, lower at Monday's opening, putting it on pace for its biggest one-day point drop in three years, per CNBC. The record currently belongs to a 1,175-point decline in February 2018. At the moment, the drop is the third-highest in that timeframe, and the Dow has erased its gains for the year, per Bloomberg.> S&P 500 registers its biggest drop since August, Dow Jones erased its gains for the year. BQMarketNow> > Read more: https://t.co/VSYdnuxalD pic.twitter.com/7B4Ysxdp6S> > -- BloombergQuint (@BloombergQuint) February 24, 2020The other major indexes, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite, fell 3.2 percent and 4 percent, respectively, and several major industries, especially those that rely heavily on Chinese consumers, have also taken hits as a result of the virus' global spread, which now has countries like Italy, Iran, and South Korea undertaking significant measures to contain it. > More stats on the coronavirus's impact on global business:> > -$29 billion loss in airline revenue > -China auto sales down 92% > -387 Procter & Gamble suppliers in China interrupted > -Adidas sales in China down 85%https://t.co/P86EPreRrg> > -- Jeff Giesea (@jeffgiesea) February 22, 2020More stories from theweek.com The coronavirus recession? The real third way in 2020 Top member of Trump's coronavirus task force asks Twitter for help accessing map of virus
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| Coronavirus updates: 5 dead and 200 infected in Italy as Europe braces for COVID-19 Posted: 24 Feb 2020 06:44 AM PST  As new hotspots arise in South Korea, Italy and Iran, here is the latest for Monday, Feb. 24.
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| Chancellor Merkel's CDU party to elect new leader in April Posted: 24 Feb 2020 06:44 AM PST  German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union will elect a new leader at the end of April, party officials said Monday. Current party chief Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer had been Merkel's preferred heir-apparent, but announced earlier this month that she would step down and not seek to become the next chancellor in the 2021 election. The decision came after a series of poor showings in state elections, and a failure by Kramp-Karrenbauer, who is also Germany's defense minister, to establish her authority over the party.
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| Justices to hear Philly dispute over same-sex foster parents Posted: 24 Feb 2020 06:34 AM PST  The Supreme Court said Monday it will hear a dispute over a Philadelphia Catholic agency that won't place foster children with same-sex couples, a big test of religious rights on a more conservative court. The justices will review an appeals court ruling that upheld the city's decision to stop placing children with the Archdiocese of Philadelphia's agency because it would not permit same-sex couples to serve as foster parents. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled the city did not target the agency, Catholic Social Services, because of its religious beliefs, but acted only to enforce its own nondiscrimination policy in the face of what seemed to be a clear violation.
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| When Development Aid Goes Awry Posted: 24 Feb 2020 06:30 AM PST  (Bloomberg Opinion) -- Most people would agree that rich countries have a moral obligation to help poor countries grow. One of the main ways wealthy countries try to do this is with "official development assistance" — foreign aid designed to boost poorer countries' economies. ODA has increased substantially since the turn of the century:Most of this aid is given directly from one country to another. But a substantial fraction is given through the World Bank, the United Nations and other international agencies. Thus, it naturally caused a stir when three economists who regularly work with the World Bank submitted a working paper claiming that a substantial amount of aid is pocketed by elites in recipient countries.Jørgen Juel Andersen, Niels Johannesen, and Bob Rijkers found that when the World Bank disburses a payment to a country that's very dependent on foreign aid, deposits to Swiss banks and other foreign havens experience a sharp and immediate rise from that country. No similar rise occurs for banks in countries with more transparent financial systems, such as France or Germany; it seems clear that whoever is moving aid payments out of recipient countries wants to keep it secret.Since the average citizens of a developing nation don't tend to have Swiss bank accounts, and since companies would tend to deposit the money in New York City or London rather than Zurich, it stands to reason that politically well-connected individuals are simply pocketing some of the cash — perhaps around 5% to 7.5% of the total aid.That isn't a huge amount, but it could be just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to misuse of funds. In addition to being stashed away in Swiss banks, aid money might be directed to politically well-connected but unproductive companies or used to buy consumption goods for friends and supporters of the ruling regime. Some earlier papers on the topic have found that aid dollars tend to be mostly spent on consumption goods, with little or no detectable effect on investment or growth. Andersen, Johannesen and Rijkers' study suggests that this consumption could be flowing to those who need it least.Also concerning is the fact that the effect tends to be stronger the more dependent a country is on foreign aid. For the most aid-dependent countries studied, around 15% of World Bank payments quickly found their way into Swiss banks. These tend to be some of the world's poorest nations.The finding suggests that aid may be actively causing political dysfunction in these countries. Much like natural-resource revenues, aid money may stabilize the power of a corrupt elite, allowing them to enrich themselves without providing education, health, infrastructure and other public goods that would benefit their countries as a whole. A number of economists have accumulated evidence on the disconcerting similarity between foreign aid and natural-resource endowments.If too much aid functions as a political and economic curse, that would bolster the arguments of aid critics such as economists Dambisa Moyo and William Easterly. It would potentially vindicate the actions of President Donald Trump, who has moved to cut foreign aid. It could even call into question one of the core functions of the World Bank itself. Perhaps it's not surprising that there are rumors that officials at the Bank tried to block publication of Andersen, Johannesen, and Rijkers's paper, prompting the organization's chief economist, Penny Goldberg, to resign.Defenders of foreign aid will no doubt have a riposte to these criticisms; the debate over aid is an old one, and won't be resolved by one more study. But there are several things that rich countries can do in response to the accumulation of evidence on the dangers of too much aid.The first is to not give any country a large percent of its economic output in terms of development aid — say, no more than 10% — over a long period of time. That should help prevent toxic political effects.The second is to rely more on other forms of income transfer from rich countries to poor ones. Two major alternatives are remittances and foreign direct investment. Remittances, which are already more than three times larger than aid as a source of income for poor and middle-income countries, require wealthy countries to allow in foreign workers, either as immigrants or as guest workers.Foreign direct investment, meanwhile, doesn't just transfer income — it helps poor countries grow economically so that eventually they can provide for themselves. Even the musician Bono, long known as a supporter of foreign aid, has recognized that investment and growth are ultimately a more powerful tonic for fighting poverty.So there are better ways to help developing countries. It's OK for rich countries to cut payments to the most aid-dependent countries, as long as they replace the lost cash with FDI and remittances.To contact the author of this story: Noah Smith at nsmith150@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.Noah Smith is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University, and he blogs at Noahpinion.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Merkel’s Party Accelerates Leadership Race to Quell Turmoil Posted: 24 Feb 2020 06:09 AM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union will accelerate the process of appointing a new leader as the party struggles to emerge from political turmoil.A special conference will be held to choose a successor to Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer on April 25 in Berlin in what will be an open fight to lead Germany's strongest party.Next up in the process will be for people to actually declare their candidacies this week. So far, only one candidate -- Norbert Roettgen, an outsider who was fired by Merkel in 2012 -- has publicly declared his intentions.Kramp-Karrenbauer -- the CDU chief who shocked Germany's political establishment two weeks ago by abandoning ambitions of succeeding Merkel -- said she spoke with four potential candidates and all pledged to support the full breadth of the party, as it seeks to close ranks after the recent upheaval.The candidates -- including Friedrich Merz, Armin Laschet, Jens Spahn and Roettgen -- "very clearly declared that they will respect any decision of the party conference, irrespective of what it is," she said, speaking to reporters in Berlin after a leadership meeting on Monday. It's unclear whether more hopefuls will come forward, she said.Kramp-Karrenbauer originally planned to have the party decide on a chief this summer and sign off on the pick at a regular party convention in December.Concerns about the risks of an extended power struggle prodded numerous party officials to push for a faster process. A disastrous election result in Hamburg on Sunday, when the CDU posted its worst performance in the city state since World War II, drove home the need for urgency.The emerging number of contenders and the tighter timetable will stoke competition for the post. The incoming CDU chief would have the inside track to run for chancellor at the next election, which is due in the fall of 2021 at the latest. Kramp-Karrenbauer said the decision on the chancellor candidate will be made later in consultation with the Bavarian sister party.If the winner ends up being from the more conservative wing of the CDU rather than a centrist in Merkel's mold, the faster decision could intensify pressure on Merkel to step down early. Kramp-Karrenbauer tried to brush aside risks to Germany's stability.After a renewed round of talks with the candidates, "it has become very clear again that everyone assumes that there will be good cooperation both with the CDU caucus in the Bundestag and with the CDU-led federal government," Kramp-Karrenbauer said. "That is certainly a requirement that applies to all candidates."With a new CDU head in place as early as the spring, the prospect of an early exit for Merkel was enough to prompt the Social Democrats to say they won't support a new chancellor. The coalition agreement the SPD signed in March 2018 was with Merkel, according to the SPD's general secretary, Lars Klingbeil."If the CDU has any ideas of somehow swapping out the chancellor, then the SPD will very clearly not go along with that," Klingbeil told Bild in an interview.Kramp-Karrenbauer attacked the Social Democrat, accusing him of misleading the public over the CDU's stance on the far right.The split between party chief and Merkel's role in the chancellery proved unworkable for Kramp-Karrenbauer. Her withdrawal on Feb. 10 escalated a crisis that began when CDU lawmakers in Thuringia cast their lot in with the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany to install a premier in the eastern state, breaking a taboo and defying marching orders to not cooperate with extreme right or left.'Deep Insecurity'At stake in the CDU leadership battle is the direction of Europe's largest economy as the European Union grapples with stagnating growth, fallout from U.K.'s exit and a withering of the global order as the U.S. recedes from view and China strengthens its footprint."There is deep insecurity in the party," Spahn told reporters before the meeting on Monday. "We need to make sure that Merkel is not the last CDU chancellor."The vote in Hamburg reflected a nationwide realignment in Germany's political establishment with the CDU declining and the Greens soaring. Leaders in Merkel's drew a straight line from the fiasco in Thuringia to the Hamburg result."What happened there and all the discussions linked to it was anything but a tailwind for the CDU," said Paul Ziemiak, the party's general secretary.Kramp-Karrenbauer spent last week talking to potential candidates, including Merz, who lost a power struggle with Merkel a decade ago; socially conservative Health Minister Spahn; and Laschet, a moderate who leads Germany's biggest state, North Rhine-Westphalia. CDU lawmaker Roettgen upended the prospects for a choreographed selection process by announcing his candidacy.(Adds comments from outgoing CDU chief throughout)To contact the reporters on this story: Arne Delfs in Berlin at adelfs@bloomberg.net;Patrick Donahue in Berlin at pdonahue1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Chris Reiter, Andrew BlackmanFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Girls and Women Still Aren't Equal Anywhere, Says UN Foundation at Launch of #EqualEverywhere Campaign Posted: 24 Feb 2020 06:00 AM PST |
| Nations seek biodiversity accord to stave off mass extinction Posted: 24 Feb 2020 05:53 AM PST  Nature experts and government delegates gather this week in Rome to thrash out an international deal for endangered species, trying to avoid a mass extinction event caused by human activity. Having been hastily relocated from Kunming in China following the coronavirus outbreak, negotiators from more than 140 countries have until February 29 to study a draft text. The United Nations biodiversity panel IPBES last year warned that up to one million species face the risk of extinction as a result of humanity's insatiable desire for land and materials.
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| Mine waste dams threaten the environment, even when they don't fail Posted: 24 Feb 2020 05:47 AM PST  Scars from large mining operations are permanently etched across the landscapes of the world. The environmental damage and human health hazards that these activities create may be both severe and irreversible. Many mining operations store enormous quantities of waste, known as tailings, onsite. After miners excavate rock, a processing plant crushes it to recover valuable minerals such as gold or copper. The leftover pulverized rock and liquid slurry become tailings, which often are acidic and contain high concentrations of arsenic, mercury and other toxic substances. Mining companies store tailings forever, frequently behind earth-filled embankment dams. Over the past 100 years, more than 300 mine tailing dams worldwide have failed, mainly due to foundation weakening, seepage, overtopping and earthquake damage.We are research scientists studying how humans affect rivers. In our view, the damage caused by stored mine waste often outweighs the benefits that mining provides to local economies and the technology industry. This issue is especially urgent now in a region of the Pacific Northwest where Alaska and British Columbia meet. This zone, known as the Golden Triangle, is studded with mineral claims and leases. We believe that rivers in this area could be severely damaged if proposed mega-projects are allowed to proceed. Catastrophic failures renew old worriesTailings dam failures range from the 1966 Aberfan disaster that buried a Welsh village to multiple spills over the past decade in Canada, China, Chile and the United States. The International Commission on Large Dams, a nongovernmental organization, warned in 2001 that the frequency and severity of tailings dam failures was increasing globally. Two catastrophic and highly publicized failures at the Mt. Polley dam in Canada in 2014 and the Brumadinho dam in Brazil in 2019 finally catalyzed a response. The International Council on Mining and Metals, the United Nations Environment Programme and the independent organization Principles for Responsible Investment drafted a "global standard for the safe and secure management of mine tailings facilities." The first public review of the standard was completed in December 2019, and its authors plan to finalize their recommendations by the end of March 2020.The standard aspires to achieve "zero harm to people and the environment and zero tolerance for human fatality." Reducing the likelihood of future dam failures and minimizing damage if one does break are appropriate goals, but our research suggests that the concept of "zero harm" is false and potentially dangerous.Why? Because once in place, tailings dams and their toxic reservoirs require maintenance forever. Even if there is no catastrophic failure, these dams and their surrounding infrastructure can cause ecological harm in multiple ways. They require artificial water diversions and releases, which upset natural flow patterns in surrounding streams and modify water temperature and concentrations of metals. And polluted groundwater seepage from unlined reservoirs or failing liners is often hard to detect and treat. These ecosystem modifications directly affect organisms on land and in the water downstream. Every decision to allow a mine to proceed with a tailings storage facility indelibly transforms rivers and their ecosystems for hundreds to thousands of years. International rivers at riskToday these decisions loom large in the Golden Triangle, home to the Taku, Stikine and Unuk Rivers – three of the longest undammed rivers in North America. Salmon from these rivers have supported indigenous communities for millennia, generate tens of millions of dollars in economic activity annually and provide a dependable source of food for organisms ranging from insects to brown bears.We calculate that 19% of the total drainage area of these three rivers is staked with mineral mining claims or leases. This includes 59% of the Unuk River watershed, along with the entire Iskut River corridor, the largest tributary to the Stikine River. We have identified dozens of mines in exploratory or production phases. Some industry representatives call these statistics irrelevant because only a small portion of the claims will convert to economically viable projects. But from our perspective, the fact that vast areas of these watersheds are included in initial explorations implies that few rivers in this region are safe from potential mining development.Most proposed projects in the Golden Triangle will require open pit mining and tailings storage. As one indicator of their potential scale, the Red Chris Mine, which has operated since 2015 in the headwaters of the Stikine River, maintains a tailings reservoir dam that is permitted to ultimately stand 344 feet (105 meters) high and contain approximately 107 billion cubic feet (305 million cubic meters) of tailings. The heights of the failed dams at Mt. Polley and Brumadinho were 131 feet (40 meters) and 282 feet (86 meters), respectively. Those heights pale in comparison to dams proposed for three metal mines in the Stikine and Unuk watersheds, including KSM, Galore Creek, and Schaft Creek. The tallest of four dams planned for KSM would measure 784 feet (239 meters) – one of the highest dams in North America, and the second highest in Canada. At KSM, economically viable ore will be transported from open pits to a processing facility and tailings storage reservoir, accessed via twin tunnels built under a glacier. After what the project proponent calls the 53-year "life of mine," Seabridge Gold proposes to treat runoff water from the piled waste rock for at least 200 years. Each component of these proposed mines is an incredible engineering feat that will cost billions of dollars to construct and more to clean up later. From the perspective of maintaining an ecologically healthy watershed, the life of the mine is just beginning when operations close. In contrast to more conventional water storage dams, which are licensed and built for a finite operating life, tailings dams must hold back their slurry forever. The likelihood of leaks or dam failure compounds over this multigenerational time period as facilities age and projects no longer generate revenue. Accurately assessing riskRivers are the arteries of coastal Alaska and northwestern Canada, draining pristine snow and ice-covered mountains and pumping out cold, clean water to support fish, wildlife and people. Here and elsewhere, we believe that regulators should take a measured and cautious view of current and planned tailings facilities. Dam failures are increasing in frequency, and often are so large that true cleanup or reclamation is not possible. Before more are built, we see a need for independent science to provide a means of honestly assessing the risk of storing mining waste.[Insight, in your inbox each day. You can get it with The Conversation's email newsletter.]This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.Read more: * Weighing the impact of the Gold King Mine spill – and hundreds of inactive mines like it * Invoking noble coal miners is a mainstay of American politicsChristopher Sergeant receives funding from Wilburforce Foundation.Julian D. Olden does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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| Leader of Merkel's CDU says party to elect new chairperson on April 25 Posted: 24 Feb 2020 05:15 AM PST |
| Europe Confronts Coronavirus as Italy Battles an Eruption of Cases Posted: 24 Feb 2020 05:05 AM PST  CASALPUSTERLENGO, Italy -- Europe confronted its first major outbreak of the coronavirus as an eruption of more than 150 cases in Italy prompted officials Sunday to lock down at least 10 towns, close schools in major cities and cancel sporting events and cultural touchstones, including the end of the Venice carnival.The worrisome spike -- from fewer than five known cases in Italy before Thursday -- shattered the sense of safety and distance that much of the Continent had felt in recent months even as the virus has infected more than 78,000 worldwide and killed more than 2,400, nearly all in China.The perception of a rising threat was amplified on television channels, newspaper headlines and social media feeds across Europe, where leaders could face their greatest challenge since the 2015 migration crisis.That surge of people into Europe radically altered the politics of the European Union and exposed its institutional weaknesses. This time, it is an invisible virus from abroad that has slipped past Europe's borders and presents its bickering coalitions with a new potential emergency.If the virus spreads, the fundamental principle of open borders within much of Europe -- so central to the identity of the bloc -- will undergo a stress test, as will the vaunted but strained European public health systems, especially in countries that have undergone austerity measures.Already, a new nervousness has pervaded Europe.In Italy's Lombardy region, 10 towns were locked down after a cluster of cases suddenly emerged in Codogno, southeast of Milan.Residents were supposed to leave or enter the towns only with special permission, affecting at least 50,000 people and by Sunday night, police officers in surgical masks were waving down cars.Austrian officials stopped a train en route from Italy to Austria and Germany to test passengers for the virus. The Austrian interior minister, Karl Nehammer, said the tests came back negative so the train got the "all clear."In France, the new health minister, Olivier Veran, stressed the country's preparedness, saying it would significantly ramp up its testing."There is a problematic situation at the door, in Italy, that we are watching with great attention," he said Sunday, adding that a Europe-wide discussion between health ministers was in the works.On Sunday night, an aid ship bringing hundreds of migrants, who had been rescued off the coast of Libya, to a Sicilian port received instructions from the Italian government to remain in quarantine for 14 days as a precaution, according to the ship's Twitter account.Fears of foreigners spreading the virus across oceans has already prompted some governments around the world to impose new border or travel controls.The Trump administration has barred entry to the United States by most foreign nationals who have recently visited China, where the virus first appeared and spread. Much of the world has adopted similar controls, but the virus has continued to spread, most notably to South Korea, where more cases have been recorded than anywhere else outside China, and this past week to Iran, where eight deaths have been reported.Israel on Monday will block entry to all nonresidents who have visited Japan and South Korea in the 14 days before their arrival. On Sunday, President Moon Jae-in of South Korea, which has 763 confirmed infections and six deaths, put the country on the highest possible alert, empowering the government to ban visitors from China and take other sweeping measures to contain the outbreak."The coming few days will be a critical time for us," Moon said at an emergency meeting of government officials.Even China -- with an authoritarian government that has locked down areas with tens of millions of people in an attempt to stamp out the epidemic -- has struggled to contain the virus, which has no known cure.But the scores of new cases in Italy, mostly in the Lombardy region that includes densely populated Milan, present a new challenge for a country with a wobbly government often paralyzed by infighting.That government has now become the reluctant laboratory to test whether the virus can be successfully contained in an open European society with a liberal approach to restrictions.Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte of Italy said on Italian television Sunday that the country had taken precautions, including barring flights from China in January. These measures seemed to have paid off "even if now it looks like it didn't," he said.He suggested that the surge of Italian cases only reflected Italy's casting a wider net in terms of testing."We cannot exclude that after tests that are equally rigorous, the numbers can go up in other countries," Conte said.Beatrice Lorenzin, a former Italian health minister, said the sharp rise in cases in Italy resulted from systematic checks that discovered a "second generation of contagion."She said this was probably caused by infected people who traveled to Italy from China using indirect flights without declaring their original departure point or putting themselves in voluntary quarantine during the virus' incubation period."I hope similar things did not happen in other countries," she said.The outbreak in Codogno, in Lombardy, was detected after a 38-year-old man was admitted to the city's hospital and diagnosed with the virus Thursday. But the man had developed symptoms perhaps five days before that, potentially allowing the virus to spread.Health officials are trying to figure out how he contracted the virus; he had not been to China. Many cases in Lombardy, officials say, may be traceable to that one case.At least five members of the hospital medical staff and several patients have been infected. Other persons who tested positive include the man's pregnant wife, some friends, and others who spent time with them. The towns surrounding the ones where the man works and lives have been included in the shutdown.On Sunday night on a road outside Casalpusterlengo, one of the locked-down towns, police officers in surgical masks halted cars, asking what business they had in the town. The officers suggested that motorists take an alternate route and urged them against going any farther.Most of the drivers didn't need much convincing.Bahije Mounia, a 42-year-old caretaker from a nearby town who wore a surgical mask, turned right back around. She said the government should have let people in the area know how dangerous things were much earlier. With the spike of cases in the region, she said, "It's almost like we're in China."What had seemed like a contained few cases spread throughout the country's wealthy north. So did the precautions.People wore surgical masks in Aosta, which is on the Swiss border. Officials in the Piedmont region closed schools in Turin, and Venice cut its Carnival short. The patriarch of Venice, the Rev. Francesco Moraglia, suspended all religious ceremonies, including Ash Wednesday celebrations that mark the beginning of Lent.At least two trade fairs in Milan, cornerstones of the city's economy, were postponed. But the women's fashion shows, except for those by Armani, continued on schedule Sunday to large crowds, with few wearing masks, The Associated Press reported. The Giorgio Armani fashion house made a last-minute decision to stream its shows from empty theaters.Two elderly people who tested positive for the coronavirus were in intensive care at Venice's municipal hospital.In the regional capital of Milan, officials closed museums, schools, its cathedral, and halted religious and cultural events. Many other venues, aside from those providing essential services, have been closed, including most bars and nightclubs.Fears that the city could be quarantined triggered a run on supermarkets. By 5 p.m. Sunday, at least one supermarket had run out of fruit, vegetables, meat and nearly all canned food.Some of the customers wore masks, and they all seemed in a hurry to fill up their carts with whatever was left on the shelves.Vanessa Maiocchi, 45, said she worried about getting her children enough food. She was also concerned that her brother, who has a weak immune system, might be more vulnerable, especially if his company kept making him go to work."At least in these cases," she said, "the state should intervene."So far, the virus has killed three people in Italy, including a 78-year-old man from Veneto who died Friday; an elderly woman who died in Crema on Sunday; and a 77-year-old woman who died in her home in Casalpusterlengo and posthumously tested positive for the virus.The Italian state, which leads the third largest economy in the eurozone, has not inspired much confidence of late, as it has been consumed by internal machinations. But health experts said they were more worried because the Italian Health Ministry appeared to have moved aggressively to prevent an outbreak, to no avail.Francesco Passerini, the mayor of Codogno, said in an interview Sunday evening that he still had not received concrete logistical instructions from Rome."Who is going to bring essential goods here?" he said. "Who is going to take care of provisions and medical transportation?"Two military structures in Lombardy are being prepared to become isolation camps. A military base in Rome has been housing evacuees from Wuhan, China, where the virus began, and the Italian passengers of the Diamond Princess, the cruise ship that has been under quarantine in Yokohama, Japan.Lockdown procedures like the ones in Lombardy will be applied to other towns if new clusters emerge, officials said. Quarantine measures will also be applied to anyone who has close contact with someone who has the virus.Elia Delmiglio, the mayor of Casalpusterlengo, said people continued going in and out of his town for most of the day Sunday."We got the decree, but not a precise schedule for when it will be implemented," he said.But by late Sunday night, police began arriving to seal the town off."People are worried," said Paolo Camia, a 55-year-old manager of a software company from Casalpusterlengo, who drove out of town in his blue surgical mask to take some pictures of the police checkpoints. "Basically, we can't leave."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| Sanctions bill aimed at Lebanon over detained US citizen Posted: 24 Feb 2020 05:02 AM PST |
| Dueling Narratives Emerge From Muddied Account of Russia's 2020 Interference Posted: 24 Feb 2020 04:56 AM PST  As accusations swirled Sunday about Russia's efforts to interfere with the 2020 election, President Donald Trump's national security adviser and former Vice President Joe Biden could not agree on what Moscow is, or is not, doing.Their disagreement came as intelligence officials disputed reports that emerged last week about a briefing of the House Intelligence Committee. The officials now maintain that the House members either misheard or misinterpreted a key part of the briefing and that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not mean to say that it believes the Russians are currently intervening in the election explicitly to help Trump.They do believe that Russia is intervening in the election and that Moscow prefers Trump, a deal-maker it knows well. But at least for now, those two objectives may not be linked.The differing interpretations only made it easier for the Trump administration and Democrats to put forward their own version of what the Russians are doing. As the national security adviser, Robert O'Brien, defended Trump and intimated that the Russians favored the Democratic presidential front-runner, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Biden blamed the president and other Republicans for allowing Russia to continue to interfere in the election.O'Brien, who took office at the end of last summer, insisted on CBS' "Face the Nation" that he had never seen any intelligence suggesting that the Russians were interfering on behalf of Trump."There's no briefing that I've received, that the president has received, that says that President Putin is doing anything to try and influence the election in favor of President Trump," O'Brien said, referring to the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin. "We just haven't seen that intelligence. If it's out there, I haven't seen it."He was referring to an assessment provided to the House Intelligence Committee on Feb. 13. That briefing outlined the breadth of Russian efforts to get involved in the November election -- from hacking into voting systems to disinformation.At the root of the confusion is what Shelby Pierson, a senior intelligence official responsible for overseeing the issues of election interference, said in that briefing.Pierson, a longtime intelligence official, said there was no doubt the Russians were continuing to insert themselves in the election process. That would be consistent with past intelligence reports and the effort by the U.S. Cyber Command in 2018 to block Russian intelligence from manipulating social media before the midterm congressional elections.But some intelligence officials said Pierson did not say that the current interference was explicitly on Trump's behalf. Others in the briefing said that in response to lawmakers' follow-up questions, officials made the connection between the Russian preference for Trump and Moscow's efforts to interfere in the election.The difference between actively backing Trump and preferring his reelection is a subtle nuance, officials said, but an important one: It is probably too early for the Russians to begin any significant move to bolster a specific candidate. In 2016, they at first sought to cause chaos and hurt Hillary Clinton, intelligence reports released later that year said, but only in the last few months before the election did they actively work to elect Trump.If they go the same route now, it would not be inconsistent with backing Sanders for the Democratic nomination, in part because Sanders has voted against new sanctions on Russia and because he is considered a noninterventionist. And they may conclude, rightly or wrongly, that Trump could beat Sanders.O'Brien seemed to have little doubt that the Russians preferred Sanders. "What I've heard from the FBI," he said, "is that Russia would like Bernie Sanders to win the Democrat nomination. They'd probably like him to be president, understandably, because he wants to spend money on social programs and probably would have to take it out of the military."He did not give the source of that intelligence.Sanders has denounced Russia and warned it not to interfere in the election.Trump also leapt into the fray Sunday, accusing Rep. Adam B. Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, of leaking information from the briefing.He demanded on Twitter that someone tell "Adam 'Shifty' Schiff to stop leaking Classified information or, even worse, made up information, to the Fake News Media.""Someday he will be caught, & that will be a very unpleasant experience!" Trump added.When Trump made similar comments earlier Sunday, Schiff accused the president of deflection."Your false claims fool no one," he said in a tweet. "You welcomed Russian help in 2016, tried to coerce Ukraine's help in 2019, and won't protect our elections in 2020. Now you fired your intel chief for briefing Congress about it. You've betrayed America. Again."Biden, who was in office as the Obama White House struggled over how to respond to Russian interference in 2016, saw some advantage in claiming he was the candidate Putin hated."The Russians don't want me to be the nominee," he said on "Face the Nation." "They spent a lot of money on bots on Facebook, and they've been taken down, saying Biden is a bad guy. They don't want Biden running. They're not -- no one's helping me to try to get the nomination. They have good reason."Biden said he had not been informed of any specific intelligence. But intelligence officials said the reports they have generated have been consistent: Russian activity did not end with the 2016 election.Biden suggested that Trump was still denying Russia's involvement in 2016, even though U.S. intelligence officials have testified on the issue every year of his presidency."The president denies they're involved," Biden said. "They've been involved. I was deeply involved in the intelligence apparatus and how it functioned before we left the vice presidency. It was clear they were involved. The president continues to deny their involvement. It's overwhelming. And the fact is that everybody knows."He accused the Republican leadership in the Senate of failing to act to secure electoral systems.While Congress allocated several hundred million dollars for election security immediately after the 2016 election, gaping holes in the system remain, and Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, has repeatedly blocked additional legislation from coming to the floor for a vote.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| The Latest: Buttigieg keeps up attacks on Sanders Posted: 24 Feb 2020 04:51 AM PST  Pete Buttigieg is keeping up his criticism of Bernie Sanders as he pitches himself to black voters in South Carolina. Buttigieg says that to win and govern in "a country that has been torn apart by broken promises, then we must ensure that the promises we are making are promises that can be kept." And he says Democrats must choose a candidate who won't hurt down-ballot Democrats up for re-election. Joe Biden has told a group of high-dollar donors that Russians are apparently supporting Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary to help President Donald Trump win re-election.
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| Bernie Sanders says it's 'unfair' to say everything Fidel Castro did was bad, condemns his 'authoritarian nature' Posted: 24 Feb 2020 04:41 AM PST  Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) sat down with CNN's Anderson Cooper for a 60 Minutes interview that aired Sunday night, and he agreed "it is a bit shocking" he's the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination. When Cooper asked if Democratic voters are "really wanting a revolution," Sanders suggested they "go easy on the word rev— 'political revolution.'" Cooper noted that's the word Sanders uses, and Sanders said he doesn't want "people, you know, to overstate that." His Medicare-for-all plan, he said, is "not socialized medicine. This is keeping the same system intact, but getting rid of the private insurance companies."Cooper played clips of Sanders saying positive things about the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro in the 1980s. "We're very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba but you know, it's unfair to simply say everything is bad," Sanders told Cooper. "When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing? Even though Fidel Castro did it?" Cooper noted that Castro also jailed dissidents and worse, and Sanders said "we condemn that. Unlike Donald Trump" with North Korea's despotic ruler. "I do not think that Kim Jong Un is a good friend," he said. "I don't trade love letters with a murdering dictator. Vladimir Putin, not a great friend of mine."> Bernie Sanders defends his 1980s comments about Fidel Castro in an interview on 60 Minutes. https://t.co/ySqvQKoiBU pic.twitter.com/lTwuXWp9sA> > — 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) February 24, 2020Sanders wasn't very specific on how he planned to pay for Medicare-for-all and his other big initiatives, and he didn't explain how he would get his plans through Congress. But he did acknowledge that his policy proposals were influenced "a lot" by his family or origin and childhood in Brooklyn. Still, " I don't like to, you know, talk about personal stuff that much," he said. Cooper asked if his "personal stuff" wasn't important to who he is, and Sanders said it may be but he's "kind of private" and "not particularly anxious to tell the world about everything personal in my life."Read the transcript and watch the full interview at 60 Minutes.More stories from theweek.com The coronavirus recession? The real third way in 2020 Top member of Trump's coronavirus task force asks Twitter for help accessing map of virus
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