| UN: 9 countries delay rotating troop and police over virus Posted: 06 Mar 2020 05:39 PM PST |
| Trump names Rep. Mark Meadows his new chief of staff Posted: 06 Mar 2020 05:22 PM PST  Under fire for his handling of the coronavirus crisis, President Donald Trump on Friday announced a major staff overhaul, naming Rep. Mark Meadows as his new chief of staff and replacing Mick Mulvaney, who has been acting in the role for more than a year. Trump announced the surprise staff reshuffle in a series of Friday night tweets, saying Mulvaney would become the U.S. special envoy for Northern Ireland. "I have long known and worked with Mark, and the relationship is a very good one," he wrote, thanking Mulvaney — who never shook his "acting" title — "for having served the Administration so well."
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| UN chief and top US diplomat meet on global hot spots Posted: 06 Mar 2020 05:09 PM PST |
| One more victory: Biden wins most Super Tuesday delegates Posted: 06 Mar 2020 04:14 PM PST  Former Vice President Joe Biden has put an exclamation point on his Super Tuesday victories by winning the most delegates on the presidential primary calendar's biggest night. The Associated Press has allocated more than 92% of the 1,344 delegates that were up for grabs on Tuesday, and Biden has such a commanding lead that Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders cannot catch up as the remaining votes from that day's 14 state primaries are counted. Biden built his delegate lead on Tuesday by racking up huge victories in Alabama, North Carolina and Virginia, while scoring a narrow win in Texas.
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| Russia sought UN backing for Syria cease-fire, but failed Posted: 06 Mar 2020 03:56 PM PST |
| US death toll from coronavirus rises to 15; SXSW canceled Posted: 06 Mar 2020 03:01 PM PST  The virus, known officially as COVID-19, has since spread to every continent except Antarctica, and the World Health Organization has declared the outbreak a global health emergency. South Korea, Italy and Iran have the highest national totals of confirmed cases behind China, respectively. In the United States, at least 213 confirmed cases have been detected through the local public health system.
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| Christopher Steele Whacks Mueller Report and ‘Bad Faith’ Team Trump Posted: 06 Mar 2020 02:40 PM PST  OXFORD, England—Christopher Steele, a former British spy who compiled the notorious dossier on Trump's relationship with Russia, attacked the Mueller report and Trump's Department of Justice officials on Friday, in his first public remarks since his bombshell allegations were published in 2017.Speaking to students at Oxford University in England, he described the probe into Russian interference as having failed to do any "drilling down into financial networks and leverage," which he said was "the way Russian influence works."His appearance at the Oxford Union, a 200-year-old debating society, was held in private but attended by The Daily Beast.Steele said he had been interviewed by the Mueller probe into potential collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and the Russian government for "two whole days" but said: "I was surprised that very little of what I had discussed with them appeared in the final report." He criticized the report for being "too narrow" and failing to follow up on crucial evidence. "There were many things about the report that were good… but other (aspects) that were not so good," he said.Steele said the fact that "a number of witnesses—including for instance, Donald Trump Jr." had avoided being interviewed "wasn't great."The former head of the Russia desk at Britain's MI6 said it was no surprise that Trump did not appreciate the work of the secret service. "Trump himself doesn't like intelligence because its ground truth is inconvenient for him," he said.Steele also attacked the U.S. Department of Justice's inspector general report on the Russia probe, which criticized the FBI's interactions with him, when The Daily Beast asked him about its findings.Steele described having cooperated with the inquiry over "4 to 5 months" but he said he had seen some "very bad qualities" of U.S. officials, who he accused of acting in "bad faith."Trump's Attorney General, Bill Barr, has now appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham to lead a further probe into the origins of the Russia investigation, which was originally labelled "Crossfire Hurricane."Barr has asked Durham to examine whether there was any criminality involved after DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz found "serious errors" in the FBI's work, conducted amid the tumultuous conditions of the 2016 Presidential campaign.Steele said he would not cooperate with Barr and John Durham's new investigation; saying he and his private investigation company Orbis Business Intelligence had already "done our duty" by cooperating fully with the IG report."As far as I'm concerned," he told students. "We've said everything we have to say on the matter."He said that he had fulfilled his obligations them, "including confidentiality" but that they had failed to reciprocate.Steele would not say whether anyone from the Department of Justice had contacted him in relation to Durham's new probe.Steele's dossier on Trump's dealings with Russia sensationally alleged that Russian intelligence had spent many years compromising the former businessman—including rumors that Trump had been filmed in a Moscow hotel engaging in lewd acts with prostitutes.The Mueller report dismissed many of the claims in the dossier, including the allegation about the compromising hotel tape. The special counsel also disproved allegations that Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen had traveled to Prague to meet Kremlin officials and claims that Carter Page had met with senior Russian figures.Steele told the students in Oxford that he was still confident in his report's conclusions. "We stand by the integrity of our work and the integrity of our sources," he said.Steele also advocated for Western governments to take a more aggressive stance against Russian interference, describing President Putin as a "bully" and pointing out that "the psychology of bullies suggests that if you hit them once, they might hit you back, but they won't bother you again."Many Republicans, led by President Trump, have alleged political bias in Steele's work because his research company was hired by American firm Fusion GPS, which had been conducting opposition research on Trump on behalf of his Republican primary challengers. The Clinton campaign later picked up the tab. Steele dismissed the allegations of bias, describing himself as simply "an opponent of President Putin."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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| Nursing home showed few signs it prepared for virus outbreak Posted: 06 Mar 2020 01:41 PM PST  In the days before the Life Care Center nursing home became ground zero for coronavirus deaths in the U.S., there were few signs it was girding against an illness spreading rapidly around the world. Staffers had only recently begun wearing face masks, but the frail residents and those who came to see them were not asked to do so. "We were all eating, drinking, singing and clapping to the music," said Pat McCauley, who was there visiting a friend.
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| Iran warns it could use 'force' to halt travel amid virus Posted: 06 Mar 2020 01:12 PM PST  Iranian authorities warned Friday they may use "force" to limit travel between cities and announced the new coronavirus has killed 124 people amid 4,747 confirmed cases in the Islamic Republic. Health Ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour offered the figures at a televised news conference. The threat may be to stop people from using closed schools and universities as an excuse to go to the Caspian Sea and other Iranian vacation spots.
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| FDA Bans School Electric Shock Devices Posted: 06 Mar 2020 12:11 PM PST |
| AP Interview: UN official appeals for more access in Syria Posted: 06 Mar 2020 11:22 AM PST  The head of the U.N. children's agency said Friday she has asked government officials for more access inside Syria, saying it's critical to bring aid to "the most vulnerable" in the war-torn country, which is experiencing one of the conflict's worst humanitarian crises yet. Henrietta Fore, UNICEF's executive director, spoke with The Associated Press following a two-day visit to Syria where she toured areas close to the northwestern province of Idlib, the country's last remaining rebel stronghold. Fighting stopped at midnight Thursday following a cease-fire agreement reached between Russia and Turkey.
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| Asylum-seekers, coronavirus collide with complicated results Posted: 06 Mar 2020 11:08 AM PST  No entry, says Hungary. Watch out, says Croatia: They might have the coronavirus. This week, thousands of asylum-seekers sit at the intersection of a pair of fast-moving news stories — a spike in migration in Europe and uncertainty about the global spread of the new and sometimes deadly virus.
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| Vatican halts Mexico abuse prevention mission, cites virus Posted: 06 Mar 2020 10:40 AM PST  Mexico's bishops said Friday the Vatican had suspended a clerical sex abuse fact-finding and assistance mission to Mexico due to the spreading coronavirus in Italy and now the Vatican. The Mexican Episcopal Conference said in a statement the Holy See had suspended all foreign activities after registering its first positive test Thursday. The Vatican announced no such ban publicly and the Vatican spokesman didn't immediately return messages seeking comment.
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| Iraq to Suspend Border Trade With Iran, Kuwait From March 8-15 Posted: 06 Mar 2020 10:24 AM PST |
| Before-and-after satellite images show how the coronavirus has emptied global landmarks, from Mecca's Grand Mosque to Tiananmen Square Posted: 06 Mar 2020 10:21 AM PST  The coronavirus epidemic has prompted many people to avoid busy places and halt their travel plans, especially in places like China, Iran, and Italy.
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| Trump surveys tornado damage, marvels at 'tremendous heart' Posted: 06 Mar 2020 10:17 AM PST  President Donald Trump on Friday toured a neighborhood reduced to rubble by a tornado earlier this week and marveled at "the tremendous heart" he witnessed. Trump assumed the role of national consoler as he traveled to Tennessee. Trump surveyed devastated communities in Putnam County, where a tornado tore a 2-mile-long path, killing 18 people, including five children under 13.
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| US prisons, jails on alert for spread of coronavirus Posted: 06 Mar 2020 10:15 AM PST  The nation's jails and prisons are on high alert, stepping up inmate screenings, sanitizing jail cells and urging lawyers to scale back in-person visits to prevent the new coronavirus from spreading through their vast inmate populations. There have been no reports of COVID-19 inside U.S. jails or prisons. Coronavirus suddenly exploded in China's prisons last week, with reports of more than 500 cases spreading across five facilities in three provinces.
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| Nazi flag display at Sanders rally sparks broad condemnation Posted: 06 Mar 2020 10:11 AM PST  The display of a Nazi flag by a man at a Bernie Sanders campaign rally in Arizona drew condemnation from Jewish American groups and his main rival in the Democratic presidential primary on Friday amid ongoing worries about Democratic candidates' security at public events. Images of a flag depicting the Nazi swastika symbol that was briefly displayed at Sanders' Thursday night rally in Phoenix began circulating online after the incident. The moment also elicited warnings about anti-Semitism directed at the Jewish Sanders, who has talked about members of his father's family being "wiped out" by the Holocaust.
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| Blueprints for the original World Trade Center are on sale Posted: 06 Mar 2020 09:54 AM PST |
| International tourist arrivals to drop 3% due to virus: UN Posted: 06 Mar 2020 09:32 AM PST  The number of international tourist arrivals is expected to drop sharply this year, the World Tourism Organization said Friday, reversing a previous forecast for a substantial increase. The United Nations' UNWTO said in a statement that arrivals were now projected to fall by 1.0-3.0 percent in 2020, instead of a previous forecast of growth of 3.0-4.0 percent. This will lead to an estimated loss of $30-50 billion (29-45 billion euros) in international tourism receipts, the Madrid-based body said.
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| Inside the 3 days that remade the Democratic primary Posted: 06 Mar 2020 09:27 AM PST  At Mike Bloomberg's midtown Manhattan campaign headquarters, a team of pollsters and analysts churned out multiple tranches of data each day on the state of the Democratic race. The sophisticated data operation was supposed to be the candidate's not-so-secret weapon, giving Bloomberg an almost real-time look at voters' preferences in key states and allowing the campaign to rapidly move around its vast resources. Voters were rapidly flocking to the former vice president — so quickly that poll results were outdated almost as fast as they landed in the Bloomberg team's inboxes.
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| US sending military police to two border crossings Posted: 06 Mar 2020 09:15 AM PST  The U.S. government says it is sending 160 military police and engineers to two official border crossings to deal with asylum seekers in case a federal appeals court strikes down one of the Trump administration's key policies. Senior Customs and Border Protection officials said Friday that active duty personnel will be in place by Saturday at ports of entry in El Paso and San Diego, where a large caravan attempted to cross the border in 2018, resulting in chaos and the closure of the San Ysidro port, the nation's busiest land crossing. The deployment is in response to a crowd of asylum-seekers that gathered at an El Paso crossing last Friday after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily struck down the program known as "Remain in Mexico," which forces asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while their cases wind through court in the U.S. Officials shut down that border crossing for several hours that evening before the court reversed itself.
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| Trump says sexism not to blame for end of Warren's campaign Posted: 06 Mar 2020 08:25 AM PST  President Donald Trump insisted Friday that sexism wasn't to blame for the end of Elizabeth Warren's Democratic presidential campaign, even as he showered her with insults that are often deployed against women. Speaking to reporters as he signed an emergency $8.3 billion funding package to help tackle the coronavirus outbreak, Trump was asked whether he thought sexism had anything to do with Warren's departure from the Democratic presidential race on Thursday. The president commended her debate performances, saying she "was a good debater" who had "destroyed" the candidacy of former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg "like it was nothing."
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| Coronavirus Deaths Hit 15, Infection Shows New Signs of New York Spread Posted: 06 Mar 2020 07:46 AM PST  The death toll for the 2019 novel coronavirus spiked in the United States on Friday to a total of 15, while infections in New York state jumped to 44, double the figure a day earlier."The number will continue to go up because it's mathematics," Gov. Andrew Cuomo said early Friday. "The more you test, the more you will find."The numbers in New York rose in recent days from 11 to 22 to 33 to 44, with cases in Westchester County, Nassau County, and New York City. By Friday, Gap's Manhattan headquarters reportedly closed over a case of the virus.Nationally, there were a total of 15 deaths connected to the virus–14 in Washington state and one in California.Two more people died overnight from the virus in Kirkland, Washington, according to the chief executive of the hospital treating many of the patients, EvergreenHealth CEO Jeff Tomlin. Tomlin said that 12 people total had died at EvergreenHealth hospital as of late Friday morning local time. Authorities previously reported that one person died at Seattle's Harborview Medical Center, while another died in Snohomish County. California reported its first death on Wednesday.There were at least 148 confirmed cases in the United States by Friday, including 99 picked up through the health system and another 49 in patients who were evacuated on State Department-chartered planes or the disastrous Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan, according to an online tally from the CDC. Johns Hopkins University's count pegged the national tally higher, at 233.Coronavirus Is Scary Enough for Some People to Risk DeportationMeanwhile, in New York state, a Manhattan lawyer diagnosed with the 2019 novel coronavirus was in critical condition as new cases connected to his Westchester County temple, New Rochelle neighborhood, and family were announced on Friday.The man's 20-year-old son, a student at Yeshiva University, and 14-year-old daughter, a student at SAR Academy and High School in the Bronx—which has been shut down out of an abundance of caution—were confirmed to have the virus on Wednesday, along with the neighbor who drove him to the hospital, and at least five others. The 50-year-old lawyer, part of a boutique seven-lawyer practice across 42nd street from Grand Central Terminal, where he often reportedly commuted on the Metro-North Railroad, was last reported to be in critical condition at the New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center in Manhattan, according to health officials. Westchester County Health Commissioner Dr. Sherlita Amler on Tuesday directed Young Israel of New Rochelle, the synagogue the lawyer's family reportedly attended, to halt all services immediately "and for the foreseeable future" over potential exposure, and for congregants to self-quarantine until at least March 8 following services on Feb. 22 and Feb. 23.On Friday, those self-quarantine orders appeared to be justified, when Dr. Ari Berman, president of Yeshiva University, announced that the temple's rabbi, Reuven Fink, tested positive for the virus. Fink also teaches two undergraduate courses at the private school's Washington Heights campus, according to Berman."We have reached out to his students and recommended as a precautionary measure to self-quarantine until further notice," added Berman, in a statement. "Our thoughts and prayers are with Rabbi Fink for a full and speedy recovery.""As New York City continues to see more cases, I am reminding New Yorkers to remain vigilant, but not alarmed," Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Thursday afternoon. "We are continuing to do everything in our power to keep New Yorkers safe and healthy, and are asking our federal partners to help us increase testing capacity so we can get the job done faster."De Blasio had said on Thursday that there were four total cases in New York City, including a man in his forties and a woman in her eighties who "are critically ill" and had preexisting conditions. One of those patients was in a hospital in Brooklyn, and another was in Manhattan, he noted.On Thursday night, the city's Department of Health said 2,733 people were being monitored in home isolation, most of them due to recent visits to China, Italy, Iran, South Korea, or Japan."We're obviously in a crisis," De Blasio said. Washington has declared a state public health emergency, followed by declarations from California and Florida, as new cases in New Jersey, outside the quarantine zone in Texas, and in Tennessee brought the number of states with infected patients to at least 18.Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, said on Friday that there were a total of 98,023 reported cases in dozens of countries, with 3,380 deaths.Speaking at a Geneva, Switzerland press conference a day earlier, Tedros said the WHO is "calling on every country to act with speed, scale, and clear-minded determination." "This epidemic is a threat for every country, rich and poor, and as we have said before: Even the high-income countries should expect surprises," he continued. "There is still a lot we don't know, but every day we are learning more and we are working around the clock to fill in the gaps in our knowledge.""The solution is aggressive preparedness," said Tedros. "This is not a drill. This is not the time to give up. This is not the time for excuses. This is a time for bringing out all the stops."Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, reiterated on Friday morning that the U.S. was behind other countries due to issues with diagnostic tests. "We're not going to have a vaccine in the immediate future," said Fauci, who cautioned that he was more hopeful about the drugs in clinical trials for therapeutic treatment.—with additional reporting from Pilar Melendez.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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| Previous coronavirus daily briefing updates, March 2-4 Posted: 06 Mar 2020 07:34 AM PST  Current daily briefings on the coronavirus can be found here. Scroll below to read previous reports, listed in eastern time.Click here for previous briefings on the coronavirus dating back to Feb. 27. The first presumptive positive case of coronavirus in New Jersey has been announced by Gov. Phil Murphy. The male in his 30s has been hospitalized since Tuesday in Bergen County, which is in northern Jersey and encompasses a part of the state just across the Hudson River from Manhattan and the Bronx. According to NorthJersey.com, the 32-year-old man from Fort Lee, N.J., "doing well and resting comfortably in an isolation room" after arriving at Hackensack University Medical Center a day earlier.The House passed a bill to allocate $8.3 billion in emergency funds to suppress the spread of the coronavirus, CNBC reported. The Senate will vote Thursday on the bill.Meanwhile, United Airlines announced it is cutting some domestic, Canadian and international flights in response to the lowering demand due to coronavirus spreading, according to Reuters.The first sports-related cancellations in the U.S. as a result of the virus have occurred at the collegiate level.The Chicago State University men's basketball team will not travel to two regularly scheduled games this week, and the women's team will not host two games. The men's team was scheduled to play at Seattle University on Thursday. The Seattle area is where some of the highest number of COVID-19 cases have been reported.Italy has passed Iran to become the country with the third-most confirmed cases of COVID-19, with 3,100 as of Wednesday. At least 107 deaths are being blamed on COVID-19 as well. Government officials are urging people to refrain from kissing on the cheeks or shaking hands when greeting people to help reduce the chances of community transfer.The Italian government has also ordered all sporting events to take place with no fans in attendance until at least April 3. Pope Francis kisses a baby as he greets faithful in St. Nicholas Basilica, in Bari, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 23, 2020. As the COVID-19 death toll mounts in Italy, government officials are discouraging Italians from traditional methods of greeting, like kissing and handshakes. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia) The U.S. death toll climbed to 11 on Wednesday when California reported the first fatality in the state due to COVID-19, and Washington state reported its 10 fatality. "The person, an elderly adult with underlying health conditions, was the second confirmed case of COVID-19 in the county and is now the first to die from the illness in California," officials from Placer County, which is just northeast of Sacramento, said on Wednesday.The person was likely exposed to COVID-19 between Feb. 11 and Feb. 21 while traveling on a Princess cruise ship that departed from San Francisco to Mexico. "This case is travel-related and does not represent local transmission," Placer County officials said. Health officials in Washington reported a ninth fatality in King County on Wednesday. Together with one death in nearby Snohomish County, COVID-19 has claimed 10 lives in Washington.The International Monetary Fund said it is making $50 billion available to help address COVID-19 for "low income and emerging market countries that could potentially seek support.""I am particularly concerned about our low-income and more vulnerable members - these countries may see financing needs rise rapidly as the economic and human cost of the virus escalates, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said at a press conference." The announcement came one day after the World Bank Group announced $12 billion in immediate support "to assist countries coping with the health and economic impacts of the global outbreak."During a press conference on Wednesday morning, officials declared a state of emergency in Los Angeles county in response to the coronavirus. This will help to open up funding from the state to combat the virus. This announcement came shortly after six new cases were reported in the county. "I want to reiterate this is not a response rooted in panic," L.A. County supervisor Kathryn Barger said, according to The Los Angeles Times. "We need every tool at our disposal."New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the state has risen to six.Cuomo said the four new cases are tied to a 50-year-old man from New Rochelle, a New York City suburb about 20 miles northeast of Manhattan in Westchester County. Officials said on Tuesday this was the second confirmed patient in the state.The patient's wife, two of his children and the neighbor who drove the man to the hospital are the latest confirmed to have the virus. The man remains hospitalized while his family is quarantined in their home.On Tuesday, officials said the man, a lawyer who works in Manhattan, had not traveled to any of the countries where the number of COVID-19 cases is the highest, indicating this was a case of community spread.Cuomo also said students with the State University of New York and the City University of New York that were studying abroad in China, Italy, Japan, Iran or South Korea were being transported home. Upon arrival they will be quarantined for 14 days."Remember: We have been expecting more cases & we are fully prepared," Cuomo said. "There is no cause for undue anxiety."Confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. climbed past 125 on Wednesday, with 9 fatalities blamed on the virus \-- all in Washington state. It's not time to panic, but being vigilant is always wise. Here's a reminder on what coronavirus symptoms to look out for, according to the WHO. * Fever is a symptom in 90% of COVID-19 cases * 70% of cases include a dry cough as a symptom * Symptoms usually do not include a runny noseThe COVID-19 global mortality rate is 3.4%, WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus told reporters at a press conference in Geneva on Tuesday. "Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died. By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected," he said.Italy's government will close all of the country's schools and universities from Thursday until mid-March as a result of the virus, according to a report from Italian newswire service ANSA.Italy has reported more than 2,500 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and the death toll in the country stands at 79. Only China, South Korea and Iran have a higher number of cases.After being closed for three days due to fears about the spread of COVID-19, Paris' famed Louvre Museum reopened on Wednesday. According to The Associated Press, museum employees voted to return to work on Wednesday after the museum's management presented several new "anti-virus" measures. This includes wider distributions of disinfectants and more frequent staff rotations so employees can wash their hands, the AP said.The Louvre is said to be the world's most visited museum and in 2019 attracted more than 9.6 million visitors. The museum's website states that about 25% of its visitors in 2019 were French, with "visitors from other countries representing almost three-quarters of total attendance." Weather in Paris for the next week will be mostly rainy and chilly, according to the AccuWeather forecast.An Amazon employee in Seattle has tested positive for COVID-19. "We're supporting the affected employee who is in quarantine," a company spokesperson told Reuters. The company also said two employees in Milan, Italy were infected and in quarantine.In total, Washington state has 27 cases of COVID-19, the most of any state in the U.S., and all of the U.S. fatalities have occurred in Washington.Here are the latest updated numbers from around the world according to Johns Hopkins University: * Total confirmed cases: 93,455 * Total deaths: 3,198 * Total recovered: 50,743Tuesday's 2,500 new cases was the largest jump globally in new confirmed cases since Feb. 14.A woman who recovered talked about what it felt like to have coronavirus and sit in isolation in an interview with BBC News."Isolation is basically four walls with a door. I got my food though a secure hatch, my medication, my change of clothing," a woman identified as Julie from Singapore said."When I was going through the critical stage, one of the things I encountered was really breathing. It felt like my lungs were going into overdrive," Julie, 53, continued."Yes you have the phone, you can text someone you may have a video call but just being completely without human interaction. I almost felt like I wanted to go knock on the wall and talk to the patient next door just to have some conversation with a human being," she said.Many who have contracted COVID-19 and recovered don't want to discuss it publicly due to concerns about stigmas and discrimination they may face. But Julie decided it was time to speak out and counteract those forces, BBC News reported. Watch the full interview below.> "I got my food though a secure hatch, my medication, my change of clothing" > > Julie from Singapore talks candidly about being diagnosed with coronavirus and going through days of isolation https://t.co/ZhTpgrgjuY pic.twitter.com/6mNRfG2nPC> > -- BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) March 3, 2020South Korea has declared war on COVID-19. The country has emerged as a major coronavirus hotspot in recent weeks and has the most confirmed cases outside of mainland China. More than 5,000 patients have tested positive and at least 28 deaths have been blamed on the virus. South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Tuesday said, "The entire country has entered war against the infectious disease," Reuters reported, and he apologized that the country is suffering through a shortage of face masks.South Korea has been aggressive about testing its population for COVID-19, going so far as to set up drive-through testing sites that allow people to be screened for the virus without even getting out of the car. Drive-through testing sites are also in use in Northern Ireland, which has just one confirmed case, according to the latest figures from Johns Hopkins University.The Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite all posted losses during Tuesday's trade session, falling nearly 3% on fears of the spreading coronavirus. The markets did briefly turn positive early in the day when the Federal Reserve announced an emergency rate cut of half a percentage point, but the three indexes fell back into the negative by midday.Tuesday's losses wiped out most, but not all, of the gains from Monday when the stock market tried to rebound from last week's losses. The Dow posted its largest-ever point surge on Monday, gaining 1,294 points before falling 786 points on Tuesday."We can't count on high humidity to save us." Those are the words of Dr. Bryan Lewis, a professor at the Biocomplexity Institute at the University of Virginia who is sounding the alarm that COVID-19 could have a historically unprecedented impact on life across the globe. AccuWeather reporter John Roach talked with Lewis and Dr. Madhav Marathe, also from UVA. They touched on what they know about weather's impact on the virus, which they caution is not definitive at this point.Compared to influenza, "COVID-19 seems to be a bit more resilient to weather changes than the flu," Marathe told AccuWeather. "Its spread in warmer regions is evidence." Lewis said that "we can't count on high humidity to 'save us'," but even if the virus is suppressed in summer, that will buy health officials valuable time because "COVID-19 will most likely return once the humidity drops in the fall."Read the full story here.A resident of North Carolina has tested positive for COVID-19, the first person in the state to be diagnosed with the virus. The person that recently traveled to Washington, and was exposed at a long-term care facility where there is currently a COVID-19 outbreak, according to a press release by the North Carolina Department of Public Safety. "I know that people are worried about this virus, and I want to assure North Carolinians our state is prepared," said North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper. "Our task force and state agencies are working closely with local health departments, health care providers and others to quickly identify and respond to cases that might occur."The death toll has risen to nine in Washington state, according to the state's health department. In a daily update issued at 11:40 a.m. local time, the agency said that there are 27 positive cases. Twenty-one of those are in King County and the remaining six are in Snohomish County. Eight of the deaths have occurred in King County.Earlier Tuesday it was confirmed that a person who died last week in a Seattle hospital is now confirmed to have had the virus. This marks the earliest known fatality from the virus in the U.S., according to the New York Times. The Times reported that the patient died on Feb. 26, after being brought to the facility on Feb. 24.A state of emergency has been in effect for the entire state since Feb. 29.What's a place that could be a potential hotspot for the spread of COVID-19? A polling station on Super Tuesday. And that was an issue in Texas as coronavirus fears caused disruption in Travis County, which includes Austin, on Super Tuesday, the Austin American-Statesman reported. Dana DeBeauvoir, the Travis County Clerk, said nearly a dozen judges who were assigned to open polling stations didn't show up to do so on Tuesday. "Election judges are comprised of a group of older adults," DeBeauvoir told the Statesman. "They just decided they did not want to do this and decided the news was scaring them."Health officials have said COVID-19 has had a harsher effect on older patients and those with underlying health issues. In Travis County, DeBeauvior said backup workers were enlisted. "The elections will go on," he declared. "They always do." The weather in Austin on Super Tuesday was cloudy with temperatures headed for a high of 80 and some rain possible in the evening. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, March 3, 2020, alongside Maria Van Kerkhove, an infectious disease epidemiologist and the MERS-CoV technical lead for the WHO Health Emergencies Programme. (WHO) Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organization's director-general, said in a press conference, "This virus is not SARS, it's not MERS, and it's not influenza. It is a unique virus with unique characteristics." Ghebreyesus issued a plea for countries to combat price gauging and said supplies of protective equipment were being rapidly depleted."Shortages are leaving doctors, nurses and other frontline health care workers dangerously ill-equipped to care for COVID-19 patients, due to limited access to supplies such as gloves, medical masks, respirators, goggles, face shields, gowns, and aprons." He added, "We can't stop COVID-19 without protecting our health workers."Good news continued to emerge from China as the number of new cases declined once again. Mainland China reported 129 new cases of confirmed infections, down from 202 new cases confirmed on Sunday and 573 cases on Saturday.This is the lowest number of confirmed cases reported in the country since January 20, The WHO reported.A recent report published in the New England Journal of Medicine examined a "detailed clinical and epidemiologic description" of the first 425 cases reported in Wuhan, the epicenter where the virus originated late in 2019. The authors, which include CDC director Robert Redfield, noted the following high-level findings: * Median age of the patients was 59 years * Higher morbidity and mortality among the elderly and among those with coexisting conditions -- similar to the flu virus * 56% of the patients were male * Particularly notable: no cases in children younger than 15 years of age * Either children are less likely to become infected, which would have important epidemiologic implications, or: * Children's symptoms were so mild that their infections escaped detection, which has implications for the size of the denominator of total community infections.Outdoor sporting goods retailer REI said it closed three corporate campuses in Washington state due to two incidents of potential exposure to the virus, according to a report from Bloomberg News.A spokesperson told Bloomberg that the cases met the CDC's definition of "low risk" and the company is expected to do a thorough cleaning of the offices in Kent, Bellevue and Georgetown before employees are allowed back.At least six deaths and 18 cases have been reported in the state. The number of deaths accounts for all of the COVID-19 fatalities in the U.S., and confirmed cases are higher in Washington than anywhere else in the nation.New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday morning at a press conference that a second case of COVID-19 has been confirmed in the state.A 50-year-old man who works in Manhattan and lives in Westchester County, a suburb about 30 miles north of the city, has tested positive for the virus.The man has not traveled to any of the countries overseas that have been considered a hotbed for the spread of COVID-19, according to Cuomo, although the man did recently visit Miami."Our information is the gentleman had an underlying respiratory illness and he is ill and is hospitalized," Cuomo said.The first case in New York was reported over the weekend after a Manhattan resident who recently traveled to Iran tested positive. The patient, a 39-year-old female health worker, remains at home with mild symptoms.Japan's Olympic Minister said Tuesday that the country's contract with the International Olympic Committee allows Japan's organizers to push the games back to the end of the year if necessary, Reuters reported. The Games are scheduled to begin in Tokyo on July 24."The contract calls for the Games to be held within 2020. That could be interpreted as allowing a postponement," Seiko Hashimoto said, according to Reuters.Here's a look at the latest updated numbers from around the world according to Johns Hopkins University: * Total cases: 91,320 * Total deaths: 3,118 * Total recovered: 48,155First presumptive positive case confirmed in Norfolk County in Massachusetts after a woman recently traveled to Italy with a school group, according to WWLP. The young woman in her 20s was reportedly symptomatic and is recovering at her home.There are two coronavirus cases in Fulton County in Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp announced.Kemp said one of the victims traveled to Milan, Italy, and both patients are being quarantined inside their homes.FEMA officials are preparing in case the president announces an "infectious disease emergency declaration" that would allow the agency to provide disaster relief funding to aid the coronavirus response, according to agency planning documents reviewed by NBC News. A woman wearing a mask walks away from the Life Care Center in Kirkland, Wash., near Seattle, Monday, March 2, 2020. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren) Officials and emergency experts are comparing coronavirus preparedness to hurricane preparedness. "Even before the coronavirus, if you had asked the CDC what you should do about preparedness we would say that every individual should think ahead and prepare -- whether it's a hurricane -- and those recommendations haven't changed," CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield said at a news conference Monday. Sherilyn Burris, a crisis consultant and the former head of Manatee County Emergency Management, said officials in Florida should develop a strategy that's "like a hurricane plan on steroids."The World Baseball Softball Conference announced Monday that it has postponed the final Olympics qualifying event until mid-June amid fears about COVID-19, The Associated Press reported.The final qualifying event was set to take place in Taipei, Taiwan, April 1-5. It will now be held June 17-21, about a month before the 2020 Olympics open in Tokyo. Temperatures in Taipei in early April are typically in the mid-70s.Near the very beginning of summer, when the games are now scheduled to be played, average highs there are in the low 90s. Taiwan has seen 41 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and one fatality, according to statistics kept by researchers at Johns Hopkins University.Coronavirus fears rattling world financial markets eased in the U.S. as markets rebounded on Monday. The Dow surged more than 1,200 points, its biggest gain since 2009, according to CNBC, after taking a beating last week.Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has declared a public health emergency after two patients in the Sunshine State have tested "presumptive positive" for COVID-19. One patient is from Manatee County, South of Tampa, and has no history of travel to any of the coronavirus hotspots, Florida health officials said. The other patient, from Hillsborough County, which encompasses the Tampa area, recently traveled to Italy. Both are in isolation. There's been much speculation that warmer weather, like with other viruses, will help suppress spread of COVID-19. But health experts have yet to make a determination.The weather down in Manatee County has been mostly sunny and pleasant recently with highs in the mid-60s and low 70s. The AccuWeather forecast calls for temperatures there to make a run into the high 70s this week. In the Tampa area, weather has been similar with highs ranging from the mid-60s to high 70s recently and heading into the low 80s this week.COVID-19 claimed another life in King County, Washington, outside of Seattle, officials announced on Monday. The fatality was "a woman in her 80s" who was already in critical condition, public health officials said on Twitter. There have now been 14 confirmed cases in the Seattle area and the death toll in King County now stands at five along with another fatality in nearby Snohomish County, according to KOMO News, for a total of six deaths in Washington state.In King County, Washington, home of the first two coronavirus fatalities in the U.S., officials have said the area will be declaring a state of emergency in response to the outbreak.On Saturday, Gov. Jay Inslee issued an emergency declaration for the entire state in response to the first death.One of the top advisors to Iran's supreme leader died Monday from COVID-19, the first top government official in Iran to succumb to the virus. According to Time, Mohammad Mirmohammadi, a member of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's Expediency Council, was pronounced dead at a hospital in Tehran at the age of 71. Iran has been hit particularly hard by COVID-19. The country has nearly 1,000 confirmed cases, fourth-most worldwide, according to statistics from Johns Hopkins University, and 54 fatalities.Some potentially positive news emerged from Wuhan, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak. According to Reuters, officials are shutting down one of the 16 hastily-built hospitals used to treat COVID-19 patients due to a sharp drop in the number of confirmed cases in recent days.What does the coronavirus look like? Images of the COVID-19 strands under a microscope have emerged from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases' Rocky Mountain Laboratories, based in Hamilton, Montana. The NIAID chief of Pathogenesis Unit, Emmie de Wit, shared the images, which were produced by microscopist Elizabeth Fischer, per NPR. According to the NIAID, via NPR, the virus can be seen in the yellow cells, emerging from the purple and blue cells. The image was from a scanning electron microscope. U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams admonished Americans who are buying large quantities of face masks in an attempt to prevent catching the virus. "Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS!" Adams said on Twitter over the weekend."They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can't get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!" he continued. In a subsequent tweet, Adams said the best way to prevent the spread of the virus is "staying home when you are sick and washing hands with soap and water."A second death in Washington was confirmed on Sunday night after a 70-year-old resident from King County, the same area as the United States' first victim, passed away.According to health authorities, the individual who died was one of six residents in a nursing home who had contracted the virus. Three others remain in critical condition, according to The New York Times.The global death toll from COVID-19 climbed past 3,000. Here's a look at the latest updated numbers from Johns Hopkins University: * Total cases: 89,197 * Total deaths: 3,048 * Total recovered: 45,150Click here for previous briefings on the coronavirus dating back to Feb. 27. Additional reporting by Lauren Fox and Maria Antonieta Valery GilKeep checking back on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier and Verizon Fios.
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| Keep Calm And Travel On: What Virtuoso® Travel Advisors Want You To Know About Traveling And Coronavirus Posted: 06 Mar 2020 07:09 AM PST  Leading luxury and experiential travel network Virtuoso® has been closely monitoring the impact of coronavirus, collaborating and consulting with its travel agency members across the world as well as its preferred partners. Since COVID-19 first surfaced late last year in Wuhan, China, the virus has become a global epidemic and a disruption to the travel industry as well as the global economy. To date, people have tested positive for the virus in 84 countries, including the United States; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued new Travel Health Notices to China, Italy, Iran and South Korea; and travel plans for many are in disarray.
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| India's beleaguered health system braces for virus surge Posted: 06 Mar 2020 06:42 AM PST  India is bracing for a potential explosion of coronavirus cases as authorities rush to trace, test and quarantine contacts of 31 people confirmed to have the disease. For weeks, India watched as cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, multiplied in neighboring China and other countries as its own caseload remained static — three students evacuated from Wuhan, the disease epicenter, who were quarantined and returned to health in the southern state of Kerala. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government said last week that community transmission is now taking place.
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| Trump's failing Iran policy is no excuse for the regime to block nuclear inspections Posted: 06 Mar 2020 05:57 AM PST  For Trump, imposing terms on Iran became a test of his power. But failure in the world of proliferation could lead to a Middle East nuclear wave.
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| Cyprus president scolds UN for comments on crossing closures Posted: 06 Mar 2020 05:25 AM PST |
| Why it took Congress 40 years to pass a bill acknowledging the Armenian genocide Posted: 06 Mar 2020 05:01 AM PST  Between 1914 and 1921, the Ottoman Empire carried out an extended campaign to expel or kill the Armenians living in Turkey and its border regions. From massacres to death marches, 1.5 million of Turkey's historic Armenian population was murdered. Since 1923, Turkey has denied perpetrating what came to be called the Armenian genocide. It has pressured its allies to refrain from officially declaring the events a "genocide," which the United Nations defines as acts committed with the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."But in a milestone vote in late 2019, both the U.S. House and Senate defied that pressure and the weight of over 40 years of precedent. They passed a bill declaring that the killing of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks was, in fact, a genocide.Since 1975, numerous efforts were made to pass an Armenian genocide bill. The decades-long struggle involving Turkey, Israel, Armenian-Americans, the American Jewish community and the U.S. government over the commemoration of the Armenian genocide resulted in failure to pass a bill every time – until 2019. Setting the tableI am a historian of international relations. I am currently writing a book that focuses on Israeli-Turkish-American relations and the contested memories of the Armenian genocide. The political struggle over U.S. recognition of the Armenian genocide was set in motion during the presidency of Jimmy Carter in 1976. Carter came to the job with a commitment to protecting human rights. That commitment was soon tested by the longstanding strategic relationship between the U.S. and Iran, which was ruled by the Shah with an iron fist. By late 1977, U.S.-Iranian relations were deteriorating after Carter sent mixed signals about the Shah's dictatorship and his abuse of Iranians' human rights. In 1978, Carter's fraught relations with the Shah weakened the Iranian leader's hold on power. Popular protest movements mounted, culminating in the Shah's overthrow in 1979, the Iranian fundamentalist revolution and the American hostage crisis.The criticism at home about the Carter-Shah relationship and American Jews' reluctance to support Carter's administration convinced the president and his staff members to re-promote human rights through American foreign policy. Their strategy: Use the Holocaust as a universal lesson for genocide prevention to help reinforce ties with Jewish voters. Holocaust remembranceWhile the Iran crisis was playing out, on Nov. 1, 1978, Carter launched the President's Commission on the Holocaust. Carter requested that the commission submit a report addressing the "establishment and maintenance of an appropriate memorial to those who perished in the Holocaust." The commission included American Holocaust survivors like Elie Wiesel and Benjamin Meed. The commission's September 1979 report recommended special days of remembrance for the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, a dedicated education program, and the establishment of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a national memorial.The museum, the report said, should be focused on one specific aspect of the Nazis' many crimes: the "unique" and unprecedented nature of the murder of the Jews – even over other Nazi victims. "Millions of innocent civilians were tragically killed by the Nazis. They must be remembered. However, there exists a moral imperative for special emphasis on the six million Jews. While not all victims were Jews, all Jews were victims, disdained for annihilation solely because they were born Jewish," wrote the commission.This approach clashed with Carter's views on the universal lessons of the Holocaust. It also aroused the opposition of representatives of other victims of the Nazis, such as the Roma and the gay community, who pressed for inclusion in the Holocaust museum. A 'campaign to remember'Another heated debate was taking place about who should pay for the museum, which was estimated to cost US$100 million. The land allocated on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was a contribution by the federal government. But the remaining funds to build the museum were to be donated mainly by the American public through a "Campaign to Remember." This was the moment – the convergence of Carter's vision of human rights protection and the "Campaign to Remember" – that the organized American-Armenian community believed could bring the almost-forgotten memory of the Armenian genocide back to public consciousness.California Gov. George Deukmejian, an Armenian-American, pressured museum leaders to appoint Set Momjian as its American-Armenian community representative. The Armenian community in the U.S. made a donation of $1 million, aiming to be able to include the Armenian genocide in the museum's focus. In August 1983, the Armenian expectations became reality when the museum commission reached a decision to include the Armenian genocide in the exhibition narrative. Although the decision about the 1915 genocide was informal, it was still a commitment that later would be difficult to reverse. Turkey looks to IsraelThe Turkish government was extremely anxious about the museum. It turned for help to its regional and Cold War ally, Israel. Turkey pressured Israel to influence the concept of the museum and to make sure the Armenians were left out of the memorial.As part of an oral history project, I interviewed Gabi Levy, who served as Israeli ambassador to Turkey from 2007 to 2011. Levy told me that throughout the history of Israeli-Turkish relations, whenever Turkey had an urgent concern in the U.S., "the Turks carried assumptions regarding the 'magical power' of Israel's foreign policy," especially their purported ability to use the American Jewish lobby for influence the U.S. political arena. Israel capitalized on presumptions about the Israeli/Jewish "magic power" to convince Turkey that they were taking all "possible measures." Israeli diplomats tried to persuade the relevant American players to prevent the Armenian experience from being incorporated into the museum, requesting influential Jewish congressmen such as Tom Lantos and Stephen Solarz to convince the museum commission to exclude the Armenian genocide. Lantos and Solarz believed this would serve U.S. interests in the Middle East that included Israel and Turkey maintaining good relations. Ultimately, as a key U.S. NATO ally, it was Turkey's own pressure on the U.S. Congress and the Reagan administration's Cold War fears that forestalled any presence of the Armenian genocide in the museum as well as resulted in the failure to pass the Armenian genocide bill.When the memorial finally opened its doors in 1991, its focus was the Holocaust and Jewish victims. What changed in 2019?Internationally, a number of developments supported the dramatic changes in U.S.-Turkish relations in 2019. They include Turkey's July purchase of a Russian-made air defense system, which angered the Americans, and the October military offensive by Turkey in Northern Syria against the Kurds, who were U.S. allies. In the U.S., the unprecedented condemnation by both Democrats and Republicans of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for his attack on Kurds in Syria, as well as the impeachment process against Erdogan ally Donald Trump, weakened Congress' adherence to the longtime official position favoring Turkey.Congress passed powerful sanctions against Turkey. The Armenian genocide bill was part of the package. Importantly, the bill passed by the U.S. Congress states the U.S. will "commemorate the Armenian Genocide through official recognition and remembrance." The U.S. is thus committed to allocate federal resources to build a U.S. memorial to commemorate the 1915 genocide – just as with the the 1978 President's Commission on the Holocaust. Practically speaking, building a U.S. Armenian genocide museum or memorial will have further negative implications for U.S.-Turkish relations, which might take another 40 years to rebuild. [Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation's newsletter and get a digest of academic takes on today's news, every day.]This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.Read more: * The worst humanitarian crisis of the 21st century: 5 questions on Syria answered * Christians have lived in Turkey for two millennia – but their future is uncertainBetween 2017-2019 Eldad Ben Aharon was awarded the 'Armenian Studies Scholarship' by Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. This was partial funding to undertake his doctoral studies.
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| Coronavirus fears put a halt to the Muslim pilgrimage of umrah – but not yet the hajj Posted: 06 Mar 2020 05:01 AM PST  Due to concerns over the global spread of the coronavirus – especially in nearby Iran – Saudi Arabia has temporarily suspended travel to its holy sites. Millions of Muslims visit the Saudi kingdom around the year for pilgrimage. The current travel restrictions prevent the entry of both overseas pilgrims and Saudi citizens into the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. This has had a direct impact on the umrah pilgrimage, known as the "lesser pilgrimage," that can be performed at almost any time of the year. Whether or not the restrictions will extend to the hajj, which begins around July 28, can be known only after it becomes clear how long the coronavirus outbreak will last.Both the umrah and hajj are important pilgrimages for Muslims, but they differ in many respects. When do Muslims undertake umrah?Millions of pilgrims undertake these pilgrimages. In 2019, for example, Mecca welcomed over 7 million international pilgrims for umrah in addition to millions from within the kingdom. The number of hajj pilgrims for the same year was over 2 million.As a scholar of global Islam, I listen to stories of people from around the world who performed these pilgrimages.Muslims believe Prophet Muhammad performed both the umrah and the hajj. Muslims have been following this tradition for the last 1,400 years. The pilgrimages retrace events from the lives of Ibrahim, Hajar, Ismail and Muhammad.While the hajj is a once-in-a-lifetime obligation, compulsory for all Muslims according to their finances and physical ability, umrah is voluntary. According to certain hadiths, the recorded traditions and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, both pilgrimages offer the forgiveness of sin. Hajj takes many daysUmrah and hajj also differ in duty and duration. Hajj is longer and far more involved than umrah.Umrah requires that pilgrims consecrate and cleanse themselves beforehand and circle the Kaaba, a cubic structure draped in black at the center of the Great Mosque of Mecca, seven times in a counterclockwise direction. In doing so, they join in a long line of pilgrims to Mecca who have circled the Kaaba. Some may also kiss, touch or approach the black stone embedded in the Kaaba as a sign of their respect and devotion. The Kaaba is central to Muslims because of its role in the history of prophets like Ibrahim and Muhammad and its symbolism of their worship of the one God. Across the world, Muslims pray in its direction.Afterwards, pilgrims perform prayers and walk about 100 meters between two hills known as Safa and Marwah. This recalls a significant event recorded in the Quran.After Ismail was born, God instructed Ibrahim to leave his newborn son and his mother, Hajar, out in the desert, and he complied. But when baby Ismail cried out with thirst, Hajar ran between the two hills looking for water, until finally she turned to God for help.God rewarded Hajar for her patience. He sent his angel Jibreel to reveal a spring, which today is known as the Zamzam well. Pilgrims go on to drink from the well, marking the moment when God provided water to a thirsty Ismail. Umrah can be completed in a matter of hours. Hajj, however, takes five to six days. It also includes additional rituals outside of Mecca. Past epidemicsThis is not the first time diseases have impacted pilgrimages. Cholera outbreaks in 1821 and 1865 claimed thousands of lives during hajj. In 2012 and 2013, Saudi authorities encouraged the ill and the elderly not to undertake the pilgrimage amid concerns over Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS. While the recent decision halting umrah will disappoint Muslims looking to perform the pilgrimage, they might refer to a hadith that provides guidance about traveling during a time of an epidemic. > "If you hear of an outbreak of plague in a land, do not enter it; but if the plague breaks out in a place while you are in it, do not leave that place."This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.Read more: * What is the Shia-Sunni divide? * What is Eid and how do Muslims celebrate it? 6 questions answeredKen Chitwood 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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| China Revels in U.S. Virus Missteps, Helping Xi Win Back Trust Posted: 06 Mar 2020 05:01 AM PST |
| UN: Over 20,000 migrant deaths on Mediterranean since 2014 Posted: 06 Mar 2020 04:50 AM PST  The U.N. migration agency said Friday that a shipwreck off Libya and other recent maritime incidents have raised its estimated death toll among migrants who tried to cross the Mediterranean past the "grim milestone" of 20,000 deaths since 2014. Paul Dillon, spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, pointed to incidents including the presumed drowning of 91 people who went missing from a dinghy that left Garabulli, Libya, on Feb. 9, and the disappearance of a ship that set off from Algeria on Feb. 14. IOM noted Friday that the yearly death toll has declined each year since 2016, when over 5,000 people lost their lives while attempting Mediterranean crossings.
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| Swiss gruyere named best in world cheese competition Posted: 06 Mar 2020 04:43 AM PST  A gruyere from Switzerland has been named the world's best cheese, chosen from a record number of entrants from 26 nations in the World Championship Cheese Contest in Wisconsin. The cheese from Bern, Switzerland made its maker, Michael Spycher of Mountain Dairy Fritzenhaus, a two-time winner. Spycher also won in 2008.
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| Merkel’s Bloc Slumps to Record Low Approval Amid Leadership Race Posted: 06 Mar 2020 04:32 AM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Support for Chancellor Angela Merkel's bloc dropped to its weakest on record, with her party embroiled in a leadership contest and Europe's largest economy flirting with recession.If a general election were held this Sunday, Merkel's CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU, would together garner 26%, down one percentage point from a month earlier, according to a survey conducted for ZDF television.The Greens gained one point in second place to 23%, and could form a government with either the CDU/CSU or with a combination of the Social Democrats and the leftist Linke, which tallied 16% and 8% respectively.Leaders of the ruling coalition, made up of the CDU/CSU and SPD, will meet Sunday to discuss possible measures to help contain the economic fallout from the coronavirus. The country's influential industry federation BDI on Thursday warned of recession this year and urged the government to consider stimulus.Following a political crisis that forced CDU leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer to step aside last month, party delegates will elect a new chair at a convention on April 25. Merkel critic Friedrich Merz leads loyalist Armin Laschet with 27% against 24% among all respondents, the ZDF poll showed. Among CDU/CSU voters, Merz has an advantage of 40% to 27%.The poll by Forschungsgruppe Wahlen surveyed 1,276 people between March 3 and March 5 and has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.To contact the reporter on this story: Raymond Colitt in Berlin at rcolitt@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Iain RogersFor 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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| Nissan pushes on with new vehicle plan at UK factory despite Brexit warning Posted: 06 Mar 2020 04:17 AM PST  Nissan <7201.T> is pushing on with plans to build its new Qashqai sports utility vehicle at its British factory despite warnings over Brexit, announcing on Friday a 52-million pound investment in a new press line at the site. The Japanese carmaker has said that if Britain's departure from the European Union leads to tariffs, its European business, which also includes a plant in Barcelona, would be unsustainable. It said it would build the new Qashqai at its northern English Sunderland site in 2016 after government reassurances that Brexit would not hit competitiveness, reflecting how far in advance investment decisions are made for a vehicle due around the start of 2021.
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| CEO Taylor Wilshire's Wilshire Foundation receives 'outstanding achievement' praise from the United Nations Posted: 06 Mar 2020 04:00 AM PST  On March 3, 2020, the United Nations Economic and Social Council acknowledged the work that the Wilshire Foundation has done to support the UN's 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, a blueprint for addressing poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace and justice.
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| Pope lets French cardinal embroiled in abuse cover-up resign Posted: 06 Mar 2020 03:55 AM PST  Pope Francis on Friday accepted the resignation of a French cardinal who was convicted and then acquitted of covering up for a pedophile priest in a case that fueled a reckoning over clergy sexual abuse in France. Lyon Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, 69, had offered to resign when the Lyon court in March 2019 first convicted him and gave him a six-month suspended sentence for failing to report the predator priest to police. Francis declined to accept it then, saying he wanted to wait for the outcome of the appeal.
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| Donald Trump Could Use These 5 Weapons in a War Against Iran Posted: 06 Mar 2020 03:54 AM PST  Iran's day of reckoning may be near.
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| 10 things you need to know today: March 6, 2020 Posted: 06 Mar 2020 03:47 AM PST |
| Great Barrier Reef enters crucial period in coral bleaching Posted: 06 Mar 2020 03:06 AM PST  The Great Barrier Reef is facing a critical period of heat stress over the coming weeks following the most widespread coral bleaching the natural wonder has ever endured, scientists said Friday. David Wachenfeld, chief scientist at the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, the government agency that manages the coral expanse off northeast Australia, said ocean temperatures over the next month will be crucial to how the reef recovers from heat-induced bleaching. "The forecasts ... indicate that we can expect ongoing levels of thermal stress for at least the next two weeks and maybe three or four weeks," Wachenfeld said in a weekly update on the reef's health.
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| First Cow is a necessary portrait of platonic male affection Posted: 06 Mar 2020 02:55 AM PST  First Cow opens with lovely poetry from William Blake: "The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship." The line precedes the film's opening sequence, where an unnamed woman (Alia Shawkat) and her dog (because what would a Kelly Reichardt production be without a dog?) stumble upon and unearth a pair of human skeletons buried a stone's throw from a rivershore in modern day Oregon. Blake's words take on dual meaning: Friendship might be home and hearth for man, but it's also his tomb.Given that the bones belong to 1800s frontiersmen who'd rather be anywhere than the frontier, the implications of the contrast feel more tender than they do morbid. Deducing whose remains the woman has found in the film's present is a simple task. It's the questions of how they got there, and why, that Reichardt refuses to answer upfront.One of the dead men is Cookie (John Magaro), so named because he's a cook and his companions, a troupe of uncivilized fur trappers, lack imagination. The other is King Lu (Orion Lee), a Chinese expat on the lam from a pack of Russian thugs. Neither King Lu nor Cookie care for the casual barbarity of their time and place; they get along easily and form an immediate bond. Then they conspire to steal milk from a cow (the first cow, in fact) owned by a wealthy Brit by the name of Chief Factor (Toby Jones), use said milk to bake tasty goods, and make a mint selling their treats to hungry and homesick pioneers (as well as the wealthy Brit, a pompous naif who's none the wiser to their theft).The picture that First Cow most closely mirrors is one of Reichardt's own: Old Joy, her adaptation of a Jonathan Raymond short story that orbits two men whose friendship has rusted over through the passage of years. Unlike Old Joy's long-time pals, Cookie and King Lu are new acquaintances who become fast friends. But just like Old Joy, First Cow explores the hushed melancholy of platonic male friendship. Reichardt's historical lens gives that melancholy new context: Cookie and King gravitate toward each other out of what looks like necessity at first, but as the film progresses, "need" takes on expansive, more tender meaning.Reichardt is blunt in her portraiture of the era and the environment; frontier Oregon is unforgiving, populated by men so far removed from polite society for so long a time that they act more like ogres. Bar fights are started seemingly as a way to pass the time, if not for the fighters than for other patrons, who eagerly rush outside to see who wins. (One fighter leaves his baby, snug in a basket, sitting on the bartop under Cookie's reluctant custody.) First Cow wastes no time impressing on the audience that King Lu and Cookie don't fit in among rugged landscapes and rough men: They're more likely to fit in, say, around San Francisco, a city King Lu always holds close in his mind, or maybe Boston, where Cookie learned how to bake like a master.King Lu keeps his brain's gears well-greased at all times, cooking up business plans and commercial opportunities faster than Cookie can whip up his "oily cakes," the confection the two hawk to their burgeoning clientele. When they're alone, King Lu does the talking while Cookie quietly, contentedly, does the baking. On the surface, their relationship is a matter of convenience: Cookie has a commodity people will buy, King Lu has a talent for selling commodities. But both of them share a common desire for more, or if not more, then certainly better than what they currently have. Magaro lends Cookie a wistfulness, a humble sort of longing, that compliments Lee's outspoken performance: Together they define Cookie and King Lu not as fated business partners but as spiritual kin. They meet not because they're well-suited as colleagues, but because they're soulmates.Reichardt's chosen her moment for revisiting Old Joy's themes well. First Cow feels like a valuable lesson in male intimacy, a movie about the ease with which men can maintain close attachments to one another sans shame. There's no big, staged scene where Cookie and King Lu profess their mutual love, but that's for the best: The love they share speaks for itself. After treading through wilderness and fleeing from harm, they're able to enjoy peaceful domesticity, isolated from the period's harsh realities. When Cookie arrives at the camp with the trappers, one particularly brutal-looking man gives him a menacing send-off, his gaze scraping over Cookie as he makes violent promises should their paths cross again. Cookie scampers off at his first opportunity. Their paths never cross again; he makes sure of it.First Cow shows viewers a glimpse at what manhood looked like two centuries ago, when men were expected to be tough and those who weren't were prey and sport for the rest. Today the world still worships the strongman: Jair Balsonaro, Rodrigo Duterte, Donald Trump, Matteo Salvini, Xi Jinping, each toxic in his own way and also in the same ways as his peers. And toxicity trickles down throughout the rest of culture, too, such that any non-toxic male characters feel like rare gifts. What First Cow offers — a vision not only of non-toxic male characters, but non-toxic male characters with an abiding emotional connection — feels rarer still, and wholly vital. The message isn't that it's okay for men to be friends; it's that it's okay for male friendship to have deep roots that last and that endure beyond the span of years and decades.The tragedy of Cookie and King Lu's end, in that regard, isn't tragic at all: haunting, sure, but also painfully beautiful. We all deserve something sweet in life. For most, that's an oily cake. For Cookie and King Lu, it's a friendship that they take to the grave.Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here.More stories from theweek.com China's coronavirus recovery is 'all fake,' whistleblowers and residents claim South by Southwest canceled amid coronavirus concerns Bond yields, oil prices, and stocks all fall after a tumultuous week
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| Adviser to Iran's foreign minister dies of coronavirus Posted: 06 Mar 2020 02:11 AM PST  An adviser to Iran's foreign minister who took part in the 1979 US embassy hostage crisis has died from coronavirus, the official IRNA news agency reported. Hossein Sheikholeslam, "a veteran and revolutionary diplomat" died late Thursday, IRNA said. Iran has been scrambling to contain the rapid spread of coronavirus which so far has infected 3,513 people and killed at least 107 people in the Islamic republic.
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| Who Is Hillary Clinton’s Hulu Series Even For? Posted: 06 Mar 2020 01:45 AM PST  Not even 30 minutes into the first episode of the four-part Hulu docuseries Hillary—and amidst a widely-shared sense of Hillary fatigue as she has just announced a forthcoming podcast—I wondered: Who is this thing even for? The series, directed by Nanette Burstein, includes talking-head testimony from the former presidential candidate herself, along with her campaign staff, husband and former president Bill Clinton, childhood friends, college classmates, sympathetic journalists, and a Republican ally for good measure. It posits Hillary as "a leader of the revolutionary feminist movement" and "radical," as Newsweek journalist Joe Klein emphatically claims, with the evidence being a speech she gave at Wellesley graduation, the undercover work she did for the Children's Defense Fund, and a vaguely imperialist speech she gave at the U.N. women's conference in Beijing. (I would argue while all of these involvements were reformist, they certainly don't amount to anything like radicalism, which Hillary rejects anyway.) Surely, liberal feminists, graduated from Yale Law and the like, may find affinity with this portrayal of Hillary as a pragmatic boss-feminist who has loved her problematic husband through thick and thin. But the fact is that Hillary, the documentary and the person, paint a victim narrative for an incredibly powerful woman who has ridden her middle-class background to academic pedigree to professional legitimacy and all the way to competing for the highest office in the land (as well as a net worth in the tens of millions). I say this as a graduate of Yale College myself, who has worked at one of the most highbrow magazines in the country (and has a negative net worth in the tens of thousands): Neither I nor Hillary are in any position to be leaders of a truly feminist revolution; the point is to be useful, to be in solidarity with the working-class women who should lead and have led it.Hillary Clinton Gets Tipsy and Throws Shade at Bernie and Trump on 'Watch What Happens Live'We Need to Talk About Hillary Clinton's Disturbing Harvey Weinstein TiesBut as the documentary makes clear, Hillary isn't listening—she did plenty of that when she and her husband each ran for office; now, we must listen to her. As a moderate Democrat who naturally believes in incrementalism (though the GOP's called her a radical and a socialist, since that is an insult in their shared world), Hillary has actively forgone solidarity with working-class women of all cultural, ethnic, and racial backgrounds, in order to "get things done" with wealthy lawmakers. The documentary allows Hillary and her allies to list those pragmatic solutions, like the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), a kind of Medicaid for children under 19. CHIP is administered on the state level, and there are premiums as low as $45 per child or as high as $383.06 per child if household income exceeds the poverty line. For instance, if you have two kids, and earn more than $53,098.01 a year in the state of Pennsylvania, you will owe $766.12 per month for CHIP healthcare. Families who must pay premiums for CHIP will also have out-of-pocket costs like copays and coinsurance.Like Obama's Affordable Care Act, these kinds of means-tested reforms, passed with bipartisan support and thus with watered-down provisions that mean poor and struggling working-class families often still cannot afford the benefits, are the bread and butter of the policy wonkishness Hillary prides herself on. Never mind that, as the documentary is at least willing to admit, Bill Clinton's administration may have been able to sign a universal health care bill if the former president hadn't appointed his own wife to head up the committee. We're asked instead to focus on the undeniable sexism Hillary was met with as the head of this committee—Republicans used Hillary's gender to dismiss and malign her, even though she was otherwise chummy with them. Yes, the Republicans deployed sexism as a political strategy to neutralize a popular demand (universal health care) in order to please the corporate lobbyists who bankroll them. But even Hillary later admits that, gender aside, she shouldn't have been the one to head up that committee—as a first lady, who wasn't elected, she should've been a champion for the cause and not a leader of it. Sound familiar? Hillary is a four-part series about how a well-intentioned second-wave white feminist savior and former New York senator was denied the presidency via Electoral College because misogyny is still a thing. I imagine, then, that Hillary is for the women whose major concern is losing out on the most high-powered jobs because white men won't let them in the most exclusive section of the club. (It's also, as I'm sure Hillary would point out, for the fathers raising their daughters to have such ambitions.) Here's a challenge for that audience: Imagine a world in which power isn't about corporate positions, organizational hierarchy, or the benevolent rich conferring a set of (contingent) benefits to the poor. Instead, imagine power as rooted in the right to live in a safe and sturdy home, the ability to get the healthcare you need without incurring costs, and the universal assurance of getting a good education debt-free. Under either set of metrics, Hillary and her ilk are still very much on top.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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| Officials say gunmen kill 32 at ceremony in Afghan capital Posted: 06 Mar 2020 12:59 AM PST  Gunmen opened fire Friday at a ceremony in Afghanistan's capital attended by prominent political leaders, killing at least 32 people and wounding dozens more before the two attackers were slain by police, officials said. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on its website. Militants from IS have declared war on Afghanistan's Shiites, and many of those at the ceremony were from the minority Shiite sect.
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| Under-representation of women in power remains the norm, UN says Posted: 06 Mar 2020 12:33 AM PST  "Equality isn't just one quarter of the seats at the tables of power. But that's the current reality of women's representation," says the executive director of U.N Women
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| Truce brings some relief but no joy for Syrians in Idlib Posted: 06 Mar 2020 12:15 AM PST  For the first time in three months, Omar Zaqzaq says he and his family slept through the entire night, without an airstrike or artillery shell jolting them out of bed. Idlib's skies were completely free of Russian and Syrian government warplanes Friday as a cease-fire deal took hold in Syria's northwestern province, the last rebel stronghold. The truce, brokered by Turkey and Russia, halted a terrifying three-month air and ground campaign that killed hundreds and sent 1 million people fleeing toward the Turkish border.
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| MH17 families hope truth emerges from unprecedented trial Posted: 05 Mar 2020 11:37 PM PST  United by grief across oceans and continents, families who lost loved ones when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down in 2014 hope that a trial starting next week will finally deliver something that has remained elusive ever since: The truth. For the families of the victims, the trial is the latest development in a constant stream of news since they received devastating phone calls telling them that their loved ones had been killed. "It never will return to normal," Fredriksz-Hoogzand said.
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| EU blasts Turkey for "organized" migrant attack on Greece Posted: 05 Mar 2020 11:23 PM PST  Clashes between Greek riot police and migrants attempting to cross the border from Turkey erupted anew Friday as European Union foreign ministers criticized Turkey for using migrants' desperation "for political purposes." Greek riot police used tear gas and a water cannon in the morning to drive back people trying to cross its land border with Turkey. Turkish police fired volleys of tear gas back toward Greece in an ongoing standoff between Ankara and the EU over who should care for migrants and refugees.
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