Chagrin Falls

A timeline of Trump's missed opportunities on coronavirus

As the deadly coronavirus outbreak rapidly spread across America in February and March, President Trump repeatedly asserted that “nobody could have predicted something like this.” But a review of government records shows that repeated warnings were issued to the White House and went unheeded.

Coronavirus is ushering in a new wave of racially motivated attacks, warns intelligence bulletin

Federal agencies are concerned that domestic extremists could use the coronavirus pandemic to attack Asians and Jews, according to a joint intelligence bulletin obtained by Yahoo News. That bulletin mirrors what organizations that monitor online hate content are also finding.

Coronavirus: WHO chief and Taiwan in row over 'racist' comments

Taiwan rejects accusations by the UN health body's head that racist slurs against him originated there.

Denmark rushed to lock down before almost every other country. Now its response is so far ahead that it's starting to remove restrictions.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said schools will reopen on April 15, but warned that the country can't return to normal too quickly.

Saudi, Russia outline record oil cut under U.S. pressure as demand crashes

OPEC, Russia and other allies outlined plans on Thursday to cut their oil output by more than a fifth and said they expected the United States and other producers to join in their effort to prop up prices hammered by the coronavirus crisis. The planned output curbs by OPEC+ amount to 10 million barrels per day (bpd) or 10% of global supplies, with another 5 million bpd expected to come from other nations to help deal with the deepest oil crisis in decades. Global fuel demand has plunged by around 30 million bpd, or 30% of global supplies, as steps to fight the virus have grounded planes, cut vehicle usage and curbed economic activity.

This is what I want my friends to do if they have COVID-19 symptoms and are asked to go to the ER

As a frontline infectious diseases doctor, this is what I want my friends and neighbors to do if they have COVID-19 symptoms and are asked to go to the emergency room.

Hamas arrests Gaza activists after Zoom call with Israelis

Hamas-run security forces have arrested several peace activists in the Gaza Strip on treason charges after they took part in a web conference with Israeli activists, officials said Thursday. The Hamas-run Interior Ministry said the activists are accused of “holding a normalization activity with the Israeli occupation.” “Holding any activity or contact with the Israeli occupation under any cover is a crime punishable by law and a betrayal for the people and their sacrifices,” it said in a statement.

Europe Is Looking at Several More Weeks of Virus Lockdowns

(Bloomberg) -- Italy and Spain are preparing for several more weeks under lockdown as volatile coronavirus infection rates prevent Europe’s governments from easing curbs on public life.Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, whose country has reported the most virus-linked deaths worldwide, is leaning toward an extension to early May, though a small number of businesses may be allowed to reopen. Spain prolonged a state of emergency until April 25 and the U.K. also is likely to extend restrictions.German Chancellor Angela Merkel joined Spain and Italy on Thursday in upholding curbs on people’s movement and face-to-face contacts, saying progress in defeating the pandemic is “fragile” and it’s too early to relent. In a plea echoed elsewhere in Europe, she called on Germans to abide by the measures over the long Easter weekend.“We must stay focused,” she said after a cabinet meeting.As the pandemic maintains its grip on Europe, policy makers are caught between the urgent need to restart battered economies and calls by health officials to maintain lockdowns. Political uncertainty in the U.K. eased after Prime Minister Boris Johnson was released from intensive care, though he remained hospitalized to recover from a coronavirus infection.Merkel’s cautious words echo the approach in other European countries faced with major outbreaks. Italy reported a rise in deaths and infections, while France’s death toll increased with a backlog of data from nursing homes. U.K. deaths, though lower than in Europe’s worst-hit countries, rose by 881 to almost 8,000.“We’re not done yet, we must keep going,” Foreign Minister Dominic Raab, who is deputizing for Johnson, said in London. “Deaths are still rising, and we still haven’t seen the peak of the virus.”Conte’s DilemmaItaly’s containment measures run until Monday. Conte is inclined to keep those restrictions fundamentally unchanged, according to three trade union and business representatives who met with him on Thursday. The Italian premier is expected to announce an extension as early as Friday, according to two officials.Any slight easing will be gradual and on a regional basis, according to the officials, who asked not to be identified by name in line with policy. Businesses that could be allowed to open include bookshops and stationary stores, agricultural machinery makers, forestry companies and perhaps sellers of baby clothes, according to newspaper Corriere della Sera.With expanded testing under way, Italy recorded Thursday a second straight increase in the number of daily new coronavirus cases, counting 4,204 confirmed infections compared with 3,836 on Wednesday. Another 610 patients died, bringing the death toll to 18,279, according to civil protection authorities.Infections in Spain rose to more than 157,000 and deaths surpassed 15,800 on Friday, underscoring the severity of Europe’s most-extensive outbreak, even as daily fatalities slowed to the lowest since March 24.Spanish lawmakers extended a national state of emergency for a second time on Thursday as the opposition People’s Party joined Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s coalition government in supporting the measure. His government’s poll ratings have declined as the virus ravaged Spain’s health system.Get Going AgainFrance reported 1,341 new deaths from the coronavirus on Thursday after including two days of data from nursing homes, while the number of intensive-care patients declined for the first time since the outbreak began.“So we can hope for a leveling off, but it’s a very high leveling off,” Jerome Salomon, head France’s public health agency, said at a briefing. “It remains to be confirmed in the days ahead.”New cases in Germany climbed the most in five days, according to figures Thursday from Johns Hopkins University. Merkel and the premiers of Germany’s 16 states plan to meet on Wednesday to consider the next steps.“I would really love to be the first one to say to you that everything is how it was and we can get things going again,” Merkel said Thursday. “But that’s not the case. My job right now is to say what is happening now.”(Updates with Spanish data from Friday in 11th paragraph)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Coronavirus: California woman arrested for licking $1,800 worth of groceries

A California woman has been arrested after licking $1,800 worth of groceries and other items at a supermarket in the northern part of the state, police said Wednesday. Chris Fiore, spokesman for the South Lake Tahoe police department, near the border with Nevada, told AFP that officers were called to the Safeway store on Tuesday following reports of "a customer licking groceries" at a time of heightened fears over the spread of the highly contagious novel coronavirus. "When officers arrived on the scene, a Safeway employee informed them that the suspect put numerous pieces of jewelry from the store on her hands," he said.

Biden campaign assembling VP selection committee

Former Vice President Joe Biden, now the presumptive Democrat nominee, told donors Wednesday afternoon that his campaign is putting together a team to help pick his running mate. 

Trump’s Fox News Cabinet Tells Him the Coronavirus Crisis Is Over

Throughout the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump’s decisions and stances have seemingly been influenced by the unofficial advisers he treasures most: Fox News primetime hosts.After downplaying for weeks the threat of the virus, just as many on Fox News did the same, the president began taking it seriously last month after Tucker Carlson personally confronted him before delivering an on-air monologue calling for action. Elsewhere, Fox stars have been the primary driving force behind Trump’s incessant promotion of an unproven anti-malarial drug as the miracle COVID-19 cure.And in recent days, it seems, the president has been receiving his newest coronavirus intel briefing from Fox News. This time, they say, the pandemic is over and it’s time to move on.Throughout Tuesday night’s primetime stretch, Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham were in lockstep in telegraphing to Trump a message that the pandemic’s threat has been overstated, death counts have been inflated, and the U.S. is already on the downside of the curve.Carlson, who received mainstream plaudits for his “admirable” early coronavirus coverage, kicked off his show by declaring that the crisis “may have passed,” noting that health-care systems across the country haven’t come close to collapsing—“except in a handful of places.”“Patients are not dying alone in the hallways of emergency rooms with physicians too overwhelmed to treat them,” he asserted. “That was the concern. It happens in other countries, it's not happening here. Thank God for that.”There have been numerous reports and testimonials from health-care workers expressing horror over the conditions of overcrowded hospitals and the stress it has placed on both medical staffers and patients. Much reporting has also been done on how many patients are dying alone and away from family members and friends from the disease.But despite nearly 13,000 U.S. deaths and at least 400,000 confirmed cases, with portions of the country having yet to suffer the worst effects of the outbreak, Carlson called for a quick reversal of social-distancing restrictions in order to jumpstart the economy, citing downward revisions of coronavirus models as the key reason.“Before we go ahead and alter our lives and our country forever, it is fair to ask about the numbers, their numbers, the ones we acted on the first time, that turned out to be completely wrong,” the Fox star fumed. “How did they screw that up so thoroughly? That is a fair question.”Adjustments of expected death tolls in some models—which, weeks ago, showed as many as 240,000 American deaths—have largely occurred due to the widespread adoption of social-distancing guidelines and the assumption that school and business closures will stay in place through the summer. Even factoring all that in, the models still project roughly 80,000 deaths.Nevertheless, over the past few days, Carlson has been pushing the president to ignore medical expertise and quickly move forward with economic activity. “Is there a single person who sincerely expects the coronavirus itself will hurt more people in the end than the damage we're causing in our response to it? Probably not,” he said on Monday night. “Mass unemployment is almost certain to cause far more harm, including physical harm, to the average family than this disease.”Carlson has also railed against top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has urged Americans to embrace social distancing in order to flatten the curve. Calling it “bewildering” that the U.S. is allowing medical “experts” to make policy decisions, Carlson claimed last week that Fauci is proposing “national suicide” by pushing aggressive social distancing. “We should never let someone like that run this country,” he said.Fox News senior analyst Brit Hume, who has recently been at the forefront of right-wing media’s questioning of coronavirus deaths, has also joined the chorus of Fox stars agitating against medical expertise. The official COVID-19 death count has been inflated, he declared Carlson on Tuesday evening.“Dr. Birx said tonight during the briefing at the White House that all deaths from anyone who died with coronavirus is counted as if the person died from coronavirus,” Hume said. “Now, we all know that isn’t true.”“And if everybody is being automatically classified, if they're found to have COVID-19, as a COVID-19 death, we’re going to get a very large number of deaths that way and we’re probably not going to have an accurate count of what the real death total is,” he added.Besides the fact that flu deaths—which Trump and Fox figures have constantly used as a comparison point to downplay the pandemic—are tracked the exact same way, and coronavirus disproportionately impacts people with pre-conditions, it is actually far more likely that the COVID-19 death count has been understated so far.Hannity, meanwhile, kicked off his Tuesday evening broadcast by claiming there is a “ton of good news” surrounding the pandemic, touting revised downward estimates of the death count to suggest that regular economic activity should restart very soon.In a phone interview with the president, Hannity—who has served as an unofficial Trump adviser and confidant—noted that the “cure can’t be worse than the problem” and nudged the president to reveal when he’d roll back social-distancing policies.“I’d love to open with a big bang, one beautiful country and just open,” Trump declared, adding, “We’re looking at two concepts. We’re looking at the concept where you open up sections and we’re also looking at the concept where you open up everything.”In a Wednesday morning tweet, Trump further hinted that he is looking to end restrictions “sooner rather than later,” adding that the “horror” of coronavirus “must be quickly forgotten” and predicting that the economy “will BOOM” going forward.Laura Ingraham, however, may have been the most aggressive among her primetime colleagues in openly pushing Trump to view the pandemic threat as completely neutralized.Claiming the experts were “wrong” with their modeling and that it caused undue panic for Americans, Ingraham echoed Carlson by railing against medical officials, claiming this pandemic should “make us less willing to rely on the same experts to help determine when and how we should reopen our economy.”“We didn’t vote for doctors,” exclaimed Ingraham, who recently sat with the president to tout the unproven coronavirus cure hydroxychloroquine. “We voted for political leadership that sees the big picture. That means the whole picture of America.”She continued to hammer away at that message Wednesday on her Twitter account.Tucker Carlson Wants to Have It Both Ways on Coronavirus“At some point, the president is going to have to look at Drs. Fauci and Birx and say, we're opening on May 1,” she wrote on Wednesday morning. “Give me your best guidance on protocols, but we cannot deny our people their basic freedoms any longer.”“America must get back to work,” Ingraham blared in another tweet. “‘Experts’ were wrong on fatalities by a factor of 30 now want to dictate when we reopen.”While Trump’s Fox News cabinet is declaring the crisis over, the network’s brass is still taking the pandemic seriously, implementing strict social-distancing policies for its employees. In a memo sent last week, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott announced the company would distribute thermometers to all essential workers and suggested the use of face masks for anyone who had to come into one of Fox’s offices. Additionally, Scott said that Fox was targeting May 4 as a possible return date for employees currently telecommuting.And as Fox News’ biggest stars tried to convince the president to ditch social distancing altogether, one of Trump’s own health officials rebuked the network’s faux-populist manipulation of the expert data and projections.“Physical distancing is incredibly important—remember the projections,” Assistant Secretary for Health Brett Giroir said Wednesday on Fox & Friends. “I have seen people twist that like this was not going to be that bad after all and we didn’t need to do it. That’s a complete misinterpretation. The estimate of deaths going down is the result of the fact that we have listened to the president and vice president and task force.”“I do want to emphasize the point, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, but don’t keep your foot—don’t take your foot off the gas,” Giroir continued. “Because we really need to continue these efforts because we could see another peak, a second peak, a third peak if people don’t do the physical distancing or they think it’s all over.“It’s not over yet.”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.

Coronavirus: New York has more cases than any country

Photos emerge of workers in hazmat outfits stacking coffins in a mass grave in New York City.

Leading Scientific Journal Nature Apologizes for ‘Associating’ Coronavirus with China

The leading British scientific journal Nature apologized in an article published on Tuesday for "associating" the coronavirus with its origin place in China on the grounds that the linkage had inspired racist attacks against people with Asian heritage across the world.“That we did so was an error on our part, for which we take responsibility and apologize,” the journal said in an article published Tuesday.The coronavirus outbreak originated in Wuhan, China and first appeared in bats thought to have infected wild animals that were sold in the city's wet markets. Since then, it has spread to at least 177 countries and infected 1.4 million people. As of Thursday morning, at least 89,000 people had died after contracting the respiratory illness.“It’s clear that since the outbreak was first reported, people of Asian descent around the world have been subjected to racist attacks, with untold human costs – for example, on their health and livelihoods,” the article read.Nature remarked that the World Health Organization's dubbing the new coronavirus COVID-19 was a subtle reminder to “those who had erroneously been associating the virus with Wuhan and with China in their news coverage – including Nature.”The publication urged that “Coronavirus stigma must stop – now.”“It would be tragic if stigma, fueled by the coronavirus, led Asia’s young people to retreat from international campuses, curtailing their own education, reducing their own and others’ opportunities and leaving research worse off – just when the world is relying on it to find a way out,” the journal said.The Nature report also chastised "a minority of politicians," who are "sticking with the outdated script."“Continuing to associate a virus and the disease it causes with a specific place is irresponsible and needs to stop," the report said.President Trump briefly referred to the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus,” defending his use of the term by saying "it comes from China," but later backed away from the phrase after reports of an uptick in violence against Asian Americans."Look, everyone knows it came out of China, but I decided we shouldn't make any more of a big deal out of it," Trump said early last month.The Communist Chinese government has denied that the virus originated in China and said that it is “strongly indignant” over the phrase, calling it “a kind of stigmatization.” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang demanded last month that the U.S. “immediately stop its unjustified accusations against China.”

Harvey Weinstein free of coronavirus symptoms, spokesman says

"As of now, it's been 14 days since reports of concern from people inside the prison, and he has no symptoms and no issues," Weinstein spokesman Juda Engelmayer said. Weinstein, 68, was sentenced on March 11 for sexually assaulting former production assistant Mimi Haleyi and raping Jessica Mann, a onetime aspiring actress. Michael Powers, head of the state corrections officers union, said on March 22 that Weinstein had tested positive for the coronavirus, which causes the respiratory illness COVID-19.

A 44-year-old marathon runner says he now has to sit on a plastic stool in the shower, unable to stand for long after being on a ventilator for a severe case of COVID-19

"My physician father had warned me: 'You better not get put on a ventilator. People don't come back from that,'" David Lat wrote in an op-ed.

As virus kills, NYC shortens deadline for claiming dead

As New York City deals with a mounting coronavirus death toll and dwindling morgue space, the city has shortened the amount of time it will hold unclaimed remains before they are buried in the city's public cemetery. Under the new policy, the medical examiner’s office will keep bodies in storage for just 14 days before they’re buried in the city’s potter’s field on Hart Island. In recent days, though, burial operations have increased from one day a week to five days a week, with around 24 burials each day, said Department of Correction spokesman Jason Kersten.

Trump administration, citing coronavirus, expels 10,000 migrants in less than 3 weeks

Homeland Security officials say CDC guidance on coronavirus and 'public health' outweigh U.S. laws that protect asylum seekers and migrant children.

Adam Schiff says Intelligence Committee may conduct 'Zoom hearings' during current pandemic

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., says he is considering using the teleconferencing software Zoom to hold hearings into foreign election interference and other key issues, including the firing of intelligence community inspector general Michael Atkinson, while social distancing restrictions remain in place due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Texas teen accused of threatening to spread coronavirus is charged

Maradiaga claimed in a series of Snapchat videos to have tested positive and threatened to willfully spread COVID-19, according to police.

Joe Biden leads Donald Trump by 8 points in new poll; majority believe US is in a recession

The poll found Biden is the top choice among 49% of registered voters and Trump the top choice of 41%. Biden is boosted by self-identified independent voters.

Coronavirus: Worst economic crisis since 1930s depression, IMF says

Global economic growth will turn "sharply negative" this year due to the pandemic, the IMF warns.

Head of Global Strike Command Wants to Make Air Force Bombers Even More Lethal

The Air Force plans to have 165 to 175 bombers in its inventory once the B-21 Long Range Strike Bomber comes online.

PM Johnson out of intensive care as he continues COVID-19 recovery

Prime Minister Boris Johnson was resting in hospital on Friday, recovering from COVID-19, while his fellow Britons were told to resist the temptation of spring sunshine over Easter as the coronavirus outbreak approaches a peak. The flamboyant 55-year-old leader's visible decline shook the nation, but he came out of three nights of intensive care at St Thomas' Hospital on Thursday, having been admitted after suffering from a high temperature and cough. "The prime minister is back on a ward and continuing his recovery, which is at an early stage," his spokesman told reporters.

An 86-year-old woman with dementia was pushed and killed in an NYC emergency room over social distancing

Janie Marshall grabbed onto a 32-year-old patient's IV pole to regain her balance, and the woman threw her to the floor, The New York Times reported.

Wuhan ends its coronavirus lockdown, but another Chinese city shutdown emerges

The Chinese city where the new coronavirus emerged ended its more-than two-month lockdown on Wednesday, even as a small northern city ordered restrictions on residents amid concern about a second wave of infections.

Mayor says virus has hit black, Hispanic New Yorkers hard

New data shows New York City’s death toll from COVID-19 has been disproportionately high in black and Hispanic communities. New York City's death toll from the coronavirus has been disproportionately high in black and Hispanic communities, and the city is starting an outreach campaign for those residents, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday. “We’re seeing folks who have struggled before really being hit particularly hard,” de Blasio said at a City Hall briefing.

Kushner Considering Using Personal Patient Data to Create National Coronavirus Surveillance System

Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner is leading an effort to develop a national coronavirus surveillance system in order to track patient data almost in real time, Politico reported on Tuesday based on conversations with four people involved in the ongoing effort.The system would allow the federal government to monitor where and for what patients are seeking treatment. Ideally, this would provide government officials with the data needed to determine which areas of the country should implement coronavirus mitigation measures and which can safely lift those measures to open up businesses."It allows you to be much more targeted and precise in how you engage," a person familiar with the development process told Politico. "They need data to make the policy decisions, and so that’s what we and others now have been asked to do."Three people working on the project said the data would be handled in such a way as to protect patient privacy. However, the project has sparked civil liberties concerns, especially following criticism of the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act."We dealt with similar issues in 9/11," said Jessica Rich, former director of the Federal Trade Commission’s consumer protection bureau. "One reason that the government doesn’t have all of this data is there’s a lot of concern about big brother maintaining large databases on every consumer on sensitive issues like health, and for good reason."White House spokesman Avi Berkowitz denied that a coronavirus surveillance system was under discussion."This story makes no sense and is completely false," Berkowitz said. "The White House gets many unsolicited random proposals on a variety of topics, but Jared has no knowledge of this proposal or the people mentioned in this article who may have submitted it."The coronavirus pandemic has seen over 1,400,000 infected patients worldwide, with over 80,000 deaths. Medical officials in the U.S. have at times struggled to track the scope of the outbreak, in part due to a lack of testing in the outbreak's early stages.The U.S. has also criticized China's apparent unwillingness to provide a more complete picture of that country's coronavirus outbreak, which Dr. Deborah Birx of the White House coronavirus task force said contributed to the U.S.'s slow initial response.

Sanders' exit could bring Obama into the 2020 fold

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is out, and former President Barack Obama is maybe, possibly in.Sanders dropped out of the 2020 race on Wednesday, saying his "path toward victory is virtually impossible" but pledging to stay on primary ballots through the Democratic National Convention to gain influence in the party. That makes former Vice President Joe Biden the presumptive Democratic nominee, and leaves Obama free to campaign for his former second in command.Obama has refused to endorse a primary candidate since the 2020 Democratic race's jam-packed beginnings, though reports did suggest he was quietly backing Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Other reports suggested he wasn't thrilled about Biden getting in the race, and told Biden's campaign staff to make sure he didn't "embarrass himself." Biden meanwhile maintained he specifically asked Obama not to endorse him, though he has promised his presidency would essentially be a third Obama term.But Sanders' departure leaves Obama with just one choice, effectively compelling him to take a stand as a Biden surrogate. Obama did reportedly expect to perform a lot of party unifying this summer, after all. There's just one problem: Obama didn't end up turning the tides when he did the same for Hillary Clinton in 2016.More stories from theweek.com Biden is the weakest major party nominee in recent history — but that might be the point Biden pledges to lower Medicare age and reduce some student debt in olive branch to Sanders supporters 4 important parenting lessons from life in lockdown

The coronavirus probably started spreading in Wuhan far earlier than Chinese authorities reported — here's the more likely timeline

The first cases of COVID-19 in China popped up weeks before December 31, the date health authorities reported the first cluster of cases.

US-Mexico border: Thousands of migrants expelled under coronavirus powers

The Trump administration is using an emergency public health order to turn back irregular migrants.

Lockdown in West Bank, crowds in Gaza: Palestinians divided over coronavirus

Political and physical divisions between Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have induced two very different responses to the coronavirus pandemic, with a strict lockdown in the first and crowds milling about freely in the second. In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which has 250 recorded cases of the COVID-19 lung disease, a lockdown on public life was swiftly imposed - Bethlehem was sealed off after the first outbreak in March and a state of emergency declared. Forty km (25 miles) apart and separated by Israel, the West Bank and Gaza have no direct link between them.

Trump news – live: More Americans died of coronavirus this week than in entire Iraq War as president’s latest Biden attack called out as ‘racist garbage’

More Americans have died of coronavirus this week than in the entire Iraq War, which claimed the lives of more than 4,500 US troops between 2003 and 2011.Donald Trump is meanwhile under fire for his latest attack ad linking Democratic rival Joe Biden to China, the short promo mistakenly identifying Asian-American former Washington governor Gary Locke as a Chinese dignitary.

Turkey's COVID-19 infection rate is the fastest rising in the world. Here's why it got so many cases so quickly.

Less than a month ago, Turkey didn't have a single case. As of April 10, it had 42,282 confirmed cases with 908 deaths.

UN agency says 280 migrants stranded in unsafe port in Libya

The Libyan coast guard rescued 280 migrants in distress in the Mediterranean Sea on Thursday and diverted them to the shores of the North African country, only to have them banned from disembarking, the U.N. migration agency said. The migrants, hungry and exhausted after 72 hours at sea, remained stuck on a crowded coast guard ship overnight after being denied entry to the capital, Tripoli. Fighting has engulfed Tripoli in recent months as eastern-based forces under the command of Khalifa Hifter have escalated their year-long siege.

CDC extends 'no sail' order for cruise ships as industry ravaged by the coronavirus

Cruise ships won't be hitting the high seas again anytime soon. A new CDC order says about 100 cruise ships near the U.S. must remain idle.

Empty of pilgrims, Bosnia's miracle town falls victim to the virus

Ever since the Virgin Mary was said to appear before six teenagers on a hill in Bosnia four decades ago, pilgrims have flocked to the town of Medjugorje, eager to witness a miracle. With Easter upon us, the Catholic shrine normally packed with thousands of people is deserted as the coronavirus pandemic freezes travel around the globe. The doors of St. James church are shuttered and the Franciscan priests who manage the site are in confinement.

East Coast faces thunderstorm threat; tornadoes, snow in weekend forecasts

Dangerous weather is expected for Easter Weekend — and snow is in the forecast for New England.

Covid-19 Is Trapping Ecuador Between Death and Debt

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Sometime late last month the bodies began to turn up on the streets of Guayaquil. Some of the dead were abandoned in dumpsters. Others had been bundled in plastic and left on the sidewalks of this seaside Ecuadoran city, the yellow and black plastic cordon suggesting an unsolved crime scene.While most of Latin America is bracing for the worst of the coronavirus pandemic, Ecuador is already overwhelmed. The Andean nation of 17.5 million people is proportionately South America’s most afflicted: Only Brazil has a higher death count, with three times the fatalities for a population 12 times larger than Ecuador’s. (But as Bloomberg News reports, the continent is woefully behind in testing populations for the virus.) In Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, with 70% of the nation’s stricken, coffins are scarce, families wait days for funeral homes to collect their dead and morgues are overflowing, forcing city authorities to store the bodies in industrial refrigerators. This is not just a tragedy of human health. As Covid-19 claims lives, it also menaces an economy that is already failing. While emerging markets everywhere are in trouble, Ecuador comes to the pandemic with some serious co-morbidities: a huge foreign debt, sinking oil prices, deepening poverty and political fratricide. The only question is whether public health or the economy is in a more precarious state.The slump in oil prices has gutted winnings from Ecuador’s signature commodity even as public debt has risen to nearly 52% of gross domestic product, well over the nationally stipulated maximum of 40%. That level of red ink can be hard for many countries to handle. For dollarized Ecuador, the surging greenback makes its signature non-oil exports even less competitive and forces the country to pile on even more debt, default on its loans or slash spending even as it battles the pandemic.Ecuador’s plight is in part the product of collective responses to prior emergencies. One reason Ecuador proved to be so accommodating to coronavirus was its diaspora. Propelled by political instability and a banking crisis in the late 1990s and early 2000s, up to 1 million Ecuadorans have migrated. More than 400,000 settled in Spain, becoming Latin America’s largest expatriate community there, while another 100,000 moved to Italy. Just as these global Ecuadorans nurtured their native economy with remittances, the returnees and frequent fliers have helped spread the contagion back home. Ecuador’s patient zero reportedly was an elderly Ecuadoran who returned to Guayaquil in February and may have infected up to 180 patients. By the time national lockdown orders were in place in March, the virus was already loose.Dollarization is another two-edged sword. Runaway prices and a banking crisis forced Ecuador to jettison the worthless national currency for the greenback in early 2000. Dollarization stabilized the economy and shielded Ecuadorans from inflation and the economic fallout from political turmoil which routinely ravaged neighboring economies. However, the stronger dollar not only makes Ecuador’s exports less competitive, but ties the nation’s hands in a crisis. Since the central bank cannot print dollars, government can’t monetize its swollen public deficit. With plunging oil prices (crude oil is 29% of exports), Ecuador’s gross financing needs this year are on track to hit an “unmanageable” $8.1 billion this year, according to Oxford Economics. Unless multilateral lenders come to the rescue, the government will have to raise taxes or double down on austerity, a strategy that nearly unseated President Lenin Moreno last year.While some Latin American leaders have stepped up during the outbreak and seen their approval ratings climb, Moreno has struggled. Once heralded as a reformer, he has seen his credibility shattered by partisan caviling, aggravated by his own well-intentioned bumbling. Nationwide protests late last October forced him to roll back fiscal measures, including a cut in fuel subsidies, prescribed by the International Monetary Fund, whose largesse his government needs even more today. The economy is likely to contract by 6% this year, said Norman McKay of the Economist Intelligence Unit.Now he faces the country’s worst crisis in memory with approval ratings below 20% (compared with 77% when he first took office in 2017), junk-rated sovereign debt and little fiscal firepower. “Moreno was already isolated and has little national support and little cash to buy political support,” Andres Mejia Acosta, a lecturer in political economy at Kings College London, told me. A weak central government is a cue for opportunists to weaponize the pandemic for political ends. “We are likely to see Moreno’s political problems escalate because his government has no national support.”An emergency fund in the works will offer a modicum of relief to some of the most vulnerable families. However under fiscal constraints Ecuador revised its registry of cash transfer recipients in 2014, restricting eligibility to all but those in extreme poverty (eliminating 600,000 recipients) and leaving out many more potential beneficiaries who are now in harm’s way. ”If you are part of the population at risk, but didn’t make the official registry, you are invisible to the state,” said Mejia Acosta.For those who toil in Ecuador’s vast shadow economy and live by peddling their wares and services day by day, sheltering is penury. The state has no plan for them, nor refrigerators for their rising body count.This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.Mac Margolis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Latin and South America. He was a reporter for Newsweek and is the author of “The Last New World: The Conquest of the Amazon Frontier.”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.

Coronavirus pandemic: EU agrees €500bn rescue package

EU ministers reached the deal after long talks, pledging support for countries hit hard by coronavirus.

Kazakhstan to extend coronavirus state of emergency to end of April

Kazakhstan will extend a state of emergency declared over the coronavirus outbreak until the end of April, but will allow some businesses to reopen after a two-week shutdown, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev's office said on Friday. The state of emergency, which has allowed the government to lock down all provinces and major cities and shut down many businesses in the capital, Nur-Sultan, and biggest city, Almaty, was originally due to end on April 15. "We have not yet passed the peak of coronavirus infections," Tokayev said.

Woman gives birth standing with trousers on while detained at US-Mexico border

A woman suffering flu-like symptoms gave birth standing and fully clothed while detained near the Mexican-US border, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.The Guatemalan woman, 27, was being processed at the Chula Vista Border Patrol Station near San Diego when her complaints of pain and pleas for help were allegedly ignored by agents, according to a complaint filed on Wednesday by the ACLU and Jewish Family Service of San Diego with the US Department of Homeland Security's Office of the Inspector General.

Bill Gates warns that a coronavirus-like outbreak will probably happen 'every 20 years or so'

Gates said people now realize that there is "a meaningful probability every 20 years or so ... that one of these [viruses] will come along."

Feds loosen virus rules to let essential workers return

In a first, small step toward reopening the country, the Trump administration issued new guidelines to make it easier for essential workers who have been exposed to COVID-19 to get back to work if they do not have symptoms of the coronavirus. Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, announced Wednesday at the White House that essential employees, such as health care and food supply workers, who have been within 6 feet (1.8 meters) of a confirmed or suspected case of the virus can return to work under certain circumstances if they are not experiencing symptoms. The new guidelines are being issued as the nation mourns about 15,000 deaths from the virus and grapples with a devastated economy and medical crises from coast to coast.

More than 90,000 cruise crewmembers left to battle coronavirus – at times without pay

Crew members are having just as trouble as passengers in getting off ships once their skills are no longer needed.

US man arrested for beating up mom over toilet paper

A California man was arrested this week after allegedly punching his mother -- who had apparently hidden the family's stash of toilet paper because of his excessive use of the hot commodity. Police were called to the family's home in Saugus, north of Los Angeles, at 3:00 am Monday following a dispute over the whereabouts of the hygiene product, Shirley Miller, spokeswoman for the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff's Station, told AFP. The argument between Adrian Yan and his mother escalated and he punched her in the face, Miller said.

CDC releases data of worst U.S. coronavirus cases

The CDC gathered data on those who were hospitalized from COVID-19 in 14 states from March 1-30, in efforts to get a clearer picture of those infected who needed the most serious medical care.

Coronavirus: Teachers in Singapore stop using Zoom after 'lewd' incidents

A secondary school home-based geography lesson in Singapore was hijacked by two men.

Some African countries heading for coronavirus peak in weeks: WHO

Some African countries could see a peak in coronavirus cases in the coming weeks and testing should be urgently increased in the region, World Health Organization officials said on Thursday. "During the last four days we can see that the numbers have already doubled," Michel Yao, the WHO Africa programme manager for emergency response, told a media teleconference on Thursday. The numbers of recorded coronavirus infections in Africa have been relatively low so far - with nearly 11,000 cases and 562 deaths, according to a Reuters tally based on government statements and WHO data.