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Apr 08, 2020
A proposed class-action lawsuit has been filed against Costa Cruises, a Carnival subsidiary. Such a lawsuit likely won't gain much traction.
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Apr 08, 2020
A gun attack in a mining area in the Democratic Republic of Congo has killed three Chinese nationals, China's official Xinhua news agency reported, citing the Chinese embassy in the mineral-rich central African country.
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Apr 08, 2020
After 11 weeks of lockdown, residents of China's Wuhan were allowed out, and tens of thousands prepared to leave the city.
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Apr 08, 2020
China is investigating a prominent Communist Party member who criticized leader Xi Jinping's handling of the coronavirus outbreak.
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Apr 08, 2020
The Philippines on Wednesday expressed solidarity with Vietnam after Hanoi protested what it said was the ramming and sinking of a Vietnamese fishing boat by a Chinese coast guard ship in the disputed South China Sea. The Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila expressed deep concern over the reported April 3 sinking of the boat carrying eight fishermen off the Paracel Islands. China claims virtually the entire South China Sea and has built several islands equipped with military installations in the area, one of world's busiest shipping lanes.
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Apr 08, 2020
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is facing criticism for creating a new coronavirus relief fund when about $500 million was lying unspent in an older fund, even as top businesses and celebrities pledge millions of dollars in new donations. Modi launched the "PM CARES" fund to provide relief to those affected by the coronavirus that has infected more than 5,000 people in India, and killed 149. The fund is expected to help millions of day labourers, many of whose lives were devastated by a nationwide lockdown ordered by Modi to stem the epidemic.
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Apr 08, 2020
As debate rages about the true death toll caused by the coronavirus outbreak in Indonesia, Jakarta coffin maker Sahroni has been too busy to pay the issue much attention. "Usually we sell between five to seven coffins a day, but now it is up to 20 to 30 coffins a day," said Sahroni, 38, as he applied base coat onto a wooden coffin. The warehouse where Sahroni works normally specialises in coffins for Indonesia's Christian minority, but now they are providing coffins for all denominations, including Muslims who would usually be buried in a shroud.
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Apr 08, 2020
India's financial hub Mumbai is set to extend lockdown measures until at least April 30 as authorities race to expand testing to stem the spread of coronavirus cases in the city, three senior officials said. A 21-day nationwide lockdown that Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared in late March to fight the epidemic is officially set to end on April 14. The Mumbai municipal authority and the state government in the western state of Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital, both declined to comment.
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Apr 08, 2020
(Bloomberg) -- Japan has earmarked $2.2 billion of its record economic stimulus package to help its manufacturers shift production out of China as the coronavirus disrupts supply chains between the major trading partners.The extra budget, compiled to try to offset the devastating effects of the pandemic, includes 220 billion yen ($2 billion) for companies shifting production back to Japan and 23.5 billion yen for those seeking to move production to other countries, according to details of the plan posted online.The move coincides with what should have been a celebration of friendlier ties between the two countries. Chinese President Xi Jinping was supposed to be on a state visit to Japan early this month. But what would have been the first visit of its sort in a decade was postponed a month ago amid the spread of the virus and no new date has been set.China is Japan's biggest trading partner under normal circumstances, but imports from China slumped by almost half in February as the disease shuttered factories, in turn starving Japanese manufacturers of necessary components.That has renewed talk of Japanese firms reducing their reliance on China as a manufacturing base. The government's panel on future investment last month discussed the need for manufacturing of high-added value products to be shifted back to Japan, and for production of other goods to be diversified across Southeast Asia.Japan exports a far larger share of parts and partially finished goods to China than other major industrial nations, according to data compi
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Apr 08, 2020
HONG KONG—Trains are leaving Wuhan for the first time since January 23, carrying 55,000 people out of the city in one day. Long-haul buses are moving passengers across provinces. Planes are taking off at the airport again. Roadblocks on outbound highways have been removed, and cars have been streaming through since midnight. The lockdown of the first epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic—after doctors who flagged the unusual virus were gagged by authorities—was lifted at midnight local time on Wednesday. U.S. Eyes Second Coronavirus Outbreak in ChinaIt's difficult to look back at the lockdown without feeling like it was an 11-week internment. More than 3,300 people reportedly have died in China due to COVID-19, including nearly 2,600 in the city of Wuhan alone. (The official tallies are deemed by medical professionals in China and abroad to be much lower than the actual count.) Intensive care units were, of course, where the most recorded deaths occurred; the mortality rate in Wuhan's ICUs was between 25 and 30 percent, according to Dr. Peng Zhiyong, who led two ICU teams in the city and maintained the lowest rates of fatalities and hospital transmissions at the facilities where he worked.Now, after daily—hourly, constant—checks on the epidemic curve, there is an uneasy mixture of relief and apprehension as life in Wuhan crawls back to a normal pace and Hubei province reconnects with the rest of the country.There are lessons here for the hard-hit United States, where to date almost four times as many people have died as in China, judging
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Apr 08, 2020
Iran's President Hassan Rouhani appealed to the International Monetary Fund Wednesday to approve a $5 billion emergency loan request to combat its novel coronavirus outbreak. "I urge all international organisations to fulfil their duties," Rouhani said during a cabinet meeting. "We are a member of the IMF... if there's going to be any discrimination between Iran and others in giving loans, neither us nor world opinion will tolerate it," he said in televised remarks.
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Apr 08, 2020
Iran demanded on Wednesday that U.S. oil production levels must be known before an upcoming OPEC meeting with Russia and others seeking to boost global energy prices. The meeting of the so-called OPEC is scheduled to be held Thursday after officials delayed it following Saudi Arabia criticizing Russia over its comments about the price collapse. A meeting in March saw OPEC and other nations led by Russia fail to agree to a production cut as the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has drastically cut demand for oil.
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Apr 08, 2020
Black Chicagoans account for 70% of coronavirus deaths, despite making up 30% of the population.
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Apr 08, 2020
Tokyo recorded 144 coronavirus infections on Wednesday, its biggest daily jump since the start of the pandemic, the city's governor Yuriko Koike said, on the first day of a state of emergency aimed at containing the outbreak. Total infections in the Japanese capital stand at 1,339, said Koike, a rise that helped carry the nationwide tally to 4,768, according to an evening report by public broadcaster NHK. Deaths in Japan as of Wednesday morning stood at 98, said the NHK.
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Apr 08, 2020
The leader of the remote Solomon Islands said Wednesday that 27 people had died after being washed overboard from a crowded ferry last week and the government is conducting a criminal investigation. The ship MV Taimareho left Honiara on the evening of April 2 as a tropical cyclone was approaching. In the Solomon Islands, crews recovered seven bodies of those washed overboard.
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Apr 08, 2020
A reporter at Tuesday's White House coronavirus press briefing raised the question many, many parents want answered: How soon will the kids be going back to school? This school year is probably out in most of the country, but what about summer school? In the fall?Vice President Mike Pence, who was at the lectern, thanked America's teachers for adjusting to remote learning. The coronavirus task force will work on "guidance going forward, whether it be summer school or whether it be returning to school next fall," he said, "but the most important thing we can do is put this epidemic behind us as quickly as possible."Pence turned the stage over to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "Well, my daughter is a school teacher, so she asked me the same question," Fauci said. "I fully expect -- though I'm humble enough to know that I can't accurately predict -- that by the time we get to the fall, that we will have this under control enough that it certainly will not be the way it is now, where people are shutting schools. My optimistic side tells me that we'll be able to renew, to a certain extent -- but it's going to be different, remember now, because this is not going to disappear."Assuming the U.S. has the ability to widely test for the disease, determine how many people have built up antibodies after surviving the virus, and trace the contacts of newly infected people, U.S.
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Apr 08, 2020
An outspoken Chinese Communist Party critic and millionaire property tycoon, Ren Zhiqiang, has been placed under investigation for "serious violations of discipline and law", an anti-graft watchdog said. The Beijing Commission for Discipline Inspection announced late on Tuesday that the 69-year-old former chairman of the state-owned real estate developer Beijing Huayuan Group was under investigation. Rights campaigners accuse President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party of using charges such as "disciplinary violations" -- often considered to refer to corruption -- as a way to silence dissent.
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Apr 08, 2020
As New York City faced one of its darkest days with the death toll from the coronavirus surging past 4,000 — more than the number killed on 9/11 — the Chinese city where the global pandemic began lifted its final restrictions on movement Wednesday as deaths there plummeted. The tale of two cities came as the coronavirus crisis continued to strain health care systems from Europe to North America, roil global stock markets, and strand international travelers behind closed borders. In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson remained in intensive care, the first major world leader confirmed to have COVID-19.
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Apr 08, 2020
After 76 days in lockdown, the Chinese city at the heart of the global pandemic reopened Wednesday, and tens of thousands immediately hopped on trains and planes to leave. Elsewhere, the economic, political and psychological toll of fighting the virus grew increasingly clear and more difficult to bear. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson spent a second night in intensive care with his country in the grips of its biggest crisis since World War II. The 55-year-old Johnson, the first major world leader confirmed to have COVID-19, was stable and responding to treatment, spokesman James Slack said.
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Apr 08, 2020
(Bloomberg) -- Divisions among the European Union's finance ministers threatened to derail, or at least delay, the bloc's attempt to put forward a bold strategy aimed at mitigating the economic impact of the global pandemic.An emergency teleconference that started Tuesday dragged on until Wednesday morning, as the region's finance chiefs struggled to reconcile their contrasting visions, forcing negotiations to continue through the night. A press conference was tentatively scheduled for 10 a.m. Brussels time.France and Europe's hardest-hit southern countries are pushing for a firm commitment to a recovery fund financed by jointly issued bonds, a proposal that's anathema to nations like Germany and the Netherlands that have strict red lines regarding the mutualization of debt. Ministers are also at loggerheads over the wording of a joint statement on the conditions for using the firepower of credit lines from the euro area's bailout fund.The ministers had been tasked by EU leaders to come up with a toolkit of measures to address the economic impact of the outbreak by the end of this week. But even as the virus continued to engulf their economies and medical systems, governments have struggled to move past traditional dividing lines.And the stakes couldn't be higher. Last week, IHS Markit said its monthly measure of services and manufacturing in the euro area points to an annualized economic contraction of about 10%. And that's on top of job losses that are mounting across Europe, with Spain showing a record jobless-c
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Apr 07, 2020
There is another growing group of victims amid the coronavirus pandemic: Asian Americans who are being attacked and accused of causing the virus.
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Apr 07, 2020
Azul Rojas Marín was beaten and raped in custody in Peru, a top human rights court rules.
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Apr 07, 2020
Korean Air is the flagship of the Hanjin group, one of the multifaceted, family-controlled conglomerates known as chaebols that dominate business in South Korea and played a key part in its rise to become the world's 12th-largest economy. Most of its staff will go on leave from April 16 for six months in response to "deteriorating business circumstances", Korean Air said in a statement. Korean Air's labour union agreed to participate as part of a "burden-sharing" initiative, the company said -- executives have also agreed to take pay cuts.
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Apr 07, 2020
Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly is out after a profanity-laced speech about Capt. Brett Crozier, who was fired for pleading for help for his crew.
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Apr 07, 2020
"My wife is an adult capable of making her own decisions, and in this instance she exhibited a stunning lack of judgement," Mayor Brant Walker of Alton, Illinois, wrote on Facebook.
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Apr 07, 2020
There's a global shortage of COVID-19 face masks — so people around the world are getting creative in making their own.
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Apr 07, 2020
President Donald Trump says he has not seen top aide Peter Navarro's memos warning that coronavirus could endanger millions of Americans.
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Apr 07, 2020
Wuhan's 76-day lockdown has ended. Photos show how China's novel coronavirus outbreak unfolded from the start.
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Apr 07, 2020
The mother and three sons all died within days of each other, the New Orleans Coroner's Office confirmed.
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Apr 07, 2020
Many voters called out state leaders over the decision to go forward with in-person voting. Wisconsin has more than 2,500 cases of coronavirus.
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Apr 07, 2020
China Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian held his first press conference in several weeks on Tuesday, attempting to walk back his earlier claim that the U.S. military had brought the novel coronavirus to the city of Wuhan."The virus [is] a scientific question that requires scientific opinions," Zhao told reporters. He was then asked if he stood behind a March 12 tweet in which he wrote that, "It might be the U.S. Army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan.""The questions raised on my personal Twitter account are a response to U.S. politicians' stigmatization of China, which also reflects the righteous anger of many Chinese people over these stigmatizing acts," Zhao responded.China blocks Twitter within its borders, although certain citizens and companies may use the app with government approval. Twitter has said that using the platform to claim that the U.S. brought coronavirus to Wuhan does not violate its rules and terms of service.The Chinese government and state-owned media outlets have repeatedly tried to portray President Trump's use of the term "Chinese virus" as stigmatizing. On March 17, Trump was asked during a White House press conference whether he thought calling the coronavirus the "Chinese virus" created a "stigma.""No, I don't think so. I think saying that our military gave it to them creates a stigma," Trump replied.The coronavirus pandemic that began in Wuhan has now claimed over 81,000 lives and seen 1,400,000 people infected.
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Apr 07, 2020
(Bloomberg) -- Some on Wall Street are bridling at stay-at-home orders when they would rather see employees in the office, pandemic notwithstanding. As New York City suffers a ghastly death toll and even after their Manhattan headquarters saw 16 people infected on one trading floor, JPMorgan managers have nevertheless been making plans to get workers back to their desks.Bloomberg is mapping the pandemic globally and across America. For the latest news, sign up for our Covid-19 podcast and daily newsletter.Here are today's top storiesNew York State, ground zero for America's coronavirus outbreak, recorded 731 deaths in one 24-hour period, its highest daily loss of life yet. Infections, however, fell for a third straight day. There are 384,000 recorded cases and more than 12,000 dead from the coronavirus in the U.S. alone. Globally, there are 1.4 million cases and 81,000 dead.Today's Wisconsin primary is a key contest, one in which former Vice President Joe Biden hopes to deal a knockout blow to rival Senator Bernie Sanders. Democrats sought to delay the vote and extend absentee balloting, to both protect voters from Covid-19 and because some 12,000 ballots had yet to be received by voters. But the Republican-controlled state legislature, along with Republican-appointed majorities of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and U.S. Supreme Court, decided in-person voting couldn't be postponed and that there would be no extensions for submitting absentee ballots. Voting rights experts said the changes effectively disenfranchised thousands of voters who didn't want to risk contagion. At the few polls that were open Tuesd
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Apr 07, 2020
Street gangs in El Salvador have turned from extortion and killing to enforcing social distancing restrictions, often with threats and baseball bats.
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Apr 07, 2020
Black Chicagoans account for 70% of coronavirus deaths, despite making up 30% of the population.
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Apr 07, 2020
China lifted a travel ban on Tuesday on residents of Wuhan, where the coronavirus pandemic began last year, and reported no new deaths, but the situation remained grim elsewhere as Britain and New York State recorded their highest number of fatalities yet. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson remained in intensive care, meanwhile, after being admitted to a London hospital on Monday evening, 10 days after being diagnosed with the virus. The shocking hospitalization of a major world leader underscored the global reach of COVID-19, which has put more than four billion people -- over half of the planet -- on some form of lockdown, upended societies and battered economies worldwide.
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Apr 07, 2020
Videos will now be deleted if they falsely link coronavirus to 5G mobile networks.
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Apr 07, 2020
Abortion in Texas has been unavailable for more than two weeks, the first time the procedure has not been accessible in a state since Roe v. Wade.
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Apr 07, 2020
It's one of the most recent measures taken to protect the city's sizable homeless population as the coronavirus disease continues to spread.
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Apr 07, 2020
Surgeon General Jerome Adams and the director of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention are both voicing optimism that the United States' coronavirus death toll can end up lower than the projection previously shared by the White House.CDC director Robert Redfield in a Monday interview with KVOI Radio said the "large majority of the American public" is following social distancing guidelines, and he therefore anticipates "the numbers are going to be much, much, much, much lower than would have been predicted by the models," per Politico. The White House recently shared a forecast suggesting the U.S. coronavirus death toll could be between 100,000 and 240,000.In a Tuesday appearance on Good Morning America, the surgeon general was asked about Redfield's comments and whether it's his expectation that the country's death toll will come in below the White House projection."That's absolutely my expectation, and I feel a lot more optimistic because I'm seeing mitigation work," Adams said."I really do believe that we will come in under those protections as long as we can continue to do our part for 30 days," Adams continued, referring to the federal social distancing guidelines that were recently extended until the end of April.Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force's response coordinator, previously said the United States could be facing up to 200,000 coronavirus deaths even in a scenario where Americans do everything
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Apr 07, 2020
Here are the latest coronavirus updates from around the world.
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Apr 07, 2020
The Navy official, who once served as a helicopter pilot, described Capt. Brett Crozier's warning about a coronavirus outbreak as "a betrayal."
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Apr 07, 2020
The Navy official, who once served as a helicopter pilot, described Capt. Brett Crozier's warning about a coronavirus outbreak as "a betrayal."
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Apr 07, 2020
One study found that 15% of patients admitted to the ICU in the UK died. Here's what we know about what happens to the hardest-hit COVID-19 patients.
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Apr 07, 2020
Here are the latest developments in Asia related to the coronavirus pandemic:
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Apr 07, 2020
Guatemala said Tuesday that a third deportee has tested positive for the coronavirus after being flown home by the United States. The report came a day after authorities announced they were suspending deportation flights from the U.S. over concerns about spreading the virus. The Health Ministry said the latest positive case was a 37-year-old man who was deported March 26 from Mesa, Arizona, and had been in quarantine since his return.
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Apr 07, 2020
The U.S. Army's top enlisted soldier said Tuesday that the service plans to issue some type of non-surgical mask to troops.
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Apr 07, 2020
Thousands of Chinese travellers rushed to leave coronavirus-ravaged Wuhan early Wednesday as authorities lifted a more than two-month prohibition on outbound travel from the city where the global pandemic first emerged. As the ban expired on schedule at midnight (1600 GMT Tuesday), passengers -- many in hazmat suits -- expressed joy and relief as they filed into Wuhan's Wuchang station to catch the first overnight trains out of town. "Wuhan has lost a lot in this epidemic, and Wuhan people have paid a big price," said a 21-year-old man surnamed Yao, who was heading back to his restaurant job in Shanghai.
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Apr 07, 2020
Monday night, there was a brief but furious political struggle over the Wisconsin election planned for Tuesday. Democratic Governor Tony Evers ordered that the election be delayed until June 9, so as to allow time for the novel coronavirus pandemic to pass, and so the state could set up universal vote-by-mail systems. Several other states have already taken similar steps.Right-wing Republican justices, who control the state Supreme Court by a 4-2 margin, including one of whom faces a liberal challenger in this very election (though he did recuse himself on this vote), immediately overturned his order. The U.S. Supreme Court also issued another 5-4 ruling on partisan lines forbidding the state from extending the deadline for mailing an absentee ballot. Many more Wisconsin voters had requested absentee ballots compared to previous elections (for obvious reasons), which led to major delays in sending them out. Now, anyone who wanted their vote counted and hadn't yet gotten a ballot was abruptly forced to go vote in person.Evers backed down, and the election did indeed proceed Tuesday. But the results cannot possibly be considered legitimate. This is a fraudulent election, a power grab forced through by a minority party whose own control of the Wisconsin legislature is the result of cheating.To begin with, no doubt tens or even hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin residents are rightly too frightened to vote. At time of writing turnout figures were not available, but it simply beggars belief to think that turnout would not have been higher if it weren't for th
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Apr 07, 2020
Mass tree planting could harm the environment if badly planned, a report warns.
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Apr 07, 2020
The US is not in the clear: More than 378,200 coronavirus cases and 11,800 deaths have been reported as of Tuesday.
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Apr 07, 2020
The USS Puller is acting as a floating base for Army attack helicopters.
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Apr 07, 2020
As it's tested as a possible treatment for COVID-19, India had barred exports of hydroxychloroquine, until Trump weighed in.
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Apr 07, 2020
Police in India lodged a case this week against an unknown online fraudster who tried selling the world's largest statue for $4 billion, claiming the proceeds would be used to help the Gujarat state government fund its fight against the coronavirus. With scams ranging from free mobile recharges, to offers of free Netflix subscriptions, federal home ministry officials say there has been 86% percent rise in cyber crime in the past four weeks. Police and internal security officials said scammers have created fake versions of the flagship 'PM CARES Fund' payments interface that look deceptively similar to the original and many Indians and Non-Residents Indians (NRIs) have fallen prey.
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Apr 07, 2020
Rapid coronavirus testing allowed doctors to give Zach Branson the liver he needed. The pandemic has led many hospitals to postpone transplant operations.
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Apr 07, 2020
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday that no victim of the coronavirus has died because the state could not provide health care for them, even as New York posted its highest number of deaths in one day."You can't save everyone. This virus is very good at what it does, and it kills vulnerable people," Cuomo said at his daily briefing providing updates on the outbreak. "The question is, are you saving everyone you can save? And there the answer is yes, and I take some solace in that fact.""Our health care system is operating. I don't believe we've lost a single person because we couldn't provide care," the Democratic governor continued. "People we lost we couldn't save despite our best efforts."A record 731 New Yorkers died between Monday and Tuesday, Cuomo reported. He cautioned that the death rate is a "lagging indicator," meaning that those who died are often sick for weeks before they pass. More than 138,000 people in the state have been infected with the respiratory illness, with 8,157 new positive cases on Tuesday, the lowest rate in a week. The number of patients being hospitalized and moved to intensive care has dropped as well.The governor warned Thursday that New York state only had enough ventilators for six days and was considering how to increase the supply. The state released 400 ventilators to New York City a day earlier. Cuomo has worked to get as many ventilators as possible to the city, which has emerg
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Apr 07, 2020
Authorities in Germany have fallen victim to a multi-million-euro fraud involving masks much needed in the coronavirus pandemic, prosecutors said Tuesday. The German managing director of two distribution companies based in Zurich and Hamburg raised the alarm after realising he had been tricked. According to the man's police report, he received an offer from companies allegedly based in Asia in mid-March to supply the masks and subsequently attracted the large order from North Rhine-Westphalia.
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Apr 07, 2020
Given their findings, researchers urged people to avoid touching the outside of the masks, where the coronavirus particles could last up to a week.
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Apr 07, 2020
Deaths from the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy rose by 604 on Tuesday, a lower daily tally than the 636 seen the day before, while the number of new cases posted the smallest increase since March 13. The total death toll in the world's hardest-hit country since its outbreak came to light on Feb. 21 rose to 17,127, the Civil Protection Agency said. The total of confirmed cases increased by 3,039 on Tuesday to 135,586, the second successive daily decline, underscoring growing confidence that the illness is on the retreat thanks to a nationwide lockdown introduced on March 9.
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Apr 07, 2020
Even as the total number of deaths reached 5,489 across New York, Cuomo told a daily briefing on Tuesday that he was working with governors in New Jersey and Connecticut on a plan to restart life once the crisis subsides.
Cuomo said that the closures of businesses and schools and other social distancing measures were having the intended impact and urged continued compliance, especially as New York City braces for the possible peak to hospitalizations this week.
The 731 new deaths on Monday marked an increase from the prior day's 599 deaths, while new hospitalizations nearly doubled to 656, contradicting a trend of the past few days which Cuomo had touted as a possible "flattening of the curve."
But Cuomo cautioned against reading too much into one day of data and stressed three-day averages, which still showed a downward trend in the stress on the state's hospitals. The governor also pointed to a daily drop in admissions to intensive care units and a fall in intubations as encouraging signs.
Cuomo said health officials have developed an antibody testing regimen that was approved by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for use in the state, and said that regulators were working to bring it up to scale.
The test, Cuomo said, would determine whether a person has developed antibodies from contracting and resolving the virus, and would be part of a larger plan aim
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Apr 07, 2020
Thousands of travellers flocked to catch trains leaving Wuhan early Wednesday as authorities lifted a more than two-month ban on outbound travel from the hard-hit Chinese city where the global coronavirus pandemic first emerged. "Wuhan has lost a lot in this epidemic, and Wuhan people have paid a big price," said a 21-year-old man surnamed Yao, who was heading back to his restaurant job in Shanghai. China's ruling Communist Party imposed a quarantine lockdown on tens of millions of people -- first in Wuhan and then the rest of Hubei province -- beginning January 23, making the central Chinese city the first place in the world subjected to draconian restrictions now seen in many countries.
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Apr 07, 2020
Azul Rojas Marín was beaten and raped in custody in Peru, a top human rights court rules.
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Apr 07, 2020
Government software hosted on WeChat and Alipay are giving out green, yellow, or red codes that dictate where they can travel.
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Apr 07, 2020
The acting secretary did an about-face Monday night, apologizing for his remarks after saying hours earlier that he stood by "every word" he said.
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Apr 07, 2020
The novel coronavirus has been spreading rapidly throughout federal prisons, and the BOP reported Monday that eight inmates have died so far.
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Apr 07, 2020
New York state has recorded its highest number of COVID-19 deaths in 24 hours, Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Tuesday, adding though that hospitalizations appeared to be "plateauing." Cuomo said 731 people succumbed to the new coronavirus on Monday, bringing the state's total death toll to 5,489. New York has borne the brunt of America's deadly coronavirus pandemic, accounting for around half the number of deaths across the country.
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Apr 07, 2020
President Trump hammered the World Health Organization on Tuesday over its response to the coronavirus pandemic, accusing it of being partial to China and endangering countries by recommending borders be kept open."The W.H.O. really blew it," Trump wrote on Twitter. "For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric. We will be giving that a good look. Fortunately I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on. Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?"The WHO recommended in January that countries keep borders and trade open even as it dubbed the coronavirus outbreak a global emergency. In March, the WHO upgraded the outbreak to pandemic status.Several Republican senators have eviscerated the WHO for its handling of the pandemic. Senator Martha McSally last week called on WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to step down. McSally called the director a "communist" and accused him of helping China conceal its underreporting of coronavirus case numbers.Another Republican senator, Rick Scott of Florida, called for a congressional investigation into the WHO and questioned whether the organization should continue to be funded since it engaged in "helping Communist China cover up" the seriousness of the virus and "willfully parroted propaganda" from China's Communist Party.During an interview last month, WHO assistant director-general Dr. Bruce Aylward appeared to dodge a question about whether the WHO will
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Apr 07, 2020
Former President Barack Obama is handing out an endorsement of sorts.Even though she ended her presidential campaign a month ago, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has continued to crank out plans for how she'd like the government to be run. They've continued throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and, on Monday, got a stamp of approval from Obama.Linking to Warren's appearance on the Vox podcast The Ezra Klein Show, Obama described Warren as providing a "cogent summary of how federal policymakers should be thinking about the pandemic in the coming months." In the discussion, Warren outlined plans for protecting health care workers and stemming disease spread, federal deficit spending to save the economy, and collecting data to improve future response measures. As she often does, @SenWarren provides a cogent summary of how federal policymakers should be thinking about the pandemic in the coming months. https://t.co/zkX0E7ncK5 -- Barack Obama (@BarackObama) April 6, 2020To some observers, it looked like an endorsement of Warren's policy agenda. And to NBC News' Mike Memoli, it looked like a wholesale endorsement for former Vice President Joe Biden's potential 2020 vice presidential pick. TO: J.Robinette.Biden@JoeBiden.com FROM: 44@barackobama.com SUBJECT: Your VP Search https://t.co/pnjjZhvGsP -- Mike Memoli (@mikememoli) April 6, 2020More stories from theweek.com What America needs to do before lockdown can end Bruce Willis and Demi Moore have 'reunited during their sel
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Apr 07, 2020
Mayor Brant Walker said his wife would be treated like any other citizen violating the stay-at-home order and faces a complaint of reckless conduct.
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Apr 07, 2020
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- The Supreme Court's decision in the Wisconsin election case isn't exactly the shot heard round the world. In a narrow, 5 to 4 decision, the court's conservatives held that a federal district court shouldn't have granted a coronavirus-inspired emergency extension for mailing in absentee ballots.But the Supreme Court's ruling nevertheless matters a lot. It's the opening salvo in what is likely to be a seven-month long series of legal battles about how the 2020 elections will be accomplished with Covid-19 disrupting the voting process.So it's highly unfortunate that the justices split along partisan lines in this first case, a case with relatively low stakes. The nation badly needs the court to avoid a scenario reminiscent of the 2000 Bush v. Gore case, in which the justices were perceived to have decided the election for Bush along roughly ideological lines.The takeaway for states, and for democracy, is clear: Plan now, plan well, and don't rely on the courts to resolve controversial questions about mail-in voting and deadlines — especially at the last minute.The Supreme Court's involvement in the Wisconsin election mess arose against the backdrop of an explicitly partisan struggle in Wisconsin over whether polling would take place on April 7 as scheduled. With the coronavirus on people's minds, roughly a million more voters requested absentee ballots than have done so in comparable prior elections. Many of these requests came very close to election day, leaving very little time for the absen
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Apr 07, 2020
Cuomo said that the closures of businesses and schools and other social distancing measures were having the intended impact and urged continued compliance, especially as New York City braces for the possible peak to hospitalizations this week. "Our behavior affects the number of cases," said Cuomo.
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Apr 07, 2020
Norway, one of the first European countries to curb activities to rein in the spread of the coronavirus, will relax restrictions "little by little", the prime minister said on Tuesday. The Nordic country's lockdown sent the economy into a tailspin and triggered hundreds of thousands of layoffs. "Together we have taken control of the virus, therefore we can open up society little by little," Erna Solberg told a news conference.
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Apr 07, 2020
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday that New York has recorded the largest single-day increase in the number of deaths related to the novel coronavirus, despite indications that hospitalizations are plateauing in the state.So far, more than 5,500 people have died and 138,836 more have been infected with the virus in New York State. Over the last 24 hours alone, 731 people died, the state's highest single-day death toll since the first known infection last month, Cuomo said."Behind every one of those numbers is an individual, is a family, is a mother, is a father, is a sister, is a brother," Cuomo said during a press conference in Albany. "So a lot of pain again today for many New Yorkers."The devastating increase comes just one day after Cuomo was cautiously optimistic about New York seeing a "possible flattening of the curve" after two days in which the rate of new deaths seemed to slow. Cuomo said that despite the spike in deaths over the last day, New York is still seeing a falling rate in the number of hospitalizations and an increase in discharged patients. Cuomo Suggests ‘Possible Flattening of the Curve' in New York"We are projecting that we are reaching a plateau on the number of hospitalizations," Cuomo said, stating that the number of infected patients in the ICU saw its smallest increase since the outbreak began in New York. "This virus is very good at what it does. And it kills vulnerable people. We can't stop that. The question is, ‘Are you saving everyone you can save?' There the answer is yes. And I
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Apr 07, 2020
A Kentucky nurse says she was suspended for refusing to treat COVID-19 patients after the hospital would not supply her with a protective respirator.
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Apr 07, 2020
Teams around the world are racing to develop a vaccine for the COVID-19 coronavirus in the hopes that a successful one will lead the charge in normalizing life. But there are likely to be failures along the way — that's just the nature of vaccine development, Richard Hatchett, the CEO of the Norway-based Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, told Stat News. Still, Hatchett believes it's important to begin production of some potential vaccines before they're proven to work.Hatchett said if the hope is to get vaccines out as quickly as possible while also minimizing health safety risks, "we're going to have to take an awful lot of financial risk." That includes "investing in manufacturing capacity for everything" and "even beginning full-scale manufacturing before we know if the vaccine even works." The comments echo those previously made by Bill Gates.Stocking up on vaccines in the meantime would theoretically speed up the process of administering vaccinations once they have the green light, allowing more people to protect themselves from COVID-19 in a shortened timeframe. But it will take a lot of resources, Hatchett said, meaning governments will need to shell out for it, which he expects will happen. "That's talking tens of billions of dollars if you include the cost of manufacturing hundreds of millions or billions of doses," he said. Read more at Stat News.More stories from theweek.com What America needs to do before lockdown can en
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Apr 07, 2020
The new coronavirus could eventually infect between 10,000 and 200,000 people in Saudi Arabia, the kingdom's health minister said on Tuesday, urging the public to adhere more closely to state directives against mixing and movement. The country of some 30 million has so far reported 2,795 cases and 41 deaths, the highest in the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), despite halting all passenger flights, suspending most commercial activities and imposing a 24-hour curfew in major cities including the capital Riyadh. "We stand today at a decisive moment as a society in raising our sense of responsibility and contributing together with determination to stop the spread of this pandemic," Health Minister Tawfiq al-Rabiah said in a rare televised address.
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Apr 07, 2020
Stephanie Grisham, President Trump's third press secretary, has not held a briefing with the White House press corps since taking the job late last June.
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Apr 07, 2020
Celebrities may be calling COVID-19 a "great equalizer," but statistics from across the U.S. show that's far from the truth. Coronavirus case numbers and death tolls have revealed the virus is disproportionately affecting black Americans in many parts of the country — though statistics from some of the hardest hit areas haven't been revealed yet, The New York Times reports.Black Americans make up just about a third of Louisiana's population. But according to numbers released Monday by the state government, more than 70 percent of those who've died of COVID-19 were black. Chicago is less than a third black, but 72 percent of those who've died of the new coronavirus were black. And while the county around Milwaukee is about 27 percent black, around twice as many black residents tested positive for COVID-19 as white residents.There's not enough data to fully explain the overwhelmingly disproportionate numbers, experts tell the Times. But the fact that black Americans are less likely than white Americans to be insured, suffer racial bias in medical testing and treatment, and more often have jobs that haven't let them stay home during the pandemic all certainly contribute.California, New Jersey, New York and Washington are among the states COVID-19 has hit the hardest, but they haven't yet released statewide information about the race of patients, the Times notes. Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), have demanded the federal government track and release this data
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Apr 07, 2020
Many Italian companies and academics are pressing the government to reopen factories to prevent an economic catastrophe, as the world watches how the first Western country to impose a lockdown can extricate itself from the unprecedented measures. The same debate is being held around the globe: how long and stringently can bans to combat the coronavirus pandemic be held in place before irreversible damage is wrought, with businesses sunk and swathes of the population jobless? Italy faces among the most pressing dilemmas, not only because its lockdown has been in place longer than most nations and it has the world's highest death toll, but because the novel coronavirus has hit hardest in the northern industrial heartlands that generate a third of its economic output.
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Apr 07, 2020
Cleaning wipes are selling out, but you can still find them at retailers like Staples, Target, and Office Depot.
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Apr 07, 2020
President Donald Trump says he has not seen top aide Peter Navarro's memos warning that coronavirus could endanger millions of Americans.
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Apr 07, 2020
(Bloomberg) -- Joe Biden said unequivocally Tuesday the November election couldn't be delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic."We cannot delay or postpone a constitutionally required election," Biden said in an interview on NBC's "Today."Biden, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, repeated his calls for states to plan ahead for remote voting options, including expanding vote by mail. The former vice president said he hoped people can vote in person, but it would "depend on the state of play.""We're going to have to conduct the election on November 3," he said.Biden's comments come as voters in Wisconsin stood in line to vote in the state's primary Tuesday after the Republican-controlled legislature refused the governor's request to delay in-person voting amid a stay-at-home order.John Lewis, Civil Rights Icon, Endorses Biden (5:30 a.m.)Representative John Lewis of Georgia, an icon of the Civil Rights movement, endorsed Joe Biden on Tuesday, becoming the latest Democrat to support the former vice president as he tries to wrap up the Democratic presidential nomination.Lewis' endorsement comes as Biden has amassed a nearly insurmountable lead in delegates over his only remaining competitor, Senator Bernie Sanders. Biden is looking to extend that lead Tuesday when Wisconsin holds its primary contest.Lewis has represented Georgia in Congress for more than 30 years, after serving as one of the leaders of the American civil rights movement. He was the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
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Apr 07, 2020
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has approved the withdrawal of 1 billion euros from the country's sovereign wealth fund to help fight the coronavirus epidemic, President Hassan Rouhani's official website said on Monday.
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Apr 07, 2020
A gun attack in a mining area in the Democratic Republic of Congo has killed three Chinese nationals, China's official Xinhua news agency reported, citing the Chinese embassy in the mineral-rich central African country.
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Apr 07, 2020
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is facing backlash after she violated her own quarantine advice over the weekend to go to a salon for a haircut.Lightfoot defended her decision by saying that she is the "public face of this city""I'm on national media and I'm out in the public eye," she responded to a reporter. "I take my personal hygiene very seriously. As I said, I felt like I needed to have a haircut. I'm not able to do that myself, so I got a haircut. You want to talk more about that?"The controversy began on Sunday after a woman posted photos on Facebook saying she "had the pleasure of giving Mayor Lightfoot a hair trim."Lightfoot insisted she is "practicing what I'm preaching" since the woman who did her haircut wore a mask and gloves."I think what really people want to talk about is, we're talking about people dying here. We're talking about significant health disparities. I think that's what people care most about," the mayor continued.In a humorous video posted to Twitter as part of the City's "Stay Home, Save Lives" campaign, encouraging residents to remain quarantined, Lightfoot tells a friend on the phone that "Getting your roots done is not essential.""The truth is, 40,000 hospitalizations will break our health care system," she says towards the end of the video.After closing Chicago's lakefront beaches and parks last week, Lightfoot reprimanded those who had gathe
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Apr 07, 2020
Pope Francis, speaking just a few hours after Australia's highest court acquitted Cardinal George Pell of sexual abuse, on Tuesday (April 7) offered his morning Mass for those who suffer today from what he calls, quote, "unjust sentences."
The court quashed convictions that Pell sexually assaulted two choir boys in the 1990s and allowed the former Vatican economy minister to walk free from jail.
Pell had been the highest-ranking member of the Catholic Church to be charged with abuse and now cannot face the same charges again.
The timely subject chosen by Francis for his daily morning Mass did not mention Pell by name, but broke from recent weeks of regular prayers for those around the world currently suffering with illness.
(SOUNDBITE) (Italian) POPE FRANCIS SAYING:
"We have seen the persecution that Jesus has suffered and how the doctors of the law persecuted him. He was judged with obstinacy and rage, even though he was innocent. I would like to pray today for all those people who suffer unjust sentences resulting from intransigence (against them)."
The Vatican had no immediate comment on the Pell verdict, which comes during the Holy Week in the run up to Easter.
Given the fact that Pell is now 78, he is not expected to return to a role back with the Vatican.
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Apr 07, 2020
As it's tested as a possible treatment for COVID-19, India had barred exports of hydroxychloroquine, until Trump weighed in.
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Apr 07, 2020
As New York City's death toll from coronavirus hits 3,845, officials are considering using Hart Island in Long Island Sound off the Bronx as a temporary grave site at a time when morgues are overrun.Dr Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious diseases expert, has meanwhile broken with Donald Trump to warn that the world may never "go back to normal" after the outbreak because the threat will linger, issuing the caution as America approaches 400,000 cases and 12,300 deaths in total.
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Apr 07, 2020
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell flexed his fundraising strength in the midst of a global pandemic, raising nearly $7.5 million in the first three months of 2020, his campaign said Tuesday. "Kentuckians know that at a time of great consequence, there is no substitute for the proven leadership of Mitch McConnell," the senator's campaign manager, Kevin Golden, said. McConnell, who is seeking his seventh term, has raised $25.6 million so far for the 2020 election cycle, and he had nearly $14.9 million on hand in what shapes up as a big-spending Senate race in Kentucky.
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Apr 07, 2020
Democrat Amy McGrath raised substantially more campaign cash than Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in the first three months of 2020, showing her staying power against the Republican lawmaker in setting a blistering fundraising pace in Kentucky. Hours after McConnell's campaign reported raising nearly $7.5 million in the quarter, McGrath upped the ante.
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Apr 07, 2020
The coronavirus' rapid spread in the U.S. has already upended voting in more than a dozen states.
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Apr 07, 2020
Mexico's health ministry on Tuesday warned that the country was facing an acute shortage of doctors as the country seeks to ramp up hospital care to fight the fast-spreading novel coronavirus outbreak. Mexico on Monday registered 296 new coronavirus infections, bringing the country's total to 2,439 cases and 125 deaths, with health officials expecting the death toll to rise sharply. Mexico has among the lowest number of medical personnel relative to population among countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Mexican health officials say.
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Apr 07, 2020
This is a bridge to a vaccine."
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Apr 07, 2020
Maeve Kennedy McKean and her son were last seen in a canoe off Chesapeake Bay in Maryland last week.
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Apr 07, 2020
It was early spring when British scientists laid out the bald truth to their government. It was "highly likely," they said, that there was now "sustained transmission" of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom. If unconstrained and if the virus behaved as in China, up to four-fifths of Britons could be infected and one in a hundred might die, wrote the scientists, members of an official committee set up to model the spread of pandemic flu, on March 2.
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Apr 07, 2020
The U.S. has been in social-distancing mode for about three weeks — it also has the most coronavirus cases in the world.
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Apr 07, 2020
Donald Trump is giving himself license to take over other planets, according to the Russian space agency.Roscosmos accused the president of creating a basis to seize other worlds with a new executive order about commercial mining in space.
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Apr 07, 2020
China has reported no new coronavirus deaths in the last 24 hours, the first time since January, as the death toll from the disease reached 75,000 people worldwide.Meanwhile, more than 160 current and former global leaders are urging the world's 20 major industrialised nations to approve $8bn (£6.5bn) in emergency global health funding to hasten the search for a vaccine, cure and treatment for Covid-19 and prevent a second wave of the pandemic.
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Apr 07, 2020
African Americans make up 52% of all coronavirus cases in Chicago even though they only account for 30% of the total population.
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Apr 07, 2020
Dr. Tom Yadegar, pulmonologist and medical director of the intensive care unit at Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center, explains.
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Apr 07, 2020
Sweden urged people to practice social distancing but left shops and restaurants open, contrasting with many countries across Europe and the world.
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