- WorldAssociated Press
US outlines plan for Venezuela transition, sanctions relief
The Trump administration is prepared to lift crippling sanctions on Venezuela in support of a new proposal to form a transitional government requiring both Nicolas Maduro and opposition leader Juan Guaidó to step aside in favor of a five-person governing council, U.S. officials said. The one-page “Democratic Transition Framework for Venezuela” was presented Tuesday by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. It echoes a proposal made over the weekend by Guaidó that shows how growing concerns about the coronavirus, which threatens to overwhelm the South American country's already collapsed health system and economy, are reviving U.S. attempts to pull the military apart from Maduro.
- U.S.CBS News
U.S. is swiftly deporting migrant children at the border
Citing a public health order to curb the coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration is swiftly deporting unaccompanied migrant minors apprehended near the U.S.-Mexico border, upending a long-standing practice required under a federal law designed to protect children from violence and exploitation. Despite initially maintaining that the new measures would not apply to unaccompanied minors, Customs and Border Protection on Monday said its officials could deny entry to children who cross the southern border alone under an order by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC. The agency said some minors could be excluded from the CDC directive if a border official "suspects trafficking or sees signs of illness."
- U.S.INSIDER
Photos show crowds of New Yorkers breaking social distancing rules and gawking at the USNS Comfort docked in Manhattan
REUTERS/Carlo Allegri Crowds of people gathered in New York City to watch the USNS Comfort arrive, despite a state order requiring social distancing. The ship will be used as additional hospital space for non-coronavirus patients as New York hospitals become overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's communications team asked the NYPD to help disperse the crowd after a journalist tweeted about it.
- PoliticsThe Daily Beast
Joe Biden Is Smart to Get the Hell Out of the Way
I know this because Super Tuesday was also the last time that I was invited to appear on cable news as a political commentator (in the Trump era, turns out, I should have become an FBI agent, lawyer... or a virologist). By the time Super Tuesday II (or whatever we're calling it) came along, Biden's miraculous turnaround was already headline story number II, taking a backseat to (deservedly) breathless pandemic coverage.
WorldAFP Relax NewsChina lockdown may have blocked 700,000 virus cases: researchers
China's decision to lock down the city of Wuhan, ground zero for the global COVID-19 pandemic, may have prevented more than 700,000 new cases by delaying the spread of the virus, researchers said Tuesday. Drastic Chinese control measures in the first 50 days of the epidemic bought other cities across the country valuable time to prepare and install their own restrictions, according to the paper by researchers in China, the United States and the UK, published in the journal Science. "Our analysis suggests that without the Wuhan travel ban and the national emergency response there would have been more than 700,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases outside of Wuhan by that date," he was quoted as saying in a press release.
- LifestyleBusiness Insider
Read the letter my dad, a top virologist, wrote our family about signs of progress around COVID-19 — and why we can't end the lockdown anytime soon
Peter Vanham is the head of the International Media Council at the World Economic Forum and a member of its COVID-19 task force. Guido Vanham sent another letter to his three children on why the coronavirus is still a public health crisis, and how important it is to embrace this new normal.
- WorldReuters
India and Pakistan crack down on Muslim group emerging as COVID-19 cluster
India and Pakistan sealed off centers belonging to a Muslim missionary group on Tuesday and began investigating how many coronavirus cases were linked to its activities. Tablighi Jamaat is a Deobandi Sunni Muslim missionary movement that preaches worldwide. Every year, tens of thousands attend its congregations in the Pakistani city of Lahore and other parts of South Asia.
- SportsNBC News
One country is refusing to shut down to stop the coronavirus
While officials from Montreal to Moscow have placed populations under some form of lockdown designed to slow the spread of the coronavirus, one man continues to hold firm to the notion that the rest of the world has lost its mind: Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. “It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees!” Lukashenko told a Belarusian television reporter Saturday when asked whether the coronavirus could stop him from hitting the rink for a propaganda-filled hockey game. Lukashenko, one of the longest-serving leaders in the former Soviet Union, has been in power for over 25 years.
EntertainmentAOL.comMeet Candy Sterling, a fierce drag queen at night and a corporate professional by day
This is Candy Sterling – a fierce drag queen who lights up the New York City nightlife while maintaining a professional day job. Get to know her both in and out of drag on this week's episode of Behind the Drag.
- WorldAssociated Press
China state media reports 19 people killed in forest fire
Nineteen people have died while fighting a raging forest fire in southwestern China and hundreds of reinforcements were sent to fight the blaze and evacuate nearby residents, officials and state media reported Tuesday. The area threatened by the fire in Sichuan province is thinly populated, but there was no estimate on how many people were leaving the evacuation zone. State media have described villages, a school, a chemical plant and other places as under threat.
- WorldBloomberg
Ghana Cuts GDP Growth Forecast to 37-Year Low on Coronavirus
Ghana's Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta cut the country's economic growth forecast for 2020 to the lowest in 37 years due to the collapse in oil prices and the impact of the coronavirus. Growth in gross domestic product could slow to 1.5% with a partial lockdown of the economy and may “further worsen in the event of full lockdown,” Ofori-Atta told lawmakers Monday in the capital, Accra, according to a copy of his speech. The estimate compares with the government's initial projection of 6.8% and will be slowest since the economy contracted in 1983, when the West African nation was under military rule, data from the International Monetary Fund show.
- WorldINSIDER
Open coffins are left on roads to remind people to stay inside while soldiers shoot disinfectant from water cannons. Here's what lockdown for 57 million people in the Philippines looks like.
Ezra Acayan/Getty The Philippines' main island Luzon, which has a population of more than 57 million, is on lockdown. Along with people's movements being restricted, soldiers are covering residents and the streets in disinfectant, and open coffins have been left on the roads as a warning to people to stay inside. On Sunday, the Philippines reported 343 new coronavirus cases in a day — its highest one day increase yet.
- U.S.The Daily Beast
White House Trots Out Grim Death Models to Drive Home Social Distancing
Americans on Tuesday got their first official glance at the statistical models used in recent weeks by federal officials to guide the country toward an economic shut down, implement social-distancing guidelines, and ask more than 250 million people to stay home. During a press briefing at the White House, Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coordinator for its coronavirus task force, spoke about various predictive models that warned of as many as 1.5 million to 2.2 million people in the United States succumbing to this virus, without mitigation. Birx had previously said that the national death toll could reach between 100,000 to 200,000, even in a world where all of the federal social-distancing guidelines were followed “perfectly.”
- StyleArchitectural Digest
12 Buildings That Show the Beauty of Deconstructed Architecture
From Zaha Hadid's majestic MAXII in Italy to the stunning beauty of Frank Gehry's Vitra Design Museum, these structures elevate the environment they were built in Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest
WorldAFPVenezuela prosecutor's office summoned Guaido for 'attempted coup'
State prosecutors in Venezuela have summoned opposition leader Juan Guaido for an alleged "attempted coup d'etat" and attempted assassination, Attorney General Tarek William Saab announced Tuesday. In a statement broadcast on state television, Saab said Guaido had been summoned to appear before prosecutors next Thursday following an investigation last week into the seizure of a weapons cache in neighboring Colombia that he said was to be smuggled into Venezuela. The subpoena was delivered to his head of security on Monday night, Saab said.
- EntertainmentBusiness Insider
How the coronavirus death toll compares to other pandemics, including SARS, HIV, and the Black Death
The viral illness is extremely contagious, and spreads from person to person easily through close contact. The most severe coronavirus cases (20%) often include difficulty breathing, and may require hospitalization, where patients may be hooked up to ventilators, which help blow more oxygen into a person's lungs. The novel coronavirus has already killed more than 3,000 people in China, 9,000 in Spain, 12,000 in Italy, and it isn't done yet.
- HealthThe Independent
Coronavirus: Number of Louisiana patients on ventilators doubles in five days
Louisiana's patients hospitalised for coronavirus and the number of patients on life-saving ventilators have doubled within the last five days, the state's governor has announced. The state also saw a one-day surge in more than 1,200 confirmed cases of Covid-19, a 30 per cent increase that brings the statewide total to more than 5,200. At least 239 people have died, including 54 newly reported deaths.
- U.S.National Review
Lindsey Graham Calls on IG Horowitz to Testify in Further FISA Hearings after Scathing New Report
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) plans to call DOJ inspector general Michael Horowitz to testify before congress regarding his office's audit of the FBI's FISA application process, which was released Tuesday and revealed potentially systematic abuses of the transparency measures required of the Bureau when agents interact with the FISA court. I have just been briefed on Inspector General Horowitz's audit of FISA applications involving American citizens. This random audit shows discrepancies regarding verification of the information under the Woods Procedures,” Graham said in a press release.
- U.S.Associated Press
Defense lawyer in death of 7 motorcyclists: Biker at fault
One of the motorcyclists in a crash that killed him and six fellow bikers on a north woods highway was drunk and actually was the one who hit a pickup and caused the accident, the lawyer for the truck driver charged with homicide said in a document made public Tuesday. A New Hampshire State Police account of the June 21 crash in the community of Randolph “was deeply flawed," the lawyer for truck driver Volodymyr Zhukovskyy, 24, of West Springfield, Massachusetts, said in a motion filed Friday that seeks a hearing to set him free on bail. State police initially determined that the flatbed trailer he was hauling was 1 1/2 feet over the center line at the time of impact, the motion said.
- WorldReuters
U.S. spies find coronavirus spread in China, North Korea, Russia hard to chart
As U.S. spy agencies seek to assemble a precise picture of the world's coronavirus outbreaks, they are finding serious gaps in their ability to assess the situation in China, Russia and North Korea, according to five U.S. government sources familiar with the intelligence reporting. The agencies also have limited insight into the full impact of the pandemic in Iran, although information on infections and deaths among the ruling class and public is becoming more available on official and social media, two sources said.
- WorldBloomberg
G-20 Pivots as Emergency Aid Focus Turns to Developing World
Economy chiefs from the Group of 20 nations, which accounts for about 90% of global economic output, are switching focus to the need to assist developing nations trying to cope with the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. At a virtual meeting on Tuesday, G-20 finance ministers and central bankers said they'd look to address debt vulnerabilities in developing nations to allow them to focus their efforts on fighting the outbreak, according to a statement. They also committed to working with other organizations to “swiftly deliver the appropriate international financial assistance” to lower-income countries.
- U.S.The Daily Beast
Do I Have to Pay My Rent or Mortgage During the Pandemic?
Alaska: Gov. Mike Dunleavy has forestalled evictions and foreclosures of any tenant or homeowner covered by the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation, while the state Supreme Court has halted eviction hearings until May 1 and barred enforcement of outstanding ejectment orders against quarantined people. Arizona: Gov. Doug Ducey has ordered a 120-day stay on eviction orders against anybody quarantined or experiencing hardship because of COVID-19, starting March 24, and has launched a $5 million rental assistance fund. The state's “Save Our Home AZ Program” is offering principal reduction assistance, monthly mortgage subsidy assistance, and second lien elimination assistance.
- BusinessBBC
Coronavirus: 'I don't want a flight voucher, where's my refund?'
Hundreds of flights have been cancelled as fleets are grounded and the process of reimbursing people is under strain. EasyJet has faced particular anger as rebooking is done online but refunds require calling customer services and getting through is almost impossible. Holly Fitton, writing on Facebook, said: "I have been told to ring you for a refund.
BusinessYahoo News VideoTrump criticizes Cuomo for saying states have to bid on ventilators as if on eBay to fight coronavirus
At the coronavirus task force briefing, President Trump rebuked New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for saying states have to compete and bid against each other like they're on eBay.
- U.S.Business Insider
I followed New York City 'deathcare' workers as they collected the bodies of people killed by the coronavirus, and I saw a growing, chaotic, and risky battle
New York City is the epicenter of the US's coronavirus outbreak. To see how the rising death toll is affecting "deathcare" — services that families use to put the bodies of loved ones to rest — I shadowed Patrick Marmo, a funeral director from Brooklyn. "No one in the New York City area possibly has enough equipment to care for human remains of this magnitude," Marmo said.
