Questions remain about Trump's experimental Covid-19 treatment

Dr. Irwin Redlener, MSNBC Public Health Analayst and an expert on pandemic influenza, reacts to the unanswered questions about the president's Covid-19 treatment regimen.

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  • Giuliani tells Pennsylvania legislators they can override popular vote to appoint pro-Trump electors

    President Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and his campaign counsel Jenna Ellis on Wednesday floated the idea to Pennsylvania Republicans that the state legislature could decide on its own to give the state's 20 Electoral College votes to Trump, despite the state’s certifying that Joe Biden won the Nov. 3 election in the state.

  • Americans 'won't stand' for election results not being honored: Biden

    US President-elect Joe Biden said Wednesday that Americans "won't stand" for the results of the November 3 election not being honored.

  • Exclusive: Venezuela resumes direct oil shipments to China despite U.S. sanctions

    Chinese state companies China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) and PetroChina - long among PDVSA's top customers - stopped loading crude and fuel at Venezuelan ports in August 2019 after Washington extended its sanctions on PDVSA to include any companies trading with the Venezuelan state firm. PDVSA's customers instead boosted shipments to Malaysia, where transfers of cargoes between vessels at sea have allowed most of Venezuela's crude to continue flowing to China after changing hands and using trade intermediaries.

  • Operator of notorious South Korean online sex trafficking ring sentenced to 40 years

    A South Korean court has sentenced the operator of a vast online sex trafficking ring to 40 years in prison in a case that outraged the nation. Cho Ju-bin, 25, oversaw a group of 38 accomplices who befriended and then blackmailed at least 74 women into sharing explicit videos that were then posted in pay-per-view internet chat rooms. Sixteen of the victims were less than 16 years old, the age of consent in South Korea. The Seoul Central District Court on Thursday found Cho guilty of violating laws to protect minors from sexual abuse and of making a profit from producing and selling abusive footage, Yonhap News reported. Indicted on 14 criminal charges, including inducing another person involved in the trafficking ring to rape a teenage girl and concealing more than £70,000 in criminal proceeds, prosecutors had initially demanded a life sentence on the grounds of the “irreperable damage” Cho had caused his victims. They had also requested that he be obliged to wear an electronic monitoring device for 45 years. In a petition to the court, one of the women said Cho, who had worked in an orphanage and adopted the online name “The Doctor”, was “evil” and deserved a 2,000-year prison term. Passing sentence, the judge said: “The accused has widely distributed sexually abusive content that he created by luring and threatening many victims.” Media reports have suggested that some of the video clips showed a group of men raping a teenage girl in a motel room, while others included images of the word “slave” cut into a woman’s body. One video showed girls “barking like dogs”, the Kookmin Ilbo newspaper reported. Cho operated the chat room on the Telegram messenger service, with at least 10,000 people accessing the site and paying as much as £1,000 for access. Authorities have been tracing people who used the site and have identified serving police officers and teachers as among the users. Cho’s arrest in March sparked fury across South Korea after prosecutors initially refused to name the suspect before his trial opened. Within days, more than 5 million people had signed petitions on the home page of Moon Jae-in, the South Korean president, demanding that the authorities withdraw his right to anonymity. A committee of senior judicial officials, a psychologist and a psychiatrist weighed the public’s right to know and took the unprecedented step of naming Cho. He was then brought out in handcuffs from a police station in central Seoul to face the public. “I apologise to those that I hurt”, Cho said. “Thank you for putting a brake on the life of a devil who could not be stopped.” South Korea’s Ministry of Justice has been the target of criticism for its failure to deal with the growing use of technology to carry out sex crimes, with one ministry official admitting that the case had been “a disaster” and apologising for its “lukewarm response” to online sexual abuse cases.

  • The Top 6 Black Friday Deals for Vacuums

    Cordless? Handheld? Robotic? We have you covered with all the best vacuum deals that you need to know aboutOriginally Appeared on Architectural Digest

  • Journalist who criticized FBI for handling of Russia probe says Trump's refusal to concede is 'dangerous BS'

    Journalist Eli Lake, an aggressive critic of the government’s handling of the investigation into Trump and Russia, said that while there was a “scandal” in how the FBI conducted parts of its investigation, there was not a “deep state conspiracy.”

  • Florida governor Ron DeSantis accused of ‘killing spree’ after extending ban on cities from imposing own mask mandates

    Miami-Dade mayor Daniella Levine Cava calls decision ‘deeply frustrating’

  • Democratic Senate hopeful Jon Ossoff of Georgia holds drive-through event to ‘inspire people out to the polls’

    Jon Ossoff, one of the two Democrats running for the U.S. Senate in Georgia, is looking to build off President-elect Joe Biden’s narrow victory in the state. By holding various socially distanced events all over Georgia to connect with voters, Ossoff hopes the more engagement he has with residents will translate to  historic voter turnout in the Jan. 5 runoff.

  • S. Korea agency says N. Korea executed people, shut capital

    North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ordered at least two people executed, banned fishing at sea and locked down the capital, Pyongyang, as part of frantic efforts to guard against the coronavirus and its economic damage, South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers Friday. Kim's government also ordered diplomats overseas to refrain from any acts that could provoke the United States because it is worried about President-elect Joe Biden’s expected new approach toward North Korea, lawmakers told reporters after attending a private briefing by the National Intelligence Service. One of the lawmakers, Ha Tae-keung, quoted the NIS as saying Kim is displaying “excessive anger” and taking “irrational measures” over the pandemic and its economic impact.

  • Donald Trump Jr. says he is 'all done with the Rona' and ends his COVID-19 isolation to celebrate Thanksgiving days after announcing his positive test

    Donald Trump Jr. tested positive for COVID-19 last week. Although he is asymptomatic, the CDC recommends sick people like him isolate for 10 days.

  • Ghislaine Maxwell woken up every 15 minutes in jail while she sleeps says lawyer

    A lawyer for Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite charged with finding girls in the 1990s for financier Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse, said Tuesday that her client is awakened every 15 minutes in jail while she sleeps to ensure she's breathing. Attorney Bobbi Sternheim told a Manhattan judge that Maxwell faces more restrictive conditions than inmates convicted of terrorism or murder. Maxwell has no history of mental health issues or suicidal ideation and no criminal history, either, she said. She asked a judge to intervene on her client's behalf to improve her conditions at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. In her request, Ms Sternheim made no direct reference to Epstein taking his life in August 2019 in his cell at another federal lockup, in Manhattan. US District Judge Alison J. Nathan instructed defense lawyers and prosecutors to confer over the next week over Ms Sternheim's request that the Brooklyn facility's warden directly address the concerns. A spokesperson for prosecutors declined comment. A message for comment was sent to the Federal Bureau of Prisons spokespeople. Maxwell, 58, has pleaded not guilty to charges that she procured three girls for Epstein to abuse in the mid-1990s. She has been held without bail while she prepares for a July trial.

  • Biden Promises Bill Providing Pathway to Citizenship for 11 Million Illegal Immigrants in First 100 Days

    Joe Biden vowed on Tuesday to send a bill to the Senate that would set up a path to citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants.The president-elect's team has already indicated that Biden will attempt to overturn much of President Trump's immigration agenda, including reinstating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and rescinding the Remain in Mexico policy."I will send an immigration bill to the United States Senate with a pathway to citizenship for over 11 million undocumented people in America," Biden told NBC's Lester Holt.Such a bill would likely be dead on arrival if Republicans hold on to their Senate majority. Georgia senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are both facing runoffs on January 5, and if one of them wins, Republicans will hold 51 seats in the chamber. However, if Democratic challengers Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff both win the runoffs, the Senate will be tied 50-50, allowing vice president-elect Kamala Harris to serve as the tie-breaker.Biden also plans to implement a 100-day freeze on deportations before reinstating Obama-era guidance that limits deportations to criminal offenders.Once Biden takes office, his administration will likely be preoccupied with vaccine distribution and economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. While the Biden administration will eventually attempt to overhaul Trump's immigration agenda, the process will still take time.The Trump administration had an extraordinary preoccupation with immigration issues and they invested an enormous amount of attention and single-minded focus on immigration,” Doris Messiner, a former immigration official, told CBS earlier this month.. “An administration that wants to undo those changes would have to devote a similar amount of time and effort — and arguably more, because you don’t want to just be undoing things."

  • Zoom nightmare come true: New Jersey school board member resigns after streaming bathroom break during meeting

    Stop taking Zoom into the bathroom. A New Jersey school board member accidentally broadcast her bathroom break during a board meeting and resigned.

  • Russia should look again at terms of ISS participation - space industry official

    Russia should consider revising the terms of its participation in the International Space Station, a Russian space industry executive said on Thursday, because it wants to focus on forming its own orbiting outpost after 2024. The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, has said it will remain part of the ISS until 2024 and that it is open to extending its participation beyond then. "We have to reconsider the terms of further participation in the (ISS) programme and focus on the implementation of orbital station programmes," Vladimir Solovyov, deputy head of Rocket and Space Corporation Energia, was quoted as saying by the Scientific Russia internet portal.

  • Tigray crisis: How the Ethiopian army and TPLF clashed over an airport

    With communications largely cut to the Tigray region, both sides in the conflict are trying to control the narrative.

  • Police: Brazil man admits raping Japanese woman before death

    The Brazilian man who previously confessed to killing Hitomi Akamatsu in Brazil's Goiás state has admitted that he also raped the Japanese woman, according to a statement from local police. Police identified the 18-year-old killer as Rafael Lima da Costa, who claimed during his first interrogation that he used Akamatsu's blouse to strangle her, and hadn't said that he raped her. Akamatsu moved to the city of Abadiania to seek treatment for her skin cancer after she survived a nuclear accident in Japan.

  • Donald Trump commits to leaving White House if Joe Biden wins Electoral College vote

    Donald Trump admitted it was a "very hard thing to concede" electoral defeat but committed to leaving the White House if the Electoral College votes for Joe Biden, the Democrat president-elect as he attended a Thanksgiving event on Thursday. "It's going to be a very hard thing to concede because we know there was massive fraud," Mr Trump said, refusing to say whether he would attend Mr Biden's inauguration in January. In the nearest he has come to a concession, Mr Trump said he would leave the White House if Mr Biden is certified the election winner by the Electoral College - the process by which presidents are elected - on December 14. However, Mr Trump appeared to suggest he still held hopes of retaining the presidency. Asked about his plans for his last Thanksgiving in the White House, the president told reporters that the occasion might be the “first one of a second term”. The president added there were "a lot of things happening between now and January 20th [inauguration day]" and the election results have a "long way" to go. "I know one thing Joe Biden did not get 80 million votes," he said. "The only way he got 80 million votes is through massive fraud." During his annual Thanksgiving call with US troops overseas, Mr Trump also claimed the US will begin delivering Covid-19 vaccines "next week and the week after" as he insisted the country had "rounded the curve" on the pandemic. "We are rounding the curve [on the virus]. The vaccines are being delivered - literally it will start next week and the week after," he said during his address. Mr Trump suggested that medical workers, other frontline staff and elderly people would be the first to receive the vaccinations. It is unclear which vaccine Mr Trump was referencing, or whether he was referring to a specific federal government policy for a vaccine distribution. Two US companies, Moderna and Pfizer, have so far announced that their vaccines are effective at protecting people against coronavirus. Earlier this week US government officials said the administration planned to distribute around 6.4 million doses of Pfizer's vaccine to Americans as soon as the jab received emergency approval from the federal government, expected to be around mid-December. Officials say that by the end of the year they expect to have enough doses of vaccines from both Pfizer and Moderna to vaccinate around 20 million people. However, it is likely to be April before the vaccines are distributed to the wider American public. In his address on Thursday, Mr Trump praised the speed with which a vaccination had been created, saying "two companies already announced [successful vaccines]" adding that several others were "coming up soon". "Some people have called it a medical miracle," the president said adding that the hunt for a vaccination "could have taken four or five years".

  • North Korea defectors: Loose screws at border blamed for gymnast crossing

    A former gymnast is thought to have jumped across the border fence undetected to flee to the South.

  • Pakistan's first transgender lawyer goes from begging to fighting in court

    As Pakistan's first transgender lawyer, she has carved a path from the streets to the courtroom and her example is inspiring other transgender people in the conservative Islamic Republic. "I am proud to have become Pakistan first transgender lawyer", Rao told Reuters. Life is hard for transgender persons in Pakistan, where the Supreme Court only allowed them to claim a third gender on their national identity cards in 2009.

  • Obama Claims Evangelical Latinos Disregarded Trump’s Racism Because of Views on ‘Abortion,’ ‘Gay Marriage’

    Former President Obama claimed on Wednesday that evangelical Latino voters chose President Trump over Joe Biden because Trump backs their views on abortion and gay marriage.While Trump lost the 2020 election, he gained support among Latino voters according to exit polls and voting data in counties with large Hispanic populations. For example, in 93-percent Hispanic Zapata County in Texas, Trump won by six percentage points while Hillary Clinton carried the county in 2016 by 33 percentage points."People were surprised about a lot of Hispanic folks who voted for Trump," Obama commented on the podcast The Breakfast Club. "But there are a lot of evangelical Hispanics."Obama continued, "The fact that Trump says racist things about Mexicans or…puts undocumented workers in cages—they think that's less important than [that] he supports their views on gay marriage or abortion." (The "cages" Obama refers to were in fact built during his administration, as chain-link enclosures meant to temporarily house illegal immigrants at border facilities.)Giancarlo Sopo, the Trump campaign's director of rapid response for Spanish media, disputed Obama's claim."Our Hispanic advertising and communications largely focused on economic issues, public safety, Latin America, and socialism," Sopo wrote in an email to National Review. "We never ran a single ad that even mentioned gay marriage, and while our surrogates did address abortion in media appearances, our only advertising on the topic was limited to a modest radio buy in New Mexico. "According to Sopo, who was involved in the production of Spanish-language campaign advertisements, the campaign emphasized different topics for outreach to various Latino groups."In states like Texas and Arizona, where Latinos are predominantly Mexican-American, the President's strong border policies and measures to combat poverty were very popular," Sopo said. "Meanwhile, law and order was a top priority for voters in areas with large Puerto Rican communities, such as Orlando and Philadelphia."Meanwhile, Cuban and Venezuelan Americans have widely cited the "socialist" leanings of some progressive Democrats to explain their support for Trump.Trump supported abortion rights before the 2016 campaign, but pivoted towards the pro-life movement and has courted the backing of pro-life organizations. The Trump campaign did not speak about marriage rights at all during the election.Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.), criticized Obama's comments as "condescending."> Ah yes, those Hispanic evangelicals. So backwards. Clinging to their guns and religion, you might say. Barack Obama still the most condescending corporate liberal in America https://t.co/IqUdbx5FB7> > -- Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) November 25, 2020"Ah yes, those Hispanic evangelicals. So backwards. Clinging to their guns and religion, you might say," Hawley wrote on Twitter. "Barack Obama still the most condescending corporate liberal in America."