Currentaffairsnews (Headlines)

Portugal's government tightened restrictions on movement to stop the spread of the coronavirus during the normally busy Easter holiday period, closing all airports to commercial flights and banning domestic travel from April 9-13. "The virus doesn't travel by itself," Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa told reporters. "This Easter period is a particularly critical time and that's why it is essential to restrict movement in the national territory."

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A photo obtained by Business Insider appears to show company managers sitting close together at a warehouse. Amazon says it's investigating.

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June 2 has now replaced April 28 as one of the biggest days in the Democratic presidential primary.

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The plane will arrive today, after President Donald Trump accepted an offer by Russian President Vladimir Putin to send personal protective equipment and other gear.

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Southwest Airlines wasn't offering refunds or credit for some EarlyBird fees, but the airline announced a temporary change Thursday.

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A lot of countries around the world are grappling with the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. The U.S. has a special challenge, though: Unlike most developed nations, health insurance is mostly tied to jobs. As millions of Americans suddenly lose their employment, several Democratic-leaning states have reopened their Affordable Care Act marketplaces to let people affected by the pandemic sign up for health coverage. Health insurers expected a similar announcement Friday from the Trump administration, which oversees ACA enrollment in about two-thirds of states, Politico reports, but the White House had rejected the proposal.A White House official told Politico Tuesday evening that after considering a reopening HealthCare.gov for a special enrollment period, the administration is instead "exploring other options." Americans who lose their job can opt for COBRA coverage for up to 18 months, an especially expensive option, and lower-income people in the states that expanded Medicaid under the ACA can get coverage under that federal program. The ACA also allows enrollment under certain circumstances outside the normal registration window.But reopening the enrollment window during the COVID-19 outbreak had support from both the health insurance industry and Democrats. President Trump "confirmed last week he was seriously considering a special enrollment period, but he also doubled down on his support of a lawsuit by Republican states that could destroy the entire Affordable Care Act, along with coverage for the 20 million people insured through the law," Politico notes. "It wasn't immediately clear why the Trump administration decided against the special enrollment period."More stories from theweek.com The Trump administration is adding an extra barrier for Social Security recipients to get their stimulus check Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is what real coronavirus leadership looks like China is bracing for a second wave of coronavirus

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When Ronnie Krensel went in for his most recent checkup following chemotherapy on March 21, it wasn’t anything like the ones he’d had before. Upon his arrival at the Southhampton Stony Brook Hospital in Long Island, N.Y., a doctor met Krensel in a hazmat suit in a large tent outside the facility, where he was asked “a series of rapid-fire questions” and then sent to a negative-pressure room, which prevents cross-contamination, for his visit. 

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At the coronavirus task force briefing, President Trump said he didn’t want to issue a nationwide stay-at-home order to fight the pandemic because there are some states that don’t have a large number of positive coronavirus cases.

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Border closures and strict lockdowns have led to a steep decline in the number of migrants coming from Central AmericaWhen Angelica turned 30, she realized there was no future for her in Honduras.Although she had a college degree, she was still living paycheck to paycheck and was stuck in a neighborhood of the capital Tegucigalpa ruled by violent gangs.So, after years contemplating migration to the US where she has relatives, she finally made arrangements to depart.“I didn’t want to stay in a neighborhood where there are massacres or where the people lock themselves in their homes at six at night because the gangs impose a curfew,” she said. “I realized I was more surviving than living.”But by the time she was due to start her journey north, Honduras had closed its borders and declared a state of emergency. She could no longer leave her city – much less take a bus to northern Guatemala, to meet a coyote who would guide her through Mexico.“I had thought that only a hurricane could stop me,” she said. “But I hadn’t thought of a pandemic.”Border closures and strict lockdowns prompted by the Covid-19 crisis have disrupted the migrant trail through Central America and Mexico, forcing some would-be migrants to postpone their journeys – and stopping many others in their tracks.The result has been a deterrent more effective than any wall Donald Trump could build.Activists across the region have reported a steep decline in the number of migrants coming from Central America since the restrictions were implemented. One Mexican shelter near the Guatemalan border said it hadn’t received a new arrival in a week.“The crisis has facilitated Trump’s policies because [Central American] migrants can’t even leave their countries,” said Sister Nyzella Juliana Dondé, coordinator of a Catholic migrant aid organization in Honduras.El Salvador closed its borders on 11 March, and the governments of Guatemala and Honduras quickly followed suit. All three countries in the so-called northern triangle have since announced internal lockdowns of differing strictness.The three nations had recently signed “safe third country agreements” with the US government under which they agreed to increase enforcement on their borders, and receive migrants who had transited their country on the way to the US.Only Guatemala had begun to implement the new measures, but it announced on 17 March that it would suspend the deportations of Hondurans and Salvadorans from the US to its territory.But Guatemala and Honduras continued to receive deportation flights bringing their own citizens from the US – despite concerns that the practice could accelerate the spread of the virus. In the past week, a migrant who was deported from the US to Guatemala was diagnosed with Covid-19 and a group of deportees to Honduras escaped from the shelter where they were to be quarantined. Guatemala has now requested that the US suspend deportation flights.Meanwhile, migrants who were already en route have been left exposed by the closure of shelters and the difficulties facing humanitarian organizations which would normally attend to them.“They are in a vulnerable situation because the guidance is to stay at home – but the migrants don’t have homes,” said Dondé, who mentioned a case of a large group of Haitian and African migrants who were detained after crossing into Guatemala from Honduras amid the lockdown. “Neither Honduras or Guatemala wanted to offer them a place to stay.”Migrants who already had arrived to Mexico have been left in limbo by the US government’s decision to immediately return all migrants from Mexico and Central America who cross into the country irregularly along the south-west border.When restrictions are eventually eased, a fresh surge in migration seems likely: multiple would-be migrants who spoke with the Guardian said it was only a question of when, not if, they would set out for the US.And the economic impact of the crisis may in turn cause others to migrate.. “Before many people migrated because they lacked work and a dignified life,” said Silva de Souza. “Now there will be many more.”Migrants who have come from even farther afield, have no choice but to try to push on. Mohamed left Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, in 2018, following the well-trodden migrant path via Ecuador, Colombia and the jungles of Panama. He was burning through his savings and racking up debt, but making steady progress north.But he reached Guatemala just before the government announced a state of emergency which has made moving on impossible.“Travel has become very difficult,” he said in a brief exchange via Facebook Messenger. But he was still determined to reach the US – even if he now has to move more carefully – traveling at night and avoiding large caravans. “With God’s will, I’ll get there. I will build a life of opportunity.” * Additional reporting by Joe Parkin Daniels

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"In the next few days we will reach 1 million confirmed cases, and 50 thousand deaths,” the World Health Organization's Director-General warned.

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Exclusive: The systematic failures in the Government's pandemic strategy laid bare Exclusive: 10m tests a day needed to end lockdown and avert economic disaster Comedian Eddie Large dies aged 78 after contracting Covid-19 Follow coronavirus cases in the UK and across the world with our Live Tracker Subscribe to The Telegraph, free for one month Telegraph Coronavirus Appeal: Join us in helping those hit hardest Global coronavirus cases surpassed 1 million on Thursday with more than 51,000 deaths as the pandemic further exploded in the United States and the death toll climbed in Spain and Italy. Italy had the most deaths, more than 13,900, followed by Spain. The United States had the most confirmed cases of any country, more than 235,000, said researchers at Johns Hopkins University. In the UK, the number of coronavirus-related fatalities has risen by 569 in the last 24 hours, taking the total toll to 2,921. This is the biggest jump the UK has seen to date - just. On Wednesday 563 new fatalities were reported. Meanwhile, Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, said he was "setting the goal" of reaching 100,000 tests for coronavirus per day by the end of April.

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Iran’s parliament speaker has contracted the new coronavirus, the country's highest-ranking government figure yet to catch the disease, while in Israel, several top officials entered quarantine when the health minister tested positive on Thursday. Iran's parliament announced Ali Larijani’s illness on its website, saying he was receiving treatment in quarantine. Iran, the regional epicenter of the virus, has been fighting one of the world's worst outbreaks.

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While announcing a statewide shelter-in-place order on Wednesday, Georgia governor Brian Kemp, a Republican, said that he had just been informed that asymptomatic individuals could spread the coronavirus.The illness "is now transmitting before people see signs….Those individuals could have been infecting people before they ever felt [symptoms]," Kemp said at a press conference. "We didn’t know that until the last 24 hours."It has been widely known for months that the coronavirus can spread through asymptomatic transmission. However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently updated its guidelines for outbreak mitigation regarding asymptomatic transmission, leading Georgia health officials to change their projections for an outbreak in the state."It’s a combination of recognizing there’s a large number of people out there who are infected and who are infected, who are asymptomatic, who never would have been recognized under our old models, but also seeing the community transmission that we’re seeing," said Dr. Kathleen Toomey, head of Georgia's Department of Public Health.Governor Kemp had initially resisted signing a shelter-in-place order due to the effect it would have on the state's economy. However, in recent days the governors of Florida, Texas, and South Carolina all introduced limitations on residents' mobility to combat coronavirus spread. Georgia has 4,748 confirmed cases, with Florida at 7,773, Texas at 4,607, and South Carolina at 1,293, according to Johns Hopkins University's coronavirus tracker.With the extent of coronavirus spread across the U.S. becoming clearer, Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday said the outbreak in the U.S. was increasingly comparable to that of Italy, one of the worst outbreaks in the western hemisphere.

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The Chinese government told other countries to "double-check" the instructions for using the defective face masks.

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The pandemic has created a surge in demand, with some gun stores inundated with panic-buyers * Coronavirus – latest US updates * Coronavirus – latest global updates * See all our coronavirus coverageAmericans have responded to the coronavirus epidemic with a record-breaking number of gun purchases, according to new government data on the number of background checks conducted in March.More than 3.7m total firearm background checks were conducted through the FBI’s background check system in March, the highest number on record in more than 20 years. An estimated 2.4m of those background checks were conducted for gun sales, according to adjusted statistics from a leading firearms industry trade group. That’s an 80% increase compared with the same month last year, the trade group said.Nearly 1.2m total gun background checks were conducted in a single week, starting 16 March, breaking all previous records going back to 1998, according to FBI data.While the number of background checks doesn’t correlate one-to-one in terms of guns sold, the number of firearm background checks conducted through the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System is the best available proxy for gun sales in the United States. The figures highlight how the pandemic has created a surge in demand for gun ownership, with some gun stores finding themselves inundated with panic-buyers, including, at least anecdotally, many Americans purchasing a gun for the first time.The record-breaking week of 16 March was when California residents were photographed lining up by the dozens outside local gun stores, as the Bay Area and then California as a whole announced the first emergency stay-at-home orders to prevent the spread of coronavirus in the United States.Friday 20 March broke records for the highest number of firearms background checks conducted nationwide in a single day: 210,308.Americans can buy multiple guns from a licensed gun dealer with a single background check, meaning that the number of checks conducted does not reflect the total number of guns sold.In most states, private citizens can also sell guns to each other without a background check, and these private sales are not included in the FBI’s numbers. There is no way to track how many guns were bought and sold in private sales over the past month. Some states also allow residents who have a license to carry a concealed firearm in public to buy guns without a background check, another category of gun sales not included in the FBI’s statistics.Federal firearms background checks are also conducted for reasons other than gun sales, including for validating permits to allow people to carry a concealed firearm in public, and, in California, for ammunition sales.The National Shooting Sports Foundation, the trade group for the American firearms industry, produces regular “adjusted” estimates for gun background checks that subtract out background checks that the FBI tags as related to concealed carry permit applications, or to period checks by officials to make sure permits are still valid. This produces a lower number that is a closer proxy for gun sales.The trade group’s adjusted numbers for March are still “simply eye-popping”, Mark Oliva, a spokesman for the industry group, wrote in an email.The second-highest week of total firearms background checks on record was 17 December 2012, the week after a mass shooting at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, left 20 children dead, and sparked fears that the United States would pass sweeping national gun control measures.More than 950,000 firearms background checks were conducted that week, though US lawmakers ultimately failed to pass any additional gun control legislation after resistance from gun rights activists and many Republican politicians.While the FBI statistics do not include any information on what kind of purchasers are driving the spike in gun sales, some gun sellers have said they are seeing increased numbers of new gun owners.“Retailers have been telling us that the overwhelming majority of those buying firearms over the last month have been first-time gun owners,” Oliva, the spokesman for the firearms industry trade group, wrote in an email.American gun control advocates said they found the statistics on record-breaking numbers of firearms background checks concerning, and urged Americans to think twice before panic-buying a gun, particularly if they had never owned one before.Concerns have also been raised about children sheltering at home in houses where they might have access to guns, as well as the risk of gun suicide, which amount to approximately two-thirds of US gun deaths each year.“We need to prepare for the increased risk of more firearms in untrained hands,” David Chipman, a senior policy adviser at Giffords, a leading gun violence prevention expert, said in a statement. “If you didn’t think you needed a gun prior to March of this year, you certainly don’t need to rush out and get one now.”Activists said that the number of guns sold in the past month could have been even higher, if some cities and states had not told gun retailers to close during stay-at-home orders, deeming them non-essential businesses. However, some of these orders have been changed under pressure from gun rights activists, particularly after the Trump administration included firearms manufacturers, retailers and shooting ranges as part of the national’s “essential critical infrastructure workforce”.

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A Russian military transport plane left an airfield outside Moscow and arrived at New York's John F. Kennedy airport in late afternoon on Wednesday.

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The American Society for Reproductive Medicine has guidelines discouraging couples from beginning fertility treatments during this time.

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Over the past few weeks and months, the number of global COVID-19 cases and deaths has escalated dramatically.

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An earthquake struck north of Boise Tuesday evening, with people across a large area reporting shaking. More than 2 million live in the region that could feel the Idaho quake, according to the USGS, with reports of shaking coming in from as far away as Helena, Montana, and Salt Lake City, Utah. Marcus Smith, an emergency room health unit coordinator at St. Luke's Wood River Medical Center, said the hospital, about 65 miles (104 kilometers) south of the epicenter, shook but the quake didn't interfere with the treatment of any patients.

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Oil prices rocketed Thursday, posting the largeset percent increase ever, after US President Donald Trump said Russia and Saudi Arabia planned to end their price war by slashing output. After Trump tweeted that Saudi and Russia could slash production by up to 15 million barrels, Brent hit $36.29 a barrel, up almost 46 percent, and West Texas Intermediate soared around 35 percent to $27.39.

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Gates wrote an op-ed article for The Washington Post in which he made suggestions based on expert consultations he'd had through work his charity.

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A Russian military transport plane was headed to the United States on Wednesday carrying tons of medical equipment and masks to help Washington fight the coronavirus outbreak, Russian state TV reported and a U.S. official said.

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Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden has quietly expanded his lead over President Donald Trump among registered voters, even as the rapidly spreading coronavirus has all but sidelined the former vice president's campaign, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Tuesday. The poll conducted on Monday and Tuesday of more than 1,100 American adults found that 46% of registered voters said they would support Biden if he were running against Trump in the Nov. 3 election, while 40% said they would vote for Trump.

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(Bloomberg) -- China has concealed the extent of the coronavirus outbreak in its country, under-reporting both total cases and deaths it’s suffered from the disease, the U.S. intelligence community concluded in a classified report to the White House, according to three U.S. officials.The officials asked not to be identified because the report is secret, and they declined to detail its contents. But the thrust, they said, is that China’s public reporting on cases and deaths is intentionally incomplete. Two of the officials said the report concludes that China’s numbers are fake.The report was received by the White House last week, one of the officials said.The outbreak began in China’s Hubei province in late 2019, but the country has publicly reported only about 82,000 cases and 3,300 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. That compares to more than 189,000 cases and more than 4,000 deaths in the U.S., which has the largest publicly reported outbreak in the world.Communications staff at the White House and the Chinese embassy in Washington didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.“The reality is that we could have been better off if China had been more forthcoming,” Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday on CNN. “What appears evident now is that long before the world learned in December that China was dealing with this, and maybe as much as a month earlier than that, that the outbreak was real in China.While China eventually imposed a strict lockdown beyond those of less autocratic nations, there has been considerable skepticism toward China’s reported numbers, both outside and within the country. The Chinese government has repeatedly revised its methodology for counting cases, for weeks excluding people without symptoms entirely, and only on Tuesday added more than 1,500 asymptomatic cases to its total.Stacks of thousands of urns outside funeral homes in Hubei province have driven public doubt in Beijing’s reporting.Republican lawmakers in the U.S. have been particularly harsh about China’s role in the outbreak. Enhancing Beijing’s role in the pandemic could be politically helpful to President Donald Trump, who has sought to shift blame for the U.S. outbreak away from his administration’s delays in achieving widespread testing for the virus and mobilizing greater production of supplies such as face masks and hospital ventilators.“The claim that the United States has more coronavirus deaths than China is false,” Senator Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, said in a statement after Bloomberg News published its report. “Without commenting on any classified information, this much is painfully obvious: The Chinese Communist Party has lied, is lying, and will continue to lie about coronavirus to protect the regime.”Deborah Birx, the State Department immunologist advising the White House on its response to the outbreak, said Tuesday that China’s public reporting influenced assumptions elsewhere in the world about the nature of the virus.“The medical community made -- interpreted the Chinese data as: This was serious, but smaller than anyone expected,” she said at a news conference on Tuesday. “Because I think probably we were missing a significant amount of the data, now that what we see happened to Italy and see what happened to Spain.”China isn’t the only country with suspect public reporting. Western officials have pointed to Iran, Russia, Indonesia and especially North Korea, which has not reported a single case of the disease, as probable under-counts. Others including Saudi Arabia and Egypt may also be playing down their numbers.U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo has publicly urged China and other nations to be transparent about their outbreaks. He has repeatedly accused China of covering up the extent of the problem and being slow to share information, especially in the weeks after the virus first emerged, and blocking offers of help from American experts.“This data set matters,” he said at a news conference in Washington on Tuesday. The development of medical therapies and public-health measures to combat the virus “so that we can save lives depends on the ability to have confidence and information about what has actually transpired,” he said.“I would urge every nation: Do your best to collect the data. Do your best to share that information,” he said. “We’re doing that.”(Updates with Pence’s comment in sixth 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.

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Almost 30 students who recently traveled to Mexico for spring break have tested positive for COVID-19.Health officials in Austin, Texas, on Tuesday announced an investigation into a "cluster" of COVID-19 cases among a group of roughly 70 people in their 20s who traveled in a chartered plane to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico for spring break about a week-and-a-half ago amid the coronavirus crisis. "Currently, 28 young adults on this trip have tested positive for COVID-19 and dozens more are under public health investigation," the Austin Public Health Department said. "Four of the confirmed cases did not present any symptoms."The 28 people who tested positive are currently self-isolating, and more are being monitored while quarantined, according to the statement. The University of Texas at Austin told NBC News that the 28 young adults with COVID-19 are students at the school. Some individuals who went on the trip came back home on commercial flights, according to the Austin Public Health Department's statement. Austin officials said that although Mexico wasn't under a federal travel advisory when the young adults traveled there, "Austin-Travis County residents should follow CDC's travel recommendations indicating travelers avoid all non-essential international travel," and "a leisure vacation of any kind is not considered essential." The University of Texas at Austin told NBC that this serves as a "reminder of the vital importance" of following health officials' warnings amid the coronavirus pandemic. More stories from theweek.com How the coronavirus fight might end up at the Supreme Court Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is what real coronavirus leadership looks like Trump is incapable of taking the coronavirus outbreak seriously

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The Dow Jones and FTSE 100 have fallen more than 20% since the start of the year.

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Springtime stargazers will have plenty to look for throughout April, ranging from a meteor shower to the rare opportunity to see a comet.The wide variety of astronomy events this month will be great for people looking to spend some time outside under the night sky, including families with young children, as they will not require any special equipment apart from a blanket, warm clothes and a clear sky.Here are the top three astronomy events to look for in April:1\. Super Pink Moon When: April 7-8 The moon will be the main feature in the night sky during the first full week of April as it will be the biggest and brightest supermoon of 2020.The supermoon will rise on the night of April 7, glowing all night long, and will be bright enough to cast shadows on the ground. Although it will appear slightly bigger and brighter than normal, the difference will be subtle and may be difficult for the average observer to notice.April's full moon is also known as the Pink Moon, but contrary to its name, the moon will not appear pink. Instead, it has been given this nickname due to the phlox, a perennial plant that blooms in April with pink flowers. A view of the full pink moon, in Lakatamia, a suburb of capital Nicosia, Cyprus, Friday, April 19, 2019. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias) 2\. Lyrid meteor shower When: April 21-22April 22 is known around the world as Earth Day, and the global event will kick off with a light show from Mother Nature as the Lyrid meteor shower reaches its peak.This is the first major meteor shower since January and will bring 15 to 20 shooting stars per hour on the night of April 21 into the early hours of April 22. This year will be a particularly good year for the "Earth Day meteor shower" as it occurs on a moonless night, meaning darker skies for onlookers.CLICK HERE FOR THE FREE ACCUWEATHER APP"These meteors are best seen from the Northern Hemisphere where the radiant is high in the sky at dawn," the American Meteor Society explained on their website. "Activity from this shower can be seen from the Southern Hemisphere, but at a lower rate." Folks that miss the Lyrids will only have to wait about two weeks for the next chance to see a meteor shower, with the Eta Aquarids set to peak during the first full week of May.3\. Comet ATLAS When: Late AprilA newly discovered comet will soon make a splash in the night sky as it grows brighter throughout April, potentially becoming bright enough to see with the naked eye by the end of the month.Comet ATLAS, also known as Comet C/2019 Y4, was discovered on Dec. 28, 2019, by astronomers using the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in Hawaii. It is still too dim to see without a telescope, but it is expected to get much brighter in the coming weeks. Animation of a comet. (NASA/JPL-Caltech) "If predictions are correct, Comet ATLAS might reach a visual magnitude of +5 around May 1, 2020. That is theoretically bright enough to be seen with the eye, but the fuzziness of faint comets can make them harder to spot than comparably bright stars," Earthsky explained on their website."To spot the comet, look in the northern sky. It is not far from the Big and Little Dippers," AccuWeather Astronomy Blogger Dave Samuhel said.Comet ATLAS is projected to make its closest approach to Earth on May 23, followed by its closest approach to the sun on May 31.On March 19 at 11:50 p.m., winter transitioned to spring across the Northern Hemisphere during the earliest March equinox since 1896.Hours later, just before sunrise, early risers were treated to a celestial alignment as the crescent moon fell in line with Jupiter, Mars, Saturn and Mercury in the morning sky.Around the same time, a newly released photo revealed a stunning view of Jupiter like we've never seen it before. The image was captured by the Juno spacecraft which is orbiting the solar system's largest planet.At the beginning of March, NASA announced that it was accepting applications for the astronaut program that would fly on future trips to space. This includes the possibility of being on one of the upcoming trips to the moon in the 2020s.A few days later, the space agency announced the name of the next visitor being sent to the Red Planet. The Mars 2020 rover was officially given the name Perseverance, chosen from a nationwide student competition. Perseverance was once of 28,000 name entries and was proposed by an elementary school student from Virginia.The first mission of the U.S. Space Force launched from Earth on March 26 as an Atlas V rocket blasted into space. The rocket launched a $1.1 billion communications satellite that will be used by the military.Meanwhile, NASA was forced to suspend work on the Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket due to the coronavirus. The rocket is still in development and was preparing for a major test at the Stennis Space Center, but the test has been delayed "due to the rising number of COVID-19 cases in the community around the center," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said.Keep checking back on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier and Verizon Fios.

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President Trump reportedly disengaged from his plan to re-open the United States economy by April 12 in part because he was shaken by a personal connection to the novel COVID-19 coronavirus, Vanity Fair reports.In March, Trump learned that his friend, 78-year-old real estate mogul Stan Chera, was in a coma at a New York hospital after falling ill with COVID-19. "Boy, did that hit home," prominent New York Trump donor Bill White told Vanity Fair. "Stan is like one of his best friends."That wasn't the only reason for the change of heart, however. Trump's re-election campaign was also concerned by their polling numbers in red states, which reportedly "sucked." A former White House official said the campaign "panicked" after realizing they couldn't win states "getting blown to pieces" by the virus. The president himself reportedly said the campaign "doesn't matter anymore" because "what I do now will determine if I get re-elected." Read more at Vanity Fair.More stories from theweek.com Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is what real coronavirus leadership looks like China is bracing for a second wave of coronavirus Netanyahu reportedly mistook a Hallmark series clip for proof of an Iranian coronavirus coverup

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As hospitals and morgues fill with the bodies of coronavirus patients, mortuary professionals face a growing struggle in putting the dead to rest.

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In the streets of Beirut's southern suburbs, Hezbollah paramedics and volunteers on trucks and on foot sprayed disinfectants on shops and buildings. Hezbollah says it is turning the organizational might it once deployed to fight Israel or in the civil war in neighboring Syria to battle the spread of the virus pandemic in Lebanon. It wants to send a clear message to its supporters in Lebanon's Shiite community that it is a force to rely on in a crisis.

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The New York Times reported this week that almost a dozen Liberty University students have come down with COVID-19 symptoms since the school reopened last week. But Liberty University officials have since pushed back on these claims, calling the Times story “fake news”. Now, students are choosing sides in who they believe is telling the truth.

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Authorities order residents of Jia county to stay home after reports of cases linked to the area’s hospital.

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A Chinese county that was largely unscathed by the novel COVID-19 coronavirus went into lockdown Wednesday, signaling fears of a possible second wave in the country where the virus originated, The South China Morning Post reports.The county of Jia in Henan province, home to 600,000 people, is now in lockdown after infections reportedly spread at a local hospital. There were previously only 12 confirmed cases in Henan, despite it being situated just north of Hubei province, where China's epicenter, Wuhan, is located. However, U.S. intelligence reportedly believes China under-reported the actual number of cases.Either way, the new lockdown, which shuts down all non-essential business and requires people to carry special permits to leave their homes, and wear face masks and have their temperature taken when out and about, comes at a time when the country clearly wants to get its economy up and running again. It's unclear if such measures will be limited to the county or if it's a sign of things to come for the rest of the world's most populous country, but President Xi Jinping has warned that China must return to normal gradually in the hopes of preventing a full-scale COVID-19 return. Read more at The South China Morning Post.More stories from theweek.com Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is what real coronavirus leadership looks like How the coronavirus fight might end up at the Supreme Court Trump is incapable of taking the coronavirus outbreak seriously

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Florida announced a stay-at-home order, and officials weighed recommending more Americans wear masks. Here are the latest coronavirus updates.

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The decision to pare down California's $200-million stockpile of emergency equipment to save $5 million annually needs to be investigated.

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Tony Spell, an evangelical pastor at the Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was charged with six misdemeanor charges on Tuesday.

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Almost all the benefits of tossing out the SALT cap would go towards richer households — and not average Americans weathering the coronavirus fallout.

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The U.S. government raced to build hundreds of makeshift hospitals to ease the strain on overwhelmed healthcare systems as the United States marked 700 deaths in a single day from COVID-19 for the first time on Tuesday. Nearly half those deaths were in New York state, still the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio pleaded for reinforcements from the Trump administration, saying the worst may still be weeks away. De Blasio, a Democrat, said he had asked the White House for an additional 1,000 nurses, 300 respiratory therapists and 150 doctors by April 5 but had yet to receive an answer from the Trump administration.

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There has been some skepticism about China's reporting on the novel COVID-19 coronavirus for some time, especially as smaller countries like Italy surged past the world's most populous nation in both overall cases and deaths. On Wednesday, U.S. intelligence officials told Bloomberg on condition of anonymity that the skepticism is valid.Per Bloomberg, the U.S. intelligence community reportedly concluded in a classified document that China, where the pandemic originated, has under-reported its totals. The officials didn't reveal any of the reports contents, but said the gist of it is China intentionally left death and cases reports incomplete — two officials reportedly said the numbers out of China are fake.Officially, China has tallied more than 82,000 cases and 3,300 deaths, whereas the U.S. already has more than 189,000 cases and 4,000 deaths. Beijing somewhat acknowledged their stats were skewed after they changed their methodology to include some asymptomatic cases, but it's unclear how many more asymptomatic infections were discounted overall. Thousands of urns outside funeral homes have reportedly led people to doubt the Chinese government's death total, as well. Read more at Bloomberg.More stories from theweek.com Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is what real coronavirus leadership looks like China is bracing for a second wave of coronavirus How the coronavirus fight might end up at the Supreme Court

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"This is going to be a very bad two, and maybe three weeks. This is going to be three weeks like we’ve never seen before,” President Donald Trump said at a news briefing.

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"Despite everything I experienced along the way, they deported me the next day," one indigenous teenager from Guatemala told CBS News.

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Despite the lockdown, on Sunday the Philippines reported a daily increase of 343 new coronavirus cases — its highest one day increase yet.

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Evidence suggests the coronavirus can enter the body through the eyes, so some eye doctors say glasses are safer.

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Wuhan residents are increasingly skeptical of the Chinese Communist Party’s reported coronavirus death count of approximately 2,500 deaths in the city to date, with most people believing the actual number is at least 40,000."Maybe the authorities are gradually releasing the real figures, intentionally or unintentionally, so that people will gradually come to accept the reality," a Wuhan resident, who gave only his surname Mao, told Radio Free Asia.A city source added that, based on the aggregation of funeral and cremation numbers, authorities likely know the real number and are keeping it under wraps."Every funeral home reports data on cremations directly to the authorities twice daily," the source said. "This means that each funeral home only knows how many cremations it has conducted, but not the situation at the other funeral homes."The city began lifting its lockdown on Saturday after two months of mandatory shutdown, with a complete lift of restrictions set for April 8. Funeral homes in Wuhan have been handing out the cremated remains to families every day, but rumors began circulating after one funeral home received two shipments of 5,000 urns over the course of two days, according to photos reported by Chinese media outlet Caixin, which were later censored.Reports of the funeral’s crematoriums working nonstop also raised questions."It can't be right … because the incinerators have been working round the clock, so how can so few people have died?" a man surnamed Zhang told RFA.Wuhan residents said the government was paying families 3,000 yuan for "funeral allowances" in exchange for silence."There have been a lot of funerals in the past few days, and the authorities are handing out 3,000 yuan in hush money to families who get their loved ones' remains laid to rest ahead of Qing Ming," Wuhan resident Chen Yaohui said, in a reference to the traditional grave tending festival on April 5.“During the epidemic, they transferred cremation workers from around China to Wuhan keep cremate bodies around the clock," he added.China has used state propaganda in an attempt to avoid blame for the spreading of COVID-19, despite reports showing how the government suppressed initial reports of human-to-human transmission and gagged Wuhan labs that discovered the novel virus resembled the deadly SARS virus of 2002-2003.

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What does it mean when you hear New York is the coronavirus "epicenter" in the United States? Do doctors say they need ventilators or respirator?

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The president said corruption is a much bigger threat to Mexico than a 92-year-old woman "who deserves my respect."

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The death toll from an outbreak of coronavirus in Italy climbed by 812 to 11,591, the Civil Protection Agency said on Monday, reversing two days of declines in the daily rate. Italy has registered more deaths than anywhere else in the world and accounts for more than a third of all global fatalities from the virus. Italy's largest daily toll from the five-week-old epidemic was registered on Friday, when 919 people died.

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(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. military is set to put almost half of its 8,500 South Korean civilian workers on furlough, as the two sides bicker over the Trump administration’s demands for a massive increase in troop funding.About 4,000 workers have been told not to report to American military bases in South Korea as of Wednesday, if the two countries can’t find some way to extend a cost-sharing deal that expired Dec. 31. A breakthrough seems unlikely with President Donald Trump asking for as much as a five-fold increase and South Korea showing no signs of paying anywhere near that much.The furloughs, which the Hankyoreh newspaper said would be the first of their kind, will put new pressure on an alliance that Trump has repeatedly criticized since taking office three years ago. The move comes as the U.S. military struggles to keep coronavirus outbreaks from disrupting operations in South Korea and elsewhere and the allies watch for fresh provocations from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.The two sides have been deadlocked over what’s known as the Special Measures Agreement, with Trump initially demanding about $5 billion a year from South Korea to pay for U.S. security. South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s administration has indicated that it wouldn’t pay much more than the almost $1 billion it agreed to in a one-year stopgap deal in 2019.South Korea’s lead negotiator, Jeong Eun-bo, said in a statement Tuesday that the two sides were in the “final steps” of negotiations and expressed regret that the U.S. government went ahead with the furlough.“If the Trump administration persists in holding to this level of unreasonable demands it will seriously damage the reliability and credibility of our security alliance,” said Daniel Sneider, a lecturer in international policy at Stanford University who has written about how Japanese and Koreans view their shared history. “It feeds a strain of Korean nationalism that would want to effectively end the alliance and perhaps bring Korea, de facto, under the security umbrella of China.”In the short term, the furloughs of workers, who provide services ranging from security to manning food stations, could mean further disruptions to daily life on bases that serve some 28,000 U.S. service personnel in South Korea. In the longer term, the dispute could accelerate a realignment of an alliance that the U.S. relies on to check China, as well as North Korea.Trump has repeatedly insisted that the U.S. gets a raw deal from partners who host American troops around the world, and he’s focused particular ire on the South Korean agreement. Last month, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper told his counterpart, Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo, that “as a global economic powerhouse and an equal partner in the preservation of peace on the peninsula, South Korea can and should contribute more to its defense.”South Korea’s National Assembly must sign off on any deal and Trump’s demands have brought about a rare moment of unity from progressives and conservatives in the country who see them as unreasonable. With parliamentary elections set for April 15, siding with Washington could lead to defeat at the ballot box.Missiles Fly“We are currently trying our best to ensure our joint defense posture goes unhindered as well to protect our Korean workers,” South Korean Defense Ministry spokeswoman Choi Hyun-soo said. The USFK Korean Employees Union, which represents the workers, said in a statement last week that negotiations “cannot end with the way the U.S. government and President Trump wants.”Negotiators from the U.S. and South Korea met earlier this month in Los Angeles but a wide gap remains between the two sides, according to a State Department spokesman who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations. The official said that South Korea will need to show more focus and flexibility to reach a deal, without specifying what the U.S. is asking or what South Korea is offering.While the U.S. and South Korea have been bargaining, North Korea has been busy testing new types of solid-fuel, nuclear-capable ballistic missiles designed to strike anywhere on the peninsula and evade U.S. interceptors. It has fired off at least nine in March alone, a record for a month.Kim warned on Dec. 31 that bigger provocations could soon come, saying he was no longer bound by a previous promise to halt testing of nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles. On Monday, a top diplomat was quoted in a state media report issuing a new threat, saying Secretary of State Michael Pompeo’s pressure campaign against Pyongyang will result in North Korea looking “to repay the U.S. with actual horror and unrest for the sufferings it has inflicted upon our people.”North Korea Fires Missiles Off Its East Coast; 4th Volley This Month The negotiations in South Korea could affect other U.S. allies hosting troops, such as Japan, with Esper saying the Trump administration wants them to pay more, too. Japanese officials are watching the South Korea negotiations closely with the approach of talks set to begin later this year for a U.S-Japan cost-sharing deal.Daniel Pinkston, a lecturer in international relations at Troy University in Seoul and a former Korean linguist with the U.S. Air Force, said the difficulty in reaching a troop-funding deal “sends the wrong signal to allies, competitors, and challengers who must be questioning U.S. commitments and resolve.”“It increases the likelihood of miscalculation, arms-racing, WMD proliferation, and even armed conflict,” Pinkston said.(Updates with South Korean statement in fifth 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.

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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.

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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.

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