Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, which he once dismissed as a hoax, has been fiercely criticised at home as woefully inadequate to the point of irresponsibility.
Yet also thanks largely to Trump, a parallel disaster is unfolding across the world: the ruination of America’s reputation as a safe, trustworthy, competent international leader and partner.
Call it the Trump double-whammy. Diplomatically speaking, the US is on life support.
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What does protest look like under a stay-at-home order?
This evening, activists are lighting a candle in solidarity with more than 90,000 people typically incarcerated in state prisons and jails in New York state, as coronavirus threatens to turn crowded, unsanitary prisons into death traps.
Advocates have been pleading for weeks that San Francisco move people out of homeless shelters and into hotel rooms, given that the conditions inside these facilities are often unsanitary and crowded, making it easy for a virus to quickly spread.
Now, there has been a major coronavirus outbreak inside a homeless shelter in San Francisco: nearly 70 residents at MSC South have tested positive, which is roughly half of all the people who were tested.
After 70 residents of a San Francisco homeless shelter test positive for Covid-19, advocates say others are trapped in lockdown in shelters with restrictions. "Telling them they cannot leave is not protecting them"-@Leahfsw. "People need to be moved to hotels, not just locked up" pic.twitter.com/YTfxVaMIGg
The World Health Organization has warned that a premature lifting of restrictions on peoples’ movements by countries fighting the coronavirus pandemic could spark a “deadly resurgence”, as global deaths from the virus passed the grim milestone of 100,000.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the WHO, said it was working with countries on ways in which lockdowns could be gradually eased, but said doing so too quickly could be dangerous.
Attorney general asserts that investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia was ‘without basis’, despite evidence
William Barr has said without evidence that he believes the Russia investigation that shadowed Donald Trump for the first two years of his administration was started without any basis and amounted to an effort to “sabotage the presidency”, he said in an interview with Fox News Channel that aired on Thursday.
The attorney general offered no support for his assertion that the FBI lacked a basis for opening the investigation and made no mention of the fact that the bureau began its investigation after a Trump campaign adviser purported to have early knowledge that Russia had dirt on his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.
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Fact check: The majority of states have less than 10% positive cases
Earlier, Dr Deborah Birx, a coordinator on the coronavirus response task force, said that 63% of the states (31 states) had less than 10% of total people tested for Covid-19 be positive. A quick glance at data provided by the Covid Tracking Project, a collaborative, volunteer-run project that collects data from local health departments, shows that about 28 states plus US Samoa meet that threshold.
The World Health Organization warned the US and other countries about the risk of human-to-human transmission of Covid-19 as early as 10 January, and urged precautions even though initial Chinese studies at that point had found no clear evidence of that route of infection.
Technical guidance notes seen by the Guardian and briefings by top WHO officials warned of potential human-to-human transmission and made clear that there was a threat of catching the disease through water droplets and contaminated surfaces, based on the experience of earlier coronavirus outbreaks, such as Sars and Mers.
With coronavirus occupying people’s attention, the Trump administration is giving handouts to big business, appointing judges and rolling back regulations
The last time America was facing a possible economic depression, Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama’s chief of staff, observed: “Never allow a good crisis go to waste. It’s an opportunity to do the things you once thought were impossible.”
It is advice Donald Trump and his Republican allies appear to have taken to heart.
In just three months, the coronavirus has turned the world upside down. But how did it play out so quickly? We take a look back to where it all began – from its origins in south east Asia, to its acceleration across Europe and the US. As the infection rate increased and countries went into lockdown, people began to find imaginative and inspiring ways of coping with our new reality
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The White House is reportedly having discussions about reopening the economy next month, which could cause friction with health experts who have warned against lifting “stay at home” orders too quickly.
Officials said the options being discussed on reopening the country vary widely in scope, from recommendations on benchmarks for when individual states can begin easing restrictions to a nationwide ‘big bang’ that Trump previewed Tuesday evening on Fox News. The officials said the conversations were still preliminary and would likely evolve over the course of the next weeks.
Still, some officials have even begun mulling the type of event Trump may want to mark the day when nationwide restrictions are lifted after he suggested a ‘big celebration’ when the crisis is over. ...
At some point, the president is going to have to look at Drs. Fauci and Birx and say, we're opening on May 1. Give me your best guidance on protocols, but we cannot deny our people their basic freedoms any longer.
Barack Obama called for a “robust system of testing and monitoring” to confront the coronavirus crisis.
Social distancing bends the curve and relieves some pressure on our heroic medical professionals. But in order to shift off current policies, the key will be a robust system of testing and monitoring – something we have yet to put in place nationwide. https://t.co/evkTSrzReB
Donald Trump has criticised the World Health Organization (WHO), and by implication Beijing, saying the global body is “China centric” and “biased” towards the rival superpower.
Executive order says US will oppose any international effort to bar it from removing chunks of moon, Mars or elsewhere in space
The world may be racked by the coronavirus, but Donald Trump has less earthly concerns on his mind, too, after signing an executive order encouraging the US to mine the moon for minerals.
The executive order makes clear that the US doesn’t view space as a “global commons”, opening the way for the mining of the moon without any sort of international treaty.
Stock market crash strips billionaire status from 267 of world’s richest people in the annual list
Donald Trump lost an estimated $1bn of his paper fortune in the past month as the coronavirus lockdown forced the closure of offices, shopping centres, hotels and golf courses he owns.
The US president’s fortune has fallen from an estimated $3.1bn (£2.5bn) on 1 March to $2.1bn on 18 March (at the height of stock market panic caused by the coronavirus pandemic) according to Forbes magazine’s annual billionaires list.
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Joe Biden said he would like Bernie Sanders to be “part of the journey,” although not his running mate, if he wins the Democratic nomination.
Biden has a significant lead in the delegate count, but Sanders remains in the race, despite an increasingly narrow path to the nomination.
President Trump said he had a friendly phone conversation with former Vice President Joe Biden to talk about the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic. Biden told @craigmelvin in a one-on-one interview that he doesn't want the November election delayed. pic.twitter.com/DICLhBafTE
The White House has confirmed Stephanie Grisham is leaving her role as press secretary to rejoin the first lady’s team.
“My replacements will be announced in the coming days and I will stay in the West Wing to help with a smooth transition for as long as needed,” Grisham said in a statement released by the White House.
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Dr Birx shared a personal story about her granddaughter’s current high fever and her inability to visit. Earlier, Trump accidentally referred to her “grandson”.
“I’m sure it’s roseola or something,” Birx says of her 10-month-old granddaughter’s high fever.
She doubts it’s coronavirus because her family is self-isolating.
“No one is allowed into that house or out of that house because there’s too much precious cargo inside,” Birx says https://t.co/zvWlrulgbf
More details from the Guardian’s Sam Levine on the Wisconsin election:
The US supreme court ruled 5-4 that Wisconsin voters have to have their mail-in ballots postmarked by 7 April, election day, in order to have them counted in the state’s closely watched election. The deadline for election officials to receive the ballot is 13 April. The decision, which came shortly after the state supreme court ordered the election to move forward on Tuesday, ends days of legal fighting over the deadline for receiving absentee ballots in the state.
While I do not doubt the good faith of my colleagues, the court’s order, I fear, will result in massive disenfranchisement. A voter cannot deliver for postmarking a ballot she has not received. The question here is whether tens of thousands of Wisconsin citizens can vote safely in the midst of a pandemic.”
A group of 24 senior diplomats and defence officials, including four former Nato secretary generals, have urged Donald Trump to save “potentially hundreds of thousands of lives” across the Middle East by easing medical and humanitarian sanctions on Iran.
Donald Trump fired Michael Atkinson, a pivotal figure in his impeachment last year, on Friday
The ousted US inspector general of the intelligence community has said he is “disappointed and saddened” that Donald Trump fired him, but he also encouraged other inspectors general to continue to speak out when they are aware of wrongdoing.
The US president notified Congress late on Friday evening that he intended to fire Michael Atkinson, a pivotal figure in his impeachment last year, because he had lost confidence in him. On Saturday, Trump made it clear that the move had been retaliatory, telling reporters that Atkinson was a “disgrace” and had done “a terrible job” because he had provided an anonymous whistleblower complaint to Congress – a move that was required by law.
Donald Trump has warned Americans that the toll from coronavirus in the US will be 'the toughest' during the next two weeks, saying there will be 'a lot of death'. According to the Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, by Saturday evening more than 305,000 cases of Covid-19 had been confirmed in the US, resulting in more than 8,000 deaths
Adam Schiff calls Trump ‘vindictive president’ after president fired the inspector general of the US intelligence community
Donald Trump is “decapitating the leadership of the intelligence community in the middle of a national crisis”, senior Democrat Adam Schiff has charged, after the president fired the inspector general of the US intelligence community late on Friday night.
Fox News host Sean Hannity has hit back against intense criticism of the conservative network’s coronavirus coverage, even claiming in a new interview he was ahead of most media in taking Covid-19 seriously.
Sanctions should not stop the delivery of medical equipment and supplies to countries trying to contain outbreaks of coronavirus, the EU’s top diplomat has said.
Josep Borrell, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, made his comments in a declaration on Friday in which he backed the UN’s call for an immediate global ceasefire to allow the world to focus on the pandemic.