U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said a fundamental reform of the World Health Organization was needed following its handling of the coronavirus pandemic and that the United States, the WHO’s biggest donor, may never restore funding to the U.N. body.
As Pompeo launched fresh attacks on the U.N. body on Wednesday, Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives accused the Trump administration of trying to “scapegoat” the WHO to distract from its handling of the coronavirus outbreak.
In a letter to President Donald Trump, they called for the immediate restoration of U.S. funding, which Trump suspended last week accusing the WHO of being “China-centric” and of promoting China’s “disinformation” about the outbreak.
Pompeo told Fox News late on Wednesday there needed to be “a structural fix of the WHO” to correct its “shortcomings.”
Asked if he was not ruling out a change in leadership of the WHO, Pompeo replied: “Even more than that, it may be the case that the United States can never return to underwriting, having U.S. taxpayer dollars go to the WHO.”
The WHO has denied the Trump administration’s charges and China insists it has been transparent and open.
The United States has been the biggest overall donor to the WHO, contributing over $400 million in 2019, roughly 15% of its budget. Senior U.S. officials last week told Reuters Washington could redirect these funds to other aid groups.
Earlier on Wednesday, Pompeo said the United States “strongly believed” Beijing had failed to report the outbreak in a timely manner, in breach of World Health Organization rules, and that WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom did not use his ability “to go public” when a member state failed to follow those rules.
Pompeo said the WHO had an obligation to ensure safety standards were observed in virology labs in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the outbreak began, and its director-general had “enormous authority with respect to nations that do not comply.”
The acting head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) said on Wednesday the United States would assess if the WHO was being run properly and look for alternative partners outside the body.
The possibility of the U.S. ceasing its funding definitively to the global body is contingent upon Trump succeeding in his bid for re-election in the November presidential vote, against the presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
The U.S. Congress controls federal spending, and could pass legislation to guarantee funding for the WHO. However, to become law it would need to garner enough support, including from Trump’s Republicans, not just to pass but to override a likely veto.
According to a Reuters tally, the coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 180,000 people worldwide, including nearly 48,000 in the United States, making it the worst-hit country by official statistics.
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Month: April 2020
The Rolling Stones gave their fans some satisfaction on Thursday by releasing a new track “Living in a Ghost Town,” part-recorded during the coronavirus lockdown. The song, powered by a Keith Richards’ riff and a chanted refrain, comes with a video showing deserted streets and subway stations in London, Los Angeles, Kyoto and other cities. “So the Stones were in the studio recording some new material before the lockdown and there was one song we thought would resonate through the times that we’re living in right now,” Mick Jagger said in a statement. “We’ve worked on it in isolation. And here it is … I hope you like it.” The band said it started recording the track in Los Angeles in 2019. Then, as pandemic restrictions started rolling out across the world, they adjusted some of the lyrics and added other finishing touches to the mix. In the video, Jagger is seen singing one tweaked line in a plush, wood-paneled room: “Life was so beautiful then we all got locked down. Feel like a ghost, living in a ghost town.” Keith Richards said the track had been meant for a new album, “then shit hit the fan … Mick and I decided this one really needed to go to work right now.” The release comes less than a week after the band’s four members performed “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” from their living rooms via a video conference call — part of the global “One World: Together At Home” broadcast brought together by pop icon Lady Gaga. A string of stars have been heading online to keep their fans entertained during the lockdown. Bob Dylan has released two tracks in the past month — his first new original material in eight years — including one near 17-minute reflection on the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy titled “Murder Most Foul.” “Living in a Ghost Town” is released on streaming and download services only.
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Google said Thursday it would expand its program of verification of advertisers on its platform as part of an effort to weed out fraud and “bad actors.” The internet giant and global leader in digital advertising said it would start by verifying advertisers in phases in the United States and expand the program globally. The move builds on Google’s efforts launched in 2018 to verify political advertisers with a requirement to indicate where they are located. Google’s action comes amid growing concerns over ads promoting fraud or fake treatment for coronavirus, among other things. “As part of this initiative, advertisers will be required to complete a verification program in order to buy ads on our network,” Google’s ads integrity chief John Canfield said in a blog post. “Advertisers will need to submit personal identification, business incorporation documents or other information that proves who they are and the country in which they operate.” With the change, which will take “a few years” to complete, according to Canfield, users will be able to click on a link to get information about specific advertisers. “This change will make it easier for people to understand who the advertiser is behind the ads they see from Google and help them make more informed decisions when using our advertising controls,” he said. “It will also help support the health of the digital advertising ecosystem by detecting bad actors and limiting their attempts to misrepresent themselves.”
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The United Kingdom’s economy is crumbling under the strain of the coronavirus lockdown and government borrowing is soaring to the highest levels in peacetime history, increasing pressure on the government to set out an exit strategy.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, recuperating at his country residence after being seriously ill with COVID-19, is facing criticism from opposition politicians and some epidemiologists for reacting too slowly to the novel coronavirus outbreak.
Ministers are already struggling to explain high death rates, limited testing and shortages of protective kit, and the grim reality of the damage to the world’s fifth largest economy hit home on Thursday.
The past century, or possibly several centuries,” Bank of England interest-rate setter Jan Vlieghe said, the recovery, he said, was unlikely to be swift.
“The risks are that it will take longer and that it will look a little bit more like a U than a V,” Vlieghe said.
The IHS Markit/CIPS Flash UK Composite Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) fell to a new record low of 12.9 from 36.0 in March – not even close to the weakest forecast in a Reuters poll of economists that had pointed to a reading of 31.4.
The United Kingdom will issue 180 billion pounds ($222 billion) of government debt between May and July, more than it had previously planned for the entire financial year.
The country’s debt mountain exceeds $2.5 trillion and its public sector net borrowing could reach 14% of gross domestic product this year, the biggest single year deficit since World War Two.
The government’s as yet unpublished strategy for unwinding from the lockdown is also under scrutiny. Deutsche Bank said the country’s limited testing capacity is a problem.
“The UK is lagging behind almost any medium to large economy globally when it comes to coronavirus tests,” Deutsche Bank’s Oliver Harvey said in a note to clients.
“This will materially impact the government’s ability to pursue a ‘test and trace’ approach when it comes to easing the lockdown.”
Health Secretary Matt Hancock has promised to get 100,000 people per day tested by the end of April, though just 22,814 tests were carried out on April 21 – the latest day for which data is publicly available.
A total of 411,192 people have so far been tested and 559,935 tests have been carried out in total in the United Kingdom.
Lockdown undone?
Restrictions on everyday life are likely to be needed for the “next calendar year” due to the time needed to develop and roll out vaccines or find a cure, the government’s chief medical adviser, Chris Whitty, said on Wednesday.
Britain is in the fifth week of a lockdown that only allows people to leave home for essential work, food shopping, exercise and limited other reasons.
The lack of testing is not good enough, Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis said, although he added the authorities had done well to raise it to current levels.
“I think it’s dreadful we can’t get more people tested,” Lewis told ITV. “We are determined to deal with this.”
Deutsche Bank said that given the British population was supportive of the lockdown and very concerned by the outbreak, the government might find it hard to simply ease it with a Scandinavian herd-immunity style plan.
“The UK will be one of the laggards when it comes to either a lifting of the existing lockdown, or public buy-in when restrictions are eased,” Deutsche Bank’s Harvey said.
However, the BoE’s Vlieghe painted an more optimistic picture, saying Britain should recover the growth pattern it had before the coronavirus crisis once the pandemic passed.
“The economy’s potential is severely disrupted at the moment but, once the pandemic is over, and other things equal, in principle it should return approximately to the pre-virus trajectory,” he said.
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Zoom Video Communications Inc. said Wednesday it was upgrading the encryption features on its video conferencing app to quell safety concerns as its users surged by 50 percent in the past three weeks.Zoom now has over 300 million daily users after adding 100 million in the last 22 days, the company said, even as it faces a barrage of criticism from cyber security experts and users alike over bugs in its codes and the lack of end-to-end encryption of its chat sessions.The use of Zoom has soared with corporate offices, political parties, school districts, organizations and millions across the world working from home after lockdowns were enforced to slow the spread of the coronavirus.The app’s issues, including “Zoombombing” incidents where uninvited guests crash meetings, led to several companies, schools and governments to stop using the platform.In response, the company said it would be rolling out a new version of the app, Zoom 5.0 within the week.The company, which competes with Microsoft Teams and Cisco’s Webex has also launched a 90-day plan to improve the app and appointed former Facebook security chief Alex Stamos as an adviser.Zoom said it had made several changes to its user interface, including offering password protection and giving more controls to meeting hosts to check unruly participants.To account for criticism that the company had routed some data through Chinese servers, Zoom said an account admin can now choose data center regions for their meetings.Zoom shares closed up nearly 5 percent at $150.25 on Wednesday.
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Far-right computer hackers have published nearly 25,000 email addresses allegedly belonging to several major organizations fighting the coronavirus pandemic, including the World Health Organization, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the World Bank.The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist activities, has yet to confirm the addresses are genuine but said that the hackers posted the email addresses across far-right messaging and chat sites, as well as Twitter, this week.“Using the data, far-right extremists were calling for a harassment campaign while sharing conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic,” SITE Executive Director Rita Katz said. “The distribution of these alleged email credentials was just another part of a monthslong initiative across the far right to weaponize the COVID-19 pandemic.”It is unclear where the hackers got the email addresses. Other victims of the hacks include the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the Gates Foundation; and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a research center in the Chinese city where the COVID-19 outbreak began in December.While those affected by the security breach did not comment on the specifics of the case, NIH and the Gates Foundation both said they consistently monitor data security and take appropriate action.A Twitter spokeswoman said the company is taking action to remove in bulk any links that send users to far-right websites where the alleged email addresses can be found.An Australian cybersecurity expert, Robert Potter, told The Washington Post that the WHO’s password security is appalling and that he was able to get into its computer system simply by using email addresses the WHO posted on the internet.“Forty-eight people have ‘password’ as their password,” Potter said, adding that others used their own first name or the word “changeme.”He said the right-wingers may have been able to buy the WHO passwords on what is called the dark web, a part of the internet that is not seen by search engines.Megan Squire, a computer science professor at Elon College in North Carolina who monitors right-wing extremism online, said neo-Nazis and white supremacists are looking to exploit the coronavirus pandemic to stir up violence, chaos and anti-Semitism, hoping it will all lead to a collapse of society and a white power takeover.“The fantasizing about it is not limited. They are really doing that to a great extent — openly fantasizing about how this is the event they’ve been waiting for, this is going to bring about the societal collapse they all hope for … bringing down infrastructure and so on. That’s all fantasy/hopefulness on their part.”Squire said the password hack may be part of an effort to get people to read the WHO or Gates Foundation emails to look for what the extremists believe are conspiracies surrounding the pandemic, including far-right theories that the coronavirus was created and deliberately released from the Chinese or that COVID-19 is part of a Jewish plot.Masood Farivar contributed to this report.
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Swedish activist Greta Thunberg joined calls for a combined effort to tackle coronavirus and the climate crisis, saying the 50th anniversary of Earth Day on Wednesday was the time to choose a “new way forward.”
Dramatic improvements in air and water quality as coronavirus lockdowns have cut pollution have prompted calls for a low-carbon future, but the need to get millions back to work is clouding the picture for the future.
Thunberg, taking part in a streamed event to mark Earth Day, said the extraordinary measures to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus did not mean the climate crisis had gone away. Climate activist Greta Thunberg, center, talks with other climate activists youth at the COP25 climate talks summit in Madrid, Dec. 6, 2019.”We need to tackle two crises at once,” she said. “Whether we like it or not the world has changed, it looks completely different from how it did a few months ago and it will probably not look the same again and we are going to have to choose a new way forward,” the teenager said. With economies round the world shut down, wildlife has returned to some city streets, with wolves, deer and kangaroos spotted on thoroughfares usually teeming with traffic. Fish have been seen in Venice canals no longer polluted by motor boats, while residents of some Indian cities have reported seeing the Himalayas for the first time in decades. Satellite imagery has shown significant air quality improvements across Europe and Asia, including China, where the coronavirus pandemic emerged at the end of last year. Residents in some of China’s most smog-prone cities said they feared blue skies would not last as the world’s second biggest economy got back to work, however. “In the second half of the year, when the epidemic eases, the weather will slowly be worse after factories reopen,” said Tang Zhiwei, 27, a resident of Shanghai. “Try your best to enjoy the blue sky now.”Shanghai saw emissions fall by nearly 20% in the first quarter of 2020, which also saw China’s economy contract for the first time on record. Together U.N. chief Antonio Guterres echoed Thunberg, urging governments to use their economic responses to the pandemic to tackle the “even deeper emergency” of climate change. With battle lines emerging between investors backing “green stimulus” measures and industry lobbyists aiming to weaken climate regulations, Guterres cautioned governments against bailing out heavily polluting industries.”On this Earth Day, all eyes are on the COVID-19 pandemic,” Guterres said. “But there is another, even deeper emergency, the planet’s unfolding environmental crisis.” U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, who on Wednesday was endorsed by two of his party’s most prominent climate change campaigners, including former vice president Al Gore, said green jobs “can be the very thing that helps us get through this existential threat to our economy.” In November, Biden will run against President Donald Trump, who wants to re-open the U.S. economy to get the 22 million Americans who filed for unemployment benefits in the past month back to work. Trump has touted a strong economy as one of the biggest reasons why he should be re-elected. Peter Betts, a former lead climate negotiator for Britain and the European Union, said although there was now pressure for coronavirus economic stimulus packages to be “low-carbon, climate-smart,” the effort faced strong headwinds. “A risk, clearly, is that for some governments around the world there will be a huge premium on getting the economy moving, getting people back into jobs,” Betts, now with the Chatham House think-tank in London, told Reuters Television.FILE – Environmentalists read an oath for ‘climate action’ during an event to mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, in Seoul, South Korea, April 22, 2020.Hottest on recordThe environmental stakes have been rising. Last year was the hottest on record in Europe, extending a run of exceptionally warm years driven by unprecedented levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, according to a study released on Earth Day. Of Europe’s 12 warmest years on record, 11 have occurred since 2000, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said. “This warming trend is now unequivocal anywhere on the planet. And as a consequence of that, the frequency of these record-breaking events is going up,” C3S director Carlo Buontempo told Reuters.The coronavirus pandemic is expected to drive carbon dioxide emissions down 6% this year, the head of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said, in what would be the biggest yearly drop since World War Two.But that’s not enough to stop climate change, the WMO said. “COVID-19 may result in a temporary reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, but it is not a substitute for sustained climate action,” the WMO said in an Earth Day statement.In a general audience at the Vatican streamed over the internet, Pope Francis prayed for the protection of the planet.”This is an occasion for renewing our commitment to love and care for our common home and for the weaker members of our human family,” Francis said, and urged children to “take to the streets to teach us the obvious: we have no future if we destroy the very environment that sustains us.”
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Shirley Knight, the Kansas-born actress who was nominated for two Oscars early in her career and went on to play an astonishing variety of roles in movies, TV and the stage, has died. She was 83. Knight passed away Wednesday at her daughter’s home in San Marcos, Texas, according to her daughter Kaitlin Hopkins. Knight’s career carried her from Kansas to Hollywood and then to the New York theater and London and back to Hollywood. She was nominated for two Tonys, winning one. In recent years, she had a recurring role as Phyllis Van de Kamp (the mother-in-law of Marcia Cross’ character) in the long-running ABC show “Desperate Housewives,” gaining one of her many Emmy nominations. Knight’s her first Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress came in just her second screen role, as an Oklahoman in love with a Jewish man in the 1960 film version of William Inges’ play “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs.” FILE – Actresses Jane Fonda, center, Cloris Leachman, left, and Shirley Knight pose as they arrive at a film festival in Rome, Oct. 22, 2007.She was nominated for best supporting actress two years later for her role as the woman seduced and abandoned by Paul Newman in the 1962 film “Sweet Bird of Youth,” based on the Tennessee Williams play. As success beckoned in 1960, she told columnist Hedda Hopper that she was struggling to keep on an even keel and keep bettering herself as an actress. “So many actors, once they became famous, lose some beautiful inner thing, something they should try hard to keep,” she said. “They begin to think too highly of themselves and success.” For a time, she lived in New York, where she studied with Lee Strasberg. She turned down an offer to play Ophelia to Richard Burton’s Hamlet, preferring to appear on Broadway in 1964 with Geraldine Page and Kim Stanley in Anton Chekhov’s “The Three Sisters,” a play directed by Strasberg. Her beauty helped bring her roles in such films as “The Group” (1966), based on Mary McCarthy’s novel about the lives of a group of college girls, and “Dutchman” (1967), from Amiri Baraka’s explosive one-act play about a middle-class black man and a sexually provocative white woman. After playing a pregnant woman who runs off with a football player in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Rain People,” released in 1969, she wearied of the Hollywood routine, terming the studio bosses “blockheads.” FILE – Tony winners, from left, Edward Herrmann, Carole Bishop, Shirley Knight and Sammy Williams, pose with their awards at the 30th Annual Tony Awards presentations at New York’s Shubert Theatre, April 18, 1976.Knight moved to England with her second husband, British playwright John Hopkins, with whom she had a daughter, Sophie. (Her first husband was producer Gene Persson, father of her older daughter, Kaitlin). Over the next few years, she raised her daughters and did needlework. But “I decided that acting is what I do best,” she said. The family moved back to the U.S. and she returned to films in “Beyond the Poseidon Adventure.” She also appeared in such films as “Endless Love” (as Brooke Shields’ mother), “As Good as It Gets” (as Helen Hunt’s mother) and “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.” Tony, Emmy awardsMeanwhile, she thrived on stage and television. She won a Tony award in 1976 as best featured actress in a play for “Kennedy’s Children.” Knight played, in the words of The New York Times review, “a very tart tart with an ambition of gold.” She was nominated for another Tony in 1997 for best actress in Horton Foote’s “The Young Man From Atlanta.” As the Times put it, “the splendid Ms. Knight, who doesn’t waste a single fluttery gesture, brings an Ibsenesque weight to a woman frozen in the role of petulant, spoiled child bride.” Knight became active in television starting in the ’80s and was nominated for Emmys eight times from 1981 to 2006. She won a guest actress Emmy in 1988 for playing Mel Harris’ mother in “Thirtysomething,” and then won two Emmys in the same year, 1995: one for a supporting actress role in the TV drama “Indictment: The McMartin Trial,” and a second for a guest actress role as a murder victim in “NYPD Blue.”Early days She was born Shirley Enola Knight on July 5, 1936, in the Kansas countryside, 10 miles from the town of Lyons. Her family was musical and she learned to sing, tap dance and play instruments. She was the first in her family to enter college, winning a scholarship to a church college in Enid, Oklahoma, then moved to Wichita State University. She appeared in 32 plays in two years and did two seasons of summer stock. She aimed to become an opera singer, then switched to acting when she saw Julie Harris in a touring company of “The Lark.” She traveled west to study acting at the Pasadena Playhouse. Warner Bros. signed her to a contract.
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Police in the Netherlands have released security camera video showing a thief who stole a prized Vincent van Gogh painting from a Dutch museum late last month.The video of the March 30 theft shows how the perpetrator used a sledgehammer to smash his way through reinforced glass doors at the Singer Laren Museum in Laren, Netherlands, east of Amsterdam.Police hope that publicizing the images will help them track down the thief who stole “The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring 1884” while the museum was shut down due to coronavirus containment measures.Police have made no arrests in connection with the theft of the painting, which was on loan from the Groninger Museum when it was stolen, and it remains missing.The 25-by-57-centimeter oil-on-paper painting shows a person standing in a garden surrounded by trees with a church tower in the background.It dates to a time when Van Gogh had moved back to his family in a rural area of the Netherlands and painted the life he saw there, including his famous work “The Potato Eaters”, in mostly somber tones.The exact value of the missing painting is uncertain, but recent Van Gogh paintings have gone for tens of millions of dollars when sold at auction.
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The World Meteorological Organization is warning that if the planet keeps warming at its current pace, the average global temperature could increase by 1.5 degrees C in the next 10 years. This rise would worsen extreme weather events, and many of the dangerous effects of climate change might become irreversible, it said. WMO reported Wednesday that the national lockdowns of transportation, industry and energy production because of the coronavirus pandemic have resulted in a 6 percent drop of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. However, WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said this good news would be short-lived. He said the startup of industry might even trigger a boost in emissions. He said the pandemic also was making it more difficult to monitor and manage weather and other hazards.“This current COVID crisis has led to the decrease in some measurements,” he said. For example, “airline companies have been carrying out measurements. Since we have very few flights nowadays, we have less measurements from the aircraft, which is having a negative impact on the quality of the forecasts.”While the world is in the throes of tackling two big issues at the same time, Taalas said, the magnitude of problems associated with climate change is much greater than that of COVID. He said health and economic problems resulting from the pandemic were devastating but noted they would last only a few years.“If we are unable to mitigate climate change, we will see persistent health problems, especially hunger and the ability to feed the growing population of the world, and there will be also more massive impact on economies,” he said.Taalas said the world needs to show the same determination and unity against climate change as against COVID-19. He said people everywhere need to act together in the interests of the health and welfare of humanity, for the sake of this and future generations.
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France’s parliament votes next week on plans to use a controversial tracing app to help fight the coronavirus, as the country eyes easing its lockdown next month.French Digital Affairs Minister Cedric O says the downloadable app would notify smartphone users when they cross people with COVID-19, helping authorities track and reduce the spread of the pandemic.In a video on the ruling party’s Facebook page, O said the so-called “Stop COVID” app will fully respect people’s liberties, and will be completely voluntary and anonymous. It also will be temporary — lasting only as long as the pandemic, he added.A man rides his bike in an empty street during a nationwide confinement to counter the COVID-19 in Paris, April 21, 2020.The government wants to launch the app on May 11, the date it has set to begin easing a two-month lockdown in the country. It initially announced a parliamentary debate on the technology, but that’s been changed to a vote, after major pushback from lawmakers.The app’s critics include ruling party member Guillaume Chiche, who told French TV the app would reveal people’s health status and lead to discrimination and exclusion.He’s not the only one worried.”We think that it is very dangerous for the government to say to French people that the solution will be this kind of application,” said Benoit Piedallu, a member of La Quadrature du Net, an advocacy group defending digital rights and freedoms.The potential problems he sees range from chances the app could infringe on individual liberties, to whether it would actually work effectively.”We think that the digital application is not the correct answer to this problem,” Piedallu said. “The government should buy masks, the government should open new hospitals. … There are a lot of other solutions than an application.”A recent poll showed eight in 10 French respondents said they would be willing to download the app. But Piedallu believes the numbers of those actually using it will likely be much smaller, and many seniors —who are among the most vulnerable to the coronavirus — don’t have smartphones.France isn’t the only European country working on tracing apps and sparking similar rights debates, including in neighboring Germany. Reports say the French government is also pushing Apple to allow the app to work on its iPhones without built-in privacy measures.
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As people across the globe stay home to stop the spread of the new coronavirus, the air has cleaned up, albeit temporarily. Smog stopped choking New Delhi, one of the most polluted cities in the world, and India’s getting views of sights not visible in decades. Nitrogen dioxide pollution in the northeastern United States is down 30%. Rome air pollution levels from mid-March to mid-April were down 49% from a year ago. Stars seem more visible at night.
People are also noticing animals in places and at times they don’t usually. Coyotes have meandered along downtown Chicago’s Michigan Avenue and near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. A puma roamed the streets of Santiago, Chile. Goats took over a town in Wales. In India, already daring wildlife has become bolder with hungry monkeys entering homes and opening refrigerators to look for food.
When people stay home, Earth becomes cleaner and wilder.
“It is giving us this quite extraordinary insight into just how much of a mess we humans are making of our beautiful planet,” says conservation scientist Stuart Pimm of Duke University. “This is giving us an opportunity to magically see how much better it can be.”
Chris Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, assembled scientists to assess the ecological changes happening with so much of humanity housebound. Scientists, stuck at home like the rest of us, say they are eager to explore unexpected changes in weeds, insects, weather patterns, noise and light pollution. Italy’s government is working on an ocean expedition to explore sea changes from the lack of people.
“In many ways we kind of whacked the Earth system with a sledgehammer and now we see what Earth’s response is,” Field says.
Researchers are tracking dramatic drops in traditional air pollutants, such as nitrogen dioxide, smog and tiny particles. These types of pollution kill up to 7 million people a year worldwide, according to Health Effects Institute president Dan Greenbaum.
The air from Boston to Washington is its cleanest since a NASA satellite started measuring nitrogen dioxide,in 2005, says NASA atmospheric scientist Barry Lefer. Largely caused by burning of fossil fuels, this pollution is short-lived, so the air gets cleaner quickly.
Compared to the previous five years, March air pollution is down 46% in Paris, 35% in Bengaluru, India, 38% in Sydney, 29% in Los Angeles, 26% in Rio de Janeiro and 9% in Durban, South Africa, NASA measurements show.
“We’re getting a glimpse of what might happen if we start switching to non-polluting cars,” Lefer says.
Cleaner air has been most noticeable in India and China. On April 3, residents of Jalandhar, a city in north India’s Punjab, woke up to a view not seen for decades: snow-capped Himalayan peaks more than 100 miles away.
Cleaner air means stronger lungs for asthmatics, especially children, says Dr. Mary Prunicki, director of air pollution and health research at the Stanford University School of Medicine. And she notes early studies also link coronavirus severity to people with bad lungs and those in more polluted areas, though it’s too early to tell which factor is stronger.
The greenhouse gases that trap heat and cause climate change stay in the atmosphere for 100 years or more, so the pandemic shutdown is unlikely to affect global warming, says Breakthrough Institute climate scientist Zeke Hausfather. Carbon dioxide levels are still rising, but not as fast as last year.
Aerosol pollution, which doesn’t stay airborne long, is also dropping. But aerosols cool the planet so NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt is investigating whether their falling levels may be warming local temperatures for now.
Stanford’s Field says he’s most intrigued by increased urban sightings of coyotes, pumas and other wildlife that are becoming video social media staples. Boar-like javelinas congregated outside of a Arizona shopping center. Even New York City birds seem hungrier and bolder.
In Adelaide, Australia, police shared a video of a kangaroo hopping around a mostly empty downtown, and a pack of jackals occupied an urban park in Tel Aviv, Israel.
We’re not being invaded. The wildlife has always been there, but many animals are shy, Duke’s Pimm says. They come out when humans stay home.
For sea turtles across the globe, humans have made it difficult to nest on sandy beaches. The turtles need to be undisturbed and emerging hatchlings get confused by beachfront lights, says David Godfrey, executive director of the Sea Turtle Conservancy.
But with lights and people away, this year’s sea turtle nesting so far seems much better from India to Costa Rica to Florida, Godfrey says.
“There’s some silver lining for wildlife in what otherwise is a fairly catastrophic time for humans,” he says.
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Many who shelter at home during the coronavirus pandemic feel isolated and distressed, especially those with mental health issues. According to a spokesman for the Disaster Distress Helpline, the federally funded hotline has seen 891% more calls this spring than last. Psychologists recommend a variety of coping mechanisms, such as exercising, drawing or gardening, for those who feel cooped up, fearful about the future and about the well-being of loved ones. VOA’s Penelope Poulou follows one such person, who finds solace in baking.
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China will pay close attention to clusters of coronavirus infections, especially in hospitals, according to a top level meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang on Wednesday.
China’s northeastern city of Harbin has had several clusters of infections in local hospitals.
The government also called for efforts to increase coronavirus testing capability and produce more effective testing equipment, according to a statement on the state council’s website. (Reporting by Colin Qian and Nori Shirouzu; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
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Laboratory and drug development services provider LabCorp said on Wednesday it would expand the availability of its antibody tests for the new coronavirus to more hospitals and healthcare organizations starting next week. The tests, earlier made available mainly to healthcare workers in late March, aim to identify individuals exposed to the virus but without any visible symptoms by detecting the presence of antibodies to the virus in blood samples. LabCorp said it offers separate tests to identify three major classes of antibodies for the virus. Physicians would be able to direct asymptomatic patients to the company’s approximately 2,000 patient service centers for specimen collection for the antibody test, SARS-CoV-2 IgG, starting April 27, the company said.While the tests are neither the sole basis for a diagnosis nor assurance of immunity, they could play a role in helping healthcare providers determine appropriate treatment for individuals suspected of having been infected with the virus, LabCorp’s Chief Medical Officer Brian Caveney said.LabCorp said it expects to be able to perform several hundred thousand tests per week by mid-May, as more tests receive regulatory clearance for emergency use. The antibody tests are in addition to LabCorp’s existing molecular test for COVID-19 that is already available nationwide through healthcare providers, the company said. These antibody tests have not yet been reviewed by the FDA, but are in accordance with the public health emergency guidelines issued by the health regulator, the company said. The company on Tuesday received the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s clearance for at-home sample collection for its COVID-19 diagnostic kit, allowing patients to send in their nasal swab samples to the company’s labs for diagnosis.
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All it took was a few sturdy swings with a sledgehammer and a prized painting by Vincent van Gogh was gone.A Dutch crime-busting television show has aired security camera footage showing how an art thief smashed his way through reinforced glass doors at a museum in the early hours of March 30. He later hurried out through the museum gift shop with a Vincent van Gogh painting tucked under his right arm and the sledgehammer in his left hand.Police hope that publicizing the images will help them track down the thief who stole Van Gogh’s “The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring 1884″ from the Singer Laren Museum while it was shut down due to coronavirus containment measures.Nobody has been arrested in the theft and the painting, which was on loan from another Dutch museum when it was stolen, is still missing.Police withheld other footage from inside the museum in Laren, a town east of Amsterdam, to protect their investigation. They also did not air video from outside the museum of the thief leaving.More than 40 new tips streamed in from the public as a result of the show, police spokesman Joost Lanshage said Wednesday, adding that it’s not clear if the thief acted alone. Police are also seeking information about a white van shown on footage driving past the museum. The 25-by-57-centimeter (10-by-22-inch) oil-on-paper painting shows a person standing in a garden surrounded by trees with a church tower in the background.”It looks like they very deliberately targeted this one Van Gogh painting,” another police spokeswoman, Maren Wonder, told the Opsporing Verzocht show in the Tuesday night broadcast. The artwork dates to a time when the artist had moved back to his family in a rural area of the Netherlands and painted the life he saw there, including his famous work “The Potato Eaters,” in mostly somber tones.Wonder said investigators want to hear from any potential witnesses who saw the thief arrive outside the museum on a motorcycle. She also wants museum visitors to share with police any photos or video they took in the museum in the days before it closed down, to see if anyone was casing the museum before the theft.”People can help if they now realize that another visitor was behaving suspiciously,” she said. “It would be very helpful if visitors to the museum have photos or video recordings with other people in them.”
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Several countries around the world, including Germany and South Korea, and a number of U.S. states are easing their coronavirus lockdown restrictions this week. But experts caution that a number of conditions need to be in place before people leave their homes and head back out to churches, shops, restaurants and beaches.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
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Leading U.S. doctors’ organizations are urging the Trump administration to collect data to show who is dying from COVID-19. Data collected so far shows that the coronavirus is killing African-Americans at an alarmingly higher rate than it’s killing white people. More from VOA’s Carol Pearson.
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The United Nations’ food chief warned Tuesday that while the world fights the coronavirus pandemic, it is also on the brink of a hunger pandemic.”Millions of civilians living in conflict-scarred nations, including many women and children, face being pushed to the brink of starvation, with the specter of famine a very real and dangerous possibility,” World Food Program Executive Director David Beasley told a remote meeting of the U.N. Security Council.Beasley said 821 million people worldwide are chronically hungry, and 135 million face crisis levels of hunger. With the added stress of COVID-19, an additional 130 million people could be pushed to the brink of starvation by the end of 2020.”In a worst-case scenario, we could be looking at famine in about three dozen countries,” he warned.FILE – A homeless young man, who is thought to be suffering from malnutrition, is helped to the clinic in a quarantined area at a refuge for newly arrived street children outside Dakar, April 10, 2020.In a report released Tuesday by the Global Network Against Food Crises, a coalition of U.N., governmental and non-governmental agencies, it attributed the hunger increase to economic shocks, conflicts, drought and other weather-related events.Declines in economic activity and trade restrictions “are likely to diminish national budgets, reduce household incomes and may lead to rises in food prices,” the network said.The report warned that “critical food value chains” could be disrupted, particularly in “under-resourced and vulnerable nations” such as South Sudan, Yemen and Afghanistan.Over half of the 135 million people covered in the report live in Africa, 43 million reside in Asia and the Middle East, and more than 18 million live in Latin America and the Caribbean.”There are no famines yet,” the WFP chief said. “But I must warn you that if we don’t prepare and act now to secure access, avoid funding shortfalls and disruptions to trade, we could be facing multiple famines of biblical proportions within a short, few months.”Members of the French Action Against Hunger NGO distribute hygiene and sanitation products to Palestinian residents of al-Ramadin village amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, southwest of the West Bank town of Hebron, April 13, 2020.The Global Network report also said many “high-income nations” may “find it increasingly difficult” to help address the global food crisis “when the social and economic situations in their own countries are also greatly affected.”The WFP’s Beasley echoed this concern, worrying that when donor countries’ revenues are down, it could negatively impact lifesaving foreign aid.The coronavirus outbreak first hit some of the world’s largest economies. After originating in China, Italy and Spain were particularly hard hit. The U.S. now leads the world in the number of people who have contracted COVID-19 and those who have died from the disease.
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SARS-CoV2 should be a good candidate for a vaccine. The question is which vaccine will be the best solution?
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Pollution and greenhouse gas emissions have decreased across the globe, as countries strive to contain the spread of the coronavirus by ordering people to stay at home.Among the many unknown facts about this new virus is what kind of long-term impact it will have on the environment.Since the outbreak in December 2019 and the subsequent pandemic, businesses have shuttered, airlines have slashed services, and more and more people are working from home or not working at all, cutting traffic to a minimum.The global shutdown has inadvertently become an experiment in the reduction of greenhouse gases.NASA recently released satellite data of the northeastern U.S., revealing a 30% drop in air pollution over densely populated metropolitan areas. Nitrogen dioxide from transportation fossil fuels and electricity generation shows that March 2020 has the lowest emission levels on record since 2005.In Wuhan, China, the manufacturing hub where the outbreak began, NASA reported that pollution levels have lowered between 10% and 30% since eastern and central China’s lockdown in late January.Northern Italy, another industrial and high-traffic region, has seen nitrogen dioxide levels drop about 40% since early March when its quarantine began.”It just shows you where the air pollution comes from,” Dr. John Balmes, a medical professor and national spokesperson for the American Lung Association, told VOA. It “comes from motor vehicles and industrial sources that, with the economy basically shut down, we have a lot less emission from those sources.”Some environmentalists see this as an opportunity to make significant strides in preventing serious outcomes from climate change. Others say that while the global shelter-in-place orders have resulted in a widely reported climate benefit of cleaner air, the fallout from the global health crisis hasn’t been positive for the environment across the board.Increase in plastic wastePlastic waste has become an issue, as some cities across the globe have halted recycling programs, while officials worry about the risk of spreading the virus in recycling centers.In Europe, waste disposal options have been reduced. In Italy, infected residents have been banned from sorting waste.Adding to the increase in plastic waste is the high demand for essential products such as bottled water, face masks, medical gloves, sanitary wipes and hand sanitizer.FILE – A woman wearing a face mask and a plastic bag pulls a cart loaded with bags of recyclables through the streets of Lower Manhattan during the outbreak of the novel coronavirus In New York City, April 16, 2020.Though many companies over the past few years have made strides in reducing the demand for single-use plastic products, some companies have since reverted to these products to help reduce contamination, even though environmental experts warn that single-use plastics can carry viruses and bacteria.New York has postponed its ban on single plastic bags. Starbucks temporarily blocked customers from getting refills in their own reusable cups, according to Waste360, a U.S.-based waste industry association. Instead, refills are served in paper cups.With so many consumers social distancing at home, there has been a surge in household waste, as people shop online and order deliverable meals that require a lot of packaging.Medical waste from hospitals is also on the rise. During a recent press conference hosted by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, it was reported that hospitals in Wuhan, China, are producing more than 200 tons of waste a day compared to the pre-pandemic amount of fewer than 50 tons a day.Long-term impactExperts say it is difficult to predict how long the pandemic will last and what its overall environmental and economic impact will be.Balmes, of the American Lung Association, said the uncertainty was worrisome.FILE – Framed by saguaro cactus, the downtown Phoenix skyline is easier to see, as fewer motorists in Arizona are driving, following the state stay-at-home order due to the coronavirus, April 7, 2020.”What I’m concerned about is that there may be public support for cleaner transportation and cleaner power generation, but the economy is going to need a ramp up,” he said. “And I’m concerned that there’s going to be sort of a big surge in emissions as the economy ramps up. But we should be able to do both — ramp up the economy and be careful about increasing emissions.”Balmes is not the only expert worried about the possible high post-pandemic fossil fuel emissions.Mathis Wackermagel, founder of the Global Footprint Network, warned about the potential spike in emissions. Even after quarantine and other emergency precautions are lifted, fossil fuels will remain relatively cheap, causing a global rush to obtain this resource in order to restabilize countries’ economies, Wackermagel recently said in an interview on KCRW-FM in Los Angeles, California.In a recent blog, Global Footprint Network CEO Laurel Hanscom wrote: “Sustainability, we have often said, will be achieved eventually — either by disaster or by design. As streets are emptied and planes are grounded, air pollution has gone down, and the global carbon footprint has decreased. This is not what we had in mind.”Balmes agrees that the way forward is in making better decisions.”I hope that as a society, we get the big picture that we should be getting more serious about climate change,” he said.
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The CCTV footage from a Dutch business park shows a man in a black cap pouring the contents of a white container at the base of a cellular radio tower. Flames burst out as the man jogs back to his Toyota to flee into the evening.
It’s a scene that’s been repeated dozens of times in recent weeks in Europe, where conspiracy theories linking new 5G mobile networks and the coronavirus pandemic are fueling arson attacks on cell towers.
Popular beliefs and conspiracy theories that wireless communications pose a threat have long been around, but the global spread of the virus at the same time that countries were rolling out fifth generation wireless technology has seen some of those false narratives amplified.
Officials in Europe and the U.S. are watching the situation closely and pushing back, concerned that attacks will undermine vital telecommunications links at a time they’re most needed to deal with the pandemic.
“I’m absolutely outraged, absolutely disgusted, that people would be taking action against the very infrastructure that we need to respond to this health emergency,” Stephen Powis, medical director of the National Health Service in England, said in early April.
Some 50 fires targeting cell towers and other equipment have been reported in Britain this month, leading to three arrests. Telecom engineers have been abused on the job 80 times, according to trade group Mobile UK, making the U.K. the nucleus of the attacks. Photos and videos documenting the attacks are often overlaid with false commentary about COVID-19. Some 16 have been torched in the Netherlands, with attacks also reported in Ireland, Cyprus, and Belgium.
Posts threatening to attack phone masts were receiving likes on Facebook. One post in an anti-vaccine group on April 12 shared a photo of a burned phone mast with the quote, “Nobody wants cancer & covid19. Stop trying to make it happen or every pole and mobile store will end up like this one.”
The trend received extra attention in Britain when a tower supplying voice and data traffic to a Birmingham field hospital treating coronavirus patients was among those targeted.
“It’s heart-rending enough that families cannot be there at the bedside of loved ones who are critically ill,” Nick Jeffery, CEO of wireless carrier Vodafone UK, said on LinkedIn. “It’s even more upsetting that even the small solace of a phone or video call may now be denied them because of the selfish actions of a few deluded conspiracy theorists.”
False narratives around 5G and the coronavirus have been shared hundreds of thousands of times on social media. They vary widely from claims that the coronavirus is a coverup for 5G deployment to those that say new 5G installations have created the virus.
“To be concerned that 5G is somehow driving the COVID-19 epidemic is just wrong,” Dr. Jonathan Samet, dean of the Colorado School of Public Health who chaired a World Health Organization committee that researched cell phone radiation and cancer. “I just don’t find any plausible way to link them.”
Anti-5G activists are undeterred.
Susan Brinchman, director of the Center for Electrosmog Prevention, a nonprofit campaigning against “environmental electromagnetic pollution,” says that people have a right to be concerned about 5G and links to COVID-19. “The entire 5G infrastructure should be dismantled and turned off,” she said by email.
But there’s no evidence that wireless communications – whether 5G or earlier versions – harm the immune system, said Myrtill Simko, scientific director of SciProof International in Sweden, who has spent decades researching the matter.
The current wave of 5G theories dates back to January, when a Belgian doctor suggested a link to COVID-19. Older variations were circulating before that, mostly revolving around cellphone radiation causing cancer, spreading on Reddit forums, Facebook pages and YouTube channels. Even with daily wireless use among vast majority of adults, the National Cancer Institute has not seen an increase in brain tumors.
The theories gained momentum in 2019 from Russian state media outlets, which helped push them into U.S. domestic conversation, disinformation experts say.
Ryan Fox, who tracks disinformation as chief innovation officer at AI company Yonder, said he noticed an abnormal spike last year in mentions around 5G across Russian state media, with most of the narratives playing off people’s fears around 5G and whether it could cause cancer.
“Were they the loudest voice at that time and did they amplify this conspiracy enough that it helped fuel its long-term success? Yes,” he said.
The conspiracy theories have also been elevated by celebrities including actor Woody Harrelson who shared a video claiming people in China were taking down a 5G tower. It was actually a Hong Kong “smart lamppost” cut down by pro-democracy protesters in August over China surveillance fears. British TV host Eamonn Holmes gave credence to the theories on a talk show, drawing a rebuke from regulators.
“I want to be very clear here,” European Commission spokesman Johannes Bahrke said Friday, as the arson toll rose daily. “There is no geographic or any other correlation between the deployment of 5G and the outbreak of the virus.”
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Quarantine and lockdowns in many U.S. states has moved life online including the search for love and companionship. For now, that will ha to be virtual… using dating apps. Karina Bafradzhian investigated dating during a pandemic.
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Italian restaurateur Sirio Maccioni, who opened the celebrated French restaurant Le Cirque and watched it grow into arguably Manhattan’s favorite dining room of the rich and famous, has died in Italy. He was 88.Maccioni’s son, Mauro, told The Associated Press that his father died in the family’s villa in Tuscany early Monday. He had suffered from the effects of a stroke and Alzheimer’s disease, the son said. Le Cirque was famed for its decadent Grand Marnier souffles and terrines of rabbit rillette. The starry guest list included Frank Sinatra, Henry Kissinger, Princess Grace, Bill Blass, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, Diana Ross and Nancy and Ronald Reagan. Le Cirque opened in 1974 at the Mayfair Hotel. “We weren’t really prepared, but the rest is history. We were the first ‘place to be seen’ that also had good food,” Maccioni told The AP in 2000. The restaurant moved and reopened as Le Cirque 2000 in 1997 in the New York Palace Hotel. In 2006, Le Cirque moved again and opened on East 58th Street. In 2017, the restaurant filed for bankruptcy. Le Cirque has branches in Las Vegas, Dubai and India. The restaurant received a four-star review from the New York Times in 1987, which was renewed in 1997. The Times gave it two stars in 2006 and three stars in 2008. The newspaper downgraded the restaurant to a single star in 2012. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani once recognized it as being one of the city’s most glamorous and hospitable restaurants. The James Beard Foundation gave Maccioni its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014. “I consider myself a working restaurateur, but I’m proud to be called elite,” Maccioni told The AP. “I encourage all my people to be elite; be an elite dishwasher. Being elite means being the best.” He and his restaurant helped launch the careers of many illustrious chefs, including Daniel Boulud, David Bouley, Terrance Brennan, Alain Sailhac, Rick Moonen and Jacques Torres. Maccioni, born and raised in Italy, was forced to go to work after his father was killed during World War II. He worked in hotels and restaurants in France, Switzerland and Germany before moving to the United States in 1956. “I didn’t do this out of inspiration or desperation. I realized very early that I couldn’t afford to be young,” he said. “I did completely give my life to this business. Is it worth it? Maybe not. But I had no choice, and I’ve never felt exploited.” He attended Hunter College during the day. At night, he worked at The Colony, one of New York’s trendiest restaurants, where Frank Sinatra, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and Aristotle Onassis frequently dined. After a few years, he moved to a club at the Pierre Hotel before opening Le Cirque. He is survived by his wife, Egidiana, and their three sons, Mario, Marco and Mauro.
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