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Javier E

China Gets Back to Work While U.S. Extends Coronavirus Shutdowns - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...onavirus-shutdowns-11585561393

china economy pandemic

shared by Javier E on 30 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • China’s major industrial provinces fully resumed production on Monday, a top government official said, two months after a near-nationwide shutdown of factories, workplaces and retail outlets because of the coronavirus pandemic.
  • At the beginning of March, the U.S. had reported fewer than 100 confirmed cases of Covid-19. It now has more than 143,000 cases, the most of any country,
  • While coronavirus cases have surged across the U.S. and Europe, China has gradually lifted restrictions, including the movement of people to and from its central Hubei province, where the outbreak originated and claimed the most lives in the country. For much of February, China reported hundreds or thousands of new coronavirus infections daily before the total cases reached roughly 80,000 in early March and stayed relatively stable.
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  • Chinese state media reported that shopping malls in Wuhan reopened for business Monday morning after being shut for two months. Shoppers have to scan a QR code with their mobile phones at the entrances to verify their health status before they are allowed to enter.
  • 98.6% of major industrial companies across China have resumed operations with nearly 90% of their employees back to work.
  • “Major industrial provinces like Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shandong and Fujian are basically fully open,” he said at a press briefing. More than three-quarters of China’s small- and medium-size businesses have also resumed operations.
Javier E

How local officials scrambled to protect themselves against the coronavirus - The Washi... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...virus-local-officials-response

officials local pandemic crisis trump policy

shared by Javier E on 30 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Across the country, state and local officials, frustrated by what they described as a lack of leadership in the White House and an absence of consistent guidance from federal agencies, took steps on their own to prepare for the pandemic and protect their communities. In some cases, these actions preceded federal directives by days or even weeks as local officials sifted through news reports and other sources of information to educate themselves about the risks posed by the coronavirus.
  • With scant information about the virus and no warnings against large gatherings, cities such as New Orleans moved ahead in February with massive celebrations that may have turned them into hotspots for the virus.
  • “The leader in global pandemics and protecting the United States starts at the federal level,” said Nick Crossley, the director of emergency management in Hamilton County, Ohio, and past president of the U.S. Council of International Association of Emergency Managers.
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  • He praised Republican Gov. Mike DeWine for taking bold steps early, including declaring a state of emergency when there were only three reported cases on March 9, four days before the federal government followed suit. Thirty states had declared a state of emergency by the time Trump declared a national emergency on March 13.
  • “They didn’t move fast enough,” said Crossley, of the federal government. “And what you’ve seen is more local and state officials sounding the alarm. “We needed a national response to this event.”
  • With seven reported infections in the United States by the end of the day, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar declared a public health emergency on Jan. 31, and Trump announced strict travel restrictions, barring most foreign visitors coming from China. He also imposed the nation’s first mandatory quarantine in 50 years.
  • Officials spent three hours war-gaming how they would respond. The drill prompted the state to send 300 employees home early to test their remote work capability. That unmasked a serious problem: A quarter of the team could not perform their jobs at home because they needed access to secure computer systems.
  • Then he heard the news: The United States had identified its first case of person-to-person transmission involving someone who had not traveled overseas. Also, the World Health Organization classified the coronavirus as a public health emergency of international concern.
  • Chicago Jan. 31: 9,927 cases worldwide, seven cases in the United States
  • Tallahassee Jan. 30: 8,234 cases worldwide, five cases in the United States
  • “We are concerned about our public health system’s capacity to implement these measures, recognizing they may inadvertently distract us from our ongoing tried-and-true efforts to isolate confirmed cases and closely monitor their contacts,” according to a previously unreported Feb. 6 letter. “We also worry about the potential to again overwhelm laboratory capacity, recognizing that national capacity has not been adequate to quickly test our highest-risk individuals.”
  • “In the first few sets of conversations, we were not hearing answers to those questions,” Lightfoot, a Democrat, said of her talks with federal officials. “It was kind of like, either silence, or ‘Do the best you can,’ which was obviously not acceptable.”
  • she drafted a letter to Trump on behalf of the mayors from Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Seattle. They insisted on clear, written directions from the federal government, according to the letter, and worried about diverting health-care resources during flu season, when hospitals were already stretched.
  • Americans who had visited China’s Hubei province would be forced to quarantine for 14 days, and those who visited other parts of China would be screened for symptoms and asked to isolate themselves for two weeks. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was caught off guard. The directive came with little guidance. Where were local governments supposed to quarantine the travelers? What would they do if someone refused to quarantine? Who was going to pay for the resources needed to quarantine people?
  • Mount Kisco, N.Y. Feb. 9: 40,150 cases worldwide, 11 cases in the United States
  • Weeks earlier, Amler had started fitting employees for personal protective equipment and training them on how to use the gear. In January, she watched what was happening in Wuhan with growing concern: “It seemed impossible that it wouldn’t eventually spill out of China into the rest of the world.”
  • San Francisco Feb. 24: 79,561 cases worldwide, 51 cases in the United States
  • Trump continued to reassure the public that there was little to worry about. On Feb. 24, he tweeted, “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.”
  • But Colfax and his public health staff in San Francisco were seeing something else when they studied the “curves” of the pandemic — graphs showing how many cases were reported in other regions over time.
  • Wuhan’s curve was climbing exponentially, and other countries, such as Italy, were seeing soaring infection rates as well. Colfax noticed that in every infected region, officials were more and more aggressive about restricting their populations
  • “It became apparent that no jurisdiction that was where the virus was being introduced, was sort of, in retrospect, thinking, ‘Oh, we overreacted,’ ” Colfax said.
  • On Feb. 24, Colfax and other health officials assembled their research and met with Mayor London Breed. They made an urgent request: Declare a state of emergency
  • by the end of the meeting, Breed was convinced. They needed to declare a state of emergency so that they could tap into state and federal funds and supplies, and redeploy city employees. The next day, San Francisco became one of the first major cities in the United States to do so, after Santa Clara and San Diego counties did earlier in the month.
  • It would take another 17 days, as the virus infected people in nearly every state, before Trump declared a national emergency.
  • In New Orleans, officials moved ahead with Mardi Gras festivities in late February that packed people into the streets. It was a decision the mayor would later defend as coronavirus cases traced to the celebration piled up.
  • On Feb. 27, at a White House reception, Trump predicted that the coronavirus would disappear. “Like a miracle,” he said.
  • “No red flags were given,” by the federal government, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell, a Democrat, later said in a CNN interview. “If we were given clear direction, we would not have had Mardi Gras, and I would’ve been the leader to cancel it.
  • San Antonio Feb. 29: 86,011 cases worldwide, 68 cases in the United States
  • The last day of February marked a major turning point for the coronavirus in the United States: The first American who had been diagnosed with the illness died
  • In a Saturday news conference, Trump described the patient from the Seattle area as a “medically high-risk” person who had died overnight. A CDC official said that the man, who was in his 50s, had not traveled recently — another sign that the virus was snaking through local communities.
  • During the announcement, Trump asked the media to avoid inciting panic as there was “no reason to panic at all.”
  • “We’re doing really well,” he said. “Our country is prepared for any circumstance. We hope it’s not going to be a major circumstance, it’ll be a smaller circumstance. But whatever the circumstance is, we’re prepared.”
  • That same afternoon in San Antonio, the CDC mistakenly released a woman from quarantine who was infected. The woman was one of dozens of evacuees from Wuhan whom the federal government had brought to a nearby military base and then isolated at the Texas Center for Infectious Disease.
  • the woman had been dropped off at a Holiday Inn near the San Antonio airport and headed to a mall where she shopped at Dillard’s, Talbots and Swarovski and ate in the food court.
  • As local officials learned details about the infected woman’s movements and how she had been transported at 2 a.m. back to the Texas Center for Infectious Disease, they waited for the CDC to issue a statement. Hours passed, but they heard nothing. “They were like quiet little mouses,” Wolff said. “They were all scared to talk because I think they felt they were going to get in trouble with the president of the United States because he was saying there was not a problem.”
  • The next day, San Antonio officials declared a public health emergency and filed a lawsuit to prevent the CDC from releasing the 120 people in quarantine until they were confirmed negative for the virus or completed a 28-day quarantine. A judge denied the motion, but the CDC agreed that evacuees must have two consecutive negative tests that are 24 hours apart and that no one with a pending test can be released.
  • In Oklahoma City, the coronavirus became a reality for Mayor David Holt, a Republican, when the NBA abruptly canceled a Thunder basketball game after a Utah Jazz player tested positive on March 11. Until then, Holt said, the coronavirus felt “distant on many levels.”
  • Mount Kisco, N.Y. March 3: 92,840 cases worldwide, 118 cases in the United States
  • Within days, state authorities set up an emergency operations center in New Rochelle and created a one-mile containment zone. Inside the perimeter, schools and community centers shuttered and large gatherings were prohibited.
  • Through it all, local officials faced backlash from some community leaders who thought they were overreacting.
  • San Francisco March 5: 97,886 cases worldwide, 217 cases in the United States
  • Days after San Francisco’s emergency declaration, Breed stood in front of news cameras to announce the city’s first two cases of the coronavirus.
  • They were not related, had not traveled to any coronavirus-affected areas and had no contact with known coronavirus patients: It was spreading in the community.
  • By then, Miami Mayor Francis X. Suarez, a Republican, had announced the cancellation of the Ultra Music festival, a three-day celebration that draws about 50,000 people. Miami was the first city to call off a major music festival, and Suarez faced tremendous backlash
  • When he tried to order more masks, none were immediately available. By then the entire country was scrambling for protective gear.
  • Days later, Holt huddled on the phone with other leaders from the United States Conference of Mayors. For about 20 minutes, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, a Democrat, detailed the crisis seizing her city
  • “She sounded like the main character in a Stephen King novel,” Holt recalled. “She had hundreds of cases, she had dozens of deaths.”
  • “Any struggles that we’re having, whether it be testing or other issues, or even just convincing our public of the seriousness of the matter, there are some roots back to the time period in January and February, when not all national leadership was expressing how serious this was,” Holt said.
  • While the mayors held their conference call on March 13, Trump declared a national emergency to combat the coronavirus.
  • By then, Suarez had tested positive for the coronavirus and was in quarantine. As of Sunday, he remained in isolation, leading the city by phone calls and video chats. He wanted to stop flights into Miami and the governor to order residents to shelter in place as California and other states had already done.
Javier E

Covid-19 is nature's wake-up call to complacent civilisation | George Monbiot | Opinion... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...all-to-complacent-civilisation

nature civilization bubble deniers sustainability threat crisis food antibiotics culture sunk costs

shared by Javier E on 25 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • e have been living in a bubble, a bubble of false comfort and denial. In the rich nations, we have begun to believe we have transcended the material world.
  • The wealth we’ve accumulated – often at the expense of others – has shielded us from reality. Living behind screens, passing between capsules – our houses, cars, offices and shopping malls – we persuaded ourselves that contingency had retreated, that we had reached the point all civilisations seek: insulation from natural hazards.
  • The temptation, when this pandemic has passed, will be to find another bubble. We cannot afford to succumb to it. From now on, we should expose our minds to the painful realities we have denied for too long.
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  • The planet has multiple morbidities, some of which will make this coronavirus look, by comparison, easy to treat
  • how will we feed ourselves?
  • A large body of evidence is beginning to accumulate showing how climate breakdown is likely to affect our food supply
  • In his forthcoming book, Our Final Warning, Mark Lynas explains what is likely to happen to our food supply with every extra degree of global heating. He finds that extreme danger kicks in somewhere between 3C and 4C above pre-industrial levels.
  • At this point, a series of interlocking impacts threatens to send food production into a death spiral. Outdoor temperatures become too high for humans to tolerate, making subsistence farming impossible across Africa and South Asia. Livestock die from heat stress. Temperatures start to exceed the lethal thresholds for crop plants across much of the world, and major food producing regions turn into dust bowls.
  • Simultaneous global harvest failure – something that has never happened in the modern world – becomes highly likely.
  • Every food-producing sector claims that its own current practices are sustainable and don’t need to change
  • even if every nation keeps its promises under the Paris agreement, which currently seems unlikely, global heating will amount to between 3C and 4C.
  • Thanks to our illusion of security, we are doing almost nothing to anticipate this catastrophe, let alone prevent it. This existential issue scarcely seems to impinge on our consciousness
  • A food deficit could result in billions starving. Hoarding will happen, as it always has, at the global level, as powerful people snatch food from the mouths of the poor.
  • But this is just one of our impending crises. Antibiotic resistance is, potentially, as deadly as any new disease. One of the causes is the astonishingly profligate way in which these precious medicines are used on many livestock farms
  • Pharmaceutical companies are failing to invest sufficiently in the search for new drugs. If antibiotics cease to be effective, surgery becomes almost impossible
  • Childbirth becomes a mortal hazard once more. Chemotherapy can no longer be safely practised. Infectious diseases we have comfortably forgotten become deadly threats. We should discuss this issue as often as we talk about football. But again, it scarcely registers.
  • Sunk costs within the fossil fuel industry, farming, banking, private healthcare and other sectors prevent the rapid transformations we need. Money becomes more important than life.
  • this could be the moment when we begin to see ourselves, once more, as governed by biology and physics, and dependent on a habitable planet. Never again should we listen to the liars and the deniers. Never again should we allow a comforting falsehood to trounce a painful truth. No longer can we afford to be dominated by those who put money ahead of life. This coronavirus reminds us that we belong to the material world.
brickol

India coronavirus: The country faces up to potential crisis, but is it really prepared?... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

crisis COVID-19 policy economics

shared by brickol on 25 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • India is the world's second-most populous country and has the fifth-biggest economy, with trade connections all over the world. Yet despite its size, the country of 1.34 billion appears to have avoided the full hit of the pandemic. To date, India has only 492 confirmed cases of coronavirus and nine deaths.
  • Prime Minister Narendra Modi has maintained there is no sign of community spread, and the World Health Organization (WHO) has praised India's swift response, which has included grounding domestic and international commercial flights and suspending all tourist visas.On Tuesday night, Modi ordered a 21-day nationwide lockdown starting at midnight Wednesday. The order, the largest of its type yet to be issued globally, means all Indians must stay at home and all nonessential services such as public transport, malls and market will be shut down.
  • But fears are growing that the country remains susceptible to a wider, potentially more damaging outbreak. Experts have cautioned that India is not testing enough people to know the true extent of the issue -- and have questioned the viability and sustainability of a nationwide lockdown.
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  • So far, India has confirmed relatively few cases -- but the country is also testing relatively few people. In total, 15,000 tests have been conducted, compared with South Korea, where well over 300,000 people out of its 52 million population have been tested.
  • But Balram Bhargava, director-general of the Indian Council of Medical Research, said there is no need for "indiscriminate testing." At a news briefing on Sunday, he said the country has a test capacity of 60,000 to 70,000 per week. By comparison, the United Kingdom -- a country with 5% of the population size of India -- says it is hoping to increase its test capacity to 25,000 a day.
  • Although it's not yet clear why India's case numbers are relatively low, as with other countries, it's clear that an outbreak would be incredibly difficult to control.A growing number of governments are encouraging citizens to self-isolate, and wash their hands to control the spread of coronavirus. But in parts of India, even those basic measures would be extremely difficult.
  • In 2011, an Indian government report estimated that 29.4% of the country's urban population live in low quality, semi-permanent structures, known as slums. Many of the homes here don't have bathrooms or running water. Some slum residents get their water from a communal tap, while others collect theirs in canisters and buckets from tankers that visit a few times a week.
  • It may also prove difficult to maintain the type of social isolation as ordered by Modi. In India, there are 455 people per square kilometer (or 1,178 people per square mile), according to World Bank statistics -- significantly more than the world average of 60 people, and much higher than China's 148. "Social distancing in a country like India is going to be very, very challenging," Prabhakar said. "We might be able to pull it off in urban areas, but in slums and areas of urban sprawl, I just don't see how it can be done."
  • Every country that goes into lockdown faces a huge economic impact. But in India, telling people to stay home puts millions of jobs at risk.
  • According to government estimates, there are around 102 million people -- including 75 million children -- who do not have an Aadhaar identity card, which is used to access key welfare and social services including food, electricity and gas subsidies. Most of these people are essentially undocumented -- and are less likely to receive a government handout.
  • "There are some states with very well-resourced, well-equipped health systems, and others which are weaker," Swaminathan said. "So the focus really needs to be both in short term and the medium to long term on strengthening the health systems in those states where it is relatively weak and this would involve a number of different actions."
  • According to the World Bank, India spends about 3.66% of its GDP on health -- far below the world average of 10%. Although the United Kingdom and the US have struggled to deal with their own outbreaks, each spend 9.8% and 17% of their GDP on health, respectively.
brickol

Coronavirus in America: why the US has struggled to tackle a growing crisis | US news |... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...us-america-donald-trump-crisis

politics us trump crisis COVID-19 economics

shared by brickol on 24 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Exactly a month after Donald Trump tweeted that the US had the coronavirus outbreak “very much under control”, the World Health Organization delivered a stark and jarring reality check: America faces being the centre of a pandemic that has paralysed much of the world.
  • Coronavirus has raced across the American continent with the aid of a chronic lack of preparation, deep-rooted dysfunction in the US healthcare system, and a president who has repeatedly dismissed the crisis and is now looking to scale back containment efforts in favour of restarting economic activity.
  • More than 46,000 people in the US have been diagnosed with Covid-19 and nearly 600 have died.
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  • The sharp acceleration in cases – just two weeks ago the official number was less than 2,000 – has led to the WHO warning that the US is overtaking countries such as Italy as the global hotspot for the virus.
  • early one in 10 Americans have no health insurance, while a widespread lack of sick pay across the country has forced many ill people into work despite the risk of spreading the virus.
  • the US response has been hobbled by the administration’s rejection of standard WHO testing kits, instead opting to develop its own, which turned out to be faulty.
  • The true scale of infection in the US is almost certainly far worse, with a severe lack of testing having stymied efforts to contain Covid-19 once it emerged near Seattle
  • Muddled messaging from the White House, where Trump has often contradicted the sombre warnings of his top infectious disease expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, has done little to Americans stop congregating on beaches or in shopping malls.
  • Authorities in New York are scouring the world for the ventilators, masks and gowns needed for an unfolding public health emergency that is expected to peak in the next three weeks.
  • The apex of this pandemic is higher and sooner than we thought,” said Andrew Cuomo, the New York governor who has garnered praise for his handling of the crisis. “I will turn this state upside down to get the hospital beds we need.”
  • Cuomo also condemned Fema and the Trump administration again, saying: “You want a pat on the back for sending 400 ventilators? What are we going to do with 400 ventilators when we need 30,000 ventilators? You’re missing the magnitude of the problem, and the problem is defined by the magnitude.”
  • The number of cases was higher in New York, he said, “because it started here first because we have global travelers coming here first. Because we have more density than other places. You will see this in suburban communities across the country. We are just a test case. We are just a test case. And that’s how the nation should look at it. Where we are today, you will be in three weeks or five weeks or six weeks.”
  • Trump has signaled that he is prepared to wind down restrictions at the end of a 15-day window in an attempt to bolster the economy and a sagging stock market.
Javier E

U.S. Is Nowhere Close to Reopening the Economy, Experts Say - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...coronavirus-economy.html

economy pandemic response strategies

shared by Javier E on 06 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • How long can we keep this up?
  • Essentially, economists say, there won’t be a fully functioning economy again until people are confident that they can go about their business without a high risk of catching the virus.
  • “It’s also quite likely that we will need to figure out how to reopen the economy with the virus remaining a threat.”
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  • Economists are calculating when the cost of continuing to shutter restaurants, shopping malls and other businesses — a move that has already pushed some 10 million Americans into unemployment, with millions more on the way — will outweigh the savings from further efforts to slow the virus once the infection curve has flattened out.
  • targets are at best mildly informed guesses based on models that contain variables — including how many people have the virus and how effective suppression measures will prove to be. The models cannot yet give us anything close to a precise answer on the big question looming over Americans’ lives and livelihoods.
  • Interviews with more than a dozen economists, many of whom are veterans of past presidential administrations, reveal broad consensus on the building blocks the economy needs — but does not yet have — to begin the slow process of restoring normalcy in the American economy.
  • That includes widespread agreement that the United States desperately needs more testing for the virus in order to give policymakers the first key piece of evidence they need to determine how fast the virus is spreading and when it might be safe for people to return to work.
  • rapid deployment of randomized testing for the virus could reduce its health and economic damage.
  • “It’s going to have to depend on being able to identify people that have the coronavirus, understanding how readily those people can transmit the disease to others and then kind of appropriately isolating people that are contagious,”
  • Ideally, they would sufficiently control the rate to establish so-called contact tracing in order to track — and avoid — the spread of the virus across the country.
  • Some experts have talked about quickly bringing back workers who contract the virus but recover with little effect. Testing is the best way to identify such workers, who may have had the virus with few or no symptoms and possibly not realized they were ever infected.
  • policymakers will need to provide more support to workers who have lost jobs or hours and to businesses teetering on the brink of failure. That could mean trillions more in small business loans, unemployment benefits and direct payments to individuals, and it could force the government to get creative in deploying money to avoid bottlenecks.
  • lawmakers should consider funneling $1,500 a month to individuals through mobile apps like Zelle in order to reach more people, particularly low-income and nonwhite Americans who disproportionately lack traditional bank accounts.
  • additional money for small business will be crucial throughout the full extent of the crisis — both to prevent a crush of business failures and to keep owners and customers from flouting the national effort to reduce infections.
  • “I don’t think you can force hundreds of thousands of small business owners to voluntarily shut down and let failure happen to them,” Mr. Ozimek said. “They won’t do it, the public won’t support it, and frankly I don’t think local authorities would stop them.”
  • Policymakers will also need to give better support and protection to Americans who are putting their own health at risk to keep the essential parts of the economy running, like doctors, nurses, grocery store clerks and package delivery drivers
  • those workers needed to have paid sick leave, adequate health coverage, access to coronavirus tests and affordable care for their children while they worked in order to stay healthy and to protect consumers from further spread of the virus.
  • “That is the economy at this point, those workers,” Ms. Boushey said. “And their health and safety is imperative to my safety.”
  • Restarting activity too quickly could risk a second spike in infections that could deal more damage than the first because it would shake people’s faith in their ability to engage in even limited amounts of shopping, dining or other commerce.
  • if we lift too early, the pandemic can take hold again. And that itself is very bad for the economy.”
  • business as usual might not come back until a vaccine is developed, which could take more than a year.
  • “We should certainly be prepared for a meaningful level of deliberate suppression of economic activity for the rest of the year,”
  • The Congressional Budget Office wrote on Thursday that it expected at least a quarter of the current suppression measures to last through year’s end, and that the unemployment rate could still be 9 percent at the end of 2021.
Javier E

Trump's bad ideas, like ingesting bleach to fight covid-19, tax resources - The Washing... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...ngest-bleach-trump-coronavirus

trump ideas ignorance qualification

shared by Javier E on 27 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • During his three years as president, Trump has regularly expressed confidence that he knows more than the experts. That confidence is matched only by the ignorance he actually displays about a vast array of topics.
  • Repeatedly, he has sent government officials scrambling on foolish missions, leading them to spend time and personal capital persuading him not to follow through on schemes that are invariably wasteful, ineffective, unrealistic or dangerous.
  • Consider, for example, some presidential guidance in 2017: Trump — who has no nautical, military or engineering experience — decided the electromagnetic catapults the Navy planned to install on aircraft carriers to launch airplanes into the sky were technically inferior to the steam catapults used in older-generation ships.
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  • Though experts say the move would cost billions of dollars and degrade the carriers’ capabilities, Trump has repeatedly returned to the topic in the years since, forcing Navy officials to put on their best game face in public pronouncements about the president’s off-the-wall comments.
  • A favorite object of Trump’s expertise remains the wall he is attempting to build along the southern border
  • Officials at the Department of Homeland Security and the Army Corps of Engineers have spent months constructing prototypes and convincing the commander in chief to abandon impractical, expensive and constantly changing demands.
  • During meetings to discuss hurricane response, the president has asked why the government doesn’t just drop a nuclear bomb on hurricanes before they make landfall. Despite the fact that nuking a hurricane would be banned by treaty, would spread radioactive fallout along the hurricane’s path and would do nothing to actually stop the storm, an administration official reportedly told the president, “Sir, we’ll look into that.”
  • he repeatedly pushed advisers to consider whether the United States could purchase Greenland from the government of Denmark. When news of his plan leaked and the Danish prime minister publicly responded that Greenland was not for sale, Trump publicly pouted by abruptly canceling a planned meeting with her.
  • Officials spend time and resources that should be directed toward addressing actual problems instead of studying Trump’s worst ideas and convincing him to back down.
  • We now have a Space Force, a new branch of the armed services that cost billions to establish and serves no discernible purpose that wasn’t already being handled elsewhere.
  • Trump’s obsession with the trappings of military pomp eventually got him the Fourth of July gathering he’d long sought, even if the tanks he wanted to parade down the Mall ended up merely parked there instead.
  • most concerning is the obvious issues these flights of fancy raise about Trump himself and his fitness for public office of any kind, let alone the presidency. Those questions have been apparent throughout his term, as when he claimed that windmills cause cancer (they don’t) or that the F-35 stealth fighter is literally invisible (it’s not)
  • The president of the United States has trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. He believes he knows more than anyone in the room when in fact he knows less. He can’t admit a mistake, even when doing so would be the smartest way out of the holes he invariably digs for himself.
  • Those traits were harmful enough when the country was riding high on relative peace and prosperity. During a global pandemic and a disastrous economic downturn, they can prove catastrophic.
malonema1

Apple Customer Data in China Was Sold Illegally, Police Say - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-apple-personal-data-sold.html

china Apple

shared by malonema1 on 10 Jun 17 - No Cached
  • Apple Customer Data in China Was Sold Illegally, Police Say
  • he Chinese police said this week that they had arrested 22 people suspected of selling the personal data of an unspecified number of Apple customers. The police, in Cangnan County in the eastern province of Zhejiang, said the thieves had reaped 50 million renminbi, or about $7.3 million, over an unspecified period.
  • 20 of the 22 people worked for companies that sell Apple products or are Apple contractors
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  • In China, Apple’s products are sold broadly, in electronics chain stores and small booths in shopping malls in addition to the company’s official Apple Stores.
  • An apparent trove of login information leaked onto the Chinese internet was used to hack more than 20 million accounts on Alibaba’s e-commerce site Taobao, according to news reports.
  • Between widespread malware campaigns and a large number of new internet users, China has become a playground for internet fraudsters. Last year, China tried 361 criminal cases involving violation of personal data, up from 176 in 2015, said Xie Yongjiang, associate director for the Institute of Internet Governance and Law at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.
  • he arrests are part of a set of broader difficulties in China for Apple, which is based in Cupertino, Calif. Sales of iPhones, still a sign of middle-class aspiration in China, have slowed, according to analysts, as the public waits for new models and as Chinese manufacturers of cheaper phones step up their quality and marketing.
  • The problem is not even new to Apple. Last year, 10 employees of an Apple contractor in China were also found with data from more than 80,000 users.
draneka

What does Trump mean when he calls someone a 'true American patriot?' - The Washington ... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...omeone-a-true-american-patriot

shared by draneka on 17 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • “You embody the values of dedication, discipline, and hard work,” Trump said. “To every young American watching today, we encourage you to always strive to be your best, to do your best, and to give your all.”
  • “We believe our nation was founded as a Christian nation. The enemy is trying to take it in another direction, not Christianity,” said Linda Shebsta, a Burelson, Tex., resident who joined other conservative Christian women on the Mall earlier this week for a prayer event.
anonymous

India Sees Spike In Confirmed Coronavirus Cases - And Variants : Coronavirus Updates : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...coronavirus-cases-and-variants

shared by anonymous on 24 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • India is seeing a substantial number of coronavirus variants. But it is unclear whether these are contributing to a new surge in cases there. On Wednesday, India reported 47,262 new cases, the highest jump since November. Coronavirus-related fatalities are also increasing with 275 deaths reported on Wednesday, the most India has seen this year.
  • Several virus variants have appeared in thousands of samples collected across Indian states. Some of the samples have contained viruses with two concerning mutations, one first identified in the U.K. and another in South Africa.Yet the ministry said that even though they've identified the "double mutant" variant, this and other variants "have not been detected in numbers sufficient to either establish or direct relationship or explain the rapid increase in cases in some states."
  • The western Indian state of Maharashtra, home to the commercial capital Mumbai, is leading the surge and is responsible for more than 60% of new infections. On Wednesday, Mumbai reported more than 5,000 new cases, the most it has seen since the pandemic began. The capital New Delhi is also experiencing an uptick in cases, and authorities there and in Mumbai have begun testing people randomly at airports, railway stations and crowded markets. In Mumbai, entry into shopping malls is prohibited unless visitors show a negative COVID-19 report.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Both cities have also banned celebrations of the upcoming Hindu festival of Holi, where people gather in large groups and smear colored powder on each other. Authorities have also expressed concern about another Hindu gathering, the Kumbh Mela, held in the northern Indian town of Haridwar. It is expected to attract tens of millions of pilgrims from across the country and the government is urging local officials to ramp up testing.
  • Meanwhile, India has relaxed eligibility rules for coronavirus vaccinations. Starting in April, anyone who is 45 years of age or older will be allowed to get a coronavirus shot. India began its massive immunization campaign in mid-January starting with healthcare and frontline workers, followed by elderly people and people above 45 years of age with certain health conditions. Calls to open up the vaccination program to all adults have been growing, especially as cases rise.
  • India's second wave comes one year after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a strict lockdown with barely four hours' notice that left poor migrant workers stranded and pushed the economy into a recession. Infections began climbing when the lockdown was lifted in June and reached a peak of nearly 100,000 cases a day last September. India has the third-highest coronavirus caseload in the world, after the United States and Brazil.
ethanshilling

House Approves D.C. Statehood, but Senate Obstacles Remain - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...dc-statehood-vote.html

US washington politics

shared by ethanshilling on 22 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • The House voted along party lines on Thursday to grant statehood to Washington, D.C., as Democrats moved to use their congressional majority to accomplish a long-held goal that has become a central plank in the party’s push to expand voting rights and address racial inequity.
  • The legislation would establish a 51st state called Washington, Douglass Commonwealth — in honor of Frederick Douglass, the Black emancipation and civil rights leader — while leaving the National Mall, Capitol Hill, the White House and some other federal property under congressional control.
  • The new state would have a single voting representative in the House and two senators representing its more than 700,000 residents, most of whom are people of color.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • “Congress has both the moral obligation and the constitutional authority to pass H.R. 51,” said Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s nonvoting House delegate, using the legislation’s symbolic designation to reflect the new state.
  • The vote in the House was 216 to 208. The White House confirmed President Biden’s support for the measure this week, with the Office of Management of Budget issuing a statement of administration policy declaring that making the District of Columbia a state would “make our union stronger and more just.”
  • But even with Democrats now in control of a 50-to-50 Senate, prospects for the measure remain dim. A few Senate Democrats have not publicly endorsed the proposal, and advancing it would most likely require at least 10 Republicans to vote in support, while none have said they would.
  • Backlash over the violent removal of protesters outside the White House during demonstrations against police brutality galvanized the movement. A decision to treat the District of Columbia as a territory when initially distributing state pandemic relief in 2020 also shortchanged the local government more than $700 million, local officials have said.
  • “Statehood for the District of Columbia is about showing respect for our democracy, for the American people and for our Constitution,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said on the House floor on Thursday.
  • Republicans have mounted a fierce campaign against the legislation, insisting it was not about equal representation, but ensuring that Democrats would secure three reliable votes — two in the Senate and one in the House — and pad their slim margins in both chambers.
  • Other Republicans have pushed for retroceding the nation’s capital into Maryland as a solution to ensure representation, a suggestion that has been repeatedly rejected by both Washingtonians and Marylanders.
  • Some proponents of statehood have begun pushing for the bill to be incorporated in sweeping legislation to expand voting rights and overhaul national elections, which Democrats have staked out as a top priority.
  • A group of House Democrats gathered for a news conference on Thursday to call on their Senate counterparts to abolish the filibuster, as many of their legislative ambitions are doomed to fall short of the 60-vote supermajority threshold needed to advance bills.
  • They are continuing to send legislative priorities to the Senate’s doorstep, in a bid to ramp up pressure on moderate Democrats who remain reluctant to do away with the blocking tactic.
anonymous

3 Dead In A Shooting At A Miami Area Grad Party : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...aduation-party-shooting-deaths

shared by anonymous on 06 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • Three people are dead and at least six others injured following a shooting at a Florida graduation party, the latest in a string of such violence in the Miami area, police said Sunday.
  • One of those killed was a state corrections officer, Miami-Dade police Director Freddie Ramirez told news outlets. He said the party at a strip mall lounge was ending when one or more vehicles "pulled up and began to fire into the crowd."
  • The identities of those killed and wounded were not immediately released Sunday. The shooting happened about 2 a.m. in the suburb of Kendall.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said she was "horrified" by this latest shooting.
  • "We will not allow a small group of violent actors to terrorize our community, and violent offenders will face the full weight of the law," she said in a statement Sunday."I'm fully committed to making sure Miami-Dade Police Department has all the resources they need to end this cycle of gun violence and prevent more tragedy by getting violent criminals off the street," she added.
  • Two of those who died were in one of the cars police believe was involved in the shooting. The vehicle sped off and crashed into a nearby wall. Authorities found at least one gun in the car, but its exact connection to the shooting was unclear.
  • Another shooting on May 28 in the Wynwood area killed one person and injured six others.
anonymous

What We Know About Atlanta-Area Spa Killings: Suspect Charged : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...-have-visited-spas-he-targeted

shared by anonymous on 18 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The suspected gunman in three attacks that killed eight people at Atlanta-area spas on Tuesday has been charged with eight counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault.Cherokee County officials announced on Wednesday afternoon that Robert Aaron Long, 21, has been charged with four counts of murder and one count of assault in the shooting involving three women and two men at Young's Asian Massage. He has also been charged with murder in Atlanta, where four other women were killed in two separate attacks.
  • Police said the suspect has confessed to the crime and told officials about a "temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate."
  • it is too early to determine if he'll be charged with a hate crime.
  • ...31 more annotations...
  • Six women of Asian descent are among the dead, raising suspicions of a hate crime. Long claims race did not play a role in his decision to target the businesses, police said, relaying details from questioning the gunman.Long is believed to have "frequented these places, and he may have been lashing out,"
  • he has a sexual addiction.
  • Tuesday's violence has amplified fears in the Asian American community, which is already experiencing a spike in attacks and harassment since the coronavirus pandemic began.
  • Feelings of anger within the community increased late Wednesday as comments made by a Cherokee County Sheriff's Office official as well as a post on his Facebook page were perceived as inappropriate, insensitive, and anti-Asian.
  • Long was "pretty much fed up and kind of at the end of his rope. Yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did."
  • "[Long] does claim that it was not racially motivated" and cautioned the investigation is still early.
  • screenshots of Baker's Facebook account surfaced showing a post that promoted t-shirts amplifying a racist perception of the coronavirus.
  • As of early Wednesday afternoon, only half of the victims had been publicly identified.
  • In addition, Elcias R. Hernandez-Ortiz, 30, of Acworth was injured,
  • Police in Atlanta say they're not yet publicly naming the victims from the two shootings in that city; a representative says the department is still working to identify them.
  • Atlanta Police Chief Rodney Bryant said, "We are still early in this investigation, so we cannot make that determination at this moment."
  • "This was a tragic day, with many victims," Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said.
  • In a later interview with CNN, Bottoms said that she was aware of the suspect's claims that the killings were not racially motivated, "but I am taking that with a grain of salt."
  • The shocking violence could have been worse, Bottoms said,
  • Because of the family's tip, police were able to track Long's cellphone, which helped them narrow his movements after the attacks.
  • Reynolds said his county is mostly a bedroom community and had just one murder in the past year. "We don't have a lot of crime in that area," he added.Long was initially identified through surveillance camera footage from one of the crime scenes, the sheriff said. After his agency posted images to social media, Long's parents got in touch to say they believed it was their son in the pictures.
  • The group Stop AAPI Hate says it has received nearly 3,800 reports of what it describes as hate incidents — including verbal harassment and physical assault — since the COVID-19 pandemic began last March. In the aftermath of the Atlanta-area attacks, officials in cities such as New York and Seattle said they would boost law enforcement's presence in Asian American communities.
  • On Wednesday, Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta issued a statement saying that although details are still emerging, the broader context of racial tension in the U.S. cannot be ignored.
  • The first attack targeted Young's Asian Massage in Acworth in Cherokee County, northwest of Atlanta, where the sheriff's office said four people died and at least one other person was injured.
  • Surveillance footage from a neighboring business appeared to show Long's Hyundai Tucson SUV entering the spa's strip mall parking lot around 4:50 p.m. ET.
  • The second and third attacks came about one hour later on Piedmont Road in northeast Atlanta. Women who called emergency dispatchers to ask for help at the pair of Atlanta spas urged police to come quickly, according to 911 audio that was released on Wednesday.
  • Officers arrived at the spa less than two minutes after the dispatch call went out, according to police. They found three women dead from gunshot wounds inside.
  • The second 911 call came in about nine minutes later, from a woman at Aromatherapy Spa, almost directly across the street. Police were dispatched on a report of gunshots fired and arrived two minutes later. When they entered the business, they found that a fourth woman had been killed.
  • From Atlanta, the suspected gunman fled to the south, as police spread the alarm to be on the lookout for his vehicle. As he drove south on Interstate 75, the authorities set a trap for him.Around 8 p.m., Crisp County Sheriff Billy Hancock said, his agency got word "that a murder suspect out of north Georgia was getting close to entering our county."
  • Some 30 minutes later, Georgia State Patrol troopers performed a maneuver on Long's SUV that caused it to spin out of control, Hancock said. The suspect was taken into custody without incident and taken to the county jail, he said. Long was later transferred back to Cherokee County.
  • Long bought a gun on Tuesday before the shooting rampage.
  • As for what Long's plan might have been in Florida, Baker said he understood the gunman wanted to target "some type of porn industry in that state."The FBI is assisting both Cherokee County and Atlanta police in handling the case,
  • "Long has since been moved to the Cherokee County Adult Detention Center, and has been interviewed by both the Atlanta Police Department and FBI."
  • Biden spoke about the killings on Wednesday, saying he was briefed on a phone call with Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray.
  • I am making no connection at this moment to the motivation of the killer," the president added. "I'm waiting for an answer, as the investigation proceeds, from the FBI and from the Justice Department."
  • Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said he and first lady Marty Kemp "are heartbroken and disgusted by the heinous shootings that took place last night. We continue to pray for the families and loved ones of the victims."
anonymous

US could be on the cusp of Covid-19 infection surge officials have been dreading, exper... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by anonymous on 18 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • he US may be on the cusp of another Covid-19 case surge, one expert says -- a surge that health officials have repeatedly warned about as state leaders eased restrictions and several lifted mask mandates.
  • "I think we are going to see a surge in the number of infections,"
  • "I think what helps this time though is that the most vulnerable -- particularly nursing home residents, people who are older -- are now vaccinated. And so we may prevent a spike in hospitalizations and deaths."
  • ...26 more annotations...
  • The first warning sign came when case numbers, after weeks of steep declines, appeared to level off -- with the country still averaging tens of thousands of new cases daily.
  • But governors cited fewer Covid-19 cases and more vaccinations while lifting measures aimed at curbing the spread of the virus.
  • Chicago officials earlier this month raised indoor capacity for bars, restaurants and other businesses and Baltimore leaders announced Wednesday they were easing restrictions on places including religious facilities, retail stores and malls, fitness centers and food service establishments -- changes that will go into effect next week.
  • Delaware, Montana, Alabama and West Virginia have also seen big increases.
  • The B.1.1.7 variant, she said this week, is projected to become the dominant variant in the US by the end of this month or early April.Despite the warnings, spring break crowds are gathering -- with Florida officials reporting too many people and not enough masks -- and nationwide, air travel numbers are hitting pandemic-era records.
  • Now, as the country inches closer to 30 million reported infections, cases are rising by more than 10% in 14 states this week compared to last week,
  • We're in a race to get the population vaccinated. At the same time, we're fighting people's exhaustion with the restrictions that public health has put in place and we're fighting the move by so many governors to remove the restrictions that are keeping us all safe."
  • Michigan cases are increasing the fastest, with more than a 50% jump this week compared to last,
  • All that while cases of the worrying variants -- notably the highly contagious B.1.1.7 variant -- climbed. The variants have the potential to wipe out all the progress the US made if Americans get lax with safety measures,
  • In West Virginia, Gov. Jim Justice said Wednesday that Covid-19 hospitalizations have "jumped up" slightly
  • Those include the rolling back of restrictions, a prison outbreak, Covid-19 fatigue, a failure to wear masks, and the B.1.1.7 variant fueling the surge, Morse told CNN. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer eased restrictions earlier this month, upping capacity limits at restaurants as well as in retail stores, gyms and other facilities.
  • There's a long list of factors contributing to the spike in cases in Michigan,
  • Justice had eased restrictions earlier this month, increasing capacity at bars, restaurants and other businesses to 100% and upping the social-gathering limit.
  • During Wednesday's news briefing, he added that the state has had "seven outbreaks in our church community" across five counties.
  • what could play a key role in helping control the pandemic will be more accessible, inexpensive coronavirus tests, top health officials
  • "I do believe that once we have teachers vaccinated that we can use testing in the schools -- serial testing, cadence testing -- to identify potential infections, asymptomatic infections, shut down clusters and keep our schools open."
  • Her remarks came the same day the CDC released updated guidance about testing, saying more and better testing should help catch asymptomatic cases and control the spread.
  • More than 73.6 million Americans have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, according to CDC data. And more than 39.9 million people are fully vaccinated -- roughly 12% of the US population. But challenges -- including vaccine hesitancy, disinformation and inequities -- remain, and it's not entirely clear when the US will hit herd immunity -
  • On Wednesday, both Fauci and Walensky pushed back against questions about herd immunity, saying a lot depended on how quickly Americans take vaccines.
  • For now, the US still has a long way to go to overcome vaccine hesitancy,
  • Vaccination is the country's best hope to get beyond the pandemic, he said, "and yet there's all this overlay, and some of it is politics and some of it's social media conspiracy theories and some of it is just distrust of anything that the government had anything to do with."
  • Additionally, in the first two and half months of vaccine distribution, counties considered to have high social vulnerability had lower vaccine coverage than counties considered to have low social vulnerability,
  • The agency's social vulnerability index identifies communities that may need additional support during emergencies based on more than a dozen indicators across four categories: socioeconomic status, household composition, racial/ethnic minority status and housing type.
  • By March 1, vaccination coverage was about 2 percentage points higher in counties with low social vulnerability than in counties with high social vulnerability -- and the differences were largely driven by socioeconomic disparities, particularly differences in the share of the population with a high school diploma and per capita income.
  • Only five states -- Arizona, Montana, Alaska, Minnesota and West Virginia -- had higher coverage in counties with high social vulnerability.
  • Achieving vaccine equity, the CDC said, is an important goal requiring "preferential access and administration to those who have been most affected"
edencottone

8 People Killed in Atlanta-Area Massage Parlor Shootings - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-shootings-massage-parlor.html

Politics us

shared by edencottone on 17 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Eight people were shot to death at three massage parlors in the Atlanta area on Tuesday evening, the authorities said, adding that a suspect was in custody.
  • who had earlier released a surveillance image of a suspect near a Hyundai Tucson outside one of the massage parlors.
  • Four people died in the first shooting, at Young’s Asian Massage near Acworth, a northwest suburb of Atlanta, said Capt. Jay Baker of the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office. That shooting, in which a Hispanic man was injured, was reported around 5 p.m.
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  • While the officers were at the scene, the police said, they received a report of shots fired at the Aromatherapy Spa across the street, where they found the body of another woman.
  • Northwest of Atlanta, Young’s Asian Massage is tucked in a modest strip mall, with a beauty salon on one side and a boutique on the other. Like much of suburban Georgia, it is a diverse place, with panaderias and Latin businesses and American-style chain restaurants.
  • She called 911, and soon saw people being taken out of the spa by police officers.
Javier E

Opinion | If Stalin Had a Smartphone - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...chnology-stalin-dictators.html

smartphone tech dictator surveillance privacy authoritarian crisis politics

shared by Javier E on 13 Mar 19 - No Cached
  • As online life expands, neighborhood life and social trust decline. As the social fabric decays, social isolation rises and online viciousness and swindling accumulate, you tell people that the state has to step in to restore trust. By a series of small ratcheted steps, you’ve been given permission to completely regulate their online life.
  • This, too, is essentially what is happening in China.As George Orwell and Aldous Huxley understood, if you want to be a good totalitarian, it isn’t enough to control behavior. To have total power you have to be able to control people’s minds. With modern information technology, the state can shape the intimate information pond in which we swim
  • Human history is a series of struggles for power. Every few generations, just for fun, the gods give us a new set of equipment that radically alters the game. We thought the new tools would democratize power, but they seem to have centralized it. It’s springtime for dictators
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  • Back in Stalin’s day, social discipline was so drastic. You had to stage a show trial (so expensive!), send somebody to the gulag or organize a purge. Now your tyranny can be small, subtle and omnipresent. It’s like the broken windows theory of despotism. By punishing the small deviations, you prevent the big ones from ever happening.
  • Third, thanks to big data, today’s Stalin would be able to build a massive Social Credit System to score and rank citizens, like the systems the Chinese are now using. Governments, banks and online dating sites gather data on, well, everybody. Do you pay your debts? How many hours do you spend playing video games? Do you jaywalk?
  • some of the best minds in the world have spent tens of billions of dollars improving tools that predict personal consumption. This technology, too, has got to come in handy for any modern-day Stalin.
  • One Chinese firm, Yitu, installed a system that keeps a record of employees’ movements as they walk to the break room or rest room. It records them with blue dotted lines on a monitor. That would be so helpful for your thoroughly modern dictator.
  • this is not even to mention the facial recognition technology the Chinese are using to keep track of their own citizens. In Beijing, facial recognition is used in apartment buildings to prevent renters from subletting their apartments.
  • I feel bad for Joseph Stalin. He dreamed of creating a totalitarian society where every individual’s behavior could be predicted and controlled. But he was born a century too early. He lived before the technology that would have made being a dictator so much easier!
  • The internet of things means that our refrigerators, watches, glasses, phones and security cameras will soon be recording every move we make.
  • In the second place, thanks to artificial intelligence, Uncle Joe would have much better tools for predicting how his subjects are about to behave.
  • f your score is too low, you can get put on a blacklist. You may not be able to visit a museum. You may not be able to fly on a plane, check into a hotel, visit the mall or graduate from high school. Your daughter gets rejected by her favorite university.
anonymous

Officials Increase Security, Limit Public Access Ahead Of Inauguration : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...security-limited-public-access

shared by anonymous on 12 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • With just eight days until President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration, law enforcement and local government officials in Washington, D.C., are implementing security measures that will make the historic transition of power look very different from those in the past.
  • Last week's events — in which insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol and pipe bombs were left at the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee offices in Washington — have heightened security fears for the swearing-in, with credible threats on the lives of Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris,
  • The inauguration will also take place against the backdrop of an ongoing FBI manhunt to track down Trump supporters who on Wednesday stormed the Capitol building and assaulted police. Investigators are also looking for the person or persons responsible for leaving pipe bombs at the DNC and RNC.
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  • Despite threats of more violence, Biden told reporters Monday he plans to carry on with the day's events saying, "I'm not afraid of taking the oath outside."
  • The event is set to go ahead as scheduled, with several security modifications that will restrict public access to what is usually a very public event, altering a day that was already scaled back due to the coronavirus pandemic.
  • there will be no public access to the Capitol grounds during the inauguration.
  • She said the Capitol Police — who have been heavily criticized for their handling of Wednesday's violent assault on the House and Senate chambers and offices — are engaged with law enforcement partners on the federal, state, and local levels on security for Inauguration Day.
  • The Washington Monument is also closed to tours due to "credible threats to visitors and park resources" surrounding Biden's inauguration, the National Park Service said. The monument will remain closed through Jan. 24.
  • The NPS says it might also temporarily block public access to roadways, parking areas, and restrooms on the National Mall
  • President Trump granted a state of emergency for Washington, D.C. from Monday through Jan. 24, after D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser requested the declaration.
  • Bowser has also asked the Department of the Interior to cancel or deny permits for demonstrations through Jan. 24, and she's asked the Justice Department to provide daily intelligence and threat briefings to D.C. authorities
  • the Guard plans to have up to 10,000 troops present, with the possibility of an additional increase of up to 15,000 in D.C. to meet current and future requests for the inauguration.
  • Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, and Bowser issued a joint statement urging Americans not to come to D.C. for the celebrations.
mattrenz16

Live Updates: Inauguration and Transition News - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...impeachment-trump

shared by mattrenz16 on 16 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • The Capitol Police said Friday that they had opened an investigation into whether members of Congress inappropriately gave visitors access to the Capitol ahead of the storming of the building last week, after several lawmakers raised concerns that their own colleagues might have allowed members of a pro-Trump mob inside in the days leading up to the assault.
  • In a letter to the acting House and Senate sergeants-at-arms and the Capitol Police, the lawmakers, many of whom served in the military and said they were trained to “recognize suspicious activity,” demanded answers about what they described as an “extremely high number of outside groups” let into the Capitol on Jan. 5 at a time when most tours were restricted because of the coronavirus pandemic.
  • On Friday, Eva Malecki, a spokeswoman, said the Capitol Police was looking into the issue.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The National Park Service announced that the National Mall — the iconic arena of American monuments that stretches between the Capitol and the White House — would be closed for a week to prevent further violence.
xaviermcelderry

Before the Capitol Riot, Calls for Cash and Talk of Revolution - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...capitol-riot-funding.html

Riot Capitalpolice

shared by xaviermcelderry on 17 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • In online videos, the 41-year-old Texan pointed out the flimsiness of the fencing. He cheered the arrival, long before President Trump’s rally at the other end of the mall, of far-right militiamen encircling the building. Then, armed with a bullhorn, Mr. Lee called out for the mob to rush in, until his voice echoed from the dome of the Rotunda.
  • By far the most visible financial backer of Women for America First’s efforts was Mike Lindell, a founder of the MyPillow bedding company, identified on a now-defunct website as one of the “generous sponsors” of a bus tour promoting Mr. Trump's attempt to overturn the election. In addition, he was an important supporter of Right Side Broadcasting, an obscure pro-Trump television network that provided blanket coverage of Trump rallies after the vote, and a podcast run by the former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon that also sponsored the bus tour.
  • Wild Protest linked to three hotels with discounted rates and another site for coordinating travel plans. It also raised donations from thousands of individuals, according to archived versions of a web portal used to collect them. The website has since been taken down, and it is not clear what the money was used for.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • “American citizens feel like they’ve been attacked. Fear’s reaction is anger, anger’s reaction is patriotism and voilà — you get a war,” said Mr. Lee’s co-host, who gave his name as Rampage.
aidenborst

What we won't see at this year's inauguration - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...guration-photography-cnnphotos

Politics US Trump history Culture policy pandemic gop Biden inauguration covid-19

shared by aidenborst on 17 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • That’s how former President Jimmy Carter described the photos of him and his predecessor, Gerald Ford, sharing a limousine on the day of his inauguration. Carter had defeated Ford in the 1980 election, and the two men weren’t exactly friends.
  • “It was incredibly painful for Ford when he lost the election, but you did not let that stand in the way of conceding or doing a good transition because that was the right thing to do,” said David Hume Kennerly, who was Ford’s chief White House photographer and had a remote camera set up in the limo.
  • This tradition, of the incoming president riding to Capitol Hill with the outgoing president, goes all the way back to the 19th century — although then it was a horse-drawn carriage instead of a bulletproof limo.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • “Whether they liked each other or not, they would ride together for the show of unity,”
  • “Harry Truman didn't like Eisenhower, but he rode up to the Hill with him. Nixon rode with LBJ. Ford rode with Carter. Reagan beat Carter and rode with him. … Everybody did that. Even Trump rode with Obama.”
  • But this will not be the case this year, as President Donald Trump has said he will not attend the inauguration of Joe Biden.
  • “It's a celebration of American democracy, it’s a celebration of how we peacefully transfer power,” he said. “The symbolism and the imagery of it is critical.”
  • The 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore was one of the most contentious in American history, with the Supreme Court having to ultimately settle a recount dispute before Gore would concede.
  • “It’s not just to pay off the people who supported you,” he said. “It’s to show the people of the United States that we can do this the right way and that’s why we’re different than so many other places.”
  • The President’s absence isn’t the only reason that this inauguration will be unlike any we have ever seen. The celebrations have been significantly pared down because of the coronavirus pandemic, and Biden’s inaugural committee — trying to keep crowds to a minimum — has urged Americans not to travel to Washington, DC. The National Mall will also be closed to the general public because of security concerns, according to an official familiar with discussions.
  • The Nixon transition was a moment Kennerly said he will never forget. “For drama, that’s definitely top five in my life — that moment, the only time an American president resigned,” he said.
  • Kennerly was on a press riser with other photographers and had only a few seconds to immortalize the historic spectacle. It was a quick sequence of photos as Nixon waved farewell before boarding his helicopter.
  • “You can see his lips are pursed, and in that little moment it had to be incredibly painful for him on every level,” Kennerly said. “He's giving up the presidency. No one's ever done it that way, and he was a disgraced leader and he was leaving under duress.
  • “But once again, it was a peaceful transition. A few minutes later, Ford was sworn in as president of the United States. No guns were fired, no coup was attempted, and as President Ford put it in his remarks, ‘Our long national nightmare is over.’ “
  • “These are photos that can give you more insight behind the scenes,” he said. “And it really boils down to the access of the presidential photographers. Everything's so locked down. This time, (the security) will be insane. There won't be very much behind the scenes, outside the personal photographer to Biden. That is my guess.”
  • So we likely won’t be seeing many of the great photos we’ve seen from past inaugurations. There will be an emptiness about the day, as the celebration is mostly intended to be a virtual event viewed on television.
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