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Turkey Threatens to Block Social Media Over Released Documents - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...a-over-released-documents.html turkey block social media
shared by Hannah Caspar-Johnson on 17 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • Turkish officials threatened to shut down Twitter in the country unless the social-media company blocked the account of a left-wing newspaper that had circulated documents about a military police raid on Turkish Intelligence Agency trucks that were traveling to Syria last January.
  • issued an order barring coverage of the investigation
  • Networks like Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus complied with the court order on Wednesday, removing content from accounts to avert a shutdown, Turkish news outlets reported.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The court argued that publication of the information violated national security and interfered with a continuing inquiry
  • But the BirGun newspaper, as well as other Twitter users, continued to challenge the ban by posting new messages
  • We continue to work diligently to protect the rights of our users and preserve access for millions of Twitter users in Turkey.”
  • Hannah Caspar-Johnson on 17 Jan 15
     
    Turkish government threatens to shut down Twitter if it doesn't comply with a ban on the newspaper that is spreading documents a controversy over possible weapons being carried to Al Qaeda.  
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Donald Trump Just Posted His Most Massive Lead Yet - 1 views

mic.com/...sted-his-most-massive-lead-yet donald trump politics US crisis
shared by katyshannon on 14 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Donald Trump began his Monday facing a spate of unflattering headlines, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) having officially snatched the top position in Iowa from the real estate tycoon. Then came the midday release of a national poll from Monmouth University, which showed Trump posting his most massive lead since entering the 2016 contest in June.
  • Trump crushes the Republican field with 41% support, the poll finds, with Cruz, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson far behind. Cruz garners 14% of Republican voters, while Rubio claims 10% and Carson wins 9%.
  • Further behind are Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former frontrunner Jeb Bush at 3%, while New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, businesswoman Carly Fiorina, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky earn 2% each. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina sits at 1%.
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  • Most disconcertingly for the GOP establishment, the latest poll finds a hefty portion of its electorate, even beyond current Trump supporters, coming around to the idea of Trump as their standard-bearer. Two-thirds of GOP voters said they'd be either enthusiastic or satisfied if he captured the party's nod, while 65% said the brash billionaire had the right temperament to serve as president.
  • Trump's favorability rating stands at 61% — the best among the field and a nine-point jump from his 52% favorable rating in the October Monmouth poll. Only 29% of Republicans view Trump unfavorably, compared to 33% two months ago
  • The finding comes amid signs that Trump's call last week for a "total and complete" ban on Muslims entering the United States is resonating with GOP voters. A Bloomberg Politics poll found that two in three Republicans back the ban, although an NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey showed the Republican electorate more divided. 
  • What's clear, though, is that after briefly surrendering his national polling lead to Carson, Trump is back on top. Of the 12 national polls conducted since November, Trump has led in all of t hem.
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US refugees: Stricter screening as 120-day ban expires - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-us-canada-41729584 US Refugee immigration trump travelban Culture
shared by anonymous on 25 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • US President Donald Trump is to allow refugees to begin entering to the US again, with stricter rules for applicants from 11 "high risk" nations.The decision came as a 120-day ban on refugees expired on Tuesday - a part of Mr Trump's executive orders that came to be known as the "travel ban".Applicants from the 11 nations will be restricted for a 90-day review period.
  • The White House announced on 29 September that it had set a cap on refugees at 45,000 - the lowest since the refugee admissions programme began in 1975.In President Barack Obama's last year in office, the US accepted 85,000 refugees.Pro-immigrant group Human Rights First noted in a statement how US "refugee vetting procedures - which include extensive and comprehensive interviews as well as multiple rounds of security vetting with an array of US and international intelligence and law enforcement agencies - are widely recognised as the most stringent in the world".
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Overseas Spectators Banned From Tokyo Olympics Due To COVID-19 Risks : Coronavirus Upda... - 0 views

www.npr.org/...olympics-due-to-covid-19-risks
shared by anonymous on 20 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • This year's Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games will take place without any overseas spectators after organizers decided to ban international fans from attending the events over COVID-19 concerns. The decision was made during a virtual meeting between the various stakeholders on Saturday.
  • "Based on the present situation of the pandemic, it is highly unlikely that entry into Japan will be guaranteed this summer for people from overseas,"
  • "In order to give clarity to ticket holders living overseas and to enable them to adjust their travel plans at this stage, the parties on the Japanese side have come to the conclusion that they will not be able to enter into Japan at the time of the Olympic and Paralympic Games."
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  • The International Olympic Committee and International Paralympic Committee said they fully respect and accept the move.
  • There's widespread skepticism in Japan about holding the games. As NPR's Anthony Kuhn reported in January, public opinion is turning against the Olympics.
  • Before last year's postponement, Tokyo organizers said they had sold roughly 4.5 million Olympic tickets to residents of Japan, with 970,000 for the Paralympics.
  • There were no detailed figures for ticket purchases from abroad, but Hidenori Suzuki, the organizing committee's deputy executive director of marketing, told the Associated Press that international sales represent 10-20% of the overall total.
  • Overseas fans who purchased tickets for the upcoming Olympic and Paralympic Games will receive a refund.
  • costs jumped by 22% to around $15.5 billion, according to some estimates, which would make Tokyo the priciest games on record.
  • Delaying the Olympics also affected the bottom line of organizers.
  • Japan, which has a population of 126 million, has handled the pandemic better than many other countries, with 8,700 deaths attributed to COVID-19.
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How Boulder tried to regulate guns - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...b-b02a-6a89c415c516_story.html US crisis policy gop
shared by clairemann on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • In the days before the vote, there was a dress rehearsal of sorts, testing how quickly city council members could duck behind the dais, which had been made bulletproof before the occasion.
  • “So it was clearly more than just theoretical at that point,” Weaver said. “It was probably the most intense piece of council work I have ever done.”
  • The night this city banned assault weapons provides a vivid, frightening example of how hard corralling gun ownership and mass shootings has been in Colorado, where the killings at Columbine High School in 1999 and a movie theater in Aurora 13 years later have proved that gun violence here is far from theoretical.
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  • A state court overturned Boulder’s assault weapons ban just days before Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, who appeared in court on 10 murder charges for the first time Thursday and will be held without bail pending trial, allegedly traveled a half-hour from his home to carry out the killings.
  • Law enforcement officials have not disclosed where he acquired the Ruger AR-556 within a week of the shooting. Nor have Boulder’s elected leaders directly blamed the ruling that lifted the assault weapons ban for the tragedy.
  • “I’m not going to pretend that if that law wasn’t struck down, this wouldn’t have happened,” said state Sen. Stephen Fenberg (D), the chamber’s majority leader, whose district includes Boulder. “But it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be addressed.”
  • Like cities such as Berkeley, Calif., and Takoma Park, Md., it forges its own foreign policy, forming a view of how the world should work that differs at times from the outlook in the more conservative state around it. In Colorado, a city’s right to make its own laws and impose its own taxes is called “home rule,” a status Boulder has.
  • “We are not changing state law other than saying a local government can regulate firearms,” Fenberg said. “We are a local-control state — our entire public school system basically is local control. So it’s not uncommon that we pass laws or have long-standing laws on the books that allow local governments to do these types of things.”
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Poland Imposes Near-Total Ban on Abortion - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...poland-abortion-law.html history Politics world
shared by aleija on 28 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • A contentious near-total ban on abortion in Poland went into effect late Wednesday, despite rampant opposition from hundreds of thousands of Poles who began protesting in the fall in the largest demonstrations in the country since the 1989 collapse of communism.
  • The decision had been made in October by the Constitutional Tribunal, but its implementation was delayed after it prompted a month of protests. On Wednesday the government abruptly announced that the ruling was being published in the government’s journal, meaning it came into effect.
  • “I think, I feel, I decide!” and “Freedom of choice instead of terror!” In Warsaw, they marched to the headquarters of the governing Law and Justice Party to songs including “I Will Survive.”
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  • “It’s not only women whom you’re bringing to the streets, it’s the whole nation that has had enough,” said Rafał Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw, adding the decision to publish the ruling “against the will of Poles” was a “conscious and calculated acting to the detriment of the state.”
  • Poland already had one of Europe’s most restrictive abortion laws, with the procedure legal in only three instances: fetal abnormalities, pregnancies resulting from rape or incest, and threats to a woman’s life. The latter two remain legal. But with 1,074 of 1,100 abortions performed in the country last year because of fetal abnormalities, the ban would outlaw abortion in most cases, and critics say many women will resort to illegal procedures or travel abroad to obtain abortions.
  • “For them it is not about protecting life,” said Donald Tusk, an opposition Polish lawmaker and former president of the European Council said of the Law and Justice Party. “Under their rule more and more Poles are dying, and less are being born.”
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US tourism experiences a 'Trump slump' - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...rism-experiences-a-trump-slump
shared by abbykleman on 01 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • abbykleman on 01 Mar 17
     
    Interest in travel to the US has "fallen off a cliff" since Donald Trump's election, according to travel companies who have reported a significant drop in flight searches and bookings since his inauguration and controversial travel ban.
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Most New York Coronavirus Cases Came From Europe, Genomes Show - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...irus-cases-europe-genomes.html Covid-19 mutation genome tracking
shared by Javier E on 09 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • New research indicates that the coronavirus began to circulate in the New York area by mid-February, weeks before the first confirmed case, and that travelers brought in the virus mainly from Europe, not Asia.
  • The research revealed a previously hidden spread of the virus that might have been detected if aggressive testing programs had been put in place.
  • It would not be until late February that Italy would begin locking down towns and cities, and March 11 when Mr. Trump said he would block travelers from most European countries. But New Yorkers had already been traveling home with the virus.
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  • While conspiracy theories might falsely claim the virus was concocted in a lab, the virus’s genome makes clear that it arose in bats.
  • Sophisticated computer programs can then figure out how all of those mutations arose as viruses descended from a common ancestor. If they get enough data, they can make rough estimates about how long ago those ancestors lived. That’s because mutations arise at a roughly regular pace, like a molecular clock.
  • Tracking viral mutations demands sequencing all the genetic material in a virus — its genome. Once researchers have gathered the genomes from a number of virus samples, they can compare their mutations.
  • already, the genomes of the virus are revealing previously hidden outlines of its history over the past few months.
  • The most closely related coronavirus is in a Chinese horseshoe bat, the researchers found. But the new virus has gained some unique mutations since splitting off from that bat virus decades ago.
  • Dr. Boni said that ancestral virus probably gave rise to a number of strains that infected horseshoe bats, and perhaps sometimes other animals.
  • It’s entirely possible, Dr. Boni said, in the past 10 or 20 years, a hybrid virus arose in some horseshoe bat that was well-suited to infect humans, too. Later, that virus somehow managed to cross the species barrier.
  • In January, a team of Chinese and Australian researchers published the first genome of the new virus. Since then, researchers around the world have sequenced over 3,000 more. Some are genetically identical to each other, while others carry distinctive mutations.
  • Dr. Boni and his colleagues found that the genome of the new virus contains a number of mutations in common with strains of coronaviruses that infect bats.
  • The deepest branches of the tree all belong to lineages from China. The Nextstrain team has also used the mutation rate to determine that the virus probably first moved into humans from an animal host in late 2019.
  • In January, as the scope of the catastrophe in China became clear, a few countries started an aggressive testing program. They were able to track the arrival of the virus on their territory and track its spread through their populations.
  • But the United States fumbled in making its first diagnostic kits and initially limited testing only to people who had come from China and displayed symptoms of Covid-19.“It was a disaster that we didn’t do testing,”
  • As new cases arose in other parts of the country, other researchers set up their own pipelines. The first positive test result in New York came on March 1, and after a couple of weeks, patients surged into the city’s hospitals.
  • Dr. Heguy and her colleagues found some New York viruses that shared unique mutations not found elsewhere. “That’s when you know you’ve had a silent transmission for a while,”
  • And researchers at Mount Sinai started sequencing the genomes of patients coming through their hospital. They found that the earliest cases identified in New York were not linked to later ones.“Two weeks later, we start seeing viruses related to each other,”
  • Dr. Gonzalez-Reiche and her colleagues found that these viruses were practically identical to viruses found around Europe.
  • hey write that the viruses reveal “a period of untracked global transmission between late January to mid-February.”
  • Dr. van Bakel and his colleagues found one New York virus that was identical to one of the Washington viruses found by Dr. Bedford and his colleagues. In a separate study, researchers at Yale found another Washington-related virus. Combined, the two studies hint that the coronavirus has been moving from coast to coast for several weeks.
  • While the coronavirus mutations are useful for telling lineages apart, they don’t have any apparent effect on how the virus works.
  • Some viruses evolve so quickly that they require vaccines that can produce several different antibodies. That’s not the case for Covid-19. Like other coronaviruses, it has a relatively slow mutation rate compared to some viruses, like influenza.
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How Belarus 'hijacking' will affect flights in Europe | CNN Travel - 0 views

edition.cnn.com/...index.html politics policy crisis Economics
shared by carolinehayter on 01 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • In the week since Ryanair flight FR4978 from Athens to Vilnius was forcibly diverted to Minsk, travel in Europe already looks very different.
  • The directive, issued Wednesday by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) under the form of a Safety Information Bulletin (SIB), called on all airlines "with their principle place of business in one of the EASA member states" to avoid Belarusian airspace. They advised that all other airlines should do the same, wherever they are based.
  • There were other implications, with Russia -- an ally of Belarus -- taking several days to grant Air France and Austrian Airlines flights to Moscow the clearance to use Russian airspace to divert around Belarus, prompting cancelations.
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  • So how big a deal is this? Huge, say industry insiders -- big enough to have already shaken the aviation map of Europe, and big enough to have knock-on effects beyond the continent -- particularly if the situation escalates further.
  • If it did, passengers could see their flight times increased, a rise in fares across the networks, and even long-haul, nonstop flights needing to make refueling stops along the way.
  • "Now that they're not flying over its airspace, that's good -- governments have acted swiftly to restore confidence -- but I think it'll throw up questions for consumers over who they're flying with, which points they're flying between and how they're flying between them. If you were flying from Athens to Lithuania, or in the region around Russia, you might think twice.
  • The events, described by some governments as a state-sponsored hijacking, have "inevitably redrawn the aviation map of Europe," says one airline industry insider, who wanted to remain anonymous due to the risk of being identified. (
  • But the issues don't just end there, they say. "The problem you have is the challenge around where you draw the new map -- that whole region has restrictions."There are already restrictions flying over Ukraine"
  • "So Belarus had seen a huge increase in traffic because people were going around Ukraine."
  • "Airlines will either have to go very far north into the polar region, or to go down to the Gulf States -- but then most European carriers would avoid flying over Iraq and Iran. So, they'd probably go over Egypt, Saudi Arabia and across India.
  • "There's a big lump of airspace which is strategically important to airlines and is now being denied them -- and there'll be a knock-on effect on flight times, cost, and environmental impact."
  • Everyone in the industry agrees that if diversions become a long-term thing, it'll be a headache.
  • As well as the increased fuel burn and longer flight times, he says, any unplanned stops can send crews over their allotted hours. "They might need to be swapped out, with a new crew being flown in. There are significant consequences to this sort of disruption," he says.
  • The rules and regulations around airline safety are "absolutely sacrosanct," he says -- and have been enshrined in international law since 1944, in the Chicago Convention, which established freedom of the skies after the Second World War.
  • "This is the first time that a mechanism designed to ensure the safety and security of air travel has allegedly been used for political ends, and what's also worrying is that the political response to that has also been to use another mechanism designed to ensure flight security for political ends.
  • If you start playing politics with flight safety, you're setting out on a slippery slope, he argues.
  • "This symbolizes something really big -- since the Chicago Convention, freedom of the skies has been laid out. It's supposed to be universally accepted that airlines have a right to overfly a foreign country without being forced to land," they say.
  • "Clearly that has been violated. What Belarus is said to have done is really horrible -- and if it turns out to be a precedent, it's even worse. It's a terrible signifier of what could happen."
  • In short?"Everyone is worried about what this incident means for the future."
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Lockdown Eased in England, for Now, at Least - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...lockdown-uk-india-variant.html england india pandemic
shared by ethanshilling on 18 May 21 - No Cached
  • The lifting of a wide range of coronavirus rules Monday coincided with a small but worrying spike in cases of a variant, first identified in India, that threatens a lockdown-lifting road map frequently described by Prime Minister Boris Johnson as “cautious but irreversible.”
  • In recent days the authorities have scrambled to ramp up testing and inoculation in parts of the country seeing a sharp rise in cases of the more transmissible variant.
  • The opposition Labour Party has accused Mr. Johnson of bringing on the trouble by delaying a decision to close borders to flights from India last month, while government scientific advisers have expressed their concerns about moving too fast to remove curbs.
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  • Under the changes that came into force on Monday, pubs and restaurants can serve indoors as well as outside, people can hug each other and mix inside their homes in limited numbers.
  • A legal ban on all but essential foreign travel ended too, though travelers to any other than a small number of destinations will have to quarantine on their return.
  • Pakistan and Bangladesh were red listed on April 9 but India was not added until April 23, and Mr. Johnson’s critics have suggested he was reluctant to upset India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, with whom he is trying to strike a trade deal.
  • While the government will fight hard not to have to reverse the changes introduced on Monday, there are growing doubts about whether it can proceed with the next stage of the road map. That change, scheduled to take place on June 21, would scrap almost all remaining restrictions.
  • “We must be humble in the face of this virus,” the health secretary, Matt Hancock, told Parliament on Monday, adding that there were now 86 areas with five or more cases of the variant whose higher transmission rate “poses a real risk.”
  • Mr. Johnson continues to hear criticism for failing to clamp down fast enough on travel from India, even sparing it for some weeks after placing restrictions on travel from Pakistan and Bangladesh.
  • Altogether, that represents the first real breath of freedom for many in England since the third national lockdown was declared in early January.
  • But some experts believe that the government should have reacted faster to the emergence of the variant. “Many of us in the U.K., we’re appalled at the huge delay in classifying it as a variant of concern,” said Peter English, a retired consultant in communicable disease control.
  • In general, Britons are being offered vaccination based on their age, with those oldest treated first. Appointments are to be extended this week to 37-year-olds, Mr. Hancock said.
  • On Monday, Mr. Hancock also said that of 19 cases in Bolton hospitals, most of the patients were eligible for vaccination but had not had one. That prompted a debate in and beyond Mr. Johnson’s Conservative Party about whether the lifting of lockdown restrictions should be reversed to protect people who refuse a vaccine.
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US Travel ban a 'massive success', Trump official says, as protests continue - live - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...s-travel-ban-refugees-airports
shared by davisem on 30 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • davisem on 30 Jan 17
     
    Latest updates as political backlash to president's executive order targeting Muslim-majority countries and shutting down refugee entry continues
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Opposition to Trump travel ban grows as key court decision looms - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...6-9662-6eedf1627882_story.html
shared by abbykleman on 07 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • abbykleman on 07 Feb 17
     
    Ten former high-ranking diplomatic and national security officials, nearly 100 Silicon Valley tech companies, more than 280 law professors, and a host of civil liberties and other organizations have formally lent their support to the legal bid to block President Trump's immigration order.
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Trump travel ban faces new legal assault in Virginia court - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-us-canada-38933108
shared by abbykleman on 10 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • abbykleman on 10 Feb 17
     
    Donald Trump's travel ban faces a fresh legal challenge, a day after it suffered an appeals court setback. Lawyers for the state of Virginia are arguing in a federal court there is "overwhelming evidence" the policy "resulted from animus toward Muslims". On Thursday, the appeals court said the Trump administration failed to offer "any evidence" to justify the measure.
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Donald Trump Rejects Intelligence Report on Travel Ban - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...eport-on-travel-ban-1487987629
shared by ecfruchtman on 25 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • ecfruchtman on 25 Feb 17
     
    An intelligence report by the Department of Homeland Security contradicts the White House's assertion that immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries pose a particular risk of being terrorists and should be blocked from entering the U.S. The report is the latest volley in a struggle between intelligence officials and the Trump administration that has rippled across several agencies.
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Why 'they' seem more violent than 'we' are - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...8-9570-29c9830535e5_story.html guns debate nativism immigration mass murder
shared by Javier E on 18 Feb 18 - No Cached
  • While we are used to approaching America’s gun culture as a singular phenomenon, it is worth considering how it relates to those other headlines about immigration.
  • — from President Trump’s assertion that Mexican immigrants are rapists to the language of the original travel ban, which targeted Muslim-majority countries and was titled “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States.”
  • a powerful narrative persists that immigrants are preternaturally violent and that our safety is best guaranteed by closing our doors to anyone with brown skin.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • while one hand draws up plans for border walls, the other doles out AR-15s to white, male, homegrown terrorists: Between 54 and 63 percent of the mass shootings since 1982 were committed by white men. A hypothetical outside threat is seen as far more deadly than a very real internal one. How do we account for these seemingly contradictory impulses?
  • In recent years, for instance, politicians and pundits have gone to great lengths to distinguish “our” violence from “theirs,” referring to Muslims.
  • Where does a political motive diverge from a delusion? Only in the case of Muslim killers are we confident that we can draw a bright line.
  • We’ve embraced the false dichotomy: If browser history and social media accounts link a shooter to some form of radical Islam, then he is a terrorist (as in the case of Syed Rizwan Farouk, one of the San Bernardino, Calif., attackers), even though the animating factor may have been mental illness.
  • If we look beyond America, we might notice features common among perpetrators across religious and ethnic lines. As Olivier Roy argues in his recent book, “Jihad and Death,” they tend to be young men from middle- or upper-middle-class backgrounds, often with a history of petty crime
  • “People suffering from psychological troubles can undoubtedly find in the jihadi imaginary a way to situate their madness within a realm of meaning shared by others,” Roy writes; “in other words, to cease being considered mad when their insanity reaches its murderous height, because they will be given the prestigious label of terrorist instead of being called a psychopath.”
  • white American perpetrators are deemed “troubled” or “disturbed” (as Trump described Cruz on Thursday), while their Muslim counterparts are purportedly motivated by nothing but religious fanaticism.
  • Perhaps most important — and chilling — what links mass shootings is the sense of sheer randomness they invoke
  • they rarely stop to target foes or spare friends. The mere act of being present makes one a legitimate target. It is this feature of contemporary terrorism — whether in Paris or Parkland — that unites disparate acts of violence and constitutes their prime psychological menace: It could be anyone, anywhere.
  • That truth transcends borders, but Americans continue to embrace the expensive fiction that outsiders are the real threat, with 45 percent of Americans saying immigrants worsen U.S. crime.
  • Even as the Islamic State entreats would-be fighters to take advantage of America’s lax gun laws (“their” domestic attacks depend on “our” policies), our leaders offer “thoughts and prayers” to shooting victims.
  • Scholars in a range of disciplines — from comparative literature to social theory to psychoanalysis — have long noted the tendency to project our faults on people who seem alien to us.
  • With regard to safety and security, demonizing refugees, Muslims, Mexicans and so on does the important work of seeming to take action while leaving the existing order (and the incredible profits of gun manufacturers) intact.
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Trump takes aim at China over coronavirus as known U.S. infections double - The Washing... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...a-abef-020f086a3fab_story.html trump press pandemic
shared by Javier E on 20 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • The president dug in on his use of the term “Chinese virus” to describe the novel coronavirus that was first detected in Wuhan, China, late last year and did not rule out directing economic retaliation toward Beijing.
  • Trump’s use of the term has become a point of pride among some White House aides and supporters, and the president has used it more as his handling of the public health emergency has been increasingly faulted.
  • “China unleashed this plague on the world, and China has to be held accountable,” Cotton said in an interview Wednesday evening with Fox News host Sean Hannity. “That’s why I’m introducing legislation that will say we’re no longer going to buy our basic pharmaceuticals from China. There will be a total ban on buying.”
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  • Trump’s shift to more fully blame China coincides with widening devastation from the virus in the United States and increasing criticism that his administration missed opportunities to prepare and respond. For weeks in January and February, Trump publicly dismissed the outbreak as of very little risk to Americans, even as he banned air travel for non-U.S. citizens traveling from China.
  • Trump’s recent criticism of China also aligns the president with the tougher message that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other members of his administration have voiced for weeks.Trump went further Thursday, saying China could have stopped all spread beyond the Wuhan area but deliberately chose not to do so.
  • After being egged on by a reporter from the pro-Trump One America News Network, Trump blamed the media for its coverage of the crisis and for accusations that his use of “Chinese virus” was racist or xenophobic.
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US's global reputation hits rock-bottom over Trump's coronavirus response | US news | T... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ottom-donald-trump-coronavirus trump reputation us global international prestige trust decline
shared by Javier E on 13 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, which he once dismissed as a hoax, has been fiercely criticised at home as woefully inadequate to the point of irresponsibility.
  • also thanks largely to Trump, a parallel disaster is unfolding across the world: the ruination of America’s reputation as a safe, trustworthy, competent international leader and partner.
  • “The Trump administration’s self-centred, haphazard, and tone-deaf response [to Covid-19] will end up costing Americans trillions of dollars and thousands of otherwise preventable deaths,” wrote Stephen Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard.
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  • “But that’s not the only damage the United States will suffer. Far from ‘making America great again’, this epic policy failure will further tarnish [its] reputation as a country that knows how to do things effectively.”
  • This adverse shift could be permanent, Walt warned. Since taking office in 2017, Trump has insulted America’s friends, undermined multilateral alliances and chosen confrontation over cooperation. Sanctions, embargoes and boycotts aimed at China, Iran and Europe have been globally divisive.
  • Trump’s ineptitude and dishonesty in handling the pandemic, which has left foreign observers as well as Americans gasping in disbelief, is proving a bridge too far.
  • Erratic behaviour, tolerated in the past, is now seen as downright dangerous. It’s long been plain, at least to many in Europe, that Trump could not be trusted. Now he is seen as a threat. It is not just about failed leadership. It’s about openly hostile, reckless actions.
  • The furious reaction in Germany after 200,000 protective masks destined for Berlin mysteriously went missing in Thailand and were allegedly redirected to the US is a case in point. There is no solid proof Trump approved the heist. But it’s the sort of thing he would do – or so people believe.
  • “We consider this to be an act of modern piracy. This is no way to treat transatlantic partners. Even in times of global crisis, we shouldn’t resort to the tactics of the wild west,” said Andreas Geisel, a leading Berlin politician. Significantly, Merkel has refused to give Trump the benefit of the doubt.
  • While publicly rejecting foreign help, Trump has privately asked European and Asian allies for aid – even those, such as South Korea, that he previously berated.
  • There was dismay among the G7 countries that a joint statement on tackling the pandemic could not be agreed because Trump insisted on calling it the “Wuhan virus” – his crude way of pinning sole blame on China.
  • Trump has ignored impassioned calls to create a Covid-19 global taskforce or coalition. He appears oblivious to the catastrophe bearing down on millions of people in the developing world.
  • “Trump’s battle against multilateralism has made it so that even formats like the G7 are no longer working,” commented Christoph Schult in Der Spiegel. “It appears the coronavirus is destroying the last vestiges of a world order.”
  • Trump’s surreal televised Covid-19 briefings are further undermining respect for US leadership. Trump regularly propagates false or misleading information, bets on hunches, argues with reporters and contradicts scientific and medical experts.
  • Europeans were already outraged by Trump’s reported efforts to acquire monopoly rights to a coronavirus vaccine under development in Germany. This latest example of nationalistic self-interest compounded anger across the EU over Trump’s travel ban, imposed last month without consultation or scientific justification.
  • To a watching world, the absence of a fair, affordable US healthcare system, the cut-throat contest between American states for scarce medical supplies, the disproportionate death toll among ethnic minorities, chaotic social distancing rules, and a lack of centralised coordination are reminiscent of a poor, developing country, not the most powerful, influential nation on earth.
  • That’s a title the US appears on course to lose – a fall from grace that may prove irreversible. The domestic debacle unleashed by the pandemic, and global perceptions of American selfishness and incompetence, could change everything. According to Walt, Trump has presided over “a failure of character unparalleled in US history”.
  • Do Americans realise how far their country’s moral as well as financial stock has fallen? Perhaps at this time of extreme stress, it seems not to matter. But it will matter later on – for them and for the future international balance of power.
  • Heiko Maas, Germany’s foreign minister, said he hoped the crisis would force a fundamental US rethink about “whether the ‘America first’ model really works”. The Trump administration’s response had been too slow, he said. “Hollowing out international connections comes at a high price,” Maas warned.
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Vanquish the Virus? Australia and New Zealand Aim to Show the Way - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...new-zealand-coronavirus.html science australia new zealand response pandemic Crisis leadership
shared by Javier E on 24 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • what Australia and New Zealand have already accomplished is a remarkable cause for hope. Scott Morrison of Australia, a conservative Christian, and Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s darling of the left, are both succeeding with throwback democracy — in which partisanship recedes, experts lead, and quiet coordination matters more than firing up the base.
  • . Elimination means reducing infections to zero in a geographic area with continued measures to control any new outbreak, and that may require extended travel bans. Other places that seemed to be keeping the virus at bay, such as China, Hong Kong and Singapore, have seen it rebound, usually with infections imported from overseas.
  • compared to Mr. Trump and leaders in Europe, Mr. Morrison and Ms. Ardern responded with more alacrity and with starker warnings.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • In both countries, the public initially resisted and then complied, in part because the information flowing from officials at every level was largely consistent.
  • Playing their own versions of explainer in chief, Mr. Morrison has veered toward conservative radio, while Ms. Ardern prefers Facebook Live. But they’ve both received praise from scientists for listening and adapting to evidence.
  • “It’s a case of politicians just not being in the way,” said Ian Mackay, an immunologist at the University of Queensland who has been involved in response planning for the pandemic. “It’s a mix of things, but I think it comes down to taking advice based on expertise.”
  • Australia and New Zealand have squashed the curve
  • Australia, a nation of 25 million people that had been on track for 153,000 cases by Easter, has recorded a total of 6,670 infections and 78 deaths. It has a daily growth rate of less than 1 percent, with per capita testing among the highest in the world.
  • New Zealand’s own daily growth rate, after soaring in March, is also below 1 percent, with 1,456 confirmed cases and 17 deaths. It has just 361 active cases in a country of five million.
  • These figures put the two countries closer to Taiwan and South Korea, which have controlled the virus’s spread for now, than to the United States and Europe — even places seen as success stories, like Germany.
  • That collaboration set the tone. Many of the state and local task forces spurred on by Mr. Morrison’s early action have stayed in constant contact, drawing in academics who independently started to model the virus’s spread
  • The government then opened the budgetary floodgates to support suffering workers and add health care capacity. When infections started climbing, many of the labs and hospitals hired second and third rounds of scientists to help.
  • It all started with scientists. In Australia, as soon as China released the genetic code for the coronavirus in early January, pathologists in public health laboratories started sharing plans for tests. In every state and territory, they jumped ahead of politicians.
  • The newly formed national cabinet has delivered a surprising level of consensus for a country with a loose federal system subject to high levels of discord among state premiers, whose roles and powers resemble those of American governors.
  • Dr. Michael Baker, a physician and professor at the University of Otago in Wellington, became a prominent voice outside the government pushing for elimination of the virus, not just its suppression.
  • In Australia, officials are mostly discussing elimination in private, as a potential side effect of a strategy they still describe as suppression
  • elimination would be a “nirvana” scenario — an achievement that would be tough to maintain without indefinite bans on international travel or 14-day quarantines until a vaccine arrives.
  • Like Dr. Anthony Fauci, the face of the American government’s scientific response, they are known for extensive public health pedigrees, calm demeanors and no-nonsense adherence to facts.
  • He and others like him at the local level are key factors in a revival of trust in government that has appeared in poll after poll lately, even as the two countries’ economies have cratered and people have been told to severely restrict their lives.
  • some scientists wonder if eliminating the virus with good management might rebuild some faith not just in democracy, but also in the value of expertise.
  • “Maybe we’ll see the return of science,” Dr. Mackay added. “I doubt it, but who knows.”
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Opinion | Should the President's Words Matter in Court? - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-travel-ban-appeals-court.html
shared by martinde24 on 31 May 17 - No Cached
  • martinde24 on 31 May 17
     
    But there is an exception to this rule: namely, when presidential speech supplies evidence of intent or purpose of established legal relevance - for example, when assessing a claim of religious discrimination. Thus the Fourth Circuit was right to rely on Mr. Trump's words in rejecting the administration's effort to revive its travel ban, and the Supreme Court should follow suit.
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