#The Longer Trump Waits To Release New Travel Ban

[newstfionline]

Monday, March 15, 2021

Call of the wild: Great outdoors is great escape in pandemic (AP) For those venturing off the beaten path, be advised—it’s a little crowded out there. By nature’s standards, anyway, as the great outdoors has become the great escape. Hiking trails, parks and other open spaces were packed in 2020 with a cooped-up population searching for fresh air during the coronavirus pandemic. Locked down, shut in or just fearful of crowds, people took up hiking, biking, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, camping, tennis and golf—to name several—in significant numbers. 8.1 million more Americans went hiking in 2020 compared to ‘19, according to a preview of an upcoming outdoor participation report from the Outdoor Foundation, the philanthropic wing of the Outdoor Industry Association. 7.9 million more went camping last year. 3.4 million more participated in freshwater fishing. The foundation’s research also reflected a decline in inactivity for most age groups and across all income levels.

U.S. airport passengers hit highest level since March 2020 (Reuters) The Transportation Security Administration said it screened 1.357 million U.S. airport passengers on Friday, the highest number screened since March 15, 2020, as air travel begins to rebound from a pandemic-related drop. Covid-19 has devastated air travel demand, with U.S. airline passenger demand down 60 percent in 2020 and down 63 percent in January. But with a growing number of Americans getting vaccinated, demand and advanced bookings have started to rise in recent weeks. Friday’s numbers were still down 38 percent over pre-Covid-19 levels.

Winter storm closes roads in Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska (AP) A powerful late winter snowstorm intensified over the central Rocky Mountains on Sunday with heavy snow and wind leading to airport and road closures, power outages and avalanche warnings in parts of Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska. The National Weather Service in Wyoming called it a “historic and crippling” winter storm that would cause extremely dangerous to impossible travel conditions through at least early Monday. Major roads southeast of a line that crosses diagonally from the southwest corner of Wyoming to its northeast corner were closed Sunday, including roads in and out of Cheyenne and Casper. Farther south, a record of over 2 feet (61 centimeters) of snow had fallen just outside Cheyenne by noon Sunday, the weather service reported. A SNOTEL site at Windy Peak in the Laramie Range reported 52 inches (1.3 meters) of snow in a 24-hour period ending Sunday morning, the weather service said.

FEMA to help manage unaccompanied minors at US-Mexico border (AP) The Biden administration is turning to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for help managing and caring for record numbers of unaccompanied immigrant children who are streaming into the United States by illegally crossing the border with Mexico. Government figures show a growing crisis at the border as hundreds of children illegally enter the U.S. from Mexico daily and are taken into custody. The Homeland Security Department is supposed to process and transfer unaccompanied minor children to the Department of Health and Human Services within three days so that they can be placed with a parent already living in the United States, or other suitable sponsor, until their immigration cases can be resolved. But more children are being held longer at Border Patrol facilities that weren’t designed with their care in mind because long-term shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services have next to no capacity to accommodate them. Children are being apprehended daily at far higher rates than HHS can release them to parents or sponsors.

Spanish Police Seize Submarine Built to Carry Drugs (WSJ) Spanish police Friday said they had seized a 30-foot long narco-submarine that could carry 2.2 tons of narcotics, a sign of the lengths cartels are going to transport illegal drugs to the booming European market. Police said they discovered the narco-sub in Malaga on Spain’s Costa del Sol last month as part of an international police operation that led to the arrest of 52 people and seizure of more than 400 kilos of cocaine, along with other illegal drugs and cash. The vessel was made of fiberglass and plywood and powered by two 200-horsepower engines, although it had never sailed, police said. Narco-subs are semisubmersibles that float mostly below the waterline and have long ferried cocaine from Colombia to Central America. In 2019, Spanish law enforcement discovered a narco-sub off Spain’s Atlantic coast, confirming persistent rumors that they can reach Europe.

Italy prepares for an Easter lockdown as Covid-19 cases grow exponentially (CNN) Italy is facing another lockdown, as the government attempts to contain a recent surge of coronavirus cases, marred by the presence of new variants. Half of Italy’s 20 regions, which include the cities Rome, Milan and Venice, will be entering new coronavirus restrictions from Monday, March 15. The measures will be effective through April 6, according to a decree passed by Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s cabinet on Friday. In regions demarcated as “red zones” people will be unable to leave their houses except for work or health reasons, with all non-essential shops closed. In “orange zones,” people will also be banned from leaving their town and their region—except for work or health reasons—and bars and restaurants will only be able to do delivery and take-away service. Additionally, over Easter weekend, the entire country will be considered a “red zone,” and will be subject to a national lockdown from April 3 to 5.

Born in Soviet Exile, They Might Die in a Russian One (NYT) Long lines of people waiting to buy milk, toilet paper and other essentials disappeared from Russia decades ago. But one line has only grown longer—the one Yevgeniya B. Shasheva has been waiting in. For 70 years. That is the time that has passed since her birth in a remote Russian region. Her family was sent into exile there from Moscow during the height of Stalin’s Great Purge in the 1930s, when millions were executed or died in prison camps. Throughout the past seven decades, Ms. Shasheva says, she has been waiting to move home to the Russian capital. A 2019 ruling by Russia’s Constitutional Court ordered that the government make this happen, mandating that such “children of the gulag”—around 1,500 of them, according to some estimates—be given the financial means to move to the cities from which Stalin banished their parents. But the process has stalled completely, leaving Ms. Shasheva with nearly 55,000 people ahead of her in line for social housing in Moscow. So she waits 800 miles away in Nizhny Odes, a town so far off the beaten track that wild bears appear regularly on the streets.

US-Turkey reset faces long list of hurdles (AP) Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has toned down his anti-Western and anti-US rhetoric in an apparent effort to reset the rocky relationship with his NATO allies, but so far he’s been met by silence from U.S. President Joe Biden. Nearly two months into his presidency, Biden still hasn’t called Erdogan, which some in Turkey see as a worrying sign. By contrast, former President Donald Trump and Erdogan spoke just days after the 2016 election. Ties between Ankara and Washington—which once considered each other as strategic partners—have steadily deteriorated in recent years over differences on Syria, Turkey’s cooperation with Russia and more recently on Turkish naval interventions in the eastern Mediterranean, which U.S. officials have described as destabilizing. Despite tensions, many within Erdogan’s government were hoping for four more years of the administration led by Trump, who had a personal rapport with Erdogan and didn’t give him any lectures about Turkey’s human rights record. Biden drew ire from Turkish officials after an interview with the New York Times in which he spoke about supporting Turkey’s opposition against “autocrat” Erdogan. Analysts say it’s going to be very difficult to reset the relationship, given the range of issues where the two countries don’t see eye to eye.

At least 39 killed in Myanmar district after Chinese factories burned, media say (Reuters) Security forces killed at least 22 protesters in the poor, industrial Hlaingthaya suburb of Myanmar’s main city on Sunday after Chinese-financed factories in the area were set ablaze, according to local media. A further 16 people were reported killed elsewhere in Yangon and other parts of Myanmar and state television said a policeman had died in one of the bloodiest days of protests against the Feb. 1 military coup against elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi. China’s embassy said many Chinese staff were injured and trapped in arson attacks by unidentified assailants on garment factories in Hlaingthaya and that it had called on Myanmar to protect Chinese property and citizens. As plumes of smoke rose from the industrial area, security forces opened fire on protesters in the suburb that is home to migrants from across the country, local media said.

In China, millennials embrace Spanish (NBC News) Yilin Ye, a student from Anji, in the eastern province of Zhejiang, China, is spending time abroad at the University of Zaragoza in Spain. Ye, 25, said she first started learning Spanish after having heard about its “excellent reputation.” She said she feels she takes on a slightly different persona when she speaks Spanish. “It’s a really beautiful thing, really fascinating,” she said. “When I’m speaking Chinese, I’m more calm. When I’m speaking English, I’m probably a bit more open, and when I speak Spanish, I’m very ‘wow.’” Just how popular is the world’s second-most-popular spoken language in China? There are about 50,000 Spanish speakers in China, a figure scholars say is growing by the year. “The Spanish language is making waves in China,” Lu Jingsheng, an author and national coordinator of Spanish for the Chinese government, said in an interview.

China Eases Visa Rules for Foreigners Who Get Chinese Vaccines (Bloomberg) The China-made vaccine is becoming the ticket to enter the mainland. China said it will ease visa application requirements for foreigners seeking to enter the mainland from Hong Kong if they have been inoculated with Covid-19 vaccines made in China. Foreigners visiting the mainland for work will face less paperwork in visa applications if they are able to show they have received vaccines produced in China. With the vaccine certificates, these travelers will also be able to skip the requirement for a Covid-19 test or fill out a travel declaration form. The rule also expands the scope of applicants eligible for a visa due to humanitarian needs, such as taking care of family or attending funerals, if they have received Chinese vaccines. Other applicants should still follow the earlier visa procedure, according to the statement.

Mysterious attacks on at least a dozen tankers carrying Iranian oil are reportedly due to covert Israeli operations (Business Insider) Israel has used water mines and other weapons to sabotage at least a dozen tankers carrying Iranian oil and bound for Syria, according to a Wall Street Journal report, which cited US and regional officials. In violation of US and international sanctions, Iran has continued trading oil with Syria. Israel is reportedly concerned that the profits from these sales help fund terrorism in the region, and has targeted the tankers as a result. These tankers tend to carry hundreds of millions of dollars worth of oil, per the Journal. A shipping professional told the Journal that Israel conducted three strikes against ships carrying Iranian oil in 2019, and a separate shipping professional said six ships used by Iran were targeted last year. There are not any known instances of ships being sunk as a result of these suspected operations, but at least two were forced to return to Iran. The alleged Israeli attacks may represent a new front in the conflict between these two historic adversaries.

#headlines #news

[lokiondisneyplus]

Today I left the house wearing a face mask for the first time.

I had woken up to the sound of heavy rain, which is always surreal in Los Angeles, and when I look out of the window to the hauntingly dehumanising sight of bandana-clad dog walkers, an eerie weight settles as I remember: this is our reality now.

I’m standing in the supermarket queue, a line dotted by crosses taped on the floor of the underground car park to signify our designated 6ft distance. Easily 50 people long and snaking around the perimeter of the building, I make my way to the last available X-marks-the-spot and join the other masked Bandits. I haven’t food shopped for over a week and am in need of supplies.

There is an obnoxiously loud man two crosses ahead of me ranting into his phone with such a high energy, the surrounding Bandits have allowed an extended social distance of a cross on either side of him. I sigh, remembering I’ve left my headphones at home, so am unable to tune him out, I wait and exhale, wondering how I am going to get used to the claustrophobic sensation of hot air and fabric condensing on my face.

Loud Phone Man is not wearing a mask and it's clear we’ve passed the tipping point of mild judgement, at least here in LA, where Bandits exchange a raised eyebrow, (about the only non-verbal Bandit communication available) which somehow magnifies the annoyance of this shopper - not only loud, but breathing indiscriminately all over us in this confined space… what does he think this is? Last week??

It’s Monday on #Week4 of Covid-19 lockdown in La La Land and as I shuffle to the next X I reflect on the journey so far.

After a whirlwind press tour to promote the release of Misbehaviour in UK cinemas (sadly cinemas were shuttered just days after the film's theatrical release – but it's available to watch online at home from April 15th!) I returned to work in Atlanta for Loki, the Marvel limited series for Disney Plus I’ve been working on, so am on set when I get the news that we are going on hiatus as a precaution due to the accelerating coronavirus, initially for one week. Thinking it would be longer, but still unsure at that point, I book a flight to LA to sit things out there for the time being. The next day Trump imposes a travel ban on travelling in or out of the US for 30 days, and with my visa situation and the pace at which everything is moving, it feels risky to fly to the UK in case I cannot get back into the country when filming recommences, whenever that will be.

So, with my housemate and her dog for company, we embark on social distancing, self-isolation and Lady Macbeth-level hand-washing.

Managing a constant low-level anxiety about my parents and loved ones, and friends in New York, London, Johannesburg and all over the world, I become consumed by the news, glued to the BBC website and KCRW talk radio for the latest figures. Like families gathered around “the wireless” in wartime, everything is unfolding so rapidly and the news, never this dramatic in my lifetime, takes on disaster-movie proportions.

FaceTime and WhatsApp become my lifelines as the reality of the pandemic is tinged with a weird detachment… a numbness I later realise was a form of shock that lasts for nearly two weeks and puts me into a hyper-focused state as I race to keep up, stay informed and learn how to adapt to this new rhythm.

I am of course aware that I am so privileged to be safe and personally unaffected thus far, but grasping the truth from what is overblown, and fact from politics and propaganda, give everything an out-of-body zero gravity quality; a new normal we are all united in.

Things are kicking off in the food line as my attention is caught by an exasperated Valley Girl three Xs ahead who finally explodes at Loud Phone Man, “ OH MY GAAAAD, USE YOUR INSIDE VOICE, CANT YOU SEEEEE EVERYONE IS LOOKING AT YOU CAUSE YOU’RE TALKING SO LOUD… WE ALL HAVE TO STAND HERE, OHMYGAAAD!” As she stomps her Ugged feet to the next X the security guard and smiling store employee (no mask) approach and I can feel a repressed inside-voice-cheer emanate from the rest of the line in applause.

The Bandit Couple ahead of me raise another eyebrow in solidarity and Female Bandit begins to capture a video of Loud Phone Man on her iPhone. The air gets thin, the energy tightens, “Hey Man,” Smiling Store Employee intercepts, Security guard flanking, “You wanna keep it down a bit, people are stressed, y’know? Thanks Man.” Valley Girl scowls, Bandit couple exchange glances, while still filming, Loud Phone Man defends, “I WASN’T EVEN TALKING THAT LOUUUUUD!!!” (Collective Bandit eyeroll) “YESSSSS YOU WERE!!!” Hisses Valley Girl, “Yeah Man, sorry you were,” Store Employee placates. taking the referee stance. I notice Loud Phone Man is wearing flip-flops, on a rainy day. He continues his conversation into his device, phone held to his lips, like a dictaphone, barely any quieter. “We have to be prepared…”

I sigh and feel warm breath on my cheeks. Mouth drying I look at my phone for escape and see that Boris Johnson has been admitted into intensive care for persistent and worsening Covid-19 symptoms. I suddenly feel very far from home and very sad.

I remember the things I’ve been doing to keep grounded and my spirits up. One of the benefits of turning out old cupboards was rediscovering my long dormant art materials. Painting, such an absorbing and transporting activity for me in childhood, was once something I considered doing instead of acting, but found it a little socially isolating - so acting won because it felt more collaborative. Now, of course, painting in isolation is perfect and becomes the most comforting of pastimes and a creative channel as I make images of my family and feel like I am spending time with them.

Understanding how superfluous actors are in a crisis such as this, I come to terms with the fact that staying at home, as passive as it may seem, is my contribution for now. Having the luxury of not having to home-school any children and knowing my work is pretty much on pause until social distancing recedes, I try to reframe this time as a chance to rest and refill the creative well. I read novels for pleasure, something I rarely find time for beyond work-related reads. I take my first Zoom yoga class (alexdawsonyoga.com), I join a 21-day online meditation experience (chopracentermediation.com), I take local hikes for fresh air and make first ever batches of banana bread and chicken soup. I even buy a mini trampoline online which, after a mildly challenging self-assembly, I’ve been sweating it out on to streamed classes online (lekfit.com) with a friend in Toronto, followed by accountability FaceTime coffee dates to virtually high five!

By the end of week two, the adrenalin crash truly hits and I’m exhausted from the constant rhythm shifting, news consumption and uncertainty. I’m an eternal optimist and good at self-motivating, but even when you’re Keeping Calm and Carrying on, you need to crash at some point. I nearly cry when I get my mum an Ocado food delivery slot - nothing has been available for weeks - and the “what ifs” that I have been keeping at bay with all my other activities release with relief and gratitude.

That’s when I discover Brené Brown’s new podcast Unlocking Us and find such solace in her calm and thoroughly researched words and conversations. Since her TED talk fame as a charismatic shame and vulnerability researcher, I’ve read all of her books and there is always something practical and nourishing in her work, told with humour and in a deeply relatable way - which I’ve found comfort in while in the midst of folding laundry, cleaning the bath or chopping vegetables.

Back in the food line and things are moving; the tension of the Loud Phone Man Vs Valley Girl dispute still simmers but everyone relaxes as they get closer to the front-door finish line. Smiling Store Employee does his speech on the new system: no reusable bags allowed, sanitised trollies and a one-way system in the aisles inside marked by arrows on the floor, to minimise contact with other customers. It all feels so surreal and regimented, but the Bandits, already drained from the 30-minute wait, constant Loud Phone Man soundtrack, near car park fight and everything else they’re all adjusting to, nod wearily behind their moist makeshift masks. It’s a bizarre sight.

Still chatting, Loud Phone Man makes it in and there’s a collective “phew” eye-contact exchanged between Smiling Store Employee and the remaining Bandits. Then his smile drops and crinkles for a second. “Yeah, he’s been in every day this week. It’s kinda sad. There’s no one on the phone.” The Bandits' brows knot quizzically. “Yeah, I think he has mental health issues, he just talks but the phone’s not on and he has no ear pieces, he just talks into it… 'They’re coming, we have to be prepared.'… I don’t know what to do.”

The reality breaks my heart. It seems to highlight the collective insanity we’ve all been processing and in that moment I just feel so frustrated at the state of the world and how this pandemic has exposed so many cracks in our society - from mental health to healthcare to privilege and poverty, everything just feels so raw.

I try to look for the silver linings and, among all the fear and anxiety and loss, I’ve been so inspired by human resilience, adaptability and creativity. I’m hopeful this great pandemic leveller will bring a new era of authenticity. An opportunity to shift mentality from Me to We.

Week three in self-isolation felt almost normal, which feels weird to admit. I’m getting lots of sleep and take regular meditative baths, which I’ve renamed Home Spa. I’ve found ways to safely contribute in my local community. When the shelves were bare from panic buying, I chatted with the manager of our local grocery store, who seemed so overwhelmed, so my housemate and I volunteered to stack shelves after hours. Although not exactly the front lines, we have fun and it feels good to give something back in our small way.

We of course negotiated to be paid in baked beans and toilet paper.

#Gugu Mbatha-Raw #Loki #Disney+ #coronavirus #Covid-19 #lockdown

[viralhottopics]

The Longer Trump Waits To Release New Travel Ban, The Less It May Fly In The Courts

WASHINGTON Opponents of President Donald Trumps executive order banning refugees and certain foreign travelers believe the administration repeatedly delaying its release of an update version only prove what theyve said all along: The order was slapdash and unnecessary.

They received ammunition this week when anadministration official reportedly told CNNthat the release of a new executive order would be pushed back because Trumps joint address to Congress was so well-received.

If the administration genuinely believed that the ban is urgently needed to protect national security, then one would assume they would not delay issuing a new order for political reasons, Lee Gelernt, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney who is leading the travel ban challenge in Brooklyn federal court, told The Huffington Post in an email. But, as national security experts from both parties have stated, a ban is not the way to protect the country, and is in fact, counterproductive.

One week into his presidency, Trump signed an executive order he said was necessary to prevent terrorists and other people intending to harm Americans from entering the country. The order barred nationals of seven Muslim-majority nations for 90 days, all refugees for 120 days and Syrian refugees indefinitely.

Multiple plaintiffs and organizations were quick tochallenge it in court, and a federal judge in Seattle temporarily halted the order nationwide on Feb. 3. Less than a week later, an appeals court refused to unblock the order.

The Trump administration announced plans for a new order in mid-February and told the public and reporters to expect it last week. That timeline keeps changing. First,officials said the new order was likely to drop Wednesday of this week, then pushed the expected release tonext week, likely Monday. They have sincesaid the order wont be released until next week at the earliest,The Associated Press reportedThursday afternoon.

Lawyers for the Department of Justice havetold the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which is further considering the legality of the initial order, to hold off on moving forward with the case. The President intends in the near future to rescind the Order and replace it with a new, substantially revised Executive Order, they said.

That near future seems to have come and gone, and the 9th Circuit responded Monday by denying the governments request to delay the appeal. The court gave the Trump administration until March 10 to file its opening brief explaining why the travel ban should be reinstated.

A White House official told HuffPost that it was inaccurate to say the new executive order, meant to replace the travel ban blocked in the courts more than a month ago, had been delayed because the date was never formally announced.

But White House officials told reporters this week that they had planned for a Wednesday signing day and those plans changed after Trump delivered his joint address to Congress, indicating the decision was at least in part because the president had received positive feedback on the speech.

We want the [executive order] to have its own moment, one official said, according to CNN.

Axios reported a similar comment from a top aide, who also reportedly said officials were making final tweaks to the orders language to make sure they got it right this time.

For once, we had the wind at our sails, the aide told Axios, referring to the accolades Trump received in response to his speech. We decided not to sh*t on ourselves.

Thats not to say the administration isnt taking the redrafting seriously. Officials are reportedly considering tweaks to address concerns about the first executive order, such as officially exempting green card holders and removing Iraq from the list of seven countries whose citizens are banned.

Some opponents of the original ban suggest that the administration may be taking a long time to draft a new and improved executive order because officials cant quite figure out how to carry out the presidents goals in a way that would hold up in court.

The repeated delays demonstrate just how difficult it will be for the president to craft a constitutional order, saidWashington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson. He spearheaded the lawsuit that led to the nationwide injunction that kept the travel ban from being enforced.

Nearly four weeks have passed since I obtained an injunction halting President Trumps hastily-issued, unconstitutional and illegal executive order, he said in an email. Thats four times as long as it took his administration to rush that initial order out the door, citing urgent national security concerns.

The entire process of redrafting a travel ban seems like more evidence the executive order wasnt necessary in the first place, said Marielena Hincapi, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, which was part of the Brooklyn lawsuit suit one of the first filed against the initial order.

You would think if it were such a necessity for our national security and our safety that they would have issued something quickly, Hincapi said. But now delaying it because his approval ratings are increasing and they dont want his approval ratings to drop again … undermines their arguments that this is actually necessary for national security.

Elise Foley reported from Washington. Cristian Farias reported from New York.

Read more: http://huff.to/2lIMikH

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#The Longer Trump Waits To Release New Travel Ban #The Less It May Fly In The Courts

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Biden plans sweeping reversal of Trump’s immigration agenda, from deportations to asylum policy

While the COVID-19 public health crisis and its impact on the U.S. economy will preoccupy President-elect Joe Biden during his first weeks in office, the incoming Democratic administration is also expected to quickly start dismantling President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda.

After Biden is sworn-in in January, his administration will move to fully restore an Obama-era program that shields 640,000 undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children from deportation, haltingTrump’s unsuccessful efforts to end it, people familiar with the plans told CBS News. The incoming administration also intends to rescind Trump’s travel and immigration restrictions on 13 mostly African or predominantly Muslim countries.

Biden will look to implement a 100-day freeze on deportations while his administration issues guidance narrowing who can be arrested by immigration agents. Obama-era memos that prioritized the deportation of immigrants with criminal convictions, recent border-crossers and those who entered the country illegally more than once were scrapped in 2017 by Trump so that no unauthorized immigrant would be exempted from being arrested and removed from the country.

A source familiar with Biden’s plans said new guidance would be designed to curb so-called “collateral arrests,” which are apprehensions of immigrants who are not the target of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations but are nevertheless taken into custody because they are in the country without legal status.

Trump made immigration a major theme of his insurgent and successful 2016 campaign. Despite frequent court challenges, his administration achieved rare success on this front in four years, reshaping the U.S. immigration system through more than 400 high-profile and little-noticed policy changes.

However, all of Trump’s immigration measures — from the so-called “travel ban” and the efforts to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, to new requirements for green cards and the asylum restrictions for migrants at the U.S. southern border — were enacted without Congress through proclamations, policy memos, regulations or other executive actions.

With his defeat, Trump’s immigration policy changes are now vulnerable — and Biden’s team is eager to begin the process of undoing most of them.

“All that stuff was done administratively through the [president’s] executive authority, and so a new executive can basically reject those and start from scratch,” a source familiar with the Biden team’s plans told CBS News.

At the southern border, Biden has pledged to discontinue the Trump administration’s policy of requiring non-Mexican migrants to wait in Mexico for the duration of their U.S asylum cases. It is unclear, however, how the cases of thousands of asylum-seekers currently waiting in northern Mexico will be adjudicated and whether any of them will be paroled and allowed to continue their proceedings in the U.S.

A source familiar with the Biden team’s planning said the incoming administration will withdraw from the three bilateral agreements Trump brokered with Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras that allow the U.S. to send rejected asylum-seekers to those countries and have them seek refuge there.

The incoming administration will also look at reinstating an Obama administration initiative that allowed certain at-risk children in Central America to request refugee or parole status and reunite with their families in the U.S. if their parents were authorized to be in the country, the source said. The Obama administration created the Central American Minors program in 2014 in response to a rise in border crossings by unaccompanied migrant children but Trump ended it in 2017.

The potential revival of the program, coupled with increased foreign aid to Central America, would be part of a broader Biden administration approach to address unauthorized migration from the region — a diplomatic task Biden was charged with overseeing during President Obama’s tenure.

Biden’s team is also planning to begin the process of terminating the “public charge” rules the Trump administration implemented to deny green cards and immigrant visas to applicants who U.S. officials determine rely — or could rely in the future — on government benefits like Medicaid, food stamps and Section 8 housing vouchers. Because the 2019 rules were instituted through the regulatory process, experts expect their rescission to take longer than that of presidential directives.

Citing the coronavirus-induced economic downturn, Trump invoked his executive authority this spring to limit legal immigration and the issuance of temporary work visas — and those restrictions have yet to be lifted.

The Trump administration has also expelled tens of thousands of unauthorized border-crossers, including unaccompanied children, without court hearings or asylum screenings through an order issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). While the Trump administration has defended the policy as one based on public health, former officials have said they were pressured into authorizing it.

Biden has yet to say whether his administration will continue, alter or completely scrap Trump’s pandemic-era limits on immigrant and work visas. Biden’s campaign promised that the former vice president will direct the CDC to review the expulsions policy “to ensure that people have the ability to submit their asylum claims while ensuring that we are taking the appropriate COVID-19 safety precautions.”

The president-elect has promised to dramatically increase refugees admissions, moving away from the record-low 15,000 spots set by Trump and raising the cap to 125,000. Biden has also pledged to grant Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to certain Venezuelan exiles in the U.S. to shield them from deportation.

León Rodríguez, who led U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) during the Obama presidency, said a Biden administration should prioritize reviewing Trump’s efforts to end TPS protections for approximately 300,000 immigrants from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, Sudan, Nepal and Honduras. In September, a federal appellate court allowed the Trump administration to terminate the programs, but TPS beneficiaries are not set to lose their protections until March 2021.

Jennifer Molina, a spokeswoman for the Biden campaign, said the incoming administration will also create a task force to help locate hundreds of migrant parents who were separated from their children at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2017 and 2018 and remain unreachable. “President-elect Joe Biden will restore order, dignity and fairness to our immigration system. At its core, his immigration policy will be driven by the need to keep families together,” Molina said in a statement.

While Biden’s team will have the legal authority to overturn Trump’s policies, Doris Meissner, a former commissioner of the now-defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), said it will not be an easy endeavor, given bureaucratic requirements, the ongoing COVID-19 emergency and the volume of changes implemented over the past four years.

“The Trump administration had an extraordinary preoccupation with immigration issues and they invested an enormous amount of attention and single-minded focus on immigration,” Meissner, who is also a senior fellow at the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute, told CBS News. “An administration that wants to undo those changes would have to devote a similar amount of time and effort — and arguably more, because you don’t want to just be undoing things. You want to be moving a proactive agenda as well.”

Lynden Melmed, who served as the top lawyer at USCIS during President George W. Bush’s second term, said the Biden administration will need to be careful not to rush its policy reversals, as they could face the same court challenges that hampered Trump’s immigration agenda.

“They are going to be attacked the whole way as they try to roll these things back,” Melmed told CBS News. “They are going to need to really be thoughtful about how they retreat out of some of these policies, otherwise opponents and supporters of the Trump administration’s policies will be able to hang them up in court.”

Biden has vowed to introduce legislation that would allow the nation’s estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants to legalize their status, but such an effort — which has proved elusive for two decades — would need to be approved by a divided Congress. Several House Democrats lost their seats last week and while control of the Senate will hinge on the outcome of two Georgia races in January, any potential Democratic majority would be razor-thin.

Asked about the possibility of extending temporary protections from deportation to certain undocumented immigrants in the absence of congressional action, a source familiar with Biden’s planning said the president-elect would consider all “legally available” options.

Marielena Hincapié, a member of a task force of Biden and Bernie Sanders supporters who created a unified immigration platform, said the incoming administration should use “all the levers of government” to protect certain undocumented immigrants, including COVID-19 essential workers, from deportation.

“We can’t at the same keep applauding all these essential workers who we are relying on and not recognize them legally,” Hincapié, who is also the executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, told CBS News. “And so, providing them with some kind of protection and work authorization so that they can do the work without the fear of detention or deportation, and to actually be able to work within the law, is also really critical.”

While Trump has yet to acknowledge his defeat or allow his administration to release congressionally authorized funding and government resources to the Biden transition team, Biden’s staffers continue preparing for a transfer of power.

“We don’t see anything slowing us down,” Biden said Tuesday.

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Here’s today's full interview with Morrissey Official by 

Chrissy Iley for The Sunday Times:

I'm inside Morrissey’s hotel room at the Sunset Marquis, West Hollywood. It smells incensy, instantly exotic with a dangerous edge rather like the man himself. He’s in LA because he’s performing at the Hollywood Bowl and because Friday, November 10 has been declared Morrissey Day by the mayor of Los Angeles. He lived near here until a few years ago, but now he’s just visiting. Where does he live now? A sigh. “I’m in a different place all the time. I’m not sure why everyone wants to know where I live, what that says about me. It means my credit card is permanently blocked for security reasons. They think I’m an anonymous person if I’m never in the same place. I never ask people where they live, but they always ask me as if it would reveal anything about me. I’m here now, as you can see.” Because he’s performing. “Well … I don’t perform. I’m occasionally on a stage, but I don’t ever perform.” How very Morrissey. It’s as if he never wants to be really seen — except by tens of thousands every time he is on a stage, or when he makes one of his trademark outrageous comments, whether that’s about politics, or last week, defending Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey (more of that later). He no longer lives in the house next to Johnny Depp? “No, he bought it to put his argumentative relatives in when they came to stay and since then I have been homeless. I just move around the world, which is a fascinating way to live. People say, ‘But surely you need your own kitchen.’ But I’ve managed for many years doing without.” Does he cook? “Yes I do, and it’s a very nice idea to have a kitchen ...” But room service will provide? “It tries, but it’s difficult sometimes. We don’t like to wait do we, really, for anything?” Does he travel light? “I have a sickening volume of possessions. They’re all stored away in different parts of the world waiting for that moment when I stop and buy a house and relax.” Does he ever relax? “No.” This is a moment where I want to tell him about the first time I heard his voice. So soul-curdling and deep-reaching when he sang How Soon Is Now? The Smiths are remembered by their fans with a huge amount of romanticism. It seems that they were around for ever, but in fact it was only five years — 1982 to 1987 — and four studio albums. But so many songs, such poetry that spoke for a generation about love and loss and waiting. Post Smiths, there was a series of solo albums, starting with Viva Hate, some of which were less loved. There was a dark autobiography in 2013 and a strange foray into novel writing — List of the Lost was reviewed as “turgid” and received the Bad Sex Award in 2015 for a scene describing a “giggling snowball of full-figured copulation”. But now Morrissey is back, as unconventional as ever. And with the release of the new album, Low in High School, he is on the radio, the television, that voice strangely more fluid and insistent than ever. Some of his views must jangle with his new generation of younger fans. He has said that he thought Brexit was magnificent, and the new single Jacky’s Only Happy When She’s Up on the Stage ends with a haunting chorus of “exit exit”, which some people have translated as “Brexit Brexit”. He denies it. “No, it’s not a Brexit song. There’s no Brexit in it,” he insists. “The line is, ‘All the audience head for the exit when she’s on stage’, so it’s nothing to do with Brexit. People just rush to stupid conclusions and create facts and create their own truths and slaughter the issue.” But he did say Brexit was magnificent, right? “I thought it was a fascinating strike for democracy, because the people said the opposite to Westminster, and that was extraordinary. David Cameron didn’t imagine the result could be as it was, but at least he did the honourable thing and slid away. The unfortunate thing is that politicians only speak to other politicians. They don’t speak to the people, so on that day their bubble burst. And now I don’t think Brexit has taken place, or even will, because Westminster don’t want it. It’s not that difficult. They’re just finding a way to not make it Brexit.” Is it true that he banned David Cameron from ever listening to a Morrissey-penned song? “No, that was never true, but these are the things I have to live with.” Big sigh. “I didn’t say it and it’s nice if everybody listens. It really is.” There’s nobody he wants to ban? “Well, only the obvious — the obvious international pest.” The orange one? “Yes.” “He’s beyond salvation. Beyond any help. The biggest security threat to America and the world. He’s like a two-year-old constantly reaching for something, damaging it and then moving on to something else and destroying it.” Indeed, the next day when I go to his show at the Hollywood Bowl, one of the backdrops is Morrissey holding a toddler with Trump’s head superimposed. A tiny tyrant. It goes down well. Morrissey is still mesmerising on stage as he lashes and whips his microphone cable. He gives us the songs that still speak to us even though they’re decades old. This audience — a diverse collection: black, white, brown; young, old and very young; men, women, gay, straight — seems to be with him all the way. No one minds that on Morrissey’s orders the only food sold is vegetarian. I’ve been to that same stadium many times and seen artists of similar years with pretentious trousers and hair plugs. I’ve seen them sing their old songs to a crowd of middle-aged spread. This concert was not like that. Though I could have done without the bit where the 58-year-old threw his jacket into the crowd and flaunted his unworked-out torso. But it was unselfconsciously done. On the sofa in his hotel room we sip bottled water and he asks me if I would like anything more dangerous. I suggest a coffee. He shrugs in despair. “That’s not what I meant.” The new album has created a buzz. “It feels good. People always want their latest offspring to be the cutest, I believe,” he says. He doesn’t have children. He has songs. Does he have a particular track that’s more important than the others? “No. I mean if you gave birth to quads you wouldn’t say which quad is the best one, would you? You would love all your quads equally for different reasons.” I tell him I’ve got four cats. “There. I rest my case. I bet you don’t pick one out and say you’re the one I love and boot the others in the linen cupboard.” We chat about how Russell Brand’s cat is called Morrissey. “Yes, and he’s still alive. I don’t mean Russell — I mean the cat. He is getting on now: I do mean Russell. I don’t mean the cat.” I read that Brand named the cat Morrissey because he’s an awkward bugger. He grins. “There you go. You should have guessed that one straight away.” But however difficult he can be — for instance, during the preparation of this article he spends four days saying he will do a photo shoot and then doesn’t — he is having a moment in the spotlight. “It’s certainly a moment that might annoy many people, but here I am and I offer no apologies and no excuses.” Hmm. The first single on the album, Spent the Day in Bed, has had more airplay in America than any Morrissey track ever. “I don’t spend the day in bed often but people love their beds,” he says. He advises several times that people shouldn’t stay in bed and watch the news because it is so depressing. He should know: Morrissey has spent much of his life depressed. Surely that’s where quite a few of the hits came from. “Years ago I sang a song called Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now, and it’s like an old school uniform. People insist I wear it, but I’m really not that miserable. I’m not an unhappy person. Not in the least. I’m certainly very surprised and very pleased to still be here.” I’m wondering if his new resolution to appreciate life had anything to do with it nearly being taken away. He is in remission from oesophagus cancer. “I’d had quite a few scares and was on a lot of extreme medication. I lost a lot of hair. You can be as healthy as possible, but something will always get you in the end. I thought, here we go. Just accept it, but I’ve done very well. I’m not on any medication now.” And his hair is back — greying — and the Morrissey superquiff is perhaps not as super as it once was. “It’s real. A lot of people my age don’t have hair. They don’t have teeth, so I feel quite blessed.” Following his diagnosis in 2014, he “had a lot of scrapings, but they weren’t all painful”. Wasn’t he worried a procedure involving the scraping of his oesophagus would affect his voice? “No, incredibly,” he laughs. “In fact my voice is better, absolutely better than it was. I had to give up 150 things, from red wine and beyond, but that was OK because I don’t really like red wine. When you sit before a doctor and they use the c-word you hear it but you don’t hear it. You just say, ‘Ah, yes,’ as if it’s something you hear every day. Your mind goes into this funny little somewhere and you say, ‘Ah, yes,’ as if you knew it all along.” I’m not sure that’s how most of us would react, but then he’s always been one of these people who seem to be able to dislocate himself from his own being. “Giving up red wine was meaningless to me anyway.” Doesn’t he drink alcohol? “Just not red wine.” He also has a dislike of mushrooms. “Oh they are horrific, fungus — truffles make me cry. I say to people, ‘What are you doing eating fungus?’ Truffles shock me and the smell. Ewwww. Garlic is also horrific.” Morrissey’s superfood of choice is potatoes. “I’ve never had a curry and I’ve never had a coffee. I’ve never wanted one and I’ve never been handed one. I have Ceylon tea, very, very weak with an alternative milk. Cashew milk is beautiful. Dairy farms all over England are collapsing. Non-dairy milk is now 51% of the market, which is fantastic.” Thirty-two years ago, when he first sang Meat Is Murder, veganism was rare. A vegan diet was difficult to maintain. Now, vegan food is in supermarkets. “What about champagne?” he says. I’m not sure if he’s offering to crack open a bottle, but I hate champagne. “I’ve never met anybody that hated champagne,” he says. I’ve never met anybody that hasn’t drunk coffee or eaten curry, I ripost. “I don’t like any food where the following day you can still taste it or you smell of it or your clothes smell of it. I’m very, very bland as far as food is concerned,” he says. It is as if the psyche of Morrissey is so piquant, he needs to balance it with food that tastes of nothing. Not only has he never had an onion bhaji — “I’ve never had an onion. That would make me cry. It’s just too eye-crossing. I’m strictly bread and potatoes.” Not for the first time, the conversation drifts back to politics. Does he think Trump will be impeached? “It’s a long time coming and there have been multiple reasons and it hasn’t happened. It’s a shocking reflection on American politics. I understand people wanting somebody who is nonpolitical, who is not part of a system. But not him. They thought that he was something he absolutely is not. Surely people realise it now. Everything he says is divisive. It’s meant to be. It’s meant to distract you.” He is similarly disparaging about Theresa May. “She won’t answer questions put to her. She’s not leadership [material]. She can barely get to the end of her own sentence. Her face quakes. She’s hanging on by the skin of her teeth. She has negotiations about negotiations about negotiations about the EU. I’m not a Conservative, but I can see she’s actually blocking the Conservative Party from moving on and becoming strong. But as we know, politicians do not care about public opinion. And she wants to bring back fox hunting.” This is not only “cruel and disgraceful”, but signifies that May is “out of step and not of the modern world”. Morrissey loves talking about politics, there’s always an opinion. But then he says: “I’m nonpolitical. I always have been. I’ve never voted in my life.” At the last election there was a story going round that Morrissey voted Ukip. In fact, at a concert earlier this year, he appeared to support Anne-Marie Waters, an outspoken Ukip politician with anti-Muslim views, claiming the party’s leadership contest had been rigged against her. He is the most political nonpolitical person on the planet. He’s shy, except in front of thousands. He writes about love, but only admits to one proper relationship — with Jake Walters, a boxer from east London. They lived together from 1994 to 1996. When he was in the Smiths he declared himself celibate and said he hated sex. After Walters, he discussed having a baby with Tina Dehghani, a friend whom he met while living in Los Angeles, and in his autobiography he refers to a relationship with an Italian whom he calls Gelato. He’s said in the past he’s only attracted to people who aren’t interested in him. He’s never been on a date. He only writes about wanting to be loved. Many contradictions. “Well, I’m human. I’m not interested in being part of anything. I don’t see a party that speaks to me and I haven’t ever. My vote is very precious. I won’t use it just to get rid of somebody I don’t like because they’re all absolutely the same.” Does he think Jeremy Corbyn is the same? “He has had many opportunities to take a strike against Theresa May and he has resisted. It’s hard to believe that this is the best England can produce at this stage of the game. We survived Thatcher by the skin of our teeth, and somehow we’re all still alive and we are presented with Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn.” I laugh, and he corrects me: “It’s a tragedy. The UK is in a state of cultural tragedy, dominated by political correctness. Nobody tells the truth about anything. If you tell the truth in England, you’ll lose your job.” This is not a rule, however, Morrissey feels applies to him. I ask him about the behaviour of Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey who are both accused of multiple cases of sexual misdemeanours. He is in no mood to condemn them. “You must be careful as far as ‘sexual harassment’ is concerned, because often it can be just a pathetic attempt at courtship.” Most people wouldn’t see the kind of behaviours these sexual predators are accused of as in any way “courtship”. But Morrissey is undeterred. As this interview went to press it emerged that he’d told the German magazine Der Spiegel that the claims against Kevin Spacey — one of which alleges a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old boy — were “ridiculous” and argued, as he did with me, that definitions of harassment and assault have become too broad. “Kevin Spacey was 26, boy 14. One wonders where the boy’s parents were,” Morrissey said. “One wonders if the boy did not know what would happen.” On Weinstein, he said to Der Spiegel that some of the movie mogul’s alleged victims: “play along”. “Afterwards, they feel embarrassed or disliked. And then they turn it around and say, ‘I was attacked, I was surprised.’ But if everything went well, and if it had given them a great career, they would not talk about it.” He added: “I hate rape. I hate attacks. I hate sexual situations that are forced on someone. But in many cases one looks at the circumstances and thinks that the person who is considered a victim is merely disappointed.” Our conversation covers similar ground. When I ask him about these sexual attacks he says: “I’m sure it’s horrific, but we have to keep everything in proportion. Do you not agree? I have never been sexually harassed, I might add.” Perhaps that is why he seems so unsympathetic. Morrissey’s sexuality has always been a point of some discussion. Is it still true, I ask, that he doesn’t identify as heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual but, as he puts it, “humoursexual”? “No, humasexual as in we’re all humans.” Oh, I thought it was only about sleeping with people that you had a laugh with. “That would dramatically limit things, but certainly I think we are obsessed with labels, obsessed with knowing where we stand with other people, what we can expect them to do, and it doesn’t make any difference really.” Just like veganism, he insists, being sexually fluid and gender fluid is now much more accepted. “It’s extraordinary. People seem to be very relaxed by it.” But when Morrissey announced his humasexuality in 2013, he was a lonely voice. “Yes, I was. I spearheaded the movement. I know no other way, so nothing has changed for me, but the rest of the world leaps on. I am pleased because I want people to be happy. There is an expiration date on our lives on this planet. You have to be yourself and hopefully get some happiness from it. It seems everybody, in every respect of their lives, is coming out of their cupboard saying this is the person I’d like to be. I want to wear these clothes, not those that have been imposed on me. As long as nobody’s harmed, I think it’s good.” Is it true that he’s never been on a date? “Yes, I’ve never been on a traditional date. I’m not that kind of person.” No one’s ever said I’d like to take you to dinner? “No, never. But I’m happy with my vocation.” What does he mean by vocation? “I’m very interested in the singing voice. I’m very interested in making a difference in music, not simply being successful.” Isn’t it possible to do that and have a date? “No. I’ve never found it to be so.” It’s one or the other? “Well, life leads me. Does it lead you? Are you successful at the cost of something else?” I’m quite shocked by his question. I suggest that it’s not valid because I’m not really successful. He says, “Well you’re not working at KFC, are you?”and laughs a conspiratorial laugh. He’s interested in the way journalism has changed. “The Guardian, you can’t even meet them halfway. They are like The Sun in 1972. So obstinate. They don’t want to talk to you. They want to correct you. You can’t simply say, ‘This is how I feel,’ because they’ll say, ‘How you feel is wrong.’ And they’ll say, ‘He’s racist. He should be shot, he should be drowned.’ It’s very difficult to sit down with somebody and simply convey your feelings. In a democracy you should be able to give your opinion about anything. We must have debate, but that doesn’t happen any more. Free speech has died. Isn’t modern journalism about exposing people? When I was young I saw a documentary accidentally about the abattoir and I fell into an almost lifelong depression. I couldn’t believe I lived in a society that allowed this. The abattoir is no different to Auschwitz.” The tack back to animals reminds me he was once voted Britain’s second most important cultural icon by the audience of BBC 2’s The Culture Show, after David Attenborough. “It was beautiful but I don’t know about Attenborough’s regard for animals,” he says. “He often uses terms like ‘seafood’ and there’s no such thing as seafood. It’s sea life, and he talks about ‘wildlife’ and it’s free life. Animals are not wild simply because we pathetic humans haven’t shoved them in a cage, so his terminology is often up the pole.” I tell him one of my favourite songs on the album is Israel. It’s a romantic hymn to the country. How did that come about? “I have made many trips there and I was given the keys to Tel Aviv by the mayor. Everybody was so very nice to me and I’m aware that there’s a constant backlash against the country that I could never quite understand. I feel people are judging the country by its government, which you shouldn’t do. You can’t blame the people for the rulership. Israel is beautiful.” Steven Patrick Morrissey was born and raised in Manchester. A lapsed Catholic, he went to a religious school. Manchester in the 1960s and 1970s was damp, somewhere he wanted to escape from. Part of that escape was through television — and soap operas. He was once offered a part in EastEnders, but turned it down. “I was invited to be Dot Cotton’s other son, a mysterious son no one had ever spoken about, who returns to the Square, doesn’t get involved with anybody and doesn’t immediately have sex with anybody as most characters who come into the Square do.” So basically he’d have played himself. “Yes. I didn’t do it.” Is it too late? “For many things, yes … I was also offered a part in Emmerdale. I was to play an intruder in jodhpurs — which I’d longed to be, of course, I had waited years to be an intruder in jodhpurs — an intruder at Home Farm, but I refused to wear the jodhpurs. As they say, it’s nice to be asked.” He has no ambitions to act, his time occupied with the new album and a tour that will include China, Australia and Europe. China has one of the worst records for human and animal rights in the world, I point out. “You can’t simply fold your arms and say I’m not going to China because of the cat and dog trade, which is absolutely tearful, but hopefully your presence can make a difference,” he says. His only problem with not living anywhere is he has no animal companion. “My best friends have been cats. I had one cat for 23 years and one for 22. They just walked into the house, one when I was a small child and one when I was slightly older. I won’t say they were like children, because I don’t know any children that are actually nice. They were black-and-white and called Buster and Tibby. Tibby had been kicked in the face so he had to be fed by hand. He couldn’t eat from a plate. He required a lot of patience but he cured himself and became a healthy, incredibly happy cat. They certainly enriched my life.” It’s been hours now. Morrissey is too polite to end our meeting and I feel if I don’t end it I may never leave. For me, meeting Morrissey is like meeting a battered, black-and-white alley cat. Sure, he’s not to everyone’s taste. But that is the highest compliment I could ever give — although Morrissey is the only one who could recognise it as such.

The Sunday Times Magazine - Interview by Chrissy Iley:https://t.co/0rq4KHtItW 

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WHO states agree to coronavirus response probe: Live updates | News

WHO member states have agreed on an independent review of the global pandemic response at a virtual meeting of the World Health Assembly.

China has accused the United States of smearing Beijing and shirking responsibilities to the World Health Organization (WHO) after President Donald Trump threatened to pull out of the UN health body.

Unemployment claims in Britain jumped by 69 percent last month as the coronavirus pandemic took hold and hit the labour market.

Globally, there have been more than 4.8 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and more than 318,800 people have died, according to Johns Hopkins University. Nearly 1.8 million people have recovered.

Here are all the latest updates:

Tuesday, May 19

18:20 GMT – South Africa to start phased school re-opening on June 1

South Africa will resume classes for all grade 7 and 12 pupils on June 1, after a nationwide school closure of more than two months due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga said that, under strict social distancing rules, other grades would be able to attend lessons in smaller schools with fewer than 150 pupils.

Bigger schools will open for other grades at a later date. South Africa, the African nation worst hit by COVID-19 with 16,433 infections and 286 deaths, began a phased easing of its lockdown at the start of May.

All teachers are expected to return to work from May 25 and the revised school calendar will be published soon, the minister said, adding that school sports would not be permitted.

Locals look on during the distribution of food amid the spread of the coronavirus in Alexandra township, South Africa [Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters]

18:00 GMT – Nicaragua’s ‘express burials’ hide true COVID-19 scale: Doctors

Doctors are warning of looming coronavirus chaos in Nicaragua, where victims’ families and the opposition accuse President Daniel Ortega’s government of ordering “express burials” to hide the true number of infections. 

To date, the Central American country has confirmed just 25 cases of the coronavirus and eight deaths. But rights groups and experts believe the numbers are far higher.

“We are entering a phase of rapid community spread of the virus,” epidemiologist Alvaro Ramirez told the AFP news agency. “As the exponential curve continues to increase and more people become infected, we are going to get a chaotic situation.”

Read more here. 

The coffin with the body of a patient who died with symptoms of the new coronavirus, COVID-19, is carried by relatives to be buried at the Oriental Cemetery, in Managua [AFP]

17:40 GMT – Ontario schools not to open at this time: Premier

Schools in Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, will not open at this time due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Premier Doug Ford has said. 

All provincial schools were shut in mid-March in an effort to contain the new coronavirus, which has killed 1,919 people in the province, according to the latest data.

“The safety of our children is my top priority,” Ford told reporters. “We cannot open schools at this time. I’m just not going to risk it.” Ford said.

The schools normally end their session by the end of June

17:20 GMT – Pandemic deadliest in NYC’s Black, Latino neighbourhoods: Data

Some New York City neighbourhoods have seen death rates from the novel coronavirus nearly 15 times higher than others, according to data released by New York City’s health department on Monday, showing the disproportionate toll taken on poor communities.

The data shows for the first time a breakdown on the number of deaths in each of the city’s more than 60 postcodes. The highest death rate was seen on the edge of Brooklyn in a neighbourhood dominated by a large subsidised-housing development called Starrett City.

Read more here. 

People wearing protective face masks wait in line at a free food distribution for people in need, outside the West Harlem Group Assistance in Manhattan [Mike Segar/Reuters]

17:00 GMT – Trump: WHO must clean up its act or US will no longer be involved

President Donald Trump has said the WHO had to improve how it treated the US and other countries or Washington would pull out, doubling down on a threat made the previous day. 

“They have to clean up their act. They have to do a better job. They have to be much more fair to other countries, including the United States, or we’re not going to be involved with them anymore,” Trump told reporters at the White House.

The president’s comments came after he released a letter to the WHO on Monday saying it had to make improvements in the next 30 days or he would make a temporary freeze on US funding to the organization permanent and consider pulling out the body all together.

Trump says he’s taking hydroxychloroquine

16:40 GMT – Wealthy countries failing Africa during pandemic, presidents say

Wealthy countries are failing Africa, with pledges of financial support and debt relief falling well short of the continent’s needs as it battles the COVID-19 pandemic, several African presidents have said. 

Developed economies have channelled trillions of dollars into health initiatives and economic stimulus at home. But the presidents – from Kenya, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Senegal and Niger – said they could not afford such measures in their own countries.

“We’re not in a position to protect companies, to preserve jobs. There’s an injustice that is again being exposed by COVID-19,” Senegal’s President Macky Sall said during a virtual roundtable organised by the New York Forum Institute think-tank.

While Africa, with a limited capacity to test, has recorded just a fraction of the world’s coronavirus cases, it has been hit hard by the economic fallout from global trade disruptions, falling oil and commodities prices and the lockdowns deployed to fight the disease’s spread.

Could the pandemic threaten the survival of Africa’s wildlife? | Inside Story

16:20 GMT – Regional health body warns of spread in Amazon tri-border area

The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has warned that the new coronavirus is spreading rapidly in the tri-border area of the Amazon between Brazil, Colombia and Peru and threatens to infect remote indigenous communities in the rainforest.

PAHO directors urged in a virtual briefing that special measures be taken to protect vulnerable groups among the poor and indigenous populations of the Americas.

They said contagion was rising fast in densely populated Amazon border cities such as Manaus, Leticia and Iquitos, and the greatest danger is the COVID-19 spreading now to isolated villages.

Brazil’s president defiant as coronavirus death toll soars

16:00 GMT – Italy’s daily death toll and new cases climb

Deaths from the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy have climbed by 162, against 99 the day before, the Civil Protection Agency said, while the daily tally of new cases rose sharply to 813 from 451 on Monday.

The total death toll since the outbreak came to light on February 21 now stands at 32,169 the agency said, the third highest in the world after those of the United States and Britain.

The number of confirmed total cases is now 226,699, the sixth highest global tally behind those of the US, Russia, Spain, Britain and Brazil.

Shops, cafes reopen as Italy lifts coronavirus restrictions

15:45 GMT – Latin American health chief says ‘hopes’ to continue working with US

 The head of the Pan American Health Organization, Carissa Etienne, has said that the WHO-affiliated body “hopes” to continue working with the US government, after President Donald Trump threatened on Monday to end US funding and withdraw from WHO.

In recent days, Trump has ramped up his criticism of the WHO’s early response to the coronavirus pandemic.

PAHO Director Carissa Etienne pointed to past collaborations with the US government to combat diseases like malaria and yellow fever, and noted that US contributions account for about 60 percent of the regional health agency’s budget.

15:30 GMT – Canada, US agree to 30-day extension of ban on non-essential travel: Trudeau

Canada and the US have agreed to extend a ban on non-essential travel between the two nations by another 30 days as part of the fight against the coronavirus, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said.

Trudeau made the announcement in remarks to reporters. Officials from both nations said last week it was likely that the measure would be rolled over until June 21. 

Drivers wait to cross through Canadian customs at the Canada-US border near the Peace Arch Provincial Park in Surrey, British Columbia. [File: Jesse Winter/Reuters]

15:15 GMT – Pakistan airlifts 274 students from Wuhan

Pakistan has repatriated 274 students from the Chinese city of Wuhan, according to the ministry of foreign affairs. 

The students were shuttled from the city, where the virus first appeared and the one-time epicentre of the global outbreak, to Islamabad on a Pakistan International Airlines flight that arrived in Islamabad on Monday. 

The first wave of the outbreak in Wuhan had been brought largely under control in April, but new clusters have emerged in recent days.

15:00 GMT – Sweden tops Europe deaths per capita over last 7 days

Sweden, which has opted for a more open strategy in combating the virus than other European countries, has the highest number of deaths in Europe per capita from the COVID-19 disease over the last seven days, data shows.

Sweden has kept most schools, restaurant and businesses open during the pandemic. While deaths are on the decline Sweden had 6.25 deaths per million inhabitants per day in a rolling seven day average between May 12 and May 19, according to Ourworldinsata.org. That was the highest in Europe and just above the United Kingdom, which had 5.75 deaths per million.

Over the course of the pandemic Sweden still has fewer deaths per capita than the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Belgium and France, which have all opted for lockdowns, but much higher than Nordic neighbours Denmark, Norway and Finland.

Sweden response to coronavirus outbreak divides opinion

14:45 GMT – UK economy will take time to return to normal after lockdown: Finance minister

British finance minister Rishi Sunak has said it would take time for the economy to get back to normal even when the government’s coronavirus shutdown is lifted.

“It is not obvious that there will be an immediate bounce-back,” Sunak told lawmakers, saying the retail sector, for example, would still face restrictions when it reopens.

“In all cases, it will take a little bit of time for things to get back to normal, even once we have reopened currently closed sectors.”

England’s schools to reopen as coronavirus curbs ease

14:30 GMT – WHO will continue to lead global fight against pandemic, Tedros vows

The WHO will continue to lead the global fight against the coronavirus pandemic which “threatens to tear at the fabric of international cooperation”, its chief has said.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, thanked “the many member states who have expressed their support and solidarity” at its two-day annual ministerial assembly.

He welcomed an EU resolution, adopted by consensus by WHO’s 194 member states, that calls for an independent evaluation of the international response, “including, but not limited to, WHO’s performance”.

“We want accountability more than anyone,” Tedros said. “We will continue providing strategic leadership to coordinate the global response” to the pandemic.

The WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has welcomed a resolution calling for an independent evaluation of the international response to the pandemic [Christopher Black/AFP]

14:10 GMT – Russia denounces US attempts to ‘break’ WHO     

Russia has denounced President Donald Trump’s threat to pull the US out of the WHO over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.     

“Yes there are opportunities to improve it… but we are against breaking everything that is there for the sake of one state’s political or geopolitical preferences,” deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said, according to Interfax news agency.

More:

13:50 GMT – China protests support for Taiwan at World Health Assembly

The Chinese envoy to the WHO has denounced support shown by the US and other members to Taiwan during its annual ministerial assembly.

“There are still a few countries determined to plea for Taiwan authorities…,” Chen Xu, the Chinese ambassador told the virtual assembly, saying this was “undermining global anti-epidemic efforts”.

“This conduct is not acceptable,” Chen added in response specifically to US support for Taiwan following remarks by a senior US diplomat which he dismissed as “political hype”.

Taiwan is not a member of the UN agency although a proposal was submitted to allow it to participate in the assembly as an observer. However, no invitation was issued due to a lack of consensus.

Xi: Nobody can change fact Taiwan is part of China

13:30 GMT – US backs pandemic resolution at WHO but rejects patent wording

The US has joined consensus on an EU resolution on the global handling of the coronavirus pandemic, but quickly distanced itself from its wording on intellectual property and reproductive health services.

In a statement, the US mission to the UN in Geneva said the pandemic review would ensure “complete and transparent understanding of the source of the virus, timeline of events … and the decision-making process for the WHO’s response”.

But it had to “disassociate” itself from the references in the pandemic resolution to intellectual property under the so-called “TRIPS” agreement that allows for compulsory licensing of medicines and vaccines during a health emergency.

Such language would “send the wrong message to innovators who will be essential to the solutions the whole world needs”, the US statement said. The Trump administration “believes in legal protections for the unborn”, and it could not accept the idea of an international right to abortion, it added.

The US has rejected the wording on intellectual property in an EU resolution passed at the World Health Assembly [Bing Guan/Reuters]

13:15 GMT – Italy’s PM says entering next pandemic phase with ‘cautious optimism’

Italy’s prime minister has told the World Health Organization on Tuesday that he was cautiously optimistic about the next phase of the pandemic as the country eases coronavirus measures.

“We are entering this phase with cautious optimism and a sense of responsibility,” Giuseppe Conte said in a speech to the World Health Assembly, being held virtually. “We know that our struggle is far from being over.”

He also said that global health should be a “shared priority” shortly after the assembly adopted an EU resolution on the pandemic.

Hello, this is Joseph Stepansky in Doha, taking over from my colleague Saba Aziz.

12:30 GMT – WHO states agree on COVID-19 response probe

World Health Organization member states agreed to an independent probe into the UN agency’s COVID-19 response as US criticism mounted over its handling of the pandemic.

Countries taking part in the WHO’s annual assembly, held virtually for the first time, adopted a resolution by consensus calling for an “impartial, independent and comprehensive evaluation” of the international response to the crisis, including a probe of WHO actions and “their timelines pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic”.

Live from the virtual #WHA73. #COVID19 https://t.co/KDkakRz34G

— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) May 19, 2020

None of the WHO’s 194 member states – which include the United States – raised objections to the resolution brought by the European Union on behalf of more than 100 countries including Australia, China and Japan.

12:15 GMT – How does lockdown affect our mental health?

The coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns are having an effect on people’s psychological well-being.

So, how do we help ourselves and the people around us? Watch our latest Start Here episode. 

12:10 GMT – Egypt extends suspension of international flights 

Egypt has extended a halt to all international passenger flights to curb the spread of the coronavirus, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said in a statement. 

Flights at Egyptian airports were suspended on March 19, and the stoppage will continue until further notice, the statement said.

11:45 GMT – S Africa rugby team use World Cup score for fundraiser

South Africa’s World Cup winning squad are using the score from last year’s final in Japan to launch a campaign to feed people affected by the COVID-19 crisis.

A total of 100,000 raffle tickets are being sold at 32.12 South African rand ($1.76) which will pay for food parcels and soup kitchens.

South Africa’s rugby players pose after winning the Laureus World Team of the Year award in February [Annegret Hilse/Reuters]

The Springboks beat England 32-12 in November’s final to win the World Cup for a third time and many of their top players have already launched their own initiatives to collect food for the hungry, notably captain Siya Kolisi.

11:30 GMT – Turkey extends travel ban in 15 major cities

Turkey has extended a travel ban in 15 major cities for 15 more days to stem the spread of the new coronavirus.  

In a statement, the interior ministry said the travel ban will continue until June 3 and those who do not comply with the travel restrictions will face administrative fines.

The cities include Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Balikesir, Bursa, Eskisehir, Gaziantep, Kayseri, Kocaeli, Konya, Manisa, Sakarya, Samsun, Van and Zonguldak. 

Turkey imposed a travel ban across 31 provinces in April to stem the spread of the virus and later lifted the restrictions in some of them [Mehmet Ali Ozcan/Anadolu]

11:10 GMT – EU backs WHO after Trump pull-out threat

The European Union has backed the World Health Organization and multilateral efforts to fight the coronavirus after Trump threatened to quit the global agency.

“This is the time for solidarity, not the time for finger pointing or for undermining multilateral cooperation,” European foreign affairs spokeswoman Virginie Battu-Henriksson told reporters.

The EU has sponsored a motion at Tuesday’s session of the WHO’s annual assembly to urge an “impartial, independent and comprehensive evaluation” of the international response to the pandemic.

11:00 GMT – Qatar introduces new restrictions for Eid al-Fitr

Qatar has announced a series of new measures aimed at stopping the spread of the new coronavirus, including halting most commercial activities until May 30.

All shops, with the exception of food and catering shops, pharmacies, restaurants delivery services and a few other essential services, will also be closed during the same time period, which coincides with the official Eid al-Fitr holidays.

Read more here. 

Decision to suspend all commercial and service activities during Eid Alfitr holiday, with the exception of specific sectors and activities. #Qatar #YourSafetyIsMySafety pic.twitter.com/YgSCOBDj3Q

— وزارة التجارة والصناعة (@MOCIQatar) May 18, 2020

10:20 GMT – Al-Aqsa Mosque to reopen after Eid holiday

Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque will reopen to worshippers after the Eid holiday, a statement from its governing body said, two months after closing due to the coronavirus.

“The council decided to lift the suspension on worshippers entering the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque after the Eid al-Fitr holiday,” a statement from the Waqf organisation said, referring to the holiday expected to begin this weekend.

The statement added that the exact terms of the reopening of Islam’s third holiest site would be announced later.

More:

09:10 GMT – Russian PM back to work after coronavirus battle

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin is returning to his duties after fighting off the coronavirus, the Kremlin said. 

President Vladimir Putin signed a decree ordering Mishustin to assume his regular duties, which were carried out by a deputy since April 30, while the prime minister was receiving medical treatment.

Mishustin told Putin last month that he was temporarily stepping down while he recovered from coronavirus [Dmitry Astakhov/Sputnik/Reuters]

09:00 GMT – Spain lifts direct ban on flights from Italy

Spain has lifted a ban on all direct flights and ships from Italy since March 11 during its coronavirus lockdown, according to the government gazette.

Travellers from Italy will have to comply, however, with a two-week quarantine like other foreign visitors, while a state of emergency is in place.

08:45 GMT – Latest coronavirus figures:

Russia: 299,941 cases (9,263), 2,837 deaths (115)

Indonesia: 18,496 (486), 1,221 deaths (30)

Oman: 5,671 cases (292), 26 deaths (0)

08:00 GMT – China says US trying to smear Beijing over WHO

China said the US was trying to shift the blame for Washington’s own mishandling of the COVID-19 crisis, responding to Trump’s letter threatening to permanently freeze funding to the WHO.

Trump threatened on Monday to reconsider Washington’s membership of the UN agency if the organisation did not commit to improvements within 30 days, and said the body had shown an “alarming lack of independence” from China.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters the US was trying to smear China and had miscalculated by trying to use China to avoid its own responsibility.

Zhao also said China would would agree to an eventual review of the global response to the pandemic, but not an immediate probe as Australia and others have proposed.

Trump says he’s taking hydroxychloroquine

07:30 GMT – South Sudan’s Riek Machar tests positive for coronavirus

Riek Machar, South Sudan rebel leader and former vice president, has tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

South Sudan has so far recorded 339 coronavirus cases and six deaths [File: Samir Bol/Reuters]

Machar’s wife, Minister of Defence Angelina Teny, and “a number of his office staff and bodyguards” have also been infected, his office said. 

Read more here. 

07:15 GMT – Qatar confirms virus in jail but denies widespread outbreak

Qatar has confirmed 12 coronavirus cases in its central prison, but denied reports of a widespread outbreak, saying all infected patients had been “transferred immediately” to a specialised hospital, isolating them from others.

The government issued the statement following a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, which warned about the spread of the disease inside the jail complex potentially becoming “a public health disaster.”

Read the full story. 

07:10 GMT – Tennis players join relief efforts in Pakistan

Some of the world’s leading tennis stars, including men’s number one Novak Djokovic, have rallied behind relief efforts led by Pakistan’s top tennis player to help feed people affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

The initiative was launched last week by doubles specialist Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi, who has been raising funds and delivering door-to-door ration packs to poor families suffering due to the country’s partial lockdown.

Djokovic donated a shirt he wore at the 2011 Australian Open final, which he won [Saba Aziz/Al Jazeera]

Read more here.

07:00 GMT – Countries report new total figures:

Germany: 175,210 cases (513), 8,007 deaths (72)

India: 101,139 cases (4,970), 3,163 deaths (134)

Czech Republic: 8,586 cases (111), 297 deaths (0)

06:30 GMT – UK jobless claims jump to 2.1 million in April

A measure of the number of people claiming unemployment benefits in Britain soared in April, the first full month of the government’s coronavirus lockdown, government data showed.

The claimant count rose by 856,500 to 2.097 million, the Office for National Statistics said.

The ONS also said Britain’s unemployment rate fell to 3.9 percent in the January-March period, covering only one week of the lockdown, from 4.0 percent in the three months to February.

Read more here. 

A worker disinfects door release buttons at Waterloo Station in London, England [Dan Kitwood/Getty Images]

06:15 GMT – Singapore sorry for sending positive test results in error

Singapore has apologised to 357 COVID-19 patients who received an erroneous text message saying they had again tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

“The messages had been sent due to an IT system testing glitch as we sought to improve the efficiency of our system,” the health ministry said in a statement. 

It apologised “for any inconvenience and anxiety caused” and said recipients had been alerted to the error within hours.

Hello, this is Saba Aziz in Doha, taking over from my colleague Kate Mayberry.

05:25 GMT – 

I will be handing over the blog to my colleagues in Doha shortly. A quick recap on this morning’s developments: US President Donald Trump has threatened to permanently freeze US funding for the WHO and withdraw from the organisation if it does not reform within 30 days; the US has set aside $11bn to ramp up coronavirus testing; and it looks as if Hong Kong will extend social distancing measures that outlaw gatherings of large groups.

05:05 GMT – Chinese city tightens lockdown after spike in cases

Authorities in the Chinese city of Shulan are tightening lockdown measures after a spike in coronavirus cases.

Since noon on Monday, people living in compounds with confirmed or suspected cases have been barred from leaving while visitors have been banned. All food will be delivered.

The northeastern city of Shulan has confirmed 19 locally-transmitted cases of the virus since May 7, according to state media. It was classified as a “high risk” area on May 10.

The local government in #Shulan, Jilin province, announced plans to step up its lockdown measures by tightening movement control in all residential areas as the number of new cases in a #Covid_19 cluster that was first detected there continues to rise. https://t.co/dYRXZmpn3Q pic.twitter.com/129QJoZ7Ld

— China Daily (@ChinaDaily) May 19, 2020

04:45 GMT – ‘A joke’: Chinese embassy dismisses Australia claim of probe vindication

The Chinese Embassy in Canberra has dismissed Australian claims that a World Health Assembly (WHA) resolution calling for an inquiry into the coronavirus was a vindication of the country’s campaign for a global review. 

“The draft resolution on COVID-19 to be adopted by the World Health Assembly is totally different from Australia’s proposal of an independent international review,” the embassy said in a statement that was emailed to journalists in Australia.

“To claim the WHA’s resolution a vindication of Australia’s call is nothing but a joke.”

More on the assembly’s promised review here.

04:25 GMT – Hong Kong signals social distancing measures will be extended

Hong Kong’s chief executive Carrie Lam has indicated social distancing measures that prohibit gatherings of more than eight people will be extended, which could make the territory’s annual commemoration of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre impossible.

“There’s no political consideration at all on certain anniversaries or political gatherings and so on,” Lam said. “Our only consideration is public safety and public health concerns.”

With coronavirus receding, anti-government protests that rocked the territory last year have resumed.

Anti-government protests – met with riot police – have begun to resume in Hong Kong as the coronavirus threat has receded [Anthony Kwan/Getty Images]

03:30 GMT – Trump threatens to halt funding permanently if WHO does not reform

US President Donald Trump has threatened to permanently halt funding for the WHO and withdraw the United States from the United Nations health agency if it does not make “substantive improvements” in the next 30 days.

Earlier on Monday he attacked the WHO as a “puppet of China”. The president froze US funding for the WHO in April.

This is the letter sent to Dr. Tedros of the World Health Organization. It is self-explanatory! pic.twitter.com/pF2kzPUpDv

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 19, 2020

02:30 GMT – Children in New South Wales to return to school next week

Children in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) will return to school full-time from next week, the state’s Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters in Sydney.

Berjiklian said the state government had used the time that children were at home to prepare schools as a coronavirus-safe environment but warned that temporary closures would probably be necessary to contain sporadic outbreaks of the virus.

The decision caught the state’s teachers’ union by surprise. It “caused a lot of concern, frustration and anger among teachers and principals,” Teachers Federation President Angelo Gavrielatos told Australian network ABC television. About 800,000 children attend school in NSW, Australia’s most heavily-populated state. 

From May 25, here’s the plan for a full-time return to schools for NSW students. Find out more: https://t.co/k8nhFDLocW pic.twitter.com/PwUaopranu

— NSW DoE (@NSWEducation) May 18, 2020

02:00 GMT – Medical evacuations of Indigenous people in Amazon with COVID-19 

The coronavirus is spreading so fast among Indigenous people in the most remote parts of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest that doctors are having to evacuate the most seriously-ill patients by plane.

“It’s the last opportunity to save their lives,” Edson Santos Rodrigues, a paediatric doctor working on medevac plans in Amazonas told Reuters News Agency. “Sometimes we don’t get there in time because we cannot land at night on remote airfields that have no lights.”

Brazil’s Indigenous health service, Sesai, reported on Monday that at least 23 Indigenous people had died from COVID-19. The country’s main tribal umbrella group APIB, which counts cases among Indigenous people who have moved to the cities, reported 103 confirmed deaths on Monday – up from 18 on April 3. 

00:30 GMT – US promises $11bn for expanded coronavirus testing

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has set aside $11bn in new funding to support coronavirus testing.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will provide $10.25bn to states, territories and local jurisdictions, the CDC said in a statement. The Indian Health Service will provide $750m to the IHS, tribal and urban Indian health programmes, it added.

HHS Secretary Alex Azar said the “historic investment” would enable the US to track and control the spread of the virus as the country reopens.

“For the sake of all Americans health and wellbeing, we must help Americans get safely back to work and school, and that requires continued expansion of testing, surveillance and contact tracing,” he said.

More:

23:30 GMT (Monday) – Trump turns on WHO over handling of pandemic

President Trump has again attacked the WHO calling the UN agency a “puppet of China” that has “done a very sad job” in handling the coronavirus.

“The United States pays them $450m a year, China pays them $38m a year, And they’re a puppet of China. They’re China-centric to put it nicer, but they’re a puppet of China,” Trump told reporters in Washington, DC.

Trump has already suspended US funding of the WHO. 

Trump’s comments came after the US administration continued to put pressure on the WHO over its handling of the pandemic at a key meeting of the agency’s decision-making body, the WHA.

23:00 GMT (Monday) – UNESCO says 90 percent of world’s museums closed

Studies from the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the International Council of Museums have confirmed that more than 85,000 museums across the world – about 90 percent of all institutions – have shut because of the coronavirus.

Almost 13 percent may never reopen, UNESCO added.

UNESCO said protection of staff, digitisation and inventory, as well as online content development were priorities for museums but noted that there were large disparities in digital access between different regions.

Museums may be temporarily closed, but they remain a source of knowledge and discovery for many – now through virtual tours in particular.

This International Museum Day, let’s celebrate the inspirational power of museums & thank museum workers for their valuable contribution. pic.twitter.com/vbtxeGlos4

— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) May 18, 2020

—-

Hello and welcome to Al Jazeera’s continuing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. I’m Kate Mayberry in Kuala Lumpur.

Read all the updates from yesterday (May 18) here.

Russia:  299,941 cases (9,263), 2,837 deaths (115)

Oman:  5,671 cases (292), 26 deaths (0)

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from World Wide News https://ift.tt/2zWWLF5

#World Wide News

[newstfionline]

Sunday, December 27, 2020

Millions of Americans lose jobless benefits as Trump refuses to sign aid bill (Reuters) Millions of Americans saw their jobless benefits expire on Saturday after U.S. President Donald Trump refused to sign into law a $2.3 trillion pandemic aid and spending package, protesting that it did not do enough to help everyday people. Trump stunned Republicans and Democrats alike when he said this week he was unhappy with the massive bill, which provides $892 billion in badly needed coronavirus relief, including extending special unemployment benefits expiring on Dec. 26, and $1.4 trillion for normal government spending. Without Trump’s signature, about 14 million people could lose those extra benefits, according to Labor Department data. A partial government shutdown will begin on Tuesday unless Congress can agree a stop-gap government funding bill before then.

Downtown Nashville explosion knocks some communications offline (AP) A recreational vehicle parked in the deserted streets of downtown Nashville exploded early Christmas morning, causing widespread communications outages that took down police emergency systems and grounded holiday travel at the city’s airport. Police were responding to a report of shots fired Friday when they encountered the RV blaring a recorded warning that a bomb would detonate in 15 minutes, Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake said. Police evacuated nearby buildings and called in the bomb squad. The RV exploded shortly afterward, Drake said. The blast sent black smoke and flames billowing from the heart of downtown Nashville’s tourist scene, an area packed with honky-tonks, restaurants and shops. Buildings shook and windows shattered streets away from the explosion near a building owned by AT&T that lies one block from the company’s office tower, a landmark in downtown. AT&T said the affected building is the central office of a telephone exchange, with network equipment in it. The blast interrupted service, but the company declined to say how widespread outages were.

Powerful mobile phone surveillance tool (The Intercept) UNTIL NOW, the Bartonville, Texas, company Hawk Analytics and its product CellHawk have largely escaped public scrutiny. CellHawk has been in wide use by law enforcement; the software is helping police departments, the FBI, and private investigators around the United States convert information collected by cellular providers into maps of people’s locations, movements, and relationships. Police records obtained by The Intercept reveal a troublingly powerful surveillance tool operated in obscurity, with scant oversight. CellHawk’s maker says it can process a year’s worth of cellphone records in 20 minutes, automating a process that used to require painstaking work by investigators, including hand-drawn paper plots. According to the company’s website, CellHawk uses GPS records in its “unique animation analysis tool,” which, according to company promotional materials, plots a target’s calls and locations over time. “Watch data come to life as it moves around town or the entire county,” the site states. The company has touted features that make CellHawk sound more like a tool for automated, continuous surveillance than for just processing the occasional spreadsheet from a cellular company. CellHawk’s website touts the ability to send email and text alerts “to surveillance teams” when a target moves, or enters or exits a particular “location or Geozone (e.g. your entire county border).”

In other white Christmas news, 74 pounds of cocaine found floating off the Florida Keys (Miami Herald) The Keys sheriff’s office came across some white stuff Christmas week. But it wasn’t the usual kind of snow. About 74 pounds of cocaine were spotted floating off the Lower Keys by a fisherman Wednesday afternoon. The packages were put in a Monroe County sheriff’s patrol boat and turned over to the U.S. Border Patrol. Lost shipments are trending in South Florida and the Keys. In August and September, almost 150 pounds of marijuana were found floating off the island chain or washed up on the shore. In July, more than 50 pounds of cocaine washed up near Grassy Key. Earlier that month, 29 bricks of cocaine came ashore in the Middle Keys city of Marathon, according to federal agents.

Brexit Deal Done, Britain Now Scrambles to See How It Will Work (NYT) For weary Brexit negotiators on both sides of the English Channel, a Christmas Eve trade agreement sealed 11 months of painstaking deliberations over Britain’s departure from the European Union, encompassing details as arcane as what species of fish could be caught by each side’s boats in British waters. But for many others—among them bankers, traders, truckers, architects and millions of migrants—Christmas was only the beginning, Day 1 of a high-stakes and unpredictable experiment in how to unstitch a tight web of commercial relations across Europe. The deal, far from closing the book on Britain’s tumultuous partnership with Europe, has opened a new one, beginning on its first pages with what analysts say will be the biggest overnight change in modern commercial relations. Britain’s services sector—encompassing not only London’s powerful financial industry, but also lawyers, architects, consultants and others—was largely left out of the 1,246-page deal, despite the sector accounting for 80 percent of British economic activity. Negotiators have not formally published the voluminous trade deal, though both sides have offered summaries, leaving analysts and ordinary citizens uncertain about some details even as lawmakers in Britain and Europe prepare to vote on it in a matter of days.

Virus besets Belarus prisons filled with president’s critics (AP) A wave of COVID-19 has engulfed prisons in Belarus that are packed with people in custody for demonstrating against the nation’s authoritarian president, and some of the protesters who contracted the coronavirus while incarcerated accuse authorities of neglecting or even encouraging infections. Activists who spoke to The Associated Press after their release described massively overcrowded cells without proper ventilation or basic amenities and a lack of medical treatment. Kastus Lisetsky, 35, a musician who received a 15-day sentence for attending a protest, said that before he entered prison, he and three bandmates were held in a Minsk jail and had to sleep on the floor of a cell intended for only two people. All four have contracted the virus. Lisetsky must return to prison to serve the remaining seven days of his sentence after he’s discharged from the hospital. He accused the government of allowing the virus to run wild among those jailed for political reasons. “The guards say openly that they do it deliberately on orders,” Lisetsky said. More than 30,000 people have been detained for taking part in protests against the August reelection of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in a vote that opposition activists and some election workers say was rigged to give Lukashenko a sixth term.

Japan bans new entries of foreigners after virus variant arrives (Reuters) Japan on Saturday said it would temporarily ban non-resident foreign nationals from entering the country as it tightens its borders following the detection of a new, highly infectious variant of the coronavirus. The ban will take effect from Dec. 28 and will run through January, the government said in an emailed statement. Japanese citizens and foreign residents will be allowed to enter but must show proof of a negative coronavirus test 72 hours before departing for Japan and must quarantine for two weeks after arrival, the statement said.

As Virus Resurges in Africa, Doctors Fear the Worst Is Yet to Come (NYT) When the pandemic began, global public health officials raised grave concerns about the vulnerabilities of Africa. But its countries overall appeared to fare far better than those in Europe or the Americas, upending scientists’ expectations. Now, the coronavirus is on the rise again in swaths of the continent, posing a new, possibly deadlier threat. In South Africa, a crush of new cases that spread from Port Elizabeth is growing exponentially across the nation, with deaths mounting. Eight countries, including Nigeria, Uganda and Mali, recently recorded their highest daily case counts all year. “The second wave is here,” John N. Nkengasong, the head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has declared. In South Africa, the continent’s leader by far in coronavirus cases and deaths, the growing devastation in its medical system has led to the rationing of care for older adults. Last week, officials announced that a new variant of the virus that may be associated with faster transmission has become dominant. With stricter control measures lifted and many people no longer seeing the virus as a threat, public health officials fear that Africa’s second wave could be far worse than its first.

Syria’s bread lines are so long that children have to skip school to wait in them (Washington Post) Every morning, Abu Mohammed and his two eldest sons wake up for dawn prayer in Damascus, then take turns heading to the bakery. They wait for at least three hours, barely making it to work or school on time, he said. Often, the boys miss their first few classes. Sometimes they miss the whole day. Abu Mohammed, who declined to give his full name for fear of harassment by the security services, is among a rapidly growing number of Syrians languishing in seemingly endless lines. The bread crisis is perhaps the most visible and painful manifestation of Syria’s economic meltdown. It has seen the amount of subsidized bread most families can buy reduced by half or even more. Subsidized prices have doubled since October. Outside major cities, the deprivation may be even worse. “The poor man living in the village no longer has gas; he has wood. He’s out of bread; he makes his own,” said a resident of the coastal city Tartous, interviewed over Facebook.

Our Digital Lives Drive a Brick-and-Mortar Boom in Data Centers (NYT) The shift to digital work and play from home, hastened by the pandemic, has wreaked havoc on commercial real estate. But experts say it has also generated one surprising bright spot for the industry: data centers. The growing reliance on cloud-based technology—and the big, blocky buildings that house its hardware—has created greater opportunities for developers and investors as businesses and consumers gobble up more data in a world that has become increasingly connected. “Our houses are connected, our cars are connected, our streetlights and parking meters are connected, and every single one of those connections is passing data back and forth,” said Sean O’Hara, president of the exchange-traded funds division at Pacer Financial, an investment advisory firm in Malvern, Pa. And companies that provide data storage are preparing for even greater demand as new technologies like 5G and artificial intelligence become more widely used.

The Secret to Longevity? 4-Minute Bursts of Intense Exercise May Help (NYT) If you increase your heart rate, will your life span follow? That possibility is at the heart of an ambitious new study of exercise and mortality. The study, one of the largest and longest-term experimental examinations to date of exercise and mortality, shows that older men and women who exercise in almost any fashion are relatively unlikely to die prematurely. But if some of that exercise is intense, the study also finds, the risk of early mortality declines even more, and the quality of people’s lives climbs. In essence, says Dorthe Stensvold, a researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology who led the new study, intense training—which was part of the routines of both the interval and control groups—provided slightly better protection against premature death than moderate workouts alone.

#headlines #news

[politicalennui]

I was amazed at what the world was capable of. Of a temporary truce. To wars. To infighting. To random violence. To pollution. It was like a vision. A vision of what the world could be.

Over and over I had these thoughts. Let’s keep it together. Let’s take small steps towards world peace, towards a common humanity. Maybe we could slide towards Humanism, a philosophy that stresses the potential value and goodness of human beings, emphasizes common human needs, and seeks rational ways of solving human problems.

Maybe not.

Governors of U.S. states are being sued for placing promoting distancing, for closing non-essential businesses and all large gatherings. These things were done by Democratic and Republican Governors. But ti didn’t matter to the President of the United Sates. I commended him for finally stepping up and acting Presidential, for showing leadership in a crisis. He had been reluctant at first, claiming that there was no pandemic, that it was all a hoax, and that it was created by Democrats to make him look bad. Denied that his was his responsibility. But, he banned travel from China – controversial at first, as he had seemed to be blaming China for infecting us deliberately . He had called it the China virus, all the while claiming to be looking into allegations that China had created the virus in a lab, or let one escape. But, certainly travelers from China were bringing the corona virus with them. A bit late, but a good move.

He suddenly stepped away from paranoid ravings and partisan bicker. Began releasing stockpiles of U.S. medical supplies. Called for more masks, for more ventilators. Appeared to agree that large social gatherings would help spread the virus, that distancing was a good thing, that we would all get through this together. And we were weathering it together, under leadership potential I never though was in him. I was confused, but hopeful. It was good.

Then, he attacked individual States for not doing enough, for not moving fast enough. States were having troubles getting supplies to make ventilators, for virus-blocking masks for health-care workers. A little bit of bickering, but a reminder that we are not all as united as I’d hoped. Then, groups started suing States for closing certain businesses, particularly for selecting gun stores as non-essential for the duration of the shutdowns. People didn’t like that. And the ones doing the complaining already had plenty of guns, but any halt to gun sales was seen as an infringement of basic Constitutional rights. People began speaking out on social media about not taking this insult any longer. They wanted unrestricted access to weapons and ammunition, to shooting ranges. Then the mass shootings started up again, but only in Canada, so far.

I heard all that, and I was worried. Worried that this fragile peace would end soon. The propaganda machines started up. People were accusing (Democratic) Governors of violating people’s basic tights, the right to bear arms, the right to assemble, the right to do as they pleased, really, and if they pleased to disobey the law, and violate quarantine, and distancing, then that was their right too. And they began demonstrating, with their guns. And their message was clear. We’ve waited long enough (about a month), and we’re angry and we’re taking back our rights. Because after all, what’s more important than making money? Than buying guns? Than riding gas guzzling, polluting giant trucks around for fun? Public health be damned.

We thought it was a hoax all along. Even if it’s real, we don’t care. We believe it’s overblown hype, that it’s not that dangerous. That we know better than anyone that we don’t have anything to worry about.

And, then the President of the United States didn’t urge patience. He didn’t even ask people to wait a couple more weeks as most closures and stay-at-home orders wold end on May 1. No, he said, I’m with your people in those sates where you’re demonstrating. Go for it. Do it. We need to open the country back up. And the demonstrators are not practicing social distancing or wearing masks. After all, they remember when President Trump said it was all a hoax, and they put that on their signs. They remember when he said it was a plot by Democrats, so they are coming out in force, blocking streets in States with Democratic Governors, demanding that all restrictions be dropped. Wearing MAGA hats and shirts, the uniform of Trump’s fanatic followers. Followers who are prepared to test the this new virus by having everyone in the country be exposed to this virus so they can go back to their normal lives. Four weeks is long enough, they say. Wearing their MAGA hats and Trump shirts, and brandishing their semi-automatic rifles – which can easily be converted to automatic weapons – the message is clear. Let us do what we want, regardless os consequences, or we take back our street by force of arms.

So far, they number a few hundred in a few states. The Nazis in Germany were few in number too. Just hooligans at first, breaking shop windows, beating people up. Then shooting people. Then marching with their weapons. The Schutzstaffel, or S.S., was a small organization in Germany – volunteer body guards at first – devoted to Adolf Hitler, whom they idolized in the same way these MAGA people worship Donald Trump. Of course, after war started, they became two units, the ones who continued to enforce racial policy, and the combat units. Trump often claims offense at all the lies about him, and fake news, for reporting his lies. In Germany, the S.S. created the Gestapo, who were allowed to arrest people that offended the government. Is that next?

We could have weathered this pandemic together, and come out of it with a feeling of shared humanity, with a common purpose. We could have put plans in place to insure that we would be better prepared next time to handle things like this, that we’d have planners, medical equipment, cures, and a more universal vaccine that could prevent new mutations of common viruses. We could have developed better plans for necessary stay-at-home situations. Hell, I even thought we could maybe have a two-day holiday once a month when we shut off the coal-burning factories, prohibit dumping waste into oceans and lakes and watersheds, or not use our cars. Just so we could have clean air to see what it’s like, and clean water to swim in. Instead, while we’re distracted by having this virus to deal with, the current government of our country is rolling back restrictions on coal burning, and fracking, and on clean air and water standards. Because, like Trump, his fanatical followers believe there is no such thing as global warming. No climate change to worry about. No pandemic. No need to follow health warnings.

It is, to only slightly modify the German phrase of “over all things or all people” used to justify world domination: USA über alles.

It Didn’t Last I was amazed at what the world was capable of. Of a temporary truce. To wars. To infighting.

#freedom #insanity #leadership #observations #politicians #Politics #United States #USA

[justsomeantifas]

Here’s your dose of “What the Fuck Is Going On” news (2/15/2017 edition)

Some members of the Ways and Means Committee introduced an amendment that would have request for Trump's tax returns to be released from the Treasury Department. This stems from Trump's possible conflicts of interest and his possible business holdings and debts. Everyone voted along the party lines and the amendment was rejected. Representative Sander Levin told his colleagues "Unless this amendment is adopted, we will never see the president's tax returns while he's in office." (source)

There are reports about a 23 year old named Daniel Ramirez Medina who was taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. Medina has no criminal record and was brought into this country as a child, and he was previously granted permission to live and work in the U.S due to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. The program is designed to protect those who came into the U.S. as babies/children and gives them the temporary right to work in the U.S. This move represents a possible broadening of immigration enforcement under Trump and puts hundreds of thousands of people at risk, it also goes against his comments he made before where he claimed DREAMers would be protected. (source)

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway retweeted a message from a white nationalist twitter user, and responded that she "loved them back." Later Conway claimed that someone else must have had access to her account and did this, but she then said that "everyone makes mistakes." (source)  

The Natural Resources Defense Council has sued the Trump administration for delaying action that would protect an endangered bumble bee species that plays an integral role in the food chain. The lawsuit says that the delay is an illegal holdup because the species is "currently facing an imminent risk of extinction." The plans to protect the bee would have taken effect this Friday but Trump's executive order that imposed a 60-day waiting period on new regulations kept the conservation measures from taking effect. (source)

Trump’s nominee for labor secretary and CEO of the company that owns the Hardee's and Carl's Jr. fast food chains, Andrew Puzder, has withdrawn himself for consideration for the position. Puzder has been widely criticized by unions and worker’s rights organizations. He was the matter of more controversy when it was revealed that his ex-wife appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show on an episode about domestic violence and talked about the violence Puzder put her through. (source)

According to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump remains committed in investigating a link between autism and vaccines. Kennedy, who is one of the leading proponents of the theory that vaccines cause autism theory, says that Trump wants him to lead a “vaccine safety commission.” (source)

There was a White House event in which Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos met with U.S. educators. During the event, a principal of a Virginia Special Ed Center that specializes in children with autism and other physical and mental conditions introduced herself and the word "autism," caught Trump's attention. He then went on to ask "so what's going on with autism," and then falsely told the principal that there's been a "tremendous amount of increase," and asked her if she’s noticed the increase. The principal then gave the statistics for how many children have autism and Trump repeated that the numbers have greatly increased (they haven’t) and told her “now, it’s gotta be even lower than that.” (source)

Trump said on that the United States will no longer insist on a Palestinian state as part of a peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians. Trump said in a joint news conference with Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, "I'm looking at two states and one state, and I like the one both parties like. I can live with either one." (source)

Texas became the first state to support Trump's travel ban in court. Ken Paxton, the state attorney general, has asked the appeals court to reconsider their ruling against the travel restrictions. 21 states have urged the court to keep the travel ban frozen, Texas is the first and (so far) only state to ask it to be restored. (source)

In an interview a reporter asked Trump about the rise of anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic related incidents, they also asked about the administration "playing with xenophobia and maybe racist tones." Trump responded by going on a long winded rant about how many electoral college votes he got and how wrong the predictions were. He then listed the Jewish people he knows in his family and then said that "A lot of good things are happening and you're going to see a lot of love. You're going to see a lot of love, okay?" (source/full question and answer)

Despite his frequent attacks on the Affordable Care Act for it's "high deductibles" and "narrow doctor networks," the Trump administration has proposed regulations that would give insurers the okay to introduce plans with even higher deductibles and narrower networks. The Department of Health and Human Services released the proposed regulations and could also reduce the amount of financial assistance that lower and middle income people receive. (source)

Finally, I will now provide a daily reminder that: Flint, Michigan still doesn’t have clean water. Standing Rock still needs your support. The American infrastructure report card still averages poorly with the rating of a "D+" 

#Donald Trump #politics #immigration #refugees #racism #xenophobia #anti-semitism #white supremacy #Healthcare #classism #israeli-palestinian conflict #ableism #domestic abuse #abuse #violence #domestic violence #What the Fuck is Going On News #Mod H

[front-burner]

Today in Politics: March 6, 2017

President Trump has a new, revised executive order which bans travelers from six Muslim-majority countries from getting new visas. It won’t affect current visa holders and unlike the previous ban, it excludes citizens of Iraq. The executive order will be phased in over the next two weeks. (NYT)(WP)(ATL)(Raw Executive Order- White House)

The Supreme Court decided to not hear the case regarding transgender bathroom rights after the White House’s reversal of position, even though they agreed in October to hear the case. (NYT)(CNN)(WP)

House Republicans released the Affordable Care Act replacement bill called the American Health Care Act. The bill replaces federal insurance subsidies with a new form of individual tax credits and grants to help states shape their own policies. The bill would also allow insurers a charge on people if they have had a gap in their health coverage. The GOP bill also includes a provision to strip all federal funding for Planned Parenthood. (view bill)(WP)(CNN)(FOX)(NYT)

Today Ben Carson made some of his first remarks to Housing and Urban Development. “That’s what America is about. A land of dreams and opportunity. There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less,“. This comment, which compares slaves to immigrants, has been criticized by numerous members of the Black community as well as the NAACP. (WP)(HILL)(FOX)

Four Atlanta mosques receive death threats. They received a note that said, "Death is waiting for you and your kind” and included a hand-drawn picture of someone being beheaded. (CNN)(AJC)

#news #politics #donald trump #obamacare #muslim ban #top

[s-leary]

Fascism Watch, January 31

(@Britannica tweet)

Constitutional Crisis

Customs and Border Protection deports people, US Marshals fail to serve court orders to stop them.

According to the statement issued by Vayeghan’s attorneys, the marshal’s office “has so far failed to serve process and instead represents that it has been instructed by its Office of the General Counsel to await instruction from the U.S. Attorney’s office.”

This is bad. This is very, very bad.

The attorney general is part of the executive branch. The U.S. marshals are a part of the judiciary. It’s not up to the attorney general to instruct the U.S. marshals to serve the court orders on the CBP. The U.S. marshals are federally required to do so.

Journalist Charlotte Silver has a Twitter thread explaining the situation. LA Weekly has a Q&A with the ACLU about the handling of refugees at LAX over the weekend.

(@flamsmark tweet)

Washington, Virginia, Massachusetts, and New York are all suing over the immigration ban.

Detroit family caught in Iraq travel ban, mom dies waiting to come home. But according to Sean Spicer, families are merely being inconvenienced.

Russia

Russia is shelling eastern Ukraine in violation of a February 2015 ceasefire. You might recall that Trump inserted new language about Ukraine into the GOP platform last summer. I’m sure there’s no connection whatsoever between his inauguration and accelerated hostilities from Moscow.

Rep. Maxine Waters: Investigate Trump and the only man he won’t disparage — Vladimir Putin

Trump

White House is reportedly considering deporting legal immigrants on programs like food stamps and publicizing their usage

The Trump administration is considering a broad crackdown on legal foreign workers

After meeting with pharma lobbyists, Trump drops promise to negotiate drug prices

There have been reports that Steve Bannon's appointment to the National Security Council is illegal without Congressional approval, but the wording of the executive order appears to skirt that requirement.

White House officials will no longer appear on CNN, because it doesn't promote Trump's agenda

Workers at Trump’s Washington hotel vote to join union. The National Labor Relations Board members are appointed by Trump.

EU chief puts Trump administration in 'threat' category — with China, Russia, radical Islam, war and terror

"When Charles and David Koch join forces with the ACLU, a Republican president ought to recognize that he’s messed up. Bad."

Trump falsely takes credit for cutting $600 million from the F-35 program

Congress

Republicans move to sell off 3.3m acres of national land

House to repeal Obama coal rule that prohibits pollution of water sources near mines. It is estimated that about 6,000 miles of streams will be destroyed.

Cabinet & Federal Appointees

Elaine Chao has been confirmed as Secretary of Transportation. On another day, it would probably be a bigger scandal that she donated $42K to the committee members voting for her and that her husband failed to recuse himself from her vote.

Tillerson, Zinke, DeVos, and Perry have all cleared their respective committees and will get a full Senate vote. Democrats boycotted the committee votes of Sessions, Price, and Mnuchin, preventing a quorum.

Betsy DeVos's written responses to her committee's questions plagiarized passages from the Department of Education's old press releases and that of Vanita Gupta, former head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division.

Have I mentioned that the State Department’s entire senior administrative team just resigned? The State Department’s entire senior administrative team just resigned. (ETA: as several readers have pointed out, that WaPo headline is somewhat misleading. They were essentially fired.)

Trump picks Scalia 2.0 for Supreme Court. His record:

“Mark me down, too, as a believer that the traditional account of the judicial role Justice Scalia defended will endure,” he said in a lecture last year. Like Scalia, as a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, Gorsuch has been hostile to abortion rights and environmental regulations, and sympathetic to large corporations and the religious right. He has criticized liberals for challenging bans on gay marriage before the courts. Though his paper trail on civil-rights cases is slim, he’ll presumably be in sync with Scalia on these issues too.

Here's McCain, in October, vowing to block any Clinton nominee

Protests

The President and CEO of the NAACP was arrested after sitting in at Jeff Sessions's Alabama office.

Other Fascist Nonsense

ICE agents staked out the county courthouse in Portland and asked non-white people exiting courtrooms to identify themselves

Jerry Falwell Jr. Says He Will Lead Federal Task Force on Higher-Ed Policy. Falwell is the president of the online Christian Liberty University, a creationist, and an Islamophobe.

Philippines extrajudicial killings may constitute crimes against humanity, Amnesty warns. We have talked before about Trump's admiration for the president of the Philippines and his war on drugs.

#fascism watch #fascism #donald trump #koch brothers #russia #ukraine #jerry falwell jr. #duterte #cornell william brooks #Gorsuch #elaine chao #rex tillerson #betsy devos #rick perry #jeff sessions #tom price #steven mnuchin #maxine waters #steve bannon #nobannowall