Las Vegas mayor says 'free enterprise' will allow restaurants to reopen safely

The mayor of Las Vegas, pressing to reopen businesses in her city, said “competition” would ensure that they operated safely during the coronavirus pandemic.

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Israel police kill Palestinian who launched van, stabbing attack

A Palestinian man was shot dead Wednesday after he hit an Israeli police officer with a van at a West Bank checkpoint and then stabbed him with a pair of scissors, police said. A pipe bomb was found at the scene which the attacker had apparently intended to hurl at the officers, police said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wished a "speedy recovery" to the policeman -- who was taken to hospital but was not in a life-threatening condition -- and congratulated the forces who had "acted speedily and neutralised the terrorist".

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Mexico braces for a surge in coronavirus infections and deaths

Amid worries about shortages of hospital space, doctors and equipment, Mexico braces for a major surge in coronavirus deaths.

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Trump 'strongly' disagrees with Georgia governor's reopening plan

"It's just too soon. I think it's too soon," Trump said at the White House coronavirus news briefing.

"They can wait a little bit longer, just a little bit - not much. Because safety has to predominate. We have to have that. So I told the governor very simply that I disagree with his decision but he has to do what he thinks is right."

Kemp, a Republican, is allowing gyms, hair salons, bowling alleys and tattoo and massage parlors to reopen on Friday, followed by movie houses and restaurants next week.

The easing of sweeping restrictions in Georgia, along with South Carolina and other mostly Southern U.S. states, follows protests against rules imposed during the pandemic that shut down businesses and largely confined residents to their homes.

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Coronavirus Kills More Americans in One Month Than the Flu Kills in One Year

Although there is still much we don’t know about the coronavirus, we know enough to say that it is far more dangerous and deadly than the flu. It took twelve months and 61 million infections for the H1N1 swine flu to kill 12,500 Americans in 2009–10. The Centers for Disease Control estimated that the seasonal flu killed 34,200 Americans during the 2018–19 flu season. In 2019, car crashes killed 38,800 Americans.As for the new coronavirus? On March 20, the death toll in the United States was 225. By April 20, the coronavirus had killed more than 42,000 Americans.Last week The New Atlantis produced a chart that starkly portrays just how quickly COVID-19 became one of the leading causes of death in the United States:> Why "it's not as bad as flu" — or car crashes or the 1957 pandemic — is not credible.> > New from the @tnajournal team: https://t.co/SVNscTHZrQ> > -- Ari Schulman (@AriSchulman) April 13, 2020Despite the rapidity with which the coronavirus has killed tens of thousands of Americans, some on the right have continued to argue that the pandemic will end up being no more serious than a bad flu season. On Fox News last week, Bill Bennett said that “we’re going to have fewer fatalities from this than from the flu.” He pointed to the fact that the IMHE model from the University of Washington estimated that COVID-19 would most likely kill about 60,000 Americans and that the seasonal flu killed 61,000 Americans in 2017–18, a particularly bad flu season.But as Rich Lowry pointed out last week, “if we are going to have 60,000 deaths with people not leaving their homes for more than a month, the number of deaths obviously would have been higher — much higher — if everyone had gone about business as usual.” Indeed, the IMHE model is making an estimate of the death toll only for a first wave of infections, and most of the country will still be vulnerable to infection after the first wave passes.While there are 800,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States — that’s 0.24 percent of the U.S. population — former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb has noted that anywhere between 1 percent and 5 percent of Americans may have actually already been infected with the virus. But that’s far short of the 50 percent to 70 percent required to achieve herd immunity. The seasonal flu, by contrast, infected 12 percent of the American population last year because we have a flu vaccine and some more immunity from previous infections.Not only does the new coronavirus have the potential to infect many more people than the seasonal flu does, it appears to kill a greater percentage of those infected. You don’t need to rely on various statistical models to come to that conclusion. You just have to look at the reality of what has already happened around the world and in our own country.The seasonal flu kills 0.1 percent of people infected, but the new coronavirus has already killed 0.1 percent of the entire population of the state of New York. That may seem like a small percentage. But imagine the entire country getting hit as badly as New York state: 0.1 percent of the U.S. population is 330,000 people. And there’s no reason to believe that New York’s current death toll marks the upper limit of the virus’s lethality.The Wall Street Journal reported that confirmed coronavirus cases in the Italian province of Bergamo (population 1.1 million) had killed 0.2 percent of the entire population in one month. The true percentage may be higher: There were 4,000 more deaths in Bergamo in March 2020 than the average number of deaths in March in recent years, but only 2,000 of those deaths were attributed to confirmed COVID-19 cases.We are talking not about statistical models of what might happen in the future but about the reality of what has already happened. The virus has killed 100 Italian doctors. That doesn’t happen during a bad flu season. The virus has killed 30 employees of the New York City Police Department. That doesn’t happen during a bad flu season.And then there’s the experience of China, where the official death toll in Wuhan is 2,500, according to the Communist regime. But there are reports that the true death toll in Wuhan (a city of 10 million) was more than 40,000 people. That’s 0.4 percent of the city’s entire population.Almost all conservatives are skeptical of Communist China’s official coronavirus death toll. Why, then, do some think that the coronavirus is not much more deadly than the flu? Did Communist China, a regime not known for valuing human life, shut down much of its economy for a couple of months because of a bad flu? Or did Communist leaders fear that without the costly shutdown the virus would inflict much greater harm on their nation and threaten their grip on power?You don’t have to have a Ph.D. in epidemiology to answer those questions.No nation can afford to endure a lockdown until a vaccine is developed for the new coronavirus. But having a proper understanding of the virus’s past and present danger matters. Knowing that it is extremely unlikely that the threat will be gone once the first wave passes will help guide the government, businesses, and individuals to take precautions that will limit the virus’s death toll in the months to come.

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Swedish health agency says virus has peaked in Stockholm, no easing of restrictions yet

Around one-third of Stockholm's 1 million people will have had the novel coronavirus by the start of May and the disease may have already passed its peak in the capital, Sweden's public health agency said on Tuesday. The public health agency said its modelling suggested the rate of new infections in the city had peaked on April 15, although a decline was not yet evident from its data. "Already a bit more than a week ago, the peak was reached, at least according to this model, and we can expect fewer cases each day," Anders Wallensten, deputy state epidemiologist at the agency, told reporters at a daily news briefing.

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Argentina doesn't make payment, starting default countdown

Argentina said it didn’t make $500 million in debt payments due Wednesday, starting a 30-day countdown to a possible default unless the government and bondholders can reach a deal on restructuring its massive foreign debt. The failure to pay came a week after the government of President Alberto Fernández presented a proposal to restructure roughly $70 billion in debt involving the suspension of its debt obligations for three years and a 62% reduction for interest payments. Argentina will use the period to seek creditor acceptance of its proposal, which it has said will remain in force until May 8 and aims at “restoring the sustainability of public debt in foreign currency.”

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Beijing names islands in disputed South China Sea

China on Tuesday defended its naming of 80 islands and other geographical features in the South China Sea in a move likely to anger neighbours as the country asserts its territorial claims. A joint announcement of the names on Sunday from the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Ministry of Civil Affairs came a day after China established new administrative districts for the contested Spratly and Paracel island chains. China last released such a list in 1983 when it named 287 geographical features across the disputed waterway.

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Common Questions About Stimulus Payment Problems, Answered

We got answers for some of your most pressing questions about your stimulus payment

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India coronavirus lockdown: Broke tourists rescued from cave

The six tourists moved into a cave after running out of money when India went into lockdown.

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Washington state to ease some virus restrictions

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee says the state will not be able to lift many of the stay-at-home restrictions implemented to fight the coronavirus by May 4, but he hopes health modeling in the coming days will allow resumption of some activities. (April 21)

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Coronavirus outbreak in Philippines jail sees 123 inmates infected

A prison in the Philippines is suffering from a major outbreak of the new coronavirus with 123 infected inmates, officials said on Wednesday, adding to concerns among activists about contagion risks in some of the world's most overcrowded jails. The mayor of Cebu City said a new building in the prison capable of handling 3,000 people would be used as an isolation facility to contain an outbreak that accounts for 40% of cases in the Philippines' second biggest city. Eighteen cases have been found at a jail in Manila's Quezon City, among them nine members of staff, and media has reported infections at other facilities.

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Birx says Georgia residents 'can be very creative' about getting tattoos and haircuts while social distancing

Dr. Deborah Birx tried to reconcile the controversial order by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp reopening some businesses across the state with the task force recommendations that call for continued social distancing.

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3 US soldiers punished for sneaking off to a bar in South Korea and returning through a hole in a fence despite coronavirus restrictions

Three US Army soldiers were caught and punished for breaking the rules by going to an off-post bar in South Korea.

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Health Dept. Doctor Says Doubts on Hydroxychloroquine Led to His Ouster

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‘What Do You Have to Lose?’ How Trump Has Promoted Malaria Drug

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Brothers Who Hoarded 17,700 Hand Sanitizer Bottles Avoid Fine After Donating Supplies

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Covid-19 Threatens Global Safety Net

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Tornado Kills One in Southern Oklahoma

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A Coronavirus Death in Early February Was ‘Probably the Tip of an Iceberg’

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Pentagon officials say Trump's comment on Iran a warning, will maintain self-defense

Senior Pentagon officials said on Wednesday that President Donald Trump's comments on Iran were meant as a warning to Tehran, but suggested that the U.S. military would continue to abide by their existing right to self defense instead of any changes to their rules.

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Trump: if Iranian ships get too close 'we'll shoot them out of the water'

U.S. Navy ships will shoot Iranian gunboats that get too close "out of the water," President Donald Trump said on Wednesday, after 11 vessels from Iran's elite fighting force came dangerously close to American ships in the Gulf.

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