Big Time News Blog: 04/29/20

Wednesday, April 29, 2020

Corrections: April 30, 2020

By Unknown Author from NYT Corrections https://ift.tt/2ybHjVg

Coronavirus Briefing: What Happened Today

By BY PATRICK J. LYONS from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2xhiE0W

Kim Jong-un: Who might lead N Korea without Kim?

The enigmatic sister and a spymaster are contenders, as rumours swirl over Kim Jong-un's health.

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Living in a war zone: What it teaches about surviving a pandemic

As the coronavirus disrupts daily life in America, Afghans’ adaptation to constant war holds lessons for persevering amid uncertainty.

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Stop pinning your hopes on coronavirus antibodies: 3 major issues mean they're no silver bullet

Politicians hope to use antibody tests to help reopen countries. But the tests can be inaccurate, and some patients may not develop antibodies at all.

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Coronavirus: What African countries are doing to help people to eat amid the lockdowns

What African countries are doing to help people to eat amid the lockdowns.

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New Navy carrier inquiry suggests tough scrutiny of admirals

The Navy is launching a wider investigation of the coronavirus crisis aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, suggesting closer and deeper scrutiny of actions and decisions by senior admirals in the Pacific that led to the controversial firing of the ship's commander nearly a month ago. The move announced Wednesday effectively delays a decision on whether to go ahead with a Navy recommendation that Capt. Brett E. Crozier be restored to command of the Roosevelt, which has been docked in Guam for weeks. Crozier was fired after pleading for urgent Navy action to protect his crew.

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Company says drug was effective against COVID-19 in U.S. study

A biotech company says its experimental drug has proven effective against the new coronavirus in a major U.S. government study that put it to a strict test.

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Miss the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds flyby? Check out the footage people captured of the jets roaring over New York City to honor essential workers.

The jets flew a 35-minute path across the Northeastern states as a part of "Operation America Strong" to honor essential workers.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2y8w9AB

How Tara Reade's allegations could bring down Joe Biden

Earlier this month, I wrote a column asking what Democrats should do about sexual assault allegations against Joe Biden, the party's presumptive nominee for president. My answer? Not much. The accusation made by Tara Reade, a former Biden staffer from his days in the Senate during the early 1990s, didn't strike me as especially convincing, so Democrats, I suggested, could move forward without much concern. Though toward the end of the column I included two caveats: If Reade offered further corroboration of her claims or if evidence emerged of a larger pattern of abusive actions toward women on Biden's part, that could well change my views of the matter.Just two weeks later, both of my conditions have been met.Last week we learned that Reade's mother called into the Larry King Show in 1993 to talk about how her daughter had quit working for a "prominent senator" after unspecified "problems" as a staffer. Then earlier this week Business Insider reported that a former neighbor of Reade's (a self-described "strong Democrat") recalls a conversation with her in 1995 or 1996 in which Reade tearfully described being sexually assaulted by Biden. Together, those two stories help to corroborate Reade's specific claim about herself.Finally, on Tuesday, a 2008 essay by the late Alexander Cockburn surfaced in which the journalist reported that Biden had made "unwelcome and unwanted" sexual advances against a woman in 1972 or 1973. That establishes a possible longstanding pattern of Biden's behavior that further validates Reade's accusation (and potentially opens the door to others).In light of these revelations, the time has come for a two new questions: Can Biden survive the gathering storm around Tara Reade's allegations? And if so, will that fact be good or bad for the Democratic Party in November?The first question is the easier one to answer: Biden's presumptive nomination is quite likely to survive the corroboration of Reade's claims. That's because members of Biden's electoral base in the Democratic Party — older, culturally moderate white working-class voters in the Midwest and older, culturally moderate African Americans — are unlikely to be turned against him by one corroborated allegation of sexual assault from nearly three decades in the past. If anything, rank-and-file Democrats have expressed regret that some MeToo allegations have taken down popular members of the party (former Minnesota Sen. Al Franken is the example cited most frequently) — and they're also irritated that Democrats are expected to adhere to standards their opponents openly flout.The factions of the party most likely to turn on Biden because of a sexual-assault scandal are those who've been least wedded to his candidacy from the start — those firmly on the left, who supported Sen. Bernie Sanders; and white urban progressives, who tended to favor Sen. Elizabeth Warren's candidacy. Neither group possesses the numbers or influence in the party to get it to overrule the preferences of the other two electorally crucial factions — and obviously their opinions will also carry little weight with the candidate himself. This means that, so long as no additional corroborated accusations materialize, Biden will most likely get to hold onto the nomination if he wants to.That might turn out to be a very bad thing for the party come November.But how could this be? How could a sexual assault allegation place Biden at a disadvantage in the general election against President Trump, a man who has openly bragged on tape of sexual assault and has himself been accused of rape on multiple occasions?On substance, Trump will have zero moral ground to stand on. But he won't be taking a stand in the name of treating women with respect. Neither will he be accusing Biden of being a sexual predator. Instead, he and the entire Republican noise machine will constantly, relentlessly hammer Biden, leading Democrats, and the media for flagrant hypocrisy and double standards. The moral content of the issue won't matter one bit. What will matter is that Biden has set himself up as a moral arbiter on issues of sexual harassment and violence, insisting we must "believe all women," and that in the fall of 2018 he and many other members of his party sought to destroy the reputation of Trump's Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh for allegations of sexual assault that were less convincingly corroborated than those Reade has lodged against Biden.The Democratic nominee for president and his party are ruthless political operators who seek above all else to destroy their enemies and help themselves, all the while setting themselves up as impartial moral authorities. This will be the message, driven home over and over again: that claims of purity and impartiality are pretense, transparent fakes. Democrats might posture like they're better than Republicans, including the president, but they aren't. They're every bit as bad. They're just more dishonest about it.The Biden campaign's effort to portray itself as a moral reset from the debasement of the Trump years will run into this counter-message like a power sander. The Trump campaign will strip it away with a barrage of paid ads, prime-time cable news diatribes, and a hailstorm of tweets — all of it repeating the message (illustrated with clips from and about the Kavanaugh hearings) that Biden and his fellow Democrats are every bit the BS artists that Trump is, only they won't admit it. They'll lie about it, right to your face.To Democrats this prediction may sound implausible. There's no way that Trump, a man whose mendaciousness is well established and total, can possibly succeed in portraying Biden as more dishonest than he is. But he won't have to show that Biden is worse, just that he's no better.That's Trump's (perhaps only) winning move — to bring the playing field down to his level, to lower Biden's favorability rating, to make him seem less admirable, less likable, less morally upstanding, less … superior than Trump. He did the same thing against Hillary Clinton in 2016, using the FBI investigation of her email practices while secretary of state as a cudgel. Last summer, the strategy was to impugn Biden's son, making them both look like corrupt wheeler dealers in Ukraine. That didn't work out, but now Reade's allegations have made it possible for Trump and his party to do what they love most of all, which is to accuse Democrats and the media of smarmy double standards instead.Of course this won't work with most Democratic voters, but that won't be its aim. The aim will be to ensure maximal turnout and Trump loyalty among Republicans — and the destruction of Biden's reputation among independents in crucial swing states.Will it succeed? Trump will be facing re-election while presiding over a deadly pandemic and the early stages of an economic depression, so who knows. What I do know is that the behavior Tara Reade has plausibly alleged about the presumptive Democratic nominee is going to be a major liability for him as we head toward Election Day.Editor's note: A previous version of this article mischaracterized a quote by Alexander Cockburn. It has been corrected. We regret the error.Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here.More stories from theweek.com The perils of Hooverism Florida's health department reportedly told medical examiners to remove causes of death from mortality data Elon Musk, who predicted 'close to zero' new coronavirus cases by the end of April, demands we 'free America'

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Inmate who gave birth on ventilator dies of Covid-19

The 30-year-old appears to be the the first US federal female prisoner to die from coronavirus.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/3cTQVma

Israel marks its Independence Day under coronavirus lockdown

Israelis celebrated their Independence Day at home Wednesday amid a nationwide lockdown aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. The national holiday, which honors the creation of Israel after the end of the British Mandate in 1948, is usually a festive occasion, with people heading to the beach, hosting barbecues and watching fireworks. The Israeli air force devoted its annual fly-by to health workers, with four planes crisscrossing the nation and performing aerial acrobatics over hospitals and medical centers.

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Pakistan prepares to ease coronavirus curbs with infections below projections

Pakistan is preparing to loosen coronavirus lockdown restrictions as the number of infections and deaths are well below previous projections, officials said on Wednesday. The South Asian nation, which has registered more than 15,000 cases of COVID-19 including 335 deaths, has already granted exemptions to dozens of sectors to open up over the last few days. “The mortality numbers are nowhere near the same as we see in other countries,” Planning Minister Asad Umar, who oversees the response to the virus, told journalists.

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Costco to require face coverings for shoppers

Starting Monday, customers will be required to wear masks covering their nose and mouth at all times while inside the store.

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FDA reportedly plans to authorize emergency use of largely untested drug to treat coronavirus

The Food and Drug Administration will authorize the emergency use of the antiviral remdesivir on COVID-19 patients as soon as Wednesday, a senior administration official told The New York Times. Pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences revealed promising study results involving remdesivir on Wednesday, but the FDA's reported move would still sidestep the usual testing required to authorize a drug's usage.Gilead said Wednesday that its own trial, as well one overseen by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, met its goals. Of the study's 397 severe COVID-19 patients, at least 50 percent of patients treated with a 5-day dosage of remdesivir improved and more than half were discharged from the hospital within two weeks. The overall mortality rate of the study was 7 percent, and relatively few patients developed bad side effects. But the study wasn't evaluated against a control group, and it's unclear if those recoveries were natural or if remdesivir actually had something to do with them. Hard data from the study also hasn't been released yet.Anecdotal reports, including two published in The New England Journal of Medicine, provided more credibility for remdesivir in the coronavirus fight. But they also didn't compared the drug against a placebo. A study published in The Lancet concluded remdesivir was "safe and adequately tolerated" but "did not provide significant benefits over placebo."More stories from theweek.com How Tara Reade's allegations could bring down Joe Biden The perils of Hooverism Florida's health department reportedly told medical examiners to remove causes of death from mortality data

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China opposes international COVID-19 probe that presumes its guilt: vice foreign minister

China "resolutely opposes" any international inquiry into the coronavirus pandemic that presumes its guilt, said Yue Yucheng, a vice-foreign minister, in comments published on Thursday.

from Reuters: World News https://ift.tt/2xjqGXa

Australia links coronavirus outbreak in remote south to Carnival Corp cruise ship

A coronavirus outbreak in Australia's remote southern island state of Tasmania likely originated from the Ruby Princess cruise ship, a government report published on Thursday concluded, as the national death toll rose to 91.

from Reuters: World News https://ift.tt/2Wcfu7i

Peru's leader says to propose comprehensive pension reform

Peruvian President Martin Vizcarra on Wednesday rejected a bill approved by Congress earlier this month that would have let people withdraw up to 25% of their holdings in private pension funds and vowed to send a full pension reform plan to lawmakers.

from Reuters: World News https://ift.tt/2W8hoFS

Irish government talks may drift into June: Fianna Fail leader

The leader of one of the parties negotiating to form a new Irish government raised the prospect on Wednesday of talks drifting well into June, extending a months-long deadlock that has been overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic.

from Reuters: World News https://ift.tt/3aPCNJt

Bad and going viral: UK charity highlights COVID-19 misinformation

Internet and media companies should do more to tackle the spread of misinformation in Britain, independent fact-checking charity Full Fact said in a report on Thursday highlighting falsehoods that have spread during the coronavirus outbreak this year.

from Reuters: World News https://ift.tt/3cXx2e0

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