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Republicans lean into Biden probe as he surges in Democratic primary

Republicans lean into Biden probe as he surges in Democratic primary

Politico reports: Just hours after Joe Biden surged to the top of the Democratic presidential pack, Senate Republicans announced a new phase of their investigation targeting the former vice president and his son Hunter. Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told reporters on Wednesday that he is likely to release an interim report within one to two months on his panel’s probe of Hunter Biden’s ties to a Ukrainian gas company, Burisma. “These are questions that Joe Biden…

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Coronavirus pummels Iran leadership as data show spread is far worse than reported

Coronavirus pummels Iran leadership as data show spread is far worse than reported

The Washington Post reports: The coronavirus outbreak sweeping through Iran has delivered a jarring blow to the senior ranks of its government, infecting about two dozen members of parliament and at least 15 other current or former top figures, according to official reports. Among those sickened have been a vice president, a deputy health minister, and an adviser to the head of the judiciary, and the virus has struck at the pinnacle of power, killing an adviser to Supreme Leader…

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Italy to close all schools and universities through March 15 as coronavirus death toll rises

Italy to close all schools and universities through March 15 as coronavirus death toll rises

NBC News reports: Italy’s government on Wednesday announced it will temporarily close the nation’s schools and universities due to the coronavirus outbreak. State-run RAI radio and the ANSA and LaPresse news agencies reported earlier Wednesday that Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte had agreed on the closure during a Cabinet meeting. Education Minister Lucia Azzolina later said the school closures would be in effect from March 5 through March 15. Earlier Wednesday, Italy had the dubious honor of being the worst-affected country…

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How profit makes the fight for a coronavirus vaccine harder

How profit makes the fight for a coronavirus vaccine harder

Stephen Buranyi writes: Coronavirus appears to be with us for the long haul. Despite the unprecedented attempts at isolation and containment, with about 50 million people locked down and economic activity virtually halted in China, cases have spiked in recent weeks. Sixty-seven countries are now reporting a total of more than 8,000 infections outside China. The World Health Organization has been wary of using the word pandemic, but last week it advised countries to prepare as if one were imminent….

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Coronavirus is what you get when you ignore science

Coronavirus is what you get when you ignore science

Farhad Manjoo writes: Let us pray, now, for science. Pray for empiricism and for epidemiology and for vaccines. Pray for peer review and controlled double-blinds. For flu shots, herd immunity and washing your hands. Pray for reason, rigor and expertise. Pray for the precautionary principle. Pray for the N.I.H. and the C.D.C. Pray for the W.H.O. And pray not just for science, but for scientists, too, as well as their colleagues in the application of science — the tireless health…

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System failure: Coronavirus tests in U.S. fewer than 500 a day while other nations test patients by tens of thousands

System failure: Coronavirus tests in U.S. fewer than 500 a day while other nations test patients by tens of thousands

The New York Times reports: The coronavirus has found a crack in the nation’s public health armor, and it is not one that scientists foresaw: diagnostic testing. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention botched its first attempt to mass produce a diagnostic test kit, a discovery made only after officials had shipped hundreds of kits to state laboratories. A promised replacement took several weeks, and still did not permit state and local laboratories to make final diagnoses. And the…

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Reality goes viral: Trump can’t rely on lying and bullying to fight a pandemic

Reality goes viral: Trump can’t rely on lying and bullying to fight a pandemic

Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes write: President Trump rode out the Mueller investigation. He survived impeachment. He has waved away dozens of lesser scandals as though they were nothing more than gnats. But now he faces a challenge unlike any he has confronted before: The coronavirus is continuing its spread around the globe and has arrived in the United States, causing widespread alarm and a precipitous drop in the stock market. Americans should all hope he succeeds in mitigating the…

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Coronavirus unites a divided China in fear, grief and anger at government

Coronavirus unites a divided China in fear, grief and anger at government

A train attendant in Nanchang, China, gestures in solidarity with medical staff departing for the city of Wuhan, Feb. 13, 2020. STR/AFP via Getty Images By Yuqi Na, Fordham University The coronavirus known as COVID-19 has killed more than 3,000 people and spread into Europe and Latin America, raising fears of a global pandemic. But in China, where the outbreak began, it took just one death to unleash the grief and fury of a nation. On Feb. 7, 34-year-old Dr….

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White House and federal agencies offer conflicting advice on the safety of domestic travel

White House and federal agencies offer conflicting advice on the safety of domestic travel

The Daily Beast reports: Vice President Mike Pence said Monday evening that there has been no ban on domestic travel despite the growing number of 2019 novel coronavirus deaths in the United States. But one government agency is effectively directing its employees not to travel, domestically or internationally, at least for the next several weeks. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has banned all temporary duty assignment (TDY) travel as coronavirus cases continue to surge across the globe, according to…

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Coronavirus: How behaviour can help control the spread of COVID-19

Coronavirus: How behaviour can help control the spread of COVID-19

Commuters jam a Toronto subway platform. Widespread adoption of habits that help prevent infection may boost behavioural herd immunity. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graeme Roy By Peter Hall, University of Waterloo Amid the carnage of the First World War, a flu epidemic took hold in the front-line trenches and subsequently spread around the world, infecting one-quarter of the world’s total population and ultimately killing more people than the war itself. Before it was over, somewhere between 50 million and 100 million people…

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Italy, Europe’s coronavirus laboratory

Italy, Europe’s coronavirus laboratory

Beppe Severgnini writes: For a society like Italy, keeping company with others is better than sedatives, and if you have to do without, you suffer withdrawal symptoms. So there may be furious fallout. People have stopped shaking hands, let alone greeting each other with a kiss. If you sneeze or cough in public, people jerk away and show genuine alarm. Conversation is monopolized by coronavirus, and in the absence of clear rules, companies and organizations behave randomly. Why are people…

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Lawmakers want DNI to release intelligence on Saudi crown prince’s role in murder of Jamal Khashoggi

Lawmakers want DNI to release intelligence on Saudi crown prince’s role in murder of Jamal Khashoggi

The Washington Post reports: Senior lawmakers want the intelligence community to make public what its officials have been willing to say only in classified settings: that Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was responsible for the death of Washington Post contributing columnist and regime critic Jamal Khashoggi. The Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Democratic vice chairman sent a letter Monday to the acting director of national intelligence, Richard Grenell, urging him to reconsider his agency’s…

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Coronavirus will test the resilience of economies that have over-invested in fragile efficiency

Coronavirus will test the resilience of economies that have over-invested in fragile efficiency

Charlie Warzel writes: Constant connectivity defines 21st-century life, and the infrastructure undergirding it all is both digital (the internet and our social media platforms) and physical (the gig economy, e-commerce, global workplaces). Despite a tumultuous first two decades of the century, much of our connected way of life has evaded the stress of a singular global event. The possibility of a global pandemic currently posed by the new coronavirus threatens to change that altogether. Should the virus reach extreme levels…

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Brad Parscale used Facebook to get Trump elected in 2016. He’s poised to do it again

Brad Parscale used Facebook to get Trump elected in 2016. He’s poised to do it again

Andrew Marantz writes: In September, at a resort hotel in the Coachella Valley, the California Republican Party held its fall convention. Brad Parscale—forty-four, six feet eight, balding, prolifically bearded—walked onstage in shirtsleeves and tilted the microphone upward, mumbling a self-deprecating joke about being “awkwardly tall.” Parscale has lived in a red county in California and a blue county in Texas, and he now splits his time between Washington, D.C., and two luxury properties in South Florida, yet he still speaks…

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