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Category: Politics

Trump Organization seeks financial help as coronavirus takes toll

Trump Organization seeks financial help as coronavirus takes toll

The New York Times reports: All over the country, businesses large and small are seeking breathing room from their lenders, landlords and business partners as they face the financial fallout from the coronavirus crisis. President Trump’s family company is among those looking for help. With some of its golf courses and hotels closed amid the economic lockdown, the Trump Organization has been exploring whether it can delay payments on some of its loans and other financial obligations, according to people…

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The pro-Trump media’s coronavirus distortion

The pro-Trump media’s coronavirus distortion

The New York Times reports: On Feb. 27, two days after the first reported case of the coronavirus spreading inside a community in the United States, Candace Owens was underwhelmed. “Now we’re all going to die from Coronavirus,” she wrote sarcastically to her two million Twitter followers, blaming a “doomsday cult” of liberal paranoia for the growing anxiety over the outbreak. One month later, on the day the United States reached the grim milestone of having more documented coronavirus cases…

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Bill Gates: Here’s how to make up for lost time on covid-19

Bill Gates: Here’s how to make up for lost time on covid-19

Bill Gates writes: There’s no question the United States missed the opportunity to get ahead of the novel coronavirus. But the window for making important decisions hasn’t closed. The choices we and our leaders make now will have an enormous impact on how soon case numbers start to go down, how long the economy remains shut down and how many Americans will have to bury a loved one because of covid-19. Through my work with the Gates Foundation, I’ve spoken…

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Understanding what works: How some countries are beating back the coronavirus

Understanding what works: How some countries are beating back the coronavirus

Stat reports: With Europe and the United States locked in deadly battle with the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, a number of countries that were hit early by the virus are doing a far better job of beating it back. China, which is now diagnosing more cases in returning travelers than in people infected at home, reported no new domestically acquired cases on Wednesday, for the first time in more than two months. South Korea, which had an explosive outbreak that…

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San Francisco is beating the coronavirus odds — so far. What can other places learn?

San Francisco is beating the coronavirus odds — so far. What can other places learn?

Dr. Robert M. Wachter writes: Like a wildfire spraying hot embers, the coronavirus pandemic is now flaring in communities around the country, with growth curves in New Orleans, Michigan and Illinois that resemble those of 10 days ago in New York City — which in turn mirror those of early 2020 in Italy and Wuhan, China. But California — and particularly San Francisco, where I live — appears to be following a different course, with relatively low rates of COVID-19…

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As Wuhan reopens, the need to stop a second wave of infections takes precedence over the need to restart the economy

As Wuhan reopens, the need to stop a second wave of infections takes precedence over the need to restart the economy

The Washington Post reports: After 10 weeks confined to their apartments, unable to exercise, shop for groceries or walk their dogs, Wuhan residents are emerging into the daylight. The subway and intercity trains are running again. Shopping malls and even the Tesla store are reopening. State-owned companies and manufacturing businesses are turning on their lights, with others to follow. “I’ve been indoors for 70 days. Today is the first time that I came outside,” one woman who ventured into a…

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Reality has endorsed Bernie Sanders

Reality has endorsed Bernie Sanders

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor writes: The debate over the role of government in addressing income inequality, housing insecurity, debt accumulation, and health care continues, now against the grim backdrop of the raging coronavirus. It is difficult to articulate the speed with which the U.S. and, indeed, the world, has descended into an existential crisis. We are experiencing an unprecedented public-health event whose diminution and potential resolution rests with a series of prescriptions, including settlement-in-place orders, that will annihilate the economy. The deadly…

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Trump finally submits to reality

Trump finally submits to reality

Eugene Robinson writes: I realize it’s always dangerous to be optimistic where Trump is concerned. Perhaps I’m going with hope over experience, but for the first time, I have the sense that the White House accepts the scientific consensus about the threat covid-19 poses. I heard Trump’s usual bluster and bombast at his Rose Garden performance this weekend, but I also heard realism. Trump’s decision to keep in place national social-distancing guidelines until April 30 abandoned his insane notion that…

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How will coronavirus change the world?

How will coronavirus change the world?

Peter C Baker writes: Everything feels new, unbelievable, overwhelming. At the same time, it feels as if we’ve walked into an old recurring dream. In a way, we have. We’ve seen it before, on TV and in blockbusters. We knew roughly what it would be like, and somehow this makes the encounter not less strange, but more so. Every day brings news of developments that, as recently as February, would have felt impossible – the work of years, not mere…

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Social distancing is a privilege of the middle class. For India’s slum dwellers, it will be impossible

Social distancing is a privilege of the middle class. For India’s slum dwellers, it will be impossible

CNN reports: For two days, Jeetender Mahender, a 36-year-old Dalit sanitation worker, has not dared to leave his family’s shanty in the Valmiki slum of northern Mumbai, India, except to go to the toilet. His situation is desperate. The tiny home has no running water or toilet, his family is low on food — and when he doesn’t go to work, he doesn’t get paid. Mahender is trying to comply with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 21-day nationwide lockdown, intended to…

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Coronavirus unemployment rate may peak at a rate higher than during the Great Depression

Coronavirus unemployment rate may peak at a rate higher than during the Great Depression

CNBC reports: Millions of Americans already have lost their jobs due to the coronavirus crisis and the worst of the damage is yet to come, according to a Federal Reserve estimate. Economists at the Fed’s St. Louis district project total employment reductions of 47 million, which would translate to a 32.1% unemployment rate, according to a recent analysis of how bad things could get. The projections are even worse than St. Louis Fed President James Bullard’s much-publicized estimate of 30%….

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The contrarian coronavirus theory that informed the Trump administration

The contrarian coronavirus theory that informed the Trump administration

Isaac Chotiner writes: President Trump, who at one point called the coronavirus pandemic an “invisible enemy” and said it made him a “wartime President,” has in recent days questioned its seriousness, tweeting, “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF.” Trump said repeatedly that he wanted the country to reopen by Easter, April 12th, contradicting the advice of most health officials. (On Sunday, he backed down and extended federal social-distancing guidelines for at least another month.) According…

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As Moscow enters strict quarantine, Putin has been notably silent

As Moscow enters strict quarantine, Putin has been notably silent

The Washington Post reports: Muscovites got a four-hour notice Sunday night on a sweeping quarantine that will keep them inside their homes unless they are walking a pet, taking out the trash or visiting the nearest grocery store. Mayor Sergei Sobyanin’s decree did not take effect until midnight, but the confusion was immediate. Within an hour, prominent Russian lawmaker Andrei Klishas questioned the legality of Sobyanin’s order, arguing that only federal authorities could impose such restrictions. While some state media…

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Last-minute airlift of urgently needed medical supplies from China begins arriving in New York

Last-minute airlift of urgently needed medical supplies from China begins arriving in New York

Reuters reports: A planeload of desperately needed medical supplies arrived in New York from China on Sunday, the first in a series of flights over the next 30 days organized by the White House to help fight the coronavirus, a White House official said. A commercial carrier landed at John F. Kennedy airport carrying gloves, gowns and masks for distribution in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, three hard-hit states battling to care for a crush of coronavirus patients. The…

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Desperate for medical equipment, states encounter a beleaguered national stockpile

Desperate for medical equipment, states encounter a beleaguered national stockpile

The Washington Post reports: On Feb. 5, with fewer than a dozen confirmed novel coronavirus cases in the United States but tens of thousands around the globe, a shouting match broke out in the White House Situation Room between Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and an Office of Management and Budget official, according to three people aware of the outburst. Azar had asked OMB that morning for $2 billion to buy respirator masks and other supplies for a…

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The coronavirus crisis is overwhelmingly the sole responsibility of the Trump administration

The coronavirus crisis is overwhelmingly the sole responsibility of the Trump administration

Micah Zenko writes: Last September, I met the vice-president for risk for a Fortune 100 company in Washington DC. I asked the executive – who previously had a long career as an intelligence analyst – the question you would ask any risk officer: “What are you most worried about?” Without pausing, this person replied, “A highly contagious virus that begins somewhere in China and spreads rapidly.” This vice-president, whose company has offices throughout east Asia, explained the preventive mitigating steps…

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