Saturday,  May 23rd, 2020

Europe’s largest coach operator Shearings collapses into administration with 2,460 immediate job losses and thousands of holidays cancelled. (The Guardian)

Hong Kong executive says that the newly proposed security law will not hamper judicial independence. Many activists condemn the move; the organizer of many of last year’s protests and convener of the Civil Human Rights Front Jimmy Sham says that the law is a “nuclear bomb” dropped by “the Chinese Communist Party” and calls for mass protests. Activist Joshua Wong also condemns the law and calls it a law “to silence Hongkongers”. (The Standard Hong Kong)

Trump declares places of worship ‘essential’ and demands governors let them reopen

President Trump is calling for religious institutions to reopen amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump announced Friday that he would identify houses of worship, including “churches, synagogues, and mosques,” as “essential places that provide essential services.” He called on governors to allow those institutions to reopen, and vowed to “override the governors” if they do not because “in America we need more prayer, not less.” Just like reopening businesses, Trump does not have the power to override governors when it comes to letting places of worship start holding services again. Some churches had resisted closing down amid the pandemic, and subsequently saw deadly coronavirus outbreaks spread among their members. Source: C-SPAN

43 states broke unemployment records in April

Forty-three states recorded their highest unemployment rate since the government began tracking the data in 1939, federal numbers released Friday reveal. Nevada had the highest overall unemployment rate in the country, at 28.2 percent, up from 3.6 in February before the pandemic shutdowns. The other two states to top 20 percent unemployment in April were Michigan and Hawaii, at 22.7 percent and 22.3 percent, respectively. Nevada and Hawaii saw drops because of their reliance on tourism, while Michigan’s losses stem from automotive plant shutdowns. Seven states recorded unemployment below 10 percent, with Connecticut the lowest with only 7.9 percent. Those numbers should probably be higher due to errors in the robustness of data collection as well as how that data was classified, CNN notes. Source: CNN, MarketWatch

D.C. now has the highest coronavirus positivity rate in the country

The Washington, D.C., metro area has the highest coronavirus positivity rate in the country, Dr. Deborah Birx said at the White House press briefing on Friday. The region includes both the nation’s capital, northern Virginia and several counties in Maryland. Birx said that D.C. is followed in positivity rate by Baltimore, Chicago, and Minneapolis. “These are the places where we have seen really a stalling, or an increase of cases as in Minneapolis,” she explained. The D.C. metro area specifically has a rate of infection three times higher than the areas directly surrounding it. Governors in Maryland and Virginia began easing restrictions in their states last Friday, while protestors gathered in Baltimore County on Friday to push for a faster reopening. Source: NBC News, The Washington Post

538 women are running for Congress this year, breaking 2018’s record

While the 2018 midterm elections saw a historic number of women run for Congress, 2020 has already broken that record, Gen reports. In 2018, 529 women filed to run for the House or the Senate, according to Vox, with 117 ultimately elected or appointed. This year, some 538 female congressional candidates have filed their paperwork so far. Among them are 490 women vying for House seats, according to data from Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), up from 476 in 2018. So far, 48 women have filed to run for Senate in 2020, just behind 2018’s record of 53. Additionally, Gen notes that 195 of the women running for the House this year are on the Republican ticket, “far more than the previous high of 133 in the 2010 midterms.” Source: Gen, Vox

The End 

 

Friday, May 22nd, 2020

The number of worldwide cases of COVID-19 surpasses five million. The United States remains the global epicenter, accounting for approximately 31% of all reported and confirmed cases in the world. (CNN)

The Trump administration announces it will withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty within six months, alleging continuous violations by Russia. (BBC)

The European Court of Justice rules that Hungarian authorities circumvented EU law by holding Afghan and Iranian asylum-seekers in unlawful detention at a camp near the Serbian border (DW)

A military court in Vietnam sentences former deputy defense minister Nguyễn Văn Hiến to four years in prison for allowing three plots of land in Ho Chi Minh City to be illegally transferred from the Navy to private investors. He is also stripped of his Communist Party credentials. (Reuters)

The Regents of the University of California votes unanimously to scrap the use of SATs and ACTs for admission to any of the college system’s campuses, effective 2025. (The New York Times)

Beijing moves to crack down on Hong Kong with new security law

China’s Communist Party announced Thursday it will move forward with a new security law for Hong Kong, cracking down on dissent in the region and taking one of its most aggressive steps yet in asserting control over Hong Kong’s relative autonomy. The law is somewhat vague at this point, but a spokesperson in Beijing said “the law would improve legal and enforcement mechanisms for safeguarding national security in Hong Kong,” writes The Wall Street Journal. It will reportedly likely define and criminalize seditious behavior. The crackdown follows persistent wide-scale protests in Hong Kong, led by pro-democracy opposition groups. A similar security law was shelved in 2003 after mass protests. The law will reportedly take effect as soon as next week. Source: The Wall Street Journal, NPR

2.4 million Americans file jobless claims, bringing pandemic total to 38.6 million

Approximately 2.44 million Americans filed unemployment claims last week, Labor Department figures released Thursday show. The new numbers added to previous weeks make for a total of 38.6 million initial jobless claims since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. “That two-month total is roughly equivalent to all of the initial claims filed during the Great Recession,” writes Bloomberg. However, the pace of the filings has slowed since the previous week. Despite stock futures falling ahead of the report, major indexes turned positive at opening, rising marginally. Analysts say investor optimism may come from possible progress on a COVID-19 vaccine, and a sense jobless numbers have nearly bottomed out. Source: Bloomberg, CNBC

Senate confirms Ratcliffe as new director of national intelligence

The Senate voted on Thursday to confirm Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) as the new director of national intelligence. Senators voted 49-44 to confirm Ratcliffe, after the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday voted to advance his nomination to a full Senate vote. Ratcliffe, who was first nominated by President Trump last year, had garnered some Republican skepticism over his propensity toward right-wing conspiracy theories. During his nomination hearing, however, Ratcliffe was more dismissive of so-called “deep state” conspiracies, leading all eight Republicans on the subcommittee to vote in his favor. Ratcliffe will take over for acting DNI Richard Grenell, who began filling in after the departure of Joseph Maguire. Maguire was also acting DNI, holding the role after Dan Coats was seemingly pushed out in August. Source: NBC News

Bolivian Minister of Health Marcelo Navajas is dismissed and arrested in graft probe over ventilators bought in a Spanish company. (Bloomberg)

The End Thursday

Thursday,  May 21st, 2020

In a hearing over Zoom, a court in Singapore sentences a 37-year-old Malaysian man to death for a 2011 heroin transaction. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is the first time a death sentence was imposed by a remote hearing in Singapore. (Reuters)

U.S. authorities in Massachusetts arrest two men, a father and son aged 59 and 27, wanted by Japan on charges of helping former Chairman of Nissan Carlos Ghosn escape from Japan to Lebanon last year. (Reuters)

Citizens of Burundi head to the polls to elect their president and the members of the National Assembly. After violent campaigns, the elections take place amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and a social media blackout. Regional and international election observers are blocked from overseeing the elections, raising doubts about its fairness. (DW)

Earlier lockdowns might have prevented 36,000 U.S. COVID-19 deaths  Disease modelers at Columbia University estimate that if the U.S. had started implementing social distancing and lockdown measures one week earlier in March, roughly 36,000 coronavirus deaths could have been prevented. The first imported case of COVID-19 in the U.S. was reported on Jan. 20, with community transmission established in the weeks following. Federal social distancing measures, which asked Americans to avoid unnecessary travel and social gatherings, were enacted in mid-March. The researchers estimate that if action was taken even earlier than a week before that, with cities going on lockdown and people limiting contact with others beginning on March 1, about 83 percent of the country’s deaths could have been avoided. As of Wednesday night, there are more than 1.5 million confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. and 93,383 deaths. Source: The New York Times

WHO reports 106,000 new coronavirus cases, biggest 1-day increase  The World Health Organization on Wednesday reported the largest daily increase in COVID-19 cases since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The organization said 106,000 new cases of COVID-19 were reported worldwide in the past 24 hours. “We still have a long way to go in this pandemic,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned, saying the WHO is “very concerned about rising cases in low and middle income countries.” He said nearly two-thirds of the new cases came from four countries, but didn’t specify which. The United States has reported more than 1.5 million coronavirus cases and over 90,000 deaths. Wednesday marked the day when all 50 states in the U.S. had started to reopen their economies. More than 4.9 million COVID-19 cases have been reported worldwide. Source: Reuters

The End 

 

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