| Newly reopened South Florida seen as an emerging coronavirus hot spot Posted: 15 May 2020 03:39 PM PDT  Federal officials responding to the coronavirus pandemic are concerned about the rapidly rising number of cases in Palm Beach County, Florida, according to an internal Trump administration document reviewed by Yahoo News.
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| As meat-processing factories struggle to reopen, govt. documents warn of shortages Posted: 15 May 2020 05:04 PM PDT  As COVID-19 ravages meatpacking plants throughout the country, beef and pork options are dwindling in grocery stores.
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| In patchwork restart, parts of New York and other U.S. states reopen Posted: 15 May 2020 07:56 AM PDT  Less populated areas of New York, Virginia and Maryland took their first steps towards lifting lockdowns on Friday, part of a patchwork approach to the coronavirus pandemic that has been shaped by political divisions across the United States. Construction and manufacturing facilities in five out of 10 New York state regions were given the green light to restart operations, although New York City, the country's most populous metropolis, remained under strict limits. Joe Dundon, whose construction business in Binghamton, New York, was able to start up again after shutting down in March, said he had a long backlog of kitchen and bathroom remodeling projects and several estimates lined up for Friday.
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| Family separation is back for migrants at the U.S./Mexican border, say advocates Posted: 15 May 2020 03:05 PM PDT  NBC News obtained a copy of a form ICE is allegedly distributing in family detention centers that lets parents apply for minor children to be released.
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| New York tourist arrested in Hawaii for violating local quarantine rule Posted: 16 May 2020 09:42 AM PDT  The island state, with 638 Covid-19 cases, has been cracking down on those who refuse to comply with the 14-day mandated isolation * Coronavirus – latest US updates * Coronavirus – latest global updates * See all our coronavirus coverageAn adventurous but publicity-keen New Yorker is in hot water after heading to Hawaii and finding himself under arrest when he apparently failed to follow local quarantine rules.The 23-year-old man was apprehended in the state earlier this week after he posted beach pictures on Instagram when he was supposed to be isolating himself to prevent the spread of coronavirus.He was arrested for violating Hawaii's mandatory 14-day quarantine rule and for "unsworn falsification to authority", the Hawaii governor's office said in a statement.As of Friday, Hawaii reported one new case of Covid-19, bringing the statewide total to 638 cases and 17 deaths.Some tourists have been arrested for defying the quarantine, amid a crackdown by the state authorities.Tarique Peters, 23, of the Bronx borough of New York City, arrived in Honolulu on Monday, according to a news release from the Hawaii Covid-19 Joint Information Center."He allegedly left his hotel room the day he arrived and traveled many places using public transportation," the release said. "Authorities became aware of his social media posts from citizens who saw posts of him – on the beach with a surfboard, sunbathing, and walking around Waikiki at night."Agents from the state attorney general's office arrested him Friday morning. Hotel staff told the agents they saw Peters leave his room and the hotel numerous times.Travelers in quarantine aren't allowed to leave hotel rooms or residences for any reason except medical emergencies. Hotel guests don't receive housekeeping services and must arrange for food to be delivered to them.Peters was booked, and his bail was set at $4,000. He couldn't immediately be reached for comment.A photo on social media from two days before with the location "Honolulu – Waikiki Beach" showed him carrying a surfboard on a beach. A photo from 4 May showed him wearing a mask in New York.Lawmakers have been struggling with how to enhance enforcement of the quarantine as people continue to arrive in Hawaii. On Thursday, 252 visitors and 318 residents arrived, according to the Hawaii Tourism Authority.During the same time last year, nearly 30,000 passengers arrived in the tourism-dependent state daily.Hawaii attorney general Clare Connors said, "We appreciate the assistance of local people who spot flagrant violations of our emergency rules on various social media sites and report them to the appropriate authorities."The Associated Press contributed reporting.
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| Trump sets goal of coronavirus vaccine by year's end, but 'vaccine or no vaccine, we're back' Posted: 15 May 2020 12:16 PM PDT  Trump said the project would be "big" and "fast," comparing it to the Manhattan Project, which led to the development of the atomic bomb during World War II.
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| China ready to put U.S. companies on 'unreliable list' Posted: 15 May 2020 10:06 AM PDT  China is ready to put U.S. companies in an "unreliable entity list," as part of countermeasures against Washington's move to block shipments of semiconductors to Huawei Technologies, the Global Times reported on Friday.
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| More than 70 percent of Americans say the U.S. doesn't have enough coronavirus tests Posted: 15 May 2020 07:06 AM PDT  A majority of Americans agree that the U.S. doesn't currently have enough coronavirus tests available, a new poll has found.A few days after President Trump touted the amount of COVID-19 testing being conducted in the United States and declared "we have prevailed," ABC News/Ipsos released a poll Friday in which 73 percent of respondents said there are not enough coronavirus tests available in the United States right now, compared to 26 percent who said there are.An overwhelming majority of Democrats, 90 percent, said there's not enough COVID-19 tests available, but 50 percent of Republicans also said the same.> NEW: Large majority of Americans say country lags in testing availability: POLL@kendallkarson @ABC News: https://t.co/bjy4aBiCBn pic.twitter.com/6nPzoNXVio> > — Will Steakin (@wsteaks) May 15, 2020Trump in a press conference earlier this week celebrated the fact that the United States is conducting on average 300,000 coronavirus tests a day, promising that number "will go up substantially" but also claiming "we've prevailed on testing" already. Experts have said the United States needs to ramp up its level of testing, and on Thursday, ousted vaccine official Dr. Rick Bright told Congress the U.S. must take steps such as implementing a national testing strategy or it could face the "darkest winter in modern history."The ABC News/Ispos poll was conducted by speaking to a random national sample of 564 U.S. adults on May 13 and May 14. The margin of error is 4.7 percentage points. Read the full results at ABC News.More stories from theweek.com It's almost time for pandemic apologies 5 scathingly funny cartoons about America's risky reopening The pre-election number Trump's team reportedly fears the most is the COVID-19 'body count'
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| Taiwan rejects China's main condition for WHO participation Posted: 14 May 2020 09:23 PM PDT  Taiwan's health minister rejected on Friday China's main condition for the island to be able to take part in the World Health Organization - acceptance that it is part of China - before a WHO meeting being held during the coronavirus pandemic. Non-WHO member Taiwan has lobbied to take part as an observer in next week's virtual meeting of the World Health Assembly (WHA), the WHO's decision-making body. This has raised objections from Beijing, which considers Taiwan one of its provinces.
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| Afghan maternity ward attackers 'came to kill the mothers' Posted: 15 May 2020 11:20 PM PDT  The attack on an Afghan maternity unit was "methodical" and no mistake, says charity director.
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| Obama criticizes virus response in online graduation speech Posted: 16 May 2020 01:49 PM PDT  Former President Barack Obama on Saturday criticized U.S. leaders overseeing the nation's response to the coronavirus, telling college graduates in an online commencement address that the pandemic shows many officials "aren't even pretending to be in charge." Obama spoke on "Show Me Your Walk, HBCU Edition," a two-hour event for students graduating from historically black colleges and universities broadcast on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. "More than anything, this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they're doing," Obama said.
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| Wisconsin bars packed after court lifts stay-at-home order Posted: 15 May 2020 08:29 AM PDT  "It's been kinda boring sitting in my house, I love my fiancee but there's only so much we can handle from each other," one customer says.
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| Does the justice department work for the Trump campaign now? Barr thinks so Posted: 15 May 2020 06:33 AM PDT  The US attorney general seems determined to turn the DoJ into a fully fledged arm of the Trump re-election teamIt was enough that last week, the US Department of Justice did something completely unheard of: it moved to dismiss the guilty plea of a cabinet level officer, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, for lying to the FBI. The department's argument was so preposterous that within days, nearly 2,000 former department officials signed a letter in protest of William Barr's "assault on the rule of law".A week before the motion to dismiss in the Flynn case, Trump had tweeted that a prosecution like Flynn's "should never be allowed to happen … again". The day that the motion was filed, Trump told reporters that the Obama administration officials had targeted Flynn to try to "take down a president". In co-ordination, Trump campaign manager BradParscale issued a statement saying: "[T]he Obama-Biden officials responsible for these misdeeds must be held accountable."Immediately after the filing in the Flynn case, Barr went on national television and attacked the FBI, pointedly disparaging its 2016 investigation into Russian interference and letting it be known that FBI officials or ex-officials were under examination for prosecution: "[J]ust because something may even stink to high heaven and … appear to everyone to be bad we still have to apply the right standard and be convinced that there's a violation of a criminal statute."Then on Wednesday, Barr's press spokeswoman, Kerri Kupec, upped the ante in the high-stakes effort to lend political support to Gen Flynn and to Trump's partisan political interests. Kupec complained about an allegedly nefarious effort involving Joe Biden to "unmask" Flynn's identity during the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.She said this to the Fox news correspondent Martha MacCallum: "Martha, what happened to candidate Trump and then President Trump was one of the greatest political injustices in American history and should never happen again."It is remarkable how quickly Flynn's fate is put aside and the focus shifted to the president.When has a justice department press person ever issued so nakedly political a statement?Biden was among several people who asked that the intelligence committee to identify the unnamed American who had been recorded in a conversation with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, about Obama's newly imposed sanctions in December 2016. It apparently doesn't matter to the Barr justice department that the rules were scrupulously adhered to in this "unmasking". It also doesn't matter that such requests are permitted if the identity unmasked is necessary to understand the information, and that such requests are hardly unusual. The National Security Agency handles such unmasking requests in thousands of cases: 10,000 in 2019 and nearly 17,000 in 2018.> Using the department in this way undermines the integrity of the lawyers and prosecutors who work thereKupec's statement tracks perfectly with Mr Trump's partisan campaign messaging and with the president's efforts to present himself and his most loyal followers as victims of a conspiracy. The DoJ has now been let loose in search of nefarious activity by Biden, and in the hope it can cast his way a McCarthyite shadow of suspicion.Barr, the attorney general, is by no means the first occupant of that office to do political work for or serve as a political ally of the president who appointed him. Indeed, Edmund Randolph, the first attorney general of the United States, was a close ally of George Washington, having served as the general's chief of staff and personal secretary. During Randolph's term, Washington relied on him for support on matters that went well beyond the formal duties of his office.Other attorneys general have followed in Randolph's footsteps, serving as close political allies of the president. Examples from the early years of the country include Andrew Jackson's attorney general, Roger Taney, who worked hand-in-hand with Jackson to end funding for the Bank of the United States.In the 20th century, Franklin Roosevelt's attorneys general regularly helped him in political battles. Some of those battles involved the justice department and some did not. Other close political allies of the president who appointed them include Robert Kennedy, who was appointed at 35 by his brother John, and widely criticized as unqualified for the job. President Reagan's second attorney general, Edwin Meese, was a longtime friend of, and political operative for, Reagan.But throughout American history, when presidents have appointed political cronies to be attorney general, they were looking for people only to help them pursue a policy agenda.Nixon's efforts to enlist John Mitchell in the Watergate cover-up and get one of Mitchell's successors, Elliot Richardson, to fire the Watergate special prosecutor stand out as important, but rare, exceptions.Other presidents have neither expected nor asked their attorneys general to use the vast investigatory and prosecutorial power of the justice department itself to intervene in criminal cases to help cronies, to buy the silence of those who might threaten him, or to discredit political adversaries. That is a new and dangerous ballgame.Using the justice department in this way undermines the integrity and professionalism of the lawyers and prosecutors who work there. It turns law into an arena for gaining partisan advantage and settling political grudges.Having gotten away with doing the same in his dealings with Ukraine, the president has an attorney general who is only too happy to go beyond merely politicizing the DoJ. He seems determined to turn it into a full-fledged arm of the Trump campaign.
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| Man who ‘threatened to kill’ Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer faces terrorism charge Posted: 16 May 2020 03:43 AM PDT  A man from Detroit faces a terrorism charge after making "credible threats" to kill the governor of Michigan and the state attorney general, the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office has said.Robert Tesh, 32, is alleged to have made the threats against governor Gretchen Whitmer and Dana Nessel, the attorney general, to an acquaintance via social media on 14 April.
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| India's coronavirus infections surpass China, but contagion slowing Posted: 15 May 2020 10:09 PM PDT  India's total novel corornavirus cases rose to 85,940 on Saturday, taking it past China, where the pandemic originated last year, though a strict lockdown enforced since late March has reduced the rate of contagion. State leaders, businesses and working class Indians have called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to reopen the battered economy, but the government is expected to extend the lockdown, which would otherwise expire on Sunday, though with fewer restrictions. The toll in the United States, United Kingdom and Italy is much higher.
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| Letter and contract put Guaidó at center of failed Venezuelan raid to oust Maduro Posted: 15 May 2020 01:39 PM PDT |
| Group buys Alabama abortion clinic to keep it from closing Posted: 16 May 2020 06:00 AM PDT  Conservative lawmakers in Alabama last year tried to enact the nation's most stringent abortion ban, but the attempt to outlaw the procedure may have had one ironic twist. An Alabama-based abortion rights group used a flood of donations that poured in from across the country after the ban to purchase the state's busiest abortion clinic to ensure it stays open. Yellowhammer Fund — a group founded to help low-income women access abortion — announced the purchase of West Alabama Women's Center on Friday, the one-year anniversary of the passage of the Alabama ban.
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| Hospital responds to nurse caught at crowded bar Posted: 15 May 2020 08:32 AM PDT  "I have a toddler at home and I'm a full-time nurse it's been very stressful and hard to go out and be with my friends and family at the bars," Katie Koutsky said.
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| Security video raises questions in Arbery shooting Posted: 15 May 2020 01:15 PM PDT  Security camera footage taken in December outside a home being built in coastal Georgia raises new questions about what Ahmaud Arbery was doing at the site two months later, right before he was fatally shot in the neighborhood.
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| Obama slams Trump administration's leadership amid coronavirus pandemic Posted: 16 May 2020 03:19 PM PDT  "A lot of them aren't even pretending to be in charge," former President Barack Obama said an during the first of two online commencement ceremonies Saturday.
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| Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan's $800,000 donation to their 8 favorite restaurants is like the median US family giving 13 cents to each Posted: 15 May 2020 12:05 PM PDT  When you do the math, the couple's $800,000 donation is about the same as the median US family donating $1.02.
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| Kenya closes borders to Tanzania and Somalia over coronavirus Posted: 16 May 2020 05:52 AM PDT  Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta on Saturday banned movement across the country's borders with Tanzania and Somalia to help curb the spread of the coronavirus. "There will be a cessation of movement of persons and any passenger-ferrying automobiles and vehicles into and out of the territory of Kenya through the Kenya-Tanzania international border," Kenyatta said in a televised address. The same measures would apply on the border with Somalia, he said.
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| Jerry Nadler Says House Judiciary Will Hold Hearings on DOJ Decision to Drop Flynn Case Posted: 15 May 2020 11:48 AM PDT  House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerry Nadler (D., N.Y.) said Friday that the panel will hold hearings to probe the Justice Department's decision to drop its case against former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn."We're looking into all of this," Nadler said. "We are going to hold hearings on the Flynn matter," Nadler told CNN's Manu Raju, adding that his staff is talking to former prosecutors and whistleblowers, as well as people "overruled in these kinds of matters."Last week, the DOJ moved to withdraw its case against Flynn, who in 2017 pled guilty to lying to the FBI, after an outside examination of the case yielded previously-undisclosed information. Documents released earlier this month showed handwritten notes from an FBI official questioning the goal of Flynn's January 2017 White House interview with FBI agents Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka, suggesting their intent was "to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired." That interview came after the FBI had moved to drop its counterintelligence probe into Flynn's Russian contacts, only for Strzok to intervene to keep the investigation open."They didn't warn him, the way that would usually be required by the Department, they bypassed the Justice Department, they bypassed the protocols at the White House, and so forth," Attorney General Bill Barr explained after the decision. "These were things that persuaded me that there was not a legitimate counterintelligence investigation."But the judge in the Flynn case, Emmet Sullivan, has so far resisted allowing the DOJ to drop the case, and appointed a former federal judge to argue against the move, as well as to weight charges of perjury or contempt for Flynn.President Trump and his allies have lashed out at President Obama and members of his administration this week on the grounds that they used the intelligence apparatus to target a political opponent. The attacks began after the release of documents showing that senior Obama administration officials, including Vice President Biden, requested Flynn's identity after his communications with then-Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak were collected as part of a surveillance operation.Biden's campaign responded to the release by saying "all normal procedures were followed – any suggestion otherwise is a flat out lie."
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| China tells US to stop 'unreasonable suppression' of Huawei Posted: 15 May 2020 10:39 PM PDT  Beijing has urged the United States to stop the "unreasonable suppression of Huawei and Chinese enterprises" after Washington announced new export controls to restrict the tech giant's access to semiconductor technology. "The Chinese government will firmly uphold Chinese firms' legitimate and legal rights and interests," the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement Saturday. "We urge the US side to immediately stop its unreasonable suppression of Huawei and Chinese enterprises."
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| Bosnians protest Mass in Sarajevo for Nazi-allied soldiers Posted: 16 May 2020 08:09 AM PDT  SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Thousands of Bosnians, many wearing masks, demonstrated Saturday against a Mass in Sarajevo for Croatia's Nazi-allied soldiers and civilians killed by partisan forces at the end of World War II. The Mass in Sarajevo was a replacement for a controversial annual gathering usually held in Bleiburg, Austria, which was canceled due to restrictions imposed by the coronavirus pandemic. Another small replacement event took place Saturday at a cemetery in Zagreb, Croatia.
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| What's open and closed this weekend: Beaches, parks and trails in Southern California Posted: 15 May 2020 08:50 AM PDT  As the fight against coronavirus goes on, local, state and federal leaders keep adjusting restrictions
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| As unemployment continues to rise, the US could face another crisis: Homelessness across the country could increase by 45% Posted: 14 May 2020 09:06 PM PDT  "This is unprecedented," Dan O'Flaherty said, according to the study. "No one living has seen an increase of 10% of unemployment in a month."
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| Rand Paul isn't a subliterate yawper like Trump. But he's spreading the same deadly coronavirus lies Posted: 15 May 2020 03:00 AM PDT  Rand Paul is one of those figures in public life who is wrong, wrong, and wrong again — and somehow is never called to account.
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| The fight is on for progressives to push Biden to the left. They might just win Posted: 15 May 2020 05:59 AM PDT  Progressives should know that Biden does not have a set ideology - which means his policies are still very much in flux and in playJoe Biden has had a hard time capturing the hearts of progressive Democrats. Like the media, progressive Democrats tend to see him as a centrist – a status quo candidate who just wants to return the US and the world to the pre-Trump era. Even Biden's collaborations with Bernie Sanders, including the recently announced unity taskforces, are often dismissed as pure window-dressing. But this kind of blithe dismissal of the presumptive Democratic nominee misreads both the politician and the times.It is true that Biden was never a very progressive Democrat, but neither was he a particularly conservative one. He has been a classic "centrist Democrat". But it's important to note that this places him not in the political center of the US electorate, but in the center of the Democratic party – a party that has shifted left significantly since 2016, as has Biden.Biden is a realist. He knows when the times are a-changin'. That's why he joined Barack Obama in 2008 and why he has moved to reconcile with Sanders in 2020. After two powerful primary campaigns, Biden is smart enough to acknowledge that Sanders represents the direction the party's base is moving to, and that he could shape that transformation.As Gabriel Debenedetti argues in his excellent New York magazine article on the Biden campaign, the Covid-19 pandemic has opened Biden's eyes to the need for a more radical approach to policy and governance. As Biden told a group of donors: "The blinders have been taken off because of this Covid crisis."Crises can lead to fundamental changes. While we mainly focus on the darkest consequences, such as Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the wake of the Great Depression, that same crisis also gave rise to the greatest progressive project in US history: Franklin D Roosevelt's New Deal. While heralded as a "radical" by many today, FDR was in many ways a realpolitiker, politically expedient and adjustable to the mood of the times.But perhaps the best comparison would be FDR's protege Lyndon B Johnson, the southerner who, in an atmosphere of intense polarization over civil rights and in the wake of the national trauma of the assassination of John F Kennedy, introduced some of the most important civil rights legislation in US history. As with Johnson, the current crisis provides Biden with an opportunity to step out of the shadow of his charismatic and inspiring Democratic predecessor, Obama, and become a much more transformative president.To be clear, this is not a foregone conclusion. Moderates, both Democrats and Republicans, also see Biden as a great opportunity, in their case to re-establish the status quo. Many of them have been around Biden for years, if not decades, and play important roles in his campaign – I'm looking at you, Larry Summers.But the recently announced unity taskforces – on the climate crisis, criminal justice reform, economy, education, healthcare and immigration – show a more mixed picture. First, they much better reflect the ethnic and gender diversity of the contemporary Democratic party and its electorate – with many prominent African American and Hispanic members as well as twice as many female than male co-chairs. Second, they include many prominent progressives, including Sanders surrogates such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Pramila Jayapal – hardly politicians who will accept a token role.While some "Bernie or bust" keyboard warriors will invariably denounce these progressives as sellouts, and some jaded progressives as naive, they are actually realists who should be supported and strengthened. Few politicians understand the signs of the times better than Ocasio-Cortez. She knows that the country and the party are changing, and she understands that the Covid-19 crisis provides a unique opportunity to accelerate that change.Moreover, these progressives realize that Biden does not have a set ideology, but is in many ways an empty vessel whose domestic policies and priorities are still very much in flux and in play. In other words, progressives have two fights to fight: one for a President Biden, against the Republicans, and one for a progressive Biden presidency, against the moderate Democrats. * Cas Mudde is a Guardian US columnist and the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor in the school of public and international affairs at the University of Georgia. His latest book is The Far Right Today
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| Italy's daily coronavirus death toll dips to lowest since March 9 Posted: 16 May 2020 09:14 AM PDT  The daily toll from the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy fell to 153 on Saturday, its lowest since March 9, against 242 the day before, the Civil Protection Agency said, while the daily tally of new cases increased to 875 from 789 on Friday. The total death toll since the outbreak came to light on Feb. 21 now stands at 31,763 the agency said, the third highest in the world after those of the United States and Britain.
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| Massive fire at condominium complex on South Padre Island, Texas Posted: 16 May 2020 09:20 AM PDT  The fire sent a cloud of flames and thick black smoke into the air.
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| Judge allows 5 Central American asylum seekers to enter US Posted: 15 May 2020 01:24 PM PDT |
| 'She's Starting to Lose Hope.' Two Years on, Sister of Jailed Saudi Women's Rights Activist Pleads for Justice Posted: 15 May 2020 01:05 PM PDT  Lina al-Hathloul said in an interview with TIME there hasn't been an adequate investigation into her sister Loujain's alleged torture in prison.
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| Typhoon forces 140,000 from homes in virus-hit Philippines Posted: 14 May 2020 07:48 PM PDT  Over 140,000 people were forced into cramped shelters as a powerful typhoon hammered the Philippines on Friday, compounding the nation's battle with the coronavirus pandemic. Typhoon Vongfong has dumped heavy rains since it roared ashore on Thursday, with hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people in its path on the coast or in flimsy homes. The storm hit as tens of millions of Filipinos are hunkered down at home against the coronavirus, but at least 141,700 have had to flee because of the powerful storm, disaster officials said.
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| Rwanda genocide suspect Kabuga arrested in France Posted: 16 May 2020 08:13 AM PDT 
Rwandan genocide suspect Felicien Kabuga was arrested on Saturday (May 16) near Paris after 26 years on the run. He is accused of funding Hutu militias that massacred about 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994. The 84-year-old is Rwanda's most-wanted man - and had a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head. French authorities say he was living under a false identity in a flat in a suburb near the capital. Kabuga was indicted in 1997 on seven criminal counts in relation to the Rwanda genocide, according to the UN-established International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals. The arrest paves the way for bringing the fugitive in front of the Paris Appeal Court and later to the international court in The Hague. Rwanda's two main ethnic groups are the Hutus and Tutsis... who have historically had an antagonistic relationship and fought a civil war in the early 1990s.
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| House passes $3 trillion coronavirus aid bill opposed by Donald Trump Posted: 15 May 2020 07:01 PM PDT  The House of Representatives has narrowly approved a $3 trillion bill crafted by Democrats but opposed by Donald Trump that would provide more aid for fighting the coronavirus and stimulating a faltering economy. By a vote of 208-199, Democrats won passage of a bill that Republican leaders, who control the Senate, and the president, have vowed to block, despite some Republican support for provisions aimed at helping state and local governments. But the measure could trigger a new round of negotiations with congressional Republicans and Mr Trump, who have been talking about the need for new business liability protections in the age of coronavirus or additional tax cuts. Democrats oppose both of those ideas. Following the vote, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announced that May 27-28 would be set aside for voting on some sort of coronavirus-related bill if one is ready by then. He provided no details on the contents of such a bill. The 1,800-page relief bill passed on Friday, called the Heroes Act, would extend to all corners of the United States economy. It includes $500 billion in aid to struggling state governments, another round of direct payments to people and families to help stimulate the economy, and hazard pay for healthcare workers and others on the front line of the pandemic.
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| A lot of Sanders supporters don't trust Biden yet — and Sanders' former advisers are worried Posted: 15 May 2020 07:31 AM PDT  Despite Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) quick endorsement of and unity efforts with former Vice President Joe Biden, former senior advisers to the senator's 2020 campaign say Sanders' backers still are hesitant to support Biden.There's a "clear and dangerous trend" that shows the two campaigns' supporters haven't melded, former senior advisor Jeff Weaver writes in a memo obtained by NBC News. "Despite best intentions, the Biden campaign and the DNC are far behind on digital organizing, Latino outreach, and progressive coalition building," Weaver continues in the memo shared among the new newly formed "America's Promise" PAC, which tries to get Sanders supporters to back the presumptive Democratic nominee.Weaver told NBC News he knew not every Sanders backer would fall into line with Biden's camp. But with a recent poll showing one in four Sanders supporters aren't behind Biden yet, Weaver thought it was time to sound the alarm. He told NBC News that America's Promise — formed despite Sanders' opposition to PACs — will use the next six months to draw attention to where Sanders and Biden overlap, such as on a $15 minimum wage, reducing the cost of college education, and expanding health care access.Biden's Latino outreach — or lack therof — has been widely panned, and his digital presence has seen criticism and technical problems as the 2020 presidential race is run nearly entirely online amid the COVID-19 pandemic.Sanders has already distanced himself from America's Promise. The group abandoned its original name, A Future to Believe In, at Sanders' request, Weaver said.More stories from theweek.com It's almost time for pandemic apologies 5 scathingly funny cartoons about America's risky reopening The pre-election number Trump's team reportedly fears the most is the COVID-19 'body count'
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| France says coronavirus death toll rises to 27,625 Posted: 16 May 2020 10:28 AM PDT  French health authorities reported 96 new coronavirus deaths on Saturday, as the country eases from a two month lockdown. This brings France's total to 27,625, the fourth-highest tally in the world, after the United States, Britain, and Italy, and just ahead of Spain.
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