Thursday, April 30, 2020

In the news, Sunday, April 19, 2020


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APR 18      INDEX      APR 20
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from Bloomberg
Media/News Company

‘We Needed to Go’: Rich Americans Activate Pandemic Escape Plans
For years, New Zealand has featured prominently in the doomsday survival plans of wealthy Americans worried that, say, a killer germ might paralyze the world. Isolated at the edge of the earth, more than 1,000 miles off the southern coast of Australia, New Zealand is home to about 4.9 million people, about a fifth as many as the New York metro area. The clean, green, island nation is known for its natural beauty, laid-back politicians and premier health facilities.

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from Forbes

Bill Gates Is Now A Target Of COVID-19 Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories
What do you get after trying to prepare people for an infectious disease pandemic? How about being accused of causing a pandemic when it actually occurs? Over the past decade, Bill Gates has been warning about the lack of preparation and systems in place to deal with infectious disease threats that could lead to a pandemic. Two years ago, I covered for Forbes some of these warnings. Now that the world is actually in the midst of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, take a wild guess as to whom some conspiracy theorists are now blaming for the pandemic?

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

Editorial: Washington must restart its economy soon
During the first weeks of the COVID-19 outbreak, America focused on saving lives and preventing the disease from spreading at all costs. Now that noble sentiment must give way to the cold calculus of balancing one harm against another. How many sick and dead Washingtonians will people accept to end a catastrophic economic shutdown? The answer isn’t 1 million, but it also shouldn’t be zero or nearly so. With the pressure off saving lives, we now need real focus on saving livelihoods.

Washington wolf management draws comments from across the nation
Washington wildlife managers received 7,798 comments about the future of wolves, with the majority of those comments coming from out of state. Of the comments, 47% came from Washington and 3% from Idaho, Montana and Oregon. The remainder came from across the nation. A number of national nonprofits encouraged their members to comment on the plan. “There are a lot of people interested in what goes into the plan,” statewide wolf coordinator Julia Smith said. “I think it shows our work is cut out for us. As to be expected, there are a lot of differences of opinion on how wolves should be managed and conserved into the future.”

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from Sputnik
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, MIXED, Broadcasting & Media Production Company out of Moscow, Russia

Russian Health Minister Says Necessary to Support WHO’s Efforts to Combat COVID-19
The international community must continue to support the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) efforts to combat the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak and commit to supporting attempts to improve pandemic response mechanisms, Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said during a video conference of G20 health ministers on Sunday.

US National Debt Skyrockets to Levels Unseen Since WWII Amid COVID-19 Shutdown
The United States government and the Federal Reserve have taken unprecedented fiscal measures to keep the economy afloat and prevent a new Depression in recent weeks, introducing round after round of new spending and loan guarantees to the tune of trillions of dollars. The US’s national debt and American corporate debt have hit record levels thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, with fears growing that liabilities soon may reach a “tipping point” that the country may find impossible to dig out of, the Washington Post has reported, citing multiple economists and bank analysts. Congress and the Federal Reserve have moved to inject over $6 trillion in stimulus spending into the economy in recent weeks to deal with the economic dislocation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, with much of the money going to corporations and big banks, while ordinary Americans get one-time $1,200 checks and promises of free hospital visits if they have the coronavirus. Amid the crisis, federal spending is expected to hit almost $4 trillion more in 2020 than the government collects in revenues, with the deficit’s size calculated to be twice as large relative to the size of the US economy in any year since 1945, when America was involved in a World War. The Federal Reserve has played its part, turning on the printing presses, dropping interest rates to zero and facilitating over $2 trillion in loans.

Mystery of Hotter Than Should be Solar Winds Hitting Earth Finally Revealed
Earth is constantly bombarded by winds coming from the centre of our Solar System, yet the problem that has been puzzling scientists is why the solar winds that reach our planet are hotter than they should be, in defiance of the laws of physics. New research seems to have solved the question of why particles making up the plasma of the Sun's heliosphere - in other words, solar winds - take such a long time to cool as they reach our planet.

Putin Says Coronavirus Situation in Russia is Fully Under Control
Russian President Vladimir Putin has praised the country's efforts at combating the coronavirus pandemic saying the nation has managed to handle the threat proactively. People at all levels of power are working in a dynamic, organised and responsible way to combat the coronavirus pandemic; the situation is fully under control, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, offering Orthodox Russians his Easter holiday greetings, in a statement published on the Kremlin’s website.

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