Friday, May 15, 2020

In the news, Friday, May 8, 2020


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MAY 07      INDEX      MAY 09
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from BBC News (UK)

VE Day: UK marking 75th anniversary of end of WW2 in Europe
Extracts of Winston Churchill's VE Day speech have been broadcast to the nation, as part of the commemorations for the 75th anniversary. Britain's wartime leader spoke about a "brief period of rejoicing" amid "toils and efforts" in the replayed speech. Earlier, the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall led a two-minute silence, and later the Queen will address a nation still in lockdown. Boris Johnson expressed "eternal" gratitude to the wartime generation. Victory in Europe Day marks the day in 1945 when Britain and its allies accepted the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany, bringing the war in Europe to an end.

Coronavirus: 'Modest' lockdown changes announced in Wales
People will be able to exercise outside more than once a day in Wales and some garden centres set to reopen, First Minister Mark Drakeford has said. Announcing only "modest" changes to the coronavirus lockdown, Mr Drakeford warned it was "too soon" to go further. The rest of the stay-at-home restrictions will be extended for another three weeks until 28 May. It comes 48 hours before Prime Minister Boris Johnson announces a "roadmap" for easing the lockdown in England. But a UK government minister said there would be no "dramatic overnight change" to restrictions. Earlier, Nicola Sturgeon urged people in Scotland to stick to lockdown restrictions and stay at home over the bank holiday weekend. The changes to the seven-week-old lockdown in Wales come into force from Monday.

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from Daily Mail
RIGHT BIAS, QUESTIONABLE SOURCE, tabloid newspaper in the UK

Swedish Covid-19 expert says other Scandinavian countries will be hit just as badly when they lift restrictions and New Zealand faces DECADES of quarantining foreigners if they wipe virus out
Sweden's former top virus expert has launched a blistering defence of the country's coronavirus strategy, saying that lockdowns are merely delaying an inevitable surge in cases and deaths - not preventing it. Johan Giesecke says attempts to stop the spread of the disease are 'futile' because everyone is likely to be exposed to it before a treatment can be found, meaning all countries will end up in a similar position regardless of what measures they took. Mr Giesecke predicts that the numbers of infections and cases in Denmark, Norway and Finland - which went into full lockdown - will rise to match those of Sweden - which didn't - as restrictions are eased in the coming weeks. Meanwhile New Zealand, which has managed to heavily suppress the virus with its lockdown, is now at risk of importing cases from overseas, he says.

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from First Things

DEFEND US FROM IDEOLOGY
If we want to guard ourselves against ideology and corruptions of our traditions, we need to strengthen principles through coherent philosophical definition and reflection. Hittinger concludes, “it is not only rigid thinking that’s vulnerable to ideology, but also weak thinking is vulnerable to ideology.” This is true for the political common good as well as the ecclesial common good. Skepticism that eschews a strong, coherent public philosophy will not help us. Only a philosophically coherent account of the American common good will save us from our descent into ideological incoherence.

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from HumanProgress.org  Education Website

Centers of Progress, Pt. 2: Uruk (Writing)
The emergence of written language has allowed humanity to transmit precise information across vast stretches of space and of time.

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from The Jerusalem Post

Eli Cohen, the spy who was larger than life
Many of the mysteries surrounding the super-spy have been revealed over the years, others we might never learn, but Cohen’s courage and fate have returned to public consciousness lately. Everybody has secrets, but Eli Cohen, the Israeli spy hanged in Damascus in May 1965, had more secrets than most. Some he literally took to his grave. Tragically, his burial place in Syria is among the unknown. Many of the mysteries surrounding the super-spy have been revealed over the years, others we might never learn, but Cohen’s courage and fate have returned to public consciousness lately. The story of the agent’s life, capture and execution were the subject of a Netflix series last year starring Sacha Baron Cohen. While the poetic license taken in The Spy upset his family, the dramatization did at least attract broad international attention to the affair.

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from KOMO News (ABC Seattle)

Inslee urges social distancing with warming temps, COVID-19 transmission slowly rising
With temperatures rising across Western Washington this weekend, Governor Jay Inslee warned Friday that the transmission rate of the novel coronavirus is also rising. With this weekend set to be the warmest of the year, paired with Mother’s Day Sunday, Inslee acknowledged that people will be getting out.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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from Western Journal
 RIGHT BIAS, MIXED, Media/News Company in Phoenix, Arizona

FiveThirtyEight editor and American statistician Nate Silver criticized the mainstream media on Thursday for not providing context to its stories to pursue an agenda of prioritizing stories that “sound smart” instead of the truth. In particular, Silver was calling out reports of an increase in coronavirus cases that do not discuss the sharp increase in testing.

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