Author: CensorBiz

South Dakota health officials reported 98 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus on Thursday, as the statewide total rose to 1,956.More than half of the infections statewide have been tied to the Smithfield pork processing plant in Sioux Falls. Employees who have confirmed infections grew to 801, and another 206 of their close contacts have tested positive.Nine people have died so far statewide, including two people who worked at Smithfield. For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia.Smithfield closed the plant indefinitely last week because of the outbreak and faced complaints that it wasn’t doing enough to protect its workers.Gov. Kristi Noem on Thursday released a memo from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that offers recommendations on how the plant can protect workers when it reopens. The governor said she would like to see that happen as soon as possible and offered help to Smithfield in implementing the recommendations.The memo recommended that the operators of the plant implement a strict social distancing policy and find ways to overcome language barriers.The CDC memo specifically addressed the situation at the Smithfield Foods plant in Sioux Falls but that also may give an indication of the broader recommendations that the agency is working on for meat processing plants nationwide.A CDC team toured the plant last week and reported that the company had slowed down production lines to space workers farther apart and installed about 800 Plexiglas barriers along the lines. But even though there were only a few workers left in the plant, some were still gathering closer than 6 feet apart when not at their work stations or not wearing face masks, the team found.Plant management told the CDC that more than 40 languages were spoken at the plant, making it difficult to communicate guidance to employees. The agency recommended that Smithfield post signs with pictograms and in more languages to communicate vital information to employees.Smithfield is also planning to give workers a new face mask every day and to equip production staff with face shields, according to the CDC.The CDC memo also stresses the importance reconfiguring parts of the plant to accommodate social distancing, including making sure workers don’t congregate in locker rooms, cafeterias or break areas.Smithfield has not said when it might reopen.The governor also used her Thursday briefing to raise issues with the federal dollars coming her way as part of coronavirus relief passed through Congress. She said the money must be spent on addressing the global pandemic, but she would rather use it to make up for revenue loss in the state budget.The state relies heavily on sales tax revenue, which Noem expects will be drastically behind expectations. The state also reported 5,128 people had made new claims for unemployment benefits last week. 
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Asian markets were on the upswing Thursday as investors were encouraged by the steady recovery of the U.S. crude oil market after this week’s historic plunge.Japan’s benchmark Nikkei index gained nearly 300 points, or 1.5 percent, to close out Thursday’s session at 19,429.44.The indexes in Hong Kong and Seoul also were in positive territory in late morning trading, while Shanghai and Sydney were flat.In oil futures trading, the price of U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude oil was 6.2 percent higher at $14.64 per barrel, continuing its turnaround from Monday, when it fell to $-37.63 per barrel — the first time the price dropped below zero.Economic activity has ground to a halt worldwide amid the coronavirus pandemic, wiping out demand for gas and causing such a massive glut of oil that producers may have to pay their customers to take the excess supply off their hands.Brent crude oil, the international benchmark, also was back in positive territory, trading at $21.32 per barrel, up nearly 1 percent.        
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Haitian authorities are conducting a criminal investigation into a February fire at an orphanage operated by a U.S.-based church near Port-au-Prince, where 13 children and two adults died.Authorities suspect the fire was started by candles used during frequent power failures.The Associated Press reported that at one point the Haitian orphanages run by the Church of Bible Understanding, were stripped of accreditation by Haitian officials over compliance with safety and health criteria and three years ago both of the church’s  homes in Haiti failed inspections but stayed open.The AP said an attorney for the church said the church, the orphanage operators and the Haitian government should all bear some responsibility.The operational problems and reported poor condition of the homes is glaring because of the revenue wealth and property assets of the church. 
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Analysts are predicting that China’s recent high-profile posturing over Hong Kong signals a bumpy political future for the semiautonomous city and the likely return of mass protests.They were reacting to last week’s arrest of 15 prominent democracy activists on charges of illegal assembly, A man sits next to a fountain at the Sun Yat Sen Memorial Park in Hong Kong on April 21, 2020.Meanwhile, Steve Tsang, director of University of London’s SOAS China Institute, said Western democracies’ failure to prepare for the COVID-19 outbreak means Chinese President Xi Jinping “is no longer feeling vulnerable because of his earlier mismanagement of the pandemic, and he is not feeling under much pressure from within the establishment.”Analysts warn that China’s repression in Hong Kong will intensify in the near future, with some believing China is pushing the city to pass the legislation before September’s legislative election. The authorities are nervous that the pro-democracy camp may claim a majority in the same way that A man wears a face mask as a precautionary measure against COVID-19 as he walks along a street in Hong Kong on April 21, 2020.“To the extent that the city is no longer able to retain the confidence of investors, its population and the economy will be quickly de-internationalized, whilst politically and socially Hong Kong is forced to undergo rapid mainlandization,” Chan said.Wu Qiang, a political scientist formerly with Beijing’s Tsinghua University, said an authoritarian country with national security threats at the top of its priorities, does not always make rational choices, however.“Beijing’s consistent attitude … is to bolster state security to complete its control of Hong Kong,” he said.Analysts and activists warn China’s iron-fisted policy toward Hong Kong may ultimately backfire.  Many ordinary Hong Kong people are already saying they would take to the streets again if the anti-subversion legislation goes ahead, reviving the anti-government movement which has largely paused amid the coronavirus pandemic.“The government will not succeed in instilling fear in the public,” said Chan. “The more they harass, bully, humiliate and battle their opponents, the more they turn people against them.”  
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Japanese health officials say 48 crew members of an Italian cruise ship docked in the port city of Nagasaki have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, including 14 cases confirmed Thursday.The Costa Atlantica and its 623 crew members have been docked in Nagasaki since January to undergo repairs by a unit of Mitsubishi Heavy Industry. The crew was tested for COVID-19 last week after the ship reported that one crew member had developed a cough and fever.The total number of infections include 34 crew members who were first confirmed on Wednesday. At least one crew member has been taken to a Nagasaki hospital, where he is currently on a ventilator. Health officials say they hope to test the remaining crew members by Friday.This is the second time Japan has dealt with a coronavirus outbreak onboard a cruise ship. The U.S.-flagged Diamond Princess cruise ship was quarantined in Yokohama after a passenger tested positive for the disease, but more than 700 passengers eventually tested positive.Japan has nearly 12,000 COVID-19 infections and nearly 300 deaths, not including the figures from the Diamond Princess. The nation is currently under a state of emergency.    
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U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday FILE – Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.He said he meant to explain that a season of COVID-19 combined with influenza “was going to be complicated, or difficult.”Trump initially said Redfield was misquoted and then took issue with the newspaper’s headline about its interview with the CDC director.The president repeatedly insisted Wednesday that any second wave of the coronavirus would not be as bad.“If it comes back, though, it won’t be coming back in the form that it was. It will come back in smaller doses we can contain,” Trump said. “But in my opinion from everything that I have seen it can never be like anything we witnessed right now. … It might not come back at all.”However, when Dr. Deborah Birx, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, was asked by the president if there is a good chance COVID-19 will not return, she replied: “We don’t know.”Asked by a reporter about the top official of the government’s key vaccine agency being shuffled to another job for reportedly resisting the promotion of unproven treatments promoted by the president, Trump said, “I’ve never heard of him. I don’t know who he is.”Immunologist Rick Bright, who was leading a government effort to help develop a COVID-19 vaccine, has filed a whistleblower complaint, contending he was transferred from two key posts this week for questioning Trump’s desire to make chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine widely available before such drugs are scientifically tested for efficacy with the coronavirus.“I believe this transfer was in response to my insistence that the government invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the COVID-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit,” Bright said in a statement released Wednesday by a law firm. “I am speaking out because to combat this deadly virus, science — not politics or cronyism — has to lead the way.”The career official said he had also resisted “efforts to fund potentially dangerous drugs promoted by those with political connections.”Bright was the director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and the deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response.The coronavirus has killed more than 46,000 people in the United States, the most reported by any country. In total, more than 840,000 COVID-19 infections have been confirmed in the country.Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this story.
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Far-right computer hackers have published nearly 25,000 email addresses allegedly belonging to several major organizations fighting the coronavirus pandemic, including the World Health Organization, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the World Bank.The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist activities, has yet to confirm the addresses are genuine but said that the hackers posted the email addresses across far-right messaging and chat sites, as well as Twitter, this week.“Using the data, far-right extremists were calling for a harassment campaign while sharing conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic,” SITE Executive Director Rita Katz said. “The distribution of these alleged email credentials was just another part of a monthslong initiative across the far right to weaponize the COVID-19 pandemic.”It is unclear where the hackers got the email addresses. Other victims of the hacks include the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the Gates Foundation; and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a research center in the Chinese city where the COVID-19 outbreak began in December.While those affected by the security breach did not comment on the specifics of the case, NIH and the Gates Foundation both said they consistently monitor data security and take appropriate action.A Twitter spokeswoman said the company is taking action to remove in bulk any links that send users to far-right websites where the alleged email addresses can be found.An Australian cybersecurity expert, Robert Potter, told The Washington Post that the WHO’s password security is appalling and that he was able to get into its computer system simply by using email addresses the WHO posted on the internet.“Forty-eight people have ‘password’ as their password,” Potter said, adding that others used their own first name or the word “changeme.”He said the right-wingers may have been able to buy the WHO passwords on what is called the dark web, a part of the internet that is not seen by search engines.Megan Squire, a computer science professor at Elon College in North Carolina who monitors right-wing extremism online, said neo-Nazis and white supremacists are looking to exploit the coronavirus pandemic to stir up violence, chaos and anti-Semitism, hoping it will all lead to a collapse of society and a white power takeover.“The fantasizing about it is not limited. They are really doing that to a great extent — openly fantasizing about how this is the event they’ve been waiting for, this is going to bring about the societal collapse they all hope for … bringing down infrastructure and so on. That’s all fantasy/hopefulness on their part.”Squire said the password hack may be part of an effort to get people to read the WHO or Gates Foundation emails to look for what the extremists believe are conspiracies surrounding the pandemic, including far-right theories that the coronavirus was created and deliberately released from the Chinese or that COVID-19 is part of a Jewish plot.Masood Farivar contributed to this report.
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Iran’s Revolutionary Guard launched its first satellite into space Wednesday, dramatically revealing what experts described as a secret military space program that could advance its ballistic missile development amid wider tensions between the Islamic Republic and the U.S.  Using a mobile launcher at a new launch site, the Guard said it put the “Noor,” or “Light,” satellite into a low orbit circling the Earth. While the U.S., Israel and other countries declined to immediately confirm the satellite reached orbit, their criticism suggested they believed the launch happened.Iranian state TV late Wednesday showed footage of what it said was the satellite and said it had orbited the earth within 90 minutes. It said the satellite’s signals were being received.The launch comes as Iran has abandoned all the limitations of its tattered nuclear deal with world powers that President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from in 2018. Trump’s decision set off a monthslong series of escalating attacks that culminated in a U.S. drone strike in January that killed a top Iranian general in Iraq, followed by Tehran launching ballistic missiles at American soldiers in Iraq.As the world grapples with the coronavirus pandemic and historically low oil prices, the missile launch may signal a new willingness to take risks by Iran. Trump himself later tweeted he told the U.S. Navy ” to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea,” both raising energy prices and renewing the risk of conflict.  “Now that you have the maximum pressure campaign, Iran doesn’t have that much to lose anymore,” said Fabian Hinz, a researcher at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California.The three-stage satellite launch took off from Iran’s Central Desert, the Guard said, without elaborating.  Hinz said based on state media images, the launch appeared to have happened at a previously unacknowledged Guard base near Shahroud, Iran, some 330 kilometers (205 miles) northeast of Tehran. The base is in Semnan province, which hosts the Imam Khomeini Spaceport from which Iran’s civilian space program operates.The paramilitary force said it used a “Qased,” or “Messenger,” satellite carrier to put the device into space, a previously unheard-of system. It described the system as using both liquid and solid fuel. Such a system may allow Iran to more quickly fuel a rocket, something crucial in an offensive weapon system, Hinz said, while stressing more information was needed about the launch.Wednesday marked the 41st anniversary of the founding of the Guard by Iran’s late leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. An image of the rocket that carried the satellite showed it bore a Quranic verse typically recited when going on a journey, as well as a drawing of the Earth with the word Allah in Farsi wrapped around it. It remained unclear what the satellite it carried does.”Today, the world’s powerful armies do not have a comprehensive defense plan without being in space, and achieving this superior technology that takes us into space and expands the realm of our abilities is a strategic achievement,” said Gen. Hossein Salami, the head of the Guard.The Guard, which operates its own military infrastructure parallel to Iran’s regular armed forces, is a hard-line force answerable only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.International criticism of the launch came quickly.  U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said “Iran needs to be held accountable for what it’s done.”  At a Pentagon news conference Wednesday, senior officials called the satellite launch a provocation.”We view this as further evidence of Iran’s behavior that is threatening in the region,” said David Norquist, the deputy secretary of defense.Gen. John Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the launched vehicle “went a very long way.” He said it was too early to say whether it successfully placed a satellite in orbit.Israel’s Foreign Ministry described the launch as a “façade for Iran’s continuous development of advanced missile technology.” German Foreign Ministry spokesman Christofer Burger warned that “the Iranian rocket program has a destabilizing effect on the region and is also unacceptable in view of our European security interests.”U.S. Army Maj. Rob Lodewick, a Pentagon spokesman, told The Associated Press that American officials continue to monitor Iran’s program.”While Tehran does not currently have intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), its desire to have a strategic counter to the United States could drive it to develop an ICBM,” Lodewick said.The U.S. alleges such satellite launches defy a U.N. Security Council resolution calling on Iran to undertake no activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.Iran, which long has said it does not seek nuclear weapons, previously maintained its satellite launches and rocket tests do not have a military component. The Guard launching its own satellite now calls that into question.Tehran also says it hasn’t violated a U.N. resolution on its ballistic missile program as it only “called upon” Iran not to conduct such tests.  Wednesday’s launch, however, raises new questions. While Iran isn’t known to have the know-how to miniaturize a nuclear weapon for a ballistic missile, any advances toward an intercontinental ballistic missile would put Europe and potentially the U.S. in range. Iran long has said it limits its ballistic missiles’ range to 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) under Khamenei’s orders, which puts the Mideast but not the West in its reach.  Iranian commentators described Wednesday’s launch as honoring Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, a Guard commander who led its missile development until his death in 2011 in a massive explosion at a facility outside of Tehran that killed 16 others. The state-run IRAN newspaper around that time quoted the slain commander’s brother as saying he worked on an ICBM program, though the brother later denied that in subsequent interviews.  Iran has suffered several failed satellite launches in recent months. A separate fire at the Imam Khomeini Space Center in February 2019 also killed three researchers, authorities said at the time.A rocket explosion in August drew even the attention of Trump, who later tweeted what appeared to be a classified surveillance image of the launch failure. The successive failures raised suspicion of outside interference in Iran’s program, something Trump himself hinted at by tweeting at the time that the U.S. “was not involved in the catastrophic accident.”Over the past decade, Iran has sent several short-lived satellites into orbit and in 2013 launched a monkey into space.
 
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Billionaire Michael Bloomberg will help the state of New York design and fund a program to trace coronavirus infections as part of its strategy to contain the spread of the virus. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the initiative Wednesday, saying it would be done in unison with the neighboring states of New Jersey and Connecticut, and would launch in weeks. FILE – Billionaire and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg speaks at the Greenwood Cultural Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Jan. 19, 2020.“Mayor Bloomberg will design the program, design the training, he is going to make a financial contribution also,” Cuomo said of Bloomberg, who was the city’s mayor from 2002 to 2013. “He’s going to put together an organization that can help hire the people.” Other partners include Johns Hopkins University and global health organization Vital Strategies.   Bloomberg, who spent over a billion dollars of his own fortune earlier this year on a failed bid to become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, is a well-known philanthropist. He has given away over $8 billion of his wealth to fund causes including climate action and gun control.  The governor’s office said Bloomberg is making an investment of “upwards of $10 million” in the coronavirus tracing initiative. There is an additional $1.3 billion in federal funds available to New York for tracing. In this April 18, 2020, photo, provided by the Office of New York State’s Governor, Governor Andrew Cuomo, speaks at a coronavirus press conference in the Red Room at the State Capitol in Albany.“He has tremendous insight both governmentally and from a private sector business perspective on this,” Cuomo said, pointing to Bloomberg’s offices in China and Europe having gone through coronavirus-related shutdowns and reopenings. New York state has confirmed more than a quarter million COVID-19 infections. More than 15,000 people have died, but the governor said Wednesday that deaths have stopped rising and are on a “gentle decline.”  Cuomo said that the state’s effort to double its testing capacity from 20,000 to 40,000 tests per day, plus the launch of a massive tracing operation, will help New York move into the low-level transmission phase and ultimately, be a key part of how it reopens its economy. Bloomberg plans to start with the state’s current corps of about 225 tracers and build it into the thousands. Cuomo said that the state and New York City’s public universities have about 35,000 medical students who will be an important resource for recruiting tracers. “We are going to have to hire many, many more tracers — the capacity is going to have to expand,” Cuomo said. He said the concentration of tracers would be in proportion to where infection rates are.Currently, the northern part of the state has only about 7% of the total infections, while New York City and its immediate suburbs account for 93%.  
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South Africa’s pharmacists are often overlooked as frontline healthcare workers in the fight against Africa’s worst outbreak of coronavirus, despite frequently being the first in contact with those showing symptoms.  In the rural town of Mokopane, in South Africa’s northern Limpopo Province, pharmacist Bronwyn van Heerden and her colleagues provide medicine to hundreds of patients daily.  Reporter Marize de Klerk brings us van Heerden’s story, told in her own words.
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China will pay close attention to clusters of coronavirus infections, especially in hospitals, according to a top level meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang on Wednesday.
 
China’s northeastern city of Harbin has had several clusters of infections in local hospitals.
 
The government also called for efforts to increase coronavirus testing capability and produce more effective testing equipment, according to a statement on the state council’s website.
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Leading U.S. doctors’ organizations are urging the Trump administration to collect data to show who is dying from COVID-19. Data collected so far shows that the coronavirus is killing African-Americans at an alarmingly higher rate than it’s killing white people. More from VOA’s Carol Pearson.
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Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has targeted the second half of May as his country’s “horizon of de-escalation,” as his government and others start to plan an exit from strict coronavirus containment measures. Speaking to parliament Wednesday as he requested an extension of current lockdown orders through May 9, Sanchez said when Spain does begin to ease restrictions it will be a “slow and gradual” process. That would be in line with warnings from public health officials who in recent days have urged governments to be careful when lifting restrictions on businesses and public life, saying that moving too quickly would risk a resurgence of infections. Healthcare workers of the Medical Emergency Services of Madrid (SUMMA 112) UVI-6 unit wearing protective suits speak to the wife of a man who has fallen ill at home in Madrid on April 19, 2020.Spain has been one of the world’s most hard-hit countries, with more than 208,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases and at least 21,700 deaths. A strict lockdown went into effect in mid-March.  Some businesses have been allowed to reopen, and after public criticism the government said starting Sunday children under the age of 14 will be allowed to go outside for walks. FILE – Medical staff members of a government-run medical college collect swabs from people to test for COVID-19 at a newly installed Walk-In Sample Kiosk in Ernakulam in the southern state of Kerala, India, April 6, 2020.Focus on testing
With many countries around the world focused on testing programs to find the infected, isolate them and trace down their close contacts, there are concerns about areas where widespread testing is not available and where people are living in close quarters. That includes refugee camps, and on Wednesday the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees reported the first confirmed case among refugees in a camp in eastern Lebanon. UNRWA said the woman is a Palestinian from Syria and that she has been taken to a hospital in Beirut.  The agency says it is doing everything necessary to aid her family in isolating themselves, and that it is sending a team to the camp to carry out coronavirus tests. Governments are also eager to find a vaccine for COVID-19, a milestone that would help prevent future massive outbreaks. Robert Redfield, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told The Washington Post on Tuesday that a second wave of infections later this year just as flu season begins “could be even more difficult” and put a massive strain on the health care system. Healthy volunteer receives injection in the first-stage safety study clinical trial of a potential vaccine for COVID-19, Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute, Seattle, Washington.The United States and China are among countries currently conducting trials of coronavirus vaccines, with officials cautioning it could take until at least early next year before a vaccine is available to the public. British health officials said Oxford University is set to begin testing a vaccine candidate on  people on Thursday. “In normal times, reaching this stage would take a year,” Health Secretary Matt Hancock told reporters.  He cautioned that vaccine development is a process of “trial and error and trial again.”  
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Several countries around the world, including Germany and South Korea, and a number of U.S. states are easing their coronavirus lockdown restrictions this week. But experts caution that a number of conditions need to be in place before people leave their homes and head back out to churches, shops, restaurants and beaches. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has the story.
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The Trump administration is ordering a 60-day suspension of immigration into the United States, specifically for individuals seeking permanent residence, also known as a green card. Trump said the move is necessary to protect American workers already suffering from the coronavirus pandemic. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has the story.  
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Canadian police said Tuesday they believe there are at least 22 victims after a gunman wearing a police uniform shot people in their homes and set fires in a rampage across rural communities in Nova Scotia over the weekend. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said they have recovered remains from some of the destroyed homes. Earlier, authorities had said at least 18 people were killed in the 12-hour attack.  Officials said the suspect, identified as 51-year-old Gabriel Wortman, was shot and later died on Sunday. Authorities did not provide further details or give a motive for the killings.  The dead include a 17-year-old as well as a police officer, a police news release said. All the other victims were adults and included both men and women. There were 16 crime scenes in five different communities in northern and central Nova Scotia, it said. “Some of the victims were known to Gabriel Wortman and were targeted while others were not known to him,” the police statement said.  Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers stand in line for a procession as a hearse carrying the body of Constable Heidi Stevenson passes by, in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada, April 20, 2020.Authorities also confirmed Wortman was wearing an authentic police uniform and one of the cars he used “was a very real look-alike RCMP vehicle.” “This is an unprecedented incident that has resulted in incredible loss and heartbreak for countless families and loved ones. So many lives will be forever touched,” the police statement said.  In an earlier news release, authorities had said they believed there were 23 victims, but Royal Canadian Mounted Police spokesman Daniel Brien later clarified the death toll included 22 victims and the gunman.Authorities said Wortman made his car look like a Royal Canadian Mounted Police cruiser, allowing him to travel easily within a 30-mile (50-kilometer) area.Police warningsAs the attack ensued, police warned residents in Portapique to lock their doors and stay in their basements. The town, like all of Canada, had been adhering to government advice to remain at home because of the coronavirus pandemic, and most of the victims were inside homes when the attack began. But no wider warning was issued, and questions emerged about why a public emergency alert was not sent province-wide through a system recently used to advise people to maintain social distancing. Police provided Twitter updates, but no alert that would have automatically popped up on cellphones. “There should have been some provincial alert,” said David Matthews, who said he heard a gunshot while walking with his wife Sunday. Shortly after they returned home, their phone started ringing with warnings from friends that there was an active shooter in the neighborhood.  Several bodies were later found inside and outside one house on Portapique Beach Road, police said. Bodies were also found at other locations in Nova Scotia and authorities believe the shooter may have targeted his first victims but then began attacking randomly as he drove around.Suspect’s historyAuthorities said Wortman did not have a police record, but information later emerged of at least one run-in with the law. Nova Scotia court records confirm he was ordered to receive counseling for anger management after pleading guilty to assaulting a man in the Halifax area on Oct. 29, 2001. The guilty plea came on Oct. 7, 2002, as his trial was about to begin. He was placed on probation for nine months, fined $50 and told to stay away from the man, and also prohibited from owning or possessing a weapon, ammunition or explosive substances. Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner Brenda Lucki said police were still determining what weapons were used in the attacks. Cheryl Maloney, who lives near where one victim, 54-year-old Gina Goulet, was killed, believes she was likely saved by a warning message Sunday morning from her son that read, “Don’t leave your house. This guy is at the end of your road and he’s dressed like a cop.” “I really could have used that provincial warning, as I walk here all the time and I’ve been in the yard all week,” she said. 
 
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The Institute for International Education (IIE) has committed $1 million to aid international students affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and seeks nominations for students in need of that funding. As U.S. colleges and universities have shut down their campuses and asked students to return home for the duration of stay-at-home orders, many of the more than 1 million international students attending school in the U.S. face additional burdens.  “The necessary but abrupt campus closures are devastating for many international students,” wrote IIE President Allan E. Goodman on the institute’s website. “Some are unable to go home to be with their families — border closures and canceled flights make it impossible. Others made the difficult decision to remain in the U.S. anticipating they might not be able to return when their university reopens.” IIE’s one-time Emergency Student Fund is worth $2,500 for selected students enrolled at IIE network member institutions and pursuing associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s or doctoral degrees. The global membership network is comprised of more than 7,000 professionals at 1,300 higher education institutions around the world, according to  
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