Author: CensorBiz

Decked out in full firefighting gear, Elielson Silva stands 150 feet above the ground atop a retractable ladder poking up from a red fire truck.
His lofty perch is about as high as Rio de Janeiro’s colossal Maracana soccer stadium behind him. Silva faces a row of apartment buildings filled with Brazilians sheltering from the new coronavirus and watching from their windows and balconies.
He raises his silver trumpet to his lips and the notes soar toward his audience, helping extinguish the blues from being cooped up inside their homes.  
Silva plays tunes known across Brazil, but especially ones composed in and about Rio. Channeling an era that was more carefree, his songs tug at their heart strings: “Watercolor of Brazil,” “Samba of the Plane,” “Marvelous City” and “I Know I’m Going to Love You.”  
“Everyone is suffering the pandemic and I’m trying to the boost the morale of Rio’s population, so all this difficulty is lessened in these times we’re going through,” says Silva, an 18-year veteran of the city’s firefighting corps. “Bringing a bit of music, a bit of air, to these people has meant a lot to me as a musician and to the corps.”  
Raised to heights of up to 200 feet, he has performed all over the city. That includes tourist hot spots that these days are eerily empty — like Copacabana beach and the base of Sugarloaf Mountain — and working-class communities Rocinha and Jacarepagua. On Sunday, he played in three separate neighborhoods, always sporting his heavy, fire-resistant jacket and fire helmet despite temperatures above 80 degrees Fahrenheit.  
He draws cheers and enthusiastic clapping.
“Hearing all that music restores our will to be in Rio, our sense of collectiveness,” Renata Versiani said from her windowsill, where she watched Silva play with her husband and young daughter. “Initiatives like this remind us of who we are as a community. It’s happiness to have a surprise like this.”
Versiani knows the emotional value of such gestures. She’s a psychologist whose family, by her telling, has “surrendered” to the calls to stay inside their home.  
Rio’s firefighters were the front line of the state government’s initial campaign to raise awareness about the need for people to isolate themselves and help contain the virus’ spread. They patrolled the city’s legendary beaches, playing a recording that urged beachgoers to head home, and spoke to people walking on the streets.  
Since Rio’s governor imposed restrictive measures, the firefighters have been seen waving people off the beaches.  
Brazil is in the midst of a pitched battle over the effectiveness of isolation, with President Jair Bolsonaro dismissing the virus’ severity and publicly taking aim at governors who impose shutdowns that he says could cripple the economy. His gatherings in public with supporters counter instructions from international health authorities and his own health ministry.
Brazilians seem to be more atuned to the experts. A survey by the polling firm Datafolha in the opening days of April found that 76% of Brazilians surveyed support social isolation.
Silva is striving to make social distancing seem a little less distant.  
In Rio’s Flamengo neighborhood, the sun glinted off his horn as he played his final numbers — Brazil’s national anthem, then “Hallelujah.” Onlookers surrounding him began applauding with their arms above their heads as his ladder telescoped downward.  
“Congratulations to these heroes,” Silva said, motioning to firefighters on the ground.  
Then he put his hands over his heart, and took a modest bow.
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Russia and Saudi Arabia meet with other countries Thursday on cutting oil production while they continue a price war that has driven down U.S. gasoline and oil prices.The talks could calm prices that declined in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak told Russian television several days ago that the coronavirus crisis is one of the principal causes of what he called the “unprecedented fall of world oil prices.” This, he maintained, “affects the economic interests of the major world nations, including Russia.” In a round table discussion broadcast on Russian television, President Vladimir Putin suggested that his aim in the current tug-of-war with Saudi Arabia and other major producers, including the United States, was “to cut world production by around 10 million barrels, give or take.” U.S. President Donald Trump has tried to broker a solution between Russia and Saudi Arabia, which have each increased production to try and intimidate the other. Trump said Sunday that he might consider using tariffs to halt the slide of domestic U.S. oil prices.  “Tariffs are a way of evening the score. Tariffs are a way of just neutralizing. They have tariffs on us and we can now put tariffs on them. Am I using it for oil? It’s something we can (do). Am I doing it now? No,” Trump said.Russia’s Energy Minister Alexander Novak, Venezuela’s Oil Minister Manuel Quevedo, OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo and Saudi Arabia’s Oil Minister Khalid Al-Falih are seen at an OPEC and NON-OPEC meeting in Vienna, Austria, July 2, 2019.Saudi oil analyst Abdel Aziz Miqbal told Sky News Arabia that he thought the U.S. will eventually sit down to discuss oil production levels, since the U.S. is “one of the principal parties hurt” by the ongoing price war. Riyadh will also host a virtual meeting Friday with energy ministers from the Group of 20 nations that represent the world’s most powerful economies. Khattar Abou Diab teaches political science at the University of Paris. He tells VOA that he thinks both Russia and Saudi Arabia have reached a stalemate in their game of double-or-nothing and that each side has come out a loser. He says neither Russia nor the Saudis wants to lose the important Asian oil market. Russia, he thinks, may be trying to hurt U.S. producers as a response to U.S. sanctions prompted by a gas pipeline to Germany. Saudi Arabia, he argues, is trying to defend its interests in a show of force with both Russia and the U.S., after feeling slighted by what the Saudis considered insufficient solidarity, when its Aramco oil installations were attacked by Yemen’s Houthi rebels in June. Paul Sullivan is a professor at the U.S. National Defense University. Sullivan tells VOA that he thinks “shale producers in the U.S. seem to be the target” of the current oil price war. “It is much more expensive,” he argues, “to produce an average barrel of shale oil in the U.S. than to produce an average barrel of oil in Saudi Arabia and in most of the better fields in Russia.” 
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Tuesday saw an increase in deaths and new COVID-19 cases in Britain, France, some eastern European countries, Sweden, Japan and the United States, while China, South Korea and a handful of other countries reported a decline in deaths and new infections. China on Tuesday ended the 76-day lockdown in the city of Wuhan, Hubei province, where the coronavirus outbreak began in late December. Residents who can produce a smartphone application that shows they do not have COVID-19 and have not been in recent contact with anyone infected with the disease, can move about freely, and traffic has returned to roadways and railways. In South Korea, steady progress continued with just 47 new infections reported Tuesday, but officials remain concerned about a return of the virus and are urging people to stay at home.   Austria, Denmark and Norway announced easing their own lockdowns, including the re-opening of schools, after the spread of the virus showed a decline. Even Italy and Spain, the worst hit European countries reported a slow but steady decline in deaths and new infections. But after a spike in new deaths in the past two days, France on Tuesday became the fourth country to surpass 10,000 deaths from the coronavirus, after Italy, Spain and the United States. Authorities in Paris banned residents from doing outdoor exercise between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. to keep them off the streets. The ban starts Wednesday and applies to the French capital only. France has been in lockdown since March 17, and the measures have been extended until April 15, with another extension expected soon. A woman walks her dog on a Paris bridge, with the Eiffel tower seen in background, during a nationwide confinement to counter the COVID-19, Tuesday, April 7, 2020.The United States has recorded more than 12,000 deaths, making it the country with the third-highest official death toll, after Italy and Spain.  The number of confirmed coronavirus cases was nearly 400,000 Tuesday, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Almost a half of U.S. deaths caused by COVID-19 have occurred in the state of New York, most of them in densely populated New York City.  Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that the state of New York recorded its highest single-day death toll Tuesday. The 731 deaths reported since Monday brought the total to 5,589 deaths and 138,836 infections, according to University of Minnesota figures. Britain also reported the largest daily death toll caused by the virus — 758 people over a 24-hour period. The country’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson remains in intensive care where he is being treated for the virus. Officials say he has been given oxygen but there was no need to put him on a ventilator. While some Scandinavian countries are ready to relax their COVID-19 restrictions, Sweden may have to go in the opposite direction. After month of relative freedom and no official lockdowns, the country has seen a sudden spike in the number of cases and hundreds of deaths. A number of countries have yet to report any COVID-19 cases, among them Sierra Leone and Turkmenistan. Health experts warn that many authoritarian governments suppress reports of COVID-19 cases, thus making it harder to track the virus and stop its transmission. Turkmenistan held a mass bike rally on Tuesday to mark World Health Day. Russian news media reported Tuesday that the country’s Vector Institute, a state research center in Novosibirsk, will start testing a COVID-19 vaccine on volunteers in June. The center’s director, Rinat Maksutov, told Rosija1 television that initial testing on animals, mostly mice, have made them immune to the coronavirus. The pre-clinical trials are to start in May. In Seattle, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine, released a forecast Tuesday predicting that more than 150,000 people will die during what they call the “first wave” of the pandemic. The IHME researchers say that “it is unequivocally evident” that social distancing can help control the epidemic and lead to declining death rates, if implemented timely and correctly. IHME Director Dr. Christopher Murray warned that easing these precautions too soon during “the first wave” of the pandemic could lead to new rounds of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths. He defines the end of this wave as a ratio of 0.3 deaths per 1 million people. Close to 1.5 million COVID-19 cases have been confirmed worldwide and more than 82,000 have died so far. 
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There’s a race on to predict where the COVID-19 virus is growing, what social distancing measures are working and when it will be safe to open society again.  But to do that takes data and the ability to detect signals in the noise of information. Governments are turning to tech companies such as Facebook and Google to see if location data might offer help. One unlikely place to turn: A smart thermometer that is connected to the internet. Fever is one of the common symptoms of the novel coronavirus and capturing fever data – in real time – might be an indicator of where the virus is moving.More than 100,000 temperatures are taken each day on a Kinsa smart thermometer, which starts at about $35. A user’s temperature connects via Bluetooth and is uploaded to a central database at Kinsa Health, a San Francisco-based firm. The data is aggregated, and the company looks for patterns such as where the seasonal flu is popping up, often weeks ahead of public health organizations, according to the firm.  Rings of outbreak In mid-March, the company’s data began to see fever clusters in Florida and New York. Kinsa doesn’t know for sure that those were COVID-19 cases, but it’s a signal, said Inder Singh, chief executive of Kinsa Health.  “That’s like a flashlight going off,” he said. “It’s saying, ‘Hey there’s an outbreak. There’s an outbreak here. Come look at it. Send the virologists in. Send the test kits in.’” The firm created its U.S. Health Weather Map, where people can enter their county to see if atypical fever outbreaks are falling or rising.Fevers falling Singh recently looked at his firm’s regional fever data and compared it to places with strict social-distancing measures. His conclusion: social distancing efforts are working.  “It’s clear, it’s very clear when you start implementing aggressive social distancing activity – stay at home, shelter in place, even bar and restaurant closures – within three to seven days, you see the fever curves level off and start dropping and that’s because you are breaking the chain of infection,” he said.  Leveling off, but still too high But Singh also is seeing something that is worrisome: fevers holding steady – still higher than normal – even in places where fever cases are leveling off.  “The worry is that there’s small groups of people or small communities of people where virus is being passed around. That could act as a reservoir, that could be a hiding place for COVID-19 and after we relax our social distancing activities, it will start spreading again.” To be sure, smart thermometers like Kinsa may just offer a sliver of information. Some critics say that these devices give a skewed view of an illness, perhaps because they are owned more by people who are young and affluent. Still, a smart thermometer’s fever data may be one signal for health officials scrambling to figure out what to address next.     
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The United States is “going to put a very powerful hold” on money it sends to the World Health Organization, President Donald Trump said on Tuesday, blaming the United Nations humanitarian entity of missing the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic.“They called it wrong. They missed the call,” Trump told reporters at the White House, implying that it may have done so out of deference to China, where the novel coronavirus was first reported.“They seem to be very China-centric,” the president said. “We have to look into that.”The United States is the largest contributor to the WHO.When asked by a reporter whether it would be prudent to strangle funding to the organization amid a pandemic, the president denied he said he was doing that, modifying his remark to “we’re going to look at it.”Meanwhile, President Trump is brushing off reports about his administration’s internal early warning that the new coronavirus could cost the U.S. economy trillions of dollars and kill on a massive scale.White House trade adviser Peter Navarro speaks during an interview at the White House, April 6, 2020, in Washington.Trump’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, sounded an initial alarm on Jan. 29, when there were already confirmed cases of COVID-19 in more than a dozen countries, with a memo to the National Security Council.“I didn’t see it,” Trump said of Navarro’s memo, describing it as “a recommendation. It was a feeling that he had.”A subsequent written warning by Navarro to the NSC on Feb. 23 noted a “full blown COVID-19 pandemic” could infect as many as 100 million Americans and kill between 1 million and 2 million, according to White House sources.“I’m a cheerleader for this country. I don’t want to create havoc and shock,” said Trump, indicating that even if he had been aware of the dire predictions at the time he would not have made them public.The president did act on one suggestion from Navarro: quickly restricting travel from China, something he has repeatedly touted. Trump, however, at that time was predicting a quick end to the spread of the new virus.“It’s going to have a very good ending for us,” Trump had said of the coronavirus in a Jan. 30 speech.Asked Tuesday by a reporter to reflect on that, the president responded: “I couldn’t have done it any better.”The total number of cases of the coronavirus in the United States is approaching 400,000. More than 12,000 deaths in the country are attributed to COVID-19 with one-third of those in New York City, the current global epicenter of the pandemic.The governor of New York is cautioning residents not to expect a quick return to normalcy, noting that the 1918 influenza pandemic peaked for six months and 30,000 people died in the state.New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks during a news conference at the Jacob Javits Center, March 24, 2020, in New York.“Social distancing is working,” Governor Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday. “I know it’s hard, but we have to keep doing it.”The president on Tuesday said that his administration is effectively addressing the financial toll the virus is taking on the country’s economy with about $70 billion of $350 billion to cover small business payrolls “essentially loaned.”It is still not clear how much of that has reached business owners, with many reporting they have yet to see any money.  Trump has effectively removed the leader of a new watchdog panel tasked with keeping check on how his administration will be spending trillions of dollars of taxpayer money meant to help individuals and businesses suffering economic harm from the spread of the coronavirus.Glenn Fine, the acting inspector general for the Defense Department, last week was named by a group of inspectors general of the executive branch to be the chairman of the new Pandemic Response Accountability Committee.The president, however, on Tuesday, named the Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general, Sean O’Donnell, to be the acting inspector general for the Defense Department, knocking Fine out of his role of oversight for the coronavirus relief funds.U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) makes a statement after meetings to wrap up work on coronavirus economic aid legislation, during the coronavirus outbreak, March 22, 2020.Democrats in Congress quickly cried foul. Senator Chuck Schumer, who is the minority leader, called Trump’s action corrupt.The president defended his move, saying there were “reports of bias” about the inspector general. He cited no example, however.The president has a growing track record of rejecting government oversight. On Monday, he accused the U.S. health department’s inspector general of producing a “fake dossier.”The report detailed serious shortages of supplies at the country’s hospitals amid the coronavirus pandemic. Last Friday, Trump ousted the inspector general of the intelligence community who had been involved in the events leading to the president’s impeachment in the House.   
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Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly has submitted a letter of resignation to Defense Secretary Mark Esper.That’s according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the matter before an official announcement.The official says Modly has also told staff he is quitting.Modly had created a combustible controversy by firing the captain of the USS Theodore Roosevelt last week, saying Capt. Brett E. Crozier had shown “extremely poor judgment” in widely distributing by email a letter calling for urgent help with the COVID-19 outbreak aboard his ship.Modly then flew to the ship, at port in Guam, and delivered a speech to the crew in which he lambasted Crozier, saying he was either “too naive or too stupid” to be in charge of an aircraft carrier. On Monday night, at Esper’s insistence, Modly issued a public apology, but by then the calls among Democrats in Congress for his resignation were mounting. 
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Fake news about the coronavirus can do real harm. Polygraph.info is spotlighting fact-checks from other reliable sources here​.Daily Debunk Claim: “HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine” — President Donald Trump via Twitter, March 21Verdict: DisputedRead the full story: “Why does Trump call an 86-year-old unproven drug a game-changer against coronavirus?” Washington Post, April 6 Social Media Disinfo​Charles LieberCirculating on social media: The claim that a Harvard professor charged with lying about receiving secret Chinese government payments was in fact arrested for creating the cornoavirus.Verdict: FalseRead the full story: “No Link Between Harvard Scientist Charles Lieber and Coronavirus,” FactCheck.org​ Factual Reads on CoronavirusA small trial finds that hydroxychloroquine is not effective for treating coronavirus
[A] study just published in a French medical journal provides new evidence that hydroxychloroquine does not appear to help the immune system clear the coronavirus from the body.
— The Conversation, April 3 ​
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A United Nations investigation has concluded the Syrian government or its allies was likely responsible for attacks on a school, a hospital, and two other civilian facilities, but the probe avoided specifically blaming Syria’s main military sponsor, Russia, drawing rebukes from rights activists.Human rights groups criticized the report, whose executive summary was released on April 6, as well as the United Nations for restricting the investigation to a narrow line of inquiry.The inquiry produced “a “mealy-mouthed’ report, all to avoid offending Russia, the prime offender along with Syria,” Kenneth Roth, the head of Human Rights Watch, said on Twitter.UN Secretary General @AntonioGuterres gave an excessively narrow mandate to a board of inquiry into attacks on hospitals in Syria, and the inquiry now produces a “mealy-mouthed” report, all to avoid offending Russia, the prime offender along with Syria. https://t.co/JJfnkcNxqVpic.twitter.com/i81CWMD61C— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) April 7, 2020Rights groups have long pushed the world body to investigate alleged war crimes committed during the nine-year conflict, which has devastated Syria and killed hundreds of thousands.The executive summary of the 185-page confidential report said that four civilian facilities — a child-care facility, a hospital, a school, and a health care center — were targeted, and it was “highly probable” that the Syrian government’s forces, or its allies, were responsible.It was “plausible” that a separate attack on a second health center was also carried out by the Syrian government or its allies, the report found.U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appointed a board of inquiry nearly two years ago, authorizing it to investigate incidents in Syria’s northwest after Russia and Turkey agreed to establish a “de-escalation zone” in Idlib in September 2018.At the time of the board’s establishment, Russia called the war crimes accusations “a lie.” Syria also disputed the allegations.Rights groups have repeatedly accused Syrian government forces of committing wide-scale war crimes, purposely targeting civilians. Rights groups have also focused attention on Russia, which is Syria’s main economic and military sponsor.Russia’s intervention, in September 2015, turned the tide of the war to the advantage of Bashar al-Assad’s forces. The northwestern Idlib Province is currently the last rebel stronghold holding out.Last year, The New York Times published an in-depth investigation of Syrian civilian facilities purposely being targeted.The report, which included recordings of radio communications among Russian fighter pilots, directly incriminated Russia in attacks on civilian hospitals. 
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U.S. President Donald Trump sharply criticized the World Health Organization on Tuesday, accusing it of being too focused on China and issuing bad advice during the coronavirus outbreak. “The W.H.O. really blew it,” Trump said in a Twitter post. “For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric. We will be giving that a good look. Fortunately I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on. Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?” The WHO did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. On Jan. 31, the United Nations health organization advised countries to keep borders open despite the outbreak, although it noted that countries had the right to take measures to try to protect their citizens. That same day, Trump’s administration announced restrictions on travel from China. FILE =World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus attends a daily press briefing on the new coronavirus dubbed COVID-19, at the WHO headquaters on March 2, 2020 in Geneva.U.S. conservatives have increasingly criticized the WHO during the global pandemic, saying it relied on faulty data from China about the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. Last week, Republican Senator Marco Rubio called for the resignation of WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, saying “he allowed Beijing to use the WHO to mislead the global community.” 
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Ceri Weber had just begun to defend her dissertation when the chaos began: Echoes and voices interrupted her. Someone parroted her words. Then Britney Spears music came on, and someone told Weber to shut up. Someone threatened to rape her. Hackers had targeted the meeting on the video conference platform Zoom while Weber was completing the final step of her doctoral degree at Duke University. The harassment lasted 10 minutes — the result of an increasingly common form of cyber attack known as “Zoom bombing.” As tens of millions of people turn to video conferencing to stay connected during the coronavirus pandemic, many have reported uninvited guests who make threats, interject racist, anti-gay or anti-Semitic messages, or show pornographic images. The attacks have drawn the attention of the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. “It seemed like someone was just being silly,” but then the intrusions “started to get more serious and threatening,” Weber recalled. “I was really in the zone and kept presenting.” She said she was more concerned about others in the chat who could have been scared. She was interrupted despite having selected “mute all” in the settings for the meeting she conducted from her home in Durham, North Carolina. A Massachusetts high school reported that someone interrupted a virtual class on Zoom, yelled profanity and revealed the teacher’s home address. Another school in that state reported a person who accessed a meeting and showed swastika tattoos, according to the FBI. The agency’s field office in Boston recommended that users of video-teleconference platforms prioritize their security by ensuring that hosts have sole control over screen-sharing features and meeting invitations. In New York, Attorney General Letitia James sent a letter to Zoom with questions about how users’ privacy and security are being protected. In a separate later, Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut sought information about how the company handles users’ personal data and guards against security threats and abuse. Zoom has referred to trolls as “party crashers,” which some critics have taken as a sign the company is downplaying the attacks. In a statement issued last week, the company told The Associated Press it takes the security of meetings seriously and encourages users to report any incidents directly to Zoom. The company suggested that people hosting large, public meetings confirm that they are the only ones who can share their screen and use features like mute controls. “For those hosting private meetings, password protections are on by default, and we recommend that users keep those protections on to prevent uninvited users from joining,” the company said. Zoom recently updated the default screen-sharing settings for education users so that teachers are by default the only ones who can share content. Despite the update, Nevada’s Clark County School District, which includes all public schools in Las Vegas, and the New York City Department of Education, which is responsible for the largest school district in the U.S., have told teachers to stop using Zoom. Zoom-bombing was always a threat given how the video conferencing app was configured — geared more toward user-friendliness than privacy, said Justin Brookman, director of privacy and technology policy at Consumer Reports. When shelter-at-home mandates suddenly converted Zoom into a lifeline for tens of millions of families, it became a juicy target for mischief, he said. For years, “the usability issues outweighed the potential security issues because society was less reliant on them. Obviously, that has changed dramatically over the last month,” Brookman added. Some Zoom-bombers have been able to randomly guess meeting IDs and crash conferences not configured to keep out interlopers, he said. In other cases, inexperienced users have exposed meeting IDs online, including U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who tweeted a screenshot of a Zoom Cabinet meeting that showed the ID and everyone’s screen name. Brookman said Zoom can do more to boost privacy protections for a massive user base that now ranges from elementary school children to senior citizens discussing their wills with attorneys. “A lot of people, including us, are critical of how they enable hosts to surveil users to make sure they are paying attention to the screen, or reading DMs or recording the call when it’s not entirely clear,” Brookman said. A mother in Georgia told a local TV station that her son was “embarrassed and a little hysterical” after someone hacked into his online class and showed pornography to the children and teacher. The Rev. Jason Wells was holding a publicly advertised forum recently on Zoom when a troll entered and used the chat box to post a racial slur so many times that it made the feature unusable for other participants. “I would not say this was a random vandal hoping to interrupt somebody,” said Wells, who is executive director of the New Hampshire Council of Churches in Concord and co-chair of a state chapter of the Poor People’s Campaign, part of a movement pioneered by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The intruder was eventually removed and blocked. As the Rev. Laura Everett delivered a sermon via Zoom for Boston’s First Baptist Church, a user who had seen the church service advertised entered the video conferencing session and shouted homophobic and racist slurs. Everett said she had tweeted the link to the sermon because she wanted “the doors of the church to be open to every weary soul who is looking for a word of comfort.” “This was, for all intents and purposes, a house of worship that was violated,” she said. “Zoom and every other business bears the primary responsibility for users’ safety.” In Oakland, California, Malachi Garza reported an attack on a Zoom conference she hosted for roughly 200 participants, including formerly incarcerated people who have experience with solitary confinement and are struggling with the pandemic’s stay-home orders. The conference organized by the philanthropic Solidare Network was interrupted by racist, anti-transgender language, and pornographic images were flashed on a shared screen.  Zoom needs to “tell the truth and call this what it really is,” Garza said. “It’s racial terror, not party crashers.”   
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Stuck in the same bind as many other Chinese farmers whose crops are rotting in their fields, Jiang Yuewu is preparing to throw out a 500-ton harvest of lotus root because anti-coronavirus controls are preventing traders from getting to his farm near Wuhan, where the global pandemic started.Chinese leaders are eager to revive the economy, but the bleak situation in Huangpi in Wuhan’s outskirts highlights the damage to farmers struggling to stay afloat after the country shut down for two months.
Authorities are easing travel controls after declaring victory over the virus, but flowers and some other crops deemed nonessential are withering while farmers wait for permission to move them to market.
Most transportation in and around Wuhan, a city of 11 million people in central China’s Hubei province, was suspended Jan. 23 to fight the coronavirus. Trucks carrying food supplies deemed essential were allowed through.
Jiang’s lotus roots, a starchy, popular ingredient in Chinese cooking, and some other crops were not included.  
“Vendors wanted to come and buy lotus roots but couldn’t make it,” said Jiang, 57, dressed in blue overalls and knee-high rubber boots. “If we don’t do our best, in the second half of the year, we will barely survive.”
The final restrictions on residents of Wuhan leaving the city are due to be lifted Wednesday, but farmers and companies still are working to restore supply chains that carry food to crowded cities and raw materials to factories.
The official China News Service reported that Hubei will create “green channels” to get production supplies to farmers and crops to market. Jiang and his neighbors in this area about 30 kilometers (20 miles) northeast of Wuhan’s city center said they still were waiting for clearance.
Guo Changqi, who raises flowers for sale in Wuhan, said officials visited to ask vegetable farmers about their losses. Not him.  
Guo said he has thrown away more than 20,000 pots of flowers, which usually sell for 5 to 6 yuan (70 to 85 cents) each at his in a wholesale market in Wuhan. The market has reopened, but there are few customers, he said.  
“We live on flowers,” said Guo, dressed in a wide-brimmed straw hat as he walked past rows of pots of dead flowers. “If we have no way to sell them, life will get harder.”
Farmers are hoping for government help.
“We can do nothing about the epidemic,” said Jiang. “If the government could find a way to sell lotus roots, it could minimize our losses, but so far they haven’t done anything.”
The lotus roots grow under knee-deep water in Jiang’s 20 football field-size ponds. Traders who supply markets as far away as Shenzhen, adjacent to Hong Kong in the southeast, usually pay 0.90 to 1 yuan (12 to 14 cents) per 500 grams (per pound).
Some farmers are finding temporary outlets for sales through volunteers in Wuhan helping the elderly and other vulnerable people get food supplies. They buy direct from farmers and arrange delivery to apartment complexes.  
Online grocery orders surged in Wuhan and other cities after families were ordered to stay home. The government also arranged food deliveries. But some residents had no access to websites and smartphone apps.
“Especially for empty-nesters, they didn’t know how to buy food from this channel even though they had money,” said volunteer Luo Hao.
Jiang’s neighbor Dong Yumei, who raises cabbages, said her sales have fallen by 80%. Most of her business now is with the volunteer network in Wuhan.
“The farmers here are so nice and the vegetables are cheaper,” said Luo. “They’re also fresh from the farm.”
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People around the world, trapped in their homes amid a health crisis, have something to look forward to this week when the full moon appears as a supermoon for the second of three times this year and in its most spectacular form.  A phenomenon known as the Super Pink Moon will make an appearance over a couple of nights this week. It will be the biggest and brightest on Tuesday, but its appearance on Monday and Wednesday will also be worth viewing. Housebound people are more likely than usual to want to step out into their yards or poke their heads out of their windows to watch this so-called supermoon and develop a new appreciation for the natural world or renew an old one. A full moon appears approximately once a month. When the moon gets closest to the Earth in its orbit, it appears bigger and brighter than usual and is called a supermoon. A supermoon can look up to 14% bigger and 30% brighter than a regular monthly full moon.  Most years have 12 full moons, but this year will have 13, three of them supermoons. The April supermoon follows the one of March 9 and precedes the one coming on May 7. In the United States, the April supermoon is also known as the Pink Supermoon, a name given it by Native Americans because it comes out around the time the moss pink wildflower is in bloom. April’s full moon promises to be the most spectacular full moon of this year because it will be closest to the Earth while in its “full” phase. The distance between the two on April 7 will be 356,906 kilometers.   The timing for the April supermoon varies in different parts of the world. On the U.S. West Coast, this year’s Super Pink Moon appears about 7:30 p.m. on April 7, and in Sydney, Australia, at 12:30 p.m. on April 8. But the best time to watch it anywhere is after sunset, when the sky darkens and the moon rises over the eastern horizon.  Experts say there is no need to look for its peak at 100% illumination because the moon is then so white and bright that you cannot look at it for more than a few seconds. Those who do not have an east-facing view can wait for the moonset on April 8. It is expected to be as spectacular as the moonrise.  The year 2020 will also have a rare blue moon. A blue moon is the second full moon in the same month – something that happens only every 2½ or three years. English-language speakers are familiar with the phrase “once in a blue moon,” referring to something that happens rarely. This year’s blue moon will fall on Halloween, October 31, something that happens once in two decades, so that makes it even more special. Moongazers will have plenty to watch in 2020 and under the current circumstances, watching night sky events could gain more attention among people who have had little interest in them before. 
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The mayor of one Cameroon city says wearing a mask will be mandatory to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus that has already infected 658 people across the country and nine others have died. Roger Mbassa Ndine, mayor of the coastal city of Douala, made the announcement Monday as crews began  fanning out across the city Monday to pass out washable masks, in a new awareness campaign that will take them to other boroughs in the coming days.  Nemache Celestin, a Douala teacher, welcomes the mayor’s decision to make wearing a mask compulsory, saying “Cameroon and Africa do not have enough resources to deal with this pandemic.”  She said “everyone must do everything to protect us from the pandemic.” In recent days, police in Cameroon began arresting people who ignored measures aimed at curtailing the spread of the coronavirus. Despite government warnings, officials say a majority of Cameroonians are not taking the coronavirus seriously, and authorities are taking steps to enforce social distancing rules. President Sassou-Nguesso declared a state of health emergency, with a curfew from 8 pm to 5 am and everyone must stay at home, with the exception of people who provide essential services and goods. 
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Human Rights Watch released a report early Monday urging the United States to ease sanctions on Iran because of the negative impact they are having on the country’s ability to control and treat COVID-19. “The U.S. should take immediate action to ease U.S. sanctions and expand licensing of sanctions-exempt items to ensure Iran’s access to essential humanitarian resources during the pandemic,” HRW said in a report published on its website.  In 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump imposed sweeping sanctions on Tehran after withdrawing unilaterally from the 2015 nuclear deal. Human rights groups and others say the restrictions have slowed efforts to fight the coronavirus that had infected more than 60,000 and caused more than 3,700 deaths. The report said that U.S. restrictions on financing, combined with the depreciation of the Iranian currency rial, have limited Iranian companies and hospitals from importing essential medicines and medical equipment needed for critical medical care. According to international law, a country or a bloc of nations enforcing economic sanctions should consider the impact on the affected population, especially regarding their access to goods essential to life, including medicines and food.   “It’s bad enough that Iranians are saddled with a brutal, self-serving government …” said Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth. “But it is wrong and callous for the Trump administration to compound Iranians’ misery by depriving them of access to the critical medical resources they urgently need.” 
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U.S. President Donald Trump is disputing the findings of an inspector general whose report documents continued shortages of protective equipment for hospital workers and COVID-19 testing kits.  “It is wrong,” the president responded on Monday when asked about the report from the Health and Human Services’ acting inspector general. “We have done more testing, more results than anywhere in the world.”  Trump displayed a chart for reporters showing that 1.79 million tests for COVID-19 have been conducted in the United States.  “That number is growing by 125,000 people every day,” he added.  The president declined to further address the substance of questions about the report from the HHS inspector general.  President demands nameTrump, who has repeatedly criticized government watchdogs and whistleblowers, demanded of reporters who raised the issue at a White House briefing to give him the name of the official and when the person was appointed.  “We’re going to take a look at it,” said the president, minutes later, when told by a reporter that the acting inspector general of HHS is Christi Grimm. Trump then asked how long Grimm has been in the government. A reporter replied that she held positions in previous administrations. “You mean the Obama administration,” Trump responded. “Thank you for telling me that.” Grimm has been employed at HHS since 1999 and has served in both Democratic and Republican-led administrations.  Late Friday, Trump informed Congress he was removing the inspector general for the U.S. intelligence community, Michael Atkinson, claiming he had lost trust in him. 300 hospital officials interviewedThe HHS inspector general’s report, released on Monday, is based on interviews with more than 300 hospital administrators from 46 states. The most commonly reported challenges, according to the report, “centered on hospitals’ efforts to confirm cases of COVID-19, to keep healthcare staff safe, and to provide needed services to patients requiring hospital care for a wide array of medical reasons, including COVID-19.”   The assistant inspector general  at HHS, Ann Maxwell, told NBC News that she was “taken aback” by the horror stories she heard in interviews with hospital administrators. “It is unprecedented,” Maxwell said. “I think one moment that stands out for me is when I was talking to a hospital administrator and he told me that he had staff in the hospital out trying to procure masks and gloves from auto part shops, from home supply stores, from beauty salons, from art supply stores.” The president has repeatedly denied any shortcomings in the federal government’s response, asserting that it is primarily the responsibility of states to get needed supplies and they shouldn’t view Washington as a “shipping clerk.”  When asked by reporters about such complaints from states and the medical community, Trump has accused the media of being negative and nasty by raising such issues.  Surprised by decision At Monday’s media briefing by the White House coronavirus task force, the assistant secretary of health, Admiral Brett Giroir of the U.S. Public Health Service, expressed surprise about how he was informed of the inspector general’s findings.  If there was such a problem on March 23 or 24, Giroir said, “why did I found out about the tests from them on the news media at 8 o’clock this morning?”  The admiral added the inspector general was “ethically obliged” to immediately tell him where there was a problem with supplies so he could have acted on it. In the United States, there are 365,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases — the most of any country. The number of deaths in the U.S. from the coronavirus has surpassed 10,000 with about one-third of the fatalities just in New York City.  The president agreed on Monday to a request from the governor of the state of New York for a U.S. navy hospital ship docked at New York City’s Pier 90 to treat coronavirus patients.  “This means 1,000 additional beds staffed by federal personnel,” tweeted Andrew Cuomo. “This will provide much-needed relief for our over stressed hospital systems.”  #CoronavirusNYChttps://t.co/K5fBTFkYgU— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) April 6, 2020“We hadn’t that in mind at all but we’re going to let him do it” as well as allow COVID-19 patients from the state of New Jersey, Trump told reporters.    
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Hundreds of coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Los Angeles, California, and as more tests are being done, this number continues to grow while hospitalizations climb sharply. Bars and movie theatres are closed, access to beaches is restricted and Californians have been ordered to stay home to slow the spread of the virus. Khrystyna Shevchenko has more on what life in LA looks like. Anna Rice narrates her story.
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Fake news about the coronavirus can do real harm. Polygraph.info is spotlighting fact-checks from other reliable sources here​.Daily Debunk Claim: President Donald Trump has said that the government’s stockpile of emergency medical supplies he inherited from his predecessor was an “empty shelf.”Verdict: FalseRead the full story: FactCheck.org​ Social Media Disinfo​Godirect.govCirculating on social media: A post claiming you can track your coronavirus economic stimulus check from the U.S. government by calling a toll-free telephone number..Verdict: FalseRead the full story: “False claim: Hotline to check status of stimulus check” — Reuters Factual Reads on CoronavirusA small trial finds that hydroxychloroquine is not effective for treating coronavirus
[A] study just published in a French medical journal provides new evidence that hydroxychloroquine does not appear to help the immune system clear the coronavirus from the body.
— The Conversation, April 3 ​
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