Author: CensorBiz

The coronavirus death count in France surged to nearly 5,400 people on Thursday after the health ministry began including nursing home fatalities in its data.The pandemic had claimed the lives of 4,503 patients in hospitals by Thursday, up 12% on the previous day’s 4,032, said Jerome Salomon, head of the health authority. A provisional tally showed the coronavirus had killed a further 884 people in nursing homes and other care facilities, he added.This makes for a total of 5,387 lives lost to coronavirus in France — an increase of 1,355 over Wednesday’s cumulative total — although data has not yet been collected from all of the country’s 7,400 nursing homes.”We are in France confronting an exceptional epidemic with an unprecedented impact on public health,” Salomon told a news conference.The country’s broad lockdown is likely to be extended beyond April 15, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said Thursday, extending a confinement order to try and deal with the crisis that began on March 17.Police officers check their phones as they walk on Trocadero plaza during a nationwide confinement to counter the new coronavirus, in Paris, April 2, 2020.The government was racing to try to ensure it can produce or procure itself certain medications needed to treat coronavirus patients as stocks were running low, Philippe told TF1 TV, echoing concerns across Europe as the pandemic places a huge strain on hospitals in Italy, Spain and elsewhere.More than two-thirds of all the known nursing home deaths have been registered in France’s Grand Est region, which abuts the border with Germany.It was the first region in France to be overwhelmed by a wave of infections that has rapidly moved west to engulf greater Paris, where hospitals are desperately trying to add intensive care beds to cope with the influx of critically ill patients.The care sector has called for blanket testing for all staff, with the virus often entering nursing homes through employees. More than 1 million people live in France’s care homes.”We have to limit the impact on old people as we know that they are the most fragile,” said Romain Gizolme, head of an association for the care of the elderly.On the front lineIn early March, health authorities asked nursing home staff to toughen entry protocols, wear gloves and masks, and isolate suspected cases.However, one worker in the Lyon region said that as of last week in her nursing home, residents were still dining together and staff were not wearing masks. Since then two workers had tested positive and four residents had fallen sick, she said.It is still not clear when the epidemic will reach its peak in France and hospitals in Paris are still scrambling to add more intensive care beds. France has already boosted their number to 9,000, from about 5,000 before the start of the crisis.FILE – Men wearing face masks chat at the entrance of the Fondation Rothschild nursing home, in Paris, March 27, 2020.Salomon said the number of coronavirus patients requiring life support rose by 6% on the previous day to 6,399.With France now in its third week of lockdown, the number of patients going into intensive care should in the next few days show how effective the government’s unprecedented measure is proving in slowing the rate of spread.In the Paris region, intensive care units are more or less saturated. Health authorities in the capital are trying to add 200 beds. Philippe said authorities would open a new ward at a hospital just outside Paris ahead of schedule so that it can take in an extra 86 patients there by mid-April.In Neuilly, a wealthy Paris suburb, one intensive care nurse told Reuters TV that wild swings in the conditions of some patients were among the most difficult aspects to deal with.”You can go from a state wherein he’s doing well one minute and the next he’s not,” said the nurse at the Ambroise Pare clinic, who gave his name as Martin.About 100 patients are being transferred from the capital to other less-affected regions to ease congestion in the wards, while medics are being relocated in the opposite direction.Respirators are also being put into people’s homes to save space at hospitals with patients monitored remotely.”We really now are on the front line of the battle,” said an official at the Paris region’s health authority. 
 
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Hong Kong has ordered pubs and bars to close for two weeks from 6 p.m.  Friday as the financial hub steps up social distancing restrictions and joins cities around the world in the battle to halt the spread of coronavirus.Anyone who violates the new law faces six months in jail and a fine of HK$50,000 ($6,450).The extraordinary move in a city that never sleeps comes a week after the government stopped all tourist arrivals and transit passengers at its airport and said it was considering suspending the sale of alcohol in some venues.“Any premises (commonly known as bar or pub) that is exclusively or mainly used for the sale or supply of intoxicating liquors … must be closed,” the government said in a statement late Thursday.It added that 62 confirmed coronavirus cases in the city had been linked to bars, leading to 14 further infections, including a 40-day-old baby. Hong Kong has 802 cases of coronavirus and four deaths from the disease.Alcohol will still be available in supermarkets and convenience stores across the Asian financial center.Global coronavirus cases surpassed 1 million Thursday with more than 52,000 deaths as the pandemic further exploded in the United States and the death toll climbed in Spain and Italy, according to a Reuters tally of official data.
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Late one March morning, cell phones across Illinois activated simultaneously through the state’s emergency warning system, buzzing with the urgent text message:“State needs licensed health care workers to sign up at IllinoisHelps.net to fight COVID-19.”The warning came as the number of known coronavirus cases in Illinois soared, many in Chicago and the urban areas surrounding it, while the city’s sprawling McCormick Place convention center along Lake Michigan was transformed into a temporary medical facility to handle the influx of patients.But outside Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city, among vast corn and soybean fields, smaller towns dot rural areas where concerns are growing about the relentless spread of the coronavirus, and physicians are sounding the alarm about what they need to fight it.“I think right now, critically, it’s people … it’s the protective equipment, the masks, and it’s prayers,” said Dr. Stephen Hippler. “We have an undersupply of testing kits, so we don’t always know who has coronavirus and who doesn’t, and we are facing a shortage of personal protective equipment, which really adds to the anxiety of this.”Hippler is a chief clinical officer for OSF HealthCare, owned and operated by the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis, headquartered in Peoria, Illinois. OSF HealthCare serves patients in small cities and rural markets in Illinois and Michigan through 14 hospitals with a total of 2,192 acute care beds. It also operates 30 urgent care locations.FILE – This sign near Dufur, Oregon, shows distances to the nearest towns, March 20, 2020. Rural residents fear the spread of coronavirus to areas with scarce medical resources.Unimaginable situation“I don’t know how you prepare for something like this, how you envision something like this,” Hippler told VOA. “Our health care system and our hospitals all do planning for disasters, but typically it’s around tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes — where an area is affected, but then others can rush in from elsewhere to help. But our planning scenarios have never [imagined a situation] where the entire world is down all at once.”Increasing the number of available working health care professionals and keeping them safe during the outbreak are among the challenges Hippler said rural health care providers face.“I think the challenges really come in around the resources required to stand up to a pandemic like this in IT [information technology], supplies, creating negative pressure rooms, just keeping up with the clinical resources and clinical guidelines,” said Hippler. “I think it’s that infrastructure that health care is built on that rural hospitals will face a challenge with.”“They’re really the sole source of hospital care for that community,” said Pat Schou, executive director of the Illinois Critical Access Hospital Network, or ICAHN, which connects and supports 57 rural medical facilities, many of them independent, throughout the state.Schou, who is also president of the board of the National Rural Health Association, said U.S. Census research shows only about 15 percent of those in the United States live in rural communities, where the population is, on average, older, poorer and has a greater percentage of those with underlying health conditions at higher risk for serious illness and hospitalization if they contract the coronavirus.“Most of these hospitals serve a rural community of around 25,000 people,” Schou said, adding that many rural patients could live a significant distance away from a health care facility.Outpatient services are keyAbout 80 percent of the business that occurs at those facilities are outpatient services, such as therapy, lab services and minor surgeries.Schou said this is the core of the business that generates revenue for many rural hospitals and is dramatically drying up as patients stay home under lockdown.“If you only have 30 to 45 days’ cash on hand, it’s going to be very, very tough,” said Schou, who believes about 25 percent of the hospitals her organization supports could suffer steep financial losses depending on the length of the COVID-19 crisis. “If this is a short-term situation, they may be fine. If it goes longer than three or four months, they are going to have severe financial strain.”The spread of the novel coronavirus globally comes after 19 rural hospital closures in the United States in 2019. The Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina said that since 2005, the country has lost 170 rural health care facilities, eight of those since January.Schou said the loss of income and increasing financial strain could lead to difficult decisions for rural hospital administrators. “Do they keep all the staff? Do they lay off? What if they do have a surge that comes their way?” she asked, adding, “If we have a threefold surge, we’re going to have a serious problem.”While $100 billion in financial assistance for health care providers is on the way as part of the recently enacted $2.2 trillion federal relief package, Schou said it could take weeks to filter down to rural hospitals that may need funds, support and equipment far sooner.Competing for PPETo make matters worse, rural hospitals are competing with larger medical systems serving urban areas for critical supplies and equipment that is in short supply.“If you are a larger facility and you are treating these COVID patients, already you are a higher priority,” Schou told VOA.OSF HealthCare’s Hippler said the widespread and urgent need for personal protective equipment, or PPE, continues and is complicated by the fact that much of it is supplied in China by manufacturers that suffered disruptions when the coronavirus emerged.“It just happened that the epicenter [in China] was in the area where we get a lot of our PPE products,” he said, but PPE isn’t the only item on the growing list of needs and wants as the crisis drags on.“We all wish we had access to more testing, more reagents, a quicker way to do that,” he said.  “This is unlike flu season where it typically sweeps across the country. We’re not yet seeing a lot of that spread as intensely outside of these population centers, but we don’t know yet, it’s still early, and we’re still getting prepared.”
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The global death toll from the coronavirus pandemic topped 50,000 on Thursday.The number of deaths continued to soar in Italy, Spain and the United States, where hundreds of new fatalities were recorded. Johns Hopkins University in the U.S. said the worldwide death toll has reached more than 51,300, while the number of confirmed coronavirus cases is nearing 1 million. Medical staff in full protective gear carry a patient on a stretcher down a street in Naples, as the spread of coronavirus continues, Italy, April 2, 2020.Italy added another 760 dead to its coronavirus toll, pushing its death toll to 13,915, the most in any country. The U.S. death toll topped 5,300, but the White House in recent days said the eventual count could range from 100,000 to 240,000.Around the globe, the impact of the coronavirus wreaked havoc on national and local governments trying to rush medical equipment to hospitals, along with workers who have been laid off by the millions as businesses end normal operations. Another 6.65 million jobless workers in the U.S. filed new claims for unemployment compensation last week, pushing the three-week total to more than 10 million.In China, where the virus first erupted, 600,000 people in Henan province were placed on lockdown, a signal that Chinese officials feared a new outbreak.This still image taken from a live stream provided by Office of Mayor Eric Garcetti showing Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti displaying putting on a protective face mask during his daily news conference in Los Angeles, April 1, 2020.In Los Angeles, the second biggest U.S. city, the mayor urged people to wear masks in public. U.S. health officials are considering whether to urge all Americans to follow suit, but so far have not made a national recommendation. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Wednesday that anyone can be a coronavirus carrier even if they aren’t showing any symptoms.    The CDC affirmed a study from Singapore that says 10% of new cases were spread by people who showed no signs of being sick. The agency says the study reinforces the need for social distancing, staying at least two meters away from other people.  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, himself in isolation after testing positive for the coronavirus, said in a video message that Britain would be “massively increasing testing” as the key to ultimately defeating the virus.Belgium has a large number of cases relative to its size, reporting Thursday it confirmed more than 15,000 cases thus far with a surge past 1,000 deaths.  With a population of 11.4 million people, Belgium sits in or near the top 10 worldwide for both figures.A police officer warns people to stay home as a precaution against the spread of the new coronavirus, in the historic center of Mexico City, April 1, 2020.In Mexico, the country’s foreign ministry urged Mexicans residing in other countries – particularly the United States – not to travel home to visit family right now due to the risk of importing cases. Israel’s health ministry announced Thursday that its leader, Yaakov Litzman, has tested positive for coronavirus and is in isolation.Greek officials said 119 people aboard a passenger ship have been confirmed as positive for the coronavirus.The ferry, with 380 people on board from several countries, has been anchored outside Greece’s main port of Piraeus for several days. It was chartered to house workers who were to work on a shipbuilding project in Spain.In Paris, a portion of Europe’s largest food depot is being converted into a mortuary, because the number of bodies is accumulating too fast for funeral homes to cope.In Cyprus, a domestic abuse association said the forced seclusion brought on by the coronavirus resulted in a nearly 50% spike in family violence reports in March. The Association for the Prevention and Handling of Violence in the Family said it had nearly 2,100 calls to its helpline in March, but more than half of them went unanswered because the staff was overwhelmed. 
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Twitter said Thursday it has removed thousands of accounts in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Honduras, Indonesia and Serbia that allegedly took direction from governments or pushed pro-government content.”We removed 2,541 accounts in an Egypt-based network, known as the El Fagr network,” the San Francisco-based tech firm posted in a series of tweets.”The media group created inauthentic accounts to amplify messaging critical of Iran, Qatar and Turkey. Information we gained externally indicates it was taking direction from the Egyptian government.”El Fagr’s online managing editor Mina Salah vehemently pushed back.”Yes we are loyal to the state but we don’t receive instructions from anyone. We’re merely defending our country and its position is clear vis-a-vis Iran, Qatar and Turkey,” he told AFP.He said Twitter was effectively censoring the newspaper’s content and that journalists were banned from even creating new personal accounts.The platform also deleted 5,350 accounts from regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia for “amplifying content praising Saudi leadership, and critical of Qatar and Turkish activity in Yemen”.Rights groups have accused the conservative kingdom of spying on dissidents and critical online users on Twitter.The Saudi-linked accounts were run out of the kingdom and the United Arab Emirates, where Twitter’s Middle East headquarters is based, as well as Egypt.After an internal investigation, Twitter also removed clusters of accounts in Honduras allegedly propagating pro-government content, in Serbia promoting the “ruling party and its leader” and Indonesian accounts pushing information targeting the West Papuan independence movement.Earlier this week, it removed two of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s tweets questioning quarantine measures aimed at containing the novel coronavirus on the grounds that they violated the social network’s rules.
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Nigeria on Thursday said it had launched a “massive” joint offensive with troops from Chad and Niger against jihadists waging a decade-long insurgency in the region.    FILE – Chadian soldiers drive through the streets of Gambaru, Nigeria, Feb. 4, 2015.The announcement comes after Chad’s defense minister said Tuesday his country had deployed forces across its neighbors’ borders to battle insurgents who killed almost 100 Chadian soldiers last month.   Nigeria’s military said attacks by fighters from Boko Haram and a splinter group affiliated to the so-called Islamic State group had “necessitated the contiguous nations of the Lake Chad basin to jointly launch this massive onslaught.”   Details about the operation were sketchy. Nigeria has made repeated claims in the past to have rolled back the insurgents.   The 10-year revolt has left at least 36,000 dead and displaced around 1.8 million people in northeast Nigeria alone.   The conflict has spilt over into neighboring countries as the Islamists have established camps and launched attacks against military and civilian targets.   The countries around Lake Chad have set up a multinational force to counter the jihadists but it has so far failed to end the bloodshed.   The militants on March 23 killed at least 98 Chadian soldiers in an attack on an island army base in Lake Chad.    Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno declared the surrounding area a “war zone” as he pledged a “lightning response” to the killings.    Chad earlier withdrew some 1,200 troops from Nigeria in January after a months-long mission battling the jihadists.   
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The head of the World Health Organization’s office in Europe says figures show that more than 95% of people who have died of coronavirus on the continent have been aged over 60.   But Dr. Hans Kluge said age is not the only risk factor for severe disease, adding: “The very notion that COVID-19 only affects older people is factually wrong.”   In an online news conference Thursday in Copenhagen, Kluge said “young people are not invincible” — echoing similar recent comments from WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.   The U.N. health agency says 10% to 15% of people under 50 with the disease have moderate or severe infection.   “Severe cases of the disease have been seen in people in their teens or 20s with many requiring intensive care and some unfortunately passing away,” Kluge said.   He said recent statistics showed 30,098 people have been reported to have died in Europe, mostly in Italy, France and Spain.   “We know that over 95 percent of these deaths occurred in those older than 60 years,” he said, with more than half aged over 80.   Kluge said more than four in five of those people had at least one other chronic underlying conditions, like cardiovascular disease, hypertension or diabetes.   “On a positive note, there are reports of people over the age of 100 who were admitted to hospital for COVID-19 and have now — since — made a complete recovery,” he said. 
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Thousands of Peru reservists are joining security forces and police in enforcing the mandatory quarantine aimed at stopping the spread of the new coronavirus.President Martin Vizcarra is calling up more than 10,000 reservists to patrol neighborhoods as thousands of people continue to violate a national stay-at-home order and guidelines for social distancing.Reservists who refuse to report for duty face a fine of $1,200.Although President Vizcarra declared a state of emergency and ordered people to stay home through April 12, a military spokesman said Wednesday that thousands of people have been detained for violating the dusk-to-dawn stay-off-the-streets order.So far, Peru has 1,065 cases of coronavirus, and 30 people have died.
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Ellis Marsalis Jr., jazz pianist, teacher and patriarch of a New Orleans musical clan that includes famed performer sons Wynton and Branford, has died after battling pneumonia brought on by the new coronavirus, one of his sons said late Wednesday.He was 85.Ellis Marsalis III confirmed in an Associated Press phone interview that his father’s death was sparked by the virus causing the  global pandemic. “Pneumonia was the actual thing that caused his demise. But it was pneumonia brought on by COVID-19,” he said.He said he drove Sunday from Baltimore to be with his father as he was hospitalized in Louisiana, which has been hit hard by the outbreak.  Others in the family spent time with him, too.Four of the jazz patriarch’s six sons are musicians: Wynton, trumpeter, is America’s most prominent jazz spokesman as artistic director of jazz at New York’s Lincoln Center. Branford, saxophonist, led The Tonight Show band and toured with Sting. Delfeayo, a trombonist, is a prominent recording producer and performer. And Jason, a percussionist, has made a name for himself with his own band and as an accompanist. Ellis III, who decided music wasn’t his gig, is a photographer-poet in Baltimore.In a statement, Mayor LaToya Cantrell said of the man who’d continued to perform regularly in New Orleans until December: “Ellis Marsalis was a legend. He was the prototype of what we mean when we talk about New Orleans jazz. He was a teacher, a father, and an icon – and words aren’t sufficient to describe the art, the joy and the wonder he showed the world.”Branford Marsalis, Wynton Marsalis and Delfeayo Marsalis perform in the Ellis Marsalis Family Tribute in the Jazz Tent during the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in New Orleans, Louisiana on April 28, 2019.Because Marsalis opted to stay in New Orleans for most of his career, his reputation was limited until his sons became famous and brought him the spotlight, along with new recording contracts and headliner performances on television and tour.”He was like the coach of jazz. He put on the sweatshirt, blew the whistle and made these guys work,” said Nick Spitzer, host of public radio’s American Routes and a Tulane University anthropology professor.The Marsalis “family band” seldom played together when the boys were younger but in 2003 toured East in a spinoff of a family celebration that became a PBS special when the elder Marsalis retired from teaching at the University of New Orleans.Harry Connick Jr., one of Marsalis’ students at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, was a guest. He’s one of many now-famous jazz musicians who passed through Marsalis’ classrooms. Others include trumpeters Nicholas Payton and Terence Blanchard, saxophonists Donald Harrison and Victor Goines, and bassist Reginald Veal.Marsalis was born in New Orleans, son of the operator of a hotel where Marsalis met touring black musicians who couldn’t stay at the segregated downtown hotels where they performed. He played saxophone in high school; he also played piano by the time he went to Dillard University.Although New Orleans was steeped in traditional jazz, and rock ‘n’ roll was the new sound in the 1950s, Marsalis preferred bebop and modern jazz.Spitzer described Marsalis as a “modernist in a town of traditionalists.””His great love was jazz a la bebop – he was a lover of Thelonious Monk and the idea that bebop was a music of freedom. But when he had to feed his family, he played R&B and soul and rock ‘n’ roll on Bourbon Street,” Spitzer said.The musician’s college quartet included drummer Ed Blackwell, clarinetist Alvin Batiste and saxophonist Harold Battiste playing modern.U.S. saxophonist Branford Marsalis performs with his father, Ellis Marsalis, at the 51st Jazzaldia Jazz Festival in San Sebastian, northern Spain, July 22, 2016.Ornette Coleman was in town at the time. In 1956, when Coleman headed to California, Marsalis and the others went along, but after a few months Marsalis returned home. He told the New Orleans Times-Picayune years later, when he and Coleman were old men, that he never figured out what a pianist could do behind the free form of Coleman’s jazz.Back in New Orleans, Marsalis joined the Marine Corps and was assigned to accompany soloists on the service’s weekly TV programs on CBS in New York. There, he said, he learned to handle all kinds of music styles.Returning home, he worked at the Playboy Club and ventured into running his own club, which went bust. In 1967 trumpeter Al Hirt hired him. When not on Bourbon Street, Hirt’s band appeared on national TV – headline shows on The Tonight Show and The Ed Sullivan Show, among others.Marsalis got into education about the same time, teaching improvisation at Xavier University in New Orleans. In the mid-1970s, he joined the faculty at the New Orleans magnet high school and influenced a new generation of jazz musicians.When asked how he could teach something as free-wheeling as jazz improvisation, Marsalis once said, “We don’t teach jazz, we teach students.”Jazz musician Ellis Marsalis (second from left) makes a curtain call with former student Harry Connick Jr. (left) and sons, Wynton, Delfeayo and Branford at Lakefront Arena in New Orleans on August 4, 2001.In 1986 he moved to Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. In 1989, the University of New Orleans lured him back to set up a jazz-studies program.Marsalis retired from UNO in 2001 but continued performing, particularly at Snug Harbor, a small club that anchored the city’s contemporary jazz scene – frequently backing young promising musicians.His melodic style, with running improvisations in the right hand, has been described variously as romantic, contemporary, or simply “Louisiana jazz.” He’s always on acoustic piano, never electric, and even in interpreting old standards there’s a clear link to the driving bebop chords and rhythms of his early years.He founded a record company, ELM, but his recording was limited until his sons became famous. After that he joined them and others on mainstream labels and headlined his own releases, many full of his own compositions.He often played at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. For more than three decades he played two 75-minute sets every Friday night at Snug Harbor until he decided it was exhausting. Even then, he still performed on occasion as a special guest.On Wednesday night, Ellis III recalled how his father taught him the meaning of integrity before he even knew the word.He and Delfeayo, neither of them yet 10, had gone to hear their father play at a club. Only one man – sleeping and drunk – was in the audience for the second set. The boys asked why they couldn’t leave.”He looked at us and said, “I can’t leave. I have a gig.’ While he’s playing, he said, ‘A gig is a deal. I’m paid to play this set. I’m going to play this set. It doesn’t matter that nobody’s here.”Marsalis’ wife, Dolores, died in 2017. He is survived by his sons Branford, Wynton, Ellis III, Delfeayo, Mboya and Jason.
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NASA may have just found the next man to walk on the moon — or the first woman to land on Mars — or someone who can float above the Earth and make repairs to the International Space Station.Wednesday was the deadline for submitting an application to join the next class of astronauts.NASA says more than 12,000 people applied — the largest number in three years — proving that those who believe Americans have lost interest in space are wrong.“We’ve entered a bold new era of space exploration with the Artemis program, and we are thrilled to see so many incredible Americans apply to join us,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said Wednesday. “The next class of Artemis Generation astronauts will help us explore more of the moon than ever before and lead us to the red planet.”The Northrop Grumman Antares rocket, with Cygnus resupply spacecraft onboard, launches from Pad-0A at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Virginia, Feb. 15, 2020.Artemis is the name NASA has given to its next big era in space exploration — and among the 12,000 would-be astronauts could be a name that becomes as legendary as John Glenn, the pioneering Gemini program, Neil Armstrong and Apollo.NASA received applications from every one of the 50 states and four U.S. territories. But the odds of being picked to fly into space are remote.Candidates must have a master’s degree in science, technology, math or engineering.NASA’s Astronaut Selection Board will assess each applicant’s qualifications and invite those who pass to the Johnson Space Center in Houston for interviews and medical tests before making a final selection.The board must pare down the 12,000 hopefuls to around 12.It’s an exclusive club. Only 350 men and women have been chosen for astronaut training since the 1960s. NASA currently has 48 astronauts in the pool.FILE — A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, carrying the U.S. Air Force’s Space Test Program-2 mission, lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., June 25, 2019.“We’re able to build such a strong astronaut corps at NASA because we have such a strong pool of applicants to choose from,” selection board manager Anne Roemer said. “It’s always amazing to see the diversity of education, experience and skills that are represented in our applicants. We are excited to start reviewing astronaut applications to identify the next class of astronaut candidates.”So how does one person who dreams of space stand out among 12,000 other dreamers?Astronaut Kayla Barron, who was part of the NASA class of 2017, said if you’re lucky enough to qualify as a finalist, there is no reason to feel intimidated or that you can’t be yourself.“When I go into that interview room and sit at the end of this long table with all of these astronauts and senior NASA officials … what are they looking for? What do they want from me? For some reason the last thing I thought before I walked [in] the door was,  ‘Don’t make any jokes,’ ” she recalled with a laugh. “Because I was so worried I was going to say something sarcastic or whatever.”This NASA image obtained March 24, 2020, shows the city lights at the intersection of Europe and Asia as they sparkle as the International Space Station orbited 262 miles above.But when one of the panel members made a joke seemingly at Barron’s expense, she said, “I dished it right back at him. And there was this moment of silence and I was like, ‘Oh, no, that was the one I wasn’t supposed to do.’ But then [astronaut] Kjell Lindgren started laughing … everyone started laughing and it just relaxed me … just be yourself, be honest about who you are. I think that goes a long way.”When the astronauts are chosen, they will go through about two years of training in such skills as spacewalking and robotics. They must also show people skills, including leadership and teamwork — two qualities that are essential for living on the International Space Station, taking a trip to the moon or enduring a long journey to Mars.NASA expects to introduce the new astronaut candidates in the summer of 2021 with plans for a trip to the moon in 2024 and a mission to Mars in the next decade.
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A national stay-at-home directive was rejected by U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday, but he said he might order airlines to stop flying between coronavirus hot spots.”It’s very tough. You have them going from hot spot to hot spot,” said the president at a briefing for reporters at the White House. ”We are looking at it. Once you do that, you really are clamping down industry that is desperately in need.”Trump said at one point during the news conference, “We do not give in to fear.”The U.S. government is projecting that even if social distancing guidelines in effect are strictly adhered to in the weeks ahead, up to nearly a quarter of a million people in the country could die of COVID-19 infections.The total number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States surged past 213,000 Wednesday, with deaths exceeding 4,700.  More than 1,100 of the fatalities were recorded in New York City.FILE – New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks during a news conference against a backdrop of medical supplies at the Jacob Javits Center that will house a temporary hospital in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, March 24, 2020, in New York.The governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, said 391 people had died of the virus in the state since the previous day. He noted a projection by the Gates Foundation that the death toll would reach 16,000 in New York and 93,000 nationwide.Cuomo expressed frustration that some people in New York City continue to ignore social distancing guidelines, and he said he wanted the city’s playgrounds shut down.“How reckless and irresponsible and selfish for people not to do it on their own,” the governor said. “I mean, what else do you have to know? What else do you have to hear? Who else has to die for you to understand you have a responsibility in this?”Florida, home to 21 million people, has become one of the latest states to be put under a stay-at-home order through the rest of April by its governor.Some COVID-19 hot spots in other states, such as Louisiana, another Southern state, “are really exploding,” Trump told reporters Wednesday.Asked by VOA whether the coronavirus task force headed by Vice President Mike Pence was halting aid shipments of personal protective equipment bound for foreign countries to ensure that the U.S. was not releasing critically needed items at home, Trump said there was “no truth whatsoever” to that.“Why would I do that?” he remarked in reply.FILE – A man wears personal protective equipment (PPE) as he walks on First Avenue, during the coronavirus disease outbreak, in New York City, March 31, 2020.During the briefing, Trump did confirm news reports that the national strategic stockpile of such equipment was nearly depleted.The briefing began with the president announcing an enhanced effort to halt drug smuggling.The U.S. military is beginning enhanced counternarcotics operations in the east Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, which will include the deployment of more U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships and aircraft.There is a “growing threat” that cartels and criminals will try to take advantage of the pandemic, the president said. “We must not let that happen.”“Corrupt actors, like the illegitimate Maduro regime in Venezuela, rely on the profits derived from the sale of narcotics to maintain their oppressive hold on power,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper said. “The Venezuelan people continue to suffer tremendously due to Maduro’s criminal control over the country.”“We have a job and we will continue to do it: defend the United States of America,” Esper vowed.FILE – This U.S. Navy handout photo shows the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt as it transits the Pacific Ocean while conducting a tailored ship’s training availability off the coast of Southern California, April 30, 2017.The military was facing its own particular battle against the novel coronavirus. The Navy was struggling to quarantine crew members of an aircraft carrier, docked at the Western Pacific island territory of Guam.Nearly 100 of the 3,000 sailors on the USS Theodore Roosevelt have tested positive for the coronavirus.Several thousand sailors will leave the ship, while others will remain on board in order to continue to protect the Nimitz-class nuclear-powered carrier and run its critical systems, according to Navy officials.  Trump acknowledged Wednesday that he recently began taking the virus much more seriously after earlier comparing it to normal seasonal influenza.“It’s so contagious. Nobody’s ever seen anything like this,” he responded when asked about his change of stance.Outside expertiseThree U.S. senators have sent a letter to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, calling on the private, nonprofit institutions to serve as a trusted authority outside the executive branch for coronavirus information.
“Conflicting messages from the Trump administration have caused confusion and chaos in the national response,” said Democrats Edward Markey and Elizabeth Warren, joined by independent Bernie Sanders, in a statement.“Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health are capable and well-qualified to help address many of these questions, we have seen the Trump administration’s willingness to stifle the ability of these agencies to communicate openly with the public,” their letter said. “The public needs a trusted authority outside of the executive branch.”VOA’s Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.  
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Social distancing to slow the spread of COVID-19 is changing the tactics for political campaigns, especially for candidates running for president of the United States. VOA’s Steve Redisch examines the changing strategies and endangered traditions.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin called on Wednesday for global oil producers and consumers to address “challenging” oil markets, while U.S. President Donald Trump complained that oil cheaper “than water” was hurting the industry.Oil prices fell nearly 70% from January highs as coronavirus lockdowns hammered demand and as Saudi Arabia and Russia have flooded the market in a race for market share after a deal they engineered on supply curbs broke down.Oil and natural gas sales are a key revenue source for Russian coffers, while low prices are also hurting shale oil producers in the United States.  Speaking at a government meeting, set up via a video link as a precaution against the coronavirus, Putin said that both oil producers and consumers should find a solution that would improve the “challenging” situation of global oil markets.He also said if investments into the oil sector fell, oil prices would be sure to spike, something he said “no one needs.””That’s why we, together with the main producers and consumers, should work out such decisions, which would mitigate the situation on the market on the whole,” Putin said, according to the readout of the meeting.FILE – U.S. Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette gestures during an interview at the LNG terminal of the deepwater port of Sines after visiting the port, in Sines, southern Portugal, Feb. 12, 2020.Flurry of diplomacyOn Tuesday, U.S. Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette spoke with his Russian counterpart, Alexander Novak, about the price slump, and they agreed to hold future discussions involving other major world oil producers and consumers.The call occurred a day after Trump and Putin agreed in a phone conversation to have their top energy officials discuss global oil market turmoil.Putin said that the United States was also worried about the state of the oil market as shale oil producers need a price around $40 per barrel to turn a profit.”That’s why this is also a hard challenge for the American economy,” he said.Trump plans to meet with oil executives on Friday to discuss potential aid to the industry, including possible tariffs on oil imports from Saudi Arabia, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing unidentified sources.The meeting is to take place at the White House and will include Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Occidental Petroleum Corp., the newspaper said in a report on Wednesday.Crude oil benchmarks ended a volatile quarter with their biggest losses in history. On Wednesday, oil slid toward $25 a barrel, after touching its lowest level in 18 years.”There is so much oil and in some cases it’s probably less valuable than water. At some points of the world the water is much more valuable. So we’ve never seen anything like it,” Trump said.Pact’s collapseThe discussions between Washington and Moscow mark a new twist in oil diplomacy since the collapse this month of a deal between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other producers, including Russia, on cutting production.The failure to agree on an extension to a pact that had propped up the market since 2016 led to the scrapping of all restrictions and a dash for market share.FILE – Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak is pictured at EU Commission headquarters in Brussels, Oct. 29, 2014.Brouillette and Novak “had a productive discussion on the current volatility in global oil markets,” Energy Department spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes said.”Secretary Brouillette and Minister Novak discussed energy market developments and agreed to continue dialogue among major energy producers and consumers, including through the G-20, to address this unprecedented period of disruption in the world economy,” she said.The Russian Energy Ministry said on Wednesday the ministers noted that the fall in the demand and oversupply created risks for stable supplies to the markets.The United States has grown in recent years into the world’s largest oil and gas producer, thanks to a technology-driven shale drilling boom. But the current price of oil is below the production cost of many American drillers, threatening the highly leveraged U.S. shale industry.’Crazy’ productionTrump on Monday said Saudi Arabia and Russia “both went crazy” with their production after the supply deal failed. “I never thought I’d be saying that maybe we have to have an oil [price] increase, because we do,” he said.The Trump administration is trying to persuade Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, to cut crude output. It will soon send a special energy envoy, Victoria Coates, to the kingdom.The Kremlin said on Wednesday that Russia and Saudi Arabia were not holding talks regarding the oil market at the moment and that Putin had no immediate plans to have a phone call with Saudi leadership.But the Kremlin added that such talks could be set up quickly if necessary. 
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Most of the world calls this year’s deadly respiratory disease outbreak COVID-19 and attributes it to a novel coronavirus. When U.S. President Donald Trump described the virus last month as “Chinese” because of its origin, China fumed and Trump eventually dropped it.   All along, Taiwanese officials, media and the public have been using the term “Wuhan pneumonia” in Mandarin Chinese, a reference to the central Chinese city where the disease was first reported in December. Local media sometimes call it “China Wuhan pneumonia.”   The label will eventually create a new fissure in already strained relations between Taiwan and China, analysts say. “Relations between the two sides have become even worse since Covid-19,” said Chao Chien-min, dean of social sciences at Chinese Culture University in Taipei. “If you keep using a location-based name, it’s unfriendly toward others.” Taiwanese came up with the term “Wuhan pneumonia” because they were talking about it in December and needed a descriptor before the World Health Organization gave it an official name in mid-February. But Taiwan and China are at odds politically. Use of the earlier term instead of the formal WHO one pivots Taiwanese people’s attention back to where Covid-19 was discovered and stands to sour their impression of China.Trump dropped the “Chinese virus” in late March and said it was important to avoid blaming Asian Americans for the outbreak.   In Taiwan, the government’s Central Epidemic Command Center uses the term “Wuhan pneumonia” on its daily news releases in parentheses after the English word Covid-19 and the foreign ministry uses the term “Wuhan pneumonia” only in some of its statements. Taiwan’s government-funded Central News Agency calls the disease “Wuhan pneumonia” in its many news flashes every day about the disease outbreak in other parts of the world. On the streets, people speak of the disease almost always as “Wuhan pneumonia.” People wear face masks to protect against the spread of the new coronavirus as they visit the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei, Taiwan, Thursday, Feb. 27, 2020.The World Health Organization recommends in its 2015 document “Best Practices for the Naming of New Human Infectious Diseases” against mentioning cities, countries, regions or continents. Spanish flu and Japanese encephalitis are on its “examples to be avoided” list.   Taiwanese mobilized against the virus before most of the world because they fought off the severe acute respiratory syndrome 17 years ago. That disease too came from China. The government in Taipei began boarding flights from Wuhan three months ago before other parts of the world caught on. Officials do contact tracing of known cases and strictly enforce quarantines. Taiwan has logged a total 329 cases including recovered patients.   A disease’s name targets no one, Health and Welfare Minister Chen Shi-chung told a news conference Monday. “No matter what name, whether an academic name or a colloquial term, they’re fluid ways of talking and convey no discriminatory meaning,” he said. China claims sovereignty over Taiwan despite the island’s self-rule of more than seven decades. Most Taiwanese oppose Beijing’s goal of making Taiwan fall under its flag, government opinion surveys showed last year. “If people in Taiwan call it (Wuhan pneumonia), I don’t think Beijing will do very much about it, but if the officials in Taiwan government call it, Beijing may react,” said Lin Chong-pin, a retired strategic studies professor in Taiwan. That reaction would reduce any odds of dialogue between the two governments and raise distrust instead, scholars in Taiwan say. China may send more military aircraft near Taiwan’s airspace too, Chao said. Today’s government in Taiwan already irks Beijing for declining to hold dialogue on the Communist leadership’s condition that both sides belong to China. Chinese officials have not called out Taiwan specifically so far for its label of Covid-19, a government media liaison said Wednesday. Resentment will build in Beijing if the name Wuhan keeps getting used, said Alex Chiang, associate professor of international politics at National Chengchi University in Taipei.   “Unless we stop using the term ‘Wuhan virus’, I don’t think the people in the mainland or the government in the mainland will be friendly to Taiwan,” Chiang said. “They look at it as discriminating, demonizing people or the government of mainland China.” 
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Facing intense surges in the need for hospital ICU beds, European nations are on a building and hiring spree, throwing together makeshift hospitals and shipping coronavirus patients out of overwhelmed cities via high-speed trains and military jets. The key question is whether they will be able to find enough healthy medical staff to make it all work.Even as the virus slowed its growth in overwhelmed Italy and in China, where it first emerged, hospitals in Spain and France reached their breaking points and the U.S. and Britain  braced for incoming waves of desperately ill people.
“It feels like we are in a third world country. We don’t have enough masks, enough protective equipment, and by the end of the week we might be in need of more medication too,” said Paris emergency worker Christophe Prudhomme.
In a remarkable turnaround, rich economies where virus cases have exploded are welcoming help from the less wealthy. Russia sent medical equipment and masks to the U.S. on Wednesday. Cuba sent doctors to France. Turkey sent a planeload of masks, hazmat suits, goggles and disinfectants to Italy and Spain.London is just days from unveiling a 4,000-bed temporary hospital built in a massive convention center to take non-critical patients so British hospitals can free up space and keep ahead of expected virus demand. Still, there are concerns about finding thousands of medical workers to run it.Spain has already boosted its hospital beds by 20%. Dozens of hotels across Spain have been turned into recovery rooms, and authorities are building field hospitals in sports centers, libraries and exhibition halls.Europe’s greatest need at the moment, however, is intensive care units, which are essential in a pandemic in which tens of thousands of patients quickly descend into acute respiratory distress. Those ICU units are much harder to cobble together quickly than standard hospital beds.Milan opened an intensive care field hospital Tuesday at the city fairgrounds for 200 patients, complete with a pharmacy and radiology wards. It expects to eventually employ some 900 staff. The move came after the health situation turned extreme in Italy’s Lombardy region, where bodies overflowed in morgues, caskets piled up in churches and doctors were forced to decide in some cases which desperately ill patient would get a breathing machine.”We aren’t happy to have done this,” fairgrounds foundation head Enrico Pazzali said. “It something I never would have wanted to do.”The pressure is easing on hard-hit Italian cities like Bergamo and Brescia as the rate of new infections in Italy has slowed and hospitals have boosted ICU capacity. Still, many people are dying at home or in nursing homes because hospitals are saturated and they could not get access to ICU breathing machines.  With over 12,400 dead so far, Italy has the most coronavirus deaths of any nation in the world.
Italy, Britain and France are among countries that have called in medical students, retired doctors and even airplane attendants with first aid training to help, although all need re-training.
The medical staffing shortage has been exacerbated by the high number of infected medical personnel. In Italy alone, nearly 10,000 medical workers have been infected and more than 60 doctors have died.Dr. Silvio Brusaferro, the head of Italy’s institutes of health, said three weeks into a nationwide lockdown, the country is seeing the rate of new infections level off.  “(But) arriving at the plateau doesn’t mean we have conquered the peak and we’re done,” he warned. “It means now we should start to see the decline if we continue to place maximum attention on what we do every day.”In neighboring France, nearly 500 people died Tuesday and Paris hospitals are overflowing.
“We had an extremely difficult night, we are at the end of our hospitalization capacity,” Aurélien Rousseau, director of the Paris regional health agency, said Wednesday on France-Info radio.The Paris region more than doubled its ICU capacity over the past week – but the beds are already full. So Paris was sending some critically ill patients to less-saturated regions on specially fitted high-speed trains Wednesday and Thursday. Others have been moved by military plane, helicopter or warship.  One reason Germany is in better shape  than all other European countries is its high proportion of ICU beds, at 33.9 per 100,000 people, compared to 8.6 in Italy.For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. But for others, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause severe symptoms like pneumonia and can lead to death.As U.S. health authorities warned the number of dead could reach up to 240,000 even with social distancing measures in place, the New York region also rushed to set up extra hospital capacity.A 1,000-bed emergency hospital set up at the mammoth Javits Convention Center began taking non-coronavirus patients Tuesday to help relieve the city’s overwhelmed health system. A Navy hospital ship with 1,000 beds was expected to accept patients soon, and the indoor tennis center that hosts the U.S. Open tournament is being turned into a hospital.”I want every American to be prepared for the hard days that lie ahead,” President Donald Trump said at a Tuesday briefing, as he extended social distancing guidelines until April 30. “We’re going to go through a very tough two weeks.”The U.S. recorded a big daily jump of 26,000 new cases, bringing its total infections to more than 189,000, the highest in the world. The U.S. death toll leapt to over 4,000, and refrigerated morgue trucks were parked on New York streets to collect the dead.Worldwide, more than 860,000 people have been infected and over 42,000 have died, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University. Italy and Spain accounted for half of all the deaths. China, where it began late latest year, on Wednesday reported just 36 new COVID-19 cases.Some have chosen to ignore social distancing guidelines. In Louisiana, buses and cars filled a church parking lot Tuesday evening as worshippers flocked to hear a pastor who is facing charges for holding services despite a ban on gatherings.A few protesters also showed up at the Life Tabernacle Church, including one with a sign that read: “God don’t like stupid.”  Two ships carrying passengers and crew from an ill-fated South American cruise are urging Florida officials to let them dock. Two people aboard with the virus have died, and nine have tested positive. Trump said, for humanitarian reasons, Florida should do so.
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The Afghan Taliban have launched a public awareness campaign about the new coronavirus in the areas under their control in the eastern province of Nangarhar. But locals want them to do more.
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U.S. officials say Americans should be prepared for a potential 100,000 to 240,000 deaths from the novel coronavirus outbreak, while stressing the need to keep social distancing measures in place to give the best chance of lessening the toll.Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he hopes the number will not go that high, but that realistically people should be ready.“People are suffering. People are dying,” he said. “It’s inconvenient from a societal standpoint, from an economic standpoint to go through this. But this is going to be the answer to our problems. So, let’s all pull together and make sure, as we look forward to the next 30 days, we do it with all the intensity and force that we can.”Countries all over the world have locked down cities, regions and even their entire nations to try to stop the virus from spreading.One of the latest to put in place a two-week ban on all but essential activities is Vietnam, which started Wednesday.Last week, New Zealand shut down restaurants, bars, offices and schools. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Wednesday it is too early to tell to what extent those measures have helped so far and advocated more testing to actively track down infections and stop new transmissions.Her government reported 61 new cases to push New Zealand’s total to 708Vietnam has ordered a national lockdown, as well as moved to decrease public transit, Ho Chi Minh, March 31, 2020.”If virus is in the community in this way… then worst thing we can do is to relax and be complacent, and allow the silent spread,” Ardern said.In South Korea, where mass testing has helped level off local transmission rates, official reported 101 new cases Wednesday. The country also started enforcing new 14-day quarantines for anyone entering the country.The risks of imported cases undermining successes in controlling community spread of COVID-19 have prompted similar measures in China, which for several months was by far the world leader in coronavirus cases but now has become a sign for hope with gradual lifting of lockdown restrictions.The United States, Italy and Spain remain the global hotspots with the most cases and deaths.German health officials said Wednesday there were about 5,500 new cases there, putting the country on track to soon become the next to surpass China.Meanwhile, in keeping with a plea from U.N. chief Antonio Guterres for parties in the world’s conflicts to take this opportunity to halt their fighting, the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday urged Afghanistan’s warring sides to implement a cease-fire.The Council “called on the political leadership of Afghanistan to put aside their differences and put the interest of the country first.”
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