Wednesday, July 22, 2020
Portland protests: US federal agents 'will not retreat', Chad Wolf says
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53489995
Speaking during a press conference on Tuesday, Mr Wolf said federal
law enforcement officers in Portland were only targeting and arresting
demonstrators who had been identified as being involved in "criminal
activity".
U.S. Homeland Security confirms three units sent paramilitary officers to Portland
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-race-protests-agents/us-homeland-security-confirms-three-units-sent-paramilitary-officers-to-portland-idUSKCN24M2RL
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border
Protection arm confirmed on Tuesday it has deployed officers from three
paramilitary-style units to join a federal crackdown on protests against
police violence in Portland, Oregon.
Trump blasts Beijing in public, but privately Trump org imports tons of Chinese goods
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/21/politics/trump-org-china-imports/index.html
President Donald Trump has cast himself as tough on China
and promised that his trade negotiations with Beijing would
economically benefit everyday Americans, even as Trump-owned properties
have continued to contribute to the trade deficit with the country he
rails about.
Since
September of last year, Trump properties in the US have imported more
than eight tons of goods from China, CNN has learned by reviewing US
customs data compiled by ImportGenius, which tracks information
companies are legally bound to provide to US customs when they import
goods to the US. The imports have arrived to decorate his properties
while the President has sought to dress down China.
More than six tons of tables were delivered to Trump International Hotel in New York last fall. On the same day, Trump tweeted, "We are doing very well in our negotiations with China."
Tuesday, July 21, 2020
Coronavirus vaccine: When will we have one?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51665497
When will we have a coronavirus vaccine?
A
vaccine would normally take years, if not decades, to develop.
Researchers hope to achieve the same amount of work in only a few
months.
Most experts think a vaccine is likely to become widely
available by mid-2021, about 12-18 months after the new virus, known
officially as Sars-CoV-2, first emerged.
That would be a huge scientific feat and there are no guarantees it will work.
Four
coronaviruses already circulate in human beings. They cause common cold
symptoms and we don't have vaccines for any of them.
John Bolton says there's 'disagreement' between Israel and US on sovereignty plan
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/283919
In an interview with Galei Tzahal’s Efi Triger which was
released Tuesday morning, Bolton said that Kushner opposes unilateral
actions by Israel, including the application of sovereignty in parts of
Judea and Samaria.
“I think there’s obviously a disagreement. Jared is still trying to
sustain his peace plan and he’s worried about unilateral action or
American recognition of unilateral action. Personally, I would go ahead
and do it.”
Bolton added that he will not be backing either Trump or Joe Biden in
the upcoming presidential election, and said that the election season
is an “optimal time” for Israel to move forward with its “own national
security interest”.
“I’m not advocating the election of Joe Biden. For me, in November,
I’m going to write-in the name of a third person. It’s not a happy
election for me.”
“I think the next few months are an optimal time for Israel to act in its own national security interests.”
Federal agents, local streets: A ‘red flag’ in Oregon
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) —
Federal law enforcement officers’ actions at protests in Oregon’s
largest city, done without local authorities’ consent, are raising the
prospect of a constitutional crisis — one that could escalate as weeks
of demonstrations find renewed focus in clashes with camouflaged,
unidentified agents outside Portland’s U.S. courthouse.
Trump says the US has 'the best mortality rate' in the world. That's not true
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/20/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus-mortality-rate-intl/index.html
During a meandering and occasionally hostile interview with Fox News
on Sunday, President Donald Trump made a very bold claim: that the
United States has the lowest mortality rate from Covid-19 anywhere in
the world.
"I heard
we have one of the lowest, maybe the lowest, mortality rate anywhere in
the world," Trump told "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace. "Do you
have the numbers please? I heard we had the best mortality rate," he
added to White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who was
off-camera.
When McEnany
returned with a piece of paper, Trump turned on Wallace. "Number one low
mortality rate," he said, attacking Wallace for reporting "fake news"
in the process. "You said we had the worst mortality rate in the world,
and we have the best."
But the President's claim is not true. And it's not even close.
The US in fact has one of the highest death rates
from the coronavirus of any country, and is worse than several
badly-hit countries like Brazil, Mexico and Russia, according to data
collected by Johns Hopkins University
According to Wallace, Trump also waved a graph showing a slightly different metric to tout his claim -- the case-fatality rate.
This
is simply a country's number of confirmed deaths divided by its number
of confirmed cases. It's a more problematic measure because it depends
heavily on how much testing a country is or is not doing. A country that
has consistently tested its general population will have a very low
case-fatality rate, while a country that tests only sick people in
hospitals will have a very high one.
Nonetheless,
the US still ranks in the top 60 countries worldwide by this measure,
according to JHU, around the same as Brazil and Peru and worse than
dozens of other nations.
In other words, there is no measure by which Trump's claim that the US has "the best" mortality rate is true.
I took a closer look at the cognitive test Trump claims to have aced
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/21/donald-trump-cognitive-test-closer-look
The test is called the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), and was
created by the neurologist Dr Ziad Nasreddine in 1996. Talking to
MarketWatch on Monday, Nasreddine stressed that the test “is supposed to
be easy for someone who has no cognitive impairment”, stressing that
“this is not an IQ test or the level of how a person is extremely
skilled or not. The test is supposed to help physicians detect early
signs of Alzheimer’s.”
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