TOP TECH NEWS

Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Food prices surge since lockdown: IGIDR study

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Australia asks China to explain 'economic coercion' threat in coronavirus row

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Erdogan defends Turkey religious chief's anti-gay sermon

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday defended a top religious official who claimed homosexuality caused diseases, corrupted people and was condemned in Islamic teaching. Ali Erbas, head of a state-funded agency called the Diyanet, which runs mosques and appoints imams, also claimed during his weekly sermon that homosexuality caused HIV. The Ankara bar association of lawyers accused him of inciting hatred against gay people while ignoring child abuse and misogyny.

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Supreme Court Dismisses NYC Gun Rights Case; Conservative Justices Dissent

The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a case brought by three New York City handgun owners challenging a city regulation that prohibited gun owners from transporting their firearms outside the city.The court agreed to hear the case in December, but the city then amended the regulation to allow gun owners to bring firearms to other locations. The Supreme Court ruled 5-3 in an unsigned opinion that the case was moot because the city had amended its original regulation.Conservative justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch wrote in their dissent that the case should not have been dismissed."By incorrectly dismissing this case as moot, the Court permits our docket to be manipulated in a way that should not be countenanced," the justices wrote. Lawyers for the plaintiffs had argued that the case should not be dismissed because the city changed its regulation due to fears that the Supreme Court would use the case to restrict broader gun control measures.Gun rights advocates had initially hoped the court's conservative majority would tip the case in their favor."I believe it will change the way the Second Amendment is applied to everyone who owns a gun in the country," Romolo Colantone, a resident of Staten Island and one of the plaintiffs in the case, said in December 2019.

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Hillary Clinton endorses Joe Biden: 'Think of what it would mean if we had a real president'

Hillary Clinton joined former Vice President Joe Biden for a virtual town hall event on Tuesday to officially offer her endorsement.The former secretary of state and Democratic candidate for president was Biden's guest during a live stream on Tuesday focused on the coronavirus pandemic and its effect on women, and Biden introduced Clinton as the "woman who should be president of the United States right now.""Think of what it would mean if we had a real president, not just somebody who plays one on TV, but somebody who gets up every morning worried about the people that he's responsible for leading during this crisis," Clinton said after officially endorsing Biden.Biden, Clinton went on to say, "has been preparing for this moment his entire life," describing her experiences working with him during the Obama administration."I've been not only a colleague of Joe Biden's, I've been a friend, and I can tell you that I wish he were president right now, but I can't wait until he is, if all of us do our part to support the kind of person that we want back in the White House," Clinton said.This is the latest in a series of Democratic endorsements Biden has received since becoming the party's presumptive nominee including from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). As news of the Clinton endorsement broke, President Trump's 2020 campaign manager said in a statement, "There is no greater concentration of Democrat establishment than Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton together. President Trump beat her once and now he'll beat her chosen candidate."More stories from theweek.com Scientists are perplexed by the low rate of coronavirus hospitalizations among smokers. Nicotine may hold the answer. Movies that debut on streaming and not in theaters can be eligible for the Oscars next year How Democrats blew up MeToo

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Trump news: President denies responsibility for people drinking bleach to fight coronavirus as tweetstorm branded ‘indecent and obscene’

As the number of US coronavirus cases climbs above 1 million and the nation's death toll surpasses deaths from the Vietnam War, Donald Trump claims the country is "very close" to testing 5 million people daily, as he continues to pressure states and local governments to begin "reopening" as the economy flounders.The president also suggested during a briefing on Tuesday that states with financial deficits could be forced to give undocumented people in custody over to federal immigration authorities if they want financial relief in the wake of the public health crisis.

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Whitmer Says She and Biden Are Cut From ‘Similar Cloth’

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The US is 'slightly' past its first peak, but expert says the pandemic is far from over

Dr. Tom Inglesby said some states are experiencing a decline in cases, while half of the country is still seeing a rise in daily numbers.

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The EU rewrote a report detailing China's coronavirus 'disinformation' campaign following pressure from Beijing

References to a Chinese campaign of "global disinformation" about the coronavirus were removed before publication.

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Australia rejects Chinese 'economic coercion' threat amid planned coronavirus probe

Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne has cautioned China against attempts at "economic coercion" as Australia pushes for an investigation into the coronavirus pandemic that China opposes. Chinese ambassador to Australia, Cheng Jingye, said in a newspaper interview on Monday the "Chinese public" could avoid Australian products and universities. Australia last week called for all members of the World Health Organization (WHO) to support an independent review into the origins and spread of the coronavirus, and is lobbying world leaders.

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North Korea's Kim 'alive and well': Seoul

Conjecture over Kim has grown since his conspicuous no-show at April 15 celebrations for the birthday of his grandfather Kim Il Sung, the North's founder -- the most important day in the country's political calendar. "Our government position is firm," said Moon's special adviser on national security Moon Chung-in, in an interview with CNN on Sunday. "Kim Jong Un is alive and well."

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'Naked concerns': Doctors strip down to protest lack of protective equipment

In one of the photos a doctor holds up a sign which reads in German, “I learned to sew wounds. Why do I now need to know how to sew masks?”

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US was warned of threat from anti-vaxxers in event of pandemic

FBI-connected researchers suggested biggest threat in controlling outbreak was from ‘those who categorically reject vaccination’America’s “anti-vaxxer movement” would pose a threat to national security in the event of a “pandemic with a novel organism”, an FBI-connected non-profit research group warned last year, just months before the global coronavirus pandemic began.In a research paper put out by the little-known in-house journal of InfraGard – a national security group affiliated with the FBI – experts warned the US anti-vaccine movement would also be connected with “social media misinformation and propaganda campaigns” orchestrated by the Russian government.Since the virus hit America, anti-vaccination activists and some sympathetic legislators around the country have led or participated in protests against stay-at-home orders designed to slow the spread of the deadly virus. More than 50,000 people have died in the US.On its website, InfraGard says it is an “FBI-affiliated nonprofit organization dedicated to strengthening national security” with a mission to protect “United States critical infrastructure”. It says it consists of local chapters and that “an FBI special agent from each field office is assigned to serve as a private sector coordinator”.The paper, jointly written by a security consultant and a senior doctor in New York State’s largest hospital network, warned: “The biggest threat in controlling an outbreak comes from those who categorically reject vaccination.”The paper, entitled The Anti-Vaxxers Movement and National Security, was co-written by Dr Mark Jarrett, the chief quality officer, senior vice-president and associate chief medical officer at Northwell Health; and Christine Sublett, a health industry-focused cybersecurity consultant.It lays out a pandemic scenario remarkably similar to the one now afflicting the US along with most of the world, including that “social distancing and isolation have impacts that include loss of manufactured goods, reduced food supply, and other disruptions to the supply chain”.The article then turns to the anti-vaccine movement, arguing that sufficient resistance to vaccination would hobble the chances of reaching herd immunity to a highly infectious pathogen.The paper also says that such movements have received a boost in recent years due to their “alignment with other conspiracy movements including the far right … and social media misinformation and propaganda campaigns by many foreign and domestic actors. Included among these actors is the Internet Research Agency, the Russian government–aligned organization.”Ben Harris-Roxas at the University of New South Wales, an expert on public health, endorsed the epidemiological reasoning in the paper.“Vaccine hesitancy represents a significant threat – not just for any Covid-19 vaccine that might be developed, but also to measures that might assist people and health services now, such as people getting flu vaccinations,” he said.Others expressed concerns about the implications of a paper defining a specific group as a national security threat being published under the imprimatur of the FBI.Michael German, a Brennan Center fellow and former FBI agent and whistleblower, said he was worried about the unintended consequences of defining a group as a national security threat based on their beliefs, and how that might feed into both policy and law enforcement decisions.“You can imagine some young police officer who’s trying to do a good job protecting his or her community. And all of a sudden he’s told that anti-vaxxers are Russian agents.”German added that “the lack of proper government preparation and stockpiles of medical materials to respond to a pandemic was a much more serious problem than the influence of a relatively small group of anti-vaxxers could ever be, but it is hard to argue with the need for a science-based policy approach”.InfraGard has been criticized by civil liberties groups from its origins as a security national entity and links to the FBI. An FBI spokesperson said: “InfraGard is a non-profit organization serving as a public-private partnership among US businesses, individuals, and the FBI.”The spokesperson added, “It is important to distinguish among the statements, views, and comments made by official FBI representatives and InfraGard Members”, and declined further comment.InfraGard Journal’s editor, Dr Ryan Williams, said in a telephone conversation that the journal was peer-reviewed, but received an additional layer of oversight from InfraGard’s board, which includes senior FBI officials and representatives from other partner groups.Dr Jarrett said the paper had been inspired by the experience of the measles outbreak of early 2019, and its predictions were being borne out in the current crisis.“Take the pandemic now,” he said. “If they come out with a vaccine and you have 15% of people saying, ‘I don’t want to take it, I don’t believe in it, it’s going to cause harm’, you’re never going to get up to the level of herd immunity to really shut off the process.”

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Prague's mayor, a critic of Russia, is under police protection after a magazine alleged a Russian assassin had entered the country to kill him

The report hasn't been confirmed by Czech authorities, and Russian leader Vladimir Putin's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the report was "fake."

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Monday, April 27, 2020

Venezuela appoints alleged drug trafficker El Aissami as oil minister

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Monday appointed his economy vice president, Tareck El Aissami, who has been indicted in the United States on drug trafficking charges, as oil minister, amid acute fuel shortages across the country. Maduro named Asdrubal Chavez, cousin of the late President Hugo Chavez, as interim president of state oil firm PDVSA, according to the appointments published in the government's official gazette.

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Farmers are destroying their own crops after the coronavirus ravaged the food market — and say USDA failed to help them get it to hungry Americans in time

USDA has been accused of acting too late to buy up and redistribute the surplus farm food left after lockdown decimated food service industry demand.

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