Johnny Cash's daughter slams 'ignorance & hatred' over wearing masks

BY JUSTINE COLEMAN - 05/26/20

© Getty Images

Johnny Cash’s daughter, Rosanne Cash, on Tuesday, slammed the “ignorance & hatred” over wearing masks.

The writer, in a tweet, condemned a man who she said called her daughter a “Liberal pussy” for wearing a mask to the grocery store in Nashville, saying her daughter was a survivor of H1N1 and is “trying to survive” the current pandemic.

“My daughter lives in Nashville & wore her mask to buy groceries. Guy yells at her: ‘Liberal pussy!’ ” she posted.

SAME KIND OF DEPLORABLE SCREAMS AND ASSAULTS PEOPLE TELLING THEM TO WEAR A MASK
“Back story: she nearly died of H1N1,” the writer continued. “She was in the ICU for a week, on a ventilator for 3 days. She CANNOT get covid. The ignorance & hatred is so painful. She’s trying to survive.”

My daughter lives in Nashville & wore her mask to buy groceries. Guy yells at her: ‘Liberal pussy!’ Back story: she nearly died of H1N1. She was in the ICU for a week, on a ventilator for 3 days. She CANNOT get covid. The ignorance & hatred is so painful. She’s trying to survive.— rosanne cash (@rosannecash) May 26, 2020


Videos have circulated on social media of reporters and others being called out and attacked for wearing masks in public.

Several political leaders have encouraged their constituents to wear a face covering, including New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), who said Tuesday that, “Wearing a mask is now cool.”

Cuomo says wearing a mask is 'cool'
Biden changes Twitter, Facebook avatars to him wearing mask

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R) delivered an emotional speech over the weekend, saying he hopes his state skips the "ideological and political" argument about using face masks.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended people wear cloth face coverings in public to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in communities, including among vulnerable populations.

Initially, the CDC instructed that healthy people should not wear the masks because it would not protect them from the virus, but research about asymptomatic spreaders led the agency to reverse its recommendations.

Trump anti-reg push likely to end up in court
BY REBECCA BEITSCH - 05/25/20



An executive order signed by President Trump directing agencies to slash regulations in order to boost the economy is likely to lead to a number of court challenges.

The Tuesday order directs agency heads to “identify regulatory standards that may inhibit economic recovery,” highlighting that regulations could be permanently or temporarily lifted in order to fight the economic fallout of the coronavirus.

But experts say speeding up the regulatory process or nixing public comment periods would likely be slammed in court unless the Trump administration can demonstrate their actions were necessary due to the pandemic.
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“The problem there is those measures have to be directly related to addressing the pandemic. They can't just be political priorities the Trump administration wants to speed up and get across the finish line in the first term,” said Amit Narang, a regulatory policy advocate with Public Citizen, pointing to the requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act.

“They’re not going to be able to claim that their ideological rollbacks are needed urgently to address the coronavirus just because they’re going to create economic growth. It’s not an argument that’s going to carry water on the policy side but certainly on the legal side in court either,” Narang said.

The order may be as likely to spur eye rolls as it is to spur lawsuits, however, as some say the directive is more about messaging than affecting regulation.

Critics say even with the accelerated timeline the administration seems to be pushing, the White House has little time to accomplish much else this term.

“What are you going to do? Are you going to review the whole suite of statutes and regulations that you implement and that you've spent three-and-a-half years rolling back and then you’re going to try and get more blood from a stone? And then try to accomplish that feat by 2021? It's not going to be possible,” said John Walke with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The Trump administration told The Hill they believe the order will withstand legal challenge.

“Statutes frequently allow an expedited regulatory process during urgent circumstances. The heart of what this administration is working to accomplish is clear: get our economy back to historic levels and get millions of Americans back to work,” the White House said by email.

The Trump administration has prided itself on pushing deregulation since nearly day one, with the president signing orders to nix two regulations for every new rule they want to issue and another requiring agencies to offset the costs of any new rules by scrapping old ones.

But Walke and others argue the administration will face hurdles with its approach.

“Trump does not want to appear helpless so he’s directing agencies to pin blame for the economy on regulations that have nothing to do with the economy. It’s plain to see that the pandemic and shelter-in-place orders are the reasons for the economic downturn,” Walke said.

The Trump order encourages the temporary suspension of regulations, a move already in use by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The agency in late March issued a temporary order, though it has no set end date, announcing it would not fine companies that stop monitoring their pollution emissions — something required by both the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.

The EPA says companies must document when they stopped monitoring and why the coronavirus was the cause to avoid fines down the road, but environmental groups and states have already sued, arguing the damage will have already been done, risking the health of residents near industrial operations.

It’s a playbook that could easily be adopted by other agencies, who might consider lifting private lending restrictions, regulations on food safety like inspection line requirements at meatpacking plants or suspending contract rules that require agencies to pick the most competitive bid.

Trump, however, appears hopeful that those temporary suspensions might be permanent.

“We want to leave it that way,” he said at a Cabinet meeting Tuesday. “In some cases we won’t be able to, but in other cases we will.”

Opponents say that would be illegal.

“That's rulemaking 101 that you cannot just make these things permanent,” Narang said.

Sean Moulton, a senior policy analyst with the Project on Government Oversight, said Trump’s attempt to issue a “get out of jail free card” won’t be able to bypass the lengthy rulemaking process, even in the name of economic recovery.

“You have to go through the rulemaking process, do research, issue a proposal, offer a public comment period, read the public comments, you have to respond to the public comments, you have to explain the changes you’re making, and if you ignore data just because you don't like it, people can take you to court,” he said.

What worries critics the most is that agencies will suspend enforcement of regulations, much like the EPA has done with its temporary order.

A number of studies have found agencies under the Trump administration have been less aggressive about going after companies that break the law by issuing fines or enforcement actions. That has been the case at the Food and Drug Administration, the EPA, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and many others.

“That’s the part that gives me the greatest concern, the idea of nonenforcement and telling agencies without any real basis or explanation that more lax enforcement will help us economically,” Moulton said. “That’s not to say you can’t drag them into court but it takes time.”

Conservatives groups have praised the memo.

“Many of the problems we’re experiencing today are decades in the making. They stem from well-meaning but tragically harmful laws and regulations that have accumulated over many years. This isn’t about politics, it’s about breaking barriers,” the Charles Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity wrote in a statement, saying the order would “empower the country to recover stronger.”

But critics of the executive order said the White House should be focused on addressing the core health issues that underlie the economic fallout.

“This crisis needs to be addressed through the administration with real public health measures,” Narang said. “Instead we get deregulation as an answer to the pandemic that makes no sense and is a complete distractio

Marianne Williamson touts endorsements for progressive congressional candidates

5/26/2020

Former Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson said her recent list of endorsements is meant to bring attention to lesser-known progressive candidates running for Congress.

“Too many people don’t know who these people are, so that’s why I made this endorsement list. Most congressional candidates don’t win the first time out, they win with their name recognition,” the author said Tuesday on Hill.TV’s “Rising.”

Williamson, who dropped her White House bid in January, argued that the Democratic Party has a way of ousting progressive ideals. She said progressives need to focus on congressional races now that the former Vice President Joe Biden is the presumptive Democratic nominee.

“They already voted me off the island,” she said. “Progressives, we know what happened in the presidential race. We need to now pivot… and do it in Congress now.”

VIDEO 

https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/499516-marianne-williamson-endorsements-progressive-congressional-candidates?jwsource=cl

Sweden Steadfast in Strategy as Virus Toll Continues Rising

Tuesday, 26 May 2020 

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STOCKHOLM (AP) — Sweden's government defended its response to the COVID-19 global pandemic on Tuesday despite the Scandinavian country now reporting one of the highest mortality rates in the world with 4,125 fatalities, or about 40 deaths per 100,000 people.

“Transmission is slowing down, the treatment of COVID-19 patients in intensive care is decreasing significantly, and the rising death toll curve has been flattened,” Foreign Minister Ann Linde told foreign correspondents at a briefing in Stockholm. “There is no full lockdown of Sweden, but many parts of the Swedish society have shut down.”

More than 76,000 people have been made redundant since the outbreak of the disease and unemployment, which now stands at 7.9%, is expected to climb higher.

Sweden took a relatively soft approach to fighting the coronavirus, one that attracted international attention. Large gatherings were banned, but restaurants and schools for younger children have stayed open. The government has urged social distancing, and Swedes have largely complied.

But opponents to the government’s strategy gained an influential voice this week after the country’s former state epidemiologist, Annika Linde, expressed doubt about the strategy adopted by the Swedish health authority. She said that in retrospect she believes an early lockdown could have saved lives.

“Most likely, we would still be a bit worse off (than other Nordic countries), but better off than we are now, and we would possibly have gained time to prepare the strategy to protect the elderly,” she told The Associated Press in a phone interview on Monday.

Sweden’s epidemiologist from 2005 to 2013, Linde headed the country’s response to swine flu and SARS and says she felt provoked by comments from a leading member of the health agency claiming Sweden’s strategy was the best in the world, irrespective of the number of deaths.

“I felt this can’t go on,” she told the AP. “Such a denial may prevent us from acting rationally.”

Sweden’s health policy is traditionally based on recommendations issued by medical authorities and followed by the political leadership. But as the death toll mounts, Linde believes elected officials would have been more cautious in risking the lives of citizens.

“In retrospect, I think it would have been worthwhile trying the strategy of Denmark, Norway and Iceland and Finland,” she said.

Yet for the Swedish government, it’s still too early to tell what measures have worked and which have failed.

“This is not a sprint, it’s a marathon,” Foreign Minister Ann Linde said. “It’s a good thing that many experts are saying what they think. We have freedom of speech in Sweden,” when asked about Annika Linde’s remarks.

The foreign minister said that the government wouldn't hesitate to change Sweden's policy "if we think that will be necessary.”

Follow AP pandemic coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

© Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

How the COVID-19 Bailout Gave 

Wall Street a No-Lose Casino

While ordinary Americans face record unemployment and loss, the COVID-19 bailout has saved the very rich
By
MATT TAIBBI  ROLLING STONE MAY 25, 202

Illustration by Victor Juhasz
This story appears in the June 2020 print edition of Rolling Stone.

In late April Marko Kolanovic, a financial analyst for JPMorgan Chase, wrote to clients with good news. Pandemic aside, investors should expect stock prices in S&P 500 companies to return to record numbers some time early next year!

“The S&P 500 should attain previous all-time highs,” Kolanovic wrote, “if the monetary measures are sustained.”

The key part of this phrase was the last bit, “if the monetary measures are sustained.” In countries that did not have a Federal Reserve Bank shooting a bazooka of cash daily at Wall Street, Kolanovic suggested the coronavirus would result in a 30 percent decline in the present value of earnings.

In other words, without intervention by the Federal Reserve, the United States in the coronavirus era would be looking at a Depression-level contraction.

Assuming the Fed bazooka keeps firing, however, a large portion of the investor class is already on a road leading back to champagne and confetti. And that, as Robert Frost would say, has made all the difference.






On the road more traveled, on the real side of the coronavirus economy, the pain has been historic. As of this writing, 30 million people have filed jobless claims during the COVID-19 crisis, and millions have lost their employer-based insurance.

At least one in three can’t make their rent, millions more can’t afford groceries, and workers in supermarkets, medical clinics, warehouses, and other professions are now in a macabre race to see if they’ll turn blue and die before corporate employers decide to slash their salaries or retirement benefits — which has already happened to front-line caregivers in some cities.

There are no projections of record earnings in the futures of such people. The best case is survival, and the grim reality of diminished economic horizons. Yet for the tiny sliver of people whose fortunes depend not on salaries, tips, and commissions, but upon the prices of financial products like stocks and bonds, the coronavirus response heralds a brave new world.

The $2.3 trillion CARES Act, the Donald Trump-led rescue package signed into law on March 27th, is a radical rethink of American capitalism. It retains all the cruelties of the free market for those who live and work in the real world, but turns the paper economy into a state protectorate, surrounded by a kind of Trumpian Money Wall that is designed to keep the investor class safe from fear of loss.

This financial economy is a fantasy casino, where the winnings are real but free chips cover the losses. For a rarefied segment of society, failure is being written out of the capitalist bargain.

This is a fresh take on a long-developing dynamic. Dating to the late Eighties, when then-Fed-chief Alan Greenspan slashed interest rates after the 1987 stock-market crash, there’s been an understanding that the government would be there to help Wall Street back on its feet in hard times.

That belief was so strong it had a name: the “Greenspan put.” Bloomberg’s Tim Duy defines the term as “the implied promise that central bankers led by Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan would bail out market participants who indulged in risky behavior.”

The Fed stepped in to flood Wall Street with cash (these are called “liquidity injections”) after a series of messes in the Clinton and Bush years, from the Asian-currency debacle to the collapse of the Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund in the late Nineties to a deflation panic in 2002.

A prolonged period of liquidity injection in the early 2000s prompted a now-familiar pattern of pushing investors out of traditional safe-haven investments (the low interest rates punished savers) and into ever-riskier gambles in commodities, stocks, and the housing markets.

All three arenas saw bubbles, but the one in the U.S. housing market burst after an orgy of Ponzi-style scheming sent mortgage prices shooting through the roof. In the space of a few months in 2008, the pension funds and municipalities that had been urged by greed-sick bankers to invest in a “real estate boom” (actually a fraud-driven speculative bubble) lost fortunes.

President Donald Trump looks on as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin speaks during a news conference at the White House in Washington, Wednesday, March, 25, 2020, along with members of the coronavirus task force.
ERIN SCHAFF/"The New York Times"/R

Taxpayers and homeowners bore nearly 100 percent of the pain. Nearly 3 million people filed for foreclosure in 2010 alone. Back then, the notion of using state funds to rescue these folks was rejected as laughable, a dangerous “moral hazard.” As billionaire Charlie Munger put it in 2010, homeowners needed to “suck it in and cope,” and not wait for a handout.

Wall Street, though, got the mother of all rescues. The response wasn’t limited to a traditional liquidity injection. Banks were given trillions in bailouts and emergency loans, allowed to dump years of bad investment decisions into special garbage facilities set up by the Federal Reserve, and urged to “drink themselves sober” through years of free money from a zero-interest-rate policy.

The Fed, beginning in late 2008, added a new crisis-response tool called quantitative easing (QE), a fancy academic name for printing trillions of dollars and using it to buy everything from mortgages to government debt. This was with the ostensible aim of increasing “the availability of credit” for things like home purchases, but also to “foster improved conditions in financial markets more generally.”

The dubious underlying logic was that rescuing the economy and rescuing the financial markets were the same thing. To save people, we had to save the economy in which they operate, which meant saving the high-risk investments of Wall Streeters, as much as they might suck.

What’s happening in the COVID-19 crisis is the next step: a financial bubble where the Fed isn’t the cleanup mechanism, but the source of the mania itself. While the real economy is seeing record disruptions, Wall Street has seen prolonged rallies of “rational exuberance” over the Fed’s decision to usher in “QE infinity” and essentially ban losing in finance capitalism.


Though this is a Trump bill — El Pompadour is so determined that the CARES Act be remembered as his work, he fought to get his signature on relief checks — it passed unanimously, by voice vote in the House, and 96-0 in the Senate.

Talk to Democrats on the Hill and they will tell you this is a bailout to be cheered and supported, nothing like the 2008 rescue. This time is different, the argument goes: Three-quarters of the money goes to real people.

This is true, if one squints and uses a narrow definition of “money.” The $2.3 trillion imagines $560 billion for “individuals” (including $300 billion in cash payments, much by way of the famed $1,200 “Trump” checks), plus $377 billion for small businesses, as well as $339 billion for state and local governments, and $100 billion for hospitals and other health care providers, plus some aid for students and children.

Technically, “only” about $500 billion of the congressionally passed rescue package goes to “big business.” Moreover, the big-business aid ostensibly comes with a range of draconian-sounding conditions barring greedy hijinks, meaning no layoffs, no stock buybacks, no big bonuses, etc., if companies want the handout.

The loophole comes via $454 billion created as part of that big-business package. This “emergency fund” will be dumped into a “special-purpose vehicle” used to backstop further lending by the Federal Reserve.

That $454 billion is designed to grow by a factor of 10 or more. “We can lever up to $4 trillion,” said Steve Mnuchin, playing the “free-spending Goldman Sachs-trained Treasury secretary” role that apparently is a prerequisite for financial-disaster narratives in modern America.

Democrats early on expressed concern about old-school Tammany Hall-style graft, i.e., that the fund would be used to invest in businesses with connections. “We’re not here to create a slush fund for Donald Trump and his family,” is how Elizabeth Warren put it.

However, once Democrats won superficial oversight concessions (including the creation of a Congressional Oversight Commission), Warren and everyone else in the caucus approved the “slush fund” concept, despite the far more radical issues it poses than individual graft.

The CARES Act “slush fund” imagines a future in which markets for all financial products are stressed, perhaps permanently, by lockdowns. In place of a heartless free market of panicked investors who might want to cut their losses and sell, the plan is to simulate real buying and selling of financial products like mortgages and bonds with directed deployments of the Fed’s endless trillions.

And they will be endless. As Fed chief Jerome Powell put it, the Fed is “not going to run out of ammunition” in the war against the economic crisis. Marcus Stanley of Americans for Financial Reform said, “The Fed’s perspective on this is, they want to create normalcy.” But what does “normal” mean in an economy that may be changed forever?

Investors were fleeing stocks, bonds, money-market funds, etc., in the first weeks of March for the perfectly logical reason that most businesses suddenly looked like dicey investments. But the instant the Fed announced its new purchasing programs, most of these markets bounced back nearly all the way up.

Major bond funds that were on the brink of failure on March 23rd — like BlackRock’s $30 billion LQD fund — rebounded and recovered nearly all of their value in the next days. The S&P 500 sank 34 percent in 23 trading sessions at the beginning of the crisis, then after the Fed’s announcement on March 23rd, rose 27 percent in its next 16 sessions. The NYSE Composite hit a low of 8,777 on March 23rd, then started a long march back up over 10,000 and then 11,000 from that day forward.

Investors have begun following the Fed. Analysts are encouraging clients to “buy what the Fed is buying,” because “the stimulus seems to be endless.” The boom isn’t in any particular kind of company or product, but in the Fed itself.

“The Fed is the market, and all the big players know it, while the real economy will stagger far behind,” is how Nomi Prins, author of Collusion and an expert on central-banking policy, puts it.

This plan is getting support from both the right and the left. Wall Street analysts are cheering Fed chief Powell’s decision to act “forcefully, proactively, and aggressively” to forestall financial collapse, while liberal economists seem to cheer the spectacle of the government abandoning harrumphing conservative rhetoric about fiscal restraint to invest massively in the economy.

“I’m more sympathetic than I might otherwise have been,” says noted progressive economist Dean Baker, adding that the extraordinary crisis has created real trouble for a lot of good companies that the Fed’s actions will address.

Decades ago, America started down the road of creating two economic worlds. Our once-mighty brick-and-mortar economy went into decline and began to be exported overseas, to cheap labor zones and countries with less-stringent environmental laws — places that, as economist Larry Summers infamously put it, were “vastly underpolluted.” That American factory workers would be left behind by this process was just their bad luck, another thing requiring a “suck it in and cope” attitude.

Not so for their bosses, though, who were rescued from the decline by transitioning to even-more-profitable work in a new, “financialized” economy. This world emphasized making money by moving it around in the capital markets — prioritizing fees, interest, capital gains, etc. A generation of minds that were trained in the logic of “financialization,” and its underlying principles — which include the idea that workers are fungible, parasitic drains on the more crucial “wealth creators” above — accelerated the aggressive tilt to the political right by America’s wealthy in recent decades.

Even the experts at the Federal Reserve, whose official mandate includes attaining “maximum sustainable employment,” became more and more removed from their real-world purpose over the years, devoted instead to tending to the needs of this second, sandcastle economy over the problems of disenfranchised working people, whose fates mostly couldn’t be helped. And why not? What Fed official ever interacts with anyone not employed in the financial sector? How could the real world ever seep in?

The coronavirus bailout could end up being the last chapter in this hideous story. Although we’re seeing a graphic demonstration of how “unskilled” workers like home health aides and delivery people and grocery clerks are actually the vitally important people in our society, they’re not getting the radical rescue. There’s no sudden universal health care, no guaranteed sick leave, no massive jobs plan, just Band-Aids. They will die in massive numbers and emerge from this crisis, if and when it ends, poorer and more vulnerable than before.

But the financial markets are getting the World War II-style “whatever it takes” financial commitment, based upon the continuing fallacy that “wealth creators” must be the first in line for rescue in any crisis. This was a wrong assumption on the decks of the Titanic, a wrong assumption after 2008, and a criminally wrong assumption now.

Continuing belief in the trickle-down myth that has been destroying and dividing this country for decades will kill us faster than any pandemic. If we’re going to spend in “unlimited” amounts, let’s for once do it in the real world and for the people who need it most

TRUMP FACES GRIMM

Watchdog who found hospital shortages unfazed by Trump barbs
By MATTHEW DALY

In this image from video, acting Health and Human Services acting inspector general Christi Grimm testifies during a remote hearing of the House Oversight Committee, Tuesday, May 26, 2020. (House Television via AP)


WASHINGTON (AP) — The author of a federal report that found U.S. hospitals faced severe shortages of coronavirus test supplies says she is not intimidated by criticism from President Donald Trump, even after he moved to replace her as chief watchdog of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Christi Grimm, who has served as acting inspector general since January, told a House panel that there was no “chilling effect” from Trump’s criticism of her last month and his subsequent move to replace her.


“We are plowing ahead” with 14 new reports and audits on the health department’s response to the virus, Grimm said during a videoconference briefing Tuesday with the House Oversight Committee.

Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier of California asked Grimm if she believes there was a “chilling effect” from Trump’s criticism: “If you say something or do something that is offensive to the president that you will be removed from office?”

Grimm said no, adding: “I personally and professionally cannot let the idea of providing unpopular information drive decision-making in the work that we do.″

Congress can be assured that 14 pending reports and audits of health spending related to the virus outbreak will continue unfettered “to protect people, to protect funds, to protect infrastructure and to ensure effectiveness,″ Grimm said. “We are operating as we did on May 1” when Trump nominated a new inspector general to replace Grimm.

Jason Weida, an assistant U.S. attorney in Boston, must be confirmed by the Senate before assuming the position. Grimm remains in charge of the office as principal deputy inspector general while Weida’s nomination is pending.

With coronavirus cases skyrocketing, the inspector general’s office reported April 6 that a shortage of tests and long waits for results were at the root of mounting problems faced by hospitals.

Trump called the report, based on a late March survey of 323 hospitals nationwide, “just wrong” and suggested that its conclusions were skewed by politics.

“Give me the name of the inspector general,” Trump told reporters. “Could politics be entered into that?” Trump later dismissed the report on Twitter as “Another Fake Dossier!”

Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York, who chairs the Oversight panel, said Tuesday that Grimm “should not have had to endure these senseless personal attacks just for doing her job.″ Maloney thanked Grimm for “tolerating” Trump’s attacks “with dignity while she continues serving the American people.″

Grimm, a career government manager who has served under four presidents, told lawmakers that as acting IG, she has long been aware that she can be replaced at any time and does not let that fact affect her work.

“I do think independence is the cornerstone of what any office of inspector general does,″ Grimm said. “That allows us to be impartial in the work we do ... letting the facts take us where they may.″

Grimm called the report “a snapshot in time,″ but said it offered “quick and reliable data from the ground” to document the nation’s response to the novel coronavirus, which has killed nearly 100,000 Americans.

Grimm also pushed back on a theory advanced by some critics that hospitals may have intentionally reported inaccurate COVID-19 data in an effort to win more federal money or equipment.

“I do not believe hospitals were being misleading in providing us with this information,” Grimm said. Investigators did not “independently go behind and verify” the hospitals’ claims, she added.

Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the panel’s top Republican and a close Trump ally, lamented what he said was the report’s “flawed methodology” and noted that investigators did not ask hospitals to specify actions the Trump administration had taken to help them respond to the crisis.

Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., asked Grimm to investigate the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, saying the agency failed to develop coronavirus tests in a timely fashion, and then saw its early tests plagued by a series of problems and false results.

“Clearly lives were lost because of that failure,″ Connolly said, adding that a report on the CDC should be “a primary focus” of the inspector general’s work.

Grimm said the office is reviewing CDC’s role in approving, producing and distributing test kits. Her office also is looking at the Food and Drug Administration’s role in approving the test, Grimm said.

Hong Kong leader tries to reassure investors rattled by China law

AFP / ANTHONY WALLACEThousands of protesters took to the streets of Hong Kong on Sunday after the security law announcement and were dispersed by tear gas and water cannon

China's plans to impose a new security law on Hong Kong will not erode freedoms, the city's leader said Tuesday, as she tried to reassure international businesses and foreign governments alarmed by the proposal.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam said the controversial law would "only target a handful of lawbreakers" but she would not be drawn on what actions and opinions would be deemed illegal once the legislation is passed.

Her comments came as the commander of China's military garrison in Hong Kong warned the law would "punish any acts of separatism".

"Garrison officers have the determination, faith and capacity to defend national sovereignty," Chen Daoxiang told state-run CCTV.

Beijing wants to enact legislation banning secession, subversion, terrorism and foreign interference in the international finance hub after months of massive, often-violent pro-democracy protests last year.


Many Hong Kongers, business groups and Western nations fear the proposal could be a death blow to the city's treasured liberties and usher in an end to the semi-autonomous city passing its own laws.

The announcement of plans for the new law -- which will be written by Beijing and bypass Hong Kong's legislature -- sparked the biggest drop on the city's stock exchange in five years on Friday.

But Lam said fears the city's business-friendly freedoms were at risk were "totally groundless".

"Hong Kong's freedoms will be preserved and Hong Kong's vibrancy and the core values in terms of the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary, the various rights and freedoms enjoyed by people, will continue to be there," Lam told reporters.

The proposed law, she added, "only targets a handful of law-breakers... it protects the vast majority of law-abiding, peace-loving residents."

- Mainland agents? -

Hong Kong was upended last year by seven months of huge and often violent pro-democracy protests, fuelled by years of rising fears that Beijing is chipping away at the city's freedoms.

Millions took to the streets for rallies that routinely ended with clashes between riot police and smaller groups of militant protesters wielding petrol bombs.

AFP / ANTHONY WALLACE

Beijing portrays the Hong Kong protests as a foreign-backed plot to destabilise the motherland

Beijing portrays the protests as a foreign-backed plot to destabilise the motherland. Protesters say their rallies are the only way to voice opposition in a city with no universal suffrage.

Thousands protested on Sunday after the security law announcement and were dispersed by tear gas and water cannon in the worst clashes in months.

The precise wording of the security law has yet to be revealed but China's rubber-stamp parliament previewed initial details last week.

It is expected to approve a draft of the law on Thursday and analysts say it could be implemented in the summer.

One concern is a provision allowing Chinese security agents to operate in Hong Kong, with fears it could spark a crackdown on those voicing dissent against Beijing.

Subversion laws are routinely wielded against critics on the mainland.

- Anthem law -

Asked by a reporter whether mainland officials could arrest protesters in Hong Kong, Lam dismissed the question as "your imagination".

She said anti-government protests would continue to be allowed "if it is done in a legal way", but she did not elaborate on what views would be considered illegal under the new law.

A common chant at protests over the last year has been "Free Hong Kong, revolution of our times", a cry that encapsulates frustration with Beijing's rule since the city's 1997 handover by Britain.

Activists fear such calls might be considered illegal given the broad definition of subversion.

In an interview with AFP on Tuesday, Elsie Leung, a former secretary for justice, said activities seeking to undermine the local government might be covered by the law.

"I don't think chanting of the slogan itself is so important, but when chanting of slogans (is) coupled with other behaviour, that might well amount to subversion of Hong Kong's government," she said.

Further protests are expected despite anti-coronavirus measures banning large public gatherings.

On Wednesday Hong Kong's legislature will debate a bill banning insults to China's national anthem.

Police have ringed the building -- which was ransacked by protesters last year -- with water-filled barriers ahead of the debate.

GLOBAL BELLWETHER

Singapore warns of worst economic contraction since independence

AFP / ROSLAN RAHMANEmpty streets in Singapore as people stay at home to curb the spread of the coronavirus

Singapore's virus-hit economy could shrink by as much as seven percent this year -- the worst reading since independence -- the government said Tuesday, as it unveiled a fresh multi-billion dollar stimulus package.

The city-state is seen as a bellwether of the global economy, and the forecast historic contraction highlights the extreme pain being wrought on countries by the killer disease.

The warning came as Singapore's deputy prime minister unveiled a fresh support package worth Sg$33 billion ($23.2 billion) for the troubled city, which has been crippled by months of lockdowns around the world.

The trade ministry's forecast -- which was a downgrade from the maximum four percent contraction predicted in March -- came as official data showed the economy shrank 0.7 percent on-year in the first three months of the year, while it reduced 4.7 percent from the previous quarter.

The financial hub is one of the world's most open economies, and is usually hit hardest and earliest during any global shock.

The ministry said the new estimate was made "in view of the deterioration in the external demand outlook" and the partial lockdown imposed domestically. A contraction of seven percent would be the worst since the city's independence in 1965.

Shutdowns in major markets such as the United States, Europe and China have crippled demand for exports, and a halt in international air travel has hammered Singapore's key tourism sector.

Singapore has ordered the closure of most businesses, advised people to stay at home, and banned large gatherings. While officials say they may start relaxing the rules from early June, many restrictions will remain in place.

Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat, who is also the finance minister, announced in parliament the new package largely aimed at helping companies save jobs.

The government has so far earmarked more than Sg$90 billion, or 20 percent of GDP, to cushion the economic fallout from the virus, which has infected over 32,000 people in the city-state, the highest in Southeast Asia.

"It has been an unprecedented crisis that is still changing rapidly," Heng said, adding Singapore has the "fiscal resources to mount this response".

Song Seng Wun, an economist with CIMB Private Banking, said he expects the second quarter to bear the full brunt of the fallout, with GDP expected to contract 15-20 percent.

"Singapore is a small and open economy whose trade is three times the size of GDP. The sharp contractions are a reflection of its external vulnerability," he told AFP.

The trade ministry also said "significant uncertainties" remain despite the opening up of some economies as they slowly emerge from lockdowns.

"First, there is a risk that subsequent waves of infections in major economies such as the US and eurozone may further disrupt economic activity," it said.

"Second, a growing perception of diminished fiscal and monetary policy space in many major economies could damage confidence in authorities’ ability to respond to shocks."

The trade ministry warned that "notwithstanding the downgrade, there continues to be a significant degree of uncertainty over the length and severity of the COVID-19 outbreak, as well as the trajectory of the economic recovery".

Singapore's central bank in March eased monetary policy to support the virus-hit economy.

Dino-dooming asteroid hit Earth at 'deadliest possible' angle

AFP/File / STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN66 million years ago an asteroid roughly twice the diameter of Paris crashed into Earth, wiping out all land-dwelling dinosaurs and 75 percent of life on the planet

This much we knew: some 66 million years ago an asteroid roughly twice the diameter of Paris crashed into Earth, wiping out all land-dwelling dinosaurs and 75 percent of life on the planet.

What remained a mystery was whether it was a direct hit or more of a glancing blow, and which would be more destructive.

As it turns out, according to a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications, the giant space rock struck at the "deadliest possible" angle -- 60 degrees.

The cataclysmic impact kicked up enough debris and gases into the upper atmosphere to radically change the climate, dooming T-Rex and everything it ever hunted to extinction.

Analysing the structure of the 200-kilometre-wide crater in southern Mexico where the asteroid hit, scientists ran a series of simulations.

Lead author Gareth Collins of Imperial College London and colleagues at the University of Freiburg and the University of Texas at Austin looked at four possible impact angles -- 90, 60, 45 and 30 degrees -- and two impact speeds, 12 and 20 kilometres per second.

The best fit with the data from the crater was a 60 degree strike.

"Sixty degrees is a more lethal impact angle because it ejects a larger amount of material fast enough to engulf the planet," Collins told AFP.

"The Chicxulub impact triggered a mass extinction because it ejected huge quantities of dust and gas out of the crater fast enough to disperse around the globe."

Had the asteroid hit head on or at a more oblique angle, not as much debris would have been thrown up into the atmosphere, he added.

Large amounts of sulphur in the form of tiny particles that remained suspended in the air blocked the Sun, cooling the climate by several degrees Celsius.

- Rocks 'rebound' -

Smoke, ash and debris engulfed the atmosphere, eventually destroying most plants and wiping out 75 percent of species on Earth.

AFP/File / Jonathan WALTERThe Chicxulub asteroid strike is thought to have triggered an earthquake

Chicxulub is also thought to have triggered an earthquake whose seismic waves reached Tanis -– the fossil site 3,000 km away in North Dakota where definitive evidence of the asteroid's devastating impact was uncovered -– in just 13 minutes.

The seismic shock triggered a torrent of water and debris from an arm of an inland sea known as the Western Interior Seaway.

Thus far, scientists have only been able to study the early stages of the impact.

The researchers combed through geological data gathered during a recent dig to better understand how the cataclysm unfolded.

They soon realised that the asteroid did not, as long assumed, approach Earth from the southeast.

"Our work overturns this hypothesis," Collins explained. "The crater's central uplift is leaning slightly to the southwest, and numerical simulations of the impact reproduce this."

The findings could lead to a greater understanding about how craters are formed in general.

The 3-D simulations, for example, suggest that rocks "rebound" to fill in some of the impact layer during the final stage of crater formation, a process that takes only minutes, the researchers conjectured.

Scientists are still trying to figure out exactly how the asteroid triggered a mass extinction event and why some species survived while others didn't.

"The Chicxulub impact was a very bad day for the dinosaurs," Collins said, adding that the new research showed it was "even worse" than had been previously thought.

"It makes it even more remarkable that life survived and recovered as rapidly as it did."

‘This is pretty nuts’: Reporter grills Kayleigh McEnany over Trump’s Joe Scarborough murder smear

May 26, 2020 By David Edwards


White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany defiantly pushed back on criticism of President Donald Trump for suggesting that MSNBC host Joe Scarborough is guilty of murdering intern Lori Klausutis.

“The opening of a Cold Case against Psycho Joe Scarborough was not a Donald Trump original thought, this has been going on for years, long before I joined the chorus,” Trump wrote in a tweet, “about whether or not Joe could have done such a horrible thing? Maybe or maybe not, but I find Joe to be a total Nut Job, and I knew him well, far better than most. So many unanswered & obvious questions, but I won’t bring them up now! Law enforcement eventually will?

On Tuesday, McEnany was asked if Trump would honor a request from Klausutis’ family to take down the tweet.

“I do know that our hearts are with Lori’s family at this time,” McEnany said without answering the question.

“Why is the president making these unfounded allegations?” ABC correspondent Jonathan Karl asked. “This is pretty nuts, isn’t it? The president is accusing somebody of possible murder. The family is pleading with the president to please stop unfounded conspiracy theories. Why is he doing this?”

After glancing at her prepared remarks, McEnany accused Scarborough of “joking about killing an intern” years after Klausutis died.

“I’m sure that was hurtful to Lori’s family,” she added.

“He’s the president of the United States,” Karl pointed out, “and he’s accusing somebody of possibly murder. This is different. He’s not a private citizen. He’s the president.”

“Yeah,” McEnany said, returning to her notes. “Joe Scarborough, if we want to start talking about false accusations, we have quite a few we can go through.”

“I’m asking about the president’s allegations,” Karl pressed.

“And I’m replying to you,” McEnany quipped. “Mika [Brzezinski] accused the president of 100,000 deaths and that’s incredibly irresponsible. They’ve dragged his family through the mud. They’ve made false accusations that I won’t go through.”

“They should be held to account for their falsehoods!” she complained. “Joe Scarborough should be held to account for saying people will die by taking hydroxychloroquine.”

“Does that justify the president spreading a false conspiracy theory?” Karl wondered.

“I will point you back to Joe Scarborough who laughed and joked about this item,” McEnany shot back. “It’s Joe Scarborough that has to answer these questions.”

Watch the video below from Fox News.