"Stocks surge as virus slows in some areas" by Karen Weise and Alan Rappeport New York Times, April 6, 2020
NEW YORK — Stocks rallied Monday as investors seized on signals that the coronavirus outbreak may be peaking in some of the world’s worst-hit places.
The number of new confirmed deaths and infections is slowing in parts of Europe, and the number of deaths in New York has been steady for two days. In Italy and Spain, the total number of patients continues to climb, but the rate of new infections is no longer rising.
So they are calling off the drill, is that it?
The trillions have been doled out and now it is time to reopen?
“This does not mean that the all clear is immediate, nor does it mean that the US economy will quickly recover, but the light at the end of the tunnel is starting to emerge,” Dan Clifton, a partner at Strategas Research Partners, a financial and economic consulting firm, wrote in a note.
The optimism drove shares sharply higher. The S&P 500 rose 7 percent, its biggest gain since March 24, when it climbed more than 9 percent.
Some areas of the market that have been hit hardest by shutdowns of economic activity soared. Hotel chain Marriott and casino company Wynn, for example, each rose more than 15 percent. Credit card companies also rallied, after being hammered by soaring unemployment in recent weeks, which makes people less likely to pay their bills. Capital One and Discover Financial both jumped more than 15 percent. Payment giant Visa rose more than 11 percent. Shares of cruise operator Carnival jumped by more than 20 percent after Saudi Arabia’s state investment fund said it has acquired an 8 percent stake in the company.
I wonder how many shares were bought back with the bailout loot they got.
Still, there was a strong defensive tilt to trading. The utilities sector — typically an area dominated by risk-averse investors — was one of the best performing in the S&P 500, with a gain of almost 8 percent. That suggests investors still see plenty of reason to be cautious.
The slowing of the spread of the disease is a good first step in reducing the effect on hospitals, but it still could take some time to open the economy more broadly. On Monday, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York cautioned that the state was still facing an emergency.
After I had gotten up my hopes and was ready to open my wallet and feed the corporate bea$t. Oh, well.
Plus, consumers — the chief economic engine in the United States — remain worried about how efforts to contain the virus will affect them. A Federal Reserve survey conducted in March showed that Americans’ pessimism about the labor market is testing new limits.
Yellen didn't help by warning that unemployment data could rise to levels not seen since the Great Depression.
Expectations that unemployment will be higher a year from now rocketed up, as have workers’ estimations of the chance that they may lose their own job, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Survey of Consumer Expectations.
A more widespread approach to testing that gives companies and consumers confidence that life is returning to some semblance of normal will be crucial, Scott Clemons, chief investment strategist for private banking at Brown Brothers Harriman, wrote in an email. “Progress on that front, or the lack thereof, is a potential source of future market volatility,” Clemons wrote. “I don’t think we’re out of the woods quite yet.”
They help kids succeed, and have for a long time.
Representatives of the Group of 20 countries are expected to meet “very soon — this week” to address the enormous oversupply of oil on the world markets, Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, said in an interview Monday.
Meet in person?
Birol, whose organization serves as an energy watchdog for industrialized nations, said that the glut of oil building in the market is too big for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other producers, including Russia, to resolve. This group, known as OPEC Plus, is expected to meet by teleconference Thursday, in part to resolve a price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia.
Birol said that even if these oil officials agreed to reduce production by 10 million barrels a day — a staggering amount equivalent to about 10 percent of consumption in normal times — there would still be a surplus this quarter of 15 million barrels a day, according to his agency’s numbers.
Initially, “there would be an upbeat mood in the market, but after a while people would realize there is still a huge amount of supply overhang,” he said.
Birol also said that he was worried about the fate of the global oil industry, which he called “one of the pillars of the global economy,” and its tens of millions of employees.
Yeah!
Given COVID-19 sweeping the globe and ravaging populations, yeah, let's worry about the global oil indu$try, a pillar of the global economy. Glad he has his priorities $traight!
Meanwhile, the Washington ComPost is telling us the Great Barrier Reef has suffered its most widespread mass bleaching event on record while the Globe says endangered right whales have been spotted in Cape Cod Bay during spring feeding season and the A$$ociated Pre$$ adds that New Hampshire’s Lake Winnipesaukee is ice-free.
PFFFFFFFT!
President Trump and his economic advisers are considering the possibility of issuing coronavirus “war bonds” as an effort to finance the swelling cost of propping up an economy facing a deep recession.
Now they want us to pay for it!
CNBC television host Jim Cramer has been calling publicly for the Trump administration to issue war bonds to finance the economic relief effort and rally the country. On Monday, he asked Larry Kudlow, Trump’s top economic adviser, if the concept was on the table. “You know, Jimmy, as far as I’m concerned, I think it’s a great idea,” Kudlow said. “This is a time, it seems to me, to sell bonds in order to raise money for the war effort.”
PFFFFFFT!
Kudlow said that he has spoken to Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin about the idea. They have not decided whether to move ahead with it or what the maturity or rate on the bonds would be. It’s possible that a war bond could just be the existing 30-year bond rebranded.
Yeah, a rebranding $hell game $hould fix the problem and fool the masses. It's all in the pre$entation, and the an$wer is a public relations campaign.
When asked about the idea by Cramer last week, Mnuchin suggested that the current menu of bonds was insufficient. “You can buy as many 30-years as you want,” Mnuchin said. “That’s no problem.”
As health experts scramble to understand the coronavirus and fight its spread, economists believe they can help.
One economist at the Inter-American Development Bank, who typically spends his days thinking about industrial policy in Latin America, recently looked at a map showing that hospitals may not have the resources needed to treat patients while those in other regions have plenty of supplies.
That is the kind of problem, he argued, that economists can help solve.
Oh, no, this New York Times swill has me relapsing!
They could help set up a new market for ventilators, for instance, that would allow hospitals with a surplus to move their equipment to facilities facing a deficit.
The pole position is occupied by Telsa as they unveil ventilator prototypes made with car parts, an effort they embarked on at the request of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, and right next to them is GM. It won't do much for Massachusetts as federal officials have sent just 100 of the 1,700 ventilators requested.
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UPDATE: Dow rises on optimism over progress in coronavirus battle
Related: Mass. business confidence plunges in March to recession-era levels
Why?
"Pandemic philanthropy reaches new peak with launch of statewide fund; Donors have raised $13m for Massachusetts COVID-19 Relief Fund" by Jon Chesto Globe Staff, April 6, 2020
As the coronavirus pandemic ravages the Massachusetts economy, the need for help will be vast — impossible to calculate even. No community or sector will emerge unscathed.
Oh, $ome will emerge un$cathed and even enriched, and the market is on the upswing now.
That’s why Lauren Baker and Joanna Jacobson, president of the One8 Foundation in Boston, embarked on an ambitious charitable initiative, one that would span the entire state.
They watched city-specific efforts take shape — most notably the $22 million-plus Boston Resiliency Fund. They saw industries rally around their own, such as in the hard-hit restaurant business.
Now, it’s time to help others, those who might get left behind. Baker and her husband, Governor Charlie Baker, unveiled on Monday an ambitious new effort dubbed the Massachusetts COVID-19 Relief Fund. The fund aims, in part, to address the geographic gaps not yet filled by earlier initiatives.
Baker got started after she and her husband heard from philanthropists who wanted to give to a statewide effort addressing the pandemic. One did not exist at the time, she said in an interview, and Jacobson was among those who approached the Bakers about the idea. Lauren Baker and Jacobson spent the past week calling their contacts to raise enough money to give the new fund some heft at its inception.
The result? They dialed up at least $13 million worth of donations in time for Monday’s launch. But they’re just getting started. The sky is the limit, Baker said. She knows it will be impossible to address every pandemic-related need, no matter how much they raise.
The One8 Foundation, which normally doles out grants for educational and Jewish causes, will provide administrative support and has given $1.8 million to the new effort. Jonathan Raymond has been hired to be the relief fund’s executive director. (Raymond is putting on hold his part-time job as executive director of the National Association of School Superintendents, to focus on this.) The Boston Foundation will administer gifts from foundations and donor-advised funds, while a charitable affiliate of Eastern Bank will handle the rest. Raymond will work with a small advisory group that will include Baker and Jacobson to field inquiries and decide how to divvy up the donations.
Turns out this whole thing, like everything else, once again is for the benefit of the ma$ter race. They banks got their dough and now the fever is breaking.
The Boston Resiliency Fund and the statewide fund share similar missions. The new relief fund aims to help first responders and health care workers, as well as disadvantaged residents facing homelessness, hunger, and the loss of crucial services. As of Monday, the Boston fund had already distributed more than $8 million for similar causes within the city, but many deserving communities lack the wealth and corporate base that exists in Boston. Like the Boston fund, the Massachusetts relief fund will work with charitable groups, which in turn will provide the services directly.
It's based on Kars4Kids.
Paul Grogan, president of The Boston Foundation, said he has never seen a philanthropic effort with a statewide scope like this one before.....
It's looking like a $hakedown, and that is how you keep people quiet and get them to go along with the charade.
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To that end, Citizens Bank became the latest New England bank to launch its own pandemic initiative and money isn’t the only way to help. Meanwhile, at the Massachusetts LGBT Chamber of Commerce, executive director Grace Moreno said the five staff members all have new jobs now: case managers, to help guide chamber members through the crisis.
So when can we come out of the clo$et?
"When is it time to restart the US economy?" by Jim Tankersley New York Times, April 6, 2020
WASHINGTON — How long can we keep this up?
For as long as Bill Gates tells us, right?
It is still very early in the US effort to snuff a lethal pandemic by shutting down much of the economy, but there is a growing question — from workers, the White House, corporate boardrooms, and small businesses on the brink — that hangs over what is essentially a war effort against a virus that has already killed more than 9,000 Americans.
There is no good answer yet, in part because we don’t even have the data needed to formulate one.
Essentially, economists say, there won’t be a fully functioning economy again until people are confident that they can go about their business without a high risk of catching the coronavirus.
“Our ability to reopen the economy ultimately depends on our ability to better understand the spread and risk of the virus,” said Betsey Stevenson, a University of Michigan economist who worked on the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama. “It’s also quite likely that we will need to figure out how to reopen the economy with the virus remaining a threat.”
Bill Gates says everyone must be vaccinated and provided with a digital identity tracker -- which will appear later in the post.
Public health experts are beginning to make predictions about when coronavirus infection rates will peak. Economists are calculating when the cost of continuing to shutter restaurants, shopping malls, and other businesses — a move that has already pushed some 10 million Americans into unemployment, with millions more on the way — will outweigh the savings from further efforts to slow the virus once the infection curve has flattened out.
Calculating the co$t of lives, huh?
Government officials are setting competing targets. President Trump has pushed his expected date of reopening the economy to the end of April. “We have to get back to work,” he said in a briefing Saturday. “We have to open our country again. We don’t want to be doing this for months and months and months. We’re going to open our country again. This country wasn’t meant for this.”
He is more or less powerless like the rest of us, but I appreciate his efforts.
Some governors have set much more conservative targets, like Ralph Northam of Virginia, who canceled the remainder of the school year and imposed a shelter-at-home order through June 10. Other states, like Florida, only recently agreed to shut activity down but have set more aggressive targets — April 30, in the case of the Sunshine State — to restart it.
How is Northram still there? He should be red-faced about not resigning.
Those targets are at best mildly informed guesses based on models that contain variables — including how many people have the virus and how effective suppression measures will prove to be. The models cannot yet give us anything close to a precise answer on the big question looming over Americans’ lives and livelihoods.
That is what all this was based on?
Goddamn models?!!
You have destroyed dreams, you evil f***s!
Who do they then turn to for economic analysis?
To determine when to restart activity, said R. Glenn Hubbard, a former top economist under President George W. Bush, “we need more information.”
Now I am feeling nauseous.
Interviews with more than a dozen economists, many of whom are veterans of past presidential administrations, reveal broad consensus on the building blocks the economy needs — but does not yet have — to begin the slow process of restoring normalcy in the US economy.
What would those be, test and vaccines, vaccines and tests, everyone in surgical garb and all non-e$$entials f*** off?
That includes widespread agreement that the United States desperately needs more testing for the virus in order to give policymakers the first key piece of evidence they need to determine how fast the virus is spreading and when it might be safe for people to return to work.
Oh, they have no evidence of anything, just models and simulations with their damn statistics!
Policymakers will also need better data on how strained hospitals and entire regional health care systems are likely to be if the infection rate flares up and spreads. Ideally, they would sufficiently control the rate to establish so-called contact tracing in order to track — and avoid — the spread of the virus across the country.
They shut everything down and ruined your life's dreams oner this, folks!
I don't know about you, but my temperature is starting to rise!
Once such levels of detection are established, it is possible that certain workers could begin returning to the job — for example, in areas where the chance of infection is low. Some experts have talked about quickly bringing back workers who contract the virus but recover with little effect. Testing is the best way to identify such workers, who may have had the virus with few or no symptoms and possibly not realized they were ever infected.
Yeah, and the tests are not only giving false positives 75% of the time, they are also contaminated. Even if you come back negative, they tell you it is positive so they can tag you with the vaccine. We are dealing with pure evil and control freak psychopaths, folks.
While they wait for the infection rate to fall, policymakers will need to provide more support to workers who have lost jobs or hours and to businesses teetering on the brink of failure. That could mean trillions more in small business loans, unemployment benefits, and direct payments to individuals, and it could force the government to get creative in deploying money to avoid bottlenecks.
We will get to their initial effort $hortly.
The government’s efforts could prove crucial to maintaining public support for what amounts to a prolonged economic drought. Adam Ozimek, chief economist at Upwork, said additional money for small business will be crucial throughout the full extent of the crisis — both to prevent a crush of business failures and to keep owners and customers from flouting the national effort to reduce infections.
“I don’t think you can force hundreds of thousands of small business owners to voluntarily shut down and let failure happen to them,” Ozimek said. “They won’t do it, the public won’t support it, and frankly, I don’t think local authorities would stop them.”
We already are supporting it and the local authorities are deferring to state and national leaders!
Policymakers will also need to give better support and protection to Americans who are putting their own health at risk to keep the essential parts of the economy running, like doctors, nurses, grocery store clerks, and package delivery drivers.
The e$$ential workers, and it is nice to know that fathers are still essential!
Policymakers will need patience: Restarting activity too quickly could risk a second spike in infections that could deal more damage than the first because it would shake people’s faith in their ability to engage in even limited amounts of shopping, dining, or other commerce.
I thought we were talking $cience!
Yeah, prepare for a shutdown until at least June, and prepare for a much deadlier wave this September/October.
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Speaking of stalling:
"Auto insurers Allstate Corp. and American Family Insurance are returning some money to customers as widespread shutdowns across the United States from the coronavirus cut down on driving. Allstate expects to give back more than $600 million, with personal auto customers receiving 1 percent of their monthly premium in April and May, according to a statement Monday. American Family Insurance said it plans to return about $200 million to its auto insurance customers through a one-time payment of $50 per covered vehicle. “Given an unprecedented decline in driving, customers will receive a shelter-in-place payback of more than $600 million over the next two months,” Allstate chief executive Tom Wilson said in his company’s statement. “This is fair because less driving means fewer accidents.” States across the country have issued stay-at-home mandates to help slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus. That’s led to a decline of about 35 percent to 50 percent in driving in most states, Wilson said....."
That might arrive quicker than the chump change check from government, and at least nature got a chance to catch its breath.
Going to be great world for the Master Race when we are all gone.
"Small businesses are struggling with the coronavirus and the federal loan process. ‘It’s a damn mess,’ one Mass. co-owner said" by Janelle Nanos and Shirley Leung Globe Staff and Globe Columnist, April 6, 2020
Federal aid is slowly starting to flow to small businesses crushed by the COVID-19 crisis, but some company owners worry the bungled rollout of loan money will be too little and too late for them to survive.
A bungled rollout, huh?
Were they trillions they handed over to the banks bungled?
Business owners say they have been stymied by a litany of hurdles, including a last-minute change to terms of the Paycheck Protection Program, which offers loans of as much as $10 million through the Small Business Administration to companies with fewer than 500 workers. The loans, issued through banks, can be used for salaries, rent, and other expenses and will be forgiven in amounts depending on how many employees can be kept or rehired.
Makes you want to puke.
Smaller banks have been generally more nimble at processing applications, while Bank of America and other massive institutions threw up roadblocks that infuriated longtime customers. Some lenders have not been participating, which prompted the Federal Reserve to announce a financing plan Monday that it said should encourage banks to jump into the program.
The process, for many, has created even more uncertainty in an uncertain time, with many wondering if the loans will actually be forgiven, or if they’ll just end up in business-ending debt.
The government has touted the $349 billion program as a critical way to prop up an economy that’s been forced into hibernation by the coronavirus.
It wasn't forced into hibernation, Globe! It was confined there by our leaders due to an exercise gone live!
Big banks, Michael Strain, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute who has been examining the small-businesses rescue plan, said, should have been ready to accept applications Friday, and the Treasury Department must do more to cut the red tape — and quickly. “Most of these businesses don’t have a large cash buffer,” Strain said. “We’re going to start to see businesses close up because they can’t pay the bills.”
I'm $o glad to $ee the Bo$ton Globe and the American Enterprise Institute on the $ame page!
Fearing the money would run out, many business owners rushed to prepare their loan applications as soon as the terms were released, only to learn late Thursday that important details had changed.
Sam Hendler, co-owner of the Jack’s Abby brewery, worked with MutualOne bank in Framingham to have all the documents ready so the company could be at the front of the line on Friday. “We were all eager beaver,” he said. “We had it done and submitted on Thursday.”
Trump did say it was going to be on a fir$t-come, fir$t-$erve ba$i$.
By that evening, however, the SBA had released revised regulations that were far less favorable, and involved changing the terms of the loan from 10 years to two and increasing the interest rate. Hendler’s plan to obtain $1.2 million in funding didn’t work with that new math, so he resubmitted his loan application Friday for $700,000. Now he’s worried that the government will change its mind again. “Any business has to assume they’re going to change all the rules on forgiveness,” he said. “It’s a damn mess.”
That's u$ury!
Jamie Kaye, owner of the Station Diner in Newton Centre, has been keeping close watch on the federal stimulus plans since he shuttered his restaurant about two weeks ago. On Friday, he called the SBA customer service line for guidance and was told erroneously that he had to apply for the funds that day, or else he’d be out of luck. So he rushed to call his bank, Santander, only to learn it was not ready to accept applications. “Everything about the rollout was poorly planned and administered,” Kaye said. "I was in shock that the administration would give the SBA an eight-hour window to allow for everyone to apply for the money to save their lives.”
Stick a fork in Trump, he's done.
Kaye eventually got an appointment with East Cambridge Savings Bank for this week, but he still has a host of questions: He owns his business free and clear, and every day he’s not open he goes deeper in debt. What if he borrows money and never catches up? How does he pay himself as the owner of a limited liability corporation? “I cook hamburgers for a living,” Kaye said. “I’m being forced into understanding small-business loans and grants, and I’m not entirely sure what I’m asking for.”
I hope he will observe social distancing rules.
Massachusetts Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey submitted a letter to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin Monday criticizing the rollout of the SBA loan plan, and expressing concern that the funds allocated in the Payroll Protection Program will be quickly depleted.
“As the program went live last week, issues with the program immediately became clear,” they wrote, outlining the many delays that arose at large banks such as Chase, Wells Fargo, and others. “We urge you to move quickly to issue additional guidelines and clarifications to ensure that loans are disbursed quickly . . . The ability of small businesses to access this money in a matter of days could determine whether or not they will need to shut their doors to their employees and customers forever.”
Patty Houpt, whose nonprofit has banked with Bank of America and its local predecessors for four decades, was outraged when the bank refused on Friday to process a request for a $63,000 loan because it only had a checking account at the bank.
After a public maelstrom, Bank of America has since relaxed its rules to allow for existing customers to participate in the SBA program, as long they don’t have a loan with another bank. Houpt said Monday morning that Bank of America accepted her loan application, but she is still angry.
“They did not honor the intent of the legislation. The intent was to help with small businesses. They did it with an asterisk,” said Houpt, executive director of New England Employee Benefits Council. “It makes me question my relationship with them. Are we better served by a local partner?”
Your expectations of them were far too high.
Bank of America, the largest bank in the state by market share, has started processing more than 183,000 applications nationally, totaling $33 billion in loan requests.
Citizens Bank, the Commonwealth’s second-largest bank, said it was able to start accepting applications Monday for clients that have already submitted their contact information. Santander Bank, meanwhile, said its “application will be live soon.”
As of Monday morning, Eastern Bank had received more than 4,000 applications, representing more than $800 million worth of loan requests, far more than executives at the Boston bank expected. Eastern’s CEO, Bob Rivers, said those numbers are likely to increase significantly.
“It’s going to be frustrating for customers,” Rivers said. “Eastern and every other bank is working as quickly as we can to process these requests.”
Smaller local banks were able to act fast in large part because they have the ability to process loans manually, said Sushil Tuli, chief executive of Leader Bank, based in Arlington.
Tuli said the bank launched a website, leaderbizloans.com, just after midnight Friday and did not restrict the process to existing customers. As of Monday afternoon, the bank had received 380 applications seeking nearly $60 million in loans.
Amazing how they can do that, but we can't get a good software program written for health care or unemployment insurance.
Tuli said he had 11 employees plus a management team working all weekend to submit about 100 applications for a total of $30 million to the SBA in order to secure guarantees in the program. Tuli expects to start closing these loans and disbursing funds as soon as Wednesday.
Tuli didn’t know how many small businesses would seek money from Leader, but he was struck by how fast owners lined up for money.
“It means that people need help very quickly,” he said.....
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Still waiting for Wells Fargo to open:
"Wells Fargo says cap Fed imposed in 2018 is limiting its role in small-business relief" by Hannah Levitt Bloomberg News, April 6, 2020
Wells Fargo & Co. said it can’t fully meet demand from small businesses rushing to participate in the federal relief program because of constraints imposed by the Federal Reserve on the bank’s growth.
The company has capacity to lend $10 billion to small-business clients under the $349 billion program, but customers already have expressed more interest than that, Wells Fargo said late Sunday. It will therefore focus on helping nonprofits and businesses with fewer than 50 employees.
‘‘While we are actively working to create balance-sheet capacity to lend, we are limited in our ongoing ability to use our strong capital and liquidity position to extend additional credit,’’ chief executive Charlie Scharf said in the company’s statement. ‘‘We are committed to helping our customers during these unprecedented and challenging times, but are restricted in our ability to serve as many customers as we would like.’’
I'm stumpfed, readers.
The situation may ratchet up pressure on the Fed to ease the unprecedented asset cap it imposed on the nation’s fourth-largest bank in 2018 in response to mounting scandals at the company. As the coronavirus pandemic began, Wells Fargo — a leading lender to small and mid-size US companies, home buyers, and investors in commercial property — had about $384 billion of additional lending capacity that it can’t unleash because of the cap.
As markets swooned and commerce slowed this year, Wells Fargo’s representatives privately broached the idea of at least temporarily lifting the restriction so it could help more customers. The Fed has yet to publicly disclose a decision.
People with knowledge of the situation told Bloomberg in late March that the regulator was reluctant to ease or lift the cap because the bank has yet to fully address concerns that prompted the sanction. Scharf, who took over in October, has made progress in enacting reforms, but the company must still prove it’s done enough to prevent abuses of customers, the people said.....
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Related:
"Goldman Sachs analysts have created a basket of more than 20 health care companies developing treatments, vaccines, and tests for the coronavirus pandemic, including four in Massachusetts: Alnylam, Kiniksa, Moderna, and Thermo Fisher Scientific. The list “is not all-encompassing,” but the analysts say it “provides a wide-enough, representative, and global sample of names with newsflow likely over the next 12 months.” Goldman expects the basket will continue to command a “goodwill” premium while hedging against individual stock volatility. At the top of Goldman’s list is Gilead Sciences Inc. and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc., which are expected to report clinical results from experimental COVID-19 treatments this month. Moderna and Johnson & Johnson have the most promising vaccines, analysts said. The other companies are Abbott Laboratories, Adaptive Biotechnologies Corp., Becton Dickinson and Co., BioNTech SE, CSL Ltd., Danaher Corp., Fujifilm Holdings Corp., Grifols SA, Incyte Corp., Laboratory Corp. of America, Novartis AG, Pfizer Inc., Quest Diagnostics Inc., Roche Holding AG, Sanofi, Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., Vir Biotechnology Inc., and Wuxi Biologics Cayman Inc."
Yes, this whole thing is a concerted effort by two of the most evil $ectors in exi$tence today, Big Pharma and the Banks!
Also see:
"The US government’s $2.2 trillion stimulus package comes with a perk for high fliers: Flights are getting cheaper for some private jet customers. The legislation, known as the CARES Act, suspended a 7.5 percent federal excise tax on commercial air transportation through year-end, a move that would help big US carriers, but it will also benefit some customers of private jet operators such as Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s NetJets, and broker PrivateFly. Some private jet operators were early beneficiaries of the pandemic’s initial disruption, which resulted in a surge in inquiries from wealthy travelers seeking a way around busy airport terminals and crowded jetliners, but after the initial surge, much of that business has declined along with the rest of the aviation industry, Twidell said."
I knew there was going to garbage like that buried within the bill in its rush to passage, and now I know why the Democrats consider it a public service.
United Airlines sued by a passenger who was denied a refund for cancelled flight
The passenger, Jacob Rudolph, filed the suit in federal court in Chicago on Monday.
American cuts flights from NYC area by 95 percent
Probably a good idea, and with the fever breaking I'm finally feeling hungry, even for airline food.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
"Mass. reports 1,337 new coronavirus cases, 29 new related deaths" by Matt Stout Globe Staff, April 6, 2020
Massachusetts’ death toll from the novel coronavirus pandemic climbed to 260 people Monday, as the state girded for more bleak milestones in the days ahead.
Twenty-nine more people died from the virus, all but three of whom were in their 70s or older, officials announced, and some 835 residents and workers at long-term facilities, such as nursing and rest homes, have also now tested positive, a 50 percent spike from Sunday.
Once again, we probably have underlying medical conditions as the primary cause, and as the Globe and authority seek to turn propaganda into reality.
Governor Charlie Baker has said the state is prepping for a surge in hospitalizations, perhaps as early as Friday, that threatens to overwhelm the state’s health care systems.
More importantly, how will we address the trauma health care workers have suffered post-coronavirus when the next group of COVID-19 patients are suffering and in need of help and there is no time for breaks to debrief, shed a tear, or comfort one another?
The trend line on cases is “starting to bend a little," he said, but the governor warned against drawing conclusions from small samples of data — particularly on a newly emerging illness that lacks hard scientific research.
“People care a lot about [the daily numbers] and want to see them every day, but I think it’s a mistake to draw big conclusions about whether or not a day number is a trend or even a two-day [number] is a trend," Baker said at a Boston news conference Monday afternoon, where he and his wife, Lauren, announced the creation of a relief fund for people whose lives have been disrupted by coronavirus.
That's why the Globe made this the lead article of the entire paper as the death counts take the place of sports.
You can also see that Charlie is not only a creature of the healthcare $y$tem, but is also a captive of a certain chosen group.
At the same time, officials are also trying to wrap their arms around the economic crisis into which the virus has thrust the state and country.
The Baker administration and legislative leaders are slated to hold an economic roundtable Tuesday at the State House, with input from Eric S. Rosengren, the president of the Boston Federal Reserve; state Treasurer Deborah B. Goldberg; and several economists to help gauge not how, but to what degree, the state’s finances could crater in the coming months.
I hope they observe social distancing rules because Rosengren has tested positive for COVID-19.
The projections are expected to be dire. State officials in January had expected revenue growth to hit 2.8 percent in the fiscal year, which starts in July, but economists are expected to warn that the harsh times await, likely requiring the state to dip into emergency savings. “Thank God for the rainy day fund,” Goldberg said of the state’s $3.5 billion savings account. Goldberg said that within her office, revenues from the state lottery have already fallen dramatically, with instant ticket sales in the fourth week of March down to their lowest point in 15 years.
They are no longer selling them at the convenience stores, and thank God for the rainy day fund as they have put together a solid state budget.
“I think the recovery will stretch well into 2021,” said David G. Tuerck, an economist and director of the Beacon Hill Institute who is slated to participate in Tuesday’s roundtable.
“We’re all going to be guessing,” he said of projections, but warned that cuts to transportation infrastructure, absent federal help, may be among the harshest. “All of it: the MBTA, bridges, roads. It’s going to be under pressure for spending cuts."
I hope the billion-plus in corporate $ub$idies still go out!
Mayor Martin J. Walsh on Sunday recommended a new curfew for Bostonians in an effort to help slow the spread of the coronavirus, saying that city residents should stay in their homes between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. starting Monday.
Asked Monday whether he is considering a similar measure to Walsh’s, Baker called the city’s guidance both a recommendation and a message.
“I would echo the same message,” Baker said, though he did not say whether he’d adopt the same guidance statewide.
I give him about 48 hours before he declares a curfew.
Baker said the state has seen a 60 percent drop in retail and recreation activity since March 7 or so, citing Google data.
“We’ve been pretty aggressive about our messaging . . . and we have seen a very dramatic drop” in gatherings and mobility, Baker said. “People get the fact that they’re supposed to stay home.”
Must be why I have tuned him out, and Walsh sure doesn't feel that way.
Walsh on Monday appeared on CNN, where he criticized the Trump administration for sending mixed messages.
“I think you’re going to have an impact on everyone’s response when you have people talking, the president talking, about . . . services happening for Easter,” Walsh told anchor Wolf Blitzer on “The Situation Room." “You can’t be doing that. I mean, that wouldn’t be responsible — it certainly wouldn’t be responsible in the city of Boston to be doing that.”
Playing the big time, and maybe he will be the nominee.
--more--"
(putting on mask before flipping below fold)
"Marty Walsh, in the age of coronavirus, is decisive, but even he has doubts; “Are we doing it right? Are we doing it fast enough?” by Danny McDonald Globe Staff, April 6, 2020
Amid the pandemic, Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh has relied on his vast network of contacts across the city to gather information, process the fast-moving crisis, and gut-check his decisions, according to interviews with the mayor and more than a dozen civic, political, and business leaders in the region.
Remember when he was a labor guy once?
He has also been anchored by family and the one-day-at-time creed that has helped him stay sober for more than 20 years, as other routines that have kept his feet on the ground have disappeared.
That's the last type of person we want in charge, a recovered alcoholic on his high f***ing hor$e!
Walsh, who has held New England Patriots season tickets for decades, used to unwind after a long day by watching sports, but with live sporting events gone, there is now more time for him to contemplate his decisions.
I wonder if he knows Zisha, and too bad there is more time for him to contemplate his important decisions, huh?
If he can, Walsh will watch “Seinfeld” or “Modern Family” “to get a laugh in,” but consuming the news often fills his hours away from City Hall. He said he wants to get a feel for what is happening in other places as the crisis rages on.
Typically, Walsh, 52, tries not to take the job home with him.
* * *
A week and a half before the city’s biggest annual party, the South Boston St. Patrick’s Day parade, Walsh was expecting to have a broad conversation about the economic forecast with Eric S. Rosengren, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
Instead, he spent much of the 30 minutes listening to the economist warn of the growing threat of the novel coronavirus, how Italy was being brought to a standstill by the outbreak.
Like he was in on the drill.
Later that day, March 4, he spoke to Dr. Jeffrey Leiden, the chief executive of Vertex Pharmaceuticals, a Boston biotech giant. He, too, had coronavirus concerns.
Cui bono?
Leiden said it was clear to his company at the time that the coronavirus problem was going to become a much larger emergency, and quickly.
According to Leiden, the two talked about three prospective stages of the crisis: the initial need for more testing and the necessity of social distancing becoming a norm, the need for more medical facilities and what would be needed for medical treatment, and lastly how to reopen everyday services once the brunt of the pandemic was over.
This whole f***ing thing is starting to reek!
Given how quickly the outbreak spread, timing was everything, Leiden said in a telephone interview. Leaders who waited a few days or a week to make a decision had “a real problem.”
“He’s stayed two steps ahead of it,” Leiden said of Walsh.
Such discussions brought the severity of the problem into sharp relief for Walsh.
The following day, March 5, the Cambridge biotech giant Biogen said three of its employees had tested positive for the coronavirus after attending a conference at a Boston hotel. The event, at the Marriott Long Wharf Feb. 26-27, would become an epicenter of coronavirus cases locally, with more than 100 directly linked to the conference.....
Huh!
Timing really is everything!
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Time for a run since you can't go to the gym:
A mask-wearing man set up a hammock between two trees along the Charles River on the Esplanade Monday and relaxed as other mask-wearing people ran and cycled by him. (Jim Davis/Globe Staff)
One guy doesn’t feel safe wearing a face mask, and who can blame him?
"Running is among the very best sports for social distancing. It is inherently solitary, and perhaps one of the easiest sports for a novice to jump into, but the apparent spike in runners has led to some concerns and complaints. Specifically, people have been asking those who’re exercising in areas that have seen an increased volume of visitors to be more cognizant of their surroundings, by adding extra space to the recommended 6-foot “social-distancing” rules....."
The Globe went running with Jonathan Levitt and Clara Jeffery, an editor-in-chief of Mother Jones, and I would suggest running away from them as fast as you can!
Think of it as a blessing as you whistle past the graveyard and the Globe zooms in on you while a traumatized nation is having trouble staying home.
"Isolated from their families, children and adults in group homes struggle for normalcy" by Shelley Murphy and Meghan Sorensen Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent, April 4, 2020
Roberta Biscan said her 15-year-old son Connor, who lives in a Hopkinton group home for children with autism, knows a virus is making people sick, but he doesn’t understand why he can’t come home for his usual weekend visits. On the phone, he says he misses going to school, like he used to, and tells his mother he needs a hug.
He got there thanks to the vaccines!
The social isolation caused by the coronavirus pandemic has fallen especially hard on families with special needs children and adults with developmental disabilities. Like Biscan’s son, many may not fully understand what is happening or why, and being apart from their loved ones amid so much uncertainty has added to their burden.
Group homes halted family visits last month as part of an aggressive effort to protect a vulnerable population from the novel coronavirus. Across the state, more than 11,000 people with developmental disabilities live in group settings, yet, despite efforts that have been described as “heroic” by parents and administrators, COVID-19 has spread to staff and residents at some group homes, state officials said.
“Unfortunately, we are going through an unbelievable crisis,” said Kenneth Singer, chief executive of Berkshire County Arc, which operates 42 group homes and an apartment building for residents, ages 22 to 90, with developmental disabilities and brain injuries.
On Friday, state officials said two residents living in group homes overseen by the Department of Developmental Services have died from the coronavirus. Sixty-seven residents and 71 employees have tested positive. They declined to say where they were living or how old they were. Officials did not respond to a request Monday for the latest data.
??????
“We are just hoping the virus affects as few people as possible because they are vulnerable and have medical conditions other than their primary disability," said Leo Sarkissian, executive director of The Arc of Massachusetts.
Operators of group homes and residential schools across the state said they have made every effort to keep residents and staff healthy, while trying to maintain some normalcy.
Residents who routinely spend their days at school or work are now home with staff who serve as teachers, activity directors, housekeepers, and nurses. They organize video chats and phone calls for families. Parents deliver pizza, home-cooked meals, and board games.
I see little evidence of that here.
In the Berkshires, Singer said five or six residents and a “handful” of staff members have tested positive for COVID-19 in recent weeks, and at one point as many as 80 staff were quarantined because they were exposed to someone who had the virus.
Health officials have directed residents who don’t require hospitalization to isolate themselves at home.
With workers worried about contracting the virus, operators said, maintaining enough staff to keep the group homes open is a major concern.
“This is the mother of all crises in terms of complexities,” said Vincent Strully, founder and CEO of the New England Center for Children, a Southborough-based nonprofit that operates a dozen homes in the MetroWest region for more than 120 autistic students who attend the center’s school.
I'm sick of the buzz word triggers!
Strully closed the school on March 16 and staff members now serve on teams that rotate through the group homes around the clock, teaching and caring for students.
Forty-seven staff members who work in the homes are staying in extended-stay hotels at the center’s expense to limit their exposure to the virus and allay fears about spreading it to their families.
Who will want to stay in those rooms afterwards?
On Tuesday, a teacher at one group home became the center’s first employee to test positive for COVID-19, Strully said. The teacher had mild symptoms and is isolated at her home. None of the nine children she had interacted with has exhibited any symptoms and are remaining there on the advice of state health officials, he said. They are being closely monitored by staff who are wearing masks and gowns. “We are becoming some version of a hospital and a school," Strully said.
He said he will only close the group homes as a last resort because the children, some who are nonverbal and have severe and dangerous behavioral issues, need to be there. Most of the staff have chosen to work with autistic children as a career and are committed to keep working, despite the risk. “We’re not going to give up easily," Strully said. "We are going to do it as long as we can staff shifts safely.”
Unlike the old folks, whom they are allegedly shelling around all over the place.
Melmark New England operates a school, now closed because of the pandemic, and 10 homes in Massachusetts for children and adults with intellectual disabilities and autism. It closed one of its homes in Essex County two weeks ago after a student tested positive for COVID-19.
The student was believed to have been exposed to the virus at a community medical center, according to Rita Gardner, chief executive of Melmark, and Helena Maguire, the executive director. Fifteen staffers were placed on a 14-day quarantine and were recently cleared to return to work, they said.
Stay the f*** away from the, right?
Otherwise, you might find they are all quiet!
The group home underwent a deep cleaning and may be used as an “isolation” home for any students who test positive for COVID-19 and can’t go home or have no home to go to, Gardner said.
As of last week, more than 20 staff members had confirmed cases of the virus, and on March 31, a resident at one of Melmark’s adult group homes in Essex County also tested positive, according to Gardner and Maguire.
That resident is being isolated at the home, where he has his own bedroom and bathroom, based on guidance from the CDC and local health officials, Maguire said.
Gardner said she has been inspired and impressed by staff, who are resilient and adept at working with children with complex needs.
“This has been a very challenging time and they have certainly risen to the challenge,” Gardner said.....
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A lot of them are millennials:
"Millennials, burdened with debt, are now facing an economic crisis" by Nathaniel Popper New York Times, April 6, 2020
NEW YORK — The last time a serious economic downturn hit in 2008, Evan Schade was in high school and the crisis didn’t seem like a concern. This time, as the coronavirus has brought the economy to its knees, it has become a personal affair.
When nonessential businesses were closed last month in Kansas City, Mo., where he lives, Schade, 26, lost his job at a carpet store and almost all of the shifts in his second job at a coffee shop. His girlfriend, Kaitlyn Gardner, 23, was laid off from a different coffee shop.
The money they have in their bank accounts, a little more than $1,000, is enough to cover only this week’s $800 rent check — forget about his $300 student loan payments or the health insurance he was hoping to finally sign up for. The couple have spent their time at home applying for unemployment and fruitlessly looking for new work.
“I know so many people my age who are going through the exact same thing,” Gardner said.
The youngest American adults are facing what is, for most of them, the first serious economic crisis of their working lives. By most measures, they are woefully unprepared.
I hope it won't be their last.
While the past few years were largely good ones for the American economy, that did little to help set millennials up with a solid financial foundation. Overloaded with credit card and student debt, and underrepresented in the housing and stock markets, they entered this uncertain period with significant obligations and few resources.
Yeah, they were driven into debt while wealth flowed upward.
Their position looks doubly precarious when measured against older generations today and relative to those generations when they were the same age, from 23 to 35 years old.
Going into the financial crisis of 2008, Generation X was roughly the same age as millennials today, but had on average twice the total assets that millennials have now when all bank accounts, stocks and loans are added together, according to an analysis done by economists at the St. Louis Federal Reserve.
Now members of Generation X, who are 40-55, are in a strong position relative to millennials, even after being battered by the 2008 crisis. They have about four times the assets and more than twice as much in savings as today’s youngest American adults.
Those with college degrees, a minority of the youngest adults, are doing better on average than previous generations when they were the same age, but everyone else is doing significantly worse, according to a Pew Research Center analysis last year.
“Even going into this situation, young adults were in a very precarious situation,” said Reid Cramer, who led the Millennials Initiative at New America, a left wing think tank. “A sudden shock is really going to have a pretty big impact on this generation.”
What is shocking is the "left wing think tank" is funded by none other than JPMorgan Chase, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the US Department of State, and Siemens, among others. That's "left-wing," according to the New York Times.
Of course, you are a conspiracy theorist if you start connecting the dots between these evil, agenda-pushing entities that are all in this together. EVIL!
The turmoil caused by the coronavirus has already brought out other generational divisions. College students partying on Florida beaches have earned the ire of older Americans who face graver health risks when youthful gatherings spread the virus, but while young adults may face fewer health problems, they are more vulnerable to the financial costs of the downturn. Millennials are much more likely to be involved in part-time work and the gig economy, according to government reports, and these have been hard hit. Such work generally provides few benefits to cushion the blow of bad times.
Yeah, once again the master race and their lead mouthpiece are looking to divide us.
The sudden disappearance of paychecks, combined with a wide array of monthly debt payments and the declines in any investments, is forcing some millennials to take desperate measures. Social media has been filled with discussions about how to best take money out of 401(k) retirement accounts to pay for rent.
If the kid is lucky to have a 401-fucking-(k), you a$$holes!!!
The Jew York Times is fucking insulting!!!!!!
Andrew Lawson, 29, was making $500 to $600 a week delivering food for DoorDash on Hawaii’s big island. After the state shut down nonessential businesses, most restaurants closed. In three days of work in one week, Lawson made less than $60, which wasn’t enough to cover the gas to get to Kona, the city with the work.
“Nowadays I might get a $5 order from McDonald’s after three hours of waiting,” he said.
Lawson has a 2-year-old and a pregnant wife, who does not work. They were down to eating plain noodles until he visited a food bank and got a bag of potatoes and some carrots. He has set up accounts on all the social networks to broadcast his need for work — any work.
“Give me something I could feed my family with,” he said. “I don’t care what it is.”
Andrew Lawson, 29, with his pregnant wife, Juliana, and their 2-year-old son, Vesuvianite at their home in Ocean View, Hawaii. With little money coming in, the family has had difficulty in obtaining food. (Megan Spelman/New York Times)
The guy LIVING IN HAWAII is supposed to be the example of a millennial that isn't making it that I am supposed to feel sorry for, huh?
Wow, does the $TENCH of ELTI$M ever permeate my Globe!
The inequality among millennials is even more evident when race is taken into account. Young black families at all educational levels have fallen further behind their white peers over the past two decades in measures like household wealth and homeownership, according to research from New America.
Divide, divide, divide, any difference will do.
“Over time, it is becoming more difficult for young families to accumulate wealth,” said William R. Emmons, the lead economist at the St. Louis Federal Reserve’s Center for Household Financial Stability. “We thought maybe they’d catch up later, but the current situation doesn’t give me much reason to believe that’s going to happen.”
These disadvantages are already shaping the long-term prospects of young Americans. They are much less likely to be married, have children, or own a house than Americans of a similar age in decades past.
It's LOOKING DAMN BLEAK unle$$ you are at the TOP!
Gardner said that she and Schade eventually wanted to have a family and a house, but she said, “We’re both going to be in debt for a while, and having kids is just not feasible.”
--more--"
You guys are going to love your UBI (with $trings, of cour$e).
"Digital tools could speed tracking of coronavirus" by Sharon Begley STAT April 06, 2020
Every strategy for releasing COVID-19’s vise-grip on daily life starts with identifying cases and tracing their contacts — the laborious task of public health workers tracking down people who have crossed paths with a newly diagnosed patient, so they can be quarantined well before they show symptoms.
That typically takes three days per new case, an insurmountable hurdle in the United States, with its low numbers of public health workers and tens of thousands of new cases every day. Existing digital tools, however, using cellphone location data and an app for self-reporting positive test results, could make the impossible possible, the authors of a new analysis argue.
“Traditional manual contact tracing procedures are not fast enough for [the new coronavirus],” researchers at the University of Oxford write in a paper in the journal Science this week, but digital technology "can make contact tracing and notification instantaneous.”
Here is STAT helping push Bill Gates wet dream.
The “technology to the rescue” idea has been gaining steam as the coronavirus pandemic has outpaced everything Europe and the United States have thrown at it, and not because of a deluded belief that digital tech can solve all the world’s woes. Instead, this fix is aimed at identifying cases of COVID-19 and quickly tracing everyone who came into contact with them before they infect others. That has helped countries such as South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore beat back the epidemic, though sometimes through measures that trample privacy.
The TOTALITARIAN STATE at its BE$T!
“We have evidence that this works,” said computational epidemiologist Maia Majumder of Boston Children’s Hospital, referring to contact tracing and case isolation. “The public health consensus is clear that this is what we need to do.”
Who can argue with that, right?
It's in the "public health."
The United States and Europe have hardly attempted contact tracing, however. It requires an army of public health workers or intrusive policies that many citizens oppose, but this week brought efforts to circumvent both obstacles.
Yeah, without the COVID-19 fear campaign they never would have been able to do any of this, but now..... CUI BONO?
One high-profile effort is led by Trevor Bedford, an infectious disease modeler and genomics expert at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. He and his colleagues have launched NextTrace, a project based on the fact that traditional contact tracing doesn’t scale: With more than 200,000 US cases and each case requiring hours of detailed follow-up, doing this by analog methods won’t work.
Oh, another MODELER!
“So much of this virus’s transmission, maybe 15 percent of total cases, is from people who don’t feel sick,” said mathematical biologist Lauren Ancel Meyers of the University of Texas Austin, who is advising NextTrace, “and it’s spreading so quickly, with as few as four days from when one person shows symptoms to when people he infects does."
Another sickening specimen passing herself off as a human being.
NextTrace plans to build a decentralized reporting system in which anyone with confirmed coronavirus can choose to register, anonymously, on an online platform. The platform will use cellphone location and proximity data from people who have opted in to find individuals who might have been exposed and advise them to be tested.
How about everybody just wearing a Star of David or something?
Basically, person A’s positive coronavirus test result would trigger an instant notification, again via the app, to individuals who have been in close contact. The platform would recommend isolation for that individual and quarantining of their contacts. The NextTrace team doesn’t specify if the information would be shared with public health departments, or how soon the system might be up and running.
Into the woods goes the goddamn phone!
Since this approach can “scale massively, it could significantly affect an epidemic even after there is widespread community transmission,” Meyers said. The information on the number of exposed contacts would also allow for better targeting of containment policies, with greater or less social distancing depending on the intensity of community spread.
This f***ers are sick, and are not practicing what they preach re: social distancing!
With the instantaneous tracing promised by digital technology, said Oxford’s Luca Ferretti, an expert in pathogen dynamics and the first author of the Science paper, only 60 percent of cases would have to be isolated and 60 percent of contacts traced — and possibly as few as 50 percent and 40 percent, respectively.
People should have the right to participate or not, both the NextTrace and Oxford researchers say. If uptake is too low, however, the digitally enabled instantaneous tracing wouldn’t find enough contacts to stop an epidemic.
They should have it, but we won't!
A similar platform could serve as an early-warning system for the next outbreak of COVID-19, which may well return later this year even if it fades in the summer. With fewer cases, the level of testing is likely to be even lower than it is today. That risks putting the United States exactly where it was this winter: with COVID-19 already seeded in a few cities and being spread undetected until it was too late.
And THERE YOU GO!
You HAVE BEEN WARNED, America!
“We’d like to identify regions where testing might not be happening and bring it to the attention of health authorities,” said Olivier Elemento of Weill Cornell Medicine, who before the coronavirus epidemic used big data for precision medicine.
Is it a pandemic or epidemic?
Using a tool he and his colleagues built, people can anonymously report symptoms and where they live. It doesn’t collect IP addresses or otherwise track users, “but if we identify new clusters we will let states, counties, and cities know about them,” Elemento said, “so they could increase testing in those areas, put stricter social distancing in place, and alert local hospitals to a potential surge in patients.” A group at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard is developing a similar tool, as is one at the University of Alabama Birmingham.
Always a BUT with them!
--more--"
No more staying home sick, kids:
"As School Moves Online, Many Students Stay Logged Out; Teachers at some schools across the country report that less than half of their students are participating in online learning" by Dana Goldstein and Adam Popescu New York Times, April 6, 2020
Chronic absenteeism is a problem in American education during the best of times, but now, with the vast majority of the nation’s school buildings closed and lessons being conducted remotely, more students than ever are missing class — not logging on, not checking in or not completing assignments.
The absence rate appears particularly high in schools with many low-income students, whose access to home computers and internet connections can be spotty. Some teachers report that less than half of their students are regularly participating.
The trend is leading to widespread concern among educators, with talk of a potential need for summer sessions, an early start in the fall, or perhaps having some or even all students repeat a grade once Americans are able to return to classrooms.
Students are struggling to connect in districts large and small. Los Angeles said last week that about a third of its high school students were not logging in for classes, and there are daunting challenges for rural communities like Minford, Ohio, where many students live in remote wooded areas unserved by internet providers.
Almost as if this plannedemic was going to be used to further the inequality divide regarding ejewkhazion.
Even before the outbreak, chronic absenteeism was a problem in many schools, especially those with a lot of low-income students. Many obstacles can prevent children who live in poverty from making it to class: a parent’s broken-down car or a teenager’s need to babysit siblings, for example, but online learning presents new obstacles, particularly with uneven levels of technology and adult supervision.
Get used to it.
Cratering attendance in some districts contrasts with reports from several selective or affluent schools where close to 100 percent of students are participating in online learning. The dramatic split promises to further deepen the typical academic achievement gaps between poor, middle-class and wealthy students.
No kidding. Hmmm.
There is also concern about whether large numbers of students will need to repeat all or substantial portions of their current grade.
Oh, man!
Might as well just drop out then!
“Many skills build one on another,” Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, a network of urban education systems, said. “If a child misses out on some key idea, then all of a sudden, additional ideas as they’re introduced just become Greek.”
In the Cleveland Metropolitan School District last week, teachers returning from an extended spring break tried to hold virtual parent-teacher conferences for the first time for all of the district’s 38,000 students.
The city of Cleveland has one of the nation’s highest child-poverty rates. Despite the economic slowdown, many parents continue to work full-time outside their homes in fields like sanitation, health and food service, meaning that many students do not have an adult at home to supervise their learning.
Many schools are making efforts to distribute digital devices to students who do not have their own at home. Los Angeles is trying to get them to more than 100,000 students, Mr. Beutner said. The Miami-Dade County Public Schools have distributed more than 80,000 mobile devices for distance learning, and more than 11,000 smartphones to serve as home Wi-Fi hot spots, according to a spokeswoman.....
Ooooooooh!
That explains the RUSH to 5G!
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For those who wish to continue on to college:
"Amid coronavirus, Pine Manor College’s future uncertain" by Deirdre Fernandes Globe Staff, April 6, 2020
I was told it would be a perfect repurpose sight, and notice how all that talk and discussion has gone away? One would thing the Globe would be reporting on such endeavors if they were really happening.
Pine Manor College, which enrolls mostly low-income and first-generation students, was already struggling financially. Then the coronavirus pandemic hit and the Chestnut Hill institution’s future beyond this semester has grown increasingly bleaker, according to state regulators and the regional accreditation agency.
The New England Commission of Higher Education and the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education on Monday cautioned that while they were trying to help Pine Manor stabilize its finances, it was uncertain whether the college could remain open as it is beyond this academic year.
“Owing to the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19), the College’s financial situation has become uncertain, such that it cannot confirm that it can sustain full operations at the current levels beyond the current academic year,” according to a statement published on the commission’s website.
Pine Manor may be the first example of how dire the higher education marketplace has become for many small institutions in the wake of the pandemic.
Then it is over!
Higher education experts have warned that many small colleges were under financial stress before COVID-19 swept across the globe, but the pandemic has made matters worse. Schools have been forced to empty their dorms and go online to contain the spread of coronavirus. As a result, they’ve had to spend money to refund or credit students for room and board that they are no longer using and dip into reserves to upgrade their online teaching capabilities.
They were not forced to do anything! They willingly complied!
Many colleges have been forced to cancel money-making summer programs and aren’t sure whether they will be able to open as usual in the fall and how many students will enroll.
Pine Manor had a robust business renting its wooded grounds neighboring Chestnut Hill mansions for weddings and other events, but it’s unclear when the government will actually allow public gatherings to resume.
Time to cut down the trees.
During the school year, more than 360 students enroll at Pine Manor. Most of them are Black and Hispanic, and more than three out of four students receive federal Pell grants, a marker for poverty. The college educates among the highest share of low-income students in the state, according to higher education officials.
No wonder the Globe is so concerned.
Considering the vulnerable populations that Pine Manor serves, the accrediting agency is trying to help the school find a way forward, said Barbara Brittingham, president of the regional accreditor.
“Pine Manor College has been on the commission’s radar. It serves an important and vulnerable population, but it’s not a wealthy institution,” Brittingham said. “They’re being very responsible in trying to figure out how they could move forward.”
Pine Manor College president Tom O’Reilly did not return calls seeking comment on Monday, but students and the college fought off efforts in 2017 by the town of Brookline to seize land from the college to build an elementary school.
That's past glory and does no good here!
Brittingham said the college has in recent days has found financial support from various quarters, but whether it would be enough to keep the college afloat in the long term was unclear.
Maybe Mrs. Baker could help.
The federal coronavirus stimulus package includes aid for colleges and students, but it falls billions of dollars short of what higher education lobbyists had requested. Still, Pine Manor may be able to access some of that money.
Yeah, still!
The banks get trillions, you get chump change!
Nonetheless, even before the coronavirus pandemic, Pine Manor officials were in conversations with state officials to develop contingency plans for students should the college have to shut down.....
The virus is to blame for everything, even when it is not.
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Related: Harvard University president Larry Bacow, recovered from coronavirus along with his wife, says they’re ‘feeling much better'
Then you should, too, student!
"State probe finds retired Boston school administrator owes city pension fund $67k" by James Vaznis Globe Staff, April 6, 2020
A retired Boston Public Schools headmaster violated state law by collecting the full amount of her pension while working for a public charter school and now owes the city more than $67,000, according to a state investigation released Monday.
In many ways, Linda Nathan was effectively serving as a de facto leader of the Conservatory Lab Charter School in Dorchester, overseeing the principal, developing budgets, and disseminating the school’s best practices to other public schools, which charter schools must do under state law, according to the probe conducted by Inspector General Glenn Cunha.
Yet Nathan, who has an annual pension of $105,000, never appeared on the school’s public payroll. Instead, she worked as the executive director for an affiliated nonprofit, the Center for Artistry and Scholarship, which is located at the charter school, and earned a $150,000 annual salary, plus benefits. Nathan came aboard at the time the charter school eliminated its executive director, and the school initially welcomed her as the new leader.
State law forbids retired public employees who draw a government pension from earning significantly more in the public sector than they would have if they didn’t retire from the position they held — a calculation that tries to anticipate pay raises they would have received.
The law isn't for them, even when it is!
$tate officials are above the law because they are of the Party!
“Ms. Nathan’s pension plus the portion of her salary attributable to public service exceeds what her salary would have been if she had remained a BPS headmaster,” Cunha concluded. “As a result, [my office] recommends that the [Boston] Retirement Board seek recoupment of Ms. Nathan’s excess earnings from her future pension.”
Nathan, in an interview Monday night, said she was stunned by the inspector general’s report and disagreed with its conclusions. She said she looked forward to presenting her case to the Boston Retirement Board.
“I never took a dime of public money,” Nathan said of her nonprofit salary. “I never would have taken this job if I thought it violated any pension laws. All I wanted to do is work on this vision of improving public education through art and music. The report is not valid.”
She never took a dime of public money except for the pension and the money removed from public school budgets to fund charters.
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It would be nice to see her frog-marched.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Time to go overseas:
"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Monday a complete lockdown over the upcoming Passover holiday to control the country’s coronavirus outbreak, but offered citizens some hope by saying he expects to lift widespread restrictions after the weeklong festival. Netanyahu’s announcement came as leaders of the Coptic Orthodox Church in neighboring Egypt said they were suspending Easter celebrations because of the coronavirus. Israel has already restricted movement to help slow the outbreak, allowing people to leave their homes to buy food or other essential activities. In a nationally televised address, Netanyahu said the government was further restricting movement for Passover, which begins Wednesday evening with a festive meal known as the “Seder.” Beginning Tuesday afternoon, Israel will ban movement between cities. From Wednesday evening until Thursday morning, Israelis will not be allowed to leave their homes. Netanyahu said similar travel restrictions would be in place for the holidays of Easter and Ramadan later in April. In Egypt, the Coptic church said it was suspending Easter prayers and celebrations at churches later this month. Church spokesman Boulis Halim told the Associated Press that the church also suspended services for the Holy Week leading up to Easter Sunday, celebrated on April 19 by Egyptian Coptic Orthodox followers, one the world’s oldest Christian communities. Mosques and churches have already been ordered to shut across Egypt to slow the spread of the deadly virus (Associated Press)."
It's as if they were being held in concentration camps:
"Millions of dollars in additional funds are being made available to agencies around the world that provide aid to Holocaust survivors, whose advanced age and health issues makes them particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus, the organization that handles claims on behalf of Jewish victims of the Nazis said Monday. The New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany said the $4.3 million in initial funding would be available to agencies around the world providing care for some 120,000 survivors. The emergency funding includes 200,000 euros ($215,000) from the Alfred Landecker Foundation, established last year by one of Germany’s richest families, whose assets include Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, as a way to help atone for its use of forced laborers during the Nazi era and support of Hitler’s regime. All survivors are elderly, with the end of World War II now 75 years in the past, and many suffered from illness, malnutrition, and other deprivations either at the hands of the Nazis or as they hid from them, which continues to affect their health today. There are no statistics yet as to how many Holocaust survivors have been infected (Associated Press)."
It was only a matter of time before they would be feeding at the trough.
What a f***ing racket!
"Two dozen former diplomats and national security leaders from the United States and Europe called on the Trump administration Monday to ease sanctions against Iran as part of the battle against the coronavirus pandemic. The statement, signed by some of the most storied diplomats in recent US history, said that providing some sanctions relief to Iran could help stem the spread of the disease and potentially save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Iran is one of the world’s coronavirus epicenters, with almost 60,000 confirmed cases and at least 3,600 deaths, though some researchers believe the death toll is far higher. The signatories represented decades of diplomatic and national security expertise. Among them is former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, two former defense secretaries, and a US and a European official who negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran that President Trump withdrew from in 2018. The European signatories include former prime ministers, foreign ministers, ambassadors, and secretary generals of NATO. US officials have resisted relenting on its ‘‘maximum pressure campaign’’ of sanctions, and added more against Iran and Venezuela in recent weeks. State Department officials have defended the measures by noting humanitarian and medical aid is exempt (Washington Post)."
Tells you how phony all this shit is, and the appeal that we are all in this together is phony. The Wars for the Jews continue unabated.
Yeah, the war criminal Albright is leading the charge!
"The coronavirus may infect 95,000 people in Indonesia by next month before easing, a minister said, as authorities ordered people to wear masks to contain the pandemic. The dire forecast, which came as the country reported its biggest daily spike in confirmed cases, is based on a projection by the nation’s intelligence agency, University of Indonesia and Bandung Institute of Technology, Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati told lawmakers in Jakarta. Indonesia has seen a surge in infections in recent weeks after reporting its first cases only in early March. While the death toll at 209 is the highest in Asia after China, confirmed cases at 2,491 in a country of almost 270 million people is fewer than those reported in smaller countries such as Malaysia and the Philippines (Bloomberg News)."
Another government conducting a psyop against its own citizens!
"United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says there has been “a horrifying global surge in domestic violence” in recent weeks as fear of the coronavirus pandemic has grown along with its social and economic consequences. The UN chief, who appealed on March 23 for an immediate cease-fire in conflicts around the world to tackle COVID-19, said in a statement Sunday night it is now time to appeal for an end to all violence, “everywhere, now.” Guterres said that “for many women and girls, the threat looms largest where they should be safest — in their own homes.” He said in some countries, which he didn’t name, “the number of women calling support services has doubled.” At the same time, he said, health care providers and police are overwhelmed and understaffed, local support groups are paralyzed or short of funds, and some domestic violence shelters are closed while others are full (Associated Press)."
The Globe doesn't care because overall crime rates are down.
"Virus deaths slow in places, British PM’s condition worsens" by Colleen Long and Jennifer Peltz Associated Press, April 6, 2020
NEW YORK — The steep rise in coronavirus deaths appeared to be leveling off Monday in hard-hit New York, echoing a trend underway in Italy and Spain, while the crisis escalated alarmingly in Britain, where Prime Minister Boris Johnson was moved to intensive care after his condition deteriorated.
Johnson, 55, was conscious and did not immediately need to be put on a ventilator, his office said. The prime minister is the world’s first known head of government to fall ill with the virus.
In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced the first, faint signs that the outbreak there might be at or near its peak, while warning that this is no time to relax the restrictions aimed at keeping people from getting too close to one another. He ordered bigger fines against violators.
A$$hole!
“The numbers look like it may be turning. ‘Yay, it’s over!’ No, it’s not, and other places have made that mistake,” he said as deaths in the United States climbed past 10,000, with about 350,000 confirmed infections.
Where have they made that mistake?
Outbreaks in other places moved in the opposite direction: France recorded its highest 24-hour death toll since the epidemic began, 833, and Japan considered a state of emergency for Tokyo and other areas because of soaring infections in the country with the world’s third-largest economy and its oldest population.
Funny how Japan did a 180 after the Olympics were postponed!
Worldwide, more than 1.3 million people have been confirmed infected and over 70,000 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University. The true numbers are certainly much higher, because of limited testing, different ways nations count the dead, and deliberate underreporting by some governments.
It's actually the other way around since every death is tagged as COVID-19 now.
The latest data suggests that social distancing appears to be working in some countries, and better than expected.
They have data, they don't have data, blah, blah, blah!
One of the main models on the outbreak, the University of Washington’s, is now projecting about 82,000 US deaths through early August, or 12 percent fewer than previously forecast, with the highest number of daily deaths occurring April 16. The model relies on much more robust data from Italy and Spain and from hospitals.
Yup, the projected death numbers from the models are dropping like WTC towers!
The number of dead in New York State rose past 4,700, and the death toll in New York City rivaled the 2,753 lives lost at the World Trade Center on 9/11.
This is getting f***ing disgusting!
Elsewhere around the world, Austria and the Czech Republic both began openly discussing how to ease some of the crippling restrictions, starting with reopening some small shops and garden centers next week.
No, no, no! Another wave will hit!
Deaths in Britain climbed by more than 400 on Monday, for a total of nearly 5,400 dead. Sunday was especially bleak, with more than 600 deaths — more even than Italy recorded.
Britain has no official post of deputy prime minister, but Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has been designated to take over should Johnson become incapacitated.
A grave-looking Raab said Johnson was “in safe hands” at the hospital, which is treating many virus patients.
Italy’s day-to-day count of new COVID-19 cases dipped again, for the smallest one-day increase in nearly three weeks.
Italy has, by far, the world’s highest death toll — more than 16,500 — but the pressure on intensive care units in the north has eased so much that the region is no longer airlifting patients to other regions.
In Spain, deaths and new infections dropped again. The health ministry reported 637 new deaths, the lowest toll in 13 days, for a total of more than 13,000 dead. New infections were also the lowest in two weeks.
Emergency rooms in the hard-hit Madrid region of 6.6 million were returning almost to normal a week after scenes of patients sleeping on floors and in chairs.
Those were staged photographs!
A report from a federal watchdog agency found that three out of four US hospitals surveyed are already treating patients with confirmed or suspected COVID-19, and some places, like Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., are predicting the peak won’t come until May or well into the summer.
I was starting to feel sick again.
Baton Rouge, La., reported the death of a newborn girl born prematurely after her mother contracted the disease and was put on a ventilator. Louisiana, a state where New Orleans hosts millions of tourists yearly, had more than 500 deaths.....
Are they lying about that one like they did in Connecticut?
--more--"
Related:
"New York, the epicenter of the global coronavirus outbreak, has begun to show the first signs of controlling the crisis: Its staggering death and hospitalization rates have started to stabilize, according to figures released by Governor Andrew Cuomo on Monday, but while striking a note of optimistic caution, Cuomo warned that the state’s progress could continue only if New Yorkers maintained a sense of discipline and suppressed their natural impulse to gather in the parks or on the streets, especially as the spring weather starts improving. “We get reckless,” Cuomo said at his daily news briefing, “you will see these numbers go up again.” The governor’s mixed assessment came as the pandemic entered its second month and neared what federal officials called a crucial moment for determining its future. Even with the promising signs, the virus’ overall toll in New York state was still astonishing: Nearly 5,000 people in the state have died, half of those in New York City, and across the country, many states were reporting alarming increases in cases that were straining hospitals. Federal officials, who have cited projections indicating that the virus could ultimately kill more than 100,000 people nationwide, warned that the next few days could bring a ghastly uptick in the number of deaths. In Florida, Indiana, and Louisiana, the number of fatalities attributed to the virus more than doubled in a week, but there were also signs that the situation was improving on the West Coast, where the virus first surged in the United States. New York City officials are starting to lay contingency plans if deaths from the coronavirus outbreak begin to overwhelm the capacity of morgues: temporarily burying the dead on public land. Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday that the city would consider temporary burials if the deaths from the coronavirus outbreak exceed the space available in city and hospital morgues, but it had not reached that point. “It’s going to be very tough but we have the capacity,” the mayor said (New York Times)."
That report replaced this in my National Notebook:
"New York City officials are starting to lay chilling contingency plans if deaths from the coronavirus outbreak begin to overwhelm the capacity of morgues: temporarily burying the dead in one of the city’s public parks. Mark Levine, chairman of the City Council health committee, said the office of the chief medical examiner was looking into creating temporary mass graves in a public park as it confronts the possibility that deaths from the coronavirus outbreak may soon exceed the capacity of city and hospital morgues. Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday that no such plan had been put in place yet, although he acknowledged it was under consideration. Levine declined to say which park was under consideration, noting only that it would likely have to be a large one “out of the way of the public.” “If we need to do temporary burials to be able to tide us over to pass the crisis, and then work with each family on their appropriate arrangements, we have the ability to do that,” he said, adding, “We may well be dealing with temporary burials so we can deal with each family later.” The medical examiner’s office said in a statement, “We are planning for all possibilities, however no decision on this has been made, and there is still adequate capacity at this time.” Levine, however, said in an interview: “This is definitely not in the hypothetical stage now. I think it’s fair to say we are moving to do this.” In one of his posts on Twitter, Levine said that the bodies could be placed in “trenches dug for 10 caskets in a line.” “It will be done in a dignified, orderly — and temporary — manner,” he wrote. Last week, the medical examiner’s office rushed 45 new refrigerated trailers to hospitals around the city that had started to report that their in-house morgues were filling up. The delivery of the mobile freezer units came as part of a plan — the “Pandemic Influenza Surge Plan for In- and Out-of-Hospital Deaths” — that the medical examiner has been using to deal with the sharp rise in the number of bodies. Levine said plans for the possible use of “temporary interment” had been mapped out as part of that plan. He said the city had to face the reality that “traditional burial system has largely frozen up.” “We are relying on freezers now to hold bodies, but that capacity is almost entirely used up,” he said, describing temporary interment as “essentially an extension of the freezer system.” In recent days, the virus has tripled the number of people dying in the city compared with an average day. Not only are hundreds of people dying in hospitals, straining their morgues, but the number dying at home is exploding, said Aja Worthy Davis, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s office. Before the pandemic, she said, at-home deaths ranged between 20 and 25 a day. Now they average around 200, she said. Levine said the possible sites for mass burials would be a city park or on Hart Island in the Bronx, where inmates from Rikers Island are typically employed to bury the indigent in potter’s field. Hart Island has logistical challenges because it is inaccessible and is a secure Department of Correction facility, so there are limitations on who can go there and under what circumstances, Levine said. De Blasio, asked about the city’s capacity to accommodate the dead, said, “I just don’t want to go into detail because I don’t think it’s a great thing to be talking about publicly, but we have the capacity we need.”
They want to throw your loved ones in a mass grave and then dig them up later like what happened with the Nazis!
No worries about rot or infection?
The whole ghastly idea is based on lies, btw. The refrigerated trucks full of corpses have been found to be props, that's all.
I wonder if those mobile freezer units are anything like Saddam's mobile biological labs.
"When a tiger tests positive for coronavirus, the immediate question is: What about other cats? Nadia, a 4-year-old Malayan tiger who had a dry cough and a slight loss of appetite, tested positive for the novel coronavirus, the Bronx Zoo in New York City reported Sunday. She is doing well, according to Paul Calle, the zoo’s chief veterinarian, and, he said, neither Nadia’s infection nor reports from China of domestic cats being infected should make cat owners fear for their pets or fear the cats may pass the virus to humans (New York Times)."
I'm sick and tired of New York Times' lies.
My printed lead was this:
"A federal internal watchdog is corroborating warnings by governors and front-line health care workers that hospitals’ ability to combat the coronavirus pandemic is being impeded by shortages of tests, protective gear, staff, and space, as well as inconsistent government advice. Some hospitals are so desperate for protective masks that they are scrounging them from auto body shops and nail salons, according to a report by the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services. At least one hospital is making its own hand sanitizer by mixing gel used for ultrasounds with alcohol from a distillery, the report said. The report is the first public federal critique of the capacity of the nation’s hospitals to cope with the flood of infected patients in coronavirus hot spots. In substantiating complaints about inadequate equipment, it counters assertions by President Trump that hospitals and state officials advocating for them are merely being greedy. The report’s findings are based on a survey of 343 hospitals spanning 46 states. It was conducted during five days at the end of March (Washington Post)."
They need to talk to a Mr. Baruch Feldheim then.
Related:
"Stuck inside with nowhere to go, Chloe Smith still makes sure she has her hair and nails done. The 17-year-old high school student has swapped her regular salon appointments with an at-home DIY beauty parlor, complete with a nail kit, UV light for gel manicures, and a box of home relaxer. She may not have to head to class — her Chicago-area school is closed at least through the month — but she’s still posting to TikTok....."
Just as long as it isn't Zoom, and that's what talking-head media is doing, too, right?
"The Navy’s top civilian excoriated the fired commander of the USS Theodore Roosevelt to its crew Monday as the sailors huddled on the island of Guam amid a coronavirus outbreak among their ranks, according to a transcript that was leaked online Monday. Acting Navy secretary Thomas B. Modly addressed the crew of the aircraft carrier Monday afternoon via the ship’s internal loudspeaker system. In a profane and defensive address that one crew member described in an interview as “whiny, upset, irritated, condescending,” Modly took repeated shots at the integrity of Captain Brett E. Crozier, who was removed from command last week, and eventually injected partisan political tones into the address by attacking former vice president Joe Biden, who has repeatedly criticized Crozier’s removal. Modly’s visit to the aircraft carrier followed the firing of Crozier after an e-mail he wrote seeking further help for his stricken crew was leaked to The San Francisco Chronicle. Modly said Crozier was “too naïve or too stupid to be a commanding officer” if he thought that letter wasn’t going to leak (New York Times)."
They really came down hard on Crozier and aborted his career.
Also see:
White House pushes unproven drug for virus, but doctors wary
Then it must work.
Body of RFK granddaughter recovered in Md.
Could that possibly be a message to the anti-vaxx RFK Jr. to keep quiet?
"Police in Leicester are trying to identify a woman who allegedly sprayed Lysol into a Walmart employee’s face on March 27. According to a Facebook post by police, the woman assaulted the Walmart worker with disinfectant after she was informed that there was a limit on the number of Lysol cans that she could purchase. The woman responded by spraying the cashier in the eyes with the Lysol, then completed her purchase and left in a vehicle that was believed to be an Uber. Police said EMS responded to the scene to treat the cashier. Police shared a photo of the suspect on social media and asked that anyone with information to contact....."
Should have had a sneeze guard on duty, and the car crashed while escaping.
"A Milford police officer fatally shot a 39-year-old man Sunday night when the suspect allegedly charged at him with a metal pipe, authorities said. In a statement, Worcester District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr.'s office identified the slain suspect as Philip Castonguay III, who lived on Glines Avenue in Milford. Police were called to the street around 8:30 p.m. Sunday for a report of a disturbance caused by Castonguay, the statement said. Prosecutors didn’t name the officer. The officer was placed on administrative leave according to standard protocol. The shooting remains under investigation by State Police, Early’s office, and Milford police....."
The police will eventually be cleared and absolved, they always are.
"The Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley was placed on lockdown Monday after a fight between three inmates left two stabbed and one of those two men hospitalized, state officials said Monday. The brawl in a general population housing unit involved a homemade weapon, the state Department of Correction said in an e-mail. An emergency response was called, and correction department staff were able to separate the three inmates, the department said. The men were not identified because of state criminal records laws. “Two inmates were stabbed with the weapon; one required transportation to an outside hospital for treatment,” Cara Savelli, a Department of Correction spokeswoman, said in a statement. The weapon was recovered, the Worcester district attorney was notified, and the altercation is under investigation, officials said....."
Two accused the other of being infected with coronavirus after they coughed, and I sure am glad they are emptying the jails.
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Meanwhile, in other news:
Inspector general fired by Trump urges whistle-blowers ‘to bravely speak up’
Ah, shut up!
Supreme Court rules on traffic stops and age bias
Irrelevant decisions given were we are headed.
Wisconsin governor postpones Tuesday’s elections
Which is too bad because “Democrats have always been good about getting out the vote on the day of the primary, and if you’re looking at the newspapers, watching TV, you know it’s dangerous right now.”
"President Trump said he had a “really wonderful, warm conversation” with Joe Biden Monday about the coronavirus outbreak. “He gave me his point of view, and I fully understood that, and we just had a very friendly conversation,” Trump said at his daily press briefing. The president said he and Biden agreed not to share the details of their conversation, but confirmed an earlier statement from the Biden campaign that the Democrat offered “suggestions’’ on how to address the pandemic, but Trump added: “It doesn’t mean that I agree with those suggestions.’’ Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, said in a statement that the two had a “good call’’ where Biden “expressed his appreciation for the spirit of the American people in meeting the challenges facing the nation.”
That does it. So much for the political puppet show and wrestling match as portrayed in the pre$$.
"The State Department on Monday designated an ultranationalist movement based in Russia as a terrorist organization, the first time it has applied that label to a white supremacist group. The United States for years has applied the ‘‘global terrorist’’ label to Islamist groups, but officials say the designation of the Russian Imperial Movement signals a growing concern about transnational white supremacist organizations. ‘‘These designations are unprecedented,’’ said Ambassador Nathan Sales, the State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator. ‘‘We are taking actions no previous administration has taken to counter this threat.’’ US officials say the group, which has two training facilities in St. Petersburg, provides paramilitary-style training to neo-Nazis, including hand-to-hand combat and tactical weapons instruction. The targeting of the Russian group may be used by the Trump administration to push back against criticisms that it hasn’t taken white nationalism seriously....."
That's Pompeo's State Department, and it's with the goal of labeling dissenters here at home as Russian agents!
I mean, seriously, the Russians helping Nazis?
Ukraine continues to battle forest fire near Chernobyl
The forest fire in the contaminated area around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant that has raised radiation fears, but I can not imagine why.
So who started the fire, folks?
Defendant in Slovak reporter’s slaying sentenced to 23 years
The case involves the alleged contract killings of an investigative journalist and his fiancee, a case that triggered a political crisis and brought down the country’s government, and I don't mean to appear indifferent but the story was not for me and has fallen down the pre$$ memory hole.
