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New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell today said she does not expect any large events to take place in the city for the remainder of 2020. While discussion has begun about how to re-start the economy and more normal activities when the coronavirus pandemic ends, the mayor said it is likely that a certain amount of social distancing will continue for some time, and she said that will have an impact on a lot of New Orleans events. "My recommendation is absolutely no large events such as French Quarter Fest and Jazz Fest, even Essence Festival, as it relates to the...

San Francisco's Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved an emergency ordinance requiring the city to secure at least 8,250 hotel rooms for three affected groups amid the stay-at-home order, with 7,000 reserved for the city's homeless. In addition to the 7,000 rooms for shielding the city's homeless residents from the coronavirus, the city would provide 500 rooms for discharged hospital patients and 750 for frontline workers. Also, the rooms must be acquired by April 26, according to the ordinance. The city has maintained it will only provide hotel rooms for homeless people in the shelter system and for single-room-occupancy...

I was going to write about the staggering amounts of money the Feds are spending on fighting the Wu Flu War. But when the numbers for March came out on the Treasury MTS on Friday the result was bupkis. See for yourself at my new Coronavirus COVID-19 page at usgovernmentspending.com. Oh, the federal debt went up by $370 billion last month, but that happens all the time. And with 30-year Treasuries yielding 1.35 percent, who’s complaining except widows and orphans? So, let’s talk instead about our liberal friends blaming President Trump. Two months ago, they were blaming him for acting...

BERLIN - German authorities say police have arrested four suspected members of the Islamic State group alleged to be planning an attack on American military facilities. Federal prosecutors said the suspects were arrested by tactical police units early Wednesday at various locations in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia. They identified the men as Azizjon B., Muhammadali G., Farhodshoh K. and Sunatullokh K. - all citizens of Tajikistan. The suspects’ surnames weren’t released for privacy reasons. The men’s alleged leader, a 30-year-old Tajik man identified only as Ravsan B., has been in jail since March 2019 on unspecified charges. Prosecutors...

Embattled Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer picked an odd time to attack the state’s DeVos family, a founder of the giant Amway health, beauty, and home care firm that has been loading up the state with the personal protective equipment sought in the coronavirus crisis. Whitmer, facing a recall movement after extending the state’s virus lockdown, lashed out at the “DeVos family” Monday, claiming that they are behind an upcoming protest from conservatives in the state. Then today, after the family rejected the attack, she tried to play nice and issued a statement praising their firm, founded by Jay Van Andel...

The late Sage of Baltimore, H. L. Mencken, once wrote, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” Polling suggests that America’s governors and mayors have done the terrified, beaten-down people’s bidding after saturation media coverage of panic-inducing epidemiological modeling made Americans strangely docile. If a poll released by Zogby Analytics on April 10 is to be believed, a supermajority of likely voters are fine with the lockdowns -- and perhaps the harsh un-American tactics -- used by states and localities to secure compliance with their emergency fiats...

Please FREEP this poll. It is WAY skewed to Yes, and hopefully you have heard about Gov Whitmer's recent draconian executive order.

Liberal outlet Politico exploited the coronavirus-induced "economic meltdown" and translated it into a political tool to be used by Democrats against Republicans to win races in Texas. In an absurd story headlined, “Economic meltdown gives Democrats new hope in Texas,” Politico bleated that “The twin economic shock of the coronavirus pandemic and a collapsing oil market has upended the political landscape in Texas." The outlet continued drooling that this was "driving Republicans into an unfamiliar defensive crouch and giving restive Democrats an unexpected election-year lift.”

Andrea Bocelli's mesmerising Music For Hope live concert from the deserted Duomo di Milano has broken world records. The opera singer's Easter Sunday's performance has become the biggest live-streamed classical music event of all time, with a combined 35 million people viewing the 30-minute concert. The historic event reached over 2.8 million peak concurrent viewers, making it one of the biggest musical live stream performances of all-time and the largest simultaneous audience for a classical live stream in YouTube history.

BRUSSELS - The European Union moved Wednesday to head off a chaotic and potentially disastrous easing of restrictions that are limiting the spread of the coronavirus, warning its 27 nations to move very cautiously as they return to normal life and base their actions on scientific advice. With Austria, the Czech Republic and Denmark already lifting some lockdown measures, the EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, rushed out its roadmap for members of the world’s biggest trade bloc to coordinate an exit from the lockdowns, which they expect should take at least a few months and involve large-scale testing. Brussels...

Just because we’re all at home isolating, doesn’t mean nature is. A man built a tiny picnic table for the squirrels in his neighborhood to eat on -- an idea that has charmed Twitter so much, people in quarantine all over the United States have started making their own tables for the woodland creatures in their area.

LONDON - The British government must publish its exit strategy from the stringent lockdown that was imposed to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer said on Wednesday. The nationwide lockdown, imposed on March 23, is due to be reviewed by Thursday. Foreign minister Dominic Raab, who is deputising for Prime Minister Boris Johnson while he recovers from COVID-19, said on Monday he did not expect to make any changes to the restrictions for now. Governments around the world are grappling with how to reverse measures put in place to contain the outbreak that...

America's colleges are rife with corruption. The financial squeeze resulting from COVID-19 offers opportunities for a bit of remediation. Let's first examine what might be the root of academic corruption, suggested by the title of a recent study, "Academic Grievance Studies and the Corruption of Scholarship." The study was done by Areo, an opinion and analysis digital magazine. By the way, Areo is short for Areopagitica, a speech delivered by John Milton in defense of free speech. Authors Helen Pluckrose, James A. Lindsay and Peter Boghossian say that something has gone drastically wrong in academia, especially within certain fields within...

Two McDonald's employees in Florida have filed a $500m class action lawsuit, accusing the fast food giant of fostering "systemic sexual harassment". Jamelia Fairley and Ashley Reddick are named on behalf of some 5,000 women from over 100 US McDonald's outlets. It is backed by Time's Up, a high-profile legal charity set up as part of the #MeToo movement. McDonald's said it is "committed" to addressing all harassment claims. "McDonald's has always been committed to ensuring that our employees are able to work in an environment that is free from all forms of discrimination and harassment," the company said in...

Comcast Corp. said most of the original shows that were to headline the launch of its Peacock streaming service likely won’t be ready until 2021 - another setback for a platform already coping with the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics to next year. “The majority of our original productions, like virtually all productions across the world, have been paused,” said Matt Strauss, chairman of Peacock, in a call to the press on Tuesday during which he discussed the challenges created by the global coronavirus pandemic. Mr. Strauss said the service would have a “materially limited slate and launch in 2020.”...

As our national lockdown drags on, Americans seem less and less inclined to move swiftly toward societal reopening. Perhaps that's due to the consistent media focus on the risks of reopening. Perhaps that's also due to the psychological comfort of the status quo: When we've been made to feel safe in our home, it's difficult to leave it. Or perhaps we, as a society, have so fundamentally altered our own perception of risk aversion that we aren't willing to leave our houses unless the risk is close to zero. Whatever the reason, it is simply untenable to lock Americans down...

PING LIST Some of you have asked to be placed on the COVID-19 Update Ping List. Those who give me a request, will be placed on the list before the next Update is posted. If a person has expressed an appreciation for the data I'm presenting, I may add that person to the Ping List. Some folks don't like to be on ping lists, and I won't mind if you would rather I remove your name from the list. COVID-19 Update As of 04/14/2020 22:35 PDST (taken at 23:59) Good morning everyone. Thank you for stopping by to check out...

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The Briarcliff Skilled Nursing Center in Carthage is now reporting two deaths related to COVID-19, as well as seven residents and five staff members who have tested positive, in an update Tuesday on their website. The facility has had 28 people tested for coronavirus. Five residents tested negative. The facility said eight residents and one employee had pending tests.

Professor Yitzhak Ben Israel of Tel Aviv University, who also serves on the research and development advisory board for Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, plotted the rates of new coronavirus infections of the U.S., U.K., Sweden, Italy, Israel, Switzerland, France, Germany, and Spain. The numbers told a shocking story: irrespective of whether the country quarantined like Israel, or went about business as usual like Sweden, coronavirus peaked and subsided in the exact same way. In the exact, same, way. His graphs show that all countries experienced seemingly identical coronavirus infection patterns, with the number of infected peaking in the sixth week...