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BERLIN - A European technology platform to support smartphone apps that can help trace people at risk of infection by the new coronavirus is gaining support from governments, one of its prime movers said on Friday. Seven countries have either formally supported the Pan-European Privacy Preserving Proximity Tracing initiative or tasked one of its members with developing a national app, German tech entrepreneur Chris Boos told Reuters. PEPP-PT has emerged as a leading proponent of the use of Bluetooth short-range communications between personal devices as a proxy for measuring the risk that a person infected with coronavirus can pass it...

Last week, I wrote about the stupidity of rooting against hydroxychloroquine simply because Donald Trump has mentioned that it holds some therapeutic promise in the fight against coronavirus. This NBC News piece by Heidi Przybyla is the kind of shoddy journalism to which I was referring: A New York woman with coronavirus symptoms died last week after being prescribed a drug cocktail with known cardiac side effects, and family members say she was not tested for COVID-19 or for heart problems before receiving the medication. The piece goes on to mention — twice — that Trump touted the drug, and...

Over half of likely Arizona voters surveyed said they’d choose political newcomer Mark Kelly over current seatholder Sen. Martha McSally in their race, according to a poll released Wednesday. Kelly, a Democrat, led McSally 51%-42% in the OH Predictive Insights survey of 600, with 7% undecided. The cellphone-landline poll of 600 contacted April 7-8 had a margin of error of 4%.

On this date in 1975, Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge — Day One, Year Zero of its nightmarish four-year reign over Cambodia. That very day, the Prime Minister of the defeated regime, Long Boret, was arrested and summarily shot at the city’s Cercle Sportif. Only weeks earlier, he had been furiously trying to negotiate any sort of peace with the advancing guerrillas … but his doomed government had little leverage. Boret was among several high-ranking officials whose names were on a death list the Khmer Rouge announced publicly; when the United States abandoned its support and evacuated days...

Wuhan (China) (AFP) - Nestled in the hilly outskirts of the city at the heart of the coronavirus crisis, a Chinese high-security biosafety laboratory is now the subject of US claims it may be the cradle of the pandemic. Chinese scientists have said the virus likely jumped from an animal to humans in a market that sold wildlife in Wuhan, but the existence of the lab has fuelled conspiracy theories that the germ spread from the facility. The institute is home to the China Centre for Virus Culture Collection, the largest virus bank in Asia which preserves more than 1,500...

It is the American people, not the government who will decide when this lockdown is over. And they are getting closer to that decision. New York City has been on lockdown for about a month. Up until this past week the effect has been stark and nearly universal. Most mornings, weather permitting, I sit in my small Brooklyn backyard as the day begins. For weeks the loudest sound has been the silence, quiet streets forming a backdrop for distant sirens and harbor boat horns. That is changing, the white noise of car traffic, like an ocean lapping on a beach...

Since infancy, the vast majority of us are brought up to believe that we are all the same. As David Brooks put it, “the gospel of multiculturalism preaches that all groups and cultures are equally wonderful.” In our current political climate, to suggest otherwise is akin to applying tar to one’s own skin and rolling around in a pile of feathers. The problem with the idealistic notion of “global” equality is that the premise that “we are all the same” is patently absurd. In the same way that John Lennon’s “Imagine” offers a ridiculously oversimplified explanation of the barriers to...

While American liberals castigate President Donald Trump as racist for countering Chinese Communist Party propaganda (which claims the coronavirus originated in America) by referring to the "Chinese virus," black people in China face extra quarantines, exclusion from businesses, suspicion from police, and some have even been booted from their own homes in the name of fighting the virus. "The way they are treating black people, you cannot accept," Congolese businessman Felly Mwamba, who has lived in China for 16 years and now faces restrictions in the southern city of Guangzhou, told The New York Times. He said he found himself...

After a massive citizen protest at the state capitol, several Michigan sheriffs announced they will not enforce some of Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's executive shelter-in-place orders, arguing they are bound by the Constitution. Sheriffs Mike Borkovich, Ted Schendel, Ken Falk and Kim Cole promised to continue abiding by social distancing guidelines but contend Whitmer "has created a vague framework of emergency laws that only confuse Michigan citizens." "While we understand her desire to protect the public, we question some restrictions that she has imposed as overstepping her executive authority," said the sheriff of Michigan's 101st state House district, comprise of...

Police in Maine are warning the public after some residents have received a text from a scammer during the COVID-19 outbreak. The text claims that you have come in contact with someone who has tested positive or is showing symptoms of the coronavirus. It says you must self-isolate and it directs you to click on a link for more information. “DO NOT click the link!” the Thomaston (Maine) Police Department warned. “It is not a message from any official agency. It is however a gateway for bad actors to find their way into your world.” The department issued the warning...

Stanley Kurtz ranks as one of this country’s most insightful critics of higher education. The National Association of Scholars chose wisely in commissioning him to write a report on what has happened to the teaching of Western civilization on the postmodern campus. For those worried about the future of the republic, The Lost History of Western Civilization offers little solace. The opposition has reached the red zone and appears close to putting the game away. Kurtz’s potent and well-written diagnosis does go a long way toward identifying the more prominent “scholarly” culprits responsible for what can only be described as...

Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman called the closing of nonessential businesses in Nevada "total insanity" during a city council meeting on Wednesday, and pushed for state officials to speed up the recovery process before it's too late. "This shutdown has become one of total insanity in my opinion," she said. "For there is no backup of data as to why we are shut down from the start. No plan in place, how to move through the shutdown or how even to come out of it." Goodman, who is also a Democrat, called for the entire state to be reopened as...

Once upon a time we lived in a country where people knew there were risks to living. That was before the rise of the federal agencies striving to eliminate all chance of sickness or death. Why should we remain closed until a vaccine is developed? It took 30 years from the development of the Polio vaccine and mass public inoculations, to eliminate polio in the US. Vaccines for chickenpox, measles (both kinds), mumps, whooping cough, scarlet fever, etc. didn't exist until most of us were well into adulthood and had suffered through each (except scarlet fever). 57,000 people in the...

Poor Joe. He is clearly not up to the job of being President. Here he struggles to make a coherent sentence he started during a discussion on CNN with Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Look at the look on Gupta’s face as Biden struggled for words. . . .

Trump announced Tuesday that the U.S. will halt monetary contributions to the World Health Organization while the administration reviews the mistakes it made managing the pandemic. Now, president Trump has announced where the funds will be going instead — to two organizations fighting the coronavirus: Samaritan’s Purse and the Red Cross.

THE TALE OF DONALD TRUMP AND THE PICKET FENCE “Hello, old chap, you got stuck with the big decision, didn't you?" ”Donald wheeled suddenly and said:“Why, it’s you, Andrew! I warn’t noticing.” “Say—I’m swimming in glowing press, I am. Don’t you wish you were? But of course you’d druther work on reopening the economy — wouldn’t you? Even if people gonna criticize you if it ain't picture perfect afterwards.” Donald contemplated the Governor a bit, and said: “What do you call work?” “Why, ain’t that work? ”Donald resumed his hard work, and answered carelessly: “Well, maybe it is, and...

Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido is home to about 5 million people. When the coronavirus began spreading around the world in February, Hokkaido was the first place in Japan to declare a state of emergency. And that early decision appeared to work. The number of new cases dropped and the emergency order was lifted. When the emergency ended, Hokkaido Gov. Naomichi Suzuki said, “There was no surge of infected patients that led to the collapse of the medical environment. We overcame without the fearful circumstance.”In essence, Hokkaido had flattened the curve without overwhelming the health system. The emergency was...

The happiest I’ve been in six weeks was reading this story.Investors read it too, with the Dow Futures market suddenly evincing joy as well. My layman’s understanding is that remdesivir has always been the best hope among scientists for a “miracle drug” that might put a real dent in the death toll. Hydroxychloroquine gets all the press because Trump has seized on it for whatever reason, but the evidence of its efficacy so far is mixed. The French study that put the drug on the world’s radar screen as a potential silver bullet against coronavirus was later withdrawn by...

Are masks and gloves all you need to save yourself from certain death from the Coronavirus?