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Chinese epicenter Wuhan raises number of virus dead by about 50 percent China raised Wuhan’s coronavirus death toll by nearly 50 percent Friday following weeks of allegations that officials were underreporting the numbers to make the situation there look better than it actually was. The city where the coronavirus outbreak is believed to have originated is now reporting 3,869 deaths after adding 1,290 to its previously-announced figure. Numbers of total cases in the city of 11 million were also raised by 325 to 50,333, accounting for about two-thirds of China’s total 82,367 announced cases. Chinese state media claimed Friday that...

A Smithfield Foods pork processing plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, was visited by representatives from its Chinese Communist Party-tied parent company one month before the first COVID-19 case was confirmed at the facility, according to three employees. After the first illness was confirmed at the plant on March 26, the facility quickly became the epicenter of the state’s outbreak of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem wrote in an April 11 letter that 238 plant employees had contracted the virus, accounting for 38 percent of the state’s confirmed...

New York Federal Reserve President John Williams said he doesn’t see full economic growth returning to the U.S. in 2020. While he sees pockets of the economy, such as construction, coming back, he expects people to continue to be reluctant to attend big public gatherings. New York Federal Reserve President John Williams told CNBC on Friday he sees some parts of the economy coming back online but doubts growth will return to normal this year. Construction should be among the first to return, he said in a “Squawk Box” interview with Steve Liesman. That echoed comments from Philadelphia Fed President...

Amid a series of documents released by the Senate Judiciary Committee [SEE HERE] there is a rather alarming letter from the DOJ to the FISA Court in July 2018 that points toward an institutional cover-up. [Link to Letter] Before getting to the substance of the letter, it’s important to put the release in context. After the FISA Court reviewed the DOJ inspector general report, the FISC ordered the DOJ-NSD to declassify and release documents related to the Carter Page FISA application. In the cover letter for this specific release to the Senate Judiciary and Senate Intelligence committees, the DOJ cites...

Patrick Rooney of Old School™ (Natural Health / Success / Freedom) discusses three key missing guidelines from President Trump's plan to bring America and its economy back.

The Hill reports Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) on Thursday night said the protests that took place in her state Wednesday demanding an end to her “stay-at-home” order could result in an extension of social distancing measures like it. Whitmer, during an interview with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, said that the protests are the “kind of irresponsible action that puts us in this situation where we might have to actually think about extending stay-at-home orders, which is supposedly what they are protesting.” WATCH: Gov. Whitmer tells @Maddow that Wednesday’s protest at Michigan’s Capitol is the “kind of irresponsible action that...

The world's largest randomized clinical trial of potential coronavirus treatments is underway in Britain and has recruited 5,000 patients in record time, researchers say. The British patients are scattered across 165 National Health Service hospitals, trial leader Peter Horby told The Guardian on Friday. "This is by far the largest trial in the world," said Horby, an Oxford University professor of emerging infectious diseases and global health. The Randomized Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy, or "Recovery" trial, is testing four promising treatments for the coronavirus disease. If the science supports it, they will be given to NHS patients as quickly as...

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...