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California Governor Gavin Newsom on Thursday ordered beaches in Orange County in the southern part of the state to close, after crowds defied public health guidelines to throng the popular shoreline last weekend. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8260648 https://ift.tt/2VVk2jD

U.S. President Donald Trump said he would consider bringing former national security adviser Michael Flynn, a key figure in the probe into Russia's interference in the 2016 election, back into his administration. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8260648 https://ift.tt/2z33zk3

Hundreds of protesters, some armed, gathered at Michigan's state Capitol in Lansing on Thursday objecting to Governor Gretchen Whitmer's request to extend emergency powers to combat COVID-19, an appeal Republican lawmakers ignored. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8260648 https://ift.tt/2Wfnm7P

Less than 24 hours after Los Angeles became the first major U.S. city to offer free coronavirus tests for all, a website used for sign-ups strained under the demand on Thursday as appointments were completely booked for anyone not showing symptoms. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8260648 https://ift.tt/2y76KaC

Disney is in early development of a live-action remake of its 1997 animated movie "Hercules," with "Avengers" filmmakers Joe and Anthony Russo producing through their AGBO production company. Disney has hired action specialist Dave Callaham to write the "Hercules" script. Callaham teamed with Sylvester Stallone for the original screenplay for "The Expendables," creating his character […] from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8260727 https://ift.tt/2WgEU3o

A man armed with a high-powered assault fired multiple rounds at the Cuban embassy in Washington early Thursday, authorities said, damaging the building but without causing any injuries. Police arrested the suspect, identified as 42-year-old Alexander Alazo of Aubrey, Texas. "This morning at approximately 2:15 am, US Secret Service officers responded to the Embassy of Cuba following reports of shots fired," the Secret Service said in a statement. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8260727 https://ift.tt/35hW0SG

"It affects your self-esteem. When you grow up with nothing, you believe you deserve nothing," Fender says of the story behind his powerful track "Dead Boys." from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8260727 https://ift.tt/2WdDUgv

Jordan's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ambassador Dhaifallah Al-Fayez, said the additional harvesting period "will end this evening." from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8260727 https://ift.tt/2KMSQgn

Protesters held signs, waved American flags and even carried firearms as lawmakers debated extending Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's state of emergency. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8260727 https://ift.tt/2SDXOk7

Biden and his campaign have been unloading ads accusing Trump of weakness on China and conducted a series of local television interviews in swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, lambasting what they see as the Republican president's botched handling of the coronavirus pandemic that started in China but has now killed more than 60,000 people in the United States. In its most incendiary language yet, an aide from the Biden campaign told Reuters that Trump's handling of the crisis had led to scores of U.S. deaths. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8260727 https://ift.tt/2Yo49Ue

The Philippines is not going to buy both. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8260727 https://ift.tt/3aPao6g

Brexit trade negotiations face collapse unless the EU abandons its demands for continued access to UK fishing waters, sources close to the talks have said. Brussels has called for EU boats to keep access under “existing conditions” as a price for the free trade agreement being negotiated by the two sides. The UK insists any fishing agreement must be separate from the trade deal with access negotiated annually in a similar fashion to Norway’s agreement with the bloc. A UK source close to the negotiations said that the EU’s red line would need to change, otherwise the talks could be terminated in June. “There are some fundamentals that we're not going to change, nor going to move on. Because they are not so much negotiating positions as they're sort of what an independent state does” the source said. “An independent state has independent control over coastal waters,” the source added, “what we are wanting now is an EU understanding that we are not going to subordinate our laws to...

An Indiana man charged with murdering a US postal worker this week admitted he confronted her because his mail delivery had been suspended due to his “aggressive dog,” prosecutors said.Tony Cushingberry-Mays, 21, was charged with second-degree murder, assaulting a federal employee, and discharging a firearm during a crime for the death of Angela Summers, a 45-year-old postal worker who was gunned down Monday afternoon during her mail delivery route in east Indianapolis, according to the United States District Court of Southern Indiana.The mother-of-one, who had joined the US Postal Service in 2018, died in the hospital. According to federal law, killing an on-duty federal employee can be punishable by death or a life sentence. To date, the Bureau of Labor says four postal workers have been killed during workplace homicides in the last seven years. “Angela was such a joy to be around, she was such a breath of fresh air. This is the worst thing that’s happened in my career,” Pau...

US prosecutors allege ‘El Tigre’ trafficked cocaine on behalf of Honduran presidentUS federal prosecutors have accused the former national police chief of Honduras of trafficking tonnes of cocaine to the US on behalf of the country’s president, Juan Orlando Hernández, and his brother, who was convicted of similar charges in October.Hernández was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the trial of his brother Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, but the US has continued to call him an ally in its “war on drugs”.According to the complaint filed on Thursday by the Southern District of New York, the former police chief Juan Carlos Bonilla “participated in extreme violence, including the murder of a rival trafficker, to further the conspiracy.”Prosecutors also allege that Bonilla was entrusted with “special assignments, including murder” by President Hernández – who is identified as a co-conspirator – and his brother, Tony.Bonilla, an imposing figure known as El Tigre (the Tiger), was appointed...

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin told President Vladimir Putin on Thursday that he had been diagnosed with the new coronavirus and was temporarily stepping down to recover. Mishustin, 54, suggested that First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov serve as acting prime minister in his absence. Putin, who was listening on a televised video conference, sighed when he heard the news, wished Mishustin a speedy recovery and said he agreed with the proposed replacement. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8260727 https://ift.tt/2xlu0RB

Confirmed coronavirus cases in Ghana have surged above 2,000, increasing 24% in a matter of days, health officials announced Thursday, reflecting mostly test taken during a recent three-week lockdown in the West African country's two largest cities. African nations have now reported more than 37,400 cases, including 1,598 deaths, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday. In South Africa, which has the continent's highest number of reported cases at 5,350, community health workers continued testing in Johannesburg. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8260727 https://ift.tt/3cUs2H8

A town in Sweden has found a sure fire way to keep social distancing, whether people want to or not -- ward them off with chicken poo. That's right -- the university town of Lund has begun spreading the droppings in its central park to put off any would-be revellers that show up to celebrate Walpurgis Night on Thursday (April 30). Here's mayor Philip Sandberg. (SOUNDBITE)(Swedish) MAYOR AND CHAIRMAN OF LUND CITY COUNCIL, PHILIP SANDBERG, SAYING:"We don't want Lund to become some kind of an infection epicentre. Chicken manure has two effects - firstly it will smell which means that it won't be particularly nice to sit here behind me in the park today and have a picnic in the grass but it's also good for the lawn and good for the park. It contains a lot of nitrogen and phosphorus so we're taking the opportunity to do a lot of maintenance work in the park today." Sweden has taken a softer approach than many other European countries-- by asking rathe...

Former Vice President Joe Biden has not personally responded to a former staffer's allegations of sexual assault, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is still "satisfied with how he has responded."Pelosi spoke to CNN on Thursday about former Biden staffer Tara Reade's allegation that he sexually assaulted her in the 1990s. Biden hasn't responded to the allegations himself, though the campaign denies them.Asked if Biden should publicly and personally address the allegation, Pelosi said, "I do support Joe Biden. I'm satisfied with how he has responded. I know him. I was proud to endorse him." CNN's Alisyn Camerota noted, though, "To be clear, he hasn't addressed it. His campaign has addressed it, but he has not directly addressed it."Camerota then asked again, "Should he, directly, publicly, address it?" Pelosi dodged the question, saying "it's a matter that he has to deal with."Biden has been facing call...

The announcement comes after weeks of speculation in the right-wing and far-right media that the coronavirus was created in a Wuhan lab. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8260727 https://ift.tt/2Smb7VQ

Donald Trump began his Thursday with a barrage of tweets defending Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser, after Mr Flynn’s attorneys released documents that they believe show the FBI tried to entrap him.A note, written in January 2017 by then-counterintelligence director Bill Priestap, ponders how to approach Mr Flynn’s questioning. “What’s our goal?” asks Mr Priestap. "Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?" from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8260727 https://ift.tt/3f9S7DR

Israeli farmers left an agricultural enclave in neighbouring Jordan possibly for the last time Thursday, as the extension of a lease enabling their use of the border land expired. Ghumar, known as Tsofar in Hebrew, is a Jordanian territory south of the Dead Sea that was occupied by Israel during the Six Day War of 1967. Under the 1994 peace deal, Jordan retained sovereignty over the area, along with another territory called Baqura, seized when Israeli forces infiltrated Jordan in 1950. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8260727 https://ift.tt/3bTcGmb

Throngs of people headed to beaches in Southern California during a weekend heat wave. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8260727 https://ift.tt/2zLpVqT

Joe Biden has tried to move past an allegation that he assaulted a female staffer decades ago by not talking about it. It isn't working. Some Democrats worry the story line will fester into a much bigger problem for him and the party if he keeps ignoring it. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8260727 https://ift.tt/2KN7pAI

Pakistan is preparing to loosen coronavirus lockdown restrictions as the number of infections and deaths are well below previous projections, officials said on Wednesday. The South Asian nation, which has registered more than 15,000 cases of COVID-19 including 335 deaths, has already granted exemptions to dozens of sectors to open up over the last few days. “The mortality numbers are nowhere near the same as we see in other countries,” Planning Minister Asad Umar, who oversees the response to the virus, told journalists. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8260727 https://ift.tt/2KJxoJd

India has recorded its 1,000th novel coronavirus death, but the head of a government think-tank said on Wednesday that its 1.3 billion people, strained from weeks of lockdown, were not experiencing the feared exponential surge in infections. India has now reported 31,331 cases, including 1,007 deaths, according to figures from the Health Ministry. Neighbouring Pakistan has 15,282 confirmed cases amid concerns about worshippers gathering at mosques during the current holy month of Ramadan. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8260727 https://ift.tt/2VMshhC

"This will continue to fuel our epidemic." from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8260727 https://ift.tt/35eM904

The Small Business Administration (SBA) reopened its Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) on Monday for up to $310 billion in loans for businesses affected by the coronavirus pandemic. "If the system is a first-come first-served system, it's going to be very hard for the smallest to get in," said Lisa Mensah, president and chief executive of the Opportunity Finance Network, a national association of community development financial institutions. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8260727 https://ift.tt/3bNa2yl

Earlier this month, I wrote a column asking what Democrats should do about sexual assault allegations against Joe Biden, the party's presumptive nominee for president. My answer? Not much. The accusation made by Tara Reade, a former Biden staffer from his days in the Senate during the early 1990s, didn't strike me as especially convincing, so Democrats, I suggested, could move forward without much concern. Though toward the end of the column I included two caveats: If Reade offered further corroboration of her claims or if evidence emerged of a larger pattern of abusive actions toward women on Biden's part, that could well change my views of the matter.Just two weeks later, both of my conditions have been met.Last week we learned that Reade's mother called into the Larry King Show in 1993 to talk about how her daughter had quit working for a "prominent senator" after unspecified "problems" as a staffer. Then earlier this week Business Insider reporte...

Gene Proctor remembers one of the first times he told the family of a recently deceased Georgian that he couldn’t test their loved one for COVID-19. It was early April, and a 58-year-old woman had passed away at home after years of battling multiple illnesses. The family wanted to know if the coronavirus had ultimately caused her death, but Proctor, the Floyd County Coroner, didn’t have a test.“At first they were upset because I couldn’t test her and I said, ‘Look, the few tests that we do have, have to go to the people that are still alive,” Proctor told The Daily Beast. “I told the daughter, in fact, ‘You take care of your mother most of the time, so it would be more important to know that you had it then if she did.’” Since then, testing has increased substantially in the state, according to Dr. Jose Vazquez, chief of infectious disease at the Medical College of Georgia - Augusta University. Meanwhile, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has invited a slew of non-essential businesses, ...

Though some members of the Hasidic community have disregarded lockdown rules, New York's large Jewish population has followed coronavirus measures. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8260727 https://ift.tt/2KGpnVm

Stacey Abrams has made her ambition to be Joe Biden’s running mate abundantly clear over the last couple of weeks. And to that end, she offered the presumptive Democratic nominee her unwavering support when questioned by CNN’s Don Lemon about the sexual assault allegation against Biden on Tuesday night.  “As someone who wants to be his vice president, I think it’s important that we speak about something that’s in the news now,” Lemon said near the end of his conversation with the former Georgia gubernatorial candidate, before laying out the details of Tara Reade’s claim. “CNN has now spoken on the record with her former neighbor who says Reade told her about the allegation within a few years of the alleged incident,” Lemon said. “Biden’s campaign says untrue, never happened. Is this a credible allegation?” “I believe that women deserve to be heard and I believe that they need to be listened to,” Abrams said carefully. “But I also believe that those allegations have to be ...

President Trump says the U.S. will be able to carry out five million coronavirus tests a day. The official overseeing testing strategy tells TIME that goal isn't feasible from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8260727 https://ift.tt/2VMJCXT

China, taking a step toward a return to business as normal, announced Wednesday that its previously postponed national legislature session will be held in late May. The National People's Congress, delayed from early March because of the coronavirus outbreak, will start on May 22, the official Xinhua News Agency said. It wasn't immediately clear whether the 3,000 or so delegates would come to Beijing for what is the biggest political meeting of the year, or if it would be held virtually through videoconference. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8260727 https://ift.tt/35gLISX

By Unknown Author from NYT Home Page https://ift.tt/3f5HYYL New York Times

By BY CHARLIE SAVAGE from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2W43dl2 New York Times

By BY DAVID E. SANGER from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/3bQeDjg New York Times

By BY PETER BAKER from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2KHfbMi New York Times

Hologic Inc on Wednesday said it is launching a second COVID-19 test that will help to dramatically expand testing capabilities in the United States. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8260648 https://ift.tt/3aOmoov