| As COVID cases spike in Florida, Trump now says he's 'flexible' on convention format in Jacksonville Posted: 08 Jul 2020 08:46 AM PDT  With coronavirus cases exploding in Florida, the president now says he is "flexible" on plans to hold a large-scale, indoor Republican National Convention next month.
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| An Austin police officer appeared to grope a woman's breast after pulling her over for a traffic violation Posted: 09 Jul 2020 11:44 AM PDT  The Austin Police Department defended the officer's conduct, saying he followed the department's regulations and that no female officer was available.
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| NYPD forced to impose limit on officers filing for retirement amid 400% surge of personnel trying to quit Posted: 09 Jul 2020 12:44 PM PDT  The New York Police Department (NYPD) has reportedly limited the number of retirement applications it will allow, after it saw a surge in requests in the last couple of months.The NYPD announced on Wednesday that 179 officers filed for retirement between 29 June and 6 July – a 411 per cent increase on the 35 who retired in the same time period in 2019.
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| 'I feel threatened': Unmasked Florida man's viral Costco outburst cost him his job Posted: 08 Jul 2020 02:33 PM PDT  "He absolutely does not represent our values and no longer works at our agency," the CEO of Ted Todd Insurance said Tuesday.
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| Poll: 70 Percent of Americans Think ‘Black Lives Matter’ Has Not Improved Race Relations Posted: 08 Jul 2020 03:00 PM PDT  A majority of Americans believe the Black Lives Matter movement has not improved race relations, according to a new poll from Monmouth University, with 38 percent of respondents saying BLM has hurt racial issues in America, compared to 26 percent who say the movement has helped.The poll's findings, released Wednesday, compared results from June 2020 to a similar poll conducted by Monmouth in 2016. While 71 percent of respondents agreed that Black Lives Matter has "brought attention to real racial disparities in American society" — a double-digit increase from 2016 — 70 percent of respondents think that the movement has not improved race relations, with 38 percent saying Black Lives Matter has made race relations worse.The percentage of Americans who believe the movement has helped racial issues is up 16 points from 2016, with 26 percent of respondents saying Black Lives Matter is having a positive impact on race.Monmouth also found that just over half of respondents feel that race relations in the U.S. will improve — 21 percent by a lot and 31 percent by a little — as a result of the widespread protests since the death of George Floyd in May. A majority of Americans are also hopeful about the future of race relations in the country — 26 percent are very hopeful and 56 percent are somewhat hopeful. And over three times as many respondents — 62 percent to 20 percent — said Donald Trump's handling of the protests has made the situation worse.But questions about the justification of the protests showed changes in support from early to late June. While more respondents said the actions of the protestors were justified — 65 percent by the end of the month compared to 54 percent at the beginning — they were also less inclined to say that the anger of protestors, "regardless of the actual actions taken," was fully justified. The percentage of those saying the anger was not at all justified rose by five points — from 18 percent to 23 percent — over the span of one month.The poll's demographic breakdown showed that a plurality of respondents, 41 percent, were independents, while 31 percent identified as Democrats and 28 percent as Republicans. Over 60 percent of the respondents were white, while 12 percent were black and 16 percent were Hispanic. More than two thirds of those surveyed did not have a college degree — 69 to 31 percent.
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| Philadelphia waives 100s of protest-related code violations Posted: 08 Jul 2020 01:04 PM PDT |
| Militants kill BJP politician Wasim Bari and his family in Kashmir Posted: 08 Jul 2020 07:58 PM PDT  A Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party politician was killed along with his brother and father in Indian administered Kashmir, officials said on Thursday. Wasim Bari, 38, and his family were attacked by militants at his residence in north Kashmir's Bandipora district on Wednesday night. All three were shot at point-blank range and died on the way to hospital. Authorities have arrested all 11 police personnel who were guarding him for dereliction of duties. Mr Bari's residence is a few meters away from the police station. This is the first attack on BJP workers in Kashmir after abrogation of Article 370 on August 5, 2019, when India stripped off the disputed region's autonomy. The killing of Mr Bari, who is survived by his wife and sister, has sent shock waves across political circles in Kashmir. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has condemned the attack.
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| Evidence found of epic prehistoric Pacific voyages Posted: 09 Jul 2020 05:03 AM PDT  New evidence has been found for epic prehistoric voyages between the Americas and eastern Polynesia.
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| 'Scared for my life' but needing a salary: Teachers weigh risks of COVID-19 Posted: 09 Jul 2020 10:34 AM PDT  For teachers, the question is stark: Is the risk of catching COVID-19 worth continuing in a profession many love and need to fund retirement plans?
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| US election: Biden lead over Trump cut to six points Posted: 09 Jul 2020 02:55 AM PDT 
A look at the seven-day rolling average of the approval rating of US Presidential candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump, courtesy of RealClearPolitics.
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| El Salvador murder rate plummets; study says gangs may have informal pact with government Posted: 08 Jul 2020 07:56 AM PDT |
| People are saying Viagra is now more accessible than birth control because of a Supreme Court ruling — here's the reality Posted: 08 Jul 2020 02:16 PM PDT  More employers no longer have to provide free contraception to employees, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday. Viagra usually isn't covered.
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| Europe fears complacency; virus hits 'full speed' in Africa Posted: 09 Jul 2020 12:30 AM PDT  Asian and European officials pleaded with their citizens Thursday to respect modest precautions as several countries saw coronavirus outbreaks accelerate or sought to prevent new flare-ups, while the virus showed no signs of slowing its initial advance in Africa and the Americas. Following two nights of anti-lockdown protests in Serbia, authorities banned mass gatherings in the capital of Belgrade amid an uptick in confirmed COVID-19 cases. Officials elsewhere in Europe warned of the risk of new flareups due to lax social distancing, while officials in Tokyo and Hong Kong reviewed nightclubs, restaurants and other public gathering spots as a source of their latest cases.
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| Israel looked like a model for halting coronavirus. Here's how it 'lost its bearings.' Posted: 09 Jul 2020 01:31 AM PDT  "It has been several weeks since Israel's compass for handling the pandemic has lost its bearings," wrote the public health director in her resignation.
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| Fox News host Tucker Carlson accused of echoing white supremacist slogan on air Posted: 09 Jul 2020 02:07 PM PDT  Fox News host Tucker Carlson has been accused of echoing a 14-word white supremacist phrase during one of his on-air segments.During a segment on his Monday evening show, Mr Carlson showed side-by-side images of Representative Ilhan Omar and Senator Tammy Duckworth, both of whom are Democrats on Capitol Hill and were born overseas.
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| In first, US punishes senior Chinese officials over Uighur rights Posted: 09 Jul 2020 01:05 PM PDT  The United States on Thursday took its first major action to stop "horrific" abuses against China's Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims, slapping sanctions on several senior officials. Three officials will be refused US visas and see any US-based assets frozen including Chen Quanguo, the Chinese Communist Party chief for the Xinjiang region and architect of Beijing's hardline policies against restive minorities. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the United States was acting against "horrific and systematic abuses" in the western region including forced labor, mass detention and involuntary population control.
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| César Duarte: Fugitive Mexican ex-governor arrested in Miami Posted: 09 Jul 2020 03:56 AM PDT  César Duarte fled Mexico in 2018 after being accused of embezzling millions to fund a lavish lifestyle.
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| Feds: Top Ohio State Immunologist Lied About Chinese Funding and Ties to Research Groups Posted: 09 Jul 2020 11:29 AM PDT  Federal prosecutors allege that a top immunologist at Ohio State University illegally concealed Chinese funding for his research and attempted to flee the country before his arrest in Alaska in May.In a criminal complaint unsealed on Thursday, the Justice Department accuses Song Guo Zheng, the Ronald L. Whisler MD Chair in Rheumatology and Immunology at Ohio State's medical school, of fraudulently obtaining federal grant funds from the National Institutes of Health and making false statements to investigators.Zheng, prosecutors say, obtained nearly $5 million in federal research grants without disclosing ties to Chinese entities and additional grant funds provided by them. The complaint and other filings in a federal court in Ohio indicate that Zheng has long been affiliated with Chinese research efforts called "Talent Plans" that U.S. officials have alleged are integral to Chinese government efforts to boost scientific and technological advancement in the country by having experts train and conduct research in the United States and elsewhere.According to prosecutors, Ohio State placed Zheng on administrative leave while it conducted its own investigation into those alleged omissions. Zheng, they say, quickly began making plans to return to his native China.Zheng's attorneys have not directly responded to the allegations in court. But the transcript of his arraignment indicates that Zheng, a U.S. permanent resident, has denied the charges against him. "I understand" the charges, Zheng told the court through a translator, "but I disagree with all of them."Ohio State confirmed that Zheng was an employee and said he'd been placed on unpaid leave, but declined to comment further. "Ohio State has been and continues to assist federal law enforcement authorities in every way possible," a university spokesperson told The Daily Beast in an email. "We cannot comment further at this time due to the ongoing law enforcement investigation."The U.S. Attorney's office in the Southern District of Ohio declined to comment when The Daily Beast first inquired about the Alaska arrest in late May. However, they provided a statement on Thursday after the criminal complaint was unsealed."We allege that Zheng was preparing to flee the country after he learned that his employer had begun an administrative process into whether or not he was complying with rules governing taxpayer-funded grants," said David M. DeVillers, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio. "This is our office's third recent case involving the illegal transfer of intellectual property and research to China. This underscores our commitment to work with the FBI, the Department of Health and Human Services, and our research institutions to protect our country's position as a global leader in research and innovation, and to punish those who try to exploit and undermine that position." A lawyer for Zheng did not respond to repeated requests for information. Efforts to reach Zheng personally were not successful.Zheng's case is just the latest federal prosecution of a U.S. academic whom the DOJ alleges had undisclosed ties to Chinese interests or funders. The department has also recently gone after researchers at Harvard University and the University of Kansas. In public remarks this week, the FBI Director Chris Wray stated, "We've now reached the point where the FBI is opening a new China-related counterintelligence case about every 10 hours."Prosecutors say Zheng's case revolves around a failure to disclose Chinese funding in grant applications during his time at OSU and at two previous jobs at the University of Southern California and Pennsylvania State University.Zheng "had received numerous admonishments from both NIH and OSU regarding conflicts of interest, and I believe he failed to disclose his overseas activities because he knew they placed his NIH funding at risk," an FBI agent investigating the case told the court. According to prosecutors, Zheng gave conflicting answers when asked if he was involved with China's Talent Plan programs. Zheng told a law enforcement interviewed that he "had been recruited into the PRC talent plans but he did not accept the position because he did not want to spend nine months of the year in the PRC." But later in the interview, he appeared to acknowledge his participation, saying "he did not know he had to report his affiliation with talent plans."According to the criminal complaint, OSU notified Zheng of its administrative investigation in mid-May. Six days later, prosecutors say, he left Columbus, "contacted a friend and was afforded a seat on a charter flight back to the PRC and packed up numerous electronic devices and a significant amount of personal items." Prosecutors also presented evidence that Zheng and his wife planned to sell their house in Ohio.Prosecutors characterized that as an attempt by Zheng to flee the country. He was stopped at the Ted Stevens airport in Alaska. Zheng allegedly used his Chinese passport to board the flight and when the plane was deboarded, he quickly gave his carry-on luggage to a passenger he did not know. "When confronted," prosecutors said, "Zheng initially indicated he was moving permanently, then changed his story to indicate he was visiting a sick relative and later added he was looking for a job in the PRC."Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| China’s Confucius Institutes Attempt to Rebrand Following Backlash Posted: 08 Jul 2020 09:35 AM PDT  China is attempting to rebrand Confucius Institutes following a worldwide backlash against the centers.Confucius Institutes, which are present on dozens of U.S. college campuses and at other foreign universities, carry the stated purpose of promoting Chinese language and culture. However, U.S. officials have singled out the institutes as propaganda centers that serve as an extension of China's "soft power."The Confucius Institute Headquarters in Beijing has changed its name to the "Ministry of Education Centre for Language Education and Cooperation." Additionally, the organization changed the name of its account on Chinese social-media app WeChat, although it is not clear if Confucius Institutes in other countries will themselves be renamed.The name change is "related to various kinds of pressure, but it is by no means succumbing to them," Sun Yixue, a professor at the International School of Tongji University in Shanghai, told the South China Morning Post. "It is a timely adjustment made by China to adapt to the new situation of world language and cultural exchanges, but this does not mean that all overseas Confucius Institutes should be renamed accordingly."Several American universities have shut their Confucius Institutes in the past several months, after the coronavirus pandemic led to increased public scrutiny of the U.S.-China relationship and Chinese influence on American campuses. Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are currently in the midst of an investigation into the institutes."We cannot allow a dangerous Communist regime to buy access to our institutions of higher education, plain and simple," Representative Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) said in a statement upon announcing the investigation in May. "We owe it to the American people to hold China accountable and to prevent them from doing further harm to our country."
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| Top US general slams Confederacy as 'an act of treason' and says the country needs to take 'hard look' at bases honoring its leaders Posted: 09 Jul 2020 12:43 PM PDT  The Confederacy "was an act of treason at the time against the Union, against the Stars and Stripes, against the US Constitution," Gen. Mark Milley said.
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| Severe bread shortages loom for Syria as fresh U.S. sanctions grip Posted: 09 Jul 2020 04:13 AM PDT  Syria could face severe bread shortages for the first time since the start of the war, another challenge for President Bashar al-Assad as he grapples with an economic meltdown and fresh U.S. sanctions, a U.N. official, activists and farmers said. Any major disruptions to Syria's bread subsidy system could undermine the government and threaten a population highly dependent on wheat as rampant inflation drives up food prices. "There is already some evidence of people cutting out meals," said Mike Robson, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization's Syria representative.
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| Wisconsin police officer rescues dog from burning house Posted: 08 Jul 2020 02:09 PM PDT |
| If Trump strips international student visas, these states will lose hundreds of millions of dollars Posted: 08 Jul 2020 01:32 PM PDT  Six states had half the international student enrollment.
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| Ohio sheriff refuses to enforce governor's mask order: 'I'm not going to be the mask police' Posted: 09 Jul 2020 10:57 AM PDT  An Ohio sheriff said he won't enforce Governor Mike DeWine's order making face masks mandatory in states with high rates of Covid-19 infections.Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones appeared on CNN Wednesday and told anchor Brianna Keilar that while he wears a mask and is "good with that," he has no plans on enforcing the governor's mask order.
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| What Ghislaine Maxwell's arrest means for Epstein case Posted: 08 Jul 2020 09:06 PM PDT  Insight from Cameron Lindsay, prison security expert, and criminal defense attorney Mark Eiglarsh.
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| Arrests and police raids follow Russia's vote to let Putin rule for life Posted: 09 Jul 2020 06:10 AM PDT  An opposition governor was detained and several activists had their homes raided by the police on Thursday as Russia's latest crackdown on dissent gathers momentum. The flurry of arrests and criminal inquiries follow last week's vote in which nearly 78 percent endorsed constitutional amendments allowing Vladimir Putin to stay as president at least until 2036 when he turns 83. Sergei Furgal, the governor of the Khabarovsk region in Russia's Far East who beat a Kremlin candidate at the 2018 election, was arrested by camouflaged agents of Russia's top investigative body on Thursday morning and put on a plane to Moscow. The popular governor whose landslide win at the polls embarrassed the pro-Kremlin party, is accused of organising two contract killings as well as an attempted murder 15 years ago, according to the Investigative Committee, Russia's main federal investigating authority. Mr Furgal has not been charged with any crime. An unnamed source claiming to be linked to Mr Furgal says he has denied the allegations. Mr Furgal had been in Russian parliament for more than a decade before he won the Khabarovsk election in 2018, which has raised questions about the timing of the charges brought against him.
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| National security law: Australia suspends Hong Kong extradition treaty Posted: 09 Jul 2020 01:11 AM PDT  China's new national security law "undermines" Hong Kong's current freedoms says Canberra.
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| Senior China diplomat urges "positive energy" in ties with United States Posted: 08 Jul 2020 08:53 PM PDT  Senior Chinese diplomat Wang Yi said on Thursday that China and U.S. relations face the most serious challenges since diplomatic ties were established in 1979 but the two countries can return to the right track. China and the United States should jointly explore ways for peaceful coexistence and release more "positive energy," State Councilor Wang, who is also foreign minister, said in a speech posted on his ministry's website. Washington and Beijing have been at loggerheads over the handling of the coronavirus outbreak, China's actions in the former British colony of Hong Kong, a long-running trade dispute, and frictions over Taiwan and the South China Sea.
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| Florida governor Ron DeSantis quietly signs controversial abortion bill Posted: 08 Jul 2020 09:49 AM PDT  Governor Ron Desantis has quietly signed an abortion law that will require those under the age of 18 to get a parent's permission before having an abortion.Gov DeSantis, who is a Republican, discreetly passed the bill last Tuesday, choosing to sign the legislation without providing a public statement on the matter.
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| Female US Army soldier makes history by becoming the first woman to become a Green Beret Posted: 09 Jul 2020 10:00 AM PDT  The female soldier has become the first to don the Green Beret worn by the Army's elite Special Forces.
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| Ousted U.S. prosecutor says Barr pressed him to resign Posted: 09 Jul 2020 10:48 AM PDT  The top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, who was ousted last month as his office led a probe into President Donald Trump's personal attorney Rudolph Giuliani, told lawmakers on Thursday U.S. Attorney General William Barr had pressured him to resign. In written comments submitted as part of a congressional inquiry, Geoffrey Berman said he was warned by Barr that if he did not leave and was fired, it would "not be good for my resume or future job prospects." Berman also said Barr repeatedly urged him to take another job, either in the Justice Department running its civil division or possibly as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
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| US judge issues gag order in George Floyd case Posted: 09 Jul 2020 01:28 PM PDT  The judge presiding over the cases of four fired Minneapolis police officers charged in the killing of George Floyd issued a gag order Thursday, after some of the defense attorneys discussed the case with reporters. Attorneys and others who speak to the media "will increase the risk of tainting a potential jury pool and will impair all parties' right to a fair trial," Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill said. Among the comments spurring the gag order were those by Earl Gray, attorney for former officer Thomas Lane, in interviews with ABC affiliate KSTP and the Star Tribune newspaper.
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| I did 100 push-ups a day for 100 days in lockdown and was amazed by how my body changed Posted: 09 Jul 2020 02:19 AM PDT  The hardest part of the challenge turned out to be mental instead of physical, senior lifestyle reporter Rachel Hosie found.
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| Maxine Waters Foe Omar Navarro Gets Out of Jail And Attempts to Destroy Fellow Republican Posted: 09 Jul 2020 01:55 AM PDT  Pro-Trump internet personality Omar Navarro emerged from a six-month stint in jail on a stalking charge last month, and immediately registered to run for Congress. Navarro, a perennial challenger to Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), has registered to run for her seat again in 2022—assuming, perhaps logically, that Waters will once again prevail in her re-election request this November. But Navarro, who had nearly $50,000 in his campaign bank account as of March 31 even while he served his jail term, is not going to wait for those results before getting involved. He told The Daily Beast that he's going to send out mailers this election cycle denouncing Joe Collins, the Republican nominee currently running against Waters."Hey, I don't agree with him," Navarro told The Daily Beast. "I believe Maxine Waters is better than him."Asked for comment on Navarro's sour-grapes scheme to ruin Collins's already slim chances of winning this fall, Collins responded by accusing Navarro of having "daddy issues" without elaborating. "Omar Navarro is a joke," Collins told The Daily Beast. "He has the mentality of a four year old child throwing a temper tantrum and the testicular fortitude of a mouse." A Perennial Congressional Candidate Beloved by Trump World Was Just Arrested on Stalking ChargesThe scrapping between Collins and Navarro for the chance to lose to Waters highlights the odd incentives facing Republican challengers taking on famous incumbents in heavily Democratic districts. Running against Waters as a Republican would be a poor choice for anyone who actually wants to win. Indeed, Navarro has tried twice already, losing by more than 50 percentage points in 2016 and 2018. But for a GOPer interested in raising millions off of Waters's notoriety as a devoted Trump foe, and increasing his profile in the pro-Trump mediasphere, it works out great. Navarro raked in donations from low-dollar contributors and saw his stature on the online Trump right explode thanks to his quixotic earlier campaigns. Even the candidates themselves acknowledge the money that's at stake for whoever wins the right to face off against Waters. "The main reason Navarro is upset is because he's used to living off of his campaign donations and now he's facing the realization that, after being beaten by a real candidate with a shot at winning, he has to find a real job," Collins said in his email. For Navarro, that time in the bright lights of online Trumpy fame came to a halt when he was arrested in December in San Francisco after stalking ex-girlfriend and fellow Republican personality DeAnna Lorraine Tesoriero, who herself was running a doomed campaign against Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Navarro eventually pleaded guilty to a stalking charge, and was sentenced to six months in San Francisco's jail, where he claims to have lost 30 pounds. Even while imprisoned in San Francisco, Navarro kept up his political profile. And he stayed on the ballot, losing the March Republican primary to Collins by a mere 250 votes—a 0.3 percent difference in the vote total. Undeterred by that loss, Navarro has tried to recast himself since being released from jail as the latest victim of deep-state prosecutors. While other Trump supporters who faced criminal charges were involved in international intrigue, however, Navarro has been faced with claiming that he was arrested on a local stalking charge because of some secret government scheme. "Full disclosure with you guys: in the past six months, yes, I have been in a county jail," Navarro told his more than 250,000 Twitter followers after being released from jail. Despite overwhelming evidence that Navarro violated Tesoriero's restraining order against him, including the fact that Navarro bashed Tesoriero to The Daily Beast in apparent violation of the order, Navarro claims that he only pleaded guilty because he would have become a "political prisoner" if he hadn't."I wouldn't have been judged by a jury of my peers, I would've been judged by a bunch of liberals, and they would have kept me locked up in there as a political prisoner," Navarro said in his Twitter video. "And that's not OK." While it might seem strange for the recently imprisoned Navarro to be confident he can win the 2022 primary to challenge Waters, he is aided by the fact that Collins has a bizarre history of his own.A Navy veteran, Collins has continuously switched parties since 2016, cycling between being a Democrat, a Republican, a member of the Green Party, and a member of the "Millennial Political Party." Collins has also filed a lawsuit over child support payments that is riddled with language echoing the nonsense legal language used by members of the far-right sovereign citizen movement. At one point in his lawsuit, in an apparent attempt to deploy a fringe legal theory, Collins claimed that his bodily fluids were worth $15 million—a bizarre detail Navarro has seized on in his campaign to bring down his rival. "You're the guy that's gonna take down Maxine Waters?" Navarro said in a video taunting Collins that he released in late June. "I'm sorry, but you're not gonna do that. And by the way, your bodily fluids are not worth $15 million." Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| 'Opioid overdoses are skyrocketing': as Covid-19 sweeps across US an old epidemic returns Posted: 09 Jul 2020 03:00 AM PDT  The pandemic is creating the social conditions – no jobs, isolation, despair – that helped enable the opioid crisis to emerge in the first place. Now it's backIn West Virginia, they are bracing for the second wave.The epidemic that hit the Appalachian state harder than any other in the US finally looked to be in retreat. Now it's advancing again. Not coronavirus but opioid overdoses, with one scourge driving a resurgence of the other.Covid-19 has claimed 93 lives in West Virginia over the past three months. That is only a fraction of those killed by drug overdoses, which caused nearly 1,000 deaths in the state in 2018 alone, mostly from opioids but also methamphetamine (also known as meth).That year was better than the one before as the Appalachian state appeared to turn the tide on an epidemic that has ravaged the region for two decades, destroying lives, tearing apart families and dragging down local economies.Now coronavirus looks to be undoing the advances made against a drug epidemic that has claimed close to 600,000 lives in the US over the past two decades. Worse, it is also laying the ground for a long-term resurgence of addiction by exacerbating many of the conditions, including unemployment, low incomes and isolation, that contributed to the rise of the opioid epidemic and "deaths of despair"."The number of opioid overdoses is skyrocketing and I don't think it will be easily turned back," said Dr Mike Brumage, former director of the West Virginia office of drug control policy."Once the tsunami of Covid-19 finally recedes, we're going to be left with the social conditions that enabled the opioid crisis to emerge in the first place, and those are not going to go away."To Brumage and others, coronavirus has also shown what can happen when the government takes a public health emergency seriously, unlike the opioid epidemic, which was largely ignored even as the death toll climbed into the hundreds of thousands.The American Medical Association said it was "greatly concerned" at reported increases in opioid overdoses in more than 30 states although it will be months before hard data is available.> Clearly, what we have lost with the pandemic is a loss of connection> > Dr Mike BrumagePublic health officials from Kentucky to Florida, Texas and Colorado have recorded surges in opioid deaths as the economic and social anxieties created by the Covid-19 pandemic prove fertile ground for addiction. In addition, Brumage said significant numbers of people have fallen out of treatment programmes as support networks have been yanked away by social distancing orders."I'm a firm adherent to the idea that the opposite of addiction is not sobriety, the opposite of addiction is connection. Clearly, what we have lost with the pandemic is a loss of connection," he said."Many of the people who were using the programme either didn't have broadband or they didn't have cellphone service, especially those who were homeless. They just fell out of the programme," he said.The resurgence was not unforeseen. In March, as Covid-19 escalated, Donald Trump warned about the human toll beyond lives claimed by the virus. "You're going to have tremendous suicides, but you know what you're going to have more than anything else? Drug addiction. You will see drugs being used like nobody has ever used them before. And people are going to be dying all over the place from drug addiction," he said.Brumage and others who spoke to the Guardian were at pains to say they believed the scale of the government's response to Covid-19 is necessary. But they saw the mobilisation of financial resources and political will to cope with the virus in stark contrast to the response of successive administrations to the opioid epidemic.Emily Walden lost her son to an opioid overdose and now heads Fed Up!, a group campaigning to reduce the US's exceptionally high opioid prescribing levels."Congress immediately acted with coronavirus to help those that lost their jobs, to make sure that people were taken care of and it was addressed properly," she said. "Look at the difference with the opioid epidemic, which has largely been ignored by our federal government for 20 years."While the US government has thrown $6tn at coronavirus, the Trump administration dedicated just $6bn to directly dealing with opioid addiction over his first two years in office even though about the same number of people died of drug overdoses in that period as have now been lost to Covid-19.Brumage said federal health institutions have shifted their focus to coronavirus, including freezing a $1bn research project to find less addictive pain treatments.> You can think of Covid-19 as a hurricane whereas the opioid crisis is more like global warming. It's happening, it's slow, it's dangerous> > Dr Mike Brumage"It's robbed the oxygen out of the room and made it the sole focus of what's happening," said Brumage. "There's also a fatigue about the opioid crisis. You can think of Covid-19 as a hurricane whereas the opioid crisis is more like global warming. It's happening, it's slow, it's dangerous, but it's not happening at the same speed and scale as the coronavirus is having right now." Brumage attributes the difference in response in part to attitudes toward drug addiction."The difference between getting Covid and dying of an overdose is stigma around drug use. This has been ingrained across the United States – that people using drugs are somehow seen as morally deficient and so it becomes easier then to other and alienate those people," he said.Walden does not accept that explanation. Like many whose families have been devastated by opioids, she sees a personal and public health catastrophe perpetuated by the financial and political power of the pharmaceutical industry to drive the US's exceptionally high opioid prescribing rates which were a major factor in driving the epidemic."This comes down to lobbyists and money. People say it's stigma and it's not. There is stigma but it's about profits and greed," she said.Dr Raeford Brown, a former chair of the Food and Drug Administration's opioid advisory committee, is a longstanding critic of drug industry influence over opioid medical policy and the government's response to the epidemic. He sees a parallel with coronavirus with US states lifting strong social distancing orders too early under corporate pressure."The United States is not good at doing public health," he said. "It failed the test with opioids and it failed the test with viral pandemics. But coronavirus and pandemics, and the things like the opioid crisis, are much more likely to get us than the Russians or the Chinese are."
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| Chechen leader blames foreign spies for slaying his critics Posted: 09 Jul 2020 05:04 AM PDT  The regional strongman leader of Russia's province of Chechnya on Thursday blamed unidentified foreign spy agencies for the recent killing in Austria of a Chechen man who criticized him. Ramzan Kadyrov claimed on his blog that the ethnic Chechen who was shot dead in a Vienna suburb over the weekend fell victim to "special services working against Russia and myself." The 43-year-old Chechen leader rejected allegations of his involvement in the slaying, saying that the killing in Vienna and earlier slayings of ethnic Chechens in Europe were performed by foreign spies to compromise him and tarnish Russia's image.
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| The United States does not want Cuba and Venezuela to buy on Amazon Posted: 09 Jul 2020 03:00 AM PDT  A minor nuisance that comes with U.S. sanctions is having to say goodbye to buying on Amazon.
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| With a Senate majority in reach, Democratic candidates rake in massive donations Posted: 08 Jul 2020 10:54 AM PDT  Democratic Senate candidates in several key races announce huge fundraising totals that raise the party's hopes of retaking the chamber in November.
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| Ford CEO dismisses employees' call for company to stop making, selling custom police vehicles and products Posted: 09 Jul 2020 07:43 AM PDT  Ford claims it accounts for almost two-thirds of police vehicle sales in the US, and employees are raising their voice internally.
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| Joe Shapiro's widow says her late husband met Donald Trump in college Posted: 08 Jul 2020 07:40 PM PDT  Raw video: Pam Shriver says her late husband met Trump after he was already enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania.
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| Texas executes inmate convicted of killing elderly man: Department of corrections Posted: 08 Jul 2020 05:38 PM PDT |
| Coronavirus updates: Fauci says 'divisiveness' hurts response; Big Ten schools to only play league games; CDC won't rewrite school rules Posted: 09 Jul 2020 05:14 PM PDT  The Big Ten will limit its fall schedule to only conference games. the CDC pushed back on changes to its school guidelines. Latest COVID-19 news.
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| Canada 'lost track' of 35,000 foreigners slated for removal: audit Posted: 08 Jul 2020 10:29 AM PDT  Canada's Border Services Agency "lost track" of two thirds of some 50,000 foreigners who had been hit with expulsion orders, an audit presented to parliament on Wednesday found. The agency, which is responsible for enforcing removal orders, were unable to locate 34,700 foreigners, mainly asylum seekers slated for deportation because their requests had been rejected, the report by the Office of the Auditor General said. "Most orders had been enforceable for years, including criminal cases and failed asylum claimants," the report said.
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