CPJ report details attacks on media; Police thwart ISIS plan; WHO funding halt to be 'swiftly challenged'; Macron seeks global truce; Third antibody test launched; Lawmakers: put border wall on hold
Welcome to today’s edition of NewsHero for April 16, 2020.
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Team NewsHero
Notional view of LCRT on the far side of the moon. (Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay)
NewsHero Notes
NASA - 🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️
NASA is reportedly funding a proposal to build a radio telescope (called an LCRT) inside a crater on the far side of the moon.
Privacy advocates - 🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️
A federal appeals court revived nationwide litigation accusing Facebook of violating users’ privacy rights by tracking their internet activity, even after they logged out of the website.
Afternoon Brief
Committee to Protect Journalists - 🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️
In a new report, “The Trump Administration and the Media,” Committee to Protect Journalists says repeated attacks on the media from Donald Trump illustrate and an attempt to “destroy the media’s credibility, undermining truth and consensus even as a pandemic threatens to kill tens of thousands of Americans.”
Leonard Downie, Jr., the Weil Family Professor of Journalism at Arizona State University and former Washington Post executive editor, authored the report.
“The president has personally orchestrated and dominated media information about his administration through tens of thousands of tweets and dozens of encounters with the press in which he chooses the reporters and the questions to which he will respond. By the count of The Washington Post’s Fact Checker team, Trump had made 16,241 false or misleading claims in all those communications in his first three years in office,” writes Downie in an introduction to the report.
The Washington Post ran a story today featuring the report from Committee to Protect Journalists, noting, “The document is based on interviews with nearly 40 journalists, press freedom advocates, academics, media lawyers, and current and former administration officials, including Michael Dubke, who served briefly as Trump’s White House communications director.”
Anti-terrorism personnel - 🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️
German authorities say police have arrested four suspected members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) who were 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.
Prosecutors said the men joined ISIS in January 2019 and were instructed to form a cell in Germany. They reportedly first planned to carry out an attack in Tajikistan but later shifted their target to Germany, including U.S. Air Force bases in the country and a person they deemed critical of Islam.
Throughout, they are alleged to have been in contact with two high-ranking ISIS figures in Syria and Afghanistan.
Investigators into JEDI contract bias - 🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️
The Pentagon was barred from discussing Donald Trump in an investigation into a Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract, reports Politico.
According to a 313-page report released Wednesday, the Pentagon’s inspector general “could not definitively determine” if the White House had influenced who was ultimately awarded the major cloud computing contract, because senior Defense Department officials were not allowed to answer questions on the subject during interviews.
The contract was awarded to Microsoft in October, which beat out Amazon for the program to build the Pentagon’s system allowing digital information to be shared throughout the Department of Defense.
Amazon sued the DOD last year, claiming the Pentagon made mistakes in its evaluation of bids for the JEDI contract, and that Donald Trump’s negative public remarks about Amazon and Jeff Bezos influenced the outcome.
Pelosi Says Decision To Halt WHO Funds ‘Will Be Swiftly Challenged’
Macron seeks global truce during pandemic
A South Korean woman wears a mask and plastic gloves cast her vote in a polling station on the Parliamentary election amid the coronavirus outbreak on April 15, 2020 in Seoul, South Korea.Chung Sung-Jun / Getty Images
NewsHero is continuing to offer a compilation of stories and resources that best represent the current state of the coronavirus pandemic, centered on those individuals, institutions, and organizations stepping up to end this crisis as quickly and effectively as possible. The public, too, has a duty. This includes staying responsibly informed and taking the situation seriously, while remaining as cool-headed and as isolated as possible. These are strange and difficult times, but we will endure.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says Donald Trump’s choice to block U.S. funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) will be met with resistance. “This decision is dangerous, illegal and will be swiftly challenged,” Pelosi said in a statement.
French President Emmanuel Macron said he has received support for a world truce during the coronavirus crisis, and that he’s hopeful he can get Russian President Vladimir Putin on board, as well.
Abbott Laboratories announced Wednesday its third coronavirus test and said it could be screening up to 20 million people for COVID-19 antibodies by June.
The WHO says that with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare it will be using the WHO’s national polio surveillance network, and other field staff, for COVID-19 response.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has announced a commitment of an additional $150 million in COVID-19 response funding, bringing the organization’s total contribution so far to more than $250 million.
Hundreds of doctors, nurses and other health care workers across the country say they’ve been asked to work without adequate protection. Some have taken part in protests or lodged formal complaints. Others are buying or even making their own supplies.
An Emergency Department Nurse during a demonstration of the Coronavirus pod and COVID-19 virus testing procedures set-up beside the Emergency Department of Antrim Area Hospital, Co Antrim in Northern Ireland. PA Photo. Michael Cooper | Getty Images
A report from Axios says that the $349 billion cap for small business loans for the government’s coronavirus stimulus package was hit Thursday, running out in less than two weeks.
The One Campaign, a non-profit that fights extreme poverty and preventable disease, has announced that G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors agreed to suspend debt repayments for the world’s poorest countries for the remainder of 2020 as part of its COVID-19 action plan.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said via Twitter yesterday that his state would be helping others: “In our hour of need, other states stepped up to help us. We promised we would do the same. We will be sending 100 ventilators to Michigan and 50 ventilators to Maryland.”
South Korea safely held elections for its 300-seat Parliament Wednesday with millions of voters turning out amid the coronavirus pandemic.
A group of 91 Democratic lawmakers is urging the Trump administration to cease border wall construction during the COVID-19, reports Axios.
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday that unauthorized immigrants in California can apply to receive $500 of coronavirus relief provided by the state beginning in May.
Extra! Extra!
Orders to stay at home apparently have different levels of meaning for different people.
We saw on CNN that, as the headline put it, “some in right-wing media egg on protests against stay-at-home orders.”
Yep, it seems some TV personalities, mostly found on Fox News, are encouraging the public to get outside and get back to business.
This virus nonsense is blown way out of proportion and we as Americans aren’t going to sit idly by with our local economies suffering. That’s the gist of it.
We prefer the advice from this personality: sit back (at home) and enjoy Samuel L. Jackson’s cozy sleepy time tale, Stay the F*ck At Home. We couldn’t have f*ckin’ said it better ourselves.
Our heroes are identified as follows:
🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️ - the hero, hands down. - Meaning that it wasn’t even a close call.
🦸♀️🦸♀️ - the hero, but… - Meaning that in this situation the call needed to be looked at in a little more detail. For example, in this case, they did the right thing but there have been some questionable calls in the past.
🦸♀️ - the hero, but only here, and it was a close call. - Meaning that in this instance they did the right thing but it was either out of character or a maddeningly close call.
Sources:
NASA's Plan to Turn the Moon Into a Telescope Looks Like the Death Star - VICE
Facebook must face renewed privacy lawsuit over user tracking - Reuters
Trump’s attacks on credibility of the press are dangerously effective - CPJ
CNN cuts away from 'propaganda' briefing as Trump plays video hitting press - The Hill
New study says Trump has ‘dangerously undermined truth’ with attacks on news media - The Washington Post
4 arrested for alleged ISIS plans to attack U.S. bases in Germany - CBS News
Police in Germany arrest four Islamic State suspects planning attack on US bases - The Independent
4 suspected ISIS members arrested in Germany allegedly planned attacks on US bases - The Hill
Amazon’s lawsuit over a $10 billion Pentagon contract lays out disturbing allegations against Trump - Yahoo! Finance
Watchdog Finds Few Problems in Pentagon Award of JEDI Contract to Microsoft Over Amazon - WSJ
Pentagon barred from discussing Trump in JEDI contract probe - Politico
Abbott announces new coronavirus antibody test that could do up to 20 million screenings in June - CNBC
The FDA authorizes 2 more coronavirus antibody tests - CNN
WHO’s polio surveillance team, other field staff join COVID19 fight - WHO
COVID-19 Update: $150M in additional funding & how we’re tackling the virus in Africa - Gates Foundation
Pelosi says Trump decision on WHO will be 'swiftly challenged' - The Hill
France's president says US and China back a world truce—and he thinks Putin will 'definitely agree' - CNN
Nurses suspended for refusing COVID-19 care without N95 mask - AP News
Small business loan fund from coronavirus stimulus runs out - Axios
ONE responds to G20 decision to suspend debt repayments - ONE
Gov. Andrew Cuomo - Twitter
Here's how millions voted in S. Korea amid coronavirus. Could the U.S.? - NBC News
California providing $500 in coronavirus relief to 150,000 unauthorized immigrants - Axios