Rights groups criticize Hungary's rejection of treaty that combats violence against women; Watchdogs say Philippines suppressing independent media; Pelosi moves forward with $800 billion+ aid package
NewsHero - May 5, 2020 - Issue 91
Welcome to today’s edition of NewsHero for May 5, 2020.
**Now through June 1, 2020, new annual subscriptions to NewsHero will each be contributing 25% to the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund**
At NewsHero we put the heroes in the headlines and give them the attention that they deserve. Our coverage puts the focus on those who are helping, over those causing harm. Here you’ll find the same top-priority issues, but you won’t find clickbait, and what you read won’t be driven by ad sales.
NewsHero Notes
Teachers! - 🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️
Today, May 5, is National Teacher Day, and CNN posted a few suggestions for how to show your appreciation in this time of social distancing. Anyone who has been doing quarantine homeschooling might have a sense of how much work goes into educating our children!
ACLU - 🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) took to Instagram to celebrate a court ruling that says “the Trump administration CANNOT withhold federal funds to try to force local law enforcement to do ICE’s bidding.”
Committee to Protect Journalists has launched #FreeThePress - “Amid the unprecedented public health threat posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 190 groups joined together to urge world leaders to immediately and unconditionally release all journalists imprisoned for their work.”
Afternoon Brief
Opponents of exit bans - 🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️
Critics say the Chinese Communist Party’s expanding use of exit bans to block people—including U.S., Australian and Canadian citizens and permanent residents—from leaving China reeks of hostage-taking and collective punishment. They also warn that it lays bare China’s will to exert influence, not just over Chinese citizens in China, but also permanent residents and citizens of other countries.
“American citizens are too often being detained as de facto hostages in business disputes or to coerce family members to return to China—this is shocking and unacceptable behavior by the Chinese government and a clear violation of international law,” said James P. McGovern, chair of the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China.
Chinese laws exist that give authorities broad discretion to block both Chinese citizens and foreign nationals from leaving the country. Minor children, a pregnant woman and a pastor—all with foreign passports—have been exit banned, according to people with direct knowledge of the cases.
The U.S., Canada and Australia have issued advisories warning their citizens that they can be prevented from leaving China over disputes they may not be directly involved in. People may not realize they can’t leave until they try to depart.
Women’s rights advocates - 🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️
Amnesty International and Human Rights watch are among the groups criticizing the Hungarian parliament’s rejection today of the ratification of the Istanbul convention treaty—designed to prevent and combat violence against women— supporting, as The Guardian reports, a government declaration that the treaty promotes “destructive gender ideologies” and “illegal migration.”
“This decision is extremely dangerous coming at a time when reported domestic violence incidents in Hungary have doubled since the start of the COVID-19 lockdown. This not only puts women and girls at risk but sends a damaging message to perpetrators that their acts will not be prosecuted,” said David Vig, Amnesty International’s Hungary Director.
Hungary Today reported on the decision: “The justice ministry on Tuesday issued a statement calling on opposition parties to stop ‘the deliberate and perpetual misguidance’ of the Hungarian public as regards Hungary’s ratification of the Istanbul Convention.”
Hillary Margolis, Women’s Rights Researcher with Human Rights Watch, responded via Twitter: “Instead of working to protect women & girls during the #COVID19 pandemic, #Hungary has just rushed through a vote to withdraw from a groundbreaking European treaty to combat violence against women. #IstanbulConvention.”
Independent media; watchdogs - 🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️
Media watchdogs are accusing President Rodrigo Duterte and the Philippine government of muzzling independent media, following a Tuesday order that ABS-CBN—the country’s leading broadcast network, which the president has targeted for its critical news coverage—halt operations after its 25-year congressional franchise ended Monday.
“The order to shut ABS-CBN effectively unplugs one of the Philippines most trusted, independent sources of news. It is a crushing blow to press freedom, one that was obviously ordered by President Rodrigo Duterte to silence critical reporting on his government,” said Shawn Crispin, a Bangkok-based representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists. “If he can shut down a media outfit as influential and powerful as ABS-CBN, then no independent media group is safe. The message is clear.”
Independent media like ABS-CBN have reported critically on issues including the president’s anti-drug crackdown, which has left thousands of mostly poor suspects dead. Government officials denied the closure was a press freedom issue, insisting that everyone must comply with the law.
“Millions of Filipinos will lose their source of news and entertainment ... when people need crucial and timely information as the nation deals with the COVID-19 pandemic,” ABS-CBN said in a statement.
Company President Carlo Katigbak appealed to people to let their feelings on the closure be “felt, expressed and heard” for the benefit of the network’s more than 11,000 employees and millions of Filipinos who he said need the network’s services “specially now in the worst time of sickness and hunger.”
Pelosi Presses On With Next Virus Aid Package, Topping $800 Billion
Fauci allowed to testify before Republican-led Senate, but not Democratic-led House
@Yaneer Bar-Yam from Twitter: “Overwhelming data says opening prematurely will increase cases, escalate loss of life and economic harm. Countries that acted late to impose social distancing and testing are suffering. Countries that acted early soon will safely restart economies. Don’t play with fire”
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 moved forward Tuesday with the next coronavirus aid, a sweeping $800 billion-plus package that is expected to be unveiled soon even as the House stays closed while the Senate reopens in the pandemic. “We still don’t have a national testing strategy that is adequate,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday. He called it embarrassing. “It’s life and death.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci will appear next week before a panel in the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate examining the country’s coronavirus response, though he was not allowed to testify to the Democratic-led House of Representatives.
Dr. Fauci has dismissed the theory that COVID-19 was created in a Chinese laboratory, contradicting Donald Trump’s and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s opinions. “If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what’s out there now, [the scientific evidence] is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated,” Fauci told National Geographic in an exclusive interview.
A report from FiveThirtyEight delves into “Why Scientists Think The Novel Coronavirus Developed Naturally—Not In A Chinese Lab.”
Amazon VP Tim Bray says he has left his position with the company over the recent firing of several employees who expressed concerns about protections for warehouse workers during the coronavirus pandemic, reports CNN. “I quit in dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers who were making noise about warehouse employees frightened of Covid-19,” Bray wrote in a blog post.
Both Apple and Google on Monday shared more information on their automatic exposure notification system, which tracks potential COVID-19 cases through Bluetooth Low Energy signals, reports The Verge.
The National Center for PTSD has announced Covid Coach, an app that helps people manage stress. According to a report from WIRED, the app offers breathing exercises and guidance for facing loneliness and irritability, and allows users to track their anxiety and moods.
A co-investigation by BBC Click and the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, a U.K. counter-extremism group, shows how both extremist political and fringe medical communities are trying to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic online, with false claims promoting dangerous agendas.
Pepita Jove Puiggros, 92, holds the hand of home care nurse Laura Valdes during a visit in Barcelona, Spain, April 2, 2020. Puiggros lives alone and receives food deliveries from a social service agency three days a week, but the deliveries have become more unpredictable amid the coronavirus pandemic. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
According to a report from Pharmaceutical Technology, researchers at Utrecht University and Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, with China-based firm Harbour BioMed, have identified an antibody with activity against the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2.
World leaders held an online summit Monday with hopes of solidifying global efforts to develop a coronavirus vaccine, reports CBS News. Billions of dollars had been pledged toward the mission by the end of the three-hour meeting. Guess who skipped it? The United States. And Russia.
Drug companies Pfizer and BioNTech SE said on Tuesday they have begun delivering doses of their experimental coronavirus vaccines for initial human testing in the U.S.
“A patient hospitalized with flu-like symptoms at the end of December in France turned out to have had COVID-19, a finding that suggests the new coronavirus was spreading there at least a month earlier than official records show,” says a story published today by Bloomberg News.
Committee to Protect Journalists has issued a statement ahead of an upcoming appeal hearing for four journalists from news website Iwacu, in Burundi, sentenced to two and half years in prison in January. “The journalists at Iwacu should never have been arrested, let alone sentenced to years in prison. With the spread of the novel coronavirus, each additional moment they spend in custody presents an unacceptable health risk,” said CPJ sub-Saharan Africa Representative Muthoki Mumo.
A report from Axios says that Americans from both sides of the political spectrum have doubts about the numbers of fatalities resulting from COVID-19.
Tens of thousands of Wisconsin absentee voter ballots arriving after the April 7 presidential primaries and spring elections were counted by local officials, a review by The Washington Post has found.
An opinion piece from USA Today says: “Vote by mail is not a partisan plot, it's critical infrastructure to assure a safe election in a pandemic. Now is the time to invest and prepare.”
And here, “Don’t Play With Fire,” is the latest edition of the Corona Daily newsletter.
Extra! Extra!
Hey, it’s Giving Tuesday!
The official site says: “GivingTuesday is a global generosity movement unleashing the power of people and organizations to transform their communities and the world.
We're launching #GivingTuesdayNow, a global day of unity to take place on May 5, 2020, as a response to the unprecedented need caused by COVID-19.
One of the best ways to get involved is in your own community. We've created a directory to help you find organizations, events, and ways to give back in your own community.”
Here’s the directory: What’s Happening Near Me?
Take a look and see if there’s a way, if you’re able, to get involved.
We’ve seen so many extraordinary acts of kindness and solidarity as the whole planet struggles with the coronavirus pandemic. Generosity is also contagious.
Love to you all. See you tomorrow.
Sources:
National Teacher Day May 5, 2020 - NEA
Teacher Appreciation Day: 5 ways to say 'thank you' while social distancing - CNN
“A huge win for our communities!” - ACLU on Instagram
U.S. couple's nightmare: Held in China, away from daughter - AP News
‘No remedy, no rights’: China blocks foreigners from leaving - The Washington Post
Hungary: Istanbul Convention should be rejected for promoting migration, gender ideology - Voice of Europe
Human Rights Watch - Hillary Margolis on Twitter
Hungary's parliament blocks domestic violence treaty - The Guardian
Gov’t Rejects Ratification of Istanbul Convention due to Gender Ideology, Migration Policy - Hungary Today
Hungary: Blocking of domestic violence treaty further exposes women during COVID-19 crisis - Amnesty International
Philippines orders leading TV network to shut down - AP News
ABS-CBN: Philippines' biggest broadcaster forced off air - BBC News
Philippines largest TV network ABS-CBN ordered shut - Al Jazeera
Unexpected outcome in Wisconsin: Tens of thousands of ballots that arrived after Election Day were counted, thanks to court decisions - The Washington Post
Vote by mail is the PPE we need for a safe election in November - USA Today
Pelosi pushes new virus package as GOP resists big spending - AP News
Fauci to testify before U.S. Senate, not House, on virus response - Reuters
Fauci dismisses theory that coronavirus was made in Chinese lab - NY Post
Why Scientists Think The Novel Coronavirus Developed Naturally — Not In A Chinese Lab - FiveThirtyEight
Amazon VP says he quit over company 'firing whistleblowers' - CNN
Apple and Google publish sample screenshots for their coronavirus tracking system - The Verge
Coronavirus: Far-right spreads Covid-19 'infodemic' on Facebook - BBC News
Coronavirus virtual vaccine summit sees leaders pledge billions, but US skips it - CBS News
Researchers identify antibody with activity against SARS-CoV-2 in lab - Pharmaceutical Technology
Pfizer, BioNTech set to begin U.S. coronavirus vaccine trial - Reuters
France Discovers Undiagnosed Coronavirus Patient From Last Year - Bloomberg News
CPJ calls on Burundi to release 4 Iwacu journalists on appeal - Committee to Protect Journalists
This Mental Health App Is Tailor-Made for Your Pandemic Woes - WIRED
1 big thing: Americans (both parties) doubt the virus death toll - Axios
Don't play with fire - Coronadaily
Giving Tuesday - givingtuesday.org