Women defy lockdown to protest abortion ban in Poland; US Committee agrees with findings on Russian interference; Malaria drug no help against COVID-19: study; Nurses sue over lack of PPE
NewsHero - April 22, 2020 - Issue 82
Welcome to today’s edition of NewsHero for April 22, 2020.
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NewsHero Notes
Those in favor of voting by proxy - 🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️
Democratic leaders have said they want to change House rules to allow members to vote remotely by proxy, but are getting resistance from Republican leaders. They want a bipartisan decision, but as is, the majority House Democrats could pass the change without Republican support, reports CNN.
Committee to Protect Journalists - 🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️
Committee to Protect Journalists, which regularly offers safety advisories to journalists working around the globe, issued an advisory Tuesday for the safety of journalists covering the coronavirus anti-lockdown protests the U.S.
Afternoon Brief
Women’s rights supporters, protesters in Poland - 🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️
Human rights campaigners and academics are saying that Poland's ruling nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS) is using the coronavirus crisis as a cover for putting the squeeze on democracy, CNN reports.
Demonstrators are taking to the streets—defying lockdown—to protest legislation that would tighten the country’s already heavily restrictive abortion laws.
Human rights lawyer Marta Gorczynska was among a group of protesters using their cars to block roads in Warsaw last week in protest of the law.
“We saw this as an attempt by the government to use the lockdown to push for this controversial law, because, as history shows, all these attempts of the government to amend the abortion law have always triggered a lot of demonstrations,” Gorczynska said, referring to a protest in 2016 that drew millions.
“If there was no lockdown, thousands of women would have been on the streets. So we were using other tools, especially online ones.”
Critics worry the abortion situation is only part of the bigger problem. “What's happening now is the next stage in the destruction of our new democratic state,” Anna Materska-Sosnowska, a political scientist at Warsaw University, told CNN.
Draginja Nadazdin, the director of Amnesty International Poland, told CNN: “If you want to use the coronavirus as a kind of test, to gauge how the government supports human rights, neither Poland's approach to abortion, neither its approach to free and fair elections, nor its approach to the right to health, are good signals.”
Environmental advocates, conservationists - 🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️
It’s Earth Day today, April 22, and a report from the Associated Press comes at an appropriate time. It seems that lockdown over the coronavirus pandemic has had a positive effect on the planet. With people quarantined in their homes, there are less people disrupting nature and less cars on the road polluting the air.
For example, smog stopped choking New Delhi, one of the most polluted cities in the world, and India’s getting views of sights not visible in decades. Nitrogen dioxide pollution in the northeastern United States is down 30%. Rome air pollution levels from mid-March to mid-April were down 49% from a year ago. Stars seem more visible at night.
Also, people are noticing animals in places and at times they don’t usually. Coyotes have meandered along downtown Chicago’s Michigan Avenue and near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. A puma roamed the streets of Santiago, Chile. Goats took over a town in Wales. In India, already daring wildlife has become bolder with hungry monkeys entering homes and opening refrigerators to look for food.
“It is giving us this quite extraordinary insight into just how much of a mess we humans are making of our beautiful planet,” says conservation scientist Stuart Pimm of Duke University. “This is giving us an opportunity to magically see how much better it can be.”
Seems like a good time as well to mention we saw on Axios that Amazon has announced it is “putting $10 million into restoring or conserving four million acres of forest as part of its 2019 pledge to become carbon-negative within the next 20 years.”
Lastly, this year marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, and National Geographic has put together a report on five decades of progress and setbacks.
Those investigating election interference - 🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️
The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee concurred with spy agencies’ findings that Russia sought to boost Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, according to a bipartisan report declassified and released on Tuesday.
The report found that the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation had coherent and well-constructed grounds to conclude that Russian President Vladimir Putin aimed to undercut Trump’s 2016 rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Trump, who has consistently bristled at suggestions that foreign interference helped his upset 2016 victory, has sought to discredit the intelligence agencies’ findings as the politically charged work of a “deep state.” Russia has denied that it was behind any efforts to meddle in U.S. elections.
Study Shows Malaria Drug No Help With COVID-19
Nurses file lawsuits over lack of protective equipment for battling coronavirus
Nurses participate in a candlelight vigil at UC Irvine Medical Center over the need for more protective gear during the coronavirus outbreak in Irvine, Calif., on Monday. (Mike Blake/Reuters)
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.
A new study, funded by the National Institutes of Health and the University of Virginia, showed no benefit in using hydroxychloroquine in U.S. veterans hospitals for the treatment of COVID-19. There were actually more deaths among those given the malaria drug promoted by Trump versus standard care.
Scientific American has published an article laying out information on the most touted coronavirus drugs as they undergo clinical trials.
The FDA has given the first authorization for an at-home COVID-19 test kit. The tests are produced by LabCorp, which says it will give initial access to health care workers and first responders, reports The Verge.
Facing protests against their stay-at-home orders, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, both Democrats, asked the White House on Monday for help keeping people home, after Donald Trump showed support for the demonstrators.
There are over 70 million people worldwide who have been driven from their homes by war and unrest, up to 10 million are packed into refugee camps and informal settlements, and almost none have been tested for the coronavirus, reports the Associated Press. “Testing is in short supply even in New York and Norway, but it is nonexistent in most of the countries in the (global) south for the people we try to help,” said Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council.
The World Food Program, a United Nations agency, worries that the number of people facing food crises across the world could nearly double with the COVID-19 pandemic—hitting 265 million this year, reports NPR. “We're already facing a perfect storm,” WFP Executive Director David Beasley said speaking to the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday.
A report from The Washington Post tells of nurses filing lawsuits and organizing protests over a lack of proper protective equipment for battling the coronavirus.
New York City is creating its own reserve of medical equipment for the coronavirus crisis—including test kits and ventilators—because “we can’t depend on the federal government,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday.
Judge Jesus Bernal of the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Monday ordered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to review the cases of all detained immigrants at increased health risk if they contract the coronavirus and determine whether they should be released.
Democrats and experts long-opposed to the Trump administration’s attempts to shrink federal regulations on environmental and labor issues are likely to be wary of plans in the coming days to repeal or suspend federal regulations affecting businesses, reports The Washington Post.
The New Humanitarian reports that Ukraine, with its underfunded national health system and economy weakened by war, is likely to be greatly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, even if the numbers of cases aren’t as high as some other places.
Human Rights Watch says police brutality in Kenya is marring efforts to protect the public. “It is shocking that people are losing their lives and livelihoods while supposedly being protected from infection,” said Otsieno Namwaya, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Police brutality isn’t just unlawful; it is also counterproductive in fighting the spread of the virus.”
We thought we’d leave you with a few longer reads that we found to be worth spending a moment on:
“When Government Fails, Makers Come to the Rescue” - WIRED
“From the Editors: We Can Beat Covid-19. Just Trust Science and Hold the Line” - WIRED
“Not Like the Flu, Not Like Car Crashes, Not Like...” - The New Atlantis
“Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience” - found in Corona Daily
The roadmap by the way, comes from a Harvard report that, among other things, says the U.S. would need to “run 5 million tests per day by early June to start lifting social distancing measures.”
PandemicTesting.org Harvard
Extra! Extra!
Hey, stand up for what you believe in. Stand up high!
The New York Times ran a piece Sunday on a man in South Korea who has been speaking out against Samsung from nearly 100 feet in the air.
“Kim Yong-hee has been staging sit-ins and hunger strikes at the top of an 82-foot-tall traffic camera tower overlooking the busiest intersection in Seoul—for more than 300 days and counting.”
He was reportedly fired from Samsung in 1995, allegedly for trying to organize an independent labor union.
“‘Things can hardly get worse than here, but I am ready to fight Samsung in worse conditions,’ Mr. Kim said by telephone from his midair protest camp, from which he can see the soaring towers of Samsung’s headquarters. ‘This is my last stand against that evil behemoth.’”
Stick it to ‘em!
Kim Yong-hee - 🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️
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:
House Republicans resist proposal to allow lawmakers to vote remotely - CNN
Safety Advisories - Committee to Protect Journalists
Poland: Reject New Curbs on Abortion, Sex Ed - Human Rights Watch
Poland abortion: Protesters against ban defy coronavirus lockdown - BBC News
As Poland defies 'European values,' women resist on streets and online - CNN
As people stay home, Earth turns wilder and cleaner - AP News
50 years of progress—and setbacks—since the first Earth Day - National Geographic
Amazon pours $10 million into forest conservation - Axios
Bipartisan U.S. Senate report backs spy agencies' findings on Russia - Reuters
Republican-Led Review Backs Intelligence Findings on Russian Interference - The New York Times
Bipartisan Senate report backs assessment that Russia interfered in 2016 election - Los Angeles Times
Bipartisan Senate report says 2017 intel assessment about Russian interference and Trump was accurate - NBC News
Study finds no benefit, higher death rate in patients taking hydroxychloroquine for Covid-19 - CNN
More deaths, no benefit from malaria drug in VA virus study - AP News
Here's What We Know about the Most Touted Drugs Tested for COVID-19 - Scientific American
First at-home COVID-19 testing kit authorized by the FDA - The Verge
Governors dealing with protests ask Pence for help keeping people home, access to testing gear - ABC News
U.S. attorney general won't rule out legal action over state coronavirus measures - Reuters
Lack of virus testing stokes fears in world’s refugee camps - AP News
UN Fears Coronavirus Will Double Population Living In Acute Hunger - NPR
‘We’re beyond angered’: Fed-up nurses file lawsuits, plan protest at White House over lack of coronavirus protections - The Washington Post
New York City builds coronavirus strategic medical reserve: 'We can't depend on the federal government,' mayor says - CNBC
Trump says immigration order will apply only to green cards and will last 60 days - CNNPolitics
Judge orders ICE to consider releasing all immigrants at risk of dying if infected by coronavirus - CBS News
White House readies push to slash regulations as major part of its coronavirus economic recovery plan - The Washington Post
COVID-19 turns the clock back on the war in Ukraine, as needs grow - The New Humanitarian
Kenya Police Violence Mars Pandemic Response - Human Rights Watch
Publicly traded firms get $300M in small-business loans - AP News
From the Editors: We Can Beat Covid-19. Just Trust Science and Hold the Line - WIRED
When Government Fails, Makers Come to the Rescue - WIRED
Not Like the Flu, Not Like Car Crashes, Not Like - The New Atlantis
The U.S. will need to run 5 million tests per day by early June to start lifting social distancing measures, a Harvard report found - Harvard
Harvard Study - Corona Daily
‘My Last Stand’: In South Korea, a Protester’s Lone Fight Against Samsung - The New York Times