| World Alert: Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, wife of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, tests positive for the coronavirus Posted: 12 Mar 2020 07:28 PM PDT The Canadian leader is not showing symptoms, his office said, but will remain in self-isolation for 14 days and continue to conduct meetings by phone. His wife had a message for Canadians: "We will get through this situation together."                      |
| Trump quarantines Europe Posted: 12 Mar 2020 04:14 PM PDT QuickTake Tonight | Greetings, QuickTake readers! In this edition: The Fed's injection intervention, one pro-sports cancellation begets another and a trip to the planet where it rains liquid iron.  Trump quarantines Europe After earlier downplaying the coronavirus threat in the U.S., President Trump on Wednesday evening called for a ban on most travel from Europe for 30 days, starting Friday night. Included in his 10-minute prime-time address were scattered executive actions to protect American workers and businesses rocked by the "foreign virus," he said, casting blame on the EU for failing to restrict travel from China and other hotspots. What Trump got wrong: - "We will be suspending all travel from Europe." Americans or U.K. residents coming from Europe aren't restricted as long as they go through extra screenings. It also only applies to 26 countries, not the entire continent. He didn't explain why the U.K. was exempted.
- "Insurers agreed to waive co-pays for coronavirus treatments." They agreed to cover coronavirus testing with no co-pays or deductibles but not treatment or tests ordered by a patient's doctor.
- "Prohibitions will apply to the tremendous amount of trade." The White House quickly clarified, and Trump tweeted, the official proclamation states it "only applies to humans, not goods and cargo."
On the other side of the Atlantic: - European leaders denounced the ban. The European Commission said the pandemic "is a global crisis, not limited to any continent and requires cooperation," adding the EU "disapproves that the decision to impose a travel ban was taken unilaterally, without consultation."
$ignificant figures $1.5 trillion. How much the Fed vowed to inject into the financial system to calm panicky markets amid the coronavirus meltdown, announced just before U.S. stocks plunged 10% in the Dow's worst day since 1987. 37. The number of days the coronavirus pathogen can stay in a patient's respiratory tract, a study found, which suggests people could remain infectious for weeks and reinforces the difficulty of containment. 308,745,538. The population of the U.S. at the time of the 2010 census. The 2020 census, the first to be conducted primarily online, kicked off Thursday amid fears it'd need a deadline extension due to coronavirus. Highly quotable "Not much more than a one-day-at-a-time approach, no?" Tom Hanks said he and wife Rita Wilson tested positive for coronavirus while in Australia and will stay "isolated for as long as public health requires." "Impracticality of hosting such events." The NCAA called off March Madness over the "evolving Covid-19 public health threat," following moves by the NBA, MLB, NHL and MLS to suspend or postpone play. "It is a failing, let's admit it." Anthony Fauci said the U.S.'s distribution of Covid-19 tests "is not really geared to what we need right now," and said the public health system is "not set up" for people to get easily tested. This is not normal Tipping point. The Amazon could become an open savannah in a half-century and Caribbean coral reefs could die off in 15 years, a study of 40 separate ecosystems says, warning of irreversible changes within years.  The future is now Alien weather. Some 390 light-years away in another solar system exists WASP-76b, an ultra-hot Jupiter-like exoplanet, where scientists detected a near-constant rain of extremely dense, scaldingly hot iron droplets.  What's good Aww. Scientists discovered the world's smallest dinosaur in Myanmar, trapped in 99-million-year-old amber, which preserved a bird-like skull that would've been the size of a bee hummingbird, the tiniest living bird.  Now that you're caught up... Tell your friends to sign up to receive our newsletter five days a week. Follow QuickTake on Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. BTW: Just above the Sydney Opera House, a skywriter left the best advice yet for protecting yourself from coronavirus. Thanks for reading!
-Andrew Mach | | | | Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can't find anywhere else. Learn more. | | | |   |
| News Alert: U.S. launches strikes in Iraq against Iranian-backed militias after attack that killed coalition troops Posted: 12 Mar 2020 03:55 PM PDT A U.S. official and a militia representative said the strikes were underway. The military action followed the deaths of two U.S. troops and one British service member. Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said the perpetrators would not "get away with it."                      |
| BREAKING NEWS: Retaliatory U.S. airstrikes underway after 2 American troops killed in Iraq Posted: 12 Mar 2020 03:54 PM PDT The U.S. is conducting retaliatory airstrikes in Iraq after two U.S. and one British service member died in a rocket attack Wednesday, a U.S. official confirmed to POLITICO. The strikes come just hours after Pentagon leaders warned that the United States would respond to the deadly attack, which they said was launched by Iranian-backed Shia militia groups in Iraq. "Let me be clear: The U.S. will not tolerate attacks against our people, our interests or our allies," Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters at the Pentagon, adding that he spoke to President Donald Trump after the attack and the president gave him "the authority to do what we need to do consistent with his guidance." Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/12/iraq-airstrikes-us-iran-127720 To change your alert settings, please go to https://secure.politico.com/newsletter-settings
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| PM Trudeau in self-isolation as wife being tested for COVID-19 Posted: 12 Mar 2020 02:30 PM PDT  Ontario public schools to close for two weeks | | | | | | | | The Prime Minister’s Office issued a statement Thursday that Sophie Grégoire Trudeau had recently returned from a speaking engagement in London, U.K. She began “exhibiting mild flu-like symptoms including a low fever late last night,” it read. |
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| The nightmare scenario Posted: 12 Mar 2020 02:28 PM PDT Evening Briefing | Now that the bull market is over, an uncertain future awaits U.S. stocks and the nation's economy. Radical moves during the Great Recession, first by President George W. Bush and then by President Barack Obama, eventually helped clear the way for an extraordinary stretch of growth. President Donald Trump has based his argument for a second term on the performance of the markets. Now he faces his own potential nightmare scenario. In a speech last night, Trump offered many misstatements about the Covid-19 pandemic and even his own proposals to address it, which include a payroll tax suspension, $50 billion in small business loans and a controversial ban on European travelers. On the first day of the new bear market, investors delivered their verdict: the S&P 500 had its worst day since 1987, and a day known as Black Monday. —David E. Rovella We're tracking the latest on the coronavirus outbreak and the global response. Sign up here for our daily newsletter on what you need to know. Here are today's top stories The Fed may have been drawing on the lessons of the last financial crisis when it pledged Thursday to increase purchases of U.S. government securities. After a short pause, however, investors resumed their selloff. Democrats in the House of Representatives proposed a package of emergency legislation that Trump quickly rejected because it includes what he called "goodies." The bill allows for free coronavirus testing, enhanced unemployment benefits, paid leave and increased Medicaid funding. Former Vice President Joe Biden, now the Democratic frontrunner, unveiled his plan to fight the spread of Covid-19. His debate Sunday with Senator Bernie Sanders was moved from Phoenix to a Washington studio. Patients with the new coronavirus keep the pathogen in their respiratory tract for as long as 37 days, a new study found, suggesting they could remain infectious for weeks. The leading U.S. infectious-disease official said the coronavirus testing system in America is "a failing." In China, the government says the peak of the outbreak is "generally over." Trump's travel restriction drew a furious response from the European Union and triggered a further slump in airline stocks. The European Central Bank boosted asset purchases and called for "ambitious and coordinated" action by policy makers. Read the latest on the pandemic in the Bloomberg virus update . Goldman Sachs says diminishing liquidity in the S&P 500 futures market is driving this week's extreme price moves, which may have been disproportionately driven by individual trades. Bloomberg Businessweek Special Report, The Lost Year: Overconfidence, delays, mistakes and false information from the Trump administration may have made the epidemic—and its fallout—much worse than it had to be. What you'll need to know tomorrow What you'll want to read in Bloomberg Pursuits The decision came down from Albany on Thursday: Broadway is going dark. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo also said he is banning gatherings of more than 500 people to address the spread of the new coronavirus across the city and state. New York City declared its own emergency, too.  Like Bloomberg ' s Evening Briefing? Subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, The Bloomberg Open and The Bloomberg Close. Leap ahead of the competition: Get the news and ideas shaping global markets every morning with Bloomberg Surveillance. Bloomberg's Jon Ferro, Tom Keene, and Paul Sweeney are your go-to source for the latest on the economy, finance and international relations. Subscribe now via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever else you listen. Download the Bloomberg app: It's available for iOS and Android. Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can't find anywhere else. Learn more. | |   |
| Coronavirus triggers the worst market crash since 1987 Posted: 12 Mar 2020 02:04 PM PDT Bloomberg Opinion Today Follow Us   | | This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a repurchase operation of Bloomberg Opinion's opinions. Sign up here. Today's Agenda  A whole lotta red. Photographer: BRYAN R. SMITH/AFP/Getty Images Trump Speaks, Markets Crash The coronavirus panic gripping markets, with U.S. stocks falling the most since 1987's Black Monday and threatening a new credit crisis, is being fueled by a global failure of leadership. Take President Donald Trump. He had a chance last night to reboot his handling of the rapidly unfolding virus crisis and end the market sell-off. Instead he made several unforced errors, blamed other countries for the disease's spread, bragged unconvincingly about his crisis-handling, and unveiled plans that fell far short of what experts or the market wanted. It was a debacle encapsulating the worst of his presidency, writes Jonathan Bernstein. Stock futures collapsed even as he spoke, and major indexes plunged today, falling deeper into a bear market and triggering circuit breakers for the second time in a week. This must be especially painful for Trump, who has claimed credit for every stock-market gain, notes John Authers. He's now learning why other presidents avoided this: When you claim it on the way up, you own it on the way down. Trump apparently thinks minimizing the virus's threat and dribbling out economic support will turn markets around. But investors foremost want him to take the health crisis seriously, writes James Bianco. Other countries have gotten to this point more quickly. Tim Culpan suggests there are stages of virus response like the stages of grief. Later stages include acceptance and aggressive action, as we've seen in Taiwan and Italy. The U.S. is still wallowing in the early stage of denial, making the crisis much worse. And the measures Trump did lay out were inadequate, writes Noah Smith. We need bigger loans to businesses than Trump proposed, along with paid sick leave and drastically expanded virus testing and care. All of that and more was in a Democratic relief bill Trump and Republicans immediately rejected, worsening the market sell-off. What's more, Trump's controversial European travel restriction is almost certainly pointless now that the virus is already here, writes Justin Fox. Even at their most effective, such bans simply delay transmission. Trump has also floated bailing out affected industries such as cruise lines and shale frackers, businesses far from critical to the functioning of the nation's economy. Frackers in particular need consolidation, given sagging demand for their product, writes Liam Denning. Supporting them through this crisis is a kind of corporate socialism the Soviet Union would have envied. Some global leaders are rising to the occasion. Germany's Angela Merkel, for example, has emerged from weeks of politically necessitated hiding to talk seriously about the challenges of the disease, writes Andreas Kluth. These two have long had opposing management styles, to put it mildly, and it's never been clearer. The time between this bear market's onset and the most recent market peak is the quickest since 1929, James Bianco notes. This is a terrifying comparison, but also a telling one. Back then Franklin Delano Roosevelt successfully calmed the nation by prioritizing honesty, action and teamwork, writes Cass Sunstein. We're a long way from FDR. ECB Meeting a Big Win for Hawks, Bears The European Central Bank didn't help by failing to deliver an expected interest-rate cut this morning, as its president, Christine Lagarde, apparently surrendered to the hawks. What's worse, she also delivered red meat to the sovereign-debt bears, shrugging as yield spreads jumped for Italy and other European economies, note Marcus Ashworth and Mark Gilbert. With one tossed-off sentence — "We are not here to close spreads." — Lagarde dismantled the sense of safety her predecessor Mario Draghi had provided when he protected the debt of EU member states, writes Ferdinando Giugliano. Good thing there's no kind of market crisis going on! Fed Rushes Into Burning Market With Liquidity Fire Hose At least somebody on Liberty Street in New York knows how to respond to a crisis. For several days now, the Treasury bond market has been doing very weird things, with rates swinging wildly and occasionally rising even as stocks crash, which seldom happens. It turns out forced selling has created something of a liquidity problem in the bond market, Brian Chappatta writes, so the New York Fed leaped into action with a promise of $1.5 trillion in bond-buying. This very briefly eased the pain in stocks, but soon investors were back to clamoring for more. One thing the Fed should do right away is slash interest rates to zero, writes Tim Duy. There's no point in keeping its power dry, now that the economy is likely in recession already. Still, it's good the Fed has committed to supporting the repo market that greases the skids of commerce, writes Brian Chappatta. This should help keep a market crash and recession from turning into a full-blown credit crisis. Because there probably will be unpleasant knock-on surprises, writes Matt Levine, as leverage and positions built up in the good times suddenly unwind. As for stocks, the duration of this bear market probably depends less on panic than on expectations of the damage about to be done to earnings, suggests Nir Kaissar. Profit forecasts are already being slashed dramatically, notes John Authers. Expectations are for a v-shaped recovery, but a credit crunch could blow up those expectations. Telltale Charts The Volatility Index is screaming this is like 2008 all over again, writes Barry Ritholtz. That's either reason to freak out, or an early buying signal. Good luck guessing which!  Further Reading Vietnam has long been one of the last best markets for coal, but no longer. — Clara Ferreira Marques Collapsing oil prices make this a good time to put the petroleum industry in Europe's carbon pricing market. — Andreas Kluth Boris Johnson promises spending that could keep Labour out of power indefinitely, assuming the U.K. can afford it. — Therese Raphael Iran's killing of American soldiers comes at a ridiculously bad time for the virus-struck regime. — Bobby Ghosh Virus-era home-schooling will hasten the end of the traditional classroom model. — Stephen Carter ICYMI Trump met a Brazilian official who tested positive for coronavirus. Coronavirus can live in patients for five weeks after contagion. The NCAA canceled March Madness. Kickers K-pop is a government conspiracy. (h/t Mike Smedley) Ancient shell shows days were shorter 70 million years ago. Smart devices are eating the market for affordable watches. We're better equipped to look for extraterrestrial life than ever. Note: Please send affordable watches and complaints to Mark Gongloff at mgongloff1@bloomberg.net. Sign up here and follow us on Twitter and Facebook. | | | | Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can't find anywhere else. Learn more. | | | |   |
| ❗ CONFIRMED: You're Getting... Posted: 12 Mar 2020 01:44 PM PDT Don't miss this deal!   |
| Chris Harrison was 'shocked' and 'saddened' by Peter Weber's mom Barb at The Bachelor finale Posted: 12 Mar 2020 01:17 PM PDT | If you are having trouble viewing this email click here |  | | 3/12/20 |  | | | |  | | | EXCLUSIVE
Chris Harrison Was 'Shocked' and 'Saddened' by Peter Weber's Mom Barb at The Bachelor Finale | | | | Chris Harrison says he was in shock as he listened to Peter Weber's mother openly disapprove of his relationship with Madison Prewett | | | | |  | | | STAR TRACKS
Michael B. Jordan Gets the Party Started, Plus Andrew Garfield, Brooklyn Beckham & Nicola Peltz and More | | | | From Hollywood to New York and everywhere in between, see what your favorite stars are up to | | | | | | | | |  | | | IN THIS WEEK'S ISSUE
How Meghan Markle Comforted Prince Harry During His Most 'Emotional' Moment Ahead of Royal Exit | | | | "Deep down they are truly in love with each other," a source tells PEOPLE of Meghan and Harry | | | | | | | | |  | | | HEARTBREAKING STORY
Wife of Coronavirus Patient in Coma Speaks Out from Quarantine with Twins: 'Take This Seriously' | | | | "My husband got really sick, really fast," said the woman | | | | |  | | | SPEAKING OUT
Kate Beckinsale Recalls Shocking Experience with Harvey Weinstein After 9/11: I 'Started to Shake' | | | | The actress recalled being the victim of an obscenity-filled tirade for not wearing "a tight dress" to a movie premiere following 9/11 | | | | |  | | | CORONAVIRUS CRISIS
Passenger on JetBlue Flight to Florida Tested Positive for Coronavirus Before Boarding | | | | The man was wearing a mask and gloves, and said he was not feeling well | | | | |  | | | PROTECTING THEIR LITTLE ONE
Why Archie Stayed in Canada During Meghan Markle and Prince Harry's Royal Exit in the U.K. | | | | Meghan and Harry stayed close to Archie by FaceTiming with him every day, a source tells PEOPLE | | | | CLICK HERE FOR MORE NEWS | | | | | | | | | | Meredith Corporation, 1716 Locust Street, Des Moines, IA 50309
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| BREAKING NEWS: Market plunges in worst drop since 1987 crash Posted: 12 Mar 2020 01:07 PM PDT The stock market tumbled 10% on Thursday — its worst percentage drop since the 1987 crash — despite an attempt by President Donald Trump to calm the growing panic over the coronavirus pandemic. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged more than 2,000 points, continuing a weeks-long slide that has knocked the gauge down roughly 30% from its peak. Read more here. To change your alert settings, please go to https://secure.politico.com/newsletter-settings
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| Oil Plummets, Iran’s Virus Mistakes, Houthi Offensives, and More Posted: 12 Mar 2020 11:47 AM PDT |  | | | |  | CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY Dana Stroul House Committee on Foreign Affairs, March 11, 2020 Given the near-certainty of further conflict, Washington should start planning for how it might leverage the next outbreak toward advancing a political process.
|  | OP-ED Simon Henderson The Hill, March 10, 2020 The showdown's duration may depend on Moscow and Riyadh's economic calculus, but the U.S. shale industry will suffer either way.
|  | POLICYWATCH 3279 David Makovsky March 9, 2020 Although Gantz lost the head-to-head battle, Avigdor Liberman strengthened the general's position—and took some diplomatic weight off Trump's shoulders.
|  | POLICYWATCH 3278 Simon Henderson March 9, 2020 Reports of royal arrests and a possible coup plot suggest that the kingdom is facing another period of considerable political tension.
|  | POLICYWATCH 3277 Mehdi Khalaji March 9, 2020 The clergy's globalized ambitions and resistance to modern medical science made Qom and the rest of the country uniquely vulnerable to the disease.
|  | POLICYWATCH 3276 Alex Almeida and Michael Knights March 6, 2020 To keep recent rebel victories from cascading into a wider military collapse, Washington must urge the Gulf coalition to firm up the government's forces.
|  | INTERVIEW Soner Cagaptay Bosphorus Review of Books, March 2020 A deep dive into the evolution of Erdogan's regional approach and how it informs the current crises in Syria and other hotspots.
|  | OP-ED Hanin Ghaddar Caravan, March 5, 2020 Whether by force or politics, Tehran desperately needs to reconsolidate power among regional Shia, but this may no longer be doable in Iraq and Lebanon.
|  | FIKRA FORUM Yoel Donchin March 5, 2020 The chief medical officer at Ben Gurion International Airport outlines what the country has done to curb the disease in the midst of an election season.
|  | OP-ED Matthew Levitt Middle East Institute, February 2020 Revelations from a recent terrorism trial suggest that the group could eventually use the preoperational surveillance it regularly collects to carry out an attack.
|  | | | u.S. policy | Dennis Ross told the Boston Herald that the politically popular U.S. idea of leaving the Middle East for good would be "another terrible mistake."
| syria | Anna Borshchevskaya told the Arab Weekly that all of Turkey's security deals in Syria have been more advantageous to Russia because Putin has major economic leverage over Erdogan.
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| Coronavirus in Iran (Part 2): Regime Resiliency (Khalaji | PolicyWatch 3280) Posted: 12 Mar 2020 10:39 AM PDT THE CORONAVIRUS IN IRAN (PART 2): REGIME CULPABILITY AND RESILIENCY by Mehdi Khalaji PolicyWatch 3280
March 12, 2020 Even as their lack of transparency worsens the public health crisis, the Supreme Leader and other officials have systematically gutted any civil society elements capable of organizing substantial opposition to such policies. READ THIS ITEM ON OUR WEBSITE
Iran’s ongoing coronavirus epidemic has left the people with less reason than ever to trust the information and directives issued by their leaders. Part 1 of this PolicyWatch discussed the clergy’s role in aggravating this problem, but the state’s mistakes and deceptions have been legion as well. They include scandalous discrepancies between official reports after a period of denial that the virus had entered the country; a health system that was unprepared to deal with such a disease promptly and properly; and official resistance to implementing internationally recommended precautionary measures, such as canceling flights from China and quarantining the center of the outbreak. These decisions have sown widespread confusion about facts and fictions related to the virus, the most effective medically proven ways to control it, and the degree to which it is spreading throughout the country. As a result, an already restive population has become increasingly panicked about the future and angry at the state. Yet can the coronavirus actually bring down the regime? The harsh reality is that the state has left little space for opposition to organize around health issues, or any issues for that matter. Instead, it has sought to confuse the people and redirect their anger toward external enemies, even as its own policies contribute to the crisis. CONCEALING FACTS, DEFLECTING BLAME In response to health and social challenges like the current epidemic, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his circle frequently resort to two tactics: ideological exploitation and political paranoia. The first centers on Khamenei’s insistence that the regime’s brand of Islam has a solution for all of society’s problems. To prop up this claim against ample evidence to the contrary, the state consistently categorizes data on major social problems as classified information and releases misleading or contradictory reports. For example, despite the growing prevalence of drug addiction among school students, Education Minister Muhammad Bathai has refused to reveal the related statistics. Hassan Mousavi, head of the Iran Association of Social Workers, has complained about the state’s denial of such widespread social problems and its resistance to making the data public. Even parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani has criticized the government’s policy of classifying statistics related to addiction, divorce, and other issues. The second tactic involves telling the public that Iran’s foreign enemies are bent on treating Muslim bodies as another battlefield on which to destroy Islam. For instance, Khamenei and other authorities have repeatedly accused Western governments of maliciously attempting to lower the birthrate in Muslim societies. In September 2010, he stated: “Westerners are against demographic growth among Muslims...We should not do things in a way that they reach their goal...The decline in birthrate is a very important issue. What is best for our enemies...is that Iran’s population remains around twenty or thirty million people...If they could plan for such an objective they would, they spend money, certainly they spend money.” In his view, even the domestic increase in drug addiction is the “enemy’s conspiracy.” Another example of this paranoia is transgenic food products. In a February 2016 interview with the Khamenei-controlled newspaper Kayhan, biotechnology expert Ali Karami extensively argued that “transgenic products are Zionism’s conspiracy against the Muslim population.” Even financial corruption and crime are blamed on the West. For example, in December 2013, Khamenei argued, “One of the effects of the enemies’ cultural invasion is the increasing rate of armed robbery from banks. We have seen it in [American] movies.” Regarding coronavirus, Khamenei’s initial reaction on February 23 was to characterize “this new disease” as the enemy’s “pretext” to discourage Iranians from voting in the February parliamentary election, giving him a readymade excuse when his fears of plummeting turnout were in fact born out. This claim was followed by President Hassan Rouhani’s warning that the virus was becoming the “enemy’s weapon” to shut down the country. GUTTING CIVIL SOCIETY IN THE NAME OF SECURITY Under the Islamic Republic’s brand of authoritarianism, all independent networks, organizations, institutions, and campaigns are treated as potential threats to state security, regardless of their nature, mission, and impact—including those that benefit the public health. Furthermore, phenomena that a democratic government would define as social disorders or health deficiencies are usually categorized by Tehran as security concerns. This posture often entails blocking nongovernmental actors from intervening in these issues and criminalizing any individual or institution that attempts to get involved. For example, according to a 2011 Amnesty International report, the Iranian doctors Kamiar Alaei and his brother Arash Alaei were imprisoned from 2008 to 2011 on charges of “cooperating with an enemy government.” Their actual “crime”? Founding an NGO for prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS. Last week, the brothers wrote a New York Times op-ed titled “How Iran Completely and Utterly Botched Its Response to the Coronavirus.” The article began: “We were doctors in the Iranian health system for years. This is what happens when you make health policy subservient to politics.” Indeed, Tehran’s lack of transparency and systematic deception regarding the coronavirus is anything but a new behavior. Many citizens are now deeply suspicious of government claims about health issues by default, even when they lack access to accurate data sources that would confirm their mistrust. For instance, when authorities issued contradictory announcements last fall about the unusually high rate of AIDS infection in the province of Chaharmahol and Bakhtiari, street protests soon erupted. The public’s anger was exacerbated when the regime refused to take responsibility for a local medical center’s practice of using HIV-contaminated syringes, instead blaming foreign media and domestic political opponents. On October 19, Health Minister Saeed Namaki insisted that the matter was “classified.” The regime has taken a similarly politicized approach to disaster relief. When major flooding struck Kermanshah province in May 2019, many nongovernmental institutions, sports stars, and celebrities managed to raise large sums of money and provide significant aid to the people in need. In response, government media criticized their luxurious lifestyle and complained about their legal tax exemptions, generating significant public resentment toward many celebrities who had previously been well-liked. Such systematic humiliation is Tehran’s way of preventing any alternative authority from taking independent action when citizens come under threat, whether due to the state’s aggression or its incompetence. Social media and the Internet have done little to break this overwhelming grip. When crises like the coronavirus emerge, even experienced Iranian Internet users are exposed to limitless messages with conflicting, misleading, or manipulative information, much of it disseminated via the regime’s potent cyber capabilities. Most users are therefore quite susceptible to believing and facilitating virtual mass campaigns even if their content winds up sowing misinformation and confusion. The proliferation of anti-regime campaigns does not necessarily alleviate this problem, especially when some of them tend toward propaganda themselves. When the coronavirus first emerged, regime reports about the crisis failed to persuade many Iranians. Yet the public was similarly skeptical when anti-regime websites and satellite television networks spread dramatically different reports without proof (though in some cases such proof was impossible to obtain given the regime’s deliberate withholding of disease statistics). IMPLICATIONS FOR U.S. POLICY On paper, the regime’s defining traits seem like a self-destructive combination: declining domestic credibility, international isolation, minimal competence to carry out its basic duties, ceaseless use of violence to maintain control, and an exhausting, defiant, utopian push to expand its hegemony abroad. Perhaps the recent string of crises will make that self-destruction more likely to materialize at some point. Yet even if the regime founders, the damage it has done to Iranian society leaves little hope for a smooth, speedy transition to a democratic, relatively U.S.-friendly state in the near term. The public is struggling with a profound social trust deficit, the disintegration of shared values, and deep burnout after years of regime aggression and humiliation—all of which would likely delay or abort the strong social and moral solidarity needed to birth a truly promising regime alternative any time soon. Instead, many citizens are focused on just surviving, and have adopted deeply cynical worldviews that create a disturbing sense of living in a lawless space rather than a functioning nation. In all likelihood, then, only a small subset of actors would be willing and able to fill the vacuum that follows the regime’s ultimate collapse—namely, existing factions that already hold the keys to Iran’s military arsenal and prisons. Such a replacement government would hardly choose to denounce the police state from which it was birthed, nor the defiant anti-Western animosity that has been Khamenei’s calling card. Mehdi Khalaji is the Libitzky Family Fellow at The Washington Institute.
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| BREAKING NEWS: McConnell postpones Senate recess to work on coronavirus package Posted: 12 Mar 2020 10:33 AM PDT Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the Senate will delay its recess scheduled for next week to continue work on an economic relief package dealing with the coronavirus outbreak. "Notwithstanding the scheduled state work period, the Senate will be in session next week," the GOP leader tweeted. "I am glad talks are ongoing between the Administration and Speaker Pelosi. I hope Congress can pass bipartisan legislation to continue combating the coronavirus and keep our economy strong." Pelosi is racing to clinch a deal with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on a sweeping aid package. Read more. To change your alert settings, please go to https://secure.politico.com/newsletter-settings
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| BREAKING NEWS: Dem debate moved to D.C. over coronavirus concerns Posted: 12 Mar 2020 09:41 AM PDT |
| Post Exclusive: Satellite images show Iran building vast burial trenches, an indication that Tehran is understating coronavirus toll Posted: 12 Mar 2020 09:27 AM PDT The new evidence, supplemented by on-the-ground video, shows that Iran is rapidly expanding a cemetery in the holy city of Qom. Experts say that Iran's public statements appear to have dramatically understated coronavirus impact.                      |
| الاتحاد الأوروبي يستنكر قرار ترامب حظر السفر إلى أوروبا من دون استشارة Posted: 12 Mar 2020 08:58 AM PDT الاتحاد الأوروبي يستنكر قرار ترامب حظر السفر إلى أوروبا من دون استشارة... | نسخة على الإنترنت | | نسختك الخاصة من أخبار يورونيوز – 03/12/20 |
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| نشرتك اليومية من الأخبار المختلفة المتنوعة |
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| News Alert: Brazilian official who met Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday tests positive for coronavirus Posted: 12 Mar 2020 08:38 AM PDT Fabio Wajngarten, a spokesman for Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, tested positive for covid-19, Brazilian officials said. Wajngarten stood next to President Trump in a photograph with Vice President Pence.                      |
| خلاصة بصراحة - الخميس 12 آذار/مارس 2020 Posted: 12 Mar 2020 07:28 AM PDT |
| Knowing empowers us. Get one year for $29. Posted: 12 Mar 2020 07:18 AM PDT | Support the work of our award-winning newsroom. | | |  |
| Re: today's Incoming newsletter: a spoiler warning and/or apology Posted: 12 Mar 2020 07:14 AM PDT If you're a fan of The Masked Singer and didn't see last night's episode, please read on... MY BAD
There was a spoiler involving last night's episode of "The Masked Singer" in this morning's newsletter I should have included a spoiler alert — my bad! I've already got a few emails about it, and to anyone who had the show's big surprise ruined — and seriously, it's such a wild surprise — I'm sorry! It won't happen again. And if you're a Masked Singer fan who hasn't seen last night's episode yet, and doesn't want the big reveal ruined, maybe skip today's newsletter. Also, you're in for an AMAZING time whenever you do end up watching it. No more spoilers, I promise, Tom BuzzFeed, Inc.
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| The night when all the news happened Posted: 12 Mar 2020 05:35 AM PDT Europe travel ban, NBA suspended, Tom Hanks tests positive, and that was all in one hour  THE BIG STORY
Man, that was quite an evening
The news flowed like a mighty river last night. It was wild, and abundant, and all seemed to happen within about 45 minutes. In short:
President Donald Trump announced a one-month ban on travel from most of Europe to the United States. "We will be suspending all travel from Europe," Trump said, but the Department of Homeland Security later clarified that it's not quite that harsh: the ban doesn't apply to US citizens or their immediate family, or US legal permanent residents, and it's not a ban for all of the continent, just the 26 countries in Europe's common travel Schengen Area.
The NBA suspended its season. It happened in extremely dramatic fashion: a game between the Utah Jazz and Oklahoma City Thunder was about to begin when the players were whisked off the court and announcers told the crowd the game was postponed. "You're all safe. Take your time in leaving the arena," they said over the loudspeakers — here's video of the moment.
It then emerged that Rudy Gobert, the star Jazz player, had tested positive for coronavirus. Players from the five teams the Jazz have played against in the last 10 days have been told to self-quarantine.
And Tom Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, currently in Australia, announced they have both tested positive for the virus. "We felt a bit tired, like we had colds, and some body aches," Hanks wrote on Instagram. "To play things right, as is needed in the world right now, we were tested for the Coronavirus, and were found to be positive."
And in other breaking news from last night, former Alaska Governor and 2008 Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin was revealed to be the Masked Singer, and give a stirring rendition of Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Baby's Got Back".
 Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson. Leon Bennett / Getty Images CORONAVIRUS UPDATE People inside the country's first coronavirus containment zone in New Rochelle, just north of New York City, are confused and angry. Albert Samaha visited the city and residents have questions, including: why is it still so hard to get tested? And why are most of the schools still open?
Seattle's biggest public school district is shutting all its schools for at least two weeks. Seattle has been hit hard by the outbreak; district officials told parents the move was necessary to "disrupt widespread infection."
European diplomats say they were shocked by the travel ban announced by Trump last night. They received no prior warning; the European Commission said confronting the global outbreak "requires cooperation rather than unilateral action."
New York's St. Patrick's Day parade has been cancelled. It has been held every year since 1762. Parades in Chicago and Dublin have also been canceled.
SNAPSHOTS Clearview AI gave its controversial facial recognition technology to a former Trump staffer, a notorious internet troll, and conservative think tanks. The company has previously said its tool is only for use by law enforcement.
Kamala Harris spoke out yesterday about how she was covered as a black presidential candidate. "We had to constantly explain who we are as people, and our character," she said.
The US women's national soccer team protested their employer by wearing their jerseys inside out at the beginning of a game yesterday. The protest was in reaction to US Soccer arguing in court earlier this week that the women should not be paid equally to the men's team because they are less skilled.
Harvey Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison. Women in Hollywood are celebrating.
AP Photo/Jeffrey McWhorter HOW TO BE A GOOD PERSON Yes, you actually can do something about the coronavirus You might not personally suffer from the coronavirus, but your community almost certainly will, Anne Helen Petersen writes in this lovely essay. She offers a different way of thinking about staying safe during the outbreak — one focused on facing this danger together. I thought I'd include a few of her thoughts here, although the entire piece is very much worth reading:
"We can channel some of our anxious energy away from reading articles on the internet and toward thinking about who in our lives and in our communities will need help or assistance.
Who can you talk to now to make a plan to help them later? (With supplies, with groceries, with caring for their pets or children or parents.) Can you start a group text now with your neighbors to keep up on one another's health and needs? If you're able, can you donate to your local food bank, which will be supplying families whose income is curtailed, or donate additional supplies to the homeless shelter? Can you buy things from local businesses, restaurants, and artists now (or buy a gift card!) so that things might be less lean for them in the months to come?
If you're someone who's at high risk, how can you be honest with yourself and others about it? If you're able to work from home and still pull your normal salary, can you commit to still paying someone who provides you with a service (a housecleaner, a hairdresser, a babysitter, a yoga teacher, a manicurist) even if they have to stay home? If you know someone who might lose their job or see their hours cut back, can you ask them how to help?
Can you understand how making the next few months better for as many people as possible will also, by extension, make it better for you?"
The world needs people like you today,
Tom BuzzFeed, Inc.
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| Trump's Latest Endorsement Posted: 12 Mar 2020 05:33 AM PDT  The following is a message from one of our advertisers. This message does not represent the opinion of The Washington Times. Coach Tommy Tuberville
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| من ديوان Posted: 12 Mar 2020 05:24 AM PDT |
| Thursday Morning Briefing: Coronavirus - Closing U.S. borders to Europe Posted: 12 Mar 2020 05:10 AM PDT |  | | | | | | | | | Coronavirus | | The move added to the panic and confusion, not least among those who now have to reconsider travel plans. Flights from Europe can operate to a limited number of U.S. airports with enhanced screening, but only U.S. citizens, permanent residents and immediate family members will be allowed in, severely denting the passenger base and hurting the U.S. tourism industry.
The news hit financial markets hard, with stocks diving and oil slumping, as investors were disappointed by the lack of broad measures to offset a likely fall in consumption. | | | | | | | | No pressure, Lagarde. After moves by the U.S. Federal Reserve and Bank of England, Christine Lagarde faces her biggest test as European Central Bank president today and she doesn’t have much of an arsenal to throw at the coronavirus crisis. Expectations are high for a range of measures – more cheap loans for banks to pass on to small companies, a rate cut and perhaps even a step-up in the bank's stimulus programme.
But Lagarde, who has encouraged ECB staff to work from home if they wish to, will also stress that it is up to governments to react to the pandemic and they should use leeway in their budgets, a more powerful weapon than whatever the ECB can offer. She has told EU leaders inaction could lead to calamity on a par with the global financial crisis.
| | | | | | | | The spread. There are now more than 126,000 cases of coronavirus globally, after the World Health Organization called the outbreak a pandemic for the first time on Wednesday, and more than 4,600 have died, according to a Reuters tally at 0200 GMT on Thursday. Almost 7,000 cases were reported in the past day, far surpassing the average daily number reported in China during the virus' initial peak.
See Reuters interactive graphic of the spread. | | | | | | | | Italy saw the sharpest increase in cases, with over 2,300 in 24 hours, accounting for a third of all new cases in the past day. A total of 196 people died in Italy over the last 24 hours, the largest rise in absolute numbers since the contagion came to light on Feb. 21.
China had eight new coronavirus infections in Hubei province, the first time the epicentre of the pandemic recorded a daily tally in single digits. More businesses reopened as authorities cautiously eased containment measures.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel was criticised for being alarmist when she said the new coronavirus was likely to infect up to 70% of Germans. | | | | | | | | | | | | | World | | When the current European Commission took office in December, its president, Ursula von der Leyen, created the role of a commissioner for ‘Promoting our European Way of Life’ and handed the job to a Greek politician. The job title was originally ‘Protecting our European Way of Life’, but it was criticized for sounding xenophobic. Ironically, it is Greece that now finds itself caught between promoting and protecting what the EU stands for as it faces a refugee crisis. | | | | In the sun-baked scrubland of northern Colombia’s remote La Guajira province, a bitter quarrel rages between two neighboring Wayuu indigenous families, one of them seeking refuge from a humanitarian crisis across the border in Venezuela. Such conflicts over land, water and animals are increasingly common as Venezuela spirals into disaster and thousands of indigenous Wayuu who once left their Colombian homes for Venezuela return. | | | | Turkish and Russian officials have largely reached an agreement on details of a ceasefire in Syria’s Idlib region during talks in Ankara, Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar was quoted as saying by state media on Thursday. | | | | On a crag of rock called Brother’s Point on Scotland’s Isle of Skye, scientists have identified two bustling footprint sites that reveal an abundance of dinosaurs that thrived 170 million years ago including an early member of a celebrated group. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Top Stories on Reuters TV | | | | | | | |  |
| Pence says thousands more U.S. coronavirus cases expected Posted: 12 Mar 2020 05:02 AM PDT |
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