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Hours after announcing the first person under 18 to die from complications of coronavirus, California health officials are backtracking, saying the 17-year-old from Los Angeles County could have died from something else. On Wednesday, county health officials said they would no longer include the boy’s death in the tally of coronavirus deaths until they know more information, according to the Associated Press.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) on Thursday said the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package passed by the Senate late Wednesday did not meet the needs of the Empire State, calling the bill "irresponsible" and "reckless." The $5 billion included in the bill for the state hardest hit by coronavirus is “earmarked only for COVID virus expenses, which means it does absolutely nothing for us in terms of lost revenue for this state,” Cuomo said during his daily coronavirus press briefing. He said he lost revenues are “the bigger problem.” “The congressional action in my opinion simply failed to address...

Mexican protesters have shut a US southern border crossing amid fears that untested American travellers will spread coronavirus. Residents in Sonora, south of the US state of Arizona, have promised to block traffic into Mexico for a second day after closing a checkpoint for hours on Wednesday. They wore face masks and held signs telling Americans to "stay at home". Mexico has fewer than 500 confirmed Covid-19 cases and the US over 65,000. The border is supposed to be closed to all except "essential" business, but protesters said there has been little enforcement and no testing by authorities. The blockade...

Some local governments have published where coronavirus cases appear, down to the neighborhood level. New York City has made public only county-by-county data, making it difficult to see which communities are being hardest hit. Residents of Los Angeles can go to a county website to look up how many confirmed coronavirus cases there are in Beverlywood, or Koreatown, or Echo Park. Officials in Charlotte, North Carolina, have released figures at the ZIP code level. The South Korean government is sending geotargeted texts to alert citizens to positive cases near them. In New York, now at the center of the outbreak,...

VIDEO Most of the mainstream media is now acting/pretending that Joe Biden is perfectly capable of taking up the Democrat banner against President Donald Trump in the general election. However, much of that same media not too long ago was MOCKING Biden for his lack of coherency. A notable honest exception is Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti of The Hill's Rising who mocked Biden earlier and are continuing to mock him.

#Ohio: Trump 47% (+4) Biden 43% #Pennsylvania: Trump 47% (+2) Biden 45% #Wisconsin: Trump 45% Biden 45%

The UK should now be able to cope with the spread of the covid-19 virus, according to one of the epidemiologists advising the government. Neil Ferguson at Imperial College London gave evidence today to the UK’s parliamentary select committee on science and technology as part of an inquiry into the nation’s response to the coronavirus outbreak. He said that expected increases in National Health Service capacity and ongoing restrictions to people’s movements make him “reasonably confident” the health service can cope when the predicted peak of the epidemic arrives in two or three weeks. UK deaths from the disease are...

Alex Wagner of Showtime’s “The Circus” has released an op-ed urging Democrats to view former Vice President Joseph R. Biden as a “vessel” and an “idea” if they want President Trump defeated at the ballot box. The writer penned “Stay Alive, Joe Biden” for The Atlantic this week, which serves as a blueprint for realizing a Democrat as the 46th commander in chief.

When governments frantically throw more money than they can afford at a crisis -- and we're throwing trillions (yes, trillions) at the desperate war against the coronavirus with that federal relief package out of Washington -- two truths are self-evident. One was famously expressed by Rahm Emanuel, the discredited former mayor of Chicago who dropped his re-election bid rather than get wiped out over his clumsy suppression of a police video of a black teenager being killed by a white cop. Now he dispenses wisdom as a talking head on ABC. And the other was proclaimed by Comrade Napoleon, the...

Nicolás Maduro Moros and 14 Current and Former Venezuelan Officials Charged with Narco-Terrorism, Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Other Criminal Charges.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) made it clear this would be the Senate's last opportunity to pass the bill before they go on recess until after Easter break.

UK Government Downgrades Coronavirus as No Longer Highly Dangerous

Today's Quotefall Puzzle features a quote by Margaret Thatcher. Click puzzle (or click here) for full size rendition, then use your browser's print command to print puzzle. Margaret Thatcher was the greatest peacetime British Prime Minister in the 20th Century. A staunch conservative, Thatcher saved Great Britain from economic stagnation (and potential ruin) while partnering with Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II to defeat the Soviet Union. All hints, along with the answer, are provided in the first reply comment below, using filtered font to prevent accidental spoilers. Please refrain from disclosing the full answer in comments to prevent spoilers.To solve...

The full D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will review a ruling upholding President Trump's authority to use appropriated funding from Congress to build a wall to secure the southern border. The U.S. House, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is appealing a lower-court decision in its lawsuit against Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. The Democratic-led House alleges Trump's declaration of a national emergency to tap military funds for a border usurps Congress's constitutional authority to appropriate funds. The American Center for Law and Justice filed a brief in support of the president. Not only have Pelosi and her "extreme" colleagues "refused to...

As drug manufacturers speed up their efforts to find a new treatment drug for the coronavirus outbreak that has devastated China and has caused a world-wide panic, a Chinese drug company just announced that it has started mass-producing an experimental drug from Gilead Sciences that has the potential to fight the novel coronavirus (1). BrightGene Bio-Medical Technology, a Suzhou based company (2), just announced that it has developed the technology to synthesize the active pharmaceutical ingredients of Remdesivir, the drug developed by Gilead Biosciences. Its stock price surged 20% in Tuesday morning trading in Shanghai (1). “While BrightGene said that...

Attorney General William Barr has filed a statement of interest on behalf of the Justice Department in support of the plaintiffs. Barr is taking an interesting approach in explaining the government’s position. The Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference has been citing Title IX as the rationale for their policy of allowing transgender students to dominate the girls’ track and field events in that state, defining the transgender athletes as “girls” without questioning the underlying reality. Barr has countered by also citing Title IX, saying that CIAC “deprives those women of the single-sex athletic competitions that are one of the marquee accomplishments...

Jeff Shell, NBCUniversal’s recently appointed CEO, has tested positive for coronavirus, Variety has confirmed. In a memo to staff, Shell said he was diagnosed with the virus despite being asymptomatic. He told employees that he will self-quarantine and work from home indefinitely while he recovers. “I recently have been feeling under the weather and just learned that I have tested positive for Covid-19,” Shell wrote. “Although the virus has been tough to cope with, I have managed to work remotely in LA and am improving every day.” Starting last week, NBCUniversal employees had already been directed to work from home...

NPR had to fact-check its own fact-check, showing President Trump wasn’t wrong after all when he said over 50,000 Americans could die from the flu this year. On Monday, NPR published a story headlined, “FACT CHECK: Trump Says 50,000 Could Die From Flu. So Far, It’s Half That.” The story quoted Trump recently saying, “We have a lot of people dying from the flu on top of everything else… it looks like it could be over 50,000."

U.S. equity markets clambered higher Thursday as investors digested record jobless claims and waited for the House to vote on a $2 trillion relief package. First-time unemployment filings surged to a record 3.28 million last week, according to the Labor Department, as the COVID-19 pandemic prompted businesses to temporarily close their doors and lay off employees. The previous record was 695,000, set in 1982. The all-time high in claims came hours after the Senate voted 96-0, passing the $2 trillion relief package that would extend aid to individuals, small businesses and corporations hit hardest by the pandemic. The House of...

American hedge fund boss Bill Ackman has made $2.6 billion by betting against the markets just days after stoking fears by saying 'hell is coming' and begging President Donald Trump to shut down the country amid the coronavirus pandemic. The Pershing Square Capital Management hedge fund manager said his firm had made $2.6billion from a one-off bet that the coronavirus outbreak would cause a global market crash. His firm seized upon bond market turmoil during the coronavirus crisis in buying 'credit protection on various global investment grade and high-yield credit indices'.