Search form

You are here

  • Home
  • US death toll from coronavirus hits 19, New York declares emergency


US death toll from coronavirus hits 19, New York declares emergency

Medics prepare to transfer a patient into an ambulance at the Life Care Center of Kirkland, the long-term care facility linked to several confirmed coronavirus cases in the state, in Kirkland, Washington, on March 5, 2020. (REUTERS/David Ryder)
Short Url

https://arab.news/nhhnm

Updated 08 March 2020
Reuters
AP
Follow

US death toll from coronavirus hits 19, New York declares emergency

  • One of latest cases was a US Marine, the first military victim of the coronavirus that originated from China
  • President Trump says he isn’t concerned “at all” about the coronavirus getting closer to the White House
Updated 08 March 2020
Reuters AP

WASHINGTON: Two more people succumbed to the novel coronavirus in Washington state, officials said on Saturday, bringing the nationwide toll to 19, while the number of confirmed cases in New York rose to 89 and a cruise ship with infected passengers remained stranded outside San Francisco.

More than half of all US states have reported cases of the coronavirus, which originated in China last year and causes the sometimes deadly respiratory illness COVID-19. As the outbreak takes root, daily life has become increasingly disrupted, with concerts and conferences canceled and universities telling students to stay home and take classes online.

Among the latest cases was a Marine at Virginia’s Fort Belvoir, the first military case of coronavirus reported inside the US, a Pentagon official said on background prior to the announcement. The Marine was being treated at Fort Belvoir Community Hospital, located south of Washington, and had recently returned from an overseas assignment, Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said on Twitter.

But President Donald Trump said he isn’t concerned “at all” about the coronavirus getting closer to the White House.

Asked if he was concerned about the virus getting closer, Trump said: “No, I’m not concerned at all. No, I’m not. We’ve done a great job.”

Maryland officials warned Saturday that a person who attended the recent Conservative Political Action Conference in the suburb of Oxon Hill had tested positive for the virus. Both Trump and Vice President Mike Pence spoke at the conference. The White House said Saturday there was no indication that either had met or were in “close proximity” to the infected attendee.

When asked whether his thousand person campaign rallies would would continue in light of the CPAC case, the president replied, “We’ll have tremendous rallies.” Trump held his most recent campaign rally last Monday in Charlotte, North Carolina.

He waved off other questions to join a dinner for the president of Brazil, who was visiting Trump at the president’s home in south Florida.

Organizers of the Conservative Political Action Conference, a high-profile annual gathering that took place in Maryland last month, said on Saturday one of their attendees had tested positive for the virus after exposure prior to the event. The person had no interactions with President Donald Trump or Vice President Mike Pence, who were in attendance, the American Conservative Union said in a statement.

The two latest deaths were in Washington’s King County, the hardest hit area in the United States after the virus spread among residents at a nursing facility in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland. The first deaths on the East Coast were announced late Friday, with two people succumbing in Florida.

In New York, the number of confirmed cases rose by 13 on Saturday to a statewide total of 89 people, Governor Andrew Cuomo said. He issued a declaration of emergency.

“It allows expedited purchasing and expedited hiring, which is what we need right now,” Cuomo told a news conference.

Kansas, Missouri and Washington DC announced their first cases.

In international waters off California, passengers on a cruise ship that was barred from docking in San Francisco after some aboard tested positive for the novel coronavirus did not know on Saturday when they might be able to step ashore.

Trump said on Friday he would prefer the Grand Princess’s 2,400 passengers and 1,100 crew remain out at sea, but that he would let others decide where she should dock.

After 19 crew and two passengers out of 46 tested on the Grand Princess were found to have the virus, Pence said the ocean liner will be taken to an unspecified non-commercial port where everyone on board will be tested again, and that those “who need to be quarantined will be quarantined” and those who need medical care will receive it.

US officials also began tracking another cruise ship that may have shared crew with the Grand Princess or the Diamond Princess, another ship where the coronavirus spread onboard, Pence said.
One Grand Princess passenger described a dull and sometimes queasy wait for news of when their limbo would end.

“It bugs me that my relatives in the Bay Area know what’s going to happen with us before I do,” Elizabeth Aleteanu of Colorado Springs said in an interview conducted via Facebook.

She turned 35 on Wednesday in a small, windowless cabin shared with her husband and two young children, where the rocking of the vessel sometimes left her nauseated.

“The cruise director and staff called my phone and sang happy birthday,” she wrote. “They delivered a princess notebook, birthday card, set of dominoes and a flower arrangement to my cabin. I’m not sure that we’re getting off today. It’s a big flower arrangement ... makes me think we’ll be on board for a hot minute.”

The ship’s captain had addressed passengers earlier to say he did not know when they could dock, and that one guest who was critically ill on Friday was taken off the ship, Aleteanu said. The ship has increased its offering of television programs to help passengers pass the time, she said.

The predicament of the Grand Princess was reminiscent of the Diamond Princess cruise liner, also owned by Carnival Corp. , the world’s leading cruise operator. It was quarantined off Japan in February and was for a time the largest concentration of coronavirus cases outside China.

Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, told a news conference at the White House on Saturday that a total of 2.1. million coronavirus tests will have been shipped to non-public labs by Monday, as the Trump administration aims to counter criticism that its response to the disease has been sluggish.

Hahn said the focus is on getting tests to the highest risk areas in Washington state and California.

Multiple manufacturers will soon send millions more tests, he said. “What they told us is they believe they could scale up by the end of next week ... for the capacity for 4 million additional tests that could be shipped,” Hahn said.

The respiratory illness has spread to more than 90 countries, killing more than 3,400 people and infecting more than 100,000 worldwide.

The economic damage has also intensified and stock markets have continued to tumble. To mitigate against the virus, some banks in New York are dividing their teams of traders between central locations and secondary sites in New Jersey and Connecticut, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. had a scare this past week when an employee at its Lower Manhattan offices told the bank he had been at a temple service in a city suburb with a lawyer who later tested positive for the coronavirus. The bank said the employee was sent home and has been under self-quarantine since then “out of an abundance of caution.”

The employee, however, did not have contact with the lawyer at the service and has not shown any signs of illness, the bank said. He is expected to return to work next week when it would have been two weeks since he attended the service.

Goldman also cleaned the floor on which he worked at its headquarters. All floors remained operational, though Goldman let employees who felt uncomfortable work remotely, it said.
“We have no confirmed cases of employees who have contracted COVID-19 and all our buildings are fully operational,” the bank said.

Topics: Donald Trump Coronavirus coronavirus COVID-19 Coronavirus

Related

Middle-East
Iran worst hit as more coronavirus cases reported across Mideast
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia announces 2 new cases of coronavirus coming from Iran, Iraq

Conservatives are cautiously hopeful that Pope Leo XIV will restore rigor to the papacy

Updated 2 sec ago
AP
Follow

Conservatives are cautiously hopeful that Pope Leo XIV will restore rigor to the papacy

Updated 2 sec ago
AP
VATICAN CITY: They went into last week’s conclave vastly outnumbered and smarting after being sidelined by Pope Francis for 12 years.
And yet conservatives and traditionalist Catholics are cautiously optimistic over the historic election of Pope Leo XIV, hopeful that he will return doctrinal rigor to the papacy, even as progressives sense he will continue Francis’ reformist agenda.
Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, a titan of the conservative bloc, said Monday he was very pleased with the election and expected that Leo would heal the divisions that escalated during Francis’ pontificate. Mueller, who was fired by Francis as the Vatican’s doctrinal chief, suggested as a first step that Leo should restore access to the old Latin Mass that his predecessor had greatly restricted.
“I am convinced that he will overcome these superfluous tensions (which were) damaging for the church,” Mueller said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We cannot avoid all the conflicts, but we have to avoid the not necessary conflicts, the superfluous conflicts.”
His sense of hope is significant, given that conservative cardinals went into the conclave at a numerical disadvantage. Francis appointed 108 of the 133 electors, including the former Cardinal Robert Prevost and other pastors in his image.
But in the secret dynamics of the conclave, the Augustinian missionary who spent most of his priestly life in Peru secured far more than the two-thirds majority needed on the fourth ballot in an exceptionally quick, 24-hour conclave. The speed and margin defied expectations, given that this was the largest, most geographically diverse conclave in history and the cardinals barely knew each other.
A ‘good impression’ in the conclave
“I think it was a good impression of him to everybody, and in the end it was a great concordia, a great harmony,” Mueller said. “There was no polemics, no fractionizing.”
Speaking in an interview in his apartment library just off St. Peter’s Square, Mueller said Francis’ crackdown on traditionalists and the old Mass created unnecessary divisions that Leo knows he must heal.
Pope Benedict XVI had loosened restrictions on celebrations of the Latin Mass, which was used for centuries before the modernizing reforms of the 1960s Second Vatican Council, which allowed the liturgy to be celebrated in the vernacular. Francis reversed Benedict’s signature liturgical legacy, saying the spread of the Latin Mass had created divisions in dioceses. But the crackdown had the effect of galvanizing Francis’ conservative foes.
“We cannot absolutely condemn or forbid the legitimate right and form of the Latin liturgy,” Mueller said. “According to his character, I think (Leo) is able to speak with people and to find a very good solution that is good for everybody.”
A pleasant surprise over the name ‘Leo’
Mueller is not alone in his optimism.
Benedict’s longtime secretary, Archbishop Georg Gaenswein, who also was fired by Francis and exiled from the Vatican, said he was pleasantly surprised by Leo’s election and hopeful for the future.
In an interview with Corriere della Sera, Gaenswein said the new pontiff’s choice of his name, referencing Pope Leo XIII, who led the church from 1878-1903, as well as Leo the Great and other popes, sent a signal that he would respect tradition, restore doctrinal clarity and pacify divisions.
“Pope Prevost gives me great hope,” Gaenswein was quoted as saying.
In newspaper stories, social media posts, TV interviews and private conversations among friends, some of Francis’ most vocal critics also are sounding cautiously optimistic, rejoicing over some of the smallest — but to them significant — gestures.
They liked that Leo read a written statement when he emerged from the conclave on the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica, rather than improvise. They liked that his first words referenced Jesus Christ. They loved that he decided to wear the formal red cape, or mozzetta, of the papacy, which they viewed as a show of respect for the office that Francis had eschewed.
Another plus: He sang the noontime Regina Caeli Latin prayer on Sunday, instead of reciting it.
Many point to a report in Corriere that one evening before the conclave began, Prevost was seen entering the apartment building of Cardinal Raymond Burke, another tradition-minded cardinal whom Francis fired as the Vatican’s supreme court chief. Burke, who didn’t respond to a request for comment, could have played the role of a “kingmaker” in the conclave, rallying conservative votes behind a particular candidate.
Mueller said he knew nothing about such a meeting and insisted he was unaware of behind-the-scenes pushing of Prevost. Such lobbying occurred when Jorge Mario Bergoglio had more progressive cardinals promoting his candidacy in 2005 and 2013.
Asked if he voted for Prevost, Mueller demurred.
“Oh, I cannot say. But I am content, no?” he replied.
And yet Prevost also pleased moderates, with many seeing in his first words a continuation of Francis’ priorities to build bridges. The buzzwords signal to some a pope who reaches out to the LGBTQ+ community and people of other faiths. But to others, it is the literal meaning of “pontifex” and a sign of internal bridge-building to heal divisions.
“The pope, as successor of St. Peter, has to unite the church,” Mueller said.
Mueller said he expected Leo would move into the papal apartments at the Apostolic Palace, which he said was the proper place for a pope. Francis chose to live in the Vatican’s Domus Santa Marta hotel because he said he needed to be around people. But the decision had the practical effect of taking over the entire second floor of the hotel, reducing rooms for visiting priests.
Both progressives and conservatives see what they want in Leo
Part of the dynamic at play in these early days of Leo’s papacy is that it appears progressives and conservatives can see in Leo what they want. He has virtually no published history, and played his cards very close to his vest while in Rome as head of the Vatican’s bishops office. He granted few interviews and shied away from the public appearances that fill Vatican cardinals’ days after hours: book presentations, conferences and academic lectures.
George Weigel, the biographer of St. John Paul II and senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, said Leo’s doctrinal position should be self-evident: that “a man who spent a lot of his life in the Peruvian missions believes in the truth of the Gospel and the truth of the world.”
As for the papal cape and stole, it means “we have a pope who understands the nature of the Petrine Office, which should not be bent to personal idiosyncrasies,” Weigel said in an email.

Australia's conservative opposition picks Ley as first woman leader

Updated 2 min 59 sec ago
Follow

Australia's conservative opposition picks Ley as first woman leader

Updated 2 min 59 sec ago
Australia's conservative opposition picked Sussan Ley as its first woman leader on Tuesday, charting a fresh course after a humiliating election loss partly blamed on hardline Trump-esque policies.
The 63-year-old replaces former police officer Peter Dutton as leader of the conservative Liberal Party, which was trounced by left-leaning Labor in May 3 national elections.
Dutton's failure to win votes in Australia's cities -- and his deep unpopularity with women -- have been blamed as major factors in the heavy election loss.
Ley, a former stock-mustering pilot who has spent more than 20 years in national politics, is seen as a more moderate voice within the right-leaning Liberal Party.
She is the first woman to lead the Liberal Party at a national level in its 80-year history.
"I am humbled, I am honoured and I am up for the job," she said in her first press conference as leader.
Ley refused to be drawn on whether she would keep a highly contentious policy to embrace nuclear energy in place of renewables.
"I committed to my colleagues that there would be no captain's calls from anywhere," she said.
"Unsurprisingly in our party there are many different views, and we will listen and we will take the positions that we need to at the appropriate time."
Ley was born "Susan" but changed to "Sussan" in her youth because it gave a better numerology reading -- an astrology-like belief that charts fate through letters and numbers.
Dutton cultivated a "hard man" image with tough talk on crime and immigration and a pledge to slash the public service.
Some critics dismissed his policies as "Trump-lite".
sft/djw/pst

Detained Philippines ex-President Duterte poised to win mayoral race in his home city

Updated 13 May 2025
AP
Follow

Detained Philippines ex-President Duterte poised to win mayoral race in his home city

Updated 13 May 2025
AP

Despite his detention thousands of miles away in the International Criminal Court, former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte appeared to have been elected as mayor in his home city by a landslide, according to preliminary results on Tuesday.
At least five candidates backed by his family were also among those leading the race for 12 Senate positions, in a stronger-than-expected showing in Monday’s midterm elections. Pre-election surveys had indicated only two of them would emerge victorious.
The results come as a boost for Duterte’s daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, ahead of an impeachment trial in the Senate in July over a raft of charges including alleged misuse of public funds and plotting to assassinate President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., his wife and the House speaker.
Sara Duterte is considered a strong contender for the 2028 presidential race. But if convicted by the Senate, she will lose her job and be disqualified from holding public office forever. To be acquitted, she needs at least nine of the 24 senators to vote in her favor.
The official election results will be known within a week. But the partial and unofficial count by election watchdog Parish Pastoral Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting showed Duterte garnering more than half a million votes in his stronghold Davao City, nearly eight times more than his closest rival.
His youngest son, Sebastian, the incumbent mayor of Davao, is also leading the unofficial vote count in the race for Davao vice mayor. His eldest son, Paolo, who is seeking reelection as a member of the House of Representatives, and two grandsons in local races were also in the lead, in an indication of the family’s continued influence.
“Duterte landslide in Davao!” his youngest daughter Veronica posted on Facebook.
Duterte, nicknamed “the Punisher” and “Dirty Harry,” served as Davao’s mayor for two decades before becoming president. He has been in the custody of the International Criminal Court since March, awaiting trial for crimes against humanity over a brutal war on illegal drugs that left thousands of suspects dead during his 2016-2022 presidency.
The impeachment and Rodrigo Duterte’s arrest and transfer to the tribunal in The Hague came after Marcos and Sara Duterte’s ties unraveled over political differences and their competing ambitions. Duterte supporters slammed Marcos’s government for arresting and surrendering the former leader to a court whose jurisdiction his supporters dispute.
Under Philippine law, candidates facing criminal charges, including those in detention, can run for office unless they have been convicted and have exhausted all appeals.
Sara Duterte had told reporters after voting on Monday that she was in talks with her father’s lawyers on how he could take his oath as mayor despite being behind bars. She had said the vice mayor, widely expected to be Sebastian, would likely be the acting mayor.

Topics: Philippines

Related

World
Phillipines abandon search for missing 7

Rush of diplomatic calls follow Trump’s offer to join potential Russia-Ukraine talks

Updated 13 May 2025
Reuters
Follow

Rush of diplomatic calls follow Trump’s offer to join potential Russia-Ukraine talks

  • US, European, Russia key diplomats hold separate calls
  • Trump offers to join potential Russia-Ukraine talks on Thursday
Updated 13 May 2025
Reuters

US and European diplomats went on a flurry of calls in the hours after US President Donald Trump offered on Monday to join prospective Ukraine-Russia talks later this week, trying to find a path that would bring an end to the war in Ukraine.
Trump’s surprise offer to join the talks on Thursday in Istanbul came a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in a fresh twist to the stop-start peace talks process, said he would travel to Turkiye and wait to meet President Vladimir Putin there.
After Trump’s announcement, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed the “way forward for a ceasefire” in Ukraine with European counterparts, including the foreign ministers of Britain and France, and the EU’s foreign policy chief, the State Department said on Monday.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha and his German and Polish counterparts were also on the call, according to the readout.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held talks late on Monday with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan to discuss Moscow’s direct talks with Kyiv — a proposal that came from Putin at the weekend, the Russian foreign ministry said.
It remained unclear who would travel from Moscow to Istanbul to take part in the direct talks, which would be the first between the two sides since the early days of the war that Russia launched with its invasion on Ukraine in February 2022.
There has been no response from the Kremlin to Zelensky’s offer to meet Putin in Istanbul and Moscow was yet to comment on Trump’s offer to join the talks.
If Zelensky and Putin, who make no secret of their contempt for each other, were to meet on Thursday it would be their first face-to-face meeting since December 2019.
“Don’t underestimate Thursday in Turkiye,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday.
Trump’s current schedule has him visiting Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar this week.
Ukraine and its European allies have been seeking to put pressure on Moscow to accept an unconditional 30-day ceasefire from Monday, with the leaders of four major European powers traveling to Kyiv on Saturday to show unity with Zelensky.
Earlier on Monday, the German government said Europe would start preparing new sanctions against Russia unless the Kremlin by the end of the day started abiding by the ceasefire.
Ukraine’s military said on Monday that fighting along parts of the frontline in the country’s east was at the same intensity it would be if there were no ceasefire.
Putin called the Western European and Ukrainian demands for a ceasefire “ultimatums” that the Kremlin said on Monday are for Russia an unacceptable language.
Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the international affairs committee of the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia’s parliament, told the Izvestia media outlet in remarks published on Tuesday that the talks between Moscow and Kyiv can move further than they did in the 2022.
“If the Ukrainian delegation shows up at these talks with a mandate to abandon any ultimatums and look for common ground, I am sure that we could move forward even further than we did,” Izvestia cited Kosachev as saying.

Topics: Russia-Ukraine Conflict Russia Ukraine Donald Trump Trump Returns

Related

World
Putin’s proposed Ukraine talks ‘not enough’: Macron
World
France in talks with Britain, Ukraine about potential troops, Macron tells paper

FBI ordered to prioritize immigration, as DOJ scales back white collar cases

Updated 13 May 2025
Reuters
Follow

FBI ordered to prioritize immigration, as DOJ scales back white collar cases

  • Field offices tell FBI agents to scale up on immigration enforcement and deprioritize white collar cases
  • Criminal Division issues new guidance to prosecutors that narrows the scope of white collar enforcement efforts
Updated 13 May 2025
Reuters

WASHINGTON: The FBI ordered agents on Monday to devote more time to immigration enforcement and scale back investigating white-collar crime, four people familiar with the matter told Reuters, as the Justice Department issued new guidance on what white-collar cases will be prioritized.
In a series of meetings, FBI agents were told by their field offices they would need to start devoting about one third of their time to helping the Trump administration crack down on illegal immigration.
Pursuing white-collar cases, they were told, will be deprioritized for at least the remainder of 2025, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Reuters could not immediately determine how many field offices were informed of the change, or whether it would apply to agents across the country.
An FBI spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.
The orders came on the same day that Matthew Galeotti, the head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, issued new guidance to prosecutors that scales back the scope of white-collar cases historically pursued by the department and orders prosecutors to “minimize the length and collateral impact” of such investigations.
Immigration enforcement has largely not been the purview of the Justice Department’s law enforcement agencies in the past.
But as President Donald Trump has stepped up an immigration crackdown, thousands of federal law enforcement officials from multiple agencies have been enlisted to take on new work as immigration enforcers, pulling crime-fighting resources away from other areas.
Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi have also previously announced they will scale back efforts to prosecute certain kinds of white-collar offenses, including public corruption, foreign bribery, kleptocracy and foreign influence.
As part of those efforts, the Criminal Division has also been reviewing corporate monitorships that companies were required to install as a condition of settling criminal cases. Several of them have since been ended early, while others have continued.
In Monday’s memo, Galeotti laid out the categories of cases that will be prioritized to include health care fraud, trade and customs fraud, elder securities fraud, complex money laundering including “Chinese Money Laundering Organizations,” and cases against financial gatekeepers who enable terrorists, transnational criminal organizations and cartels, among others.
He said the department will also update its whistleblower award pilot program to encourage tips on cases that lead to forfeiture, such as those involving cartels and transnational criminal organizations, violations of federal immigration law, corporate sanctions offenses, procurement fraud, trade, tariff and customs fraud, and providing material support to terrorists.
The memo also instructs prosecutors to carefully consider whether corporate misconduct “warrants federal criminal prosecution.”
“Prosecution of individuals, as well as civil and administrative remedies directed at corporations, are often appropriate to address low-level corporate misconduct and vindicate US interests,” the memo says.
It also orders prosecutors to only require companies to hire independent monitors if they cannot be expected to implement a corporate compliance program “without such heavy-handed intervention.”

Topics: Trump Returns

Related

World
Ex-FBI informant who made up bribery story about the Bidens will stay in prison, judge rules
World
FBI arrests a Milwaukee judge accused of helping a man evade immigration authorities

Latest updates

Hollywood stars condemn Gaza 'genocide' as Cannes Festival opens
Conservatives cautiously hopeful Pope Leo XIV will restore rigor to papacy
Australia's conservative opposition picks Ley as first woman leader
Israeli strike on Gaza hospital kills wounded journalist, Hamas says
Pakistan says 6 army, 5 air force, 40 civilians killed in latest India standoff

Search form

Print Edition
Read pdf version Subscribe now
© 2025 SAUDI RESEARCH & PUBLISHING COMPANY, All Rights Reserved And subject to Terms of Use Agreement.