Will They Ever Learn? Chinese Markets Are Still Selling Bats and Slaughtering Rabbits on Blood-Soaked Floors as Beijing Celebrates ‘Victory’ Over the Coronavirus

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Terrified dogs and cats crammed into rusty cages. Bats and scorpions offered for sale as traditional medicine. Rabbits and ducks slaughtered and skinned side by side on a stone floor covered with blood, filth, and animal remains.

Those were the deeply troubling scenes yesterday as China celebrated its ‘victory’ over the coronavirus by reopening squalid meat markets of the type that started the pandemic three months ago, with no apparent attempt to raise hygiene standards to prevent a future outbreak.

As the pandemic that began in Wuhan forced countries worldwide to go into lockdown, a Mail on Sunday correspondent yesterday watched as thousands of customers flocked to a sprawling indoor market in Guilin, south-west China.

Here cages of different species were piled on top of each other. In another meat market in Dongguan, southern China, another correspondent photographed a medicine seller returning to business on Thursday with a billboard advertising bats – thought to be the cause of the initial Wuhan outbreak – along with scorpions and other creatures.

The shocking scenes came as China finally lifted a weekslong nationwide lockdown and encouraged people to go back to normal daily life to boost the flagging economy. Official statistics indicated there were virtually no new infections. (Read more from “Will They Ever Learn? Chinese Markets Are Still Selling Bats and Slaughtering Rabbits on Blood-Soaked Floors as Beijing Celebrates ‘Victory’ Over the Coronavirus” HERE)

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Which World Leaders, U.S. Politicians Have Tested Positive or Been Exposed to the Coronavirus?

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By Fox News. As world leaders race to respond to the global coronavirus pandemic, government leaders and politicians — in the United States, Europe and elsewhere — have contracted the novel COVID-19 virus. . .

Prince Charles, the next in line for the British throne, tested positive for the coronavirus on Wednesday, March 25, sending shockwaves through the Royal Family. . .

Earlier this month, there were fears President Trump had been exposed to the virus — after a Brazilian press secretary who attended an event at Mar-a-Lago tested positive for COVID-19 days later. And, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., both quarantined themselves after coming in contact with someone at the Conservative Political Action Conference in late February who later tested positive. . .

Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, the wife of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, tested positive for the coronavirus on March 13 after returning from London. She and her husband separately began 14-day quarantine periods, BBC reported. Trudeau was not tested for COVID-19 and was expected to fulfill all job duties while working remotely. . .

Franck Riester, French minister of culture, and Brune Poirson, the secretary of state to the minister of ecological and inclusive transition, both tested positive for the coronavirus, according to Foreign Policy. Several lawmakers in the French National Assembly have also contracted COVID-19. (Read more from “Which World Leaders, U.S. Politicians Have Tested Positive or Been Exposed to the Coronavirus?” HERE)

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Boris Johnson Tests Positive for Coronavirus

By Washington Examiner. The prime minister of the United Kingdom tested positive for the coronavirus.

Boris Johnson, 55, announced on Friday he was self-isolating after contracting the COVID-19 virus, which has spread across the world.

“Over the last 24 hours I have developed mild symptoms and tested positive for coronavirus. I am now self-isolating, but I will continue to lead the government’s response via video-conference as we fight this virus. Together we will beat this,” he wrote in a tweet.

Johnson said he has a temperature and “persistent cough” but stressed that he can continue working.

“Be in no doubt that I can continue, thanks to the wizardry of modern technology, to communicate with all my top team to lead the national fight back against coronavirus,” he said. (Read more from “Boris Johnson Tests Positive for Coronavirus” HERE)

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Mexicans Demand Crackdown on Americans Crossing the Border

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By BBC News. 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. (Read more from “Mexicans Demand Crackdown on Americans Crossing the Border” HERE)

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Protesters in Mexico Block Lanes at Arizona Border Crossing to Demand Stricter Coronavirus Screenings

By USA Today. Protesters on the Mexican side of the border blocked the Mexico-bound lanes in the twin border cities of Ambos Nogales for several hours Wednesday to express their displeasure with the Mexican government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The protesters demanded greater controls and screenings on southbound traffic at the U.S.-Mexico border out of concern that travelers from the U.S. could import new cases of the coronavirus into Mexico.

Less than a dozen people wearing face masks and carrying signs used two of their vehicles for a blockade of the two southbound lanes at the DeConcini crossing, several hundred feet into the Mexican side of the border, video taken by Mexican media showed.

Some of the signs asked U.S. residents to “stay at home.” Others called on Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to step up controls and restrictions along the U.S.-Mexico border to contain the spread of COVID-19. (Read more from “Protesters in Mexico Block Lanes at Arizona Border Crossing to Demand Stricter Coronavirus Screenings” HERE)

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Eighty Percent of Coronavirus Tests ‘Donated’ by China to Czechs Don’t Work; Same Problem in Spain

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By Washington Examiner. Some 80% of coronavirus rapid tests China donated to the Czech Republic as part of the communist country’s global goodwill effort are faulty, according to news reports.

A medical official from the Moravian-Silesian region that borders Slovakia and Poland said the test “error rate was quite high.”

According to the Czech radio site iROZHLAS, regional hygienist Pavla Svrcinova said that the tests give false positive and false negative results. She suggested that the tests only be used on people who are ending their virus-related seclusion and who have never been tested.

A government official, however, dismissed the concerns and said the “wrong methodology” was being used for the tests. “I don’t think it’s a scandalous revelation that it’s not working,” he said. (Read more from “Eighty Percent of Coronavirus Tests ‘Donated’ by China to Czechs Are Faulty” HERE)

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Chinese Coronavirus Tests in Spain Faulty, Too

By Sinéad Baker and Ruqayyah Moynihan. Microbiology experts in Spain have said that rapid coronavirus tests that the country bought from China are not consistently detecting positive cases.

The error was discovered as Spain is in the grip of one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the world, second only to Italy in the number of reported deaths.

Studies on the tests done in Spain found that they had only 30% sensitivity, meaning they correctly identify people with the virus only 30% of the time, sources told the Spanish newspaper El País.

Those sources told the newspaper that the tests should have a sensitivity of more than 80%. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says rapid tests for influenza are required to have 80% sensitivity. (Read more about the faulty Chinese coronavirus tests HERE)

Editor’s note: the Chinese communist government is claiming that the Spanish tests were not “donated” but were sold by an unauthorized Chinese company.

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U.S. Officials Report Death of Robert Levinson, Former FBI Agent Kidnapped by Iran; ‘Iran May Well Collapse’ Under Coronavirus Strain, Warns Top EU Diplomat

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By Breitbart. The family of Robert Levinson, the former FBI agent who disappeared in Iran in 2007 and has been held illegally by the regime since then despite numerous pleas for his release, said on Wednesday that U.S. officials believe he “died while in Iranian custody,” sometime prior to the deadly outbreak of the Wuhan coronavirus in Iran.

“It is impossible to describe our pain,” the Levinson family said. They went on to condemn the “cruel, heartless actions of the Iranian regime” as well as “those in the U.S. government who for many years repeatedly left him behind.”

“It has been 13 years waiting for answers,” they wrote. “Thirteen years since we last saw him or had any contact with him. How those responsible in Iran could do this to a human being, while repeatedly lying to the world all this time, is incomprehensible to us. They kidnapped a foreign citizen and denied him any basic human rights, and his blood is on their hands.”

“His body has not yet been returned to us for a proper burial,” the family noted. “We don’t even know when, or even if, his body would be returned to us. This is the very definition of cruelty.”

The Levinson family vowed to seek justice against both the Iranian regime and American officials who spared any effort to bring him home. (Read more from “U.S. Officials Report Death of Robert Levinson, Former FBI Agent Kidnapped by Iran” HERE)

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‘Iran May Well Collapse’ Under Coronavirus Strain, Warns Top EU Diplomat

By Washington Examiner. Iran’s theocratic regime could crumble under the pressure of the coronavirus outbreak that has spread through elite ranks and the broader population alike, according to the European Union’s top diplomat.

“Elsewhere, countries like Venezuela or Iran may well collapse without our support,” EU High Representative Josep Borrell wrote in a recent bulletin to European colleagues. “This means we should ensure they have access to IMF assistance. And with Iran, we need to make sure that legitimate humanitarian trade can proceed despite US sanctions.”

Borrell’s message reflects the long-standing European frustration with President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and renew U.S. sanctions on the regime. Yet it also suggests that some Western leaders are bracing for potentially seismic geopolitical shifts at the epicenters of the coronavirus pandemic, including Tehran.

“We should also remember that none of the other problems that we focused on before the corona crisis [have] gone away,” Borrell wrote. “In fact, they may get worse. COVID-19 may well deepen some of the longer running conflicts in the neighborhood.” (Read more from “‘Iran May Well Collapse’ Under Coronavirus Strain, Warns Top EU Diplomat” HERE)

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Italian Nurse Commits Suicide After Getting Coronavirus and Fearing She Had Spread It to Others

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By The Blaze. A nurse in Italy committed suicide this week while under quarantine after testing positive for the coronavirus, and a nursing federation said she was severely stressed at the thought that she had likely infected other people in the days leading to her death, according to the Daily Mail.

Daniela Trezzi was a 34-year-old nurse working in Lombardy, the area of Italy hardest-hit by the COVID-19 outbreak. Hospitals in the region are overwhelmed, and the number of Italians dying daily from the virus has escalated to between 600 and 800 over the past week.

Trezzi had been working in the intensive care unit at San Gerardo hospital in Monza, just outside Milan. On March 10, she was diagnosed with the coronavirus and placed under quarantine. She was recovering at home alone, not under surveillance of any kind. Police are investigating the death.

The National Federation of Nurses told Daily Mail that a “similar episode” occurred in Italy last week for the “same underlying reason,” implying that Trezzi wasn’t the first nurse to take her own life due to the stress the coronavirus has caused medical professionals. (Read more from “Italian Nurse Commits Suicide After Getting Coronavirus and Fearing She Had Spread It to Others” HERE)

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Spain’s Coronavirus Death Toll Soars Past China’s, Trailing Only Italy

By NPR. Spain is now reporting more than 3,400 COVID-19 deaths, making it the second European country with a death toll higher than in China, where the new coronavirus was first detected in late 2019.

Italy is reporting 7,503 deaths from the viral respiratory disease — the most in the world, and more than double the 3,285 deaths reported in China.

The pandemic has severely disrupted life in Spain and Italy, countries that have much smaller populations than China (1.4 billion). Both European countries are more closely comparable to Hubei province, the area in China where the outbreak was first detected. Italy has around 62 million people, according to the most recent CIA World Factbook data, similar to Hubei’s nearly 60 million residents. By comparison, Spain has just 50 million people.

Spain now has at least 47,610 coronavirus cases, the country’s Ministry of Health says. Of that number, nearly 8,000 people were confirmed to have the virus in the past 24 hours. (Read more from “Spain’s Coronavirus Death Toll Soars Past China’s, Trailing Only Italy” HERE)

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Report: China Concealed 43,000 Confirmed COVID-19 Cases

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The number of “silent carriers” – people who are infected by the new coronavirus but show delayed or no symptoms – could be as high as one-third of those who test positive, according to classified Chinese government data seen by the South China Morning Post.

That could further complicate the strategies being used by countries to contain the virus, which has infected more than 300,000 people and killed more than 14,000 globally.

More than 43,000 people in China had tested positive for Covid-19 by the end of February but had no immediate symptoms, a condition typically known as asymptomatic, according to the data. They were placed in quarantine and monitored but were not included in the official tally of confirmed cases, which stood at about 80,000 at the time.

Scientists have been unable to agree on what role asymptomatic transmission plays in spreading the disease. A patient usually develops symptoms in five days, though the incubation period can be as long as three weeks in some rare cases. . .

A growing number of studies are now questioning the WHO’s earlier statement that asymptomatic transmission was “extremely rare”. A report by the WHO’s international mission after a trip to China estimated that asymptomatic infections accounted for 1 to 3 per cent of cases, according to a European Union paper. (Read more from “Report: China Concealed 43,000 Confirmed COVID-19 Cases” HERE)

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China Targeting U.S. Navy Warships With Electromagnetic Weapons

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China has called for using electromagnetic attacks on U.S. warships transiting the South China Sea, according to a state-run Chinese outlet.

The Communist Party-affiliated organ Global Times, quoting a military expert, said the use of nonlethal electromagnetic and laser weapons should be used by the People’s Liberation Army to expel American warships from the disputed sea.

The report followed China’s potentially dangerous use of a laser against a Navy P-8A maritime patrol aircraft near Guam last month, and an earlier lasing two years ago of C-130 aircraft near China’s military base in Djibouti on the coast of Africa.

The article was published Tuesday, the same day the Pacific Fleet announced on Twitter that the aircraft carrier strike group led by the USS Theodore Roosevelt, and the USS America, an amphibious assault carrier and leader of an expeditionary strike group, were conducting exercises in the South China Sea.

The training exercise for both strike groups included flight maneuvers, air defense tests and surface-support mission exercises, the fleet said in a report on the exercises. At one point, Marines carried out a simulated visit, board, search and seizure exercise on the guided missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill, according to the report. (Read more from “China Targeting U.S. Navy Warships With Electromagnetic Weapons” HERE)

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2020 Olympics Will Be Postponed

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Veteran International Olympic Committee member Dick Pound told USA TODAY Sports on Monday afternoon that the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games are going to be postponed amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“On the basis of the information the IOC has, postponement has been decided,” Pound said in a phone interview. “The parameters going forward have not been determined, but the games are not going to start on July 24, that much I know.”

Pound, a Canadian who has been one of the most influential members of the IOC for decades, said the games will likely be moved to 2021, with the details to be worked out in the next four weeks. He said he expects the IOC to announce its next steps soon.

“It will come in stages,” said Pound, 78, the longest-serving IOC member. “We will postpone this and begin to deal with all the ramifications of moving this, which are immense.”

Neither the IOC nor the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee had announced a decision to postpone as of Monday afternoon. (Read more from “2020 Olympics Will Be Postponed” HERE)

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ISIS Attack Targets U.S. Troops at Bagram Airfield in Third Such Incident Since Taliban Peace Deal

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An Islamic State militant fired mortars at U.S. and international troops at Bagram Airfield in what security officials said was the third attack on the base since the U.S. signed a peace deal with the Taliban last month.

No one was hurt during the attack Saturday night and Bagram Airfield, the largest U.S. base in Afghanistan, was not damaged, a spokesman for the NATO Resolute Support mission said Monday.

A man in a small pickup drove through a police checkpoint near Bagram about 8 p.m. Saturday and fired three mortars at the base before escaping, said Mohammad Mahfooz Alizada, police chief of Parwan province.

Afghan police destroyed the militant’s truck, causing a large explosion, said Bagram district governor Abdul Shokour Qudousi. All of the mortars were shot down, he said. . .

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Stars and Stripes on Monday in a phone interview that the group blamed the attack on spoilers trying to “sabotage” the peace process. (Read more from “ISIS Attack Targets U.S. Troops at Bagram Airfield in Third Such Incident Since Taliban Peace Deal” HERE)

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