The World Health Organization is warning all countries to take the threat of a coronavirus global pandemic seriously as governments around the world are scrambling to effectively contain the spread of COVID-19. Local health officials worldwide are preparing for widespread outbreaks while encouraging citizens to remain calm. Financial markets are bracing for the worst as many schools and corporate offices are closing their doors. On this week’s episode, Ray Suarez talks with Larry Brilliant, a renowned epidemiologist, credited with playing a major role in eradicating smallpox, and Pulitzer Prize-winning global health journalist Laurie Garrett. We also get dispatches from Rafael Suarez in China, Christopher Livesay in Italy and Peter Kenyon, who recently returned from Iran.
10 March 2020
BBC4 Thinking Allowed: Loneliness
Loneliness - Fay Bound Alberti, Reader in History at the University of York, charts the emergence of loneliness as a contemporary emotional state. Also, Janne Flora, postdoctoral scholar at Aarhus University, explores the deep connections between loneliness and modernity in the Arctic, tracing the history of Greenland and analysing the social dynamics that shaped it.
The Guardian Today in Focus: What's behind the rise of Germany's far right?
A terrorist attack in Hanau is just the latest incident of far-right violence in Germany in recent years. It left local residents outraged, with many questioning the effectiveness of the police and security services in the battle against far-right extremism.
The Guardian’s Berlin bureau chief Philip Oltermann tells Anushka Asthana that this latest attack comes at a worrying time for Germany. There is political upheaval as Angela Merkel prepares to depart as chancellor, and meanwhile the far-right AfD is making gains. He says that while many in Germany’s security services were focusing on the rising threat from Islamist-inspired terrorism, they have been accused of downplaying the threat from neo-Nazi groups.
SciShow: Is COVID-19 a Pandemic? | March 2020 Update
SARS-CoV-2 is a new kind of coronavirus that appeared suddenly in late 2019. The disease it causes, called COVID-19, is now showing signs that it's able to spread outside of its place of origin. This raises some questions... like, do we have a pandemic on our hands? What’s the difference between a pandemic and an epidemic? SciShow News has some facts to help you understand a complex and rapidly changing situation.
FiveThirtyEight: Bloomberg Lost, But He May Still Get What He Wanted
But I don’t think Bloomberg’s candidacy was a mistake or unwise. He’s worth more than $50 billion — so it’s not clear the $400 million he spent on television commercials or the other money he poured into his campaign matters much to him. He got to go on stage in the debates and attack Sanders and Warren. We don’t know if that boosted Biden, but it likely didn’t hurt him. With Biden now in a much stronger position than when Bloomberg entered the race, you could argue that Bloomberg provided what he and other more center-left figures wanted — to steer the race towards a more moderate nominee. The more extreme back-up plan — nominate Bloomberg — ended up not being needed. My guess is that Bloomberg would have preferred to be the candidate instead of Biden but knew that was a fairly unlikely outcome, since he is a one-time Republican who entered the race in late November. [...]
Now go back to his previous political role: pumping his billions into a variety of liberal causes. He hired people in numerous states for his presidential campaign, and his employees were reportedly told that they would have jobs through November. It’s not clear if Bloomberg will end up retaining these staffers for some kind of operation to boost Biden against Sanders and Warren in the primary, have his team start focusing now on the general election against Trump or simply wind down his apparatus. But I expect him to stay out of the primary and focus on Trump.
Associated Press: Lawmakers pass bill allowing Confederate monument removals
The Democratic-led House and Senate passed measures that would undo an existing state law that protects the monuments and instead let local governments decide their fate. The passage marks the latest turn in Virginia’s long-running debate over how its history should be told in public spaces. [...]
After white supremacists descended on Charlottesville in 2017, in part to protest the city’s attempt to move a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee, many places across the country quickly started taking Confederate monuments down. But Virginia localities that wanted to remove monuments were hamstrung by the existing law. [...]
The compromise measure says a locality must hold a public hearing before voting to remove or otherwise alter a monument. If it decides to remove one, it must be offered to “any museum, historical society, government or military battlefield,” although the governing body ultimately gets the say on the “final disposition.” [...]
In addition to the monuments bill, lawmakers also have advanced bills removing old racist laws that were technically still on the books, substituting the state’s holiday honoring Lee and Jackson for one on Election Day and creating a commission to recommend a replacement for a Lee statue Virginia contributed to the U.S. Capitol. They have also passed legislation that provides protections and funding for historic African American cemeteries.
Vox: Here’s what happens to delegates after their candidates drop out
The short answer is that some of these delegates will be reallocated to other candidates while others will be able to serve as “free agents” during the Democratic National Convention later this year. [...]
Statewide pledged delegates: These delegates will be reallocated to candidates who are still in the race when the states elect their delegates — a process that typically takes place after the primary and before the convention in July. Candidates who have hit the necessary 15 percent threshold statewide, and whose campaigns are still active, will be eligible to pick up these statewide delegates. That means, depending on the state, they’ll be given to Biden or Sen. Bernie Sanders, or split between the two. [...]
District-level pledged delegates: These delegates would become “free agents” at the convention and can vote for whichever candidate they are interested in supporting in the first round at the time. District-level delegates that have already been won are not reallocated for the time being and will proceed to the convention. [...]
A candidate needs 1,991 delegates, a majority, in order to win the Democratic nomination outright. In total, the four candidates who have suspended their campaigns have 130 delegates so far.
The Guardian: First Lenin statue in western Germany to be erected after heated battle
A statue of Vladimir Lenin is soon to be erected in the German city of Gelsenkirchen following a longstanding battle between a leftist party and city authorities.
Gelsenkirchen, in the centre of the Ruhr valley, once Germany’s industrial heartland, will be the first western German city with a statue of the founder of the Russian communist party. [...]
A court has now given permission for the Marxist-Leninist party of Germany, the MLPD, to place the metal statue outside its headquarters. The city authorities had tried to stop the statue, ordering a halt to the building of a concrete pedestal on which it is due to stand. It argues that the statue will “disturb the view” of a neighbouring listed building, a 1930s building society branch. The statue’s presence, it said, would also contravene historical monument preservation rules. It would, the city argued, “mean that the view of the observer of the historic building would no longer be unrestricted”
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