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Stranger Than Fiction
A brief daily note of things you might find interesting or useful
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TOP NEWS
Trump threatens to pull U.S. funding from World Health Organization. In a letter, Trump sought to push blame for COVID-19 spread on WHO, writing “It is clear the repeated missteps by you and your organization in responding to the pandemic have been extremely costly for the world,” Mr. Trump wrote. “The only way forward for the World Health Organization is if it can actually demonstrate independence from China.” Health experts point to the Trump administration not adequately responding to the outbreak, lacking enough protective equipment for hospitals and failing to establish a system that to this day cannot provide enough testing. More than 90,300 people have died from COVID-19 in the U.S.
Powell and Mnuchin to face lawmakers. The Fed Chief and Treasury Secretary will answer how they are handling $500 billion in emergency lending programs. There is still $295 billion unspent and they are likely to ask how it is intended to be used.
COVID-19 vaccine shows promising early results. Moderna’s first human study of it’s COVID-19 vaccine showed a positive signal about the potential to protect people from the virus. The study showed the vaccine was well tolerated and induced immune responses in some of the healthy volunteers who were vaccinated.
Trump said he had been taking hydroxychloroquine. The FDA has said that the antimalarial drug could cause serious heart problems for coronavirus patients.
WHAT I’M READING + WATCHING + LISTENING TO
THE COMMENT
“That postal subsidy is gone, and we must find a new one if we want to preserve our free press. The best and simplest solution would be what we would call a Local Free Press Fund — dedicated to supporting local journalism and fed by a tariff on the advertising of two big platforms, Google and Facebook, which profit from the journalistic efforts of papers to which they pay nothing. For example, a study by the News Media Alliance estimated Google made $4.7 billion from news stories it displayed in 2018.” - Frank Blethen
THE STRANGEST
THE AV ROOM