Boris Johnson’s spokesman has said social distancing measures will remain in place in the UK until after the Easter holiday, and that even harsher steps could be implemented if the situation continues to deteriorate. Read Full Article at RT.com

#Resistance heroine Alyssa Milano is being raked over the coals for backing Democratic presidential frontrunner Joe Biden despite sexual assault allegations, and she’s not the only ‘feminist’ making an exception from #MeToo. Read Full Article at RT.com

Certain political groups in the West will not hesitate to use the difficulties brought on by the coronavirus pandemic to carry out their long-lasting plans to topple the Venezuelan government, Russia’s Foreign Ministry has said. Read Full Article at RT.com

Only around one third of US citizens would get vaccinated against Covid-19 as soon as a vaccine becomes available, despite the rapid spread of the disease across the country, a newly released poll reveals. Read Full Article at RT.com

British PM Boris Johnson could be poised to end his 7-day isolation period on Friday despite continuing to have “mild symptoms” of the coronavirus, with his spokesperson insisting there has been “no change” to official guidelines. Read Full Article at RT.com

Read Full Article at RT.com

What happens when you begin to research a story about how not-so-black market retailers are selling masks, gloves, and other protective gear at exorbitant prices during an unprecedented crisis? You get a browser filled with ads for masks, gloves, and other protective gear, available to anyone willing to pay exorbitant prices … because God forbid Google and Facebook don’t get a cut of the action. Not only are pandemic profiteers setting 50 states and the federal government bidding against each other in a process that is costing billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives—they’re doing it openly. This isn’t secret. This isn’t idiots in a truck, scouring a state for hand sanitizer. This is major suppliers, including manufacturers, raking in profits and shipping away the products that health care workers need to do their jobs. These are actions that the federal government could stop … but hasn’t.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus is calling on Trump administration officials to ensure the protection of skilled and essential workers who are present in our everyday lives, yet are frequently overlooked: the farmworkers who labor in fields so that we can get our fruits and vegetables, and are now doing so at added risk due to the novel coronavirus crisis. “Throughout this public health crisis, there has not been a day when these essential workers have stopped showing up to work,” a statement said. “At the same time, farmworkers often do not have the necessary resources or information, health benefits, or direct cash assistance as other US workers.” 

Russian banker Oleg Tinkov, who is currently facing potential extradition to the US from the UK on allegations of underreporting his income, has announced he will resign from the board of directors of the bank he founded. Read Full Article at RT.com

Trenton Thurber, an asthma sufferer and Arizona resident studying abroad in Russia, told BuzzFeed News he knew when government officials started to announce soon-closing borders as a result of the coronavirus pandemic that he would need to get home. He booked a flight and saw his luggage being taken onto a New York-bound plane on Monday at Moscow's airport, when all of a sudden the country closed its borders. His flight was canceled, also stranding 100 Russian citizens across the ocean in the epicenter for the virus that is New York, BuzzFeed reported. Thurber’s only advice from the U.S. Embassy was to get to the Finland border, which is about 700 miles away and far from a sure thing, the news website reported. "They said, ‘If you can get to the land border with Finland, that might be OK,’” Thurber told BuzzFeed. He didn’t want to risk it. Now he’s facing circumstances that more than 30,000 Americans left pleading with the U.S. government for assistance are also struggling through as they hemorrhage money. “There’s no way to get out,” Thurber told Buzzfeed.

On Tuesday, networks were once again ready to proclaim the day on which Donald Trump became president by noting that he stopped using third-grade nicknames long enough to deliver the message that as many as a quarter of a million Americans may die. Then he went right back to talking about the important things—like how great the ratings are when he steps out to tell Americans how they’re going to die. It all gives the distinct impression that, had Trump known that reading a daily death sentence out for hundreds of thousands of viewers, Trump would have scheduled a pandemic long before this. But as Trump runs his fingers across a chart that turns killing 240,000 Americans into a “goal,” it’s worth examining … where are these numbers coming from? And is the doom Trump is pronouncing really as certain as it seems?

Read Full Article at RT.com

Russia's week-long paid leave will be extended until the end of the month, President Vladimir Putin has announced in a national address. The country is bracing for a possible rapid growth in Covid-19 cases. Read Full Article at RT.com

Basketball could return with a truncated round of playoff games held in ballroom casinos in Las Vegas as the NBA plots a makeshift conclusion to the season in the midst of the continuing coronavirus crisis in the US. Read Full Article at RT.com

Another day, another report on a recent pandemic warning ignored by the Trump administration. In 2018, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention held a day-long conference to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Spanish flu pandemic, with sessions like “Innovations for pandemic countermeasures.” “Are we ready to respond to a pandemic?” asked one of the doctors at the conference. “I fear the answer is no.” In one of many details that would seem over the top if this was all fictional, that doctor, Luciana Borio, was part of the National Security Council global health section that Donald Trump dismantled soon after the conference, making the U.S. even less ready to respond to a pandemic.

European hospitals are running critically low on crucial medicines needed to treat Covid-19 patients in intensive care and some expect to run out of the necessary supplies in less than two weeks. Read Full Article at RT.com

In a frank admission, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo strike partner Paulo Dybala has said there is little goodwill towards the Portugal forward in Argentina and spoken about playing with the modern greats for club and country. Read Full Article at RT.com

President Vladimir Putin is delivering a televised address to the nation as the country faces a growing number of Covid-19 cases, which have seen a record-breaking increase since the previous day. Read Full Article at RT.com

Read Full Article at RT.com

When it comes to ventilators, there has really been only one hoarder. Donald Trump has been sitting on a stack of the things, handing them out grudgingly to the states he favors and withholding them from the areas where COVID-19 is spiking. When it comes to protective gear, Trump has accused doctors and nurses of stealing masks, and done nothing at all about a robust and open market profiteering on death as all 50 states and the federal government bid against each other. Worse, the federal government has failed to step in as masks, gloves, and other vital equipment are shipped away from America to the highest bidder. But there is is one item where the federal government is getting ahead of the game. An item of coronavirus gear where they know there is going to be a big national need, and they’re actually getting in the request weeks, or at least days, before that need becomes desperate. This time FEMA is on top of—a request for 100,000 body bags for American dead.

In a new survey published on Thursday, over half of those polled think Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government was too slow in implementing social distancing measures to halt the spread of Covid-19. Read Full Article at RT.com

For the past several years, analysts have usually only glanced at the weekly number of new claims for unemployment benefits. These have remained historically low—just a bit above 200,000. The focus instead has been on the monthly report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics as the growth in new jobs that began under President Barack Obama continued for 113 consecutive months. But as the first economic impacts of the coronavirus took hold, new benefit claims soared by 70,000 three weeks ago, hit a record-shattering 3.28 million two weeks ago, and last week the Labor Department announced today, rocketed another 6.65 million. That’s almost 10 times the record of 695,000 new claims set one week late in the recession of 1982. Add that combined total of nearly 10 million people to the 5.8 million already out-of-work, and it pushes the unemployment rate from 3.5% to 9.5%. But that’s not what the BLS report will show Friday. More about that in moment.

The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Carolyn Fiddler, and Matt Booker, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar. Leading Off ● TX-22: While even Donald Trump has, at least for now, stopped dog-whistling to racists by calling the coronavirus the “Chinese virus,” self-funder Kathaleen Wall is just getting started. Wall is out with a new TV spot ahead of the July 14 GOP runoff that opens with a narrator charging, “China poisoned our people” as an animation shows arrows labeled “Chinese Virus” flying across the Pacific and landing in the United States. After praising Trump for using this racist term, the narrator says that Wall will “cut off trade, aid, and support to China.” The ad ends by calling the world’s largest country—and America's largest trading partner—“a criminal enterprise masquerading as a sovereign nation.”

The British Ministry of Defence (MoD) is declining to disclose how many of its personnel have been hit with the deadly coronavirus, despite flying its troops to countries that have imposed travel bans on UK travelers. Read Full Article at RT.com

The Abbreviated Pundit Round-up is a regular feature of Daily Kos. Noah Feldman at Bloomberg writes—Coronavirus Shouldn't Delay Justice in California: In a little-noticed move over the weekend, California’s judicial council unanimously took some worrisome steps away from constitutional principles. Drawing on emergency powers conferred by state law and an executive order by the California governor, the council changed the deadline of 48 hours for arraigning arrestees to as much as a week. It also extended the date for a mandatory preliminary hearing in criminal cases from 10 days to 30 days; and it added an extra 30 days to the “speedy trial” deadlines for both misdemeanors and felonies.