Antibody testing in Italy indicates that nearly 1.5 million people, or about 2.5% of the population, have had the coronavirus. But officials said Monday that huge geographic variations in the results confirmed a nationwide lockdown was "absolutely crucial" to preventing the country's south from getting slammed as badly as its north.


The Health Ministry and the national statistics agency based their assessment on tests performed May 25-July 15 on a sample of nearly 65,000 Italians selected for their location, age and type of work. The government carried out the testing to understand how widely the virus circulated in the first country in the West to be overwhelmed by COVID-19, given that the bulk of confirmed cases and deaths occurred in northern Italy.

The sampling indicated that 1.482 million Italians nationwide had come into contact with the virus and developed an immunological response to it, six times more than Italy's reported number of confirmed cases, said Linda Laura Sabbadini, a director at the Italian National Institute of Statistics, or ISTAT.


But there were significant geographic disparities: An estimated 7.5% of the Lombardy region's residents had virus antibodies versus 1.9% in neighboring Veneto. Within Lombardy, sharp differences also emerged from province to province: Some 24% of Bergamo residents developed virus antibodies, but only 5.1% of residents did a few provinces over in Pavia.

Democratic state Rep. LaShawn K. Ford said history classes in Illinois public schools lead to "white privilege and a racist society" — and he wants them ended until the state can come up with a history curriculum that better represents the contributions of minorities and women, WLS-TV reported.

"I'm calling for the abolishment of history classes in Illinois," Ford said at an Evanston news conference Sunday with other leaders, the station noted. "We're concerned that current school history teachings lead to white privilege and a racist society."

What are the details?

New arrivals to Singapore won't necessarily have to quarantine at a government facility during the pandemic - some, including residents, will receive an electronic monitoring device that will alert authorities if they leave home.

Singapore announced on Monday that it will track incoming travelers coming from a select group of countries - including residents and citizens - with electronic monitoring devices, starting on August 11.

Authorities framed the trackers as a positive for travelers, noting they would allow recipients to self-isolate at home instead of quarantining in a government facility. New arrivals will be ordered to activate the devices upon reaching home, at which point they are programmed to alert the authorities should the user try to leave or tamper with the device.

Homicide rates have exploded by double digits and experts blame school and church closings alongside the anti-police movement, reports the Wall Street Journal.

The Wall Street Journal looked at America's 50 biggest cities and found homicides are up an average of a whopping 24 percent across the board.

It is also worth noting, although the Journal tries to spin this as a bipartisan problem, that Democrats (including the "progressive" mayor of San Antonio who identifies as Independent) run seven of the top ten cities with the biggest jump in homicide rates.

Stephen Hawking has been named in recently unsealed court documents involving disgraced child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his alleged collaborator Ghislaine Maxwell.

The files were unveiled as part of the civil litigation against Maxwell who faces charges of aiding Epstein's sexual abuse of young girls.

They stem from a 2015 civil action brought against Maxwell by Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre who has claimed she was lured by Maxwell at age 15 into becoming involved with the alleged sex ring.

"Just quit."

That's the advice Alec gave a year and a half ago when I expressed concerns about my job.

"You just quit. It's that simple."

"Stay at MSNBC at least until the midterms," Jeffrey said a couple years back. He advised to watch and see what happens.

The PM said he was "squeezing the brake pedal" because the number of cases has begun to accelerate across the country.

He vowed not to stand by and allow the virus to "cause more pain and heartache".


Mr Johnson stopped short of enforcing tighter restrictions but hinted he could do so, a move he had previously likened to using a nuclear deterrent, if infections continue to rise.

He said: "At this stage, we are not changing the rules on social contact nationally.

LSU linebacker Soni Fonua isn't a fan of wearing a face shield on his helmet.

Football helmets are being outfitted with shields over the mouth section during the 2020 season to help limit the risk of coronavirus.

Fonua posted a video of himself wearing his and said that he "can't f**king breathe under this thing!" Watch the video below.

Police body-camera footage of George Floyd's arrest in Minneapolis has been leaked, revealing Floyd was in significant distress - and possibly intoxicated - long before Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck.

One of the videos, which reportedly came from the body camera of Minneapolis officer Thomas Lane, starts with the cops pulling Floyd over and ends with their efforts to push the increasingly panicked 46-year-old security guard into a squad car. The other - much longer, extending over 18 minutes and allegedly taken from the body camera of Officer Alexander Kueng - starts inside the store where Floyd allegedly tried to pass a counterfeit bill and ends with police discussing the arrival of the ambulance as they restrain Floyd on the ground.

A common criticism of the ultra-progressive Left is that its culture warriors now resemble the right-wing ideological enforcers of yore, excommunicating those deemed to have sinned or performed heresies. Indeed, anyone older than 30 or so should have at least a dim memory of the social conservatives who wanted every aspect of American society — from universities, to the media, right down to the content of children's television shows — hewing to the same family-values prayer book, and who led campaigns to censor violent video games, rap music, and edgy Hollywood entertainment.

In 1996, Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole called out Time Warner for publishing hip hop music whose lyrics glamorized violence against police officers. ("I would like to ask the executives of Time Warner a question: Is this what you intended to accomplish with your careers? You have sold your souls, but must you debase our nation and threaten our children as well?") A quarter-century later, it's progressives demanding the cancelation of movies and TV shows that present the police in any kind of positive light (and numerous other "problematic" themes). Alyssa Rosenberg of the Washington Post, a former colleague of mine, wants us to "shut down all police movies and TV shows. Now," or at least radically rewrite the scripts to portray police in a more negative light. Networks obliged by canceling shows such as Live PD. After 32 years on the air, the show Cops was axed by Paramount Networks in the wake of the protests that followed the May 25th killing of George Floyd.

It's the same puritanical spirit that prevailed during the heyday of the Moral Majority, except that it's been marshalled in service of a different faith. And you can hardly blame disaffected progressives, such as Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, for declaring that the "left is now the right" when it comes to smothering cultural and intellectual pluralism.