An online petition calling both for the resignation of World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and the inclusion of Taiwan in the globalist body was nearing one million signatures Sunday morning.

The campaign began on January 31 when the petition titled, "Call for the resignation of Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General," appeared on Change.org, citing Tedros' refusal on January 23 to designate the Wuhan coronavirus a global health emergency.

The author said this was partially to blame for the number of infected cases increasing more than tenfold from 800 to more than 10,000 in as little as five days.

So too was the outright refusal of the WHO to acknowledge the scale of the problem that lay ahead:

A barrage of North Korean missiles fired from both the ground and fighter jets splashed down on the waters off the country's east coast on Tuesday, South Korea's military said, a show of force on the eve of a key state anniversary in the North and parliamentary elections in the rival South.

The back-to-back launches were the latest in a series of weapons tests that North Korea has conducted in recent weeks amid stalled nuclear talks and outside worries about a possible coronavirus outbreak in the country.

North Korean troops based in the eastern coastal city of Munchon first launched several projectiles -- presumed to be cruise missiles -- on Tuesday morning, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.

New anonymous organisations in Iraq have threatened to strike US forces if they refuse to withdraw from Iraq. One of these newly emerged organisations released its first video of an attack against a US military convoy transporting vehicles on the road between the Kurdish province of Erbil and the northern Salahuddin province, where the US maintains large military bases.

US Ambassador Matthew Tueller has met with caretaker Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, expressing the will of his country to begin strategic talks with Baghdad. The US did not disclose that the US diplomat informed Mr Abdul-Mahdi about the US intention to pull out forces from Iraq and his request not to be attacked during the withdrawal of troops. Indeed, the US has already evacuated forces from 6 bases and centres of control in different places in Iraq. This is what prompted the Iraqi Kataeb Hezbollah (Brigades) to ​​announce particularly that the organisation does not intend to strike US forces as long as they completely withdraw from the country.

The chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee said Monday that his panel plans to investigate the coronavirus epidemic's origins as well as the responses from the U.S. government and World Health Organization (WHO).

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told Politico on Monday that the investigation would cover all aspects of the coronavirus pandemic, including criticism of the WHO and unfounded allegations of the virus's supposed origin in a Chinese lab.

Johnson told the news outlet:

"Where did this all start from? Was this transferred animal to human? Was this from a lab in China? Might have been the best of intentions trying to come up with the different cures, with the different therapies for the coronavirus in general. We need to know what role WHO might have had in trying to cover this thing up."

The panel, Johnson added, is "going to conduct oversight on this thing in its entirety." Other aspects of the probe reportedly include questions as to why the U.S. national stockpile wasn't "better prepared" for the shortages of masks, ventilators and other equipment sought by hospitals around the country in recent weeks.

New York county executives want access to the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine that Gov. Andrew Cuomo conceded showed early "effective" responses in COVID-19 virus patients in current clinical trials, which he began allowing within the state two weeks ago.

The Democratic governor told reporters at his daily briefing in Albany on Monday he would ask President Trump to raise the federal supply of hydroxychloroquine to New York pharmacies. This would enable the state to lift the current restriction on purchases of the drug, which Trump has touted as a potential antidote to the coronavirus, which has killed nearly 10,000 people and has much of the nation on lockdown. "There has been anecdotal evidence that it is promising," Cuomo said while noting the lack of a formal study.

New York county executives, according to Steve McLaughlin of Rensselaer County, have discussed the issue with one another and wondered why Cuomo prohibited the treatment from being dispensed to different parts of the state. McLaughlin told the Washington Examiner:

"I think most of us would say, 'Why are our doctors and pharmacists being prevented by Cuomo from even prescribing it?' Which right now, he put a block on that, and you can't even really get your hands on it. So, I think most of us are saying, 'Listen, in a life or death [situation], if somebody is really sick, I think that you'd want them to be able to do it without having to be in Cuomo's study.'"

South Asia is on course for its worst economic performance in 40 years, with decades of progress in the battle against poverty at risk, because of coronavirus, the World Bank said Sunday.

India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan and other smaller nations, which have 1.8 billion people and some of the planet's most densely populated cities, have so far reported relatively few coronavirus cases but experts fear they could be the next hotspots.

The dire economic effects are already much in evidence, with widespread lockdowns freezing most normal activity, Western factory orders cancelled and vast numbers of poor workers suddenly jobless. A World Bank report stated:

"South Asia finds itself in a perfect storm of adverse effects. Tourism has dried up, supply chains have been disrupted, demand for garments has collapsed and consumer and investor sentiments have deteriorated."

It slashed its growth forecast for the region this year to 1.8-2.8% from its pre-pandemic projection of 6.3%, with at least half the countries falling into "deep recession".

A few months ago, Khalifa Haftar declared the "zero hour" for the capture of Tripoli. Indeed, the stalemate that had lasted until then began to crumble and the LNA forces under the command of Haftar began to push towards the heart of Tripoli. Several elite brigades were deployed on the southbound line, resulting in penetration all the way to the second line of Tripoli's defenses.

In the meantime, LNA forces were able to take over the strategically important city of Sirte and set up a front about 80km south of Misrata.

Erdogan's intervention appears to have extended the life of the GNA government for several months. Hundreds of armored vehicles, Turkish drones and Turkish "advisors" have temporarily stabilized the front.

To avoid sending larger Turkish contingents to Syria, Erdogan sent thousands of Syrian terrorists loyal to Turkey. Indeed, this intervention by Erdogan and Turkey has yielded results. The front was temporarily stopped and there was another stalemate. New breakthrough attempts by Haftar forces in southern Tripoli were halted, while the front near Misrata ended with several battles in the Abu Grein area.

Former Education Secretary Bill Bennett said Monday that the danger of the coronavirus has been overstated while it has created "panic and pandemonium," "scared the hell out of the American people" and cost "17 million jobs."

Citing statistics from the University of Washington, "which is the model everybody has been going on, even though its been wrong most of the time, by a lot, overstating it, now they say 60,000 people will die. 61,000 is what we lost to the flu in 2017 and 2018. The flu," the best-selling author and conservative pundit told Fox & Friends.

"We're going to have fewer fatalities from this than from the flu. For this, we scared the hell out of the American people. We lost 17 million jobs, we put a major dent in the economy, we closed down the schools ... shut down the churches."

"The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat. The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the road side, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful." — Lysander Spooner, American abolitionist and legal theorist

Cash may well become a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As these COVID-19 lockdowns drag out, more and more individuals and businesses are going cashless (for convenience and in a so-called effort to avoid spreading coronavirus germs), engaging in online commerce or using digital forms of currency (bank cards, digital wallets, etc.). As a result, physical cash is no longer king.

Yet there are other, more devious, reasons for this re-engineering of society away from physical cash: a cashless society — easily monitored, controlled, manipulated, weaponized and locked down — would play right into the hands of the government (and its corporate partners).

North Korean hackers are an unavoidable subject of discussions considering the recent hype about them yet again. Hence, it is worth looking into the wrongdoings they have been accused of and to what extent they are guilty once more.

On 30 May 2019, radio station Voice of America reported that in the opinion of US intelligence agencies, the DPRK, facing economic difficulties due to imposed sanctions, was engaging in cyberattacks against banks and other financial institutions in order to obtain money. Erin Cho, the head of the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (an agency of the Department of Homeland Security), pointed out that North Korean cyber attacks were targeting virtual currency, a relatively new means of stealing money.

Former US State Department senior adviser Balbina Hwang also generated publicity with her statements in August 2019. The visiting professor at Georgetown University talked about a story by the Associated Press that "cited a report from the United Nations Security Council" about North Korea's use of cyberspace to launch "increasingly sophisticated attacks to steal funds from financial institutions and cryptocurrency exchanges to generate income. The hardest-hit was South Korea, the victim of 10 North Korean cyberattacks, followed by India with three attacks and Bangladesh and Chile with two each".

As it turns out, "South Korea's Bithumb, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, was reportedly attacked at least four times". Two attacks occurred in February and July 2017, each resulting in losses of approximately $7 million, "while a June 2018 attack led to a $31 million loss and a March 2019 attack to a $20 million loss".