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Largest rally at the Capitol yet, protestors demand California be reopened

Marlei Martinez
KCRA
Sun, 24 May 2020 17:17 UTC
California coronavirus lockdown protest
© Reuters/Stephen Lam
A demonstrator holds a sign during a protest calling for the reopening of California, amid the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Sacramento, California, U.S. May 7, 2020.
Memorial Day weekend brought the largest protest against the statewide shutdown at the Capitol so far.

The crowd of people gathered on 10th Street for what organizers called "Liberty Fest." The protesters want California to follow the lead of other states that have reopened businesses and ease social distancing restrictions.

Honking pickup trucks circled the Capitol as a plane flew overhead, pulling a sign with the message: 'End His Tyranny!' aimed at Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Comment:





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Calendar

Bouygues CEO: France must postpone 5G auction to year-end because of COVID-19


Reuters
Sat, 23 May 2020 10:43 UTC
5-G/Eiffel
© Smartphone Market/KJN
5-G and Eiffel Tower, Paris France
France should postpone its planned auction of 5G frequencies to late 2020 or early 2021 because of uncertainties surrounding the coronavirus crisis, the head of one of France's top conglomerates said on Saturday.

In February, French telecoms regulator Arcep had said it was hoping to award the 5G licences by June, but after France went into virus lockdown mid-March, Arcep postponed the sale and said a new date would depend on the progression of the health crisis.

"We need to push back the auction date simply because the economic world today is not the same as it was early March, when the terms of the auction were set," Martin Bouygues, CEO of Bouygues Telecom's parent company, said in the French daily Le Figaro.

Bouygues Telecom, Free Mobile, Orange and SFR had already submitted tender package for some frequencies in February.
"It is true that telecoms operators have escaped the crisis relatively unscathed, but is it reasonable to think they can buy frequencies for which the price was set early this year, when the economy was booming, while now it looks like 2020 growth may fall 8% and the recession will no doubt last?"
He said the pandemic had shown that it is essential for everyone to have an internet connection and that citizens may find it more important to have 4G in every region of France than to have 5G in the big cities.
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Calculator

England: Tens of thousands of coronavirus tests double-counted

Mason Boycott-Owen, Paul Nuki
The Telegraph
Thu, 21 May 2020 09:00 UTC
blue lungs red dots
© unknown
Two samples taken from the same patient are being recorded as two separate tests in the Government's official figures.

Tens of thousands of Covid-19 tests have been double-counted in the Government's official tally, public health officials have admitted.

Diagnostic tests which involve taking saliva and nasal samples from the same patient are being counted as two tests, not one.

The Department of Health and Social Care and Public Health England each confirmed the double-counting.

This inflates the daily reported diagnostic test numbers by over 20 per cent, with that proportion being much higher earlier on in the crisis before home test kits were added to the daily totals.

Almost 350,000 more tests have been reported in Government data than people tested since the start of the pandemic.

The discrepancy is in large part explained by the practice of counting salvia and nasal samples for the same individual twice.
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Attention

Russophobes crazed as IRS tweets Covid relief payment information in Russian - like it did for all major languages


RT
Sun, 24 May 2020 15:27 UTC
IRS notice
© Twitter/IRS
Innocuous tweet about the Economic Impact Payment unleashed conspiracy theories.
Russophobic liberals are in meltdown after the US's Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tweeted information about how to get the Economic Impact Payment in Russian, just like it's done for all major world languages.

It seems the mere sight of Cyrillic is enough to send Russiagate true believers into a tailspin. The innocuous tweet from the official IRS account, which was about a new tool to help people apply for the stimulus payment, unleashed an utterly dumbfounding stream of mind-meltingly stupid conspiracy theories.

Among the deranged replies were numerous xenophobic questions asking why the message was in Russian, jokes about US President Donald Trump outsourcing the IRS to Russian mobsters, and absurd claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin is running the US government "through encrypted communications."
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Briefcase

Michigan: Warnings ignored, AG sued to raise lake level prior to dam break to protect mussels

David Forsmark
PJ Media
Fri, 22 May 2020 09:08 UTC
Wixom Lake channel
© AP/Carlos Osorio
Wixom Lake Channel, Michigan
In her ongoing audition to be Joe Biden's veep pick, Michigan Governess Gretchen Whitmer all but convicted a private dam owner for the disastrous floods that struck the middle of the state last Wednesday.

However, it wasn't the dam company that was trying to save a few clams — it was Whitmer's radical attorney general, Dana Nessel.

Nessel was suing the dam company to raise the lake level three feet in order to save mussels — both endangered and common — and in their response, the dam company cited safety as a reason for not doing so.

But to Dana Nessel, who is also suing to keep Michigan's chilly Upper Peninsula from having a reliable source of propane, citing an imaginary concern over a pipeline across the Straits of Mackinac, people come second. A distant second.
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People 2

Breaking bad? '300-person' dance party in Siberia flouts Covid-19 social distancing rules


RT
Sun, 24 May 2020 17:05 UTC
dance party
© Twitter / NGS.ru
Scores of revellers poured on the streets of Siberia's largest city Novosibirsk at the weekend to let off some steam during the coronavirus pandemic - but the flash dance party did not go unnoticed by local media and the police.

The city of 1.6 million has restricted large gatherings as part of measures to combat Covid-19, but that didn't stop an estimated (by media) 300 people from rocking out on Saturday night.

In a video of the unsanctioned event, a crowd of largely young people is seen dancing and mingling with one another, as music pounds in the background. Judging by the photographic evidence, conga lines and other activities that don't mesh particularly well with social distancing rules dominated the evening.

Comment: People are desperate for nourishing social interaction and to get out of their homes. No matter how much the authorities and their followers shame people for what is simply a human need, these kinds of events will continue to happen.

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Umbrella

Police in Hamburg use water cannons to disperse demonstrators against anti-lockdown protest


RT
Sun, 24 May 2020 16:42 UTC
hamburg police water cannons
Police have deployed water cannons to break up a sparse crowd demonstrating against a sanctioned anti-lockdown rally in Hamburg, Germany, that saw dozens turn out while minding social distancing rules.

Police had to intervene after a small group of about 120 counter-protesters, many of them clad in black hoodies, repeatedly ignored police requests to stay clear of the 'Vigil for the Basic Law' rally against the lockdown measures on Saturday.

The counter-demonstrators, who showed up unannounced, lacking any permission from the authorities, argued that the anti-lockdown rally attracted many right-wing extremists. "Against conspiracy fantasies, anti-semites and the right-wing agenda," one of the posters read.

Comment: Those buffoons in the black block brigade don't realize they're far closer to being Nazis than the ones protesting against the lockdowns.

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Megaphone

Oxford's COVID-19 vaccine trial has 50% chance of success, says report

Kanishka Singh
Reuters
Sat, 23 May 2020 16:58 UTC
Professor Adrian Hill
© REUTERS/Eddie Keogh
Professor Adrian Hill
The University of Oxford's COVID-19 vaccine trial has only a 50% chance of success as the coronavirus seems to be fading rapidly in Britain, the professor co-leading the development of the vaccine told the Telegraph newspaper.

Adrian Hill, director of Oxford's Jenner Institute, which has teamed up with drugmaker AstraZeneca Plc to develop the vaccine, said that an upcoming trial, involving 10,000 volunteers, threatened to return "no result" due to low transmission of COVID-19 in the community.

"It's a race against the virus disappearing, and against time", Hill told the British newspaper. "At the moment, there's a 50% chance that we get no result at all."

The experimental vaccine, known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, is one of the front-runners in the global race to provide protection against the new coronavirus causing the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hill's team began early-stage human trials of the vaccine in April, making it one of only a handful to have reached that milestone.
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NPC

No Evil Foods, a faux leftist vegan-meat company, busts union drive

Lauren Kaori Gurley
Vice
Fri, 22 May 2020 16:49 UTC
No Evil Foods
Earlier this year, the company No Evil Foods, which sells a variety of socialist-themed vegan meats, fought a union drive at its Weaverville, North Carolina plant that included numerous "captive audience" meetings where management told workers to vote against a union.

Motherboard obtained a 23-minute video of No Evil Food's CEO and co-founder Mike Woliansky repeatedly imploring workers to vote "no" in the union election, and telling workers that a union could hamper the company's ability to "save lives" and "change the world."

In his speech, Woliansky compared joining the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union, which represents tens of thousands of meatpacking workers in the US, to "hitching your wagon to a huge organization with high paid executives and a history of scandal and supporting slaughterhouses," he said. "I don't think that's an organization you want to support with your dues money."
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Handcuffs

Tear gas fired, arrests made as thousands protest against Beijing's planned national security law for Hong Kong

Phila Siu and Chris Lau
South China Morning Post
Sun, 24 May 2020 16:32 UTC
hong kong police tear gas
© Sam Tsang
Riot police fire tear gas at the junction of Hennessy Road and Percival Street.
Police fired multiple rounds of tear gas in Hong Kong's Causeway Bay shopping district on Sunday as thousands took to the streets to protest against Beijing's planned national security law for the city, even as top Chinese officials sought to ease fears about its impact on local freedoms but remained stern about seeing it implemented.

Police said at least 180 people were arrested - mostly on suspicion of unauthorised assembly, unlawful assembly and disorderly conduct in a public place - in a crackdown as protesters spread out along streets of Causeway Bay and Wan Chai.

A water cannon truck was used and volleys of tear gas were fired in a series of confrontations as some radicals among the protesters defying the government's coronavirus crowd restrictions blocked multiple roads, smashed traffic lights, lit small fires and hurled bricks dug up from pavements at police.

Some also vandalised shops, while at least two people objecting to the roadblocks were severely assaulted by black-clad groups.


The protests erupted just hours after Chinese Vice-Premier Han Zheng, Beijing's top leader in charge of Hong Kong, told local delegates to the national legislature that Beijing's determination to push through the national security law should not be underestimated, and that mainland authorities would "implement it till the end".
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