The bookkeeping is varied and crude, but today the record kept by Johns Hopkins University has exceeded 3 million COVID-19 deaths worldwide. And the news is getting worse: in two months, reported infections have nearly doubled as pandemic restrictions are relaxed even as contagion increases. Since February 21, the global death toll has risen by 1 million, led by the US, Brazil and Mexico. Few places are spared, and even in Canada, medical facilities are being fully exploited as the per capita case rate exceeds that of its southern neighbor, which has recorded more than 560,000 deaths.
Swell: AP, Washington Post, NOW, BBC
2. FedEx shooter’s mother warned the police
He was looking for a “police suicide”. That is the grim message sent by the mother of 19-year-old Brandon Scott Hole to the authorities a year before he joined his former FedEx workplace in Indianapolis. He shot and killed eight people, including reportedly four Sikh Americans, and killed himself late Thursday. The warning prompted FBI agents to interview Hole and seize a shotgun from him last April, but they released him because there was no evidence of a crime. The relatives of the victims had to wait excruciatingly yesterday for news, while lawmakers from the town halls to the Capitol again demanded stricter gun controls.
Swell: NOW, Reuters, Washington Post, IndyStar
3rd Coming Up: A farewell to guns
It gets worse before it gets better. Here’s what some military say about President Joe Biden’s decision to get it all US troops from Afghanistan Until September 11th. This week’s announcement may even require more troops in the country to help remove equipment, let alone stand up against a violent Taliban farewell. Afghans are also preparing, many are seeking asylum elsewhere, as there is a risk of increasing violence. And Pakistan, a long-time supporter of the Taliban, will likely celebrate the withdrawal as a victory – but without US support, it’s been so long been relied on.
Swell: Military times, CNN
4th Cuba’s Castro era is coming to an end
Raúl Castro, who led a communist revolution with his late brother Fidel in 1959 and led Cuba for six decades, is retiring. Yesterday, the 89-year-old told the Caribbean Communist Party Congress that he would step down as party leader to make way for a party new generation “Full of passion and anti-imperialist spirit.” While this is a historic transition, little is likely to change under his expected successor, President Miguel Díaz-Canel, 60. With the livelihood devastating pandemic, pressure to move faster from a state-controlled economy will inevitably mount.
Swell: BBC, AP
5. Also important…
After an outcry from fellow Democrats over plans to keep the Trump-era borders on immigrant admission, the Biden administration has announced it Increase this annual limit of 15,000 people in their “final” formulation May 15. NASA selected Elon Musk’s SpaceX produce a lander that will bring astronauts back to the moon. And on Friday, a member of the Oath Guards who agreed to work with the federal prosecutor was the first to do so make a confession of guilt in the Capitol uprising of January 6th.
In the next week: A pandemic funeral will be held in the UK this afternoon with only 30 mourners Prince Philip dies, Queen Elizabeth II. Wife of 73 years. Tuesday is April 20th. Or National Weed Day in America. And Wednesday is Earth Daywhen President Biden will host a virtual global climate summit.
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1. A deadly reality in the midst of joy
In India this week, millions of Hindu pilgrims gathered along the Ganges to mark the Kumbh Mela. In Nepal, thousands of night owls covered themselves with colored powder for Bisket Jatra, which marked the beginning of spring. But not far away, doctors struggled to keep up with a growing pandemic. Out of 50,000 celebrities tested in an Indian location, around 1,000 people were positive for the coronavirus, and authorities fear the spread. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged supporters to keep the celebration “symbolic” to reduce infection and leading seers have repeated the call, but it is unclear whether believers will heed it.
Swell: France 24, The guard, Al Jazeera, Hindustan Times
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2. Welcome to neo-Nazi Silicon Valley
He’s just trying to make a living. According to Ethos, this is the ethos of 23-year-old Nick Lim Bloomberg Businessweek, That owes its technical prowess to saving two of the most on the internet hateful corners. From a house in Vancouver, Washington, which he inherited from grandparents, he provides a network infrastructure that other companies refused to give to the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer and 8kun, the successor to 8chan. Posing as apolitical but an advocate of free speech, Lim is being persecuted by those attempting to turn off the bigot cones, but so far he has stayed one step ahead of them.
Source: Bloomberg Business Week
3rd The migrant who fell to London
He was among the 10,134 migrants who have died since 2014 trying to find a new life in Europe. Yet the young man, who arrived in one of London’s poshest neighborhoods in the summer of 2019, made headlines when he fell out of a wheel arch on a Kenya Airways Dreamliner approaching Heathrow Airport. Investigations have opened in London and Nairobi, but the shattered body remains unnamed and unclaimed, which led The Guardian to investigate questions about how airport security allows this to happen, leading someone to take such an overwhelmingly fatal risk and the greatest of all allen: how can it be stopped?
Source: The guard
4th Did a podcast solve the Kristin Smart Case?
Every morning at 4:20 a.m., an invisible clock sounded an alarm. That strange detail told by a tenant in the house that Kristin Smart’s was in suspected murderer was one of several discovered on musician Chris Lambert’s podcast. Your own garden. This week, authorities credited Lambert’s work in helping police collect enough evidence to arrest Smart’s 25-year-old disappearance from the California Polytechnic State University campus in San Luis Obispo. The program has been downloaded 7.5 million times, not least due to revelations like the alarm set when Smart woke up to work.
Swell: AP
5. After 128 years, the pitcher’s mound is moving
If major league baseball has its way, beating becomes less of an all-or-nothing affair. This season, the Independent Atlantic League, also known as the MLB Proving Grounds, will move Pitcher’s Hill 1 foot by 60 feet, 6 inches back from home plate, where it has remained since 1893. That should allow for more hits – the usual one or two basic types – and save the game from its current boring binary number of strikeouts or home runs. And DH haters are happy: Players selected by the Atlantic League only play as long as the starting mug survives, which from now on means real baseball.
