Written by Econintersect
Early Bird Headlines 28 February 2020.
Econintersect: Here are some of the headlines we found to help you start your day. For more headlines see our afternoon feature for GEI members, What We Read Today, published Monday, Wednesday and Friday, which has many more headlines and a number of article discussions to keep you abreast of what we have found interesting.
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Key Articles
Global
- China’s Shenzhen stocks drop almost 5% as major markets enter correction territory (CNBC) Stocks in Asia declined on Friday as fears over the spread of the coronavirus globally drove investors to safety. China’s Shenzhen stocks led losses among major markets regionally as they closed sharply lower. The U.S. dollar index was last lower at 98.118 after dropping from levels around 99.0 yesterday. The most active Brent crude contract for May was down 2.4%, at $50.93 a barrel, a 14-month low. The front-month April contract expires later on Friday. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures fell 3.3%, to $45.51 per barrel. U.S. crude has fallen about 14% for the week, the biggest weekly decline since May 2011. Spot gold was down 0.7% at $1,630.86 per ounce. Bond yields were sharply lower. The yield on the benchmark U.S. 10-year Treasury touched new record lows, according to Reuters. It was last at 1.1666%.
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U.S.
- HHS Workers Who Received Coronavirus Evacuees From Wuhan Were ‘Not Properly Trained’: Whistleblower (Daily Beast) The workers deployed by the Department of Health and Human Services to assist American passengers from a flight evacuated from Wuhan amid the coronavirus outbreak were “not properly trained or equipped to operate in a public health emergency situation,” according to a whistleblower complaint. The plane, which was chartered by the U.S. State Department, carried the first Americans evacuated from Wuhan and arrived in California on Jan. 29. The whistleblower is reportedly a top HHS official who manages employees at the Administration for Children and Families – the unit that sent 14 workers to receive the passengers. The whistleblower, who says she initially complained to HHS but was then transferred to another position, alleges in the complaint that the ACF personnel were not tested for the virus and may have been exposed to it. One of the whistleblower’s lawyers, Ari Wilkenfeld, said she was “involuntarily assigned to a position in a subject matter where she has no expertise” after she voiced her concerns to the HHS. She was also informed that she would be fired if she did not “accept involuntary reassignment,” according to the complaint.
- Fox News Poll: Sanders knocks Biden out of first, majority thinks Trump wins (Fox News) Bernie Sanders has pushed Joe Biden out of the frontrunner spot for the Democratic nomination, capturing a record 31% support among primary voters in a new Fox News Poll. This is the first 2020 Fox national poll that finds Biden not leading the Democratic race. But the second part of this headline appears to be completely false. See graphic (second below) from the article.
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Ukraine
- Ukraine court forces probe into Biden role in firing of prosecutor Viktor Shokin (The Washington Post) A court ruling in Ukraine has forced state investigators to open a probe into alleged pressure by then-vice president Joe Biden that led to the 2016 dismissal of Viktor Shokin (pictured below in 2015) as the country’s prosecutor general, officials said Thursday.
Shokin’s firing, however, was not a unilateral action directed by Biden. It was prompted by a push for anti-corruption reforms developed at the State Department and coordinated with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.
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Turkey
- Turkey opens frontier for Syrian refugees to enter Europe after strike kills troops (Reuters) Turkey will no longer stop Syrian refugees from reaching Europe, a senior Turkish official said, as Ankara responded on Friday to the killing of 33 Turkish soldiers in a strike by Syrian government forces in Syria’s northwestern Idlib region.
Syria
- Dozens of Turkish soldiers killed in strike in Idlib in Syria (The Guardian) Dozens of Turkish soldiers have been killed in an airstrike in Syria’s Idlib province, in a dramatic escalation in the battle for control of the country’s last opposition stronghold. Military sources among moderate and jihadist rebel factions fighting in the northwestern province bordering Turkey said up to 70 Turkish soldiers died on Thursday night after a precision strike hit a two-storey building in the village of Balioun.
Turkish officials have blamed the Syrian regime for the attack, but several sources in Idlib and unverified footage of the nighttime strike suggested it had been carried out by the Russian air force, which has helped Damascus conduct a ferocious three-month-old offensive on Idlib.
China
- US says Chinese ship fired laser at American aircraft (Associated Press) A Chinese Navy ship fired a laser at a U.S. surveillance aircraft flying over the Philippine Sea west of Guam, the Navy said Thursday, acknowledging the incident more than a week after it happened.
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Other important articles
Global
- Track the Coronavirus Outbreak on Johns Hopkins Live Dashboard (MedPage Today)
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U.S.
- Trump tweets suggest break with Barr over FISA reauthorization (CNN)
- Pelosi, Trying to Save House Majority, Fends Off Angst Over Sanders (The New YorkTimes)
- A More Nefarious Reason Trump May Want Bernie Sanders To Win The Democratic Nomination (Medium) If Bernie were to defeat Trump, The Donald could find support for a move to refuse to leave office in order to protect the country from “radical socialism”.
- COVID-19 Requires ‘An Entire Village’ of Professionals (MedPage Today)
- Eric Trump Billed Taxpayers $80K for Two-Day Business Trip to Uruguay (Daily Beast) Read the details at Citizen’s for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
- Steve Scalise says Republicans worked with Obama on Ebola. Let’s go to the tape. (The Washington Post) Speaking about the coronavirus outbreak Wednesday, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R, LA) made another assertion about how Republicans treated President Barack Obama while he was in office.
“Anybody that’s playing partisan games with this, especially while the president’s in a foreign country, should be ashamed of themselves. We work together, like we’ve done when we were in the majority with President Obama, to make sure, whether it was Ebola or any other disease, that we were working with the president to combat it, not to try to find a way to divide the country, but by finding a way to work together.”
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Russia
- Putin, Erdogan agree new measures needed to ease Syria tensions: Kremlin (Reuters) Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan agreed during a phone call on Friday on the need for new measures to be put in place to ease tensions and normalize the situation in northwest Syria, the Kremlin said.
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India
- No Email. No WhatsApp. No Internet. This Is Now Normal Life In Kashmir. (BuzzFeed News)
- Delhi violence | Death toll rises to 38 as national capital limps to normalcy (The Hindu) The death toll in the communal violence that rocked the national capital since Sunday rose to 38 on Thursday, with 11 more persons succumbing to injuries at various hospitals. The national capital was, however, spared any major clashes, shifting the focus on treatment, investigation, relief and rehabilitation.
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China
- China wants to get back to normal as its coronavirus case numbers ease. That could be dangerous (CNN)
Canada
- Harry and Meghan to lose their Canadian security (CNN)
- Quebec grocery store bagger won $70 million from a lottery ticket (CNN) A 22-year-old grocery store employee just won the biggest jackpot in Quebec’s history after he purchased a ticket from the store where he works.
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