FCC commissioner: Our agency says all Americans are gaining advanced Internet access. It's wrong

The Covid-19 pandemic has us heading online for work, school, and healthcare like never before. Having reliable Internet access means having a fighting chance at maintaining some semblance of modern life.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/29/perspectives/fcc-broadband-access/index.html?source=Snapzu

Roger Stone Bought Hundreds of Fake Facebook Accounts to Promote His WikiLeaks Narrative

Thanks to a joint petition from Politico, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, CNN, and the New York Times, over 30 FBI search warrants into Roger Stone’s communications were unsealed on Tuesday.
Read more: https://gizmodo.com/roger-stone-bought-hundreds-of-fake-facebook-accounts-t-1843161716?source=Snapzu

Turkish students increasingly resisting religion, study suggests

Young people likely to challenge Islam and see themselves as less religious than previous generations
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/29/turkish-students-increasingly-resisting-religion-study-suggests?source=Snapzu

New Evidence Supports Credibility of Tara Reade’s Allegation Against Biden

Former Biden staffer Tara Reade’s mother called into the Larry King Live show in 1993 and discussed her daughter’s time with a “prominent senator.”
Read more: https://theintercept.com/2020/04/24/new-evidence-tara-reade-joe-biden/?source=Snapzu

The Coming Greater Depression of the 2020s

While there is never a good time for a pandemic, the COVID-19 crisis has arrived at a particularly bad moment for the global economy. The world has long been drifting into a perfect storm of financial, political, socioeconomic, and environmental risks, all of which are now growing even more acute.
Read more: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/greater-depression-covid19-headwinds-by-nouriel-roubini-2020-04?mod=article_inline?source=Snapzu

Apple to Pay $18 Million to Settle California Lawsuit Claiming Apple 'Broke' FaceTime on Older iPhones to Save Costs

Apple has agreed to pay $18 million to settle a California class-action lawsuit that accused it of intentionally breaking FaceTime in iOS 6 to force users to upgrade to iOS 7.
Read more: https://www.macrumors.com/2020/04/29/apple-pays-18-million-california-facetime-lawsuit/?source=Snapzu

Japan's Abe says impossible to hold Olympics unless pandemic contained

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Wednesday that the Tokyo Olympics could not take place next year unless the coronavirus pandemic is contained, as the city's governor requested an extension of Japan's state of emergency.
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-japan-olympics-idUSKCN22B0QR?source=Snapzu

How the internet flips elections and alters our thoughts – Robert Epstein | Aeon Essays

Over the past century, more than a few great writers have expressed concern about humanity’s future. In The Iron Heel (1908), the American writer Jack London pictured a world in which a handful of wealthy corporate titans – the ‘oligarchs’ – kept the masses at bay with a brutal combination of rewards and punishments. Much of humanity lived in virtual slavery, while the fortunate ones were bought off with decent wages that allowed them to live comfortably – but without any real control over their lives.
Read more: https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-internet-flips-elections-and-alters-our-thoughts?source=Snapzu

The 'mystery' of India's low Covid-19 death rate

The fatality rate remains among the lowest in the world, prompting both optimism and bafflement.
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-52435463?source=Snapzu

Meet the 101-year-old who was born on a ship during the Spanish flu and just beat coronavirus

Angelina Friedman survived cancer, miscarriages, internal bleeding, sepsis and now not one, but two pandemics. More than 100 years after living through the Spanish flu, the 101-year-old woman just beat coronavirus.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/28/us/woman-101-beat-coronavirus-trnd/index.html?source=Snapzu

Some overwhelmed parents are giving up on distance learning and abandoning at-home schooling

Opting out of assigned schoolwork is an opportunity to learn in different ways, professor of education says
Read more: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-growing-cohort-of-overwhelmed-parents-unengaged-children-drop/?source=Snapzu

This Is 'Creepy': Lawrence Wright Wishes His Pandemic Novel Had Gotten It Wrong

Lawrence Wright is not interested in saying "I told you so." At the beginning of his new novel, he writes: "Dear Reader, The events depicted in The End of October were meant to serve as a cautionary tale. But real life doesn't always wait for warnings." Wright's fictional tale is about a mysterious virus that starts in Asia, sweeps across continents, cripples the health care system, wrecks the economy, and kills people worldwide.
Read more: https://www.npr.org/2020/04/28/846807025/this-is-creepy-lawrence-wright-wishes-his-pandemic-novel-had-gotten-it-wrong?source=Snapzu

China is installing surveillance cameras outside people's front doors ... and sometimes inside their homes

The morning after Ian Lahiffe returned to Beijing, he found a surveillance camera being mounted on the wall outside his apartment door. Its lens was pointing right at him. After a trip to southern China, the 34-year-old Irish expat and his family were starting their two-week home quarantine, a mandatory measure enforced by the Beijing government to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/27/asia/cctv-cameras-china-hnk-intl/index.html?source=Snapzu

High school student makes clear face masks to help deaf and hard of hearing communicate

Face mask usage is more of a norm and less of a niche during the COVID-19 pandemic, with cities and states recommending that individuals don protective facial coverings before heading outside. But amid the new measures to protect public health, the deaf and hard of hearing have encountered some difficulties. Members of the community often rely on lip-reading to communicate, making it difficult to share thoughts, messages and ideas while wearing an opaque mask.
Read more: https://fox9.com/news/high-school-student-makes-clear-face-masks-to-help-deaf-and-hard-of-hearing-communicate?source=Snapzu

Trader Joe's employee who is deaf finds new way to communicate with customers in face masks

Matthew Simmons uses sign language and reads lips, but with people now wearing masks, he had to find another way to communicate with customers.
Read more: https://www.today.com/food/trader-joe-s-employee-who-deaf-finds-new-way-communicate-t179945?source=Snapzu

After ‘Tiger King,’ Celebrities Rally Around Passage of Big Cat Public Safety Act

After Netflix’s docu-series “Tiger King” became a phenomenon that essentially broke the internet in recent weeks, celebrities are rallying around a federal bill that would protect the kind of big cats that are featured in the show.
Read more: https://variety.com/2020/biz/news/tiger-king-big-cat-public-safety-act-1234591738/?source=Snapzu

NHTSA Isn't Doing Enough To Protect Us From Giant Trucks

Pedestrians are dying on American roads in greater numbers every year, and government regulators aren’t doing enough to stop it, according to a new report on pedestrian safety from the Government Accountability Office. Its chilling title is “NHTSA Needs to Decide Whether to Include Pedestrian Safety Tests in Its New Car Assessment Program.”
Read more: https://jalopnik.com/nhtsa-isnt-doing-enough-to-protect-us-from-giant-trucks-1843129168?source=Snapzu

$1 testing kits: Senegal's approach to coronavirus

Without much of a health budget, Senegal is being championed for controlling the novel coronavirus. From early-detection mobile kits to 3D-printed ventilators, the West African nation is demonstrating a possible model in curbing COVID-19, relying on their experience of managing the Ebola outbreak. In this episode, The Take is joined by Nicolas Haque, Al Jazeera journalist in Dakar, Senegal; Anta James, a regional representative for Catholic Relief Services; Dan Honig, assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University; and Shannon Underwood, an immigration lawyer in Dakar, Senegal.
Read more: https://www.aljazeera.com/podcasts/thetake/2020/04/1-testing-kits-senegal-approach-coronavirus-200427143150262.html?source=Snapzu

Palaeontologists reveal 'the most dangerous place in the history of planet Earth'

100 million years ago, ferocious predators, including flying reptiles and crocodile-like hunters, made the Sahara the most dangerous place on Earth.
Read more: https://www.port.ac.uk/news-events-and-blogs/news/palaeontologists-reveal-the-most-dangerous-place-in-the-history-of-planet-earth?source=Snapzu

When Your Freedom Depends On an App

On the day Layla got out of prison and back to her home in Georgia, she was told she would need to purchase a smartphone—not an insignificant task for someone who’d just completed a sentence, but Layla was lucky to have a friend who could buy one for her. She says she was at home in bed a few days later when the app she had been mandated to install under the terms of her release went off unexpectedly, the high-pitched warning alarm blaring as it sent a notification to her parole officers telling him that she was not, in fact, at home.
Read more: https://gizmodo.com/when-your-freedom-depends-on-an-app-1843109198?source=Snapzu

How will coronavirus change the world?

Could the huge shifts in our way of life being introduced as part of the fight against Covid-19 pave the way for a more humane economy?
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200331-covid-19-how-will-the-coronavirus-change-the-world?source=Snapzu

Largest-ever Arctic ozone hole closes

An “unprecedented” hole in the ozone layer which developed to become the largest ever seen over the Arctic has closed just weeks after opening, scientists observing the phenomenon have said. The gap in the vital layer, which protects the Earth from harmful radiation from the sun, set a new record for ozone depletion in the northern hemisphere when it formed earlier this month.
Read more: https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/arctic-ozone-hole-closes-size-a9487961.html?source=Snapzu

The Black Death led to the demise of feudalism. Could this pandemic have similar repercussions?

We’ve been here before: a pandemic, income inequality, economic stagnation and climate change brought down Medieval Europe
Read more: https://www.salon.com/2020/04/26/the-black-death-led-to-the-demise-of-feudalism-could-this-pandemic-have-a-similar-effect/?source=Snapzu

‘Ethnic spaces’ make minority students feel at home on campus

New research by the University of Washington and the University of Exeter in the U.K., examined the value that college students — of many races — place on ethnic cultural centers.
Read more: https://www.washington.edu/news/2020/04/27/ethnic-spaces-make-minority-students-feel-at-home-on-campus/?source=Snapzu

A scuba diving group is making face masks out of recycled ocean plastic

In a win-win for sea animals and humans, a scuba diving group is turning plastic water bottles that once polluted oceans into face masks for people to protect themselves against the coronavirus.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/22/us/face-masks-ocean-plastic-coronavirus-trnd/index.html?source=Snapzu

NHS rejects Apple-Google coronavirus app plan

The UK's contact-tracing app is set to use a "centralised" system that worries privacy experts.
Read more: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52441428?source=Snapzu

Pompeii ruins show that the Romans invented recycling

Excavations reveal that rubbish left outside the city walls wasn’t just dumped. It was being collected, sorted and resold
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/apr/26/pompeii-ruins-show-that-the-romans-invented-recycling?source=Snapzu

Coronavirus 'currently eliminated' in New Zealand

After single-figure new cases for more than a week, NZ says it has ended local transmissions for now.
Read more: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-52436658?source=Snapzu

Endless palimpsest: Wikipedia and the future’s historian

In spite of the project being very new, the number and variety of its authors and the ambivalence of academia towards it, Wikipedians have created an encyclopedia that upholds high standards of scholarship and encyclopedism.
Read more: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03075079.2020.1749793?journalCode=cshe20?source=Snapzu

Power is 'up for grabs': Behind China's plan to shape the future of next-generation tech

China is set to release a new plan this year called "China Standards 2035" with the aim of influencing how the next-generation of technologies will work.
Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/27/china-standards-2035-explained.html?source=Snapzu

Do Conservatives View Trump Differently from Liberals?

They perceive the same personality traits but interpret them differently.
Read more: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/talking-apes/202004/do-conservatives-view-trump-differently-liberals?source=Snapzu

The computer algorithm that was among the first to detect the coronavirus outbreak

On New Year's Eve, a small company in Canada was among the first to raise the alarm about an infectious disease outbreak. Its computer algorithm calculated where the virus might spread next. The technology could change the way we fight another contagion.
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/artificial-intelligence-mapping-coronavirus-pandemic-60-minutes-2020-04-26/?source=Snapzu

Brad Pitt answers Dr. Fauci's call to play him on SNL

Acouple of weeks ago, Dr. Anthony Fauci was asked who he would want to portray him on Saturday Night Live. "Oh, Brad Pitt, of course!" Fauci, the country's top infectious diseases expert and a member of the White House coronavirus task force, joked on CNN.
Read more: https://www.newsweek.com/brad-pitt-plays-anthony-fauci-snl-1500258?source=Snapzu

Panic of 1819: America’s First Great Depression

Historian Steve Campbell examines the complex set of domestic and international factors that both caused and grew out of the Panic of 1819.
Read more: https://economic-historian.com/2020/01/the-panic-of-1819-as-americas-first-great-depression/?source=Snapzu

Why Americans Don’t Vote Their Class Anymore

Declining unions — and rising educational attainment — have left college-educated whites more left-wing than non-college-educated ones.
Read more: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/why-americans-dont-vote-their-class-bernie-sanders-marxist-electoral-theory.html?source=Snapzu

Sinking U.S. economy hasn’t hit bottom yet

The coronavirus capsized what had been the longest expansion in U.S. history. Now the wait is on to see how far the economy sinks before it finds bottom. A few dimly hopeful signs emerged last week as a pair of reports showed consumer confidence stabilizing toward the end of the April, largely on the flickering hope that the economy will start to rebound during the summer. Another poll found that Americans think four of five jobs lost due the coronavirus will return.
Read more: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/sinking-us-economy-hasnt-hit-bottom-yet-2020-04-25?source=Snapzu

What if Covid-19 isn't our biggest threat?

Experts who assess global peril saw a pandemic coming, but they have worse worries for humanity
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/apr/26/what-if-covid-19-isnt-our-biggest-threat?source=Snapzu

Beware of Russian and Chinese ‘Trojan Horses’ bearing pandemic medical aid

When I woke up and read the headline “Russia sent humanitarian aid to USA,” I had a flashback. I remembered the morning of Aug. 11, 2014, when Russia sent its “aid” to Eastern Ukraine after discussing this with Jose Manuel Barroso. The only difference between our countries at that moment was the size, military might and the United States wasn’t under Russian military attack.
Read more: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/apr/23/beware-of-russian-and-chinese-trojan-horses-bearin/?source=Snapzu

Restaurants’ bailout problem: Unemployment pays more

Restaurants say their industry needs its own targeted recovery fund because the bailout package Congress passed last month is making it more attractive for their staff to draw unemployment benefits than to continue working. The new Paycheck Protection Program waives repayment of small business loans if the borrower uses 75 percent of the money to maintain payroll, a measure intended to reduce layoffs. But with the expanded unemployment benefits included in the stimulus bill, some workers can as much as double their weekly checks if they stay unemployed.
Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/20/restaurant-bailout-unemployment-coronavirus-197326?source=Snapzu

How Canada tricked the world into believing murderous Satanists were everywhere

Michelle Remembers, published in 1980, temporarily convinced the world that society was in the grip of murderous Satanist cults
Read more: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-canadian-book-that-tricked-the-world-into-believing-they-were-overrun-with-satanist-murder-cults?source=Snapzu

Coronavirus: A visual guide to the economic impact

The coronavirus outbreak, which was first detected in China, has infected people in 185 countries. Its spread has left businesses around the world counting the costs. Here is a selection of maps and charts to help you understand the economic impact of the virus so far.
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51706225?source=Snapzu

Miami goes seven weeks without a homicide for first time since 1957

Crime rates have dropped in numerous cities during stay-at-home orders.
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/miami-no-homicide-seven-weeks/?source=Snapzu

A 56-Year-Old Finally Learned To Write His Name — Because Of A Coronavirus Lockdown

All his life, 56-year-old Pratap Singh Bora has been sticking his thumb in ink to sign documents. He didn't go to school when he was a kid. Little did he know that he would learn to write his first words at a coronavirus lockdown center during a global pandemic.
Read more: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/25/844082712/a-56-year-old-finally-learned-to-read-and-write-because-of-a-coronavirus-lockdow?source=Snapzu

Use of conservative and social media linked with COVID-19 misinformation

A study of media use and public knowledge has found people who relied on conservative or social media were more likely to be misinformed about how to prevent COVID-19 and believe conspiracy theories about it.
Read more: https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/use-conservative-and-social-media-linked-covid-19-misinformation?source=Snapzu

A Maine girl sold her toys and used the money to support health care workers and others

A 7-year-old girl from Warren is proving you’re never too young to start giving back to your local community — especially in times of crisis. Over the past week, Alexandrea Fullerton has been raising money for Pen Bay Medical Center and the Warren Food Pantry by selling her toys. [Our COVID-19 tracker contains the most recent information on Maine cases by county] “I just wanted to be nice,” she said. “[Hospitals] need money so they can buy masks and gloves so they’re safe.”
Read more: https://bangordailynews.com/2020/04/24/news/midcoast/a-maine-girl-sold-her-toys-and-used-the-money-to-support-health-care-workers-and-others/?source=Snapzu

Please Don't Drink Disinfectant, Lysol And Dettol Maker Says After Trump Claimed People Could Inject It To Kill The Coronavirus

"We must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body."
Read more: https://www.buzzfeed.com/emilyashton/coronavirus-donald-trump-disinfectant-warning?source=Snapzu

Emergency medical workers in San Francisco are wearing smart rings that can monitor body temperature in an effort to detect COVID-19 symptoms early

Emergency medical workers at two hospitals in San Francisco will begin wearing smart rings that can detect their body temperature and other metrics in an attempt to detect coronavirus infections early, according to a report from The San Francisco Chronicle. Staff at UCSF Medical Center and Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital will begin wearing smart rings made by wearable tech startup Oura, which makes a ring that can monitor a wearer's sleep, heart rate, temperature, and steps.
Read more: https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-smart-ring-san-francisco-hospitals-covid19-symptoms-study-oura-2020-3?source=Snapzu

Coronavirus: Post Malone's virtual Nirvana tribute concert raises $2.6M for relief efforts

Post Malone's concert may be virtual, but it sure "Smells Like Teen Spirit." On YouTube Friday, the "rockstar" singer gave a virtual concert in honor of the '90s grunge band Nirvana to raise money for The United Nations Foundation’s COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund for The World Health Organization. Google.org has pledged to match the amount of money donated during the stream at a 2:1 rate up to $5 million.
Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/music/2020/04/24/coronavirus-post-malone-nirvana-concert-charity/3023805001/?source=Snapzu

Boeing looks to restart production in three states with safety protocols in place

Signs were hung at a Boeing plant in Washington state to welcome back some of its 27,000 employees as the aerospace giant looks to resume production at facilities there and in Ohio and Pennsylvania after they were forced to shut due to the coronavirus. Boing officials told "CBS This Morning" that the health and safety of employees and their families is their priority, and their precautionary measures are based on federal and state guidance.
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-boeing-looks-to-restart-production-aircraft-washington-ohio-pennsylvania/?source=Snapzu

An Earth Day Reminder of How the Republicans Have Forsaken the Environment

As Earth Day turns fifty, virtually all celebrations and protests are forced online or cancelled, and the Trump Administration is busy gutting the nation’s environmental regulations.
Read more: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/an-earth-day-reminder-of-how-the-republicans-have-forsaken-the-environment?source=Snapzu