Nation & World Glance
Coronavirus data is funneled
away from CDC
NEW YORK — Hospital data related to the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. will now be collected by a private technology firm, rather than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — a move the Trump administration says will speed up reporting but one that concerns some public health leaders.
The CDC director said Wednesday that he’s fine with the change — even though some experts fear it will further sideline the agency.
The CDC has agreed to step out of the government’s traditional data collection process “in order to streamline reporting,” Dr. Robert Redfield said during a call with reporters set up by the agency’s parent, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
HHS officials recently posted a document on the agency’s website that redirected hospitals’ daily reporting of a range of data meant to assess the impact of the coronavirus on them. TeleTracking Technologies, based in Pittsburgh, will now collect that information. However, if hospitals are already directly reporting to state health departments, they can get a written release from the state to keep doing that.
Trump replaces campaign
manager Parscale WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump shook up his campaign staff Wednesday amid sinking poll numbers less than four months before the election, replacing campaign manager Brad Parscale with veteran GOP operative Bill Stepien.
“I am pleased to announce that Bill Stepien has been promoted to the role of Trump Campaign Manager,” Trump said on Facebook. “Brad Parscale, who has been with me for a very long time and has led our tremendous digital and data strategies, will remain in that role, while being a Senior Advisor to the campaign.”
Trump and Parscale’s relationship had been increasingly strained, with the president annoyed by the publicity Parscale had garnered in the role. But the final straw appeared to be a Tulsa, Oklahoma, rally last month that drew an unexpectedly low crowd of about 6,200 people after Parscale had bragged that more than a million people had requested tickets. The president was furious.
The shakeup injected familiar turmoil to Trump’s 2020 campaign, which had so far largely avoided the regular staff churn that dominated the president’s 2016 campaign and his White House. It comes as Trump has been struggling in his reelection campaign against presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, with the nation facing health and economic crises during a pandemic that has killed more than 135,000 Americans.
The staff change was not expected to alter the dayto-day running of the campaign. News of the shuffle was delivered to Parscale on Wednesday afternoon by White House adviser and
Trump son-in-law Kushner.
Jared
Biden, Gates, other Twitter accounts hacked in scam Unidentified hackers broke into the Twitter accounts of technology moguls, politicians, celebrities and major companies Wednesday in an apparent Bitcoin scam.
The ruse included bogus tweets from former President Barack Obama, Democratic presidential frontrunner Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg and a number of tech billionaires including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Celebrities Kanye West and his wife, Kim Kardashian West, were also hacked. The fake tweets tweets offered to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to an anonymous Bitcoin address.
There is no evidence that the owners of these accounts were targeted themselves. Instead, the hacks appeared designed to lure their Twitter followers into sending money to an anonymous Bitcoin account. The Biden campaign, for instance, said that Twitter’s integrity team “locked down the account within a few minutes of the breach and removed the related tweet.”
Obama’s office had no immediate comment.
The apparently fake tweets were all quickly deleted, although the Associated Press was able to capture screenshots of several before they disappeared.
Congress eyes new virus aid as health crisis deepens WASHINGTON — Two months after House Democrats approved a $3 trillion COVID-19 aid package, Senate Republicans are poised to unveil their $1 trillion counteroffer, straining to keep spending in check as the virus outbreak spreads and societal fallout deepens.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is expected to roll out the GOP bill as soon as next week, said Wednesday that he conferred with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin as the White House’s point man on the talks prepares to negotiate with Democrats.
But having hit “pause” in May, as McConnell put it, Republicans now face a potentially more dire situation. They had hoped the pandemic would ease and the economic fallout would reverse. Instead, coronavirus cases are spiking, states are resuming shutdowns and parents are wondering if it’s safe to send children back to school.
“Regretfully, this is not over,” McConnell said during a visit to a hospital in Kentucky.
“There were some that hoped this would go away sooner than it has,” he said, urging residents to wear masks and social distance.
87 protesters arrested at Ky. attorney general’s home LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Eighty-seven demonstrators who gathered at the home of Kentucky’s attorney general to demand justice for Breonna Taylor have been arrested and charged with a felony for trying to “intimidate” the prosecutor, police said.
Protesters with the social justice organization Until Freedom gathered for a sit-in on the front yard of a Louisville home owned by Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron on Tuesday afternoon, news outlets reported.
They were arrested after refusing to leave and — having been instructed beforehand by protest organizers not to resist — could be seen lining up to await their transfer to jail.