Florida Smirked at New York's Virus Crisis. Now It Has Its Own.
In late April, as new coronavirus cases in Florida were steadily decreasing, Gov. Ron DeSantis began crowing how his state had tamed the pandemic.He credited his decision to impose a state-specific quarantine on New York, then the epicenter of the nation's outbreak. The move earned him praise in the White House and the ire of Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York.Months later, Cuomo has clearly not forgotten."You played politics with this virus and you lost," Cuomo said Thursday when asked in an interview about DeSantis' earlier boasts.With infections now rapidly spreading in Florida while they retreat in New York, the two states have come to reflect the rapidly shifting course of the coronavirus pandemic.New York still has the country's highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths, but the day-to-day numbers have been steadily falling: At its peak, the virus claimed 1,000 deaths a day in the state; on Thursday, the state recorded 17 deaths. Florida, among the states not mandating masks, rushed to reopen and on Friday reported its highest number of new cases in one day, with close to 9,000.And in their divergent political responses to the outbreak, Cuomo, a Democrat, and DeSantis, a Republican, also mirror the divide over the virus among states and regions around the country.The two brash, telegenic governors both embraced the increased visibility that the virus provided. Cuomo delivered daily sober updates on the virus, the state's aggressive lockdown strategy and its cautious approach to reopening. DeSantis eagerly advanced a narrative pushed by President Donald Trump, seeing the economic damage as a greater risk than a virus that had, for months, largely spared his state.The strain of the pandemic has frayed the ties between New York and Florida, two states that normally enjoy a more symbiotic relationship, even allowing for the occasional hints of schadenfreude.On Wednesday, Cuomo ordered his own quarantine on travelers from states with high-infection rates -- a group of eight that included Florida -- to protect New Yorkers who now have low infection rates. The reversal of fortune was too much to pass up."Your hospital beds are filling up," Cuomo said Thursday. "It means more people are getting sick. That's what's happening. And it's now undeniable."Despite the virus' spread, DeSantis has given no indication that he would order the shutdown of any of the businesses already opened. But on Friday, in an unexpected move, the state's Department of Business and Professional Regulation abruptly announced that on-premises alcohol consumption would be suspended at bars, effective immediately.DeSantis acknowledged that the trend in infections had shifted. "Our peak before was much lower than a lot of the other states -- in the Northeast, for example," he said on Thursday during a news conference in Tampa. "Really, the whole Sun Belt is seeing this."DeSantis said the state, which has lost 3,327 lives to the virus, was prepared for the rise in cases. He did not address Cuomo's remarks or the quarantine of Floridians traveling to New York. A spokeswoman for DeSantis, Helen Aguirre Ferre, said Cuomo was "sadly mistaken if he thinks this pandemic is a political contest."Even before the pandemic, New York and Florida engaged in some interstate rivalry, competing for residents and businesses. Florida has overtaken New York in population in recent years, a trend driven in part by the migration to the state of New Yorkers, census figures show.But in their responses to the coronavirus, the differences between the two states have never been clearer.Cuomo in April mandated all New Yorkers to wear masks when they could not stay 6 feet apart. DeSantis has declined to do the same, even after his own state surgeon general issued an advisory recommending masks in any setting where social distancing is not possible.New York leaders, after a halting early response to the pandemic in March, mostly followed the recommendations of state public health officials, including requirements for widespread testing and contact tracing before reopening. Florida has moved to open its businesses faster, and without the same infrastructure for tracking down the close contacts of the infected.In large part, the different approaches reflect the different experiences with the virus. New York state saw more than 18,000 hospitalizations a day during the worst period of the outbreak, back in April.The state's nursing homes were particularly hard-hit: 6,200 residents have died, and Cuomo has been criticized by DeSantis and others for an executive order that forbade nursing homes from turning away patients arriving from hospitals solely because they had the coronavirus. A Cuomo spokesman recently responded by saying DeSantis does not know how to wear a mask properly.DeSantis received praise for the state's more limited response to the pandemic, including from Trump, who urged the quarantine of New Yorkers going to Florida. DeSantis believed harsh restrictions would result in citizens refusing to follow the rules.He has also attacked the news media, which he said has been overly concerned about contagion in Florida's reopened beaches and not worried enough about virus spread in the New York subway.In early May, Florida began reopening business, and quickly: The state's first phase of reopening included restaurants, gyms, barbershops and large spectator sporting events, with restricted occupancy. In New York, reopening began more haltingly, with manufacturing and construction businesses.And when the White House called, DeSantis traveled to Washington to highlight the state's progress next to Trump."When you look at some of the most draconian orders that have been issued in some of these states and compare Florida," DeSantis said from the Oval Office in late April, including New York in a litany of several states, "Florida has done better."And so the National Basketball Association said it would hold the rest of its season at Walt Disney World. The Republican National Convention relocated its big speeches to Jacksonville, Florida. NASCAR raced at the Homestead-Miami Speedway earlier this month, with DeSantis as its honorary starter.Cuomo has made his own bid for sports, coaxing the Mets and the Yankees to return to New York from their spring training camps by suggesting Florida was no longer safe. (He exempted the teams from the new quarantine, saying they had their own health protocols.)While Cuomo did not explicitly target his quarantine order to apply to Florida, he signaled in the days before making the announcement that the state's recent treatment of New Yorkers was very much on his mind."Well, wouldn't that be karma?" Cuomo said when asked about a quarantine in New York on MSNBC.Florida's quarantine affecting New Yorkers is still in effect: As of Tuesday, New Yorkers arriving at Miami International Airport were still being met by the National Guard and state health officials, told to head straight for their lodgings and ordered to quarantine there for two weeks.But as the course of the coronavirus outbreak has turned in recent weeks, the flow of travelers has reversed: People are now jetting out of Florida and back to the relative safety of New York. Such an exodus would have been unimaginable three months earlier.Epidemiologists said Florida's quarantine of New Yorkers made sense at the time, just as New York's for Floridians does now. "There is more virus in that environment," said Dr. Amanda D. Castel, a professor of epidemiology at George Washington University.Right now, New York was looking like a safer bet to Evan Friedman, a White Plains, New York, resident who had been staying in his second home in Boca Raton, Florida, since March.In recent weeks, Friedman, 58, had begun to worry that Florida residents were not taking the virus seriously enough. A barber not wearing a mask rattled him. So did the man in the bagel shop who prepared a platter without a mask or gloves.Many New Yorkers he knew in Florida had gone back north, and he planned to go early next month.But when Cuomo announced that the new quarantine would take effect at midnight Wednesday, Friedman rushed to pack his bags. He found the flights to New York were all booked, so he got a ticket to Connecticut and rented a car to get back to New York."I have the luxury of being able to be up North or in the South," he said. "I want to be where there are the smallest amount of cases."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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China rebuts Canadian criticism over detention of two men
China lashed out at Canada on Saturday over criticism about Chinese prosecution of two Canadians, saying the matter is based on evidence and urging Ottawa to cease "megaphone diplomacy." Chinese prosecutors this month charged Canadians Michael Kovrig, a former diplomat, and Michael Spavor, a businessman, for suspected espionage. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called on Beijing to cease the "arbitrary detention," and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also called for their release.
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William Barr claims an election with mail in voting is not secure – but admits he has no evidence for it
US attorney general William Barr has suggested that an election that uses mainly mail-in voting will not be secure, but admits he has no evidence to back up his claim.Speaking to NPR on Thursday, the attorney general was asked if he thinks an election that is voted on predominately by mail can be implemented without widespread fraud.
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FOX NEWS: Trump signs executive order to protect American monuments, memorials and statues
Trump signs executive order to protect American monuments, memorials and statues

President Trump announced Friday that he signed an executive order to protect American monuments, memorials and statues and threatened those who try to pull them down with “long prison time.”
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COVID-19 cluster among migrants causes angry confrontations in southern Italian town
Italy has sent soldiers to restore order in a coastal town near Naples after a coronavirus outbreak at an apartment complex illegally occupied by hundreds of migrant workers caused angry confrontations with residents. The authorities announced on Thursday that more than 40 people living at the abandoned buildings in Mondragone, 45 km from Naples, had tested positive for COVID-19, and warned the entire town could be quarantined if the outbreak proves widespread. Italian residents on the street chanted "Mondragone is ours" and gathered outside the sealed off are, resulting in both sides shouting abuse at each other, footage showed.
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MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace Dismantles John Bolton for Trusting Trump
Nicolle Wallace seemed to pick up where Stephen Colbert left off on Thursday afternoon when former national security adviser John Bolton stopped by her MSNBC show to hawk his new book The Room Where It Happened. The host began by grilling Bolton on the phone call he says he made to Attorney General William Barr, warning him that President Trump was trying to trade foreign aid for political favors. “I guess I wonder what you thought would happen,” Wallace said, noting that Barr “put his finger on the scale and distorted [Robert] Mueller's findings.” She asked, “Was it your hope or your intention that the possible criminality and corruption would be investigated? Or did you just want it off your plate, like a hot potato?” In response, Bolton called Barr a “man of integrity,” explaining that he “believed he would do his job.” Bolton’s false assumptions about the people he worked with in the White House was a theme throughout the interview, and especially applied to the president himself. Wallace was particularly alarmed by Bolton’s “harrowing” description of the two-hour one-on-one meeting Trump had in Helsinki with Russian President Vladimir Putin without any aides present or notes taken.“Well, it was a very long two hours, I can tell you that,” Bolton said, attempting a joke. Wallace wasn’t having it. “I have to say, at the end of it, having heard from what the president himself said, what we heard from our interpreter in the room, and what was discussed at the subsequent working lunch between the two leaders that a number of us attended, I don’t—I don’t think that anything happened in that one-on-one meeting that compromised American national security,” Bolton said. At this point, a clearly flabbergasted Wallace interrupted to ask, “You don't think? I mean, you were the national security adviser. You don't think anything happened?” Pointing out that Trump came out of that meeting and “threw the entire intelligence community under the bus,” she repeated, “So you don't think anything endangered national security.” “Well, that's a different story,” Bolton said in response. He went on to admit that “it would be better if we had had more of a sense of what the president's objectives were. I'm not sure he had objectives going into the conversation.” ‘The View’ Confronts John Bolton on Refusal to Testify Against Trump: ‘You Knew!’Towards the end of the interview, Wallace brought up Colbert’s contentious interview with Bolton directly. “Do you regret going in?” she asked of Bolton’s time in the administration. “I saw you, I think, on Stephen Colbert talk about how you thought maybe you would be different. And you are really harsh on the people that came before you. Did you think that you would be different? Did you think that the Trump White House would be different than what you encountered?” After throwing former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis under the bus once more, Bolton eventually addressed his own shortcomings. “All of us who went in who thought we could make a contribution, it was a personal decision,” he said. “I hope I put forward in the book some of the mistakes I made. Maybe I made more than my share. But I don't second-guess going in. It's an honor to serve the country. We all are mortal. You have got to do the best you can. And with this president, it just proved impossible to do better.” Wallace attempted to end the interview by asking Bolton how he will feel if he wakes up the morning after Election Day 2020 and Trump has won. But apparently their connection was lost so he never had to answer. Stephen Colbert Laughs in John Bolton’s Face: How Could You Be So ‘Naive’ About Trump?Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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Iran explosion: Blast seen near military base in Tehran
Iranian authorities are investigating after an explosion east of the capital near a site linked to the regime's nuclear testing programme. A bright and large flash of light was seen in the night sky over Tehran early on Friday in images shared widely on social media, Iran's Fars news agency reported. "In the early hours after midnight on Friday, a number of social media users reported seeing an orange light in the eastern part of Tehran," said Fars. "In the videos sent by (our) readers, this light is seen for a few seconds," it reported, adding it was following up the issue with the relevant authorities. Fars said later that the flash was caused by "an industrial gas tank explosion" near a facility belonging to the defence ministry.
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