Melania Trump Reappears After Vanishing Act Sparked Speculation

Agencies
June 5, 2018

Washington, Jun 5:  Melania Trump attended a White House event for military veterans on Monday, ending a 25-day absence from the public eye that had sent the rumor mills into overdrive.

The US first lady, known for her privacy and independence, had not been seen in public following a surgery last month.

In pictures posted on her official Twitter account, she was seen sitting next to President Donald Trump at a private reception for families of US soldiers killed in action.

She and Trump "were honored to pay tribute to our fallen heroes. Thank you to the Gold Star families that joined us in celebration & remembrance," the tweet said.

Melania, 48, had not been spotted since May 10, when she joined the president in greeting three American hostages released by North Korea.

Shortly afterwards, she entered Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for what the White House said was a benign kidney procedure.

Despite the operation's routine nature, Melania remained there for five days, returning to the White House on May 19.

On Sunday, her spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham confirmed that the first lady will not accompany the president to the G7 summit in Canada or the North Korea nuclear summit in Singapore.

Her recent schedule has seen a noticeable shift from the weeks prior to the surgery, when she engaged in several high-profile events.

In April, she represented the Trumps at former first lady Barbara Bush's funeral, rolled out her "Be Best" awareness campaign to help children, and orchestrated an elaborate state dinner for the Macrons of France.

Following the surgery, Melania's absence at events where the public has come to expect her alongside the president was well documented, leading her to take to Twitter to castigate reporters.

"I see the media is working overtime speculating where I am & what I'm doing," she tweeted last week, assuring she was "here at the @WhiteHouse w my family, feeling great, & working hard."

The tweet sparked a conspiracy theory that Trump himself may have written Melania's message, given that "working overtime" is a favorite phrase of the president when he tweets about the press.

Spokeswoman Grisham dismissed the media speculation as "nonsense."

"Mrs. Trump has always been a strong and independent woman who puts her family and certainly her health above all else, and that won't change over a rabid press corps," she told Fox News.

Imagination 'running wild'

White House silence, including about why Melania spent five days in hospital for a routine procedure, only fueled the speculation.

Some said Melania had moved back to New York or was cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller, head of the main investigation into alleged Russian election meddling that President Trump has branded a "witch hunt."

Others offered she may be healing after some secret plastic surgery.

Such a weeks-long disappearance by a modern-day first lady is indeed rare, said Ohio University history professor Katherine Jellison, an expert on presidents' wives.

"I'm amazed Mrs. Trump has been able to do it," she told AFP.

The first lady is not an elected position, and Melania Trump is under no obligation to keep the American people abreast of her health, activities or whereabouts.

Several 19th century first ladies spent long periods out of view. But over the past half century, it has become the expectation that people know the basic narrative of the first lady's activities.

Melania Trump, never one to obsess like her husband about media attention, has laid low before.

She went quiet in March as a media storm raged about revelations that her husband's lawyer paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 before the 2016 election to keep silent over her alleged affair with Trump years earlier.

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News Network
May 6,2020

Washington, May 6: The Chinese Army is indulging in aggressive behaviour in the South China Sea and the Chinese Communist Party has ramped up its disinformation campaign to try to shift the blame on coronavirus and burnish its image, US Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on Tuesday.

"While the Chinese Communist Party ramps up its disinformation campaign to try to shift blame and burnish its image, we continue to see aggressive behaviour by the PLA in the South China Sea, from threatening a Philippine Navy ship to sinking a Vietnamese fishing boat and intimidating other nations from engaging in offshore oil and gas development," Esper told reporters at a Pentagon news conference.

Last week, two US Navy ships conducted freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea to send a clear message to Beijing that America will continue to protect the freedom of navigation and commerce for all nations large and small, he said.

Many countries, Esper said, have turned inward to recover from the pandemic and in the meantime, America's strategic competitors are attempting to exploit this crisis to their benefit at the expense of others.

Responding to a question, he said the Chinese have not been transparent from the beginning on the coronavirus pandemic.

"If they had been more transparent, more open, upfront in terms of giving us access, the reporting, giving us access not to the people on the ground but to the virus they had so we could understand it, we would probably be in a far different place right now. But where we are now is this," Esper said.

China needs to allow the United States in to talk to early patients, Chinese researchers and scientists, and to have access, he added.

Instead, Esper alleged that the Chinese are trying to capitalise on this by promoting their own image that somehow, China is the good guy here.

"Despite everything they did or, more importantly, failed to do, now they want to go out and say well, here's masks. We will give you masks, provide this, or provide that, we will provide you funding. Look at all the good things we are doing," he said.

"Yet, what we know is that they provide masks, they provide supplies. In many cases, it is not good. It does not do what it is supposed to do. It is broken equipment. Also, the strings attached are enormous in many cases. So, they are telling a country you can take these masks, but please, put out publicly how good China is, how great we are doing, et cetera, et cetera," Esper said.

"So there is a number of things they are doing to try and burnish their image. That is just two of them right there," he said.

The Chinese are also doing a lot of strong-arming behind the scenes, Esper said and referred to the war of words between China and Australia. He said he plans to talk to his Australian counterpart later in the day.

"All these activities are going on. It is straight from the Chinese playbook. Once again, it is just a little bit more obvious this time with what they are doing and how they are using a combination of compelling and coercion and everything else to try and shape the narrative and burnish the image of the Chinese Communist Party," Esper said.

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News Network
July 9,2020

Washington, Jul 9: The United States recorded 55,000 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours on Wednesday (Thursday in Malaysia), a tally by Johns Hopkins University showed, bringing its total to 3,046,351 recorded infections since the pandemic began.

The country, the hardest-hit in the world, had earlier on Wednesday passed the grim milestone of three million infections. The actual number is likely far higher due to issues over getting tested in March and April.

The US also added an additional 833 virus deaths, bringing the death toll to 132,195, the Baltimore-based institution showed at 8.30pm (0030 GMT Thursday).

US President Donald Trump regularly downplays the numbers, attributing them to an increase in testing capacity during the month of June.

Coronavirus cases are surging in several southern hotspots including Texas, Florida, Louisiana and Arizona, but the pandemic has almost entirely receded from its former epicentre in New York and the north-east.

Several states have been forced to suspend their reopening processes or even reverse course, with some ordering bars to close again.

On Wednesday morning, Trump called on schools throughout the country to reopen in the fall, lashing out at his own top health agency to ease health and safety requirements aimed at slowing the spread of the virus, such as social distancing.

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News Network
March 24,2020

New Delhi, Mar 24: Reports of a person in China dying due to a virus called hantavirus have spread panic at a time when the world is battling the pandemic of novel coronavirus, which began in China.

The novel coronavirus has killed over 16,000 people around the world and the outbreak is yet to be brought under control.

This morning, hantavirus became one of the top trends on Twitter after the Chinese state media tweeted about one person in the country dying due the virus. However, it turns out, hantavirus is not a new virus and has been infecting humans for decades.

Global Times, a state-run English-language newspaper, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday, "A person from Yunnan Province died while on his way back to Shandong Province for work on a chartered bus on Monday. He was tested positive for hantavirus. Other 32 people on bus were tested."

Global Times's hantavirus report on Twitter has been shared over 6,000 times.

On Tuesday, hantavirus was one of the top trends on Twitter.

WHAT IS HANTAVIRUS?

Some people are calling it a new virus but so is not the case. United States's National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) in a journal writes that currently, the hantavirus genus includes more than 21 species.

"Hantaviruses in the Americas are known as 'New World' hantaviruses and may cause hantavirus pulmonary syndrome [HPS]," CDC says. "Other hantaviruses, known as 'Old World' hantaviruses, are found mostly in Europe and Asia and may cause hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome [HFRS]."

Any man, woman, or child who is around mice or rats that carry harmful hantaviruses can get HPS.

People get HPS when they breath in hantaviruses. This can happen when rodent urine and droppings that contain a hantavirus are stirred up into the air. People can also become infected when they touch mouse or rat urine, droppings, or nesting materials that contain the virus and then touch their eyes, nose, or mouth. They can also get HPS from a mouse or rat bite.

In the US, 10 confirmed cases of hantavirus infection in people who visited Yosemite National Park in California, US, in November 2012, were reported. Similarly, in 2017, CDC assisted health officials in investigating an outbreak of Seoul virus infection that infected 17 people in seven states.

WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF HANTAVIRUS?

If people get HPS, they will feel sick one to five weeks after they were around mice or rats that carried a hantavirus.

At first people with HPS will have:

Fever
Severe muscle aches
Fatigue

After a few days, they will have a hard time breathing. Sometimes people will have headaches, dizziness, chills, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, and stomach pain.

Usually, people do not have a runny nose, sore throat, or a rash.

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