Washington, Apr 24: The number of coronavirus cases in the US has surpassed 850,000, Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center data revealed on Thursday (local time).
The country now has registered 8,56,209 cases overall, according to the data, including 47,272 deaths.
The US currently leads the world in the number of reported COVID-19 deaths and confirmed cases.
There are more than 2.6 million COVID-19 cases around the world and more than 1,85,000 deaths, according to the data.
Washington D.C, Jun 4: A lawsuit has been filed against US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order on preventing online censorship that seems to violate the freedom of speech of individuals on social media platforms.
On Tuesday, the Center for Democracy and Technology filed the lawsuit against Trump's "Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship," which was signed May 28, 2020. The suit argues that the Executive Order violates the First Amendment by curtailing and chilling the constitutionally protected speech of online platforms and individuals.
"CDT filed suit today because the President's actions are a direct attack on the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment. The government cannot and should not force online intermediaries into moderating speech according to the President's whims. Blocking this order is crucial for protecting freedom of speech and continuing important work to ensure the integrity of the 2020 election," said CDT President and CEO Alexandra Givens.
The executive order is designed to deter social media services from fighting misinformation, voter suppression, and the stoking of violence on their platforms, the digital rights group said.
"Access to accurate information about the voting process and the security of our elections infrastructure is the lifeblood of our democracy. The President has made clear that his goal is to use threats of retaliation and future regulation to intimidate intermediaries into changing how they moderate content, essentially ensuring that the dangers of voter suppression and disinformation will grow unchecked in an election year," Givens said.
The law firm of Mayer Brown is representing CDT in this action.
Balochistan, May 1: Sajid Hussain, Editor-in-Chief of Balochistan Times, has been found dead in a Swedish town, the police have confirmed.
The Swedish police informed his family on Thursday night that they discovered his body from a river in Uppsala, The Times reported.
The Baloch journalist had been missing from the Swedish city since March 2 this year.
Sajid, 39, left Pakistan in 2012 and had been living as a refugee in Sweden since 2017. He wrote extensively on the suffering of the Balochis at the hands of the Pakistani military establishment.
His work often got him into trouble as the authorities did not like his reporting of Balochistan's forbidden stories, the reason he had to leave and live in exile.
The Baloch journalist was found dead two months after he went missing in Sweden.
Sajid left Pakistan because of security threats from Pakistan Army and its intelligence service ISI.
The spokesperson of the Baloch National Movement, Hammal Haider told news agency: "We are deeply saddened by the demise of prominent Baloch intellectual and writer Sajid Hussain."
"His death is indeed a loss of a great mind for the people of Balochistan. Due to his straightforwardness, he was loved among all journalistic, literary and political circles," added Haider.
"After this incident, we have serious concerns about our members and other Baloch refugees living in the West," he said.
May 20: The novel coronavirus is behaving differently in patients in northeast China who have contracted it recently compared with early cases, indicating it is changing as it spreads, a prominent doctor said.
China, which has largely brought the virus under control, has found new clusters of infections in the northeastern border provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang in recent weeks, raising concern about a second wave.
Qiu Haibo, an expert in critical care medicine who is part of a National Health Commission expert group, said the incubation period of the virus in patients in the northeast was longer than that of patients in Wuhan, the central city, where the virus emerged late last year.
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"This causes a problem, as they don't have any symptoms. So when they gather with their families they don't care about this issue and we see family cluster infections," Qiu told state broadcaster CCTV in a programme broadcast late on Tuesday.
Patients in the northeastern clusters were also carrying the virus for longer than earlier cases in Wuhan, and they were taking longer to recover, as defined by a negative nucleic acid test, he said.
Patients in the northeast also rarely exhibited fever and tended to suffer damage to the lungs rather than across multiple organs, he said.
He said the virus found in the northeastern clusters was probably imported from abroad, which could account for the differences.
He did not say where he though they might have come from but both Jilin and Heilongjiang border Russia.
China reported five new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, down from six a day earlier.
Four of the new cases were local transmissions and one was imported by a traveller coming from abroad, the commission said in a statement, compared with three imported cases reported the previous day.
China's total number of coronavirus infections stands at 82,965, while the death toll 4,634.
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