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Trump aides blocked accurate Covid information: US probe

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AFP

Former US president Donald Trump’s administration prevented health officials from providing accurate information about Covid-19 in a bid to back up his overly optimistic view of the outbreak, according to a congressional report released Monday.

Senior staff at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told investigators Trump aides bullied staff and tried to rewrite their reports in a bid to align guidance with the president’s public downplaying of the crisis.

Officials took “unprecedented steps to insert political appointees into the publication process and rebut CDC’s scientific reports, including drafting op-eds and other public messaging designed to directly counteract CDC’s findings,” the report said.

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Investigators interviewed a dozen current and former CDC officials as well as senior administration figures for the 91-page document released by the House select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis.

The panel describes how Trump appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) tried to take over the CDC’s weekly scientific journal, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), editing or blocking articles they believed might prove harmful to Trump.

Trump appointees had sought to “alter the contents, rebut, or delay the release” of 18 MMWRs and a health alert, succeeding on at least five occasions.

The report quoted a CDC communications officer who complained that a Trump ally in HHS had used “bully-ish behavior” that made CDC officials “feel threatened.”

Jay Butler, the CDC’s deputy director of infectious diseases, said he was “not really asked back to do telebriefings” after his statements were deemed “too alarming.”

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“The Select Subcommittee’s investigation has shown that the previous administration engaged in an unprecedented campaign of political interference in the federal government’s pandemic response, which undermined public health to benefit the former president’s political goals,” panel chairman Jim Clyburn, a Democrat, said in a statement. 

“As today’s report shows, President Trump and his top aides repeatedly attacked CDC scientists, compromised the agency’s public health guidance, and suppressed scientific reports in an effort to downplay the seriousness of the coronavirus.”

A previous report outlined the Trump administration’s bid to block government health officials from speaking publicly about the pandemic.

And another described its pressure on the US Food and Drug Administration to reissue emergency authorization for hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug Trump was promoting despite its ineffectiveness in treating Covid-19.

Republicans dismissed the latest report as partisan and have vowed to conduct their own inquiry if they win back the House or the Senate in November’s midterm elections. 

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The new truce plan in Gaza includes “many demands” from Hamas, according to an Egyptian source

The talks held between delegations from Egypt and Israel in Tel Aviv for a truce in Gaza were “largely positive and successful” and included “many of the demands” of the Islamist movement Hamas, an Egyptian security source familiar with the negotiations and another from Hamas reported to EFE on Sunday.

A delegation from Hamas, headed by the member of the political bureau Khalil al-The Hague, is expected to arrive tomorrow in Cairo, mediator in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group, to deliver its response to the mediators, according to the Egyptian source, which asked not to be identified by the sensitivity of this issue.

This new proposal, on whose content it did not provide details, “overcomes the obstacles that hinder” the declaration of a truce, a ceasefire, the exchange of prisoners and hostages, as well as the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip.

The possible announcement of a truce “will contribute to the approval of a first phase and to the efforts of the entire international community to consolidate this ceasefire and seek to move to a permanent truce instead of a temporary one,” according to the informant.

On the other hand, a source of the Palestinian Islamist movement, which also asked for anonymity, confirmed to EFE that tomorrow a delegation from Hamas will arrive in the Egyptian capital to present its response to the new Israeli proposal.

The informant added that the proposal includes “reducing the minimum number of kidnapped that Hamas will commit to freeing and eliminating divisions in sections of the Gaza Strip.”

Last Friday, an Egyptian mediating delegation traveled to Tel Aviv to discuss this truce with Israel, while the Jewish State has warned that it will not allow the Palestinian group to delay and has once again threatened to invade Rafah, at the southern end of the strip and where more than a million refugees are overcrowded.

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International

Hamas warns the United Kingdom that if it sends soldiers to Gaza they will be a “legitimate” military target

The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas warned the United Kingdom on Sunday that if it deploys military personnel in the Gaza Strip, after information that they could help in the distribution of humanitarian aid, they will be “legitimate targets” of its armed wing.

“We alert Britain, or any other country, against the deployment of forces on land or on the coast of the Gaza Strip and affirm that they will be legitimate targets for our people and their resistance,” Hamas said in a statement.

The armed group charged against any initiative in the Palestinian enclave that does not have its approval.

The Islamist group responded to the information released on Saturday by the British network BBC, according to which the British Armed Forces could deploy troops to deliver humanitarian aid on the ground arriving in Gaza through the new floating dock that is being built by Israel and the United States.

The public broadcaster indicated that the United Kingdom could be the intermediary to which the United States referred when it said that it would not be the American soldiers, but others, who would distribute the food packages sent by ship from Cyprus and then transferred to Gaza.

Yesterday, the Israeli Army assured at a press conference with international media that international organizations would be in charge of the distribution of humanitarian aid, but did not indicate which ones would have agreed to collaborate.

Although the British Government has not confirmed the news, the BBC affirms, according to anonymous sources, that the Ministry of Defense is considering getting involved with ‘wet boots’ on the ground.

The possible role of the British forces would involve driving the trucks with the help from the landing boats on the floating runway, hundreds of meters long, and delivering it to a safe distribution area on dry land, the station explained.

The London Ministry of Defense reported on Friday, in turn, that the British Navy auxiliary ship RFA Cardigan Bay set sail from Cyprus to provide support for the construction of the temporary dock, which is led by the United States.

This ship will provide accommodation for hundreds of American sailors and soldiers, about whom Washington has made it clear that they will not set foot in Gaza territory.

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International

Nancy Pelosi says that Netanyahu “could not have made things worse” in Gaza

Former President of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi said that the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, “could not have made things worse” in the conflict in Gaza, in an interview broadcast this Sunday by the BBC.

Pelosi, who on Thursday participated in an event at the English university of Oxford, told the ‘Laura Kuenssberg Program’ that Netanyahu “was never a peace agent” and admitted that she “is not a great fan of his.”

The congresswoman said that what is happening in the Strip “challenges the conscience of the world” and maintained that the impact of famine on children “is almost unforgivable”, while calling the Hamas attack on Israeli territory on October 7 “barbaric”.

“Israel has the right to defend itself, but the way it is doing it is a challenge because Netanyahu has never been a peace agent,” he said.

“I’m not a great admirer of yours; I couldn’t have done things worse than those tens of thousands, or whatever number it is, of dead people, malnourished children and the uncertainty that exists… and that’s what people are talking about,” he said.

Asked if she understood why young people in the United States used controversial tactics when protesting against the conflict, Pelosi opined that “when they go beyond the campuses and block the Golden Gate Bridge, or something else, for a long time, and people can’t go to the doctor or the hospital or anything urgent in their lives, they don’t get support.”

But he added: “How can demonstrations on (university) campuses be criticized? That’s a way of life in the United States.”

On Thursday, the British police evicted two pro-Palestinian protesters who protested during their speech on populism to students from the University of Oxford, while abroad another group criticized her for her defense of Israel and her position on the movement to support Palestine.

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