Syria’s capital was rocked by multiple explosions late Sunday, and the country’s air defenses fired back in the latest attack by Israel on targets in Syria.State media said air defenses confronted a wave of “enemy rockets” coming from the direction of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.In a rare move, the Israeli military claimed responsibility through a spokesman on Twitter, saying it staged a series of strikes targeting the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad in Syria and the Gaza Strip.Residents said multiple explosions shook Damascus and lasted for about 15 minutes as air defenses fired back. It was not immediately clear what targets were hit.The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the Syrian conflict, said the explosions resulted from Israeli bombing of suspected Iranian-backed militias in the vicinity of Damascus International Airport.Israel frequently strikes at targets inside Syria, but has largely refrained from public admissions of its covert military operations there.Iran is an ally of Damascus and has offered military advisers and sent militiamen and material support to help President Bashar Assad’s government forces in the nine-year civil war.Israel considers Iran a national security threat and says it won’t tolerate Iran’s presence on its borders.
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More than 130 people have contracted the coronavirus in Italy, the majority in the north of the country. Italy, which has confirmed at least two coronavirus deaths, has the highest number of cases in Europe. With an emergency decree, the Italian government has adopted special powers to deal with the situation. Strict measures have been adopted in an effort to curb the spread of the virus.Military police wearing surgical masks are guarding the nearly a dozen northern Italian towns that are on lockdown following an outbreak of coronavirus. The towns have a combined population of about 50,000. The police were deployed to ensure no one enters or leaves the towns that have been sealed and placed under quarantine.A cyclist talks to police officers controlling movements to and from the cordoned area in Casalpusterlengo, Northern Italy, Feb. 23, 2020.Most of Italy’s coronavirus cases are in the wealthy industrial north of the country, in the regions of Lombardy and Veneto. To deal with this emergency, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte explained the government’s decisions.He said an emergency decree was approved immediately that gives special powers to the government in order to be able to safeguard in the best possible way the health of Italians.Very strict measures were adopted in the two most affected regions in Italy on Sunday including closure of schools, universities, cinemas and museums for at least one week. No public gatherings or church services will be permitted to take place and four Serie A soccer games were postponed.In Venice, checks were being carried out at the airport on all arriving passengers and leaflets handed out with an emergency number for the health ministry and a list of precautions to take. Authorities canceled all carnival events from Sunday.The governor of the Veneto  region Luca Zaia confirmed two elderly people had contracted the virus in Venice and were hospitalized.In Milan, Giorgio Armani was holding his womenswear fashion show behind closed doors as a precaution. Italian designer Laura Biagiotti canceled her show.Italian health officials are struggling to figure out how the outbreak began. Very early on the Italian government took measures against the coronavirus including the suspension of all incoming and outgoing flights from China.  
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 U.S. national security adviser Robert O’Brien said Sunday that he has not seen “any evidence” that Russia is doing anything to help President Donald Trump get re-elected, but acknowledged he has not sought out intelligence reports that allege Moscow is interfering in the 2020 election.
Reports surfaced last week that U.S. intelligence officials had told the Democratic-controlled House Intelligence Committee that Russia was working to help Trump win a second term in the White House after previously meddling to aid him in the 2016 election.But O’Brien told ABC News’ “This Week” show, “I would doubt it. It just doesn’t make common sense. Why would they want him re-elected?” He contended that Trump had strengthened the NATO alliance against Russian military might by pushing European countries to boost their defense spending.O’Brien called reports of the information passed on to the Intelligence panel “a non-story.””I’ve seen zero intelligence that Russia is trying to help President Trump get re-elected,” O’Brien said.”I haven’t seen the intel, and I haven’t seen that analysis,” he said.”I want to get whatever analysis they’ve got, and I want to make sure that the analysis is solid,” he said. “From what I’ve heard — again — this is only what I’ve seen in the press, it doesn’t make any sense.”O’Brien concluded, “If there’s someone from the intel community that has something different, I’d be happy to take a look at it. I just haven’t seen it.”Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., signs autographs to Latino supporters at a campaign event at Valley High School in Santa Ana, Calif., Feb. 21, 2020.Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, currently the leading contender to face Trump in November’s national election, has been briefed by U.S. intelligence officials that Russia is also meddling to try to help him win the Democratic presidential nomination, possibly on the theory that as a self-declared democratic socialist Sanders would be Trump’s weakest opponent.”That’s no surprise, he honeymooned in Moscow,” O’Brien said of the Russian interest in Sanders’s candidacy.Trump and Sanders have reacted differently to reports of Russian interference on their behalf.President Donald Trump speaks to the media as he leaves the White House before departing to India, Feb. 23, 2020,As he left for a trip to India, Trump blamed Congressman Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who led the prosecution of Trump at his Senate impeachment trial when he was acquitted, for leaking the information about Russian interference.At a campaign rally in Nevada on Friday, Trump said, “It’s disinformation. That’s the only thing they’re good at, they’re not good at anything else. They get nothing done. Do-nothing Democrats.”Sanders said, “The American people, whether you’re Republican, Democrats, independents, are sick and tired of seeing Russia and other countries interfering in our election.”He told The Washington Post, “I don’t care, frankly, who [Russian President Vladimir] Putin wants to be president. My message to Putin is clear: stay out of American elections, and as president I will make sure that you do.”
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Iranian authorities reported two more deaths from the deadly coronavirus, bringing the country’s death toll to eight — the highest such toll outside the disease’s epicenter in China.Speaking Sunday on state TV, Health Ministry spokesman Kianush Jahanpur said a total of 15 new confirmed cases had been reported across the country, bringing the overall figure to 43.Jahanpur gave no details on the new deaths, including when they occurred. But Iranian media earlier cited Abbas Musavi, the head of the Medical Science University in the northern province of Mazandaran, as saying that an unnamed person who had traveled from the capital, Tehran, to the regional capital of Tonekabon had died.Iran has reported more fatalities from coronavirus, officially known as COVID-19, than any other country aside from China. In all, there are 785 suspected cases across Iran, the Health Ministry reported on February 22 — a number that is likely to grow.Jahanpour earlier was quoted by the dpa news agency as saying that of the newly detected cases, two were in Tehran, and eight were in the city of Qom, 120 kilometers south of Tehran.Authorities have steadily imposed more restrictions on public spaces and travel in an effort to curtail the disease’s spread.Medical staff check temperature of passengers arriving from Iran in the airport in Najaf, Iraq, Feb. 21, 2020.Religious pilgrimages to neighboring Iraq have been suspended, one unnamed official told the semiofficial Fars news agency. The Health Ministry has closed schools and universities in several cities, along with movie theaters. Theater and concert events have been cancelled. Professional soccer games will be played as planned but without spectators.Minoo Mohraz, a Health Ministry official, said on February 21 that the virus may have spread from Chinese workers working in Qom, where a Chinese company has been building a solar-power plant.Earlier in the week, Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia suspended most flights to Iran.In China, where the virus emerged, more than 2,300 people have died. Another large cluster has been detected in South Korea, whose president raised the nation’s alert to its “highest” level on February 23 after the number of infections nearly tripled over the weekend to 556. 
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Bernie Sanders has decisively won the Nevada Democratic caucuses, solidifying his lead for his party’s presidential nomination.  As Mike O’Sullivan reports, it was the first contest in an ethnically diverse state before important party votes in coming weeks. 
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South Korea has raised its alert level for the coronavirus disease to the highest level.South Korean President Moon Jae-in urged officials to not hesitate to take “unprecedented powerful measures” to contain the outbreak.Moon made the comments as authorities reported 123 more cases Sunday, raising the total to 556 with five deaths.South Korea’s prime minister said the coronavirus in his country had entered a “more grave stage” as the new cases of the disease were reported Sunday.Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun made the remark late Saturday in a nationally televised address. He said Seoul is making all-out efforts to contain the further spread of the disease.US travel advisoryKorea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said of the 123 new cases reported Sunday, 113 were in the fourth-largest city, Daegu, and surrounding areas. South Korea now has 556 reported coronavirus cases with five deaths. South Korea is testing 6,039 other people for the virus.Also Saturday, the U.S. State Department issued travel advisories for Japan and South Korea because of the coronavirus outbreak, urging travelers to “exercise increased caution” if visiting those countries.The State Department statement said a Level 2 advisory means travelers should avoid contact with sick people and practice basic hygiene, such as washing their hands often to guard against contracting the disease.People wearing protective face masks walk on a street in Beijing, Feb. 23, 2020. South Korea and China both reported a rise in new virus cases Sunday, as the South Korean prime minister warned the outbreak was entering a “more grave stage.”China reported 648 new infections Sunday, for a total of 76,936. It said 97 more people had died, raising the death toll in the country to 2,442.Outside China, more than 1,200 people have been infected with the virus and more than a dozen have died.Beyond ChinaIn Southern California, a federal judge issued a restraining order to prevent the U.S. government from sending 50 people infected with the coronavirus to Costa Mesa, a city of about 100,000 people. A hearing will be held Monday.The death toll in Iran rose to six. Italy said two people have died, and said a cluster of coronavirus cases triggered a lock down of about a dozen towns in several northern regions of the country. Italian authorities said Saturday there are about 54 cases in the country.Samsung Electronics on Saturday confirmed a case of coronavirus at its mobile device factory in Gumi, South Korea. The plant has been shut down and is expected to remain closed until Monday morning; the floor where the infected person worked will not reopen until Tuesday, according to media reports.FILE – Director-General of the WHO Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, speaks during the news conference on the novel coronavirus in Geneva, Feb. 11, 2020.World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was concerned about new cases of the virus in Iran after an Iranian traveler carried the virus to Lebanon, and another traveler spread the virus from Iran to Canada.Iranian health officials reported Sunday that six people have died from the virus, making it the highest death toll outside of China. Iran has reported 28 cases of people sickened with COVID-19.Iran said Saturday it has suspended religious pilgrimages to Iraq during the coronavirus surge.
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A study by the Nielsen ratings service says African Americans are among the nation’s top consumers of social media especially about presidential politics. A U.S. Intelligence report says that made them a target of a Russian disinformation campaign to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election, an effort Moscow is widely expected to repeat. VOA’s Chris Simkins reports from South Carolina where African Americans say they’re on the lookout for false content on social media.
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Nevada held its presidential caucuses Saturday, Feb. 22, 2020. Here is a caucus site at the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas.
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Researchers want to know everything about the latest coronavirus, from its mortality rate to its origins, incubation period and much more, and they still have blanks to fill in. What’s the mortality rate? COVID-19, as the disease is known, is more lethal than the average seasonal flu, but less so than previous epidemics stemming from coronaviruses. We do not yet know its precise mortality rate. World Health Organization data released Saturday identified 2,348 deaths from 76,392 confirmed cases in China, for a rough rate of 3.07 percent. The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) published this week a study of 72,314 confirmed, clinically diagnosed or suspected cases as of February 11. According to the most extensive study done so far, the novel coronavirus was benign in 80.9 percent of the cases, “serious” in 13.8 percent and “critical” in 4.7 percent. The remaining 0.6 percent of cases were not specifically categorized. According to the China CDC study, the mortality rate increased substantially with age, and those over 80 were most at risk with a rate of 14.8 percent. Patients who already suffered from cardiovascular diseases were also particularly at risk, ahead of diabetics and those who suffered from chronic respiratory diseases or hypertension. Global estimates of the mortality rate are risky, however, because we do not know how many people have actually been infected. Other strains of coronavirus, such as SARS and Mers, have established mortality rates of 9.5 percent and 34.5 percent, respectively. How infectious is it? Specialists generally agree that each person who falls ill with coronavirus will infect between two and three others on average. That is a higher rate than a typical winter flu (1.3), lower than an infectious disease such as measles (more than 12), and comparable to severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, (3) — the last major virus that broke out in China, in 2002-03. A nurse wearing a sanitary mask watches from a window of the hospital of Codogno, near Lodi in northern Italy, Feb. 21,2020. Health officials reported the country’s first cases of contagion of COVID-19 in people who had not been in China.Some experts warn however that we might be seriously underestimating the number of cases. A study published Friday by the Imperial College Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis in London said: “We estimated that about two thirds of COVID-19 cases exported from mainland China have remained undetected worldwide, potentially resulting in multiple chains of as yet undetected human-to-human transmission outside mainland China.” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus voiced concern on Friday about “the number of cases with no clear epidemiological link, such as travel history to China or contact with a confirmed case.” Asymptomatic cases, where people show no symptoms, are another cause for concern. The incubation period is estimated to be two to 10 days, and has led to experts to decide on an observation period of 14 days for suspected cases or for people who have been repatriated from areas such as China’s Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak. How is it transmitted? The virus is mainly transmitted by respiratory means and physical contact. Drops of saliva expelled when an infected person coughs is a common example, and researchers believe that generally occurs over a distance of around one meter at most. Health advisories emphasize measures such as washing your hands often, coughing or sneezing into the crook of your elbow or a paper handkerchief, and wearing a mask if you know you have been infected. A secondary means of transmission might be diarrhea. What are the symptoms and treatments? WHO says: “Signs and symptoms include respiratory symptoms and include fever, cough and shortness of breath. In more severe cases, infection can cause pneumonia, severe acute respiratory syndrome and sometimes death.” There are no vaccines or medications at present to fight COVID-19, so health officials can only treat the symptoms. Some patients are given antiviral medications, but their effectiveness has not been established so far. Where did it come from? The novel coronavirus is believed to have come from bats, but researchers think it might have spread to humans via another mammal species. Chinese researchers suspect that might be the pangolin, a widely trafficked and endangered mammal. The global scientific community deems that hypothesis plausible, but still awaits confirmation. 
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The U.S. government warned Spain this week about the security risk inherent in opening its fifth-generation communications networks to Chinese mobile technology providers. In meetings Thursday and Friday, U.S. officials warned Spanish officials and telecommunications executives that the U.S. could stop sharing sensitive information with Spain if the Chinese firms reportedly involved in 5G technology were not excluded from local markets. Robert Strayer, U.S. deputy assistant secretary for cyber and international communications and information policy, told reporters at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid that 5G pioneer Huawei was under the control of the Chinese government.Defense implications  “We cannot put our important information at the risk of being accessed by the Chinese Communist Party,” Strayer said, stressing that technology developed by Huawei to accelerate connections between billions of objects has inevitable defense implications. Huawei offers better 5G network equipment at lower prices than its competitors, according to telecommunications analysts. U.S. efforts to restrict the company’s access to major international markets have been rebuffed by allies in Europe and Asia. The U.K. announced in late January that it would allow Huawei to equip parts of its 5G networks. Similar decisions have been made by Germany and other EU governments. FILE – U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo walks on the tarmac as he leaves Germany after taking part in the 56th Munich Security Conference in Munich, southern Germany, Feb. 15, 2020.At an international security conference in Munich last week, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called for the creation of a Western alliance against China aimed at blocking cyberespionage.  “In recent years, we have witnessed an intense communications campaign to raise consciousness over the interference of the People’s Republic of China in companies that manufacture telecommunications equipment,” said Javier Cremades, a Spanish lawyer specializing in cybersecurity. ‘Criminalizing’ competitionCremades said Chinese laws allow official access to all information handled by technology firms. That provision, however, does not extend to European affiliates or commercial activity outside China, he said, adding that U.S. accusations against China might be aimed at “criminalizing” the competition in the rivalry with Beijing to control the world’s phone technology market. Spokesmen from the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Center said it was “feasible” to implement security measures to separate “high-risk vendors” from sensitive data and functions, although it could require design restrictions that may slow 5G network performance. U.S. officials said other European and Asian firms that have been cleared to operate in American markets, including Sweden’s Ericsson and South Korea’s Samsung, offer 5G technology as advanced as China’s. Spain’s biggest telecommunications companies, including Telefonica and Vodafone, say they have taken steps to reduce Chinese input for their core systems of future data management in mobile telephones, according to the newspaper El Mundo. But U.S. appeals to European countries to restrict access to Chinese tech giants come at a sensitive moment in transatlantic commercial relations. Serious disagreement over European Union efforts to impose a new tax on American high-tech providers has already shaken the telecommunications sector. U.S. diplomats have threatened to retaliate against Spain and other countries for imposing taxes that target American firms that operate a majority of Europe’s digital networks.  U.S. President Donald Trump “cannot become a boss who tells European countries what they can do in the EU,” said Spain’s Treasury Minister Maria Jesus Montero, who defends the tax as a way of protecting local competitors. Spain has a had a close commercial and military relationship with the U.S. since the middle of the last century. But the influence of China has grown recently, with nearly 50% of Spain’s national debt now owned by Chinese banks. 
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