Kenya’s ban on church services because of social distancing restrictions to slow the coronavirus pandemic, is not stopping one church leader from spreading the Gospel.The Rev. Paul Macharia from All Saints’ Cathedral in Kiambu County heads the service, dubbed “B2B” for “balcony to balcony.”Each Sunday he hits the road delivering his sermons to scores of people in apartment buildings.Macharia relishes the reception he has received, telling the Associated Press it would not be possible if people didn’t invite his mobile church into their communities.”It has been beautiful seeing children coming together for worship services,” he said.The service appears to have taken on an aura of hope as Kenya tries to contain the coronavirus, which has infected just over 1,000 people and caused at least 50 deaths.
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As President Donald Trump pushes to reopen the country despite warnings from doctors about the consequences of moving too quickly during the coronavirus crisis, he has been lashing out at scientists whose conclusions he doesn’t like.Twice this week, Trump has not only dismissed the findings of studies, but suggested — without evidence — that their authors were motivated by politics and out to undermine his efforts to roll back coronavirus restrictions.First it was a study funded in part by his own government’s National Institutes of Health that raised alarms about the use of hydroxychloroquine, finding higher overall mortality in coronavirus patients who took the drug while in Veterans Administration hospitals.Trump and many of his allies had been trumpeting the drug as a miracle cure and Trump this week revealed that he has been taking it to try to ward off the virus — despite an FDA warning last month that it should only be used in hospital settings or clinical trials because of the risk of serious side effects, including life-threatening heart problems.“If you look at the one survey, the only bad survey, they were giving it to people that were in very bad shape. They were very old, almost dead,” Trump told reporters Tuesday. “It was a Trump enemy statement.”He offered similar pushback Thursday to a new study from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. It found that more than 61 percent of COVID-19 infections and 55 percent of reported deaths — nearly 36,000 people — could have been prevented had social distancing measures been put in place one week sooner. Trump has repeatedly defended his administration’s handling of the virus in the face of persistent criticism that he acted too slowly.”Columbia’s an institution that’s very liberal,” Trump told reporters Thursday. “I think it’s just a political hit job, you want to know the truth.”FILE – This April 6, 2020, photo shows an arrangement of Hydroxychloroquine pills in Las Vegas.Trump has long been skeptical of mainstream science — dismissing man-made climate change as a “hoax,” suggesting that noise from wind turbines causes cancer, and claiming that exercise can deplete a body’s finite amount of energy. It’s part of a larger skepticism of expertise and backlash against “elites” that has become increasingly popular among Trump’s conservative base.But undermining Americans’ trust in the integrity and objectivity of scientists is especially dangerous during a pandemic when the public is relying on its leaders to develop policies based on the best available information, said Larry Gostin, a Georgetown University law professor who is an expert in public health.“If the president is politicizing science, if he’s discounting health experts, then the public is going to be fearful and confused,” Gostin said, calling it “dismaying.”The White House rejected that thinking, noting that Trump has followed his administration’s public health officials’ recommendations through much of the crisis.“Any suggestion that the president does not value scientific data or the important work of scientists is patently false as evidenced by the many data-driven decision he has made to address the COVID-19 pandemic, including cutting off travel early from highly-infected populations, expediting vaccine development, issuing the 15-day and later 30-day guidance to ‘slow the spread,’ and providing governors with a clear, safe road map to opening up America again,” said White House spokesperson Judd Deere.Yet Trump has made clear that, at least when it comes to hydroxychloroquine, he has prioritized anecdotal evidence, including a letter he told reporters he’d received from a doctor in Westchester, New York, claiming success with the drug.Asked this week what evidence he had that the drug was effective in preventing COVID-19, Trump responded: “Are you ready? Here’s my evidence: I get a lot of positive calls about it.”That veterans study, funded by grants from the NIH and the University of Virginia, was not a rigorous experiment, but a retrospective analysis by researchers at several universities looking at the impact of hydroxychloroquine in patients at veterans’ hospitals across the nation. It found no benefit and more deaths among those given hydroxychloroquine versus standard care alone. The work was posted online for researchers and has not been reviewed by other scientists.The Columbia study, in draft form, also hasn’t yet been published or reviewed by other experts. The researchers ran numbers through a mathematical model, making assumptions about how quickly the coronavirus spreads and how people behave in hypothetical circumstances.Trump’s criticism of the studies also comes as his allies have been eager to counter messaging from public health experts who say Trump is putting lives at risk by pushing states to quickly reopen in an election year. Republican political operatives have been recruiting pro-Trump doctors to go on television to advocate for reviving the U.S. economy as quickly as possible, without waiting to meet federal safety benchmarks.Gostin said Trump should leave it to his public health agencies to assess emerging data and the value of various studies.“I think there are real dangers,” he said, “for the president to play scientist and doctor on TV.”
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На українському міжбанківському валютному ринку третій день поспіль триває послаблення гривні, але, як свідчать дані Finance.ua, цей процес уповільнився.

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Traveling abroad used to be relatively easy. Pick a country, get your visa if needed, book an airline and/or hotel and you’re ready to go. But as countries slowly emerge from the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns, travel industry experts say leisure travel is going to be the slowest to return, and it’s going to be a different experience — especially with various restrictions still in effect. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.
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The U.N. said this week it is “deeply concerned” about the increase in violence and civilian casualties in Afghanistan over the past six weeks. Meanwhile, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, is in the region to press the Taliban and the Afghan government to begin negotiations. Rahim Gul Sarwan reports from Kabul.
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U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday placed more pressure on states to reopen for business despite continuing concerns about the coronavirus.”I don’t think people are going to stand for it” in states that do not resume normal activities quickly, the president told reporters as he toured a Michigan automotive plant repurposed to produce ventilators for COVID-19 patients.All 50 states have announced plans to reopen at least partially following shutdowns that have crippled the American economy.If there is a second wave of the coronavirus, “we’re not closing our country,” Trump vowed.In a speech to the workers at Ford Motor Co.’s Rawsonville Components Plant, the president said, “a permanent lockdown is not a strategy for a healthy state or a healthy country.”The country is poised “for an epic comeback,” the president said.People listen as President Donald Trump speaks at Ford’s Rawsonville Components Plant that has been converted to making personal protection and medical equipment, in Ypsilanti, Mich., May 21, 2020.In the past nine weeks, 38.6 million Americans have applied for jobless benefits.Earlier at the Ford plant in Ypsilanti, during what was billed as a “listening session” with African American leaders, the president said, “We got to get our churches open, we got to get our country open.” Trump, who said he had seen video of congregants trying to break into their own churches so that they could worship, added that he had spoken with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about guidance on churches.”I said you better put it out and they’re doing it, and they’re going to be issuing something today or tomorrow, and churches are going to get our churches open,” Trump said.On his tour of the plant, the president was accompanied by the automaker’s top officials, including Executive Chairman Bill Ford. All wore both masks and goggles.U.S. President Donald Trump holds a protective face mask with a presidential seal on it that he said he had been wearing earlier in his tour at the Ford Rawsonville Components Plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan, May 21, 2020.The president said he briefly wore a mask and goggles in the factory, but “I didn’t want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it.”He displayed a navy blue mask with the presidential seal and said that because he was about to give a speech, he did not want to continue keeping it over his mouth.”Face masks are required to be worn by everyone, in all facilities, at all times,” the company had said in a statement before the president’s visit.The company subsequently issued a statement saying that “Bill Ford encouraged President Trump to wear a mask when he arrived. He wore a mask during a private viewing of three Ford GTs from over the years. The president later removed the mask for the remainder of the visit.”During remarks to plant workers, the president called for pharmaceuticals and medical supplies to be produced domestically, again blaming the pandemic on China.”We’re bringing our medicines back,” Trump said. “We cannot rely on foreign nations to take care of us, especially in times of difficulty.”According to the White House, the public-private partnership developed by Trump’s administration “has produced 12 billion gloves, 130+ million N95 masks, half a billion surgical masks, nearly 18 million face shields, and made the United States ‘King of Ventilators.’ “From left, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, HUD Secretary Ben Carson, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner tour Ford’s Rawsonville Components Plant in Ypsilanti, Mich., May 21, 2020.The president also said Thursday that despite the coronavirus pandemic, plans are under way for the United States to host a Group of Seven leaders summit next month.”If we do the G-7, when that all comes together, probably it will be in D.C. at the White House,” Trump told reporters before leaving for Michigan. “But there could be a piece of it at Camp David, which is nearby.”It is unclear if the six other leaders have agreed to attend what would certainly be a scaled-down summit. Such events usually include hundreds of accompanying officials and journalists.Trump, however, spoke of a “full G-7” and said details would be announced next week.The United States has the most reported COVID-19 cases of any country, more than 1.5 million, and about 94,000 deaths from the disease.
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The United States has secured almost a third of the first one billion doses planned for AstraZeneca’s experimental COVID-19 vaccine by pledging up to $1.2 billion, as world powers scramble for medicines to get their economies back to work. While not proven to be effective against the coronavirus, vaccines are seen by world leaders as the only real way to restart their stalled economies, and even to get an edge over global competitors. After President Donald Trump demanded a vaccine, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services agreed to provide up to $1.2 billion to accelerate British drugmaker AstraZeneca’s vaccine development and secure 300 million doses for the United States. “This contract with AstraZeneca is a major milestone in Operation Warp Speed’s work toward a safe, effective, widely available vaccine by 2021,” U.S. Health Secretary Alex Azar said. The vaccine, previously known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 and now as AZD1222, was developed by the University of Oxford and licensed to AstraZeneca. Immunity to the new coronavirus is uncertain and so the use of vaccines unclear. The U.S. deal allows a late-stage — Phase III — clinical trial of the vaccine with 30,000 people in the United States. Cambridge, England-based AstraZeneca said it had concluded agreements for at least 400 million doses of the vaccine and secured manufacturing capacity for 1 billion doses, with first deliveries due to begin in September. Now the most valuable company on Britain’s blue-chip FTSE 100 Index, it has already agreed to deliver 100 million doses to people in Britain, with 30 million as soon as September. Ministers have promised Britain will get first access to the vaccine. Vaccine  scrambleWith leaders across the world surveying some of the worst economic destruction since at least World War Two, and the deaths of more than 327,000, many are scrambling for a vaccine. The U.S. government has already struck deals to support vaccine development with Johnson & Johnson (J&J), Moderna and Sanofi, sparking fears the richest countries will be able to protect their citizens first. Sanofi’s chief angered the French government earlier this month when he said vaccine doses produced in the United States could go to U.S. patients first, given the country had supported the research financially. “We have a lot of things happening on the vaccine front or the therapeutic front,” Trump told reporters at the White House when asked about the AstraZenca announcement. “You’re going to have a lot of big announcements over the next week or two,” on therapeutics. AstraZeneca said it was in talks with governments and partners around the world — such as the Serum Institute of India — to increase access and production, and is speaking to various organizations on the fair allocation and distribution of the vaccine. “We would like to thank the U.S. and UK governments for their substantial support to accelerate the development and production of the vaccine,” AstraZeneca Chief Executive Pascal Soriot said. The Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest maker of vaccines by volume, has dedicated one of its facilities with a capacity to produce up to 400 million doses annually to producing the Oxford vaccine. “We are scaling up on a conservative basis of about 4 to 5 million doses a month to begin with,” Chief Executive Adar Poonawalla told Reuters, adding the company was in discussions with AstraZeneca. COVID-19 protection? A Phase I/II clinical trial of AZD1222 began last month to assess safety, immunogenicity and efficacy in over 1,000 healthy volunteers aged 18 to 55 years across several trial centers in southern England. Data from the trial is expected shortly. There are currently no approved treatments or vaccines for COVID-19. Governments, drugmakers and researchers are working on around 100 programs, and experts are predicting a safe, effective means of preventing the disease could take 12 to 18 months to develop. Only a handful of the vaccines in development have advanced to human trials, an indicator of safety and efficacy, and the stage at which most fail. “AstraZeneca recognizes that the vaccine may not work but is committed to progressing the clinical program with speed and scaling up manufacturing at risk,” it said. Other drugmakers including Pfizer Inc , J&J and Sanofi are also in various stages of vaccine development. U.S.-based Inovio Pharmaceuticals said on Wednesday its experimental vaccine produced protective antibodies and immune system responses in mice and guinea pigs. And Moderna this week released positive data for its potential vaccine, which it said produced protective antibodies in a small group of healthy volunteers. 
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Fake news about the coronavirus can do real harm. Polygraph.info is spotlighting fact-checks from other reliable sources here​.Daily DebunkClaim: Switzerland banned all vaccinations for five years and considered them harmful.Verdict: FalseRead the full story at: EUvsDisinfo​Social Media DisinfoScreenshotCirculating on social media:Claim that a flu shot causes false positive results for COVID-19.Verdict: ​FalseRead the full story at: FactCheck.org​
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British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said Thursday that a small-scale antibody surveillance study has shown that about 17% of people in London and 5% in the rest of the country have had COVID-19.Speaking at his usual remote COVID-19 news briefing in London, Hancock said the study came out of Britain’s government-funded effort to develop antibody tests, which he said were not reliable enough for clinical use. He said that for the public at large to know whether they have had the coronavirus, they needed antibody tests at a larger scale.To that end, Hancock announced that Britain had signed contracts with pharmaceutical company Roche and Abbott to supply more than 10 million antibody tests. He said they would begin rolling out the tests in phases beginning next week, starting with health workers, and then patients.Hancock also reported a 14% decrease in COVID-19 patients being treated in hospitals since last week. He said that over 3 million people had been tested for the virus, of which 250,908 tested positive.The COVID-19 death toll in Britain stands at 36,042, a rise of 338 since Wednesday.  
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На українському міжбанківському валютному ринку другий день поспіль триває зміцнення американської валюти. За даними Finance.ua, станом на 12:05 котирування сягнули 26 гривень 76–78 копійок за долар, це на дев’ять копійок більше від рівня відкриття торгів.

«Поступовий вихід з карантину призведе до активізації валютного ринку і зростання попиту на валюту. Цей процес почався вже практично з вівторка (але в той день ще активно купував і Нацбанк), а в середу – тільки посилився», – вказують експерти сайту «Мінфін».

Національний банк України, який в офіційному курсі на 21 травня відбив лише частину тренду, зафіксованого на міжбанку в середу, наздоганяє події на ринку. Регулятор встановив опівдні довідкове значення 26 гривень 78 копійок за долар, це на 20 копійок більше за офіційний курс на четвер.
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Michael Cohen, U.S. President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, was released from a federal prison on Thursday due to concerns that he could be exposed to the new coronavirus while incarcerated, according to a source familiar with the case.   Cohen, 53, had completed a bit more than a year of a three-year sentence for his role in paying hush money to two women — pornographic film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal — who said they had sexual relationships with Trump, as well as financial crimes and lying to Congress.   He is expected to serve the rest of his sentence in home confinement. Cohen, who had been imprisoned in a facility in New York state, had been eligible for release from prison in November 2021.   Cohen was the second Trump associate released early from prison due to coronavirus concerns after his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was released last week.   Trump has called Cohen a “rat.” Cohen has called Trump a “racist,” a “con man” and “a cheat.” 
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China will propose national security laws for Hong Kong in response to last year’s often violent pro-democracy protests that plunged the city into its deepest turmoil since it returned to Chinese rule in 1997, three people with direct knowledge of the matter said on Thursday.The South China Morning Post newspaper, citing unnamed sources, said the laws would ban secession, foreign interference, terrorism and all seditious activities aimed at toppling the central government and any external interference in the former British colony.The legislation, which could be introduced as a motion to China’s parliament, could be a turning point for its freest and most international city, potentially triggering a revision of its special status in Washington and likely to spark more unrest.Online posts have already emerged urging people to gather to protest on Thursday night and dozens were seen shouting pro-democracy slogans in a shopping mall as riot police stood nearby.Hong Kong people took to the streets last year, sometimes in their millions, to protest a now-withdrawn bill that would have allowed extraditions of criminal suspects to mainland China. The movement broadened to include demands for broader democracy amid perceptions that Beijing was tightening its grip over the city.”If Beijing passes the law … how (far) will civil society resist repressive laws? How much impact will it unleash onto Hong Kong as an international financial center?” said Ming Sing, political scientist at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.The Hong Kong dollar weakened on the news.The technical details of the proposals remain unclear but an announcement will be made in Beijing later on Thursday, one senior Hong Kong government source said.China’s parliament, the National People’s Congress, is due to begin its annual session on Friday, after being delayed for months by the coronavirus.U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on May 6 he was delaying the report assessing whether Hong Kong was sufficiently autonomous to warrant Washington’s special economic treatment that has helped it remain a world financial center.The delay was to account for any actions at the National People’s Congress, he said.Tension between the two superpowers has heightened in recent weeks, as they exchanged accusations on the handling of the coronavirus pandemic, souring an already worsening relationship over trade.Bypass mechanism A previous attempt by Hong Kong to introduce national security legislation, known as Article 23, in 2003 was met with mass peaceful protests and shelved.Hong Kong has a constitutional obligation to enact Article 23 “on its own,” but similar laws can be introduced by Beijing separately into an annex of the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution.That legal mechanism could bypass the city’s legislature as the laws could be imposed by promulgation by Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing government.”Some people are destroying Hong Kong’s peace and stability. Beijing saw all that has happened,” pro-establishment lawmaker Christopher Cheung, who is not part of discussions in Beijing, told Reuters.”Legislation is necessary and the sooner the better.”National security legislation has been strongly opposed by pro-democracy protesters who argue it could erode the city’s freedoms and high degree of autonomy, guaranteed under the “one country, two systems” formula put in place when it returned to Chinese rule.A senior Western diplomat, who declined to be identified, said the imposition of such laws from China, without any local legislative process, would hurt international perceptions about the city and its economy.Protesters denounce what they see as the creeping meddling in Hong Kong by China’s Communist Party rulers. Beijing denies the charge and blames the West, especially the United States and Britain, for stirring up trouble.
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Долар подорожчав на 18 копійок, євро – на 32, свідчать дані на сайті Національного банку України.

На 22 травня курс долара встановлений на рівні 26 гривень 77 копійок.

Євро подорожчав до 29 гривень 46 копійок.
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Asian markets closed mostly lower Thursday as investors reacted to bad economic news from Japan, and to China’s worsening trade and diplomatic relations with Australia and the United States.Tokyo’s benchmark Nikkei index lost 0.2 percent at its closing bell after the government announced that Japan’s exports fell 21.9 percent last month, the biggest drop since the 2008 global financial crisis. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was down 0.4 percent in late afternoon trading, while Shanghai was 0.5 percent lower and the S&P/ASX 500 in Sydney was down 0.4 percent. Seoul closed 0.4 percent higher, and Taipei posted a 0.9 percent increase.Monday’s major rally on global markets after news of a potential coronavirus vaccine faded after Beijing imposed massive tariffs on Australian barley imports, plus the Trump administration’s increasingly heated rhetoric against China over its initial response to the coronavirus pandemic, which was first detected late last year in Wuhan.The Dow Jones, S&P 500 and Nasdaq are all lower in futures trading, indicating a lower opening on Wall Street Thursday.Oil markets are in positive territory Thursday, with U.S. crude trading at $34.11 per barrel, up 1.85 percent, while Brent crude, the international benchmark, is trading at $36.29 per barrel, up 1.5 percent.
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