Trump On Coronavirus Outbreak: 'This Was Artificially Induced'

Kushner’s team seeks national coronavirus surveillance system

Politico 04/08/2020

White House senior adviser Jared Kushner’s task force has reached out to a range of health technology companies about creating a national coronavirus surveillance system to give the government a near real-time view of where patients are seeking treatment and for what, and whether hospitals can accommodate them, according to four people with knowledge of the discussions.

The proposed national network could help determine which areas of the country can safely relax social-distancing rules and which should remain vigilant. But it would also represent a significant expansion of government use of individual patient data, forcing a new reckoning over privacy limits amid a national crisis.

Health privacy laws already grant broad exceptions for national security purposes. But the prospect of compiling a national database of potentially sensitive health information has prompted concerns about its impact on civil liberties well after the coronavirus threat recedes, with some critics comparing it to the Patriot Act enacted after the 9/11 attacks.

Already, the Trump administration has sought to ease data-sharing rules and assure health data companies they won’t be penalized for sharing information with state and federal officials — a move driven in part by Kushner’s push to assemble the national network, according to an individual with knowledge of the decision.

“This is a genuine crisis — we have to work through it and do our best to protect people’s health,” said Jessica Rich, a former director of the Federal Trade Commission’s consumer protection bureau. “But doing that doesn’t mean we have to destroy privacy.”

The White House will host a meeting with tech firms about “violent extremism online”

Aug 8, 2019   Forbes

Topline: The White House will host a meeting with tech firms on Friday about “violent extremism online” in the wake of last weekend’s mass shootings, which raised questions over the role of Web services companies in moderating hate speech on the internet.

• White House spokesperson Judd Deere said on Wednesday that the meeting will include “senior administration officials” and representatives from a “range of companies.”
• The announcement followed a visit by President Donald Trump to El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, on Wednesday, where he met with survivors and first responders. His visit was met with protests, while El Paso Congresswoman Veronica Escobar condemned Trump’s “racist and hateful words & actions.”
• The suspected El Paso gunman, who killed 22 people on Saturday when he attacked Walmart shoppers, posted a hate-filled manifesto targeting the Hispanic community on extremist message board 8chan, minutes before the attack.  

What we don’t know: Which firms will attend or whether Trump will be present.

Key background: The meeting follows a pledge by Trump to order the Department of Justice to work with state and federal agencies, as well as social media companies, to “develop tools that can detect mass shooters before they strike.”

Melania Trump will be the first Catholic in the White House since President John F. Kennedy

United States First Lady Melania Trump is a practicing Catholic, her spokeswoman has confirmed.

Following speculation over Mrs Trump’s faith during her visit to the Vatican on Wednesday, her spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham confirmed to DailyMail.com that the First Lady is indeed Catholic.

Mrs Trump placed flowers at the feet of a statue of the Virgin Mary and spent time praying at the Bambino Gesù Hospital during her visit. She also presented Pope Francis with rosary beads for the Pontiff to bless.

It is unclear when Melania Trump became Catholic. She was raised in a Communist-supporting family in Slovenia and was not baptised as a child. She married Donald Trump, a life-long Presbyterian, in 2005 at an Episcopal church in Palm Beach, Florida.

Despite her husband being inaugurated US president in January, she is not due to move into the White House until the summer. When she does, she will be the first Catholic to live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue since President John F Kennedy and his wife Jackie in the early 1960s.    Catholic Herald

White House published a document to save earth from asteroid impact

Abigail Beall For Mailonline 6 January 2017

It is one of the most popular fictional doomsday situations, featured in films like Armageddon and Deep Impact, but the danger of an asteroid destroying life on our planet is a reality.

For years scientists have been trying to work out how to deal with the threat of an asteroid, which could hit us with little or no warning.

Now the White House has released an official document describing the plan if a meteor or asteroid was to head our way, and it shows we are under-prepared.

The White House published its 'National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy'.

The document 'seeks to improve our nation's preparedness to address the hazard of near-Earth object (NEO) impacts by enhancing the integration of existing national and international assets and adding important capabilities that are currently lacking.'

NEOs are asteroids or comets that have an orbit that brings them near or into Earth's orbit.

If one of these was to zoom towards Earth in the future, it would not be the first time.

A 56 foot (17-metre) meteor that struck Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013, injured more than 1,000 people came with no warning.

This is why one of the strategies outlined in the document is to improve on Nasa's methods of detecting NEOs before it is too late.

In seven main goals described in the document, the White House also focuses on improving modelling and predicting where NEOs will travel.

The country also plans to improve it emergency alert systems and invest in hi-tech space probes that could annihilate threats.      Dailymail