Enlarge / President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference in the Rose Garden of the White House on Tuesday, April 14, 2020. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)
President Donald Trump today said the United States will stop funding the World Health Organization until his administration completes a review of the group's response to the coronavirus pandemic.
"Today, I am instructing my administration to halt funding of the World Health Organization while a review is conducted to assess the World Health Organization's role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus," Trump said at a press conference today.
The US gives the WHO $400 million to $500 million per year and "has a duty to insist upon full accountability," Trump said. Trump said his administration will talk "with other countries and global health partners" about what to do with the US funding that would normally go to the WHO. The US provides about 15 percent of the WHO's budget. "Administration officials signaled the [funding] suspension would be for 60 days," according to Bloomberg, which noted that the US has "contributed $893 million to the WHO's operations during its current two-year funding cycle."
Enlarge / US President Donald Trump and Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, hold a press briefing with members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force on April 5, 2020, in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Sarah Silbiger)
President Donald Trump yesterday retweeted a Republican politician's call to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci from his post as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Trump's decision to spread the anti-Fauci tweet came hours after Fauci, in an interview with CNN, said it's "obvious" that the United States could have saved lives by imposing social-distancing measures in February as health experts recommended.
DeAnna Lorraine, a Republican who failed in a primary bid for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's congressional seat in California's 12th district last month, wrote yesterday that it's "Time to #FireFauci" in a tweet criticizing Fauci for his CNN interview. Less than an hour later, Trump posted a quote-retweet of Lorraine's #FireFauci call. "Sorry Fake News, it's all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up," Trump wrote. (Trump was referring to a travel ban.)
LONDON—Calling the procedure “a fast, er, effective way” to treat symptoms of the Covid-19 virus, doctors at St. Thomas’ Hospital reportedly told British prime minister Boris Johnson that the haircut he’d received on Friday “was for, uh, medical reasons.” “Well, you see Prime Minister, because of your severe…
CAPE CANAVERAL—Calling it the first purely revenge-based mission to ever be attempted on the red planet, NASA officials announced Wednesday the successful launch of the Vengeance Rover to pay back Mars for killing Opportunity back in 2018. “This is a historic launch that will bring our administration closer to the…
The PlayStation 5's new gamepad is called DualSense and sports a bold two-toned design. Did Aperture Science make this? [credit:
Sony / Aurich Lawson
]
While we still don't know what the PlayStation 5 console will look like (or whether it will really still hit its "holiday 2020" release window), we at least know about its controller. The PS5's gamepad, dubbed the DualSense, largely resembles previous DualShock models, but it appears to have just enough changes under the hood to merit a mostly new name.
Tuesday's surprise announcement comes courtesy of the official PlayStation Blog. The biggest technical difference comes in the form of a wholly updated "haptic feedback" suite, which we understand compares favorably to Nintendo's "HD rumble" feature in its Switch Joy-Con controllers. Sony senior VP Hideaki Nishino doesn't go into fine detail about how the DualSense's rumbling will differ from the DualShock 4 line, but finer-tuned haptic feedback can offer a greater range of rumble sensitivity and placement than most gamepads offer, at least when done right. "Stereo" rumbling feedback that carefully rumbles from one side to the other could be possible with such a system, but Sony didn't clarify.
Nishino only mentions one specific DualSense rumbling bonus compared to other gamepads: "Adaptive" rumbling feedback. Nishino offers a vague description of how pressing the PS5's "L2" and "R2" triggers will let players "truly feel the tension of your actions, like when drawing a bow to shoot an arrow."
Well, PS Plus subscribers, it turns out we have some potentially good news. As many gamers remain shut-in during the COVID-19 pandemic, Sony just announced its lineup for April, and it turns out people using their subscription service will be given the chance to download the 2004 romantic comedy Spanglish for free for…
NEW YORK—On the heels of a report that New York’s jails have an infection rate eight times higher than that of the city at large, sources confirmed Wednesday that officers on Rikers Island have punished numerous inmates for attempting to produce bootleg coronavirus vaccines. “We recently sent multiple convicts to…
The last five episodes of Rick and Morty S4 will air a bit earlier than fans expected.
Just a few days after dropping a special samurai-themed Rick and Morty episode, "Samurai and Shogun," Adult Swim has given us the trailer for the hotly anticipated second half of the popular animated series, along with a release date: May 3. That should delight hardcore fans, who had feared the release of the special episode meant a longer wait for the regular series' return.
(A few mild spoilers for prior seasons below.)
The first five episodes of S4 aired last November and December, and they featured Rick and Morty harvesting "death crystals" that predict various outcomes for one's demise; teaming up with Mr. Poopybutthole and "Elon Tusk" for a heist; freeing horny dragons from the Wizard who enslaved them; and battling time-traveling alien snakes, among other adventures. As always, pop-culture references abounded, riffing on the films Edge of Tomorrow, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Akira, Battlestar Galactica, and Terminator, for instance.
Enlarge / A single-player screenshot from the Switch version of Jedi Academy. (credit: Nintendo)
Just last week, the LucasArts-era PC cult classic Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy was ported to PlayStation 4 and Switch. Apart from some iffy menus, it's largely a decent port with a good control scheme, high-resolution graphics, decent framerates, and all the content present. It even has multiplayer!
But that last point has become something of a problem, as veteran PC players have found a way to enter console lobbies, and they're crushing the newer Switch and PS4 players.
It's made possible by the fact that the console ports' multiplayer servers appear to work the same way as their PC counterparts have for almost two decades, and the IP address for each server is exposed to the user. PC players can use that IP address in the Windows version of the game and join a Switch match. Forums like ResetEra have console players complaining that PC players are trolling them and that the invaders have an unfair advantage.
BALTIMORE—Insisting that this was an abundance of caution around the coronavirus and absolutely nothing else, the players and staff of the Baltimore Orioles suggested to the MLB Friday that they should consider just canceling the entire season to be safe. “We just think that given the risk there is really no reason…
A little disingenuous to say he got a "raise" since it was based on performance of stocks he already owns, but I guess "yay capitalism!"? Ugh.
Enlarge / AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson speaks at the Council on Foreign Relations on September 18, 2019 in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Win McNamee )
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson's total compensation was more than $32 million in 2019, giving him a 10 percent raise while he slashed tens of thousands of jobs and reduced spending on network upgrades. Stephenson's total compensation was $28.72 million in 2017, $29.12 million in 2018, and $32.03 million in 2019, an AT&T filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission said. His pay raise was driven by stock performance.
Stephenson's base salary was $1.8 million in all three years, but his stock awards jumped from $17.07 million to $19.80 million from 2018 to 2019. The other portions of his compensation remained roughly the same.
Falcon 9 Boostback
Short star trails appear in this single 84 second long exposure,
taken on March 6 from a rotating planet.
The remarkable scene also captures the flight of
a Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon cargo spacecraft
over Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
shortly after launch, on a
resupply
mission bound for the International Space Station.
Beginning its return to a landing zone about 9 kilometers from the
launch site, the Falcon 9 first stage boostback burn arcs
toward the top of the frame.
The second stage continues toward low Earth orbit though,
its own fiery arc traced below the first stage boostback burn
from the camera's perspective,
along with expanding exhaust plumes from the two stages.
This Dragon spacecraft was a veteran of two previous resupply
missions.
Successfully returning to the landing zone, this Falcon 9 first stage
had flown before too.
Its second landing marked the 50th landing of a SpaceX
orbital class rocket booster.
WASHINGTON—Saying she continually walks by his office while loosening the frilly beaded collar she wears over her judicial robes, sources confirmed Thursday that Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been flirting with the Supreme Court’s 67-year-old intern again. “She’s completely shameless—every time there’s a…
I went to Whole Foods the other day for the first time in a loooong time. Half of the people in there (and it was PACKED) were shopping for Amazon customers. It was so weird to see everyone wearing the same shirt.
California's recently enacted AB5 was aimed at improving working conditions at gig economy companies like Instacart, and it appears to be one of the first firms in the crosshairs. A San Diego county judge has granted a preliminary injunction barring...
Falcon 9 Boostback
Short star trails appear in this single 84 second long exposure,
taken on March 6 from a rotating planet.
The remarkable scene also captures the flight of
a Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon cargo spacecraft
over Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
shortly after launch, on a
resupply
mission bound for the International Space Station.
Beginning its return to a landing zone about 9 kilometers from the
launch site, the Falcon 9 first stage boostback burn arcs
toward the top of the frame.
The second stage continues toward low Earth orbit though,
its own fiery arc traced below the first stage boostback burn
from the camera's perspective,
along with expanding exhaust plumes from the two stages.
This Dragon spacecraft was a veteran of two previous resupply
missions.
Successfully returning to the landing zone, this Falcon 9 first stage
had flown before too.
Its second landing marked the 50th landing of a SpaceX
orbital class rocket booster.
California's recently enacted AB5 was aimed at improving working conditions at gig economy companies like Instacart, and it appears to be one of the first firms in the crosshairs. A San Diego county judge has granted a preliminary injunction barring...
