Believe it or not, the news cycle sparked by President Trump's Hurricane Dorian tweet from more than a week ago isn't nearly over yet.
The New York Times reported on Monday that after the National Weather Service's Birmingham office contradicted the president in clarifying that Alabama was not at risk of being impacted by Dorian last week, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross "threatened to fire top employees" at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
When Trump on Sept. 1 tweeted that Alabama might be getting hit by Dorian "(much) harder than anticipated," the NWS in Birmingham quickly jumped in to note that actually, "Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian." A defensive Trump in the following days would repeatedly reject claims that his original tweet was false, pointing to information showing Alabama could be hit that was days old by the time his tweet came and even pulling out a custom weather map with a circle drawn onto it to cover Alabama.
Ross' threat of firings apparently came on Friday, when the Times reports he called the NOAA's acting administrator, Neil Jacobs, and demanded he "fix the agency's perceived contradiction of the president." When Jacobs resisted, Ross reportedly told Jacobs "that the political staff at NOAA would be fired if the situation was not fixed." Later that day, the NOAA released a statement backing Trump and dismissing the tweet from the Birmingham office, saying it was "inconsistent with probabilities from the best forecast products available at the time." Just when you thought the fallout of Trump's weather tweeting and Sharpie drawing had died down, it appears many more days of it may lie ahead.
Update 6:26 p.m. ET: A Commerce Department spokesperson has now denied the New York Times story, calling it "false" and saying in a statement, "Secretary Ross did not threaten to fire any NOAA staff over forecasting and public statements about Hurricane Dorian." Brendan Morrow
Respirator masks, gloves, and other protective equipment kept in the U.S. government's emergency stockpile are almost all used up, Department of Homeland Security officials tell The Washington Post.
Hospital workers already lack supplies they need to protect themselves as they treat COVID-19 patients, and an empty stockpile will only exacerbate the problem. But "the stockpile was designed to respond to handful of cities. It was never built or designed to fight a 50-state pandemic," and so it's already close to empty even before the pandemic has hit its peak, one DHS official said.
The national stockpile is one of the few escapes from a marketplace full of price gouging, and as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) described in a recent press conference, shortages have forced states to outbid each other just to get necessary supplies. "The supply chain for PPE worldwide has broken down, and there is a lot of price gouging happening," the anonymous DHS official told the Post. It all leaves hospitals and other care facilities with a risk of completely running out of supplies, another official said. Kathryn Krawczyk
A Chinese county that was largely unscathed by the novel COVID-19 coronavirus went into lockdown Wednesday, signaling fears of a possible second wave in the country where the virus originated, The South China Morning Post reports.
The county of Jia in Henan province, home to 600,000 people, is now in lockdown after infections reportedly spread at a local hospital. There were previously only 12 confirmed cases in Henan, despite it being situated just north of Hubei province, where China's epicenter, Wuhan, is located. However, U.S. intelligence reportedly believes China under-reported the actual number of cases.
Either way, the new lockdown, which shuts down all non-essential business and requires people to carry special permits to leave their homes, and wear face masks and have their temperature taken when out and about, comes at a time when the country clearly wants to get its economy up and running again. It's unclear if such measures will be limited to the county or if it's a sign of things to come for the rest of the world's most populous country, but President Xi Jinping has warned that China must return to normal gradually in the hopes of preventing a full-scale COVID-19 return. Read more at The South China Morning Post. Tim O'Donnell
Yet another big movie is clearing out of 2020 completely.
Universal announced Wednesday its animated sequel Minions: The Rise of Gru, which was originally set for release this summer, has been delayed one year and will now hit theaters in July 2021, per The Hollywood Reporter.
It had previously been announced that Minions would not make its previously-scheduled release date because Illumination's studio in Paris was forced to temporarily close amid the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, though it was unclear at the time whether the film could still hit theaters sometime in 2020. The first Minions, a Despicable Me prequel, took in more than $1 billion worldwide in 2015 and was one of the highest-grossing films of that year.
This is just the latest example of a major 2020 film being delayed all the way until next year because of the coronavirus pandemic after Sony on Tuesday delayed Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which was scheduled to hit theaters this July, to March 2021. Universal also previously moved the ninth Fast & Furious film from May 2020 to April 2021, while Disney postponed Black Widow indefinitely.
The summer movie season typically brings in major business for Hollywood, but fewer and fewer films remain on the calendar for that period this year as theaters throughout the United States remain largely closed in accordance with social distancing guidelines. A rare blockbuster to be postponed to another date this summer was Wonder Woman 1984, as Warner Bros. moved the DC sequel from June to August 2020 in hopes theaters would widely reopen by then.
Whether they will, and whether audiences will quickly return if they do, isn't clear. AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron on Tuesday told CNBC he "would love to think" there can still be a summer movie season this year, but as far as when the chain's theaters can begin resuming operations, he said at this time, "nobody knows." Brendan Morrow
Experts are now convinced a February Champions League soccer game between the Italian club Atalanta and the Spanish club Valencia was at the forefront of an explosion of COVID-19 cases in Italy's Lombardy region, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in Europe, The Wall Street Journal reports.
More than 40,000 people crammed into San Siro stadium in Milan to watch the contest, a 4-1 victory for Atalanta. Then, two weeks later Bergamo, where Atalanta is based, experienced a major spike in cases, with scientists pinpointing the match as a crucial petri dish. "Two weeks after Feb. 19, there was an incredible explosion of cases," said Dr. Francesco Le Foche, an immunologist in charge of infectious diseases at Policlinico Umberto I in Rome. "The match played a huge role in disseminating coronavirus throughout Lombardy and in Bergamo in particular."
To put it in perspective, 35 percent of Valencia's traveling squad tested positive for the virus after the team returned to Spain. Only one Atalanta player tested positive, but the club has published death notices on its website for five people linked to the virus who were close to the club within the last two weeks, all of whom were present for Atalanta's victory over Valencia.
The match shows the type of role sporting events can play in furthering the spread of the virus, further explaining why nearly every professional league has shut down operations, and casting doubt on whether some sports will come back at all this year. Read more at The Wall Street Journal. Tim O'Donnell
The effects of the coronavirus shutdown are being felt everywhere, even in the Earth's crust.
The decrease in activity and transportation have led to a noticeable drop in seismic noise — the usual "hum of vibrations in the planet's crust." This quietude could help seismologists detect smaller earthquakes and more closely monitor volcanic activity, Nature reports.
Moving vehicles and industrial machinery usually cause vibrations that can get in the way of researchers looking to detect signals at the same frequency. A drop in activity of this size is typically only seen briefly at Christmastime, Thomas Lecocq, a seismologist at the Royal Observatory of Belgium in Brussels, told Nature.
"There's a big chance indeed it could lead to better measurements," Lecocq said. This includes a better chance at finding the locations of aftershocks, said Andy Frassetto, a seismologist at the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology. During the shutdown, seismologists are hoping to "squeeze a little more information on those events," he said. Read more at Nature. Taylor Watson