T20 Challenge announcement shows women’s cricket has bounced back in India: Shantha Rangaswamy | Cricket News

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Shantha Rangaswamy. (TOI Photo)

MUMBAI: The BCCI’s decision to host the third edition of the Women’s T20 Challenge in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from November 1-10, involving three teams, has pleased Board Apex Council member and former India women’s captain Shantha Rangaswamy.
Rangaswamy believes that the announcement of the tournament is a reminder to those who were pessimistic about the future of women’s cricket in India after the BCCI cancelled the India women’s tour to England for a Tri-Series in September due to a the covid situation, that women’s cricket in the country is in safe hands.
“I welcome IPL Governing Council chairman Brijesh Patel’s statement that three teams will play in the women’s T20 Challenge this year. I would like to thank him, and everyone connected with this decision at the BCCI. Just a fortnight back, people were predicting a doom’s day for women’s cricket in India. This is just a reminder to them that nothing is permanent. Women’s cricket has bounced back, and will bounce back in the future too,” Rangaswamy, , who is a nominee of the Indian Cricketers Association (ICA) in the BCCI Apex Council, told TOI on Monday.
“This is excellent news . Our ODI World Cup campaign to finally kick start . A big thank you to @SGanguly99@BCCI@JayShah and thank you @BoriaMajumdar for your support to women’s cricket,” India’s ODI captain Mithali Raj had tweeted on Sunday after getting the news.

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Expression of opinion cannot constitute contempt of court: Prashant Bhushan to SC | India News

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NEW DELHI: The expression of opinion, “however outspoken, disagreeable or unpalatable to some”, cannot constitute contempt of court, activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan said on Monday in his reply to a show cause notice issued by the Supreme Court.
The top court on July 22 issued notice to Bhushan for hearing on August 5 the criminal contempt proceedings initiated against him for his two alleged derogatory tweets against the judiciary, observing his statements prima facie “brought the administration of justice in disrepute”.
In a 142-page reply affidavit filed through lawyer Kamini Jaiswal, the activist lawyer has referred to several apex court judgements, speeches of former and serving judges on contempt of court and the “stifling of dissent” in a democracy and his views on judicial actions in some cases.
Bhushan also stood by his two tweets.
“The respondent (Bhushan) states that expression of his opinion however outspoken, disagreeable or however unpalatable to some, cannot constitute contempt of court. This proposition has been laid down by several judgments of the Supreme Court and in foreign jurisdictions such as Britain, USA and Canada,” he submitted.
He also referred to the freedom of speech and expression under Article 19 (1)(a) of the Constitution, and said this right was the ultimate guardian of all the values that the Constitution holds sacred.
“The relationship between Article l9 (1A) and Article 129 (this gives power of contempt to SC) is governed by Article 19(2). Article l9 (2) (reasonable restrictions) recognizes the fetters that can be placed on freedom of speech & expression under the court's power to punish for contempt under Article 129.
“ 'Reasonable restriction' being the operative word under Article l9(2), any exercise of contempt powers by the Supreme Court must necessarily not be of a nature that goes beyond 'reasonable restrictions',” Bhushan said in the affidavit.
To prevent a citizen from forming, holding, and expressing a ‘bonafide opinion' in public interest on any institution that is a creature of the Constitution is not a reasonable restriction and violates the basic principles on which our democracy is founded, he said.
The affidavit said the power of contempt under Article 129 of the Constitution should be “utilized to aid in administration of justice and not to shut out voices that seek accountability from the court for the errors of omissions and commissions”.
It said that to curb constructive criticism from “persons of knowledge and standing” is not a 'reasonable restriction'.
Preventing citizens from demanding accountability and reforms and advocating for the same by generating public opinion is not a 'reasonable restriction', it said, adding that the Article 129 cannot be pressed into service to stifle bonafide criticism.
The affidavit also raised objections related to procedures on taking up the contempt petition filed by one Mehak Maheshwari on July 21.
Earlier, the apex court had issued notice to Bhushan, and had also sought assistance of Attorney General K K Venugopal.
While referring to the tweets by Bhushan, the apex court had said these statements are prima facie capable of "undermining the dignity and authority" of the institution of the Supreme Court in general and the office of Chief Justice of India in particular, in the eyes of public at large.
Recently, Bhushan filed a separate plea seeking recall of the show cause notice of July 22 order in the contempt proceeding initiated for his alleged contemptuous tweets against the judiciary.
Simultaneously, Bhushan along with former Union Minister Arun Shourie and veteran journalist N Ram have also moved the Supreme Court challenging the constitutional validity of a legal provision, dealing with criminal contempt on the ground of “scandalizing the court”, saying it was violative freedom of speech and right to equality.

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Poland’s Supreme Court Declares Presidential Election Valid

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Poland’s Supreme Court on Monday upheld the results of President Andrzej Duda’s narrow victory in presidential elections last month, the country’s closest contest since the fall of communism in 1989, a decision that clears the path for the country’s conservative Law and Justice party to continue in power.

Thousands of supporters of the opposition candidate and rights groups had filed legal challenges in the country’s highest court demanding that the election be reassessed after Mr. Duda edged out Rafal Trzaskowski, the opposition candidate and the liberal mayor of Warsaw. Mr. Duda secured 51.03 percent of the vote, while Mr. Trzaskowski won 48.97 percent, in a mid-July runoff.

Opponents of Mr. Duda pointed to many irregularities during the campaign and election, including pushing forward with the vote despite the coronavirus pandemic, limited access to the vote for Poles abroad, and the role of the public media and government officials in the campaign.

Miroslaw Wyrzykowski, a former judge of the country’s constitutional tribunal, was among those who criticized the court’s decision.

“The whole electoral procedure from the beginning until the end violates the Constitution,” he said in an interview. “We will have a president elected in an unconstitutional manner.”

The court’s decision was not a surprise in light of sweeping changes to the country’s judicial system introduced by the governing party, which drew widespread condemnation from the European Union and international human rights organizations, as well as from Poland’s opposition and some of its judges.

The country’s judges had been selected for decades by an independent council, but legislation signed by Mr. Duda in 2017 introduced changes that gave the president more direct power over the Supreme Court.

Joanna Lemanska, who heads the chamber of the Supreme Court that ruled on the validity of the election — and who was appointed by Mr. Duda — had stepped away from the process, but critics said her departure was not enough to remove the likelihood of bias.

“I had no doubt what the decision would be,” said Michal Wawrykiewicz, a lawyer from the Free Courts Initiative and the Committee for Defense of Justice. “We are not talking here about an independent court, but a party tribunal.”

Mr. Wawrykiewicz pointed out that the court had ruled that an overwhelming majority of complaints did not fulfill the formal criteria, and were not even assessed on the grounds of their merit.

“The European Court of Justice will rule on Sept. 22 whether the chamber of the Supreme Court fulfills the criteria of an independent court,” he said, “which will give us answers to many questions.”

Given the margin of defeat — almost half a million votes — the supporters of Mr. Trzaskowski who lodged complaints after the election said the move was not intended to overturn the result of the election, but to publicly question the validity of the vote and demonstrate that the elections were unfair.

“These elections were not equal, didn’t meet democratic standards, they were dishonest,” Borys Budka, the head of the main opposition party, Civic Platform, said after the election. “Because of that, we demand that they are declared invalid.”

Other opposition members of Parliament echoed his concern, including Kamila Gasiuk-Pihowicz, who questioned the decision in a post on Twitter and added, “Who needs a Supreme Court that will accept everything the authorities want?”

The majority of issues with the election were reported by voters from abroad, where tens of thousands of a record 520,000 ballots may have gone uncounted.

In Britain, more than 30,000 ballots — 16.6 percent of the total number of registered Polish voters in that country — went missing, according to the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. Cezary Tomczyk, the head of Mr. Trzaskowski’s campaign, said it had also received reports from across Poland of ballots that were not properly stamped, a requirement for them to be validated.

Some of the claims filed to the court that questioned the validity of the election concerned the role of the country’s public media in what critics called an unfair electoral campaign.

But on Monday the court determined that the activity of public media outlets during the campaign did not limit free choice.

Representatives from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which sent an election monitoring mission to Poland, said that the public media had “failed in its duty to offer balanced and impartial coverage.” Instead, it said, the media “acted as a campaign vehicle for the incumbent and frequently portrayed his main challenger as a threat to Polish values and national interests.”

Even if the vote itself is considered fair, “the use of public funds, the engagement of the so-called public media, caused the situation to be unequal,” said Mr. Budka of the opposition.

Aleksander Stepkowski, the spokesman for the Supreme Court, said on Sunday that the court had processed all of the complaints, and found 93 of the 5,847 complaints valid, not enough to influence the overall result of the election.

The court said that the complaint filed by Mr. Trzaskowski’s campaign committee did not contain sufficient proof to sustain its claims.

Anatol Magdziarz contributed reporting.

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A Hospital Forgot to Bill Her Coronavirus Test. It Cost Her $1,980.

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The New York Times is investigating the costs associated with testing and treatment for the coronavirus and how the pandemic is changing health care in America. You can read more about the project and submit your medical bills here.

When Debbie Krebs got the bill for a March emergency room visit, she immediately noticed something was missing: her coronavirus test.

Ms. Krebs, a lawyer who focuses on insurance issues, had gone to the Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, N.J., with lung pain and a cough. A doctor ran tests and scans to rule out other diseases before swabbing her nose. A week later, the medical laboratory called, telling her it was negative.

Ms. Krebs had a clear memory of the experience, particularly the doctor saying the coronavirus test would make her feel as if she had to sneeze. She wondered whether the doctor could have lied about performing the test, or if her swab could have gone missing. (But if so, why had the laboratory called her with results?)

The absence of the coronavirus test made a big price difference. Congress, Ms. Krebs had heard, barred insurers from charging patients for visits meant to diagnosis coronavirus. Without the test, Ms. Krebs didn’t qualify for that protection and owed $1,980. She called the hospital to explain the situation but immediately ran into roadblocks.

“When I called the hospital, they said, ‘You did not get a coronavirus test,’” she said. “I told them I absolutely did.”

Across the country, Americans like Ms. Krebs are receiving surprise bills for care connected with coronavirus. Tests can cost between $199 and $6,408 at the same location. A coming wave of treatment bills could be hundreds of multiples higher, especially for those who receive intensive care or have symptoms that linger for months. Services that patients expect to be covered often aren’t.

This patchwork of medical billing is one reason we’re starting something new today: soliciting your medical bills. We’re asking you to send us copies of your bills for coronavirus testing and treatment, so we can understand what costs look like across the country. We want to know how patients are managing their medical bills in the midst of a pandemic. This is part of our larger effort to understand how the pandemic is reshaping American health care.

American medical billing is unlike that of any other developed country. The government does not regulate health care prices, but instead lets insurers and hospitals negotiate fees. Those deliberations happen in secret, and patients often do not learn the cost of their care until a bill shows up in the mail.

Sometimes, insurers give reporters a peek at their data. That’s how I learned that a laboratory in Texas had charged $2,315 for individual coronavirus tests. But more often, they keep that information confidential, which is why we need readers’ bills and explanation-of-benefit documents for any care related to coronavirus.

Readers’ bills have already shown that surprise medical bills for coronavirus have been in the United States nearly as long as the disease itself.

In late February, an American man and his 3-year-old daughter were hit with medical bills totaling thousands of dollars for care received during a government-mandated quarantine. This was only weeks after Washington State announced the country’s first known case.

“I assumed it was all being paid for,” Frank Wucinski, the patient, said at the time. “We didn’t have a choice. When the bills showed up, it was just a pit in my stomach, like, ‘How do I pay for this?’”

The federal government has since resolved to give Americans special protections against outlandish medical bills. Congress enacted new rules to make the tests a rare oasis within the American health care system — the price had to be public; and co-payments, deductibles or other charges weren’t allowed.

Or at least, Congress tried to. The experiences of patients who had or suspected they might have Covid-19 show how hard it is to write different billing rules for a tiny sliver of the country’s $3 trillion in health spending. Numerous doctor’s offices and hospitals do not post the cash prices for their coronavirus tests, despite the federal requirement to do so. Some patients have encountered unwarranted co-payments as doctors and hospitals have stuck to their regular billing habits. Others have failed to qualify for the protections because they did not receive a coronavirus test as part of their care — or, in the case of Ms. Krebs, had it left off the bill.

Aside from mandating that Covid-19 tests cost the patient nothing, there are no new rules to protect insured Americans from coronavirus treatment bills. Health policy experts worry that even those with good insurance could end up facing high costs. One outcome they envision: A patient goes to an in-network hospital for coronavirus treatment, but that hospital is overwhelmed and has no beds left. The patient is transferred to an out-of-network hospital, and gets significant bills as a result.

“Our system is so complicated,” said Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “If things aren’t exactly right or weren’t coded correctly, you get thrown into the blizzard.”

The protections that do exist are based on the receipt of something that can be in short supply: a coronavirus test. If doctors can’t obtain a test and turn to other diagnostic methods — testing for other diseases, for example — the patient will have to cover the visit’s cost.

The Trump administration has also set aside an undisclosed sum to pay for uninsured Americans’ testing and treatment, a program that has become increasingly important as millions have lost coverage in the economic downturn. So far, that fund has paid out $348 million to providers, but it is unknown how much money remains or what happens when it runs out.

Billing challenges have persisted, despite these new rules and programs. Many stem from the decision by legislators to condition aid on receipt of a test.

Dr. Kao-Ping Chua, a pediatrician in Michigan, started running into problems in March when he had patients with coronavirus-like symptoms seeking tests. His health system, like many others, required patients to undergo testing for other conditions before coronavirus.

“I had to tell my patients that, if the test I run first comes back positive and says you have the common cold, you’ll have to pay for it,” he said. “But if you test negative, that allows you to get the Covid test, and that waives your cost sharing.”

Luciano Aita, 35, sought treatment in early July at St. Mary’s Medical Center in San Francisco after his “chest started closing up” and he felt as if he couldn’t breath.

The Coronavirus Outbreak ›

Frequently Asked Questions

Updated August 3, 2020

• I’m a small-business owner. Can I get relief?

  • The stimulus bills enacted in March offer help for the millions of American small businesses. Those eligible for aid are businesses and nonprofit organizations with fewer than 500 workers, including sole proprietorships, independent contractors and freelancers. Some larger companies in some industries are also eligible. The help being offered, which is being managed by the Small Business Administration, includes the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. But lots of folks have not yet seen payouts. Even those who have received help are confused: The rules are draconian, and some are stuck sitting on money they don’t know how to use. Many small-business owners are getting less than they expected or not hearing anything at all.

• What are my rights if I am worried about going back to work?

• Should I refinance my mortgage?

  • It could be a good idea, because mortgage rates have never been lower. Refinancing requests have pushed mortgage applications to some of the highest levels since 2008, so be prepared to get in line. But defaults are also up, so if you’re thinking about buying a home, be aware that some lenders have tightened their standards.

• What is school going to look like in September?

  • It is unlikely that many schools will return to a normal schedule this fall, requiring the grind of online learning, makeshift child care and stunted workdays to continue. California’s two largest public school districts — Los Angeles and San Diego — said on July 13, that instruction will be remote-only in the fall, citing concerns that surging coronavirus infections in their areas pose too dire a risk for students and teachers. Together, the two districts enroll some 825,000 students. They are the largest in the country so far to abandon plans for even a partial physical return to classrooms when they reopen in August. For other districts, the solution won’t be an all-or-nothing approach. Many systems, including the nation’s largest, New York City, are devising hybrid plans that involve spending some days in classrooms and other days online. There’s no national policy on this yet, so check with your municipal school system regularly to see what is happening in your community.

• Is the coronavirus airborne?

  • The coronavirus can stay aloft for hours in tiny droplets in stagnant air, infecting people as they inhale, mounting scientific evidence suggests. This risk is highest in crowded indoor spaces with poor ventilation, and may help explain super-spreading events reported in meatpacking plants, churches and restaurants. It’s unclear how often the virus is spread via these tiny droplets, or aerosols, compared with larger droplets that are expelled when a sick person coughs or sneezes, or transmitted through contact with contaminated surfaces, said Linsey Marr, an aerosol expert at Virginia Tech. Aerosols are released even when a person without symptoms exhales, talks or sings, according to Dr. Marr and more than 200 other experts, who have outlined the evidence in an open letter to the World Health Organization.

“I was super scared and worried about Covid, since I never had experienced anything like that before,” he said. A doctor checked his blood pressure, listened to his lungs and took his temperature — but did not administer a coronavirus test. He recalls being told that the emergency room was giving the test only to “critically ill” patients, and he did not qualify.

Mr. Aita, who lost his job at a record store at the start of the pandemic and is uninsured, received a document at the end of his visit estimating he would owe $1,157. If the hospital had tested him for coronavirus, the federal fund could have covered the visit entirely.

Last week, he received a medical bill for the visit that was only $350. He initially thought this was good news — that the hospital had dropped his charge. But when he looked into the issue, he learned this was an additional charge from the doctor who saw him.

“I understood that if it was related to Covid, it would be taken care of,” Mr. Aita said. “It’s a pandemic, I’m unemployed, and now I’m dealing with the stress of this situation.”

A spokesman for Dignity Health, which owns St. Mary’s Medical Center, said the hospital uses C.D.C. protocols to decide who is tested, but he declined to comment on Mr. Aita’s case.

“We have suspended billing patients for their portion of their bill for the testing and treatment of Covid-19 while we work with insurers and the government to exhaust financial assistance options for patients,” Chad Burns, the spokesman, said. Mr. Aita, however, does not appear to qualify for those protections because he did not receive a test.

As coronavirus spreads and hospitalizations mount, so will the ranks of those managing unexpected bills.

The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that a fifth of all coronavirus hospitalizations could result in a surprise medical bill from an out-of-network doctor who became involved in the patient’s care. The nonpartisan foundation also projects that, on average, an American with employer-sponsored coverage would face $1,300 in costs for a coronavirus hospitalization.

Congressional staffers working on the issue say they’ve come across cases in which health providers are not following the new rules on coronavirus billing. The providers are charging patients for services when they shouldn’t, or not posting their cash prices for testing online as they are legally required to.

“Billing offices may just be doing what they’re used to — looking at your card, seeing that it says $30 co-pay and collecting it,” Ms. Pollitz said. “The person at the front desk may not know you got a test. The protections aren’t airtight.”

Congress is currently split over how far to go in protecting coronavirus patients from surprise medical bills. House Democrats have supported mandating that insurers cover all costs related to treatment as part of the HEROES Act, a larger stimulus package.

Senate Republicans introduced their stimulus proposal, the HEALS Act, last week. It does not include a similar mandate.

In the case of Ms. Krebs, she shared her bill with me after reading another article I wrote about coronavirus test billing. Together, we tracked down a record for her coronavirus test to prove that it did indeed occur.

Two days after I inquired about the case, the Valley Hospital resubmitted her bill with the coronavirus test included. Her insurer, Aetna, reprocessed the bill and confirmed that she would no longer be charged.

“We were trying to come up with extraordinary processes quickly to react to the many changes placed on all of us, including payer requirements of coverage,” Josette Portalatin, an assistant vice president at the hospital, wrote in an email to Ms. Krebs. “We apologize that your lab Covid test was not on your original claim, but happy to report we tracked down the issue.”

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World Snooker Championship 2020: Martin Gould says 'lockdown saved me'

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Gould featured at the Crucible last year where he was beaten by Mark Williams in the first round

Venue: Crucible Theatre, Sheffield Dates: 31 July-16 August
Coverage: Watch live on BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Four and Red Button, with uninterrupted coverage on BBC iPlayer, BBC Sport website and BBC Sport app. Full details and times.

Qualifier Martin Gould says lockdown "saved" him after he was driven into a "dark place" by abuse on social media.

Former German Masters champion Gould, 38, has dropped to number 60 in the world after struggling in recent years.

The Englishman, who has a career-high ranking of 11, faces Scotland's Stephen Maguire in the first round of the World Championship on Tuesday.

"My mind, body and soul weren't in it," said Gould. "I fell completely out of love with the game."

Gould has not progressed past the third round in the 10 events he has competed in this season, but he won his three qualifying matches - including beating former world champion Graeme Dott in the final round - to book his 10th appearance at the Crucible in Sheffield.

"My dad and my girlfriend were looking out for me because they knew there was something wrong," he said.

"I'd get to tournaments and as soon as I arrived I'd be looking at train times to see when I could go home. I just didn't want to be there.

"Lockdown basically helped me get my head back into wanting to play snooker again. It was hard but thankfully my family and friends have helped me to get back focused and ready."

Gould previously said he had a "retirement speech ready" because he was not expecting to stay on the tour, but progression earned him a new two-year deal.

"I was in a pretty dark place," he added. "You get a lot of stick from social media and a lot of people don't understand how we feel when we receive those kinds of messages.

"This is a game that can be really hard not just mentally, but physically. I've had lots of back and neck issues, and some days I don't even know if I'm going to get out of bed.

"They don't understand how much pressure we can be under just to pot balls."

Sign up to My Sport to follow snooker news on the BBC app.

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TikTok Ban: Creators Respond to Trump

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It was a weekend of chaos on TikTok — unleashed on Friday night when President Trump said, while aboard Air Force One, that he might ban the video app.

The surprise announcement sent influencers in droves onto livestreams to give possibly premature teary and heartfelt goodbyes to their fans, asking them to join them on apps like Instagram, YouTube and Triller. For agencies that manage talent on the platform, it was a long weekend of hand-holding and downloading TikTok archives for posterity. Some users, in a last-hurrah bid for virality, reposted TikToks they said had previously been removed by the service for violating nudity or profanity guidelines.

Others tried to make light of the situation. Addison Easterling, 19, a TikTok star who dropped out of Louisiana State University to pursue a full-time influencer career, posted a video of herself pretending to knock on the college’s doors to let her back in. “Me at LSU tomorrow,” she captioned it.

TikTok is known mostly for dance videos and comedic skits, but that silliness can obscure two facts: TikTok has become a powerhouse in the entertainment industry and the primary platform that music executives and talent agents use to scout the next big act. And, at the same time, especially as the election nears, the app has become an information and organizing hub for Gen Z activists and politically-minded young people.

TikTok has had a fraught relationship with the United States government for some time. Several administration officials, including the president, fear the app is a security risk because its parent company, ByteDance, is Chinese, potentially giving the Chinese government access to American user data. TikTok and ByteDance have vehemently denied any relationship with the Chinese government.

The president’s comments suggesting he would shut down TikTok in the United States stalled ByteDance’s negotiations to sell the app to Microsoft as a way to address the security concerns. On Sunday, Microsoft said that it had resumed talks after consulting with the president, giving some hope to users that the app would survive.

Young users say TikTok is a crucial outlet for education about climate change, systemic racism and the Black Lives Matter movement. The talk of a ban only politicized them further, with many TikTokers believing Mr. Trump’s threats were a direct response to their campaigns against him.

“TikTok is to Black Lives Matter what Twitter was to the Arab Spring,” said Kareem Rahma, 34, a TikTok creator with nearly 400,000 followers on the app. Mr. Rahma’s TikToks from the Black Lives Matter protests in Minneapolis garnered tens of millions of views. “I saw a lot of youth on the ground TikToking the protests as opposed to livestreaming, tweeting or Instagramming,” he said. “The conversations these kids are having with each other are essential.”

In June, teenage TikTok users claimed responsibility for inflating attendance expectations, leading to rows upon rows of empty seats, for Mr. Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Okla., after thousands of them registered for tickets to the event that they had no plans to redeem.

TikTok users have also waged coordinated campaigns to rate Mr. Trump’s businesses poorly on Google, to spam online surveys aimed at Trump supporters with useless information and to damage the Trump campaign’s e-commerce store by collecting in their shopping baskets items they never intend to buy.

Ellie Zeiler, 16, who has 6.3 million followers on TikTok, said that Mr. Trump’s threat to ban the app may even sway more young people to vote against him. “I think that a lot of people didn’t like Trump before, and this has driven people to not like him even more,” she said.

“For many kids, politics feel very distant,” said Eitan Bernath, 18, who has 1.2 million followers on TikTok. “This might be the first time it hits home for a lot of kids.”

On Sunday, nine TikTok creators with a collective 54 million followers, including Brittany Broski, Hope Schwing and Mitchell Crawford, published an open letter addressed to Mr. Trump on Medium.

“TikTok has enabled the kinds of interactions that could never take place on the likes of Facebook and Instagram,” they wrote. “Our generation has grown up on the internet, but our vision of the internet is going to require more than two gatekeepers. Why not use this as an opportunity to level the playing field?” they urged.

Vanessa Pappas, the general manager of TikTok North America, attempted to quell concerns on Saturday. “We’re not planning on going anywhere,” she said in a statement released on the app.

Disrupting the new entertainment business

The TikTok creator Curtis Newbill, 24, is one of thousands of young creators who has found fame through the app.

When he walked into a friend’s house in Los Angeles on Friday night, his stomach sank. He was there for a gathering with fellow TikTok stars known as the Sway Boys. “They were like, ‘Did you hear about TikTok? It’s getting banned,’” Mr. Newbill said.

Mr. Newbill’s next few hours were a blur. He remained at the gathering and tried not to think about the situation, but a pit in his stomach grew throughout the night. He went live on the app, telling his 4.3 million followers to follow him on Instagram.

All night, Mr. Newbill fielded a barrage of texts from concerned family and friends. He stayed up until 6:30 a.m., waiting for any information about his future.

Like thousands of other entertainers who have made the pilgrimage to Los Angeles in the most recent West Coast entertainment gold rush, Mr. Newbill relies solely on income from TikTok to make a living. “I live song deal to song deal,” he said.

The loss of TikTok would upend large swaths of the entertainment industry that have just been completely reoriented around the app.

TikTok has rewritten the pop charts, becoming a new default for how labels and aspiring artists promote their songs. And TikTok is where major brands like American Eagle, Chipotle and others spend millions to reach the next generation of consumers.

“I’ve lost brand deals in the past week,” Ms. Zeiler said. “They’re saying, ‘We don’t want to do this anymore.’ They’re worried if TikTok gets taken down, they’re not going to get their full potential on the deal.”

Management teams worked all night on Friday to back up their clients’ videos using FYP. RIP, a tool that downloads users' TikTok videos and emails them copies. Several managers held conference calls with skittish brands that were seeking to cancel deals. “We’re preparing for the worst,” said Mario Ayuso, an influencer manager.

“A lot of the newer talent I work with began their career on TikTok and it has been the foundation for everything they know today,” said Keith Dorsey, another talent manager. “They are concerned, worried and somewhat freaked out. One of them actually planned on quitting his job tomorrow to take his TikTok career to the next level. Our group chats are on fire right now.”

Emerging platforms and competitors see a moment

If the app’s potential shutdown or instability around a sudden sale has any silver lining, it’s a flood of new users to smaller platforms. Clash, a new short-form video app founded by Brendon McNerney, a former Vine star, became available on Friday night after the news and shot up the app store rankings on Saturday. Byte and Dubsmash, two other short form video apps, have also begun actively recruiting TikTok stars.

Last Wednesday, Triller, an app that functions similarly to TikTok, announced it had hired the 18-year-old TikTok star Josh Richards as the platform’s chief strategy officer, and successfully wooed Mr. Richards along with two other large TikTok stars, Griffin Johnson, 21, and Noah Beck, 19, to join the platform as investors.

Instagram is also offering TikTok creators deals of hundreds of thousands of dollars to create content on Reels, its new product with similarities, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Perez Hilton, a longtime celebrity news chronicler who has amassed 850,000 followers on TikTok, said he hoped that just the threat of a ban would serve as a note of caution for the young talent on the app. “These influencers on TikTok can’t have all their eggs in one basket,” he said. “You have to be everywhere,” he said, if you want to stay famous.

“You need to hustle,” he said. “A lot of the TikTokers that are just pretty, those are the ones that are really going to struggle. Pretty doesn’t age well and it doesn’t translate. The ones that are willing to work on and off TikTok and other platforms, they’re the ones that will be able to continue to thrive.”

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Portugal reports no coronavirus deaths for first time since March

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LISBON (Reuters) - Portugal reported no coronavirus-related deaths on Monday from a day earlier for the first time since mid-March, when a lockdown was put in place, and the lowest number of new infections in almost three months.

"It has been very difficult in recent times - we are very happy this happened," the secretary of state for health, Antonio Sales, said as he teared up during a news conference.

"I want to leave this message of hope to the Portuguese but I want to ask them to help us maintain these numbers," he said.

Portugal's total confirmed cases rose by 106 from Sunday to 51,569, with 62% of new infections reported in and around Lisbon, where localised outbreaks on the outskirts have worried authorities for the past two months.

The death toll remained unchanged at 1,738.

The country, heavily dependent on tourism, began lifting restrictions imposed during a six-week lockdown on May 4 and was initially hailed as a success story in its fight against the disease.

But the outbreaks around Lisbon forced the government to reinstate some measures in affected areas, and led several European nations, including Ireland, Belgium and Finland, to impose travel restrictions on Portugal.

Portugal was also left off a list of dozens of countries Britain considered safe enough for travel without having to quarantine upon return.

The need for holidaymakers returning to Britain from Portugal to quarantine for 14 days has particularly affected the Algarve, a region popular for its beaches and golf courses.

(Reporting by Catarina Demony; Additional reporting Patricia Vicente Rua, Editing by Andrei Khalip; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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Lebanon foreign minister resigns citing risks of a 'failed state' | News

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Lebanon has appointed Charbel Wehbe as foreign minister after Nassif Hitti resigned from the position, saying the country risked becoming a "failed state" and the government showed a lack of reformist will.

"I participated in this government on the basis that I have one employer named Lebanon, and I found in my country many employers and conflicting interests," Hitti said in his resignation letter to Prime Minister Hassan Diab, made public on Monday.

"If they don't come together around the interests of the Lebanese people and save them, then the ship, God forbid, will sink with everyone on board."

In his resignation letter, Hitti chided the "absence of a vision for Lebanon as I believe in it as a free, independent and capable nation" and the absence of a "real will to achieve structural reforms ... which our national society asks for and the international community are calling on us to do".

"Lebanon today is sliding towards becoming a failed state," he wrote.

The letter also implicitly criticised Hezbollah, a major backer of Diab’s government, by calling for a need for Lebanon to strengthen its ties with the "Arab community" and be "radiant in its Arab environment".

Lebanon’s formerly strong ties with Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia, have been harmed by the growing role of the Iran-backed group in Lebanese politics and in regional conflicts, including the war In Yemen.

Hours after Hitti resigned, President Michel Aoun and Diab signed a decree appointing Charbel Wehbe as the new foreign minister.

Wehbe is a diplomatic affairs advisor to Aoun and was formerly the director of political affairs at the foreign ministry.

Blow to the government

Hitti's resignation is the biggest blow yet to Diab's six-month-old government, which has struggled to make good on promises that it would implement wide-ranging reforms following massive anti-establishment protests last year.

Though the veteran diplomat is the first member of Diab's cabinet to quit, the government has already seen two high-profile resignations from a team negotiating with the International Monetary Fund for a bailout. Both had cited the same lack of will to reform due to the interests of the country’s political-financial elite.

Last week, Hitti had expressed his frustration with the Diab government on a popular talk show, saying it was "draining my professional and diplomatic credit".

Diab's government has also faced repeated calls to resign. But he has defended staying in power by claiming a replacement would take a long time, which he said would amount to "a crime against the Lebanese [people]".

Diplomatic spat with France

Hitti's resignation follows a diplomatic mishap involving Diab and Lebanon's strongest Western ally, France, after French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian visited Beirut last month.

A few days after the visit, a tweet from Diab's official Twitter account said Le Drian brought "nothing new" and had a "lack of knowledge of the path of government reforms".

"The international decision till now is not to help Lebanon," he posted.

The tweet was later deleted. Diab also met a French embassy delegation and reportedly expressed his appreciation of France's historical ties with Lebanon.

Hitti was picked by Gebran Bassil, the former foreign minister and head of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), which has the single-biggest bloc in parliament and was founded by President Michel Aoun.

Reports in local media have indicated that Hitti’s resignation was partially due to frustration over Bassil’s continued hold on key decisions at the ministry. Bassil was reportedly unhappy with Hitti’s decision to quit.

An FPM source told Al Jazeera that Hitti’s decision to step down was his own, regardless of the party’s position.

"He has his own reasons," the source said. "His statement today was clear and shows that it had nothing to do with the talk that has come out."

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England's Reece Topley to miss third ODI against Ireland with groin injury | Cricket News

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Reece Topley. (Reuters Photo)

England fast bowler Reece Topley will miss Tuesday's one-day international (ODI) against Ireland after picking up a groin injury, the country's cricket board (ECB) said on Monday, two days after he made his international comeback.
With England's first choice fast bowlers rested between Tests against the West Indies and upcoming matches against Pakistan, Topley was called up to the ODI squad and he made his first appearance in more than four years on Saturday.
The 26-year-old bowled nine overs and picked up Ireland's final wicket in England's four-wicket win.
The six foot seven inch Topley joins Joe Denly on the sidelines after the batsman was ruled out of the final two ODIs when he suffered back spasms in training ahead of the second match.
England have already clinched the three-match series with wins from the first two games. All matches are being played at the Ageas Bowl in Southampton behind closed doors due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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India strengthens troop presence in northern Ladakh, heavy tank deployment to tackle Chinese threat | India News

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NEW DELHI: In response to China's deployment of more than 17,000 troops and armoured vehicles opposite Daulat Beg Oldi (DBO) and Depsang plains in Ladakh, India has made heavy deployment of troops and tank regiments in the area to counter any misadventure by the People's Liberation Army (PLA) there.
"We have done a very heavy deployment of troops and tanks in the DBO and Depsang plains area including the T-90 regiments which are part of an armoured division," government sources told ANI.
The deployments have been made from the Patrolling Point 1 near the Karakoram Pass (PP-3) to the Depsang plains where the Chinese have amassed more than 17,000 troops since April-May time frame and have been blocking Indian patrols from PP-10 to PP-13, sources said.
The armoured deployment is such that the Chinese would find it difficult to operate there, in case, they try out any misadventure, they said.
Before the Chinese started build-up opposite the DBO and Depsang, the entire area was looked after by a mountain brigade and an armoured brigade but today more than 15,000 troops and several tank regiments have been moved there both by road and by air to tackle the threat from China, sources said.
One of the major intentions of the Chinese in this area has been to build a road from its TWD battalion headquarters opposite the DBO sector to the Karakoram pass area and connect the battalion there.
The connectivity plan, which has been foiled in the past, will allow the two Chinese units to reach other in a matter of a couple of hours against the 15-hour drive through the Highway G219 in their territory, sources said.
A small bridge was put up by the Chinese inside Indian territory on a nala (drain) near PP-7 and PP-8 but it was broken by Indian soldiers a few years ago, sources said.
At present, India and China are engaged in a dialogue focusing on disengagement from Finger area and other friction points but Chinese build up along the LAC in Depsang plains and DBO area has not yet been taken up in the military talks.
At present, we are in a position of strength in the Depsang Plains and DBO area now and we are not in a hurry to discuss that with the Chinese. Let the disengagement first take place and then we can talk about de-escalation there also, sources said.
On Sunday, India and China held Corps Commander-level talks at Moldo on the Chinese side of LAC to discuss disengagement.
The Chinese had earlier agreed for complete disengagement at Galwan valley, PP-15, Hot Springs and Gogra along with Finger area near Pangong Tso lake.
However, China stopped honouring their commitment after initial disengagement in Finger area and is now wanting to build an observation post at Finger 5. This has been rejected by India which has clearly stated that it will have to disengage completely and restore the status quoted existing in April/May 2020.

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The UK's troubled coronavirus response becomes more complicated

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The UK's troubled coronavirus response becomes more complicated

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Actual source

Boeing wins $265 million to build more special ops Chinook helos

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WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army has awarded Boeing a $265 million contract to build nine more MH-47G Block II Chinook helicopters for the service’s Special Operations Aviation Command, according to a July 31 Defense Department contract announcement.

The company is now under contract to build 24 of the G-model Chinooks. The service is expected to buy 69 special operations variants.

The original plan was to procure 473 F-model Block II helicopters for the active force as well, but the Army decided in its fiscal 2020 budget request not to buy them for the conventional force and only field the latest variant to special operations, which was very much in need of a replacement for the variant.

The service’s decision to cut the aircraft from the active force was based on the need to free up future cash to cover the cost of a plan to buy two new future vertical lift aircraft for long-range assault and attack reconnaissance missions.

Will foreign sales save the Chinook production line?

Congress has since opposed the move, injecting $28 million in FY20 funding into the program to purchase long-lead items to manufacture F-model Block II Chinooks for the active Army. The Army’s FY21 budget again provided no funding for the program. A similar plus-up in the congressional FY21 spending bill could continue to push the service back in the direction of buying more Block II variants.

The contract award is the third in a series of awards to buy G-model Chinooks. Boeing also received contracts in 2018 and 2019.

The Army approved the Block II effort to move into the engineering and manufacturing development phase in April 2017, and the program officially began in July 2017. The aircraft began flying in tests in mid-2019.

The upgrades in the Block II version include newly designed rotorblades, major changes to the drive system and other improvements like non-segmented fuel cells. The aircraft is expected to buy back roughly 4,000 pounds of additional load capacity, and it adds range capability.

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Actual source

Fierce competition starts between US, China for energy corridors in Central Asia

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BEIJING: As the US has called "for a new alliance of democracies" to counter China's aggressive policies, Beijing has begun adding more potential new trade and energy corridors linking Central Asia with South Asia and the Middle East.
"Fundamental realignments are taking place across the world at a challenging, transformative time in international affairs when global power is shifting to the East. Our region is no exception and is also witnessing a reordering of relationships," Maleeha Lodhi, who has served as Pakistan's ambassador to Britain, the US and the United Nations, was quoted as saying by the South China Morning Post.
To counter China's expansionist policies in the South China Sea, the US is on a mission to have a quadrilateral alliance with Japan, Australia and India.
Recently, the US special representative to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad was for the first time accompanied by Adam Boehler, chief executive of the US International Development Finance Corporation, to tour Qatar, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Norway and Bulgaria.
In a series of meetings with the foreign ministers of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the five Central Asian republics - as well as Taliban negotiators based in Qatar - Khalilzad and Boehler sought to reinforce the message that Washington intends to remain the top geopolitical player in Afghanistan, on the basis of its continuing role as the country's major financier, South China Morning Post reported.
During talks with the Central Asian ministers in Tashkent on July 1, the US reportedly proposed to help fund a railway project to link Uzbekistan via Afghanistan to Pakistan and India.
As the US continues to give the countries an alternative to China's financing, Beijing is striving hard to deepen cooperation with all belt and road partner governments in South and Central Asia and the Middle East.
The South China Morning Post reported that in a rare four-way video conference on July 27 with the foreign ministers of Nepal and Afghanistan and Pakistan's development minister, China's foreign minister Wang Yi proposed expanding their pandemic cooperation to establish a "green corridor" between them.
Wang also discussed the development of a multimodal trans-Himalayan corridor, which would integrate Nepal into the belt and road plan via Tibet, Xinjiang and Gwadar.
He also pressed upon the extension of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) into Afghanistan.
Though China may seem to be interested in pushing its belt and road ambitions in Afghanistan, South China Morning Post quoted Andrew Small, a senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States think tank, as saying that China will be cautiously pursuing its belt and road ambitions in Afghanistan.
"China will sound willing in principle to extend the CPEC to Afghanistan but it is cautious in practice. This was true already, given Beijing's assessment of the security situation, but dynamics with the US are starting to play into these calculations too: they have moved in such an adversarial direction that virtually no issue can remain unaffected and there is certainly no longer any confidence on the Chinese side that belt and road connections through Afghanistan would be seen in benign terms by Washington," he said.
Meanwhile, Pakistan, which seems to have a strong relationship with China, is now balancing both the US and China.
Pakistan has decided not to use the CPEC platform to finance the upgrading roads linking its national motorway network to the two border crossings - at Chaman and Torkham - through which international trade with Afghanistan is conducted.
The South Morning Post reported that the World Bank is funding the new motorway from the Pakistani city of Peshawar via the storied Khyber Pass to Torkham in Afghanistan as a build-operate-transfer (BOT) project. From Torkham, it would connect to Kabul via Jalalabad.
Islamabad has also included the upgradation of the road from Chaman to the port city of Karachi - where Hong Kong's Hutchison Ports operates container terminals - into the BOT project.
Pakistan has also limited China's role in regional connectivity to motorways dedicated to connecting Gwadar to Xinjiang.

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Actual source

Providers: How Has Covid-19 Changed Your Practice?

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We want to hear from health care providers in the U.S. about how the pandemic has changed work.

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Actual source

18-hour long fight between Afghan forces, terrorists end, 29 killed

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JALALABAD/ AFGHANISTAN: The fight between Afghan forces and terrorists in Nangarhar prison in Jalalabad, which claimed at least 29 lives, has ended after almost 18 hours, reported TOLO news on Monday.
"Attack on Nangarhar prison has ended," Fawad Aman, a spokesman for Defense Ministry, was quoted as saying.
He further said the prison is now under the control of Afghan forces.
At least 29 people have been killed and 50 injured in the fighting between Afghan security forces and terrorists who raided a jail overnight, Attaullah Khogyani, Nangarhar governor's spokesman told TOLO news.
The attack has been claimed by ISIS.
Earlier, Khogyani told Al Jazeera that among the dead were prisoners as well as civilians, prison guards and Afghan security personnel.
The attack in the provincial capital Jalalabad began late on Sunday when a suicide bomber slammed his explosive-laden vehicle into the prison entrance.
Three terrorists have been killed so far.

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Actual source

Leon Fleisher, 92, Dies; Spellbinding Pianist With One Hand or Two

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An older brother, Raymond, was given piano lessons. He showed little interest in them, but when Raymond went out to play after his lessons, Leon, who was then 4 years old, would go to the piano and repeat, by ear, everything he had heard.

His mother soon decided that Leon, rather than Raymond, should study the instrument. She made her intentions for her younger son clear: He would either be the first Jewish president of the United States or he would be a concert pianist.

So devoted was his mother to his musical training that after two weeks of kindergarten, during which he objected strenuously to nap time, she withdrew him from public school and hired tutors so he could devote his time to practicing at the piano. She also found ways of bringing him to the attention of two important San Francisco conductors, Pierre Monteux and Alfred Hertz, who in turn persuaded the pianist Artur Schnabel to take Leon on as a student in 1938, when he was 9, despite his policy of not teaching children.

By the time Leon began working with Schnabel, he had already played a few concerts, but Schnabel’s single condition for teaching the boy was that there be no more concerts. Schnabel relaxed the rule in 1944 and allowed Mr. Fleisher to play the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor with Monteux and the San Francisco Symphony and then with the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, also with Monteux conducting.

Noel Strauss, reviewing the performance for The New York Times, wrote that Mr. Fleisher, making his New York debut, “scored heavily in the exacting work and at once established himself as one of the most remarkably gifted of the younger generation of American keyboard artists.”

In 1945, at Ravinia, Mr. Fleisher played the Brahms again — it quickly became one of his signature pieces — as well as the Liszt Concerto No. 2 in A, with Leonard Bernstein conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He also performed four concertos at Ravinia the next summer, under the direction of William Steinberg and Szell, who soon engaged Mr. Fleisher to perform with the Cleveland Orchestra, which he took over later that year.

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Rape claims against Conservative MP taken 'very seriously'

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Image copyright
PA Media

Rape allegations against an unnamed Conservative MP are being treated "very seriously", a senior official has said.

Chief Whip Mark Spencer said it was right the police were investigating.

The Tories have been criticised for not suspending the MP but Mr Spencer said anything that risked identifying the complainant must be avoided.

It is understood that Mr Spencer spoke with the complainant in April, but he insists that she did not make any allegation of serious sexual assault.

The MP, who is in his 50s, was arrested on Saturday and has since been bailed.

The Metropolitan Police said the allegations related to four separate incidents claimed to have taken place between July 2019 and January 2020.

The Sunday Times reported that the allegations against the former minister had been made by an ex-parliamentary employee.

What stops the media from naming rape suspects?

The police usually do not name suspects before charging them and there are two powerful parts of the law which deter the media from naming them.

Firstly, an alleged victim has automatic right under statute to lifelong anonymity. That right can only be waived in writing by the victim.

The media must therefore be careful not to add to a "jigsaw" identification and so must limit publishing any details which could help identify an alleged victim.

There are also strong privacy reasons for not naming. Cliff Richard's 2018 legal action against the BBC (and later cases) established that individuals under investigation by the state have a reasonable expectation of privacy in relation to the fact of an investigation and its details up until they are charged.

That can be displaced but only if there are sufficient public interest grounds to name the suspect. It is a balancing act which different parts of the media, advised by their different lawyers, view differently.

Which is why some parts of the media may decide to name more quickly than others.

A spokesman for the chief whip said that he took all accusations of harassment and abuse extremely seriously and had strongly encouraged anybody who has approached him to contact the appropriate authorities.

According to sources, Mr Spencer had not known the "magnitude" of the allegations.

But a report in the Daily Telegraph suggested the woman became frustrated after they spoke that nothing was done.

It is also understood the Leader of the House of Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, was told by an MP in recent weeks about the claims - with sources saying he had said the woman should contact the police.

'Very serious'

The decision not to remove the whip - which effectively expels members from the party - means he can continue to sit in the House of Commons as a Conservative.

The decision has been criticised by Labour's Jess Phillips, who said it was "shocking" and sent a "terrible message from Westminster".

Speaking to journalists as he left his home in Nottinghamshire, Mr Spencer said the allegations were "very serious" and it was up to the police to investigate them, not the whip's office.

"Once they've come to their conclusion, then we can assess where we're at and the position that the MP finds himself in," he said.

Media playback is unsupported on your device

Media captionMark Spencer says allegations are "very serious" and it was for the police to carry out their investigations.

Asked why the MP had not been suspended, he added: "Of course, we have got to bear in mind the victim, we don't want to do anything to identify the victim at the same time."

The Sunday Times, which first reported the story, said the complainant alleges that the MP assaulted her, forced her to have sex and left her so traumatised that she had to go to hospital.

The Metropolitan Police said it had launched an investigation into the allegations.

"On Friday, 31 July, the Metropolitan Police Service received allegations relating to four separate incidents involving allegations of sexual offences and assault," the force said in a statement.

"These offences are alleged to have occurred at addresses in Westminster, Lambeth and Hackney between July 2019 and January 2020."

Police said the man has been released on bail to return on a date in mid-August.

In 2016, the Commons approved changes to its procedures to end the practice of MPs being automatically identified by the Speaker if they had been arrested.

Under the rules in force since then, the MP involved will be consulted and named in Parliament only if there is an issue of "parliamentary privilege or constitutional significance" at stake.

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Actual source

7 Marines and 1 Sailor Missing in California Accident Are Presumed Dead

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Seven Marines and a sailor who were missing after an accident off the coast of Southern California are now presumed dead after search and rescue efforts were called off on Saturday evening, the authorities said.

The Marine Corps on Sunday identified the service members who had been aboard an amphibious assault vehicle that took on water and sank on Thursday. Another Marine died and two service members were injured. The episode is under investigation, the Marines said.

The service members were assigned to the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit at Camp Pendleton, in the San Diego area. Efforts were now turning to recovering the remains of the eight presumed dead, the Marines said.

Lance Cpl. Guillermo S. Perez, 20, a rifleman, was pronounced dead at the scene, the statement said. The seven Marines presumed dead, who were also riflemen, were named as Pfc. Bryan J. Baltierra, 19; Lance Cpl. Marco A. Barranco, 21; Pfc. Evan A. Bath, 19; Pfc. Jack Ryan Ostrovsky, 21; Cpl. Wesley A. Rodd, 23;Lance Cpl. Chase D. Sweetwood, 19; and Cpl. Cesar A. Villanueva, 21.

Hospitalman Christopher Gnem, 22, a sailor, was also presumed dead, the statement said.

“It is with a heavy heart that I decided to conclude the search and rescue effort,” Col. Christopher Bronzi, a commanding officer, said in a statement on Saturday. “The steadfast dedication of the Marines, sailors and Coast Guardsmen to the persistent rescue effort was tremendous.”

At the time of the accident the vehicle was traveling from San Clemente Island back to a ship that was more than 1,000 meters off shore, Gen. David H. Berger, Commandant of the Marine Corps, said on Friday.

At around 5:45 p.m., the personnel onboard reported that the A.A.V. was taking on water, the statement said.

Two nearby amphibious assault vehicles witnessed it sink and were able to pinpoint its exact location, General Berger said.

Officials said it was unclear how the accident happened. The depth of the water drops off quickly around the island, so the vehicle was in several hundred feet of water when it sank, said Lt. Gen. Joseph L. Osterman, commanding general of the I Marine Expeditionary Force. When the vehicle left shore, conditions had been acceptable for travel, he said.

General Osterman estimated that the oldest person aboard the vehicle was around mid-30s in age and that the youngest was around 18. Those on board were wearing combat gear and flotation devices, he said.

There are around 800 amphibious assault vehicles in Marine inventory, he said, each of which can carry up to 21 people and weigh 26 tons.

A.A.V.’s are slow, lightly armored and are considered by many Marines as particularly vulnerable, especially during conflict. As the Marines have sought a replacement, the A.A.V. has remained a cornerstone in the Corps’ inventory, simply because of its amphibious capabilities. It is prone to leaking while at sea from both its rear ramp and troop compartment.

Camp Pendleton hosts the largest Marine base on the West Coast, and Marines often practice beach assaults there using the amphibious troop transport vehicles.

Marines have used the vehicles to move troops from the sea and land since the 1970s. In 2017, 15 Marines were wounded when an amphibious vehicle they were training in caught fire at Camp Pendleton.

Thomas Gibbons-Neff contributed reporting.

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Coronavirus Live Updates - The New York Times

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Live with someone vulnerable? ‘You need to really consider wearing a mask at home,’ Birx says.

As the Trump administration struggles to contain the coronavirus pandemic, and the U.S. economy continues to reel, two of the administration’s top health experts on Sunday encouraged more people to voluntarily wear masks.

Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the Trump administration’s coronavirus coordinator, said that people living in the growing number of places where cases are increasing should consider wearing a mask if they live with someone who is especially vulnerable.

“If you have an outbreak in your rural area or in your city, you need to really consider wearing a mask at home, assuming that you’re positive if you have individuals in your household with co-morbidities,” Dr. Birx said on the CNN program “State of the Union.”

Adm. Brett P. Giroir, the assistant secretary for health, speaking on the NBC program “Meet the Press,” said, “Wearing a mask is incredibly important, but we have to have like 85 or 90 percent of individuals wearing a mask and avoiding crowds.” Those percentages, he said, give “you the same outcome as a complete shutdown.”

Asked if he was recommending a national mask mandate, Admiral Giroir said, “The public health message is we’ve got to have mask wearing.” He added: “If we don’t do that, and if we don’t limit the indoor crowded spaces, the virus will continue to run.”

Dr. Birx told CNN that the country is in a “new phase” of the pandemic and said, “What we are seeing today is different from March and April. It is extraordinarily widespread.” She added, “So everybody who lives in a rural area, you are not immune.”

Many states have traced new outbreaks to the loosening of the economically costly restrictions aimed at stopping the spread of the virus.

The United States recorded more than 1.9 million new infections in July, nearly 42 percent of the more than 4.5 million cases reported nationwide since the pandemic began and more than double the number documented in any other month, according to data compiled by The New York Times.

The previous monthly high came in April, when more than 880,000 new cases were recorded.

President Trump on Monday repeated his claim that the spike in cases is a result of increased testing, a position widely rejected by his own health experts.

Late last month the number of coronavirus patients hospitalized throughout the country nearly topped the record set in April, before leveling off in recent days, according to a database compiled by The Atlantic. Deaths linked to the virus, though, remain very high — over 1,000 for six days in a row — according to the Times database.

The country’s limited testing capacity has also hampered efforts to fight the spread of the disease, health officials said.

Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said on CNN that “our testing system is under such strain that we just can’t even deliver the test today that we were doing two weeks ago.”

Admiral Giroir defended the nation’s testing program, but noted that testing and contact tracing were not particularly helpful in large, communitywide outbreaks.

It begins with a mild fever and malaise, followed by a painful cough and shortness of breath. The infection prospers in crowds, spreading to people in close reach. Containing an outbreak requires contact tracing, as well as isolation and treatment of the sick for weeks or months.

This insidious disease has touched every part of the globe. It is tuberculosis, the biggest infectious-disease killer worldwide, claiming 1.5 million lives each year.

Until this year, T.B. and its deadly allies, H.I.V. and malaria, were on the run. The toll from each disease over the previous decade was at its nadir in 2018, the last year for which data are available.

Yet now, as the coronavirus pandemic spreads around the world, consuming global health resources, these perennially neglected adversaries are making a comeback.

“Covid-19 risks derailing all our efforts and taking us back to where we were 20 years ago,” said Dr. Pedro L. Alonso, the director of the World Health Organization’s global malaria program.

It’s not just that the coronavirus has diverted scientific attention from T.B., H.I.V. and malaria. The lockdowns, particularly across parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America, have raised insurmountable barriers to patients who must travel to obtain diagnoses or drugs, according to interviews with more than two dozen public health officials, doctors and patients worldwide.

Fear of the coronavirus and the shuttering of clinics have kept away many patients struggling with H.I.V., T.B. and malaria, while restrictions on air and sea travel have severely limited delivery of medications to the hardest-hit regions.

In April, with hospitals overwhelmed and much of the United States in lockdown, the Department of Health and Human Services produced a presentation for the White House arguing that rapid development of a coronavirus vaccine was the best hope to control the pandemic.

“DEADLINE: Enable broad access to the public by October 2020,” the first slide read, with the date in bold.

Given that it typically takes years to develop a vaccine, the timetable for the initiative, called Operation Warp Speed, was incredibly ambitious. With tens of thousands dying and tens of millions out of work, the crisis demanded an all-out public-private response, with the government supplying billions of dollars to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, providing logistical support and cutting through red tape.

It escaped no one that the proposed deadline also intersected nicely with President Trump’s need to curb the virus before the election in November.

The head of the World Health Organization said that while there was great progress in the global search for a vaccine for the coronavirus, people should not expect the crisis to end anytime soon.

“A number of vaccines are now in Phase 3 clinical trials and we all hope to have a number of effective vaccines that can help prevent people from infection,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the W.H.O.’s director general, told reporters on Monday. “However, there’s no silver bullet at the moment and there might never be.”

At the same time, he said, scientists and doctors are finding new ways to save lives as they learn more about the virus.

“I’m pleased that the world has made progress in identifying treatments that can help people with the most serious forms of Covid-19 recover,” Dr. Tedros said.

The impact of the virus continued to be felt far beyond just those who are infected, he said. Countries have reported reduced immunization coverage, cancer screening and care, and mental health services.

“A survey of responses from 103 countries between mid May and early July found that 67 percent of countries report disruption in family planning and contraception services,” he said.

Also on Monday, the W.H.O. said that a team of its experts had concluded a visit to China to begin investigating the source of the coronavirus.

The visit, which lasted three weeks, was the first step in what will likely be a monthslong inquiry to examine how the disease spread from animals to humans.

Beijing faces intense pressure from the United States, Australia and other countries to allow an independent investigation of the virus, which appeared in December in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. Experts worry the government may seek to limit the scope of the inquiry to avoid the release of damaging information.

Michael Ryan, head of the W.H.O.’s emergencies program, said that Chinese scientists had provided the agency’s experts with information about their investigations into a seafood market in Wuhan where many of the first reported infections were traced. He said that the two sides had agreed that more in-depth studies would be necessary to determine the source of the outbreak.

“There are gaps in the epidemiological landscape,” Dr. Ryan said. “We must start where the human disease appeared to begin and work from there.”

With the White House and Democrats still far apart on an economic recovery plan, an informal adviser is pressing President Trump to bypass Congress and unilaterally impose a temporary payroll tax cut.

Republicans and Democrats have expressed no interest in Mr. Trump’s push for a payroll tax cut amid the coronavirus recession, a proposal that would do little to help the tens of millions of Americans who lost jobs during the crisis, and which Democrats regard as an effort to undermine the finances of Social Security.

But Stephen Moore, the conservative economist whom Mr. Trump floated — then rescinded — as a nominee for the Federal Reserve board last year, urged the president in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Sunday to declare that the Treasury Department would temporarily stop collecting the taxes that workers pay to help support Social Security and Medicare. Workers would still be on the hook to pay those taxes next year.

Mr. Moore and a colleague at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, Phil Kerpen, suggested that Mr. Trump then pledge to sign a bill to permanently absolve workers of that tax liability.

“Mr. Trump can give Americans a tax cut now,” they wrote, “and sign it into law later.”

Such a move would carry steep political and economic risks for Mr. Trump, and he has not yet indicated publicly that he is considering it, though he did post a renewed call for payroll tax cuts this weekend on Twitter, after his lead negotiators dropped it last week from their list of demands for the relief bill.

While White House officials and Democratic leaders reported some progress over the weekend in their talks, they still have substantial differences. Democrats are pushing a $3 trillion rescue plan that would include restoring $600-per-week jobless aid payments that expired on Friday and extending them through January, while Republicans have proposed a $1 trillion package that would slash the unemployment payments considerably.

President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines on Sunday ordered Manila and its suburbs to re-enter lockdown for two weeks as the health department reported 5,032 new cases of the coronavirus.

Group gatherings were prohibited, and residents were advised to stay at home. Public transportation was halted, domestic flights and inter-island ferries remained suspended, and the government encouraged biking. Schools will remain shut.

Infections spiked after the government eased lockdown rules and gradually opened up in an effort to jump-start the economy. But instead of managing the numbers, it has resulted in grim results, with hospitals overwhelmed and doctors warning they were reaching a breaking point. In an appeal to the government on Saturday, the Philippine College of Physicians, the country’s main organization of doctors, warned that the health system “has been overwhelmed.”

This came shortly after Manila’s city government ordered the temporary closure of its two hospitals, citing the growing number of health care workers who have been infected. It said that the city’s health care workers are burned out “with the seemingly endless number of patients trooping to our hospitals for emergency care and admission.”

Total cases in the country now stand at 103,185, with 2,059 deaths.

Mr. Duterte told officials to “strictly enforce the quarantine, especially the lockdown.”

“I have heard the call of different groups from the medical community for a two-week enhanced community quarantine in mega Manila,” he said. “I fully understand why your health workers would like to ask for such a timeout period. They have been in the front lines for months and are exhausted.”

In other news from around the world:

• Russia plans to launch a nationwide vaccination campaign in October with a coronavirus vaccine that has yet to complete clinical trials, raising international concern about the methods the country is using to compete in the global race to inoculate the public.

• Officials in Melbourne, Australia’s second-largest city, announced stricter measures on Sunday in an effort to stem a coronavirus outbreak that is raging despite a lockdown that began four weeks ago. For six weeks, residents of metropolitan Melbourne will be under curfew from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. except for purposes of work or giving and receiving care.

• India’s biggest film star, Amitabh Bachchan, was discharged from the hospital on Sunday after recovering from Covid-19, and the country’s powerful home minister, Amit Shah, announced that he had tested positive. Mr. Bachchan, 77, was hospitalized for three weeks.

• Kosovo’s prime minister, Avdullah Hoti, said on Sunday that he had contracted Covid-19 and would self-isolate at home for two weeks, Reuters reports. “I have no signs, except a very easy cough,” he wrote on Facebook.

To better understand the cost of health care during the pandemic, The Times is asking for your medical bills.

Americans have been battling surprise coronavirus bills for nearly as long as they’ve been fighting the disease itself. Tests can cost between $199 and $6,408 at the same location. A coming wave of treatment bills could be hundreds of multiples higher, especially for those who receive intensive care or have symptoms that linger for months. Services that patients expect to be covered often aren’t.

As part of an effort to understand how the pandemic is reshaping American health care, The New York Times is starting something new today: soliciting your medical bills.

You can read more about the project and submit your medical bills here. One woman’s story is below:

When Debbie Krebs got the bill for a March emergency room visit, she immediately noticed something was missing: her coronavirus test.

Ms. Krebs, a lawyer who focuses on insurance issues, had gone to the Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, N.J., with lung pain and a cough. A doctor ran tests and scans to rule out other diseases before swabbing her nose. A week later, the medical laboratory called, telling her it was negative.

Ms. Krebs had a clear memory of the experience, particularly the doctor saying the coronavirus test would make her feel as if she had to sneeze. She wondered whether the doctor could have lied about performing the test, or if her swab could have gone missing. (But if so, why had the laboratory called her with results?)

The absence of the coronavirus test made a big price difference. Congress, Ms. Krebs had heard, barred insurers from charging patients for visits meant to diagnosis coronavirus. Without the test, Ms. Krebs didn’t qualify for that protection and owed $1,980. She called the hospital to explain the situation but immediately ran into roadblocks.

“When I called the hospital, they said, ‘You did not get a coronavirus test,’” she said. “I told them I absolutely did.”

Five months into the pandemic, an expanding universe of distinctive small businesses that give New York’s neighborhoods their unique personalities and are key to the city’s economy are starting to topple.

More than 2,800 businesses in New York City have permanently closed since March 1, according to data from Yelp, the business listing and review site, a higher number than in any other large American city.

About half the closings have been in Manhattan, where office buildings have been hollowed out, its wealthier residents have left for second homes and tourists have stayed away.

When the pandemic eventually subsides, roughly one-third of the city’s 240,000 small businesses may never reopen, according to a report by the Partnership for New York City, an influential business group. So far, those businesses have shed 520,000 jobs.

While New York is home to more Fortune 500 headquarters than any city in the country, small businesses are the city’s backbone. They represent roughly 98 percent of the employers in the city and provide jobs to more than three million people, which is about half of its work force, according to the city.

When New York’s economic lockdown started in March the hope was that the closing of businesses would be temporary and many could weather the financial blow.

But the devastation to small businesses has become both widespread and permanent as the economy reopens at a slow pace. Emergency federal aid has failed to provide enough of a cushion, people remain leery of resuming normal lives and the threat of a second wave of the virus looms.

Reporting was contributed by Peter Baker, Benedict Carey, Jason Gutierrez, Matthew Haag, Javier C. Hernández, Annie Karni, Sarah Kliff, Andrew E. Kramer, Sharon LaFraniere, Apoorva Mandavilli, Azi Paybarah, Eileen Sullivan, Jim Tankersley, Katie Thomas, Noah Weiland and Sameer Yasir.

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