Live updates: America’s mental health is suffering; Trump mocks reporter over ‘politically correct’ mask

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death toll nears 100,000, with unemployment soaring and people in some parts of the country still under coronavirus restrictions, a third of Americans are showing signs of clinical anxiety or depression, according to new Census Bureau data.

Meanwhile, partisan battles over wearing face coverings in public continued as President Trump mocked a mask-wearing reporter for being “politically correct.” Joe Biden, Trump’s presumptive Democratic rival who was seen wearing a mask on Memorial Day, called the president a “fool” and accused him of “stoking deaths.” Trump has refused to cover his face in public, defying recommendations from public health experts.

BRUSSELS — European Union leaders on Wednesday proposed an $825 billion coronavirus rescue plan that would give Brussels major new powers akin to integrating the bloc into a federal state.

Hannity said wearing masks is common sense, considering what is known about how the novel coronavirus impacts vulnerable populations.

Hannity’s comments are washing into the growing sea of Republican and conservative voices who are encouraging face coverings as President Trump mocks the choice as a sign of political correctness.

Only about half of Americans say they definitely would get vaccinated against the novel coronavirus once a vaccine becomes available, according to a poll released Wednesday by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

The Trump administration has pledged to produce a vaccine by the end of the year, a highly ambitious timetable, health experts say.

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MADRID — Spain came to a standstill at noon local time on Wednesday as the country paused for a moment of silence on the first of the government-declared 10 days of national mourning for the more than 27,000 lives lost to the coronavirus in Spain.

With its entire membership of 51,000 professional actors and stage managers out of work, Actors’ Equity Association on Tuesday announced the health and safety guidelines it expects theaters to follow before it will authorize its members to return to the stage.

Every member of the 2019 World Cup championship squad competes in the NWSL, but its eighth season is on hold amid the coronavirus pandemic.

They said holding the parade in the District, which has experienced one of the nation’s worst coronavirus outbreaks, contradicts guidance from public health officials about social distancing.

Read the lawmakers’ letter to President Trump.

“As President Trump has said, there will be an Independence Day celebration this year, and it will have a different look than 2019 to ensure the health and safety of those attending,” Deere wrote in an email.

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The new figures were released as the World Health Organization’s Americas director, Carissa Etienne, warned countries in the region against easing restrictions, saying in an online briefing on Tuesday: “Our region has become the epicenter of the covid-19 pandemic.”.

He previously dismissed the coronavirus pandemic as a “fantasy.”.

President Trump is scheduled to huddle in the Oval Office on Wednesday with New York Gov.

“The time to do this work is now when you need the jobs and the volume is low, and New York will lead the way,” Cuomo said during a news briefing Tuesday.

Cuomo last visited Trump in April to talk about coronavirus testing.

The latest meeting comes as Trump has been voicing frustration that governors are getting higher marks for their handling of the coronavirus than he is.

“We made most Governors look very good, even great, by getting them the Ventilators, unlimited Testing, and supplies, all of which they should have had in their own stockpiles,’ Trump tweeted on Tuesday.

An illegal soccer match in France that drew a crowd of hundreds over the weekend could prompt a regional resurgence of the coronavirus, authorities warned, as the country tries to emerge from the pandemic.

“If there are other events like those on Sunday, all the work done to contain the virus over the two months of lockdown will be put into question,” said Roland Reis, the mayor of Strasbourg, according to Agence France-Presse.

“Our number one concern is health,” one official, Josiane Chevalier, said, according to AFP.

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Intensive care units in Chile are nearing capacity, the country’s health officials said Tuesday, as the coronavirus pandemic forces doctors to make unthinkable choices about whose lives to prioritize.

“This is an extraordinarily difficult time,” said Jaime Mañalich, the Chilean health minister, according to the Associated Press.

He is one of nearly 500 migrants in Kenya, more than 3,000 across Africa and 10,000 worldwide —­ the vast majority of whom are refugees —­ whose approved resettlement in third countries has been put on indefinite hold by the coronavirus, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Major League Baseball and its players’ union began formal talks Tuesday over the most contentious issue facing the sport in its desperate, last-ditch effort to get back on the field amid an ongoing global pandemic: how to compensate players for a shortened season that will almost certainly be played without fans.

LONDON — British Housing Minister Robert Jenrick said Wednesday it was time to “move on” from the scandal of a top government adviser flouting coronavirus restrictions with a road trip, but it seems as though much of the public isn’t ready to.

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Doug Burgum (R) offered an emotional plea that has been rare among President Trump’s allies: to stop a senseless and counterproductive culture war over the wearing of masks during the coronavirus outbreak.

With bigoted incidents against Asian Americans on the rise across the country, New York says it will devote $100,000 to combat discrimination during the coronavirus pandemic.

An increase in terms such as “Chinese virus” and “kung flu,” including their use by President Trump, have conflated the pandemic with ethnic and national identity.

SEOUL — South Korea added 40 new cases of the coronavirus on Wednesday, its highest daily caseload in nearly 50 days, as an infection cluster emerged at a logistics facility run by South Korea’s biggest e-commerce company.

At least 36 cases have been traced to an outbreak at Coupang’s logistics center in city of Bucheon near the capital, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday.

Infection numbers from the new outbreak could grow as about 3,600 people work at the center, said Vice Health Minister Kim Gang-lip.

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It’s not just President Trump who says he’s been taking it.

Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s 38-year-old head of state, said Tuesday that he, too, has been under a regimen for hydroxychloroquine, the antimalarial drug controversially promoted by his U.S.

“I use it as a prophylaxis, President Trump uses it as a prophylaxis, most of the world’s leaders use it as a prophylaxis,” Bukele said, according to Reuters.

A Pentagon watchdog who was removed last month from his position overseeing the government’s coronavirus response amid a purge of inspectors general has resigned from the Defense Department, a spokeswoman said Tuesday.

President Trump had dismissed Glenn Fine as the Defense Department’s senior inspector general and as chairman of a committee overseeing the Trump administration’s management of a massive economic stimulus package designed to blunt the impact of the coronavirus crisis.

North Carolina officials this week demanded a written safety plan from the organizers of the Republican National Convention, as the state’s Democratic leaders continue to clash with President Trump over the massive gathering slated for August in Charlotte.

Roy Cooper (D) said at a news conference Tuesday.

New cases of the novel coronavirus have been surging in Mecklenburg County, which includes Charlotte.

Asked about Trump’s tweets, Cooper said Tuesday he is “not surprised at anything that happens on Twitter.”.

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“I think it’s unimaginable at this point,” said Wang, who works in health policy but is enrolling in medical school this fall.

teachers say they are not likely to return to their classrooms this fall if schools reopen — and most parents and educators believe that school buildings will open, according to polls published Tuesday.

The polls — one taken of K-12 teachers and the other of parents with school-age children — found that 73 percent of parents and 64 percent of teachers said they believe that children will eventually make up for learning lost because of the disruption of school during the coronavirus crisis

While the lockdown slowed the spread of the novel coronavirus, experts say, it did not succeed in flattening the curve

The chief watchdog for the Department of Health and Human Services, being replaced as part of President Trump’s purge of inspectors general, told lawmakers on Tuesday that freedom from political intrusion is “a key safeguard for the programs we oversee.”

Christi Grimm, HHS’s principal deputy inspector general, spoke out for the first time since she was excoriated by the president for a report from her office that found “severe shortages” earlier this spring of supplies to help hospitals cope with the novel coronavirus pandemic