#steven universe ALMOST had this but then they shortened the show and forced it to end in a really unsatisfying way

[kraviolis]

you can tell when a show is really fucking good and satisfying when there isnt an insane amount of AUs and most fan content is just expanding or elaborating on or celebrating the canon

[shirlleycoyle]

The Movie Theater as We Know It Is Dying. We Can Make Something Better

One of the things this pandemic has taken from us is the summer blockbuster. The summer months came and went, and throughout that time movie-goers largely stayed home. For people like director Christopher Nolan, whose movie Tenet released in theaters after a delayed launch and performed below expectations, this is a sign of the end of cinema. Outside of the strict confines of Hollywood, though, small theaters and distributors are seeing new ways to show movies and create community. Along the way, they're redefining what it means to be movie theaters.

The blockbuster is a relatively new invention. Although the early days of cinema had movies that were huge hits—like the 1927 movie It, which turned Clara Bow into a star and smashed box office records at the time—one movie dominating theaters for an entire summer wouldn't happen for another 30 years. Steven Spielberg's Jaws and George Lucas's Star Wars ushered in the age of the blockbuster in the 70s, in a time when the landscape of cinema was moving away from the studio system and into uncharted waters.

Cinema is at another crossroads now, in the age of the pandemic. In New York and Los Angeles, two of the biggest cities for movies, theaters are not allowed to open, and haven't been since March. Rather than a Marvel movie topping the charts at the end of the year, Sonic the Hedgehog has dominated by virtue of just being able to come out. The success of Trolls World Tour had studios scared back in April; it made over one hundred million dollars premiering as a digital rental. In response, AMC threatened to stop screening movies from Trolls' studio, Universal. One movie theater chain, Regal, has closed all of its 536 theaters in the US, blaming New York's pandemic rules for the closure.

Tenet | Image Source: Warner Bros.

From the start, Nolan has made it a personal mission to continue to support movie theaters. Not only has he refused anything except a traditional, theater first release for Tenet, he has written op-eds about keeping theaters open and made a point to see movies in theaters himself. But the very real threat of COVID-19 has gotten in the way of seeing movies in theaters—by December, the movie had only grossed around $57 million domestically, though the international gross has been higher, at $300 million. The movie cost $200 million to make.

Tenet's dismal performance seems like the final nail in the coffin. Some of the movies that were supposed to open concurrently with Tenet, like the new Wonder Woman movie, have changed their strategies so that they're available to watch at home at the same time as they're available in theaters. Theater chains like AMC have struck deals to shorten the window between theatrical runs and movies becoming available on video on demand services. Even more recently, Warner Bros. has announced that their entire slate of movies for 2021 would premiere on HBO Max as well as in theaters.

The pandemic has forced movie theaters to change a system of distribution that has been in place for over half a century. This doesn't just mean figuring out how to show movies online, but how to serve the communities that rise up around theaters themselves.

When the pandemic started, Spectacle Theater was a 35-seat, volunteer-run theater in Williamsburg that showed movies from way, way off the beaten path. It immediately complied with the order to close in March, but it was difficult for the volunteers who run the theater to know what to do next. After one of the volunteers started streaming movies on their Twitch channel, the members of Spectacle decided to have Twitch streams of their own.

Spectacle Theater is a microcinema, with about 30 seats. Its space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn is so small that I have walked past it every day when I used to commute to the VICE office without noticing it once. Caroline Golum, a programmer from Spectacle who said they were speaking in their capacity as a member of the non-hierarchical, volunteer-run theater and not as its leader, said that some of its screenings would have as little as five people in the audience before the pandemic.

"We like to say that if we had a dollar for every person who was like, 'I love Spectacle,' but hasn't actually shown up, we would be on fucking easy street," Golum told Motherboard.

On Twitch, it's a different story. They got viewers in much, much higher numbers than their theater would have been able to seat, as well as attracting people from all over the world who had only been to their theater once, if at all.

“Christopher Nolan is encouraging theaters to open up in the middle of the pandemic. This was the wrong thing to be crusading for right now.”

"In May or in April, we did a series of screenings with Matt Farley and Charles Roxburgh who are two regional filmmakers from New Hampshire who make these shoestring budget genre films. They've been doing it for like 20 years. In an alternate universe, those guys would be famous and Kevin Smith would be a fucking nobody, and you can print that," Golum said.  "They were in the chat and people were asking them like, 'Where'd you film this? What were your favorite influences?' all this stuff. And they loved it."

"I think for filmmakers who don't have an avenue for public exhibition but make work that should be viewed collectively, it's nice for them to have an opportunity to know that their work is being seen," they continued.

Spectacle has worked with organizers and programmers from all over the world, giving them an international reputation. Programming on Twitch has allowed the people who have always wished they could have gone to Spectacle a chance to actually attend. Spectacle now has over 2,000 followers on Twitch, several hundred times more than would fit inside the theater. Spectacle is now offering a membership to their out of state and international fans so that they can support the theater monetarily from afar.

"I was just surprised by the number of people that were like, 'Oh, I've always wanted to go to Spectacle and I never got to,' or someone that lived in London was like, 'I've been following your programming and can never got to catch anything,'" Golum said.

Spectacle Theater | Image Source: Spectacle Theater

For Aliza Ma, director of programming at Metrograph, a renowned art house theater in Lower Manhattan, not being able to show movies meant a chance to reevaluate what a theater can be. For starters, opening a theater at this moment in time is not the right approach, she said.

"Christopher Nolan is encouraging theaters to open up in the middle of the pandemic. This was the wrong thing to be crusading for right now. It felt like a sort of misguided or misplaced machismo almost," Ma said. "Maybe the better thing to do would be to ask for some subsidies to get all these artistic institutions through this time of hardship instead of asking for the normalcy that we were used to, when that's just going to endanger our lives."

There are ways that a theater can serve its community without showing movies, and Metrograph has explored some of those options. Ma said that during the Black Lives Matter protests, Metrograph was able to open as a space for protesters to get water, charge their phones, and rest.

"When the protests were breaking out, we were in between having closed and trying to launch a new website," Ma said. She said that it felt wrong not to say anything about the mounting unrest in New York; protests against police brutality would march through Lower Manhattan, where Metrograph is located. Ma and the rest of the staff at Metrograph also wanted to take physical action.

"So we got together on a meeting and we said, 'We know so many people who are organizing in that neighborhood or who could be in that neighborhood, and you know, all we would need to do is get power strips for people to be able to charge their phones. We could get water bottles for people. We can just open up the bathrooms for people,'" she said.

Ma said that the approach that other theaters have taken, where they have tried to crunch the numbers on how many staff they can have on site and how little money they can charge for a ticket in order to break even, was not what Metrograph wanted to do.

"It's really sad. I mean, it's not really gonna make much of a difference at the end of the day. There's no thinking outside the box here. Movie theaters are an important social institution that could be reappropriated at this time…. I was really glad that, you know, when the protest started in April, that we were able to open our lobby to protestors. Just because we couldn't show movies doesn't mean we couldn't be another sort of support pillar for that neighborhood."

Pivoting to Twitch was an easy move for Spectacle not just because members of the organization already knew how to use it. The moviegoing experience isn't just about sitting in the dark in front of a huge screen—it's also about being with other people who love movies, and Twitch's chat function is an easy way to replicate that part of the experience. While geared towards games, at the end of the day, Twitch is a service where anyone can broadcast whatever they'd like; Spectacle is simply using the service in the same way one would use public access television.

Metrograph, for its part, built their own proprietary streaming service in order to make this work. Though there are video hosting services that they could have used, Ma said that they don't have all the features necessary to replicate the essential aspects of seeing a movie in a theater. Metrograph recently launched a new website, along with its own proprietary streaming service which functions very differently from buying a movie on demand, or watching one through a streaming service like Netflix.

Metrograph's online screenings have a pre-show that begins ten minutes before show time, as well as introductions, question and answer sessions, and sometimes a panel discussion. The actual movie starts later, and the archive of the entire screening remains as a VOD for 72 hours.

“Why are we relying on these corporate-backed streaming platforms when we are very vehemently opposed to corporate media?"

"A nice thing that I miss about showing up early to a film and is then being able to sit in the theater and just kind of watch upcoming trailers or whatever other ephemera ends up being shown in the pre-show," Ma said.

"Even though you're not in the same building, there's a collective sense that everyone's tuning in at the same time to watch something which is kind of comforting right now," she added.

Exploring these new avenues has also led to some dead ends. When I spoke with Spectacle Theater, it had just been served its first strike on its Twitch channel for nudity for showing the 1973 satirical French film Themroc. To get around this, Spectacle is now building its own streaming platform, similar to Metrograph, but with a couple of differences that would better suit its audience. For example, Spectacle's experiences with Twitch have led it to include a chat feature in its streaming platform, because it found that people watching its programming enjoyed being able to talk about the films without disturbing other people.

"I think we had a lot of reservations about the chat function because you rightly hear so many horror stories about the nature of these chats on gaming platforms. You know, obviously hashtag not all gamers, but it can be a bit of a cesspool," Golum told Motherboard. "At the end of the day, we don't really have to do much moderation because our audience is predominantly pretty chill. It's just people who like weird movies and want to hang out, it's a really good vibe in there. It's also really interesting to see how people engage with the chat when the filmmakers are in there too."

Golum also said that they would make their code open source, allowing other theaters to develop their own streaming video services with the backbone they developed.

Movie theaters are the site of a community, a place for people to not just see a movie, but engross yourself in the culture of cinema with your friends and family.

"The impulse behind that was: why are we relying on these corporate-backed streaming platforms when we are very vehemently opposed to corporate media and our whole programming ecosystem is designed to go against the grain of what you're seeing in movie theaters and festivals?" Golum said. "That was kind of the impetus was to build something that's, if you'll pardon the expression, for us by us, that will allow us to kind of control the narrative around what we stream and not have to worry about takedowns."

Across the country, some independent theaters are making some of the same pivots to online screenings as Metrograph and Spectacle.

The Roxie Theater in San Francisco is now offering an online membership similar to Metrograph, for example. Chicago's Music Box Theater started an online movie rental service called The Music Box At Home, where proceeds from the rentals go towards keeping the theater in business. Some cinemas, like Seattle's Northwest Film Forum, are screening ticketed movies through sites like Eventive, taking advantage of video hosting sites like Vimeo to give the viewer access to the film in question for a limited time. All of these are attempts to do more than just get people to watch movies, but to recreate what we like about going to the movies when we're all stuck at home.

While Twitch and bespoke streaming services are decent stopgaps, it's  clear that the technology necessary to create an industry where more kinds of movies are accessible outside of major cities has just not been invented.

Hollywood has existed in a system where a major blockbuster could buffer the loss from an arthouse indie movie that plays on only a few screens in Los Angeles and New York. It's a system that is controlled and defined by film distributors like Universal or A24, which set release dates and make the films available to theaters. As that system collapses, it's easy to see not just how it's done a disservice to those films, but also to people who would have loved them.

Brett Kashmere, executive director at Canyon Cinema, a distributor of 16mm films and experimental and avant garde cinema said that on their end, demand for work from their collection is still huge, especially from libraries, which is their primary audience. They just don't have the technology to deliver it.

"We're in the process of reviewing all of our artists contracts and figuring out if we need to put any language for licensing of work to a library for like three years," Kashmere said. "That's what libraries are increasingly interested in, is not actually purchasing a physical media copy of something, but they're also not really capable of actually dealing with digital files. So they don't want to buy a digital file and they don't want to buy a physical copy, but they want us to be able to stream."

Canyon Cinema's small size compared to much larger, more corporate distributors, is an advantage. It might not have the same capital backing, but it's able to make these pivots very quickly, allowing Canyon to catch up with the changing market during the pandemic much faster than Disney or Universal can. Similarly, both Ma and Golum said that their small sizes as organizations have allowed them to make decisions on the fly during a time when the future of the industry is uncertain.

"I think we were in a really privileged position being a small team that we could all just executively decide [open our doors to protesters], being on, you know, a similar political wavelength and having this camaraderie between coworkers," Ma said regarding Metrograph's choice to support the Black Lives Matter protesters. "I don't think this would have been possible with a bigger nonprofit institution, even if the personal political desire was there."

A scene from Made In Hong Kong, currently screening at Metrograph's wesbite | Image Source: Made In Hong Kong

In comparison, the solutions being rolled out by large movie chains like AMC and Regal seem untenably slow and ill-suited to the task. While Regal has permanently closed all its locations, AMC is now allowing potential movie goers the opportunity to rent out an entire theater to see a movie. Though new movies are coming out in a slow trickle, it's been clear that audiences do not want to go to movie theaters as the pandemic still rages, making this venture a questionable idea at best.

But going to the movies is about a lot more than just putting your butt in a seat. They are the site of a community, a place for people to not just see a movie, but engross yourself in the culture of cinema with your friends and family. As Spectacle and Metrograph demonstrate, there's still a need for that kind of community space among movie lovers.

These theaters are not just attempting to solve the problem of showing movies in a pandemic. They're trying to find a new space for the lobby where you talk about the movie with your friends, the exclusive showings with director Q&As, and the smart screening series put together by film scholars as well. Their success is an indication that the heart of cinema lies with these endeavors, and not necessarily the relatively new phenomenon of the blockbuster.

Before there's a widespread vaccine for Covid-19, movie theaters are either going to have to find ways to pivot to digital, or close their doors. Nolan tried his absolute hardest, but Tenet was not able to bring moviegoers back to theaters in a way that could stave off that reality. Nolan has said that people are "drawing the wrong conclusions" from Tenet's performance at the box office, saying that the movie has grossed a lot more money than most people thought possible during the pandemic. He went so far as to say that the decision to stream new releases on HBO Max on the same day they premiere in theatres "makes no economic sense."

Nolan isn't exactly wrong about this, but he's also not quite right. His own adventure in premiering Tenet in theaters despite the pandemic appears to prove him wrong. That big-budget studio blockbuster did not save movie theaters. If movie theaters are going to survive, they need to save themselves.

The Movie Theater as We Know It Is Dying. We Can Make Something Better syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[spirit-science-blog]

Having talked about the Secret Government, we've begun to get a glimpse into the scenes behind society at large... but things take a strange turn the deeper we go, as many of the mysteries surrounding the Secret Government suggest hidden powers beyond our wildest dreams. If these stories are correct, then the battle for human consciousness may go well beyond just humanity but indeed grab at the ultimate powers of the universe itself.

Directed Energy Weapons

Over the last several years, the Directed Energy Weapons conspiracy has taken root across the internet. As major fires the previous several years, from California to Australia, speculation that these were not natural fires quickly took the internet by storm, as hundreds of thousands of people shared videos showing what appeared to be a laser-beam striking the area of the fire, often just before the inferno began. These Directed Energy Weapons, shortened now to DEW’s, are believed to be powerful super-weapons using satellite technology or stealth aircraft. It is part of a difficult to detect weaponization of the skies heavens.

Looking back to nearly 100 years ago, it’s well known that Nikola Tesla himself was working on a “Death Ray.” However, he provided a different, more neutral title - “particle beam,” developed under the codename Salesforce. This device supposedly accelerated pellets or slugs of material to a high velocity inside a vacuum chamber using electrostatic repulsion. It then fired them out of aimed nozzles at intended targets. When talking about his device in 1934, he explained that “many thousands of horsepower can thus be transmitted by a stream thinner than a hair, so that nothing can resist''....going on to say that in theory it could “bring down a fleet of 10,000 enemy airplanes at a distance of 200 miles from a defending nation's border, and will cause armies to drop dead in their tracks”...culminating in the tag line that it would be “a weapon to end all wars.”

After he died, we also know that John Trump found when he was brought in by the Office of Alien Custody, a box containing a part of Tesla's "death ray" a 45-year-old multidecade resistance box...which is an instrument that can replicate different electrical values in a circuit.

Is it possible that Tesla’s Particle Beam laid the groundwork for the so-called DEW’s being used today? And if so… What reason would there be for using it to start California and possibly Australia fires?

The first time DEW’s were brought to the public's attention was in 2017 when Napa, California, suffered the biggest wildfire in its history. Countless YouTube investigations took place into videos and photos of fires skipping houses and trees, seemingly burning straight lines through the community. The next year, two separate California fires began on November 8 of 2018, the “Camp Fire” and the Woosley Fire. Once again, people noticed some pictures and video captured that seemed to show evidence of energy beams from the heavens assaulting the Golden State.

Things become even weirder when we consider this video of a tree burning from the inside, begging the question - how would this even happen? Some might suggest that it was hit by lightning, but rather unlikely amid a wildfire, especially seeing that around the tree, there doesn’t look like there’s much fire around it.

The wildfires were indeed extraordinary… Consider the images of cars melting on the road near intact wildlife, houses burned to ash beside their unharmed neighbors, and other oddities. While, of course, some people may have set their homes on fire amidst the chaos to cash in on their insurance, there’s enough evidence here to suggest there’s more at play than just that.

But the most incriminating evidence for the use of DEW’s is this satellite data collected on the scene. This video was released only on Sept 8, 2020, showing that DEW’s are a significant likelihood of explaining these devastating wildfires' origins.

So, if it is true that wildfires are being started with DEWs, then who is behind it? Why are they doing it? Is it the Chinese or the Russian trying to attack the U.S. covertly? Is it the government trying to clear land or cause panic and poverty to breed dependence in its population?

Many theorists suggest that the fires both in California and Australia happened to be along the paths that long-proposed high-speed rail networks would be built and that military testing may

Very well have been performed in a location that would clear space of cheap land for the government at the same time.

In the case of the Australia fire, despite funding being approved in 2017, their high-speed rail project would go on to face unexpected delays, costs, legal disputes, and questions over its actual economic value, with a leaked confidential document written in 2012 revealing that the project would knowingly be a net financial drain for the country. This is mostly because the land that had to be secured for it would cost about 3.5 billion dollars, involving buying out the land from homeowners and clearing away Australian wildlife.

Interestingly, an update from the US Department of Defense themselves as recently as September 16th seemingly confirmed the presence of, or at least research into DEW’s, saying that “New technologies are fundamentally changing the character of war, and the two Air Force services are leading that charge….China and Russia seek to erode our longstanding dominance in airpower through long-range fires, anti-access/area-denial systems and other asymmetric capabilities designed to counter our strengths”. Going on to say that “both China and Russia have placed weapons on satellites and are known to be developing directed energy weapons to exploit U.S. systems.”

While the US government hasn’t confirmed or denied if they have their own… If Russia and China have them, it would only make sense the US wouldn’t be far behind, or even secretly ahead. As we learned from Werner Von Braun, whoever controls and militarizes space ultimately contains the world. Perhaps freedom is already militarized, far more than any of us realize.

HAARP ( CHRIS - WORK YO’ MAGIC)

DEWs are only half the story, however, for just as it is believed the powers that be have immense firepower in the form of super-lasers, it’s also suggested that they have even discovered how to manipulate and control other aspects of nature - being able to create rain and snow anywhere and anytime, or even create earthquakes..which brings us to our next theory, centered around the Weather Research program HAARP. Since the mid-2000s, the HAARP program has become pretty infamous for its connection with everything from chemtrails to hurricanes. Even as recently as 2010, the Venezuelan leader Huge Chavez claimed that HAARP or a program like it triggered the Haiti earthquake…. he didn’t cite a source, and the official story is that it was caused by the slippage of a previously unmapped fault along the border of the Caribbean and North American tectonic plates.

HAARP stood for High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program and was essentially a weather research initiative. It was designed to analyze the ionosphere, a portion of the upper atmosphere that stretches from about 53 miles above the Earth's surface to 370 miles up. The program has been funded by the Air Force, the Navy, the University of Alaska, and the DARPA. I say “was” because, in May 2014, the Air Force announced that the HAARP program would be shut down later that year, but while experiments ended in the summer of 2014, the complete shutdown and dismantling of the facility was postponed until at least May 2015. Nowadays, the facility and equipment are controlled by the University of Alaska Fairbanks, which hires independent researchers.

The official research was mostly weather-based, as you would guess, but the U.S. military was also interested in the ionosphere because it plays a role in transmitting radio signals. HAARP sends radio beams into the ionosphere to study the responses from it — one of the few ways to measure this inaccessible part of the atmosphere accurately. However, the end goal of the program was to understand the physics of the ionosphere, which is continuously responding to influences from the sun. Solar flares can send solar particles racing toward Earth, occasionally disrupting communications and the electrical grid. If scientists could better understand what happens in the ionosphere, they might mitigate some of these problems.

Naturally...any notion of scientists messing with frequency signals and solar flares is a hotbed for alternative theories regarding weather manipulation, though. Michel Chossudovsky has argued that "recent evidence suggests that HAARP is fully operational and has the capability of triggering floods, hurricanes, droughts, and earthquakes.” While a lot of the theories surrounding HAARP are just conjecture, some sources have argued that during the Obama Administration, it was used to cause Hurricane Sandy… and throughout its years of operation, it has arguably been responsible for thunderstorms in Iran, Pakistan, Haiti, Turkey, Greece, and the Philippines. Even major power outages, the downing of TWA Flight 800, Gulf War syndrome, and chronic fatigue syndrome….but on a more kindly note, it was also responsible for creating the first artificially produced aurora in 2005.

Interestingly, the program cost more than $290 million to build, with much of the budget being earmarked by the late Senator Ted Stevens, who had significant influence over the U.S. defense budget during his time in Congress. When looking into the whole thing, though, two names that almost always come up are Nick Begich and his son Mark. Nick was an Alaskan politician who disappeared mysteriously in a plane crash in 1972, and over the years, his son became obsessed with uncovering mysteries. In his self-published book on HAARP, Mark claimed that a Russian military journal warned that blasting the ionosphere would trigger a cascade of electrons that could flip Earth's magnetic poles.

While it may all sound like a good fiction novel, it’s no secret that the Alaska state legislature and the European Parliament held hearings about HAARP and did get into disputes over concerns about its effects on the environment. Further, the military's response only worried theorists more. When program managers swore that the facility would "never be used for military functions," Mark went on to find military reports touting satellite-blinding research plans...along with then-secretary of Defense William Cohen's suggestion that "electromagnetic waves" could alter the climate and control earthquakes and volcanoes remotely.

Numerous theorists have also suggested that HAARP is responsible for a mysterious hum heard all around the world, along with the Targeted Individuals phenomenon using frequency targeting for specific individuals… naturally, since the facility has officially been shut down, allegations argue that such actions and cases of advanced technology are the work of the deep state… bringing us to the next part of our theory…

Time Travel

The Philadelphia experiment is probably one of the most famous advanced technology theories today, and it goes something like this. It was the summer of 1943, two years into the United States' involvement in World War II, a bloody sea battle was raging between American destroyers and the famed U-boat submarines of the Nazis. In the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, a newly commissioned destroyer called the USS Eldridge was being equipped with several large generators as part of a top-secret mission to win the Battle of the Atlantic once and for all.

Supposedly, however, these new generators weren’t just for extra engine speed...following the theoretical aspects of Project Rainbow, they were designed to power a new kind of magnetic field that would make the warship invisible to enemy radar. According to the theory, with the full crew on board, once the generators were switched on, witnesses described an eerie green glow surrounding the ship's hull. Then, almost instantaneously, the Eldridge disappeared. Not just invisible to radar, but gone — vanished into thin air.

According to supposed classified military reports, when the ship returned, members of the Eldridge crew suffered terrible burns and disorientation, along with a few crewmen being found partially embedded in the steel hull of the ship, still alive, but with legs or arms sealed to the deck.

The experiment was allegedly based on an aspect of some unified field theory, which merged theories of electromagnetism and gravity into one complete view. The generators were said to be able to bend light around an object via refraction so that the thing became completely invisible; however - other theories are far more interesting, suggesting that the Eldridge moved into a higher dimension temporarily, which is how - upon returning - people were found merged to the ship.  

Despite the crew's effects, however, some theorists put forth that the experiment was repeated on October 28, 1943. This time, the Eldridge not only became invisible, but it disappeared from the area in a flash of blue light and reappeared in Norfolk, Virginia, over 200 miles (320 km) away. It’s said that the Eldridge sat for some time because of men aboard the SS Andrew Furuseth, after which the ship vanished again and reappeared in Philadelphia at the site it had initially been occupied… And what’s more, it has somehow traveled ten minutes back in time.

To understand if there is any truth to this conspiracy experiment, we need to look at the people who first brought it to light. In general, almost everything we know about the Philadelphia experiment comes from 2 prominent people. In 1955, Ufologist, astronomer, and researcher Morris Jessup had just published his book on the case for UFOs in the government when he got two letters from a guy called Carlos Miguel Allende, who claimed to have witnessed the events of the experiment… Claiming that not only had the ship been rendered invisible but that it had shifted dimensions. Jessup thought Allende was a wacko since he claimed to have been taught by Albert Einstein himself.

In the letters, Allende explained how the U.S. military used Einstein's revelations to experiment… But after that, no other witnesses from the crew of the Eldridge or nearby ships came forward for 13 years or so. After trying to figure out if Allende’s claims had any truth to them, Jessup was frustrated and ready to drop the investigation entirely when he was contacted by two officers from the Navy's Office of Naval Research (ONR) in 1957, saying that they had received a copy of Jessup’s book annotated by handwritten notes claiming advanced knowledge of physics, that linked extraterrestrial technology to breakthroughs in unified field theory.

Jessup took a look and immediately recognized Allende’s handwriting… After which, the ONR published over 127 copies with the annotations included. Eventually, this idea became so popular in fringe theories that it was turned into a feature film in 1984.

For years Allende had claimed to be the sole witness of the experiment, claiming to have been stationed on the SS Furuseth. However, after the film's release, a man named Al Bielek came forward claiming to have personally taken part in the experiment and said that he had been brainwashed to forget. It was only after seeing the movie in 1984 did his repressed memories come flooding back.

But our story doesn’t end there… The events of Montauk Airforce Base supposedly continued where the Philadelphia experiment left off.

Following the theories put forward by Preston Nichols and Peter Moon, sometime in the late 1950s, secret researchers from the original Philadelphia Project began to research manipulating the electromagnetic fields for military use… Simultaneously looking into its effects on human psychology and behavior, and perhaps even deeper into understanding the mysterious dimensional shift that supposedly took place. A report was seemingly prepared and presented to the United States Congress, which was firmly rejected for being way too dangerous and inhumane. Instead, the researchers made direct contact with the Department of Defense, promising a powerful new weapon that could drive an enemy insane, inducing creating symptoms of schizophrenia at the touch of a button.

Without mainstream approval, the project would have to be top secret and black funded. According to the theory, the Department of Defense approved, and Project Phoenix was born. Supposedly, equipment was moved to Camp Hero at the Montauk base in the mid-late 1960s and installed in an underground bunker beneath the ground to take advantage of the satellite dishes without drawing public attention. According to conspiracy theorists, to mask the nature of the project, the site was closed in 1969 and donated as a wildlife refuge/park… Yet, even the government maintains. Camp hero remained in operation well into the 80s.

This is where the theory starts to get pretty dark as numerous people have pointed out atrocities that were supposedly committed. Supposedly, homeless people were abducted and subjected to vast amounts of electromagnetic radiation, with few surviving… People allegedly had their psychic abilities enhanced to the point where they could materialize objects out of thin air, but at the cost of their emotional and mental stability… Mind control experiments were conducted. Runaway boys were supposedly abducted and brought out to the base where they underwent excruciating periods of physical and psychological torture to break their minds, after which their minds were re-programmed… And, of course, research into time travel and dimensional doorways were happening regularly. Could this also be the legendary Montauk Monster's roots, a strange creature that washed up on shore near Montauk in 2008? Some believe that it may have even been a higher dimensional creature brought into our reality during the experiments.

After the experiments were completed, depending on which theory you read, the facility was closed for good or destroyed. All the staff was brainwashed, shot, or sworn to absolute secrecy, with all records also destroyed. According to some theories, though, research continues at the site to this day with enhanced security. One of the most popular tellings of the Montauk Experiments is with the Netflix series “Stranger Things,” of which the original title would be “Montauk.”

Mandela Effects:

If time or dimensional travel is involved, then it may be possible that humanity has existed in multiple realities or timelines and that even one instance of time travel may result in millions of people shifting into another time-stream in the multiverse, where things are ever so slightly different than they were before. The Mandela Effect is a widespread phenomenon where people in mass remember certain things differently than they are today.

Officially the phenomenon is categorized as a case of False Memory in mainstream circles. Still, the name was coined after Nelson Mandela, the former president of South Africa, was reported to have died in 2013. The problem is… countless people worldwide -including Fiona Broome, who came up with the term, distinctly remembered him dying in prison in the 1980s. Another weird example is Neil Armstrong. Strangely, despite his importance, people had no recollection of his death. Many fans apparently "forgot" or didn't notice the news of his passing in August 2012.

One of the more studied prominent examples comes from a 2010 study that examined people familiar with the clock at Bologna Centrale railway station, which was damaged in the Bologna massacre bombing in August 1980. In the survey, 92% of respondents falsely remembered the clock had remained stopped since the bombing, when, in fact, the watch was repaired shortly after the attack.

Other very well known ones include the title of the cartoon Looney Toons being spelled T.u.n.e.s rather than t.o.o.n.s, Curious George never actually having a tail, Febreeze only being spelled with one E, Forest Gump saying his famous phrase in the past tense stating that “life was like a box of chocolates,” Pikachu having a black mark on his tail but today doesn’t, Berenstein Bears spelled berenS.T.A.I.N, and even some cases of people thinking there were 51 or 52 states in the US rather than 50… Although that last one might be an indictment of the American Education System

Some more New Age proponents argue that such large scale false memories are evidence of “dimension-hopping” or shifting to an alternative or parallel universe where things are similar but ever so slightly different. The question is… If this is true, who is causing us to switch realities? Is it merely accidental..or is someone deliberately manifesting a collective fact that we’re all complicit in? If the secret government did indeed perform time-travel experiments and shifted our realities even just a bit… what else might have been changed in our past, present, or future?

You see, if the powers that be have control of this reality, then nothing is off-limits. Time and Space could be bent to the will of anyone who had the ability of technology to do so. In that case, the question is - who is ultimately driving the ship of the paradigm we exist in. Do we have any say at all in our future?

The mysteries are about to be revealed...

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[brajeshupadhyay]

Live Coronavirus News: Full Analysis

W.H.O. member nations reject Trump demands, but agree to study the organization’s virus response.

President Trump’s angry demands for punitive action against the World Health Organization were rebuffed on Tuesday by the organization’s other member nations, who decided instead to conduct an “impartial, independent” examination of the W.H.O.’s response to the pandemic.

In a four-page letter late Monday night, Mr. Trump had threatened to permanently cut off all United States funding of the W.H.O. unless it committed to “major, substantive improvements” within 30 days. It was a significant escalation of his repeated attempts to blame the W.H.O. and China for the spread of the virus and deflect responsibility for his own handling of a worldwide crisis that has killed more than 90,000 people in the United States.

But representatives of the organization’s member nations rallied around the W.H.O. at its annual meeting in Geneva, largely ignoring Mr. Trump’s demand for an overhaul and calling for a global show of support in the face of a deadly pandemic.

That left the United States isolated as officials from China, Russia and the European Union chided Mr. Trump’s heated rhetoric even as they acknowledged the need to review the W.H.O.’s response as the virus spread from China to the rest of the world.

Public health experts noted that Mr. Trump’s threats to withdraw from the organization and halt funding ignored the reality that any such moves would require the consent of Congress, something many analysts said was unlikely to occur.

But the president’s continued attacks on the W.H.O., experts said, threatened to hobble the organization at a critical moment and seriously damage international efforts to combat the virus, especially in poorer countries that heavily depend on the agency.

In a joint appearance on Tuesday before the Senate Banking Committee, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Jerome H. Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, offered a stark assessment of the fragile state of the economy, warning of more severe job losses in the months to come.

But they offered contrasting views of how best to buttress the economy: Mr. Powell suggested that more fiscal support to states and businesses might be needed to avoid permanent job losses. Mr. Mnuchin suggested that without an expeditious reopening, the economy might never fully recover. Here are key highlights from their testimony.

Mr. Mnuchin warned that the economy might sustain “permanent damage” if states extend their shutdowns for months.

Mr. Powell warned that the economy could face long-term damage if the policy response was not forceful enough and reiterated that the economy might need more help to make it through the pandemic without lasting scars. But he was careful to avoid giving Congress explicit advice and made sure to cushion his suggestions as a conditionality.

Mr. Powell suggested that the central bank might expand its program to buy municipal debt and agreed that state and local governments could slow the economic recovery if they laid off workers amid budget crunches.

Mr. Mnuchin, who previously said he expected that Treasury would return all $454 billion from Congress, changed that benchmark on Tuesday, saying the “base case” now was that the government would lose money.

“Our intention is that we expect to take some losses on these facilities,” he said. Some lawmakers have been pressing Treasury and the Fed to deploy their capital aggressively and not worry about taking losses.

Mr. Powell said even after states reopened, a full recovery would not come until the health crisis was resolved.

“The No. 1 thing, of course, is people believing that it’s safe to go back to work. And that’s about having a sensible, thoughtful reopening of the economy, something that we all want — and something that we’re in the early stages of now,” he said. “It will be a combination of getting the virus under control, development of therapeutics, development of a vaccine.”

Those comments were underscored by new economic projections released Tuesday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which suggested the recovery would depend in large part on the virus’s trajectory. The budget office projected that gross domestic product would contract by 11 percent in the second quarter and the jobless rate would hit 15 percent, with industries such as travel, hospitality and retail bearing the brunt of the losses.

“The range of uncertainty about social distancing, as well as its effects on economic activity and implications for the economic recovery over the next two years, is especially large,” the report noted, adding that “future waves could be smaller, of a similar size or larger than the initial wave experienced this spring.”

Missouri carried out the nation’s first execution in months on Tuesday.

Missouri executed a 64-year-old man on Tuesday night, the first execution since March 5, when there were fewer than 230 known virus cases in the United States.

Since then, judges in several states — including Tennessee and Texas — have postponed at least half a dozen executions after prisoners’ lawyers argued that they were needlessly risky or that their appeals had been delayed because of the pandemic.

But this week, a federal appeals court cleared the way for Missouri’s execution of Walter Barton, 64, who was convicted in 2006 of murdering an 81-year-old mobile home park manager in 1991 after being evicted. The Supreme Court declined to intervene on Tuesday evening.

Mr. Barton was pronounced dead at 6:10 p.m. Central time, following a lethal injection at a state prison in Bonne Terre, which is called the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center.

Everyone who enters the prison, including each of the nine witnesses who were scheduled to attend the execution, is required to have their temperatures taken, said Karen Pojmann, a spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Corrections. She said before the execution that the witnesses would also be given hand sanitizer and face coverings.

Mr. Barton’s murder conviction came during his fifth trial over the murder, after two mistrials and two guilty verdicts that he successfully appealed. Mr. Barton had long maintained his innocence.

Fever checkpoints at the entrances to academic buildings. One-way paths across the grassy quad. Face masks required in classrooms and dining halls. And a dormitory-turned-quarantine building for any students exposed to the virus.

Similar discussions are taking place at almost every college and university in the United States. Administrators are fiercely debating whether they can safely reopen their campuses, even as most provide students with encouraging messages about the prospects of returning in the fall.

On Monday, Notre Dame became one of the first major universities in the country to announce detailed plans for bringing back students, saying it would establish a regimen of testing and contact tracing, put quarantine and isolation protocols in place, and require students to maintain social distancing and wear masks in public.

Notre Dame said it would start its fall semester early, on Aug. 10, and skip fall break so that students could go home at Thanksgiving and not return. The University of South Carolina announced a similar schedule, saying its students would finish the semester online after Thanksgiving because its “best current modeling predicts a spike in cases” at the beginning of December. Rice University in Houston also plans a shortened fall semester, with a mixture of remote and in-person classes. And Ithaca College will go in the other direction, starting its fall semester late, on Oct. 5, to provide more time to prepare for returning students.

New York University plans to hold in-person classes in the fall, the university’s provost said on Tuesday. “We’re planning to convene in person, with great care, in the fall (subject to government health directives), both in New York and at our global sites,” the provost said.

Those decisions are in contrast to an announcement last week by the California State University System, which will keep its 23 campuses largely shut and teach nearly half a million students remotely.

Meatpacking plants across the country that have been forced to close because of outbreaks among workers are not the only food facilities that have been hit hard by the virus. A large-scale bakery, a date packing house and a mushroom farm also have emerged with clusters of cases.

Officials said the virus spread through other food facilities in the same manner as in meat-processing factories: Workers must stand close together to do their jobs and crowd into locker rooms and cafeterias.

Some of the major clusters include a Tennessee mushroom farm where more than 50 cases have been identified and the Birds Eye vegetable processing facility in Darien, Wis., which has at least 100 cases. In Abilene, Texas, the AbiMar Foods bakery has at least 52 cases. The Leprino Foods dairy facility in Fort Morgan, Colo., has more than 80 cases; a second Leprino facility in Greeley, Colo., has at least 20. And the SunDate date packinghouse in Coachella, Calif., has at least 20 cases.

More than 100 people have been sickened at Louisiana crawfish farms, but officials did not name the facilities. At a news conference on Monday, Alex Billioux, the assistant secretary of health, said some of the workers were migrants and some lived in dormitory-like settings.

Some of the employees, who are in the middle of apple processing season and are gearing up for cherry harvests, said they had not been offered testing nor ample personal protection equipment, and that they had faced recriminations from employers when they complained. Officials at one company told The Seattle Times that it did not have any cases and had provided masks and gloves as equipment became available, and was surprised by the strike. Some of the fruit processing workers said they were going on a hunger strike until conditions improved.

Some churches that tried to reopen are closing again as the virus spreads.

After briefly reopening for in-person worship services, a few churches have had to close again as the virus spread in their pews.

Holy Ghost Catholic Church in Houston closed after five leaders tested positive last weekend, following the death of one priest, Rev. Donnell Kirchner, who had been diagnosed with pneumonia. His immediate cause of death was unknown.

The church had reopened for limited Mass on May 2, and two of the priests who tested positive had been active in celebrations. The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston recommended that people who attended get tested.

In Ringgold, Ga., Catoosa Baptist Tabernacle started in-person services again in late April but stopped on May 11 after learning that members of several families had contracted the virus. Local health officials have been investigating three cases connected to the church. Services are currently closed indefinitely.

Officials remain concerned that worship gatherings could be particularly susceptible to viral spread.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday released a report about an outbreak in March at a rural Arkansas church. Of the 92 people who attended the church between March 6 and March 11, 35 tested positive and three died, the report said. The report said investigators found that 26 other people who were in contact with the people from the church events later tested positive. One person died.

Allison James, an author of the C.D.C. report, praised the pastor for closing the Arkansas church as soon as he heard of people getting sick.

“They were very proactive in closing the church to prevent further transmission,” Dr. James said. “At the time, they knew people were getting sick, but they didn’t know necessarily that it was Covid or flu or any other infectious disease. They just knew they had a cluster of something going on, and they wanted to prevent transmission. I really commend them for acting quickly.”

Visitors will be allowed at 16 hospitals around New York State, nine of them in New York City, as part of a pilot program, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Tuesday. They will be required to wear personal protective equipment, including masks, and will be subject to temperature checks.

In March, state officials issued guidance asking hospitals to suspend visitation as the virus appeared to be rapidly spreading.

“It is terrible to have someone in the hospital and then that person is isolated, not being able to see their family or friends,” Mr. Cuomo said. He added that the program was “to see if we can bring visitors in and do it safely.”

The governor’s announcement comes as only three regions in downstate New York will remain under the state’s shutdown orders; the Albany area can begin reopening on Wednesday, he said.

New York City, Long Island and the counties just north of the city known as the Mid-Hudson region all have yet to meet at least two of the seven health-related benchmarks that the governor set for parts of the state to start restarting their economies. Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City reiterated on Monday that he ​did not ​expect​ the city ​to meet the ​state’s criteria to begin to reopen until “the first half of June.”​

Mr. Cuomo — who arrived at his daily briefing wearing a face mask — also said that the state would allow Memorial Day festivities, so long as they had no more than 10 people. The state will also allow vehicle parades, provided that they are held safely and participants adhere to social distancing.

Mr. de Blasio said on Tuesday that nearly 16 percent of the city’s 1.1 million students would be asked to attend online summer school for about six weeks after the academic year ends on June 26 — about four times as many as were asked to attend summer school last year.

On Monday, police officers answering a complaint found about 60 students studying at a Hasidic yeshiva in Brooklyn, the latest of several episodes that have ignited tensions between the authorities and Hasidic Jews over enforcement of social-distancing rules. The school was closed.

Statewide, another 105 people had died, Mr. Cuomo said Tuesday. Data was released on Monday that offered the most granular picture yet of the ​pandemic’s rampage through New York City, reinforcing earlier ​signs​ that ​the virus had disproportionately affected immigrant​, black and Hispanic residents.

Michigan will mail absentee ballot applications to all of its voters for its congressional primary elections in August and the general election in November.

The goal is to help mitigate the spread of the virus, which has hit the state particularly hard, and to take advantage of a new law that was passed in 2018 and allows all voters to cast absentee ballots.

“By mailing applications, we have ensured that no Michigander has to choose between their health and their right to vote,” Michigan’s secretary of state said.

The state’s March 10 presidential primary saw half of the 2.3 million people who cast ballots use the absentee option. By May 5, when local elections were held, officials reported that 99 percent of the people who voted used absentee ballots and turnout had doubled, going from an average of 12 percent in the last nine years to 25 percent.

Local clerks in Michigan already send absentee ballot applications to 1.3 million voters, but the state will now mail applications to the rest of the 7.7 million registered voters, using $4.5 million in federal funds.

The pandemic has led many states to consider increasing absentee and mail-in voting. Mr. Trump and Republicans have been trying to limit absentee voting and voting by mail.

Increased turnout could be particularly troubling for Republicans in key battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where Mr. Trump won in 2016 by tiny margins, delivering the electoral votes he needed to win the White House.

Wisconsin and Pennsylvania both allow anyone to cast absentee or mail-in ballots. The Wisconsin Election Commission is scheduled to meet at 4 p.m. Wednesday and will decide whether to send absentee ballot applications to all of the state’s 3.3 million registered voters.

A top Democrat will oppose Trump’s nominee to be coronavirus watchdog.

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said on Tuesday that he would vote against Mr. Trump’s nominee to serve as special inspector general scrutinizing the pandemic recovery efforts, citing concerns about his independence from the president.

The nominee, Brian D. Miller, is currently a White House lawyer. Mr. Schumer said that in a private conversation, Mr. Miller would not share details about his current work responsibilities and refused to comment on Mr. Trump’s abrupt dismissal of a handful of inspectors general in recent weeks, apparently for political purposes.

“Mr. Miller’s inability to demonstrate independence from his current employer, and speak out when he sees actions from administration officials that are clearly out of bounds, is deeply troubling given that this president seems to demand blind loyalty from federal inspectors general,” Mr. Schumer said in a statement. “For those reasons, I will oppose Mr. Miller’s nomination.”

Mr. Schumer’s criticism is a strong indication that Senate Democrats will oppose Mr. Miller en masse when they vote on his nomination in the weeks to come. Mr. Miller had tried to win over Democrats in a confirmation hearing earlier this month, pledging to resist any undue influence.

Republicans are likely to have the votes to confirm him anyway, but the nomination is still winding through the Senate’s committee process.

The drug should only be used in clinical trials, the F.D.A. said, or in hospitals where patients could be closely monitored for heart problems.

Then Mr. Trump made the announcement this week that he was taking the drug himself, to try to ward off infection.

When the subject came up on Tuesday at a cabinet meeting, Mr. Trump turned to Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of Health and Human Services, which oversees the F.D.A. Mr. Azar did not dwell on the risks the F.D.A. had highlighted, noting instead that hydroxychloroquine had long been F.D.A. approved to prevent or treat lupus, malaria and rheumatoid arthritis.

“The system we have here in the United States is that, once a drug is approved and on the market, a doctor in consultation with a patient may use it for what we call off-label purposes, which are indications that are not yet proven and not yet on the label,” he said.

The study had found that hydroxychloroquine, with or without azithromycin, did not help patients avoid the need for ventilators. And it found that hydroxychloroquine alone was associated with an increased risk of death.

But the study was not a controlled trial, and patients who received the drugs were sicker to begin with. “These findings highlight the importance of awaiting the results of ongoing prospective, randomized, controlled studies before widespread adoption of these drugs,” the authors wrote.

Earlier on Tuesday, Mr. Trump seemed to take aim at that study, saying, “If you look at the one survey, the only bad survey, they were giving it to people that were in very bad shape.” He went on to say, without clarifying, that it was “a Trump enemy statement.”

At the cabinet meeting on Tuesday, the secretary of Veterans Affairs, Robert Wilkie, spoke about the study.

“That was not a V.A. study,” Mr. Wilkie said. “Researchers took V.A. numbers, and they did not clinically review them. They were not peer reviewed.”

Mr. Trump’s announcement that he had been taking hydroxychloroquine drew criticism from a range of medical experts.

“My concern would be that the public not hear comments about the use of hydroxychloroquine and believe that taking this drug to prevent Covid-19 infection is without hazards,” said Dr. Steven E. Nissen, the chief academic officer of the Miller Family Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute at the Cleveland Clinic. “In fact, there are serious hazards.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada said on Tuesday that the border between his country and the United States, where the outbreak is more severe, would remain closed for at least another month. The two nations reached an agreement to extend the closing, which was introduced in March and set to expire on Thursday.

Recently, several Canadian provincial leaders have said that they oppose a rapid reopening of the border. The United States has reported about 463 virus cases per 100,000 people, more than double Canada’s rate.

Most cases in Israel are linked genetically to the United States, a new study found.

People arriving in Israel from the United States played a significant role in spreading the virus, an Israeli nationwide genomic study of cases has found.

The analysis, led by biologists at Tel Aviv University, sequenced the genomes of virus samples from a randomly chosen representative group of more than 200 patients at six hospitals across Israel and then compared those to samples sequenced worldwide.

The findings, which have not yet been peer reviewed, called into question the Israeli government’s decision to admit travelers from the United States until March 9, though visitors from some European countries were barred as early as Feb. 26.

While only 27 percent of all travelers who tested positive for the virus had arrived in Israel from the United States, more than 70 percent of virus samples sequenced had originated in the U.S. Israel has reported 16,650 cases and 277 deaths linked to the virus.

Therese Kelly arrived for her shift at an Amazon warehouse in Hazle Township, Pa., on March 27 to find her co-workers clustered in the cavernous space. Over a loudspeaker, a manager told them what they had feared: For the first time, an employee had tested positive.

Some of the workers cut short their shifts and went home. Ms. Kelly, 63, got to work.

In the months since then, the warehouse in the foothills of the Pocono Mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania has become Amazon’s biggest hot spot.

Local lawmakers believe that more than 100 workers have contracted the disease, but the exact number is unknown. At first, Amazon told workers about each new case. But when the total reached about 60, the announcements stopped giving specific numbers.

The best estimate is that more than 900 of the company’s 400,000 blue-collar workers have had the disease. But that number, crowdsourced by Jana Jumpp, an Amazon worker, almost certainly understates the spread.

The company has been hit by the biggest surge of orders it has ever experienced and has paid workers extra to stay on the job.

Need some tips for talking to your children?

Parents are learning how to navigate difficult conversations about death, job loss and sickness, all while trying to answer questions they barely understand. Hopefully, we can help.

Reporting was contributed by Alan Blinder, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Benedict Carey, Michael Cooper, Michael Crowley, Elizabeth Dias, Nicholas Fandos, Michael Gold, Kathleen Gray, David M. Halbfinger, Anemona Hartocollis, Andrew Jacobs, Annie Karni, Dan Levin, Patricia Mazzei, Eduardo Porter, Alan Rappeport, Dagny Salas, Dionne Searcey, Eliza Shapiro, Michael D. Shear, Natasha Singer, Jeanna Smialek, Mitch Smith, Kaly Soto, Robin Stein, Matt Stevens, Eileen Sullivan, Jim Tankersley, Katie Thomas, Karen Weise, Edward Wong and David Yaffe-Bellany.

The post Live Coronavirus News: Full Analysis appeared first on Sansaar Times.

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The Americans, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and More – The Weekend Chill

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The Americans, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and More – The Weekend Chill

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Over the weekend, Amazon picked up sci-fi series The Expanse for a fourth season, after it had been cancelled by Syfy earlier in May. On Tuesday, Deadline brought word that Jamie Foxx would play the lead role in creator Todd McFarlane’s film adaptation of his comic book Spawn, about a black ops guy who dies, ends up in Hell, and is then sent back to Earth as a demonic warrior.

On Wednesday, Woody Harrelson confirmed in an interview that he does indeed have a role in the upcoming Spider-Man spin-off Venom, and revealed that he’s also signed up for a sequel. There’s no official word on his role, but rumours abound that Harrelson might be playing serial killer Cletus Kasady aka Carnage. We’ll find out when Venom releases October 5.

Also on Wednesday, Deadline said that Apple had greenlit a comedy based on 19th-century poet Emily Dickinson, with Hailee Steinfeld (The Edge of Seventeen) in the lead role. On Thursday, Variety reported that Westworld’s James Marsden had been cast for Sonic the Hedgehog movie, where he’ll reportedly play a cop named Tom who teams up with Sonic. The film is slated for November 15, 2019.

Lastly, we got a poster and synopsis for How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, which presents a romantic interest for the dragon Toothless. How to Train Your Dragon 3 is slated for release on March 1, 2019.

That’s all the entertainment news for this week. Welcome back to The Weekend Chill, your one-stop destination for what to watch, play, or listen to this weekend. Here are the best picks.

TV: The Americans Picking up three years after the conclusion of season five, The Americans finds the Jennings in a very different world. While Philip (Matthew Rhys) has moved away from the KGB spy life to focus on their travel-agency cover business, Elizabeth (Keri Russell) and their daughter Paige (Holly Taylor) are now involved deeper than before. Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich) has settled down and shuttered the Soviet task force.

The sixth and final season of the show – a shortened run of 10 episodes, which ended earlier this week – uses the time jump to push its fictional world closer to the geopolitical upheaval around the corner (the end of the Cold War), though it’s more interested, as always, in how people get caught up on the other sides of battle lines through no inclination of their own.

Critics are full of praise for the season finale, calling it a heart-breaking and excellent end to a terrific show, and some labelling it one of the top 10 finales of all-time. “Part of the reason The Americans became such a rare treat is because it so rarely bowed to the usual pressures of TV story-building,” Variety’s Caroline Framke wrote. “It allowed itself to be slow and insular in a deliberate way that almost always found a satisfying payoff.”

How to access: FX or Hotstar Time commitment: 1 hour, weekly

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Created by Tina Fey and Robert Carlock – the latter of whom served as showrunner for the former’s previous comedy 30 Rock – for Netflix, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt follows Kimmy, a woman in her thirties, who was rescued along with three others from a doomsday cult in Indiana, where Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne (Jon Hamm) had held them for 15 years.

After getting out, Kimmy decides to move to New York City, where she meets gay, struggling actor, Titus Andromedon (Tituss Burgess), and street-wise landlady Lillian Kaushtupper (Carol Kane), and gets a job as a nanny for high-strung and lonely socialite Jacqueline Voorhees (Jane Krakowski). In the three seasons since, Kimmy adjusts to modern-day customs and slowly rebuilds her life, going to college among other things.

The show’s fourth and final season will air in two parts, with six episodes earlier this week and the other six in January 2019. Reviews have been positive: The Atlantic’s Sophie Gilbert noted how it “jokes, over and over again, about how injustice is ingrained within every level of society”, and Vox’s Alissa Wilkinson said “the darkness that’s always been present is finally breaking through, even though it’s also loaded with the same hysterical one-liners and fast-paced humour”.

How to access: Netflix Time commitment: 3 hours

Pose Prolific producer-creator Ryan Murphy, who recently signed a $300-million deal with Netflix, is back with a new show on FX: a musical dance drama called Pose, created by Murphy, Brad Falchuk (Glee), and Steven Canals. Set in the mid-1980s New York, it looks “at the juxtaposition of several segments of life and society: the rise of the luxury Trump-era universe, the downtown social and literary scene and the ball culture world”.

Pose includes the largest transgender cast ever assembled, according to FX, with over 50 transgender characters in some form. Well-known actors include Kate Mara (Megan Leavey), Evan Peters (American Horror Story), James Van Der Beek (Dawson’s Creek), Angelica Ross (Her Story), and stage performers Billy Porter and Charlayne Woodard. The show starts Sunday in the US, and will be available on Hotstar in India from Monday.

Reviews are mostly favourable. Entertainment Weekly’s Kristen Baldwin said: “For all of its ballroom flash and diva fierceness, Pose is a sweet, touching drama about finding your family, your purpose, yourself.” The Hollywood Reporter’s Dan Fienberg noted “an introductory quality to the opening episodes” and added: “Pose is poignant, funny and completely accessible, whether you’ve been part of this community or your only point of reference is Madonna’s ‘Vogue’ video.”

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How to access: FX or Hotstar Time commitment: 1 hour, weekly

Movies: Black Panther Set immediately after the events of Captain America: Civil War, T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) returns home to Wakanda, the technologically advanced African nation that poses as an agrarian nation to its neighbours. Now king after the death of his father, he finds his rule being challenged by factions within Wakanda, who seek to overthrow him.

Black Panther must work with members of the Dora Milaje, Wakanadan special forces, and CIA to prevent his country from being dragged into an all-out war. In addition to Boseman, the film stars Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, and Andy Serkis. As always, Stan Lee has a cameo.

Black Panther Is the King of Marvel Movies

Directed by Ryan Coogler (Creed), the film received stellar reviews upon release from critics, including us. Thanks to an impressive cast, three-dimensional characters (plus a great villain), stellar writing and direction, resonating themes, and a soundtrack like no other Marvel film, Black Panther is likely the best of the MCU lot. And it’s now available for purchase on Blu-ray and digital media.

How to access: Amazon IN, Google Play IN, or YouTube IN Time commitment: 2 hours and 14 minutes

Other mentions: Over in the world of streaming, Netflix had several worthy additions: Brad Pitt-starrer World War Z, 2018 Oscars nominee for Best Animated Feature Film The Breadwinner, Disney’s 1940 animated classic Pinocchio, and the critically-acclaimed Beach Rats (2017) and Eye in the Sky (2015).

Luke Cage, GLOW, The Avengers, and More on Netflix in June 2018

Amazon Prime Video now has Batman Begins, which was earlier only on Netflix. The first two seasons of The Magicians are now available on Amazon as well.

Video games: Street Fighter: 30th Anniversary Edition For the thirtieth anniversary of its popular fighting franchise, Capcom decided to package the arcade versions of 12 Street Fighter games: the original Street Fighter, all five versions of Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, Champion Edition, Turbo: Hyper Fighting, Super, and Super Turbo; all three versions of Street Fighter Alpha: Alpha, Alpha 2, and Alpha 3; and all three versions of Street Fighter III: New Generation, 2nd Impact, and 3rd Strike.

Of these twelves, four titles – Turbo: Hyper Fighting, Super Turbo, Alpha 3, and 3rd Strike – also have support for online multiplayer, where four players can join lobbies. The game’s Nintendo Switch version has an exclusive eight-player local mode for Super Street Fighter II. Bonus features include a Museum Mode where you can view concept art from the past three decades, a music player to listen to tracks, and biographies for characters.

Street Fighter: 30th Anniversary Edition has received good reviews. It looks good on modern hardware despite the respective age of the 12 titles (between 1987 and 1999), sports responsive controls, sounds great, and has a lot on offer in main content and extras. The only things we didn’t like were a lack of context in some places, and a higher price on the Switch.

How to access: PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Steam for PC, or Xbox One Time commitment: 18 hours

Other mentions: Beyond that, you should check out Yoku’s Island Express, which brings together pinball mechanics, platforming and open world exploration. It’s getting good reviews, and it’s available on PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.

This week also brought a new action RPG with rogue-lite elements, called Moonlighter. If that’s more your style, be sure to read our review, where it scored a 7 out of 10. It’s available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

There’s also Ikaruga, Sega’s 2001 shoot ‘em up, which has been ported over to the Nintendo Switch. It’s getting great reviews, so if you’ve Nintendo’s handheld and have been looking for a new game, try Ikaruga.

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W.H.O. member nations reject Trump demands, but agree to study the organization’s virus response. President Trump’s angry demands for punitive action against the World Health Organization were rebuffed on Tuesday by the organization’s other member nations, who decided instead to conduct an “impartial, independent” examination of the W.H.O.’s response to the pandemic. In a four-page letter late Monday night, Mr. Trump had threatened to permanently cut off all United States funding of the W.H.O. unless it committed to “major, substantive improvements” within 30 days. It was a significant escalation of his repeated attempts to blame the W.H.O. and China for the spread of the virus and deflect responsibility for his own handling of a worldwide crisis that has killed more than 90,000 people in the United States. But representatives of the organization’s member nations rallied around the W.H.O. at its annual meeting in Geneva, largely ignoring Mr. Trump’s demand for an overhaul and calling for a global show of support in the face of a deadly pandemic. That left the United States isolated as officials from China, Russia and the European Union chided Mr. Trump’s heated rhetoric even as they acknowledged the need to review the W.H.O.’s response as the virus spread from China to the rest of the world. Public health experts noted that Mr. Trump’s threats to withdraw from the organization and halt funding ignored the reality that any such moves would require the consent of Congress, something many analysts said was unlikely to occur. But the president’s continued attacks on the W.H.O., experts said, threatened to hobble the organization at a critical moment and seriously damage international efforts to combat the virus, especially in poorer countries that heavily depend on the agency. In a joint appearance on Tuesday before the Senate Banking Committee, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Jerome H. Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, offered a stark assessment of the fragile state of the economy, warning of more severe job losses in the months to come. But they offered contrasting views of how best to buttress the economy: Mr. Powell suggested that more fiscal support to states and businesses might be needed to avoid permanent job losses. Mr. Mnuchin suggested that without an expeditious reopening, the economy might never fully recover. Here are key highlights from their testimony. Mr. Mnuchin warned that the economy might sustain “permanent damage” if states extend their shutdowns for months. Mr. Powell warned that the economy could face long-term damage if the policy response was not forceful enough and reiterated that the economy might need more help to make it through the pandemic without lasting scars. But he was careful to avoid giving Congress explicit advice and made sure to cushion his suggestions as a conditionality. Mr. Powell suggested that the central bank might expand its program to buy municipal debt and agreed that state and local governments could slow the economic recovery if they laid off workers amid budget crunches. Mr. Mnuchin, who previously said he expected that Treasury would return all $454 billion from Congress, changed that benchmark on Tuesday, saying the “base case” now was that the government would lose money. “Our intention is that we expect to take some losses on these facilities,” he said. Some lawmakers have been pressing Treasury and the Fed to deploy their capital aggressively and not worry about taking losses. Mr. Powell said even after states reopened, a full recovery would not come until the health crisis was resolved. “The No. 1 thing, of course, is people believing that it’s safe to go back to work. And that’s about having a sensible, thoughtful reopening of the economy, something that we all want — and something that we’re in the early stages of now,” he said. “It will be a combination of getting the virus under control, development of therapeutics, development of a vaccine.” Those comments were underscored by new economic projections released Tuesday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which suggested the recovery would depend in large part on the virus’s trajectory. The budget office projected that gross domestic product would contract by 11 percent in the second quarter and the jobless rate would hit 15 percent, with industries such as travel, hospitality and retail bearing the brunt of the losses. “The range of uncertainty about social distancing, as well as its effects on economic activity and implications for the economic recovery over the next two years, is especially large,” the report noted, adding that “future waves could be smaller, of a similar size or larger than the initial wave experienced this spring.” Missouri carried out the nation’s first execution in months on Tuesday. Missouri executed a 64-year-old man on Tuesday night, the first execution since March 5, when there were fewer than 230 known virus cases in the United States. Since then, judges in several states — including Tennessee and Texas — have postponed at least half a dozen executions after prisoners’ lawyers argued that they were needlessly risky or that their appeals had been delayed because of the pandemic. But this week, a federal appeals court cleared the way for Missouri’s execution of Walter Barton, 64, who was convicted in 2006 of murdering an 81-year-old mobile home park manager in 1991 after being evicted. The Supreme Court declined to intervene on Tuesday evening. Mr. Barton was pronounced dead at 6:10 p.m. Central time, following a lethal injection at a state prison in Bonne Terre, which is called the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center. Everyone who enters the prison, including each of the nine witnesses who were scheduled to attend the execution, is required to have their temperatures taken, said Karen Pojmann, a spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Corrections. She said before the execution that the witnesses would also be given hand sanitizer and face coverings. Mr. Barton’s murder conviction came during his fifth trial over the murder, after two mistrials and two guilty verdicts that he successfully appealed. Mr. Barton had long maintained his innocence. Fever checkpoints at the entrances to academic buildings. One-way paths across the grassy quad. Face masks required in classrooms and dining halls. And a dormitory-turned-quarantine building for any students exposed to the virus. Similar discussions are taking place at almost every college and university in the United States. Administrators are fiercely debating whether they can safely reopen their campuses, even as most provide students with encouraging messages about the prospects of returning in the fall. On Monday, Notre Dame became one of the first major universities in the country to announce detailed plans for bringing back students, saying it would establish a regimen of testing and contact tracing, put quarantine and isolation protocols in place, and require students to maintain social distancing and wear masks in public. Notre Dame said it would start its fall semester early, on Aug. 10, and skip fall break so that students could go home at Thanksgiving and not return. The University of South Carolina announced a similar schedule, saying its students would finish the semester online after Thanksgiving because its “best current modeling predicts a spike in cases” at the beginning of December. Rice University in Houston also plans a shortened fall semester, with a mixture of remote and in-person classes. And Ithaca College will go in the other direction, starting its fall semester late, on Oct. 5, to provide more time to prepare for returning students. New York University plans to hold in-person classes in the fall, the university’s provost said on Tuesday. “We’re planning to convene in person, with great care, in the fall (subject to government health directives), both in New York and at our global sites,” the provost said. Those decisions are in contrast to an announcement last week by the California State University System, which will keep its 23 campuses largely shut and teach nearly half a million students remotely. Meatpacking plants across the country that have been forced to close because of outbreaks among workers are not the only food facilities that have been hit hard by the virus. A large-scale bakery, a date packing house and a mushroom farm also have emerged with clusters of cases. Officials said the virus spread through other food facilities in the same manner as in meat-processing factories: Workers must stand close together to do their jobs and crowd into locker rooms and cafeterias. Some of the major clusters include a Tennessee mushroom farm where more than 50 cases have been identified and the Birds Eye vegetable processing facility in Darien, Wis., which has at least 100 cases. In Abilene, Texas, the AbiMar Foods bakery has at least 52 cases. The Leprino Foods dairy facility in Fort Morgan, Colo., has more than 80 cases; a second Leprino facility in Greeley, Colo., has at least 20. And the SunDate date packinghouse in Coachella, Calif., has at least 20 cases. More than 100 people have been sickened at Louisiana crawfish farms, but officials did not name the facilities. At a news conference on Monday, Alex Billioux, the assistant secretary of health, said some of the workers were migrants and some lived in dormitory-like settings. Some of the employees, who are in the middle of apple processing season and are gearing up for cherry harvests, said they had not been offered testing nor ample personal protection equipment, and that they had faced recriminations from employers when they complained. Officials at one company told The Seattle Times that it did not have any cases and had provided masks and gloves as equipment became available, and was surprised by the strike. Some of the fruit processing workers said they were going on a hunger strike until conditions improved. Some churches that tried to reopen are closing again as the virus spreads. After briefly reopening for in-person worship services, a few churches have had to close again as the virus spread in their pews. Holy Ghost Catholic Church in Houston closed after five leaders tested positive last weekend, following the death of one priest, Rev. Donnell Kirchner, who had been diagnosed with pneumonia. His immediate cause of death was unknown. The church had reopened for limited Mass on May 2, and two of the priests who tested positive had been active in celebrations. The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston recommended that people who attended get tested. In Ringgold, Ga., Catoosa Baptist Tabernacle started in-person services again in late April but stopped on May 11 after learning that members of several families had contracted the virus. Local health officials have been investigating three cases connected to the church. Services are currently closed indefinitely. Officials remain concerned that worship gatherings could be particularly susceptible to viral spread. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday released a report about an outbreak in March at a rural Arkansas church. Of the 92 people who attended the church between March 6 and March 11, 35 tested positive and three died, the report said. The report said investigators found that 26 other people who were in contact with the people from the church events later tested positive. One person died. Allison James, an author of the C.D.C. report, praised the pastor for closing the Arkansas church as soon as he heard of people getting sick. “They were very proactive in closing the church to prevent further transmission,” Dr. James said. “At the time, they knew people were getting sick, but they didn’t know necessarily that it was Covid or flu or any other infectious disease. They just knew they had a cluster of something going on, and they wanted to prevent transmission. I really commend them for acting quickly.” Visitors will be allowed at 16 hospitals around New York State, nine of them in New York City, as part of a pilot program, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Tuesday. They will be required to wear personal protective equipment, including masks, and will be subject to temperature checks. In March, state officials issued guidance asking hospitals to suspend visitation as the virus appeared to be rapidly spreading. “It is terrible to have someone in the hospital and then that person is isolated, not being able to see their family or friends,” Mr. Cuomo said. He added that the program was “to see if we can bring visitors in and do it safely.” The governor’s announcement comes as only three regions in downstate New York will remain under the state’s shutdown orders; the Albany area can begin reopening on Wednesday, he said. New York City, Long Island and the counties just north of the city known as the Mid-Hudson region all have yet to meet at least two of the seven health-related benchmarks that the governor set for parts of the state to start restarting their economies. Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City reiterated on Monday that he ​did not ​expect​ the city ​to meet the ​state’s criteria to begin to reopen until “the first half of June.”​ Mr. Cuomo — who arrived at his daily briefing wearing a face mask — also said that the state would allow Memorial Day festivities, so long as they had no more than 10 people. The state will also allow vehicle parades, provided that they are held safely and participants adhere to social distancing. Mr. de Blasio said on Tuesday that nearly 16 percent of the city’s 1.1 million students would be asked to attend online summer school for about six weeks after the academic year ends on June 26 — about four times as many as were asked to attend summer school last year. On Monday, police officers answering a complaint found about 60 students studying at a Hasidic yeshiva in Brooklyn, the latest of several episodes that have ignited tensions between the authorities and Hasidic Jews over enforcement of social-distancing rules. The school was closed. Statewide, another 105 people had died, Mr. Cuomo said Tuesday. Data was released on Monday that offered the most granular picture yet of the ​pandemic’s rampage through New York City, reinforcing earlier ​signs​ that ​the virus had disproportionately affected immigrant​, black and Hispanic residents. Michigan will mail absentee ballot applications to all of its voters for its congressional primary elections in August and the general election in November. The goal is to help mitigate the spread of the virus, which has hit the state particularly hard, and to take advantage of a new law that was passed in 2018 and allows all voters to cast absentee ballots. “By mailing applications, we have ensured that no Michigander has to choose between their health and their right to vote,” Michigan’s secretary of state said. The state’s March 10 presidential primary saw half of the 2.3 million people who cast ballots use the absentee option. By May 5, when local elections were held, officials reported that 99 percent of the people who voted used absentee ballots and turnout had doubled, going from an average of 12 percent in the last nine years to 25 percent. Local clerks in Michigan already send absentee ballot applications to 1.3 million voters, but the state will now mail applications to the rest of the 7.7 million registered voters, using $4.5 million in federal funds. The pandemic has led many states to consider increasing absentee and mail-in voting. Mr. Trump and Republicans have been trying to limit absentee voting and voting by mail. Increased turnout could be particularly troubling for Republicans in key battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where Mr. Trump won in 2016 by tiny margins, delivering the electoral votes he needed to win the White House. Wisconsin and Pennsylvania both allow anyone to cast absentee or mail-in ballots. The Wisconsin Election Commission is scheduled to meet at 4 p.m. Wednesday and will decide whether to send absentee ballot applications to all of the state’s 3.3 million registered voters. A top Democrat will oppose Trump’s nominee to be coronavirus watchdog. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said on Tuesday that he would vote against Mr. Trump’s nominee to serve as special inspector general scrutinizing the pandemic recovery efforts, citing concerns about his independence from the president. The nominee, Brian D. Miller, is currently a White House lawyer. Mr. Schumer said that in a private conversation, Mr. Miller would not share details about his current work responsibilities and refused to comment on Mr. Trump’s abrupt dismissal of a handful of inspectors general in recent weeks, apparently for political purposes. “Mr. Miller’s inability to demonstrate independence from his current employer, and speak out when he sees actions from administration officials that are clearly out of bounds, is deeply troubling given that this president seems to demand blind loyalty from federal inspectors general,” Mr. Schumer said in a statement. “For those reasons, I will oppose Mr. Miller’s nomination.” Mr. Schumer’s criticism is a strong indication that Senate Democrats will oppose Mr. Miller en masse when they vote on his nomination in the weeks to come. Mr. Miller had tried to win over Democrats in a confirmation hearing earlier this month, pledging to resist any undue influence. Republicans are likely to have the votes to confirm him anyway, but the nomination is still winding through the Senate’s committee process. The drug should only be used in clinical trials, the F.D.A. said, or in hospitals where patients could be closely monitored for heart problems. Then Mr. Trump made the announcement this week that he was taking the drug himself, to try to ward off infection. When the subject came up on Tuesday at a cabinet meeting, Mr. Trump turned to Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of Health and Human Services, which oversees the F.D.A. Mr. Azar did not dwell on the risks the F.D.A. had highlighted, noting instead that hydroxychloroquine had long been F.D.A. approved to prevent or treat lupus, malaria and rheumatoid arthritis. “The system we have here in the United States is that, once a drug is approved and on the market, a doctor in consultation with a patient may use it for what we call off-label purposes, which are indications that are not yet proven and not yet on the label,” he said. The study had found that hydroxychloroquine, with or without azithromycin, did not help patients avoid the need for ventilators. And it found that hydroxychloroquine alone was associated with an increased risk of death. But the study was not a controlled trial, and patients who received the drugs were sicker to begin with. “These findings highlight the importance of awaiting the results of ongoing prospective, randomized, controlled studies before widespread adoption of these drugs,” the authors wrote. Earlier on Tuesday, Mr. Trump seemed to take aim at that study, saying, “If you look at the one survey, the only bad survey, they were giving it to people that were in very bad shape.” He went on to say, without clarifying, that it was “a Trump enemy statement.” At the cabinet meeting on Tuesday, the secretary of Veterans Affairs, Robert Wilkie, spoke about the study. “That was not a V.A. study,” Mr. Wilkie said. “Researchers took V.A. numbers, and they did not clinically review them. They were not peer reviewed.” Mr. Trump’s announcement that he had been taking hydroxychloroquine drew criticism from a range of medical experts. “My concern would be that the public not hear comments about the use of hydroxychloroquine and believe that taking this drug to prevent Covid-19 infection is without hazards,” said Dr. Steven E. Nissen, the chief academic officer of the Miller Family Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute at the Cleveland Clinic. “In fact, there are serious hazards.” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada said on Tuesday that the border between his country and the United States, where the outbreak is more severe, would remain closed for at least another month. The two nations reached an agreement to extend the closing, which was introduced in March and set to expire on Thursday. Recently, several Canadian provincial leaders have said that they oppose a rapid reopening of the border. The United States has reported about 463 virus cases per 100,000 people, more than double Canada’s rate. Most cases in Israel are linked genetically to the United States, a new study found. People arriving in Israel from the United States played a significant role in spreading the virus, an Israeli nationwide genomic study of cases has found. The analysis, led by biologists at Tel Aviv University, sequenced the genomes of virus samples from a randomly chosen representative group of more than 200 patients at six hospitals across Israel and then compared those to samples sequenced worldwide. The findings, which have not yet been peer reviewed, called into question the Israeli government’s decision to admit travelers from the United States until March 9, though visitors from some European countries were barred as early as Feb. 26. While only 27 percent of all travelers who tested positive for the virus had arrived in Israel from the United States, more than 70 percent of virus samples sequenced had originated in the U.S. Israel has reported 16,650 cases and 277 deaths linked to the virus. Therese Kelly arrived for her shift at an Amazon warehouse in Hazle Township, Pa., on March 27 to find her co-workers clustered in the cavernous space. Over a loudspeaker, a manager told them what they had feared: For the first time, an employee had tested positive. Some of the workers cut short their shifts and went home. Ms. Kelly, 63, got to work. In the months since then, the warehouse in the foothills of the Pocono Mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania has become Amazon’s biggest hot spot. Local lawmakers believe that more than 100 workers have contracted the disease, but the exact number is unknown. At first, Amazon told workers about each new case. But when the total reached about 60, the announcements stopped giving specific numbers. The best estimate is that more than 900 of the company’s 400,000 blue-collar workers have had the disease. But that number, crowdsourced by Jana Jumpp, an Amazon worker, almost certainly understates the spread. The company has been hit by the biggest surge of orders it has ever experienced and has paid workers extra to stay on the job. Need some tips for talking to your children? Parents are learning how to navigate difficult conversations about death, job loss and sickness, all while trying to answer questions they barely understand. Hopefully, we can help. Reporting was contributed by Alan Blinder, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Benedict Carey, Michael Cooper, Michael Crowley, Elizabeth Dias, Nicholas Fandos, Michael Gold, Kathleen Gray, David M. Halbfinger, Anemona Hartocollis, Andrew Jacobs, Annie Karni, Dan Levin, Patricia Mazzei, Eduardo Porter, Alan Rappeport, Dagny Salas, Dionne Searcey, Eliza Shapiro, Michael D. Shear, Natasha Singer, Jeanna Smialek, Mitch Smith, Kaly Soto, Robin Stein, Matt Stevens, Eileen Sullivan, Jim Tankersley, Katie Thomas, Karen Weise, Edward Wong and David Yaffe-Bellany. The post Live Coronavirus News: Full Analysis appeared first on Sansaar Times.

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