Carol J. Williams is a retired foreign correspondent with 30 years' reporting abroad for the Los Angeles Times and Associated Press. She has reported from more than 80 countries, with a focus on USSR/Russia and Eastern Europe.
“The world should stand with Hong Kong because it belongs to the world, and if Hong Kong burns, the world gets burned too.” -- Ching Kwan Lee, UCLA sociology professor and chairwoman of Society for Hong Kong Studies
Sweden’s percentage of confirmed cases leading to death is dramatically higher than its neighbors, with 12% of patients in Sweden succumbing to the virus, 2.6% in Norway, 4% in Finland, 4.7% in Denmark and 3.6% in Germany.
With people confined to their homes, unable to dine out, one result has been a boom in home cooking. Supermarkets are out of flour – baking is suddenly in.
The Pentagon last week issued an order to defense installations prohibiting them from public disclosure of coronavirus infections among their ranks. That has stirred fear in civilian and military communities in places like Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Joint Base Lewis McChord
Putin’s posture during the pandemic had for weeks mimicked that of Donald Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who persisted in brushing off the threat to their countries from a virus that was spreading rapidly elsewhere.
Putin is now positioned to join the rulers-for-life club whose membership is a Who’s Who of autocracy: Chinese President Xi Jinping, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The only clarity to come out of the competition for the loudest voice in the room was that what is needed most for a Democratic victory in November – unity – is nowhere in sight.
The Kremlin's attempt to cover up the 1986 Chernobyl disaster eroded public trust of the Communist leadership and set the Soviet Union on the path to breakup in 1991. Could the Chinese government's secrecy on the coronavirus epidemic undermine its authority?
What we feared during the last decade when autocrats and populists took power in democratic countries like ours has come to pass and surpass our worst nightmares.