Live updates: Federal judge rules that North Carolina governor’s coronavirus restrictions violate religious expression

Major League Baseball sent a proposal to the players’ union Friday that offered a detailed outline on how players, coaches and select staff members would be tested for the novel coronavirus that is threatening the season, but it also suggested radical changes to how players would interact if and when conditions are deemed safe enough to stage games.

Think of it this way: masked players who aren’t allowed to spit or high five sitting at least six feet apart in the dugout and even spilling into the stands as necessary.

Iceland announced this week that it plans to reopen its borders to tourists by June 15. The country will welcome travelers from all over the world, including the United States, but will subject visitors to either testing or quarantine.

Less than two months after limiting arrivals from international travelers, the country announced its reopening plan, which could be moved up if the number of cases stays low. According to Iceland’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the timing “depends on when all the practicalities will be in place.”

Texas reported 1,801 new cases of the novel coronavirus Saturday, its highest one-day total since the pandemic began.

In a statement, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) correlated the uptick in new cases — which brought the state’s total to 46,999 on Saturday — to the state’s increase in testing. Amarillo specifically saw a huge surge in new reported cases Saturday, with 700 new cases flagged.

“As Texas continues ramping up its testing capabilities, there will be an increase in positive cases as the state targets the most high-risk areas: nursing homes, meat packing plants and jails,” Abbott said in a statement. “That is exactly why I established Surge Response Teams. By immediately deploying resources and supplies to these high risk areas, we will identify the positive cases, isolate the individuals and ensure any outbreak is quickly contained, which is the strategy being deployed in Amarillo.”

Abbott deployed a Surge Response Team to Amarillo in early May, which consisted of Medical Incident Support Team personnel from the Texas Emergency Medical Task Force and members of the Texas National Guard. These teams conducted a site survey of high-risk areas to begin testing employees in meat packing facilities. Texas started seeing the results of those tests starting Saturday and will continue to see these results in targeted areas over the next two weeks.

The last three days in Texas have been the deadliest three-day span for the state, with a combined 147 fatalities. The day with the most was Thursday, with 58 reported deaths. There were 56 on Friday and finally a dip on Saturday with 33. The state has reported a total of 1,305 fatalities as of Saturday.

Former Washington Redskins star Dexter Manley has been hospitalized since Friday morning and is receiving oxygen to treat breathing issues related to the novel coronavirus, his daughter said Saturday.

Dalis Manley described her father as feeling “very weak,” worn down and discouraged after two weeks of a persistent fever and shortness of breath. She said he was at a Washington-area hospital and had not been placed on a ventilator as of Saturday afternoon.

“I just think he is scared.” said Dalis Manley, who lives outside Atlanta but has been talking to her father by phone.

Houses of worship in North Carolina can temporarily hold indoor services after a federal judge ruled the governor’s pandemic restrictions violated First Amendment religious expression.

Judge James C. Dever III issued a provisional restraining order on Saturday allowing religious groups to assembly for services inside for the next 14 days. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) had issued an executive order suspending large gatherings inside houses of worship as part of the state’s Phase One reopening, though guidelines allowed them to hold services outdoors.

A conservative Christian group filed a lawsuit against Cooper on Thursday, claiming the order violated religious freedom. Several North Carolina lawmakers backed the legal action.

After the judge’s ruling, Cooper said in a statement that he did not agree with the result but would not challenge it.

“We don’t want indoor meetings to become hotspots for the virus and our health experts continue to warn that large groups sitting together inside for long periods of time are much more likely to cause the spread of covid-19,” he said. “While our office disagrees with the decision, we will not appeal it, but instead urge houses of worship and their leaders to voluntarily follow public health guidance to keep their members safe.”

A handful of church services in North Carolina have been linked to covid-19 clusters. In early March, health officials said “multiple” confirmed positive tests came from a church service held inside a Durham hotel. In April, an armed man broke into the home of a North Carolina minister to confront her after the church suffered three coronavirus-related deaths.

ISTANBUL–The Iranian cartoon shows two traditional healers, including a turbaned cleric, preparing to treat a coronavirus patient on all fours with beakers of camel urine and violet leaf oil, remedies hailed by some clergymen as surefire cures for covid-19. On the wall hangs a picture of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, donning a nurse’s cap and putting a finger to his lips, signaling critics to remain silent.

The appearance of the cartoon on the Telegram account of a mainstream Iranian news outlet represented a rare criticism of Iran’s ruling religious establishment by the media and came amid a wider outcry among Iranians over the role played by the Shiite Muslim clergy during the pandemic.

Since Iran’s outbreak first erupted in the holy city of Qom, religious leaders have resisted calls for quarantines, protested orders to close shrines, cast the coronavirus as an American conspiracy, and promoted traditional or Islamic medicine as a panacea for covid-19, the disease it causes. Their actions have angered senior health officials and stoked long-existing doubts within the Iranian population about whether the clergy are fit to rule.

Hundreds of protesters in London defied social distancing guidelines Saturday as they gathered in Hyde Park to protest coronavirus lockdown measures, according to BBC News.

Police officers made at least 19 arrests at the demonstration, the BBC reported. Among the detainees was Piers Corbyn, the brother of former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Piers Corbyn was led away from the protest in handcuffs, after using a megaphone to espouse a coronavirus and 5G conspiracy theory while also claiming the pandemic was a “pack of lies to brainwash you and keep you in order,” the Guardian reported.

Other videos from the scene showed police wearing no masks as they went through the crowd.

Several other small demonstrations against the lockdown took place across the United Kingdom. In Belfast, police monitored a crowd of about 20 people who gathered in Ormeau Park, which was broken up without incident after an hour, according to the Guardian.

Thousands of protesters also gathered in Germany to call on Chancellor Angela Merkel to ease restrictions.

A Utah woman claims in a lawsuit that her company “knowingly, intentionally, and recklessly” functioned in a way that exposed her and others to the coronavirus.

The lawsuit, filed by Juan Victoria Flores in Utah’s 4th District Court, claims Built Bar — a company that manufacturers and sells protein bars and nutritional supplements — refused to provide employees with personal protective equipment or sanitize its facilities, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. It comes as the White House and Congress clash over the extent to which businesses should face liability if their workers contract covid-19.

The lawsuit also alleges Built Bar threatened to terminate any employee who came forward with safety concerns about these practices, the newspaper reported.

Flores said she worked on the production lines of Built Bar. The lawsuit claims Flores tested positive for the coronavirus along with her daughter, who has Down syndrome with respiratory cardiac deficiencies and remains in “critical” conditions, according to the Tribune.

Built Bar, which did not immediately respond to an inquiry, states on its website that its “production facility response” to the global pandemic includes telling employees with covid-19 symptoms to stay home, performing temperature checks on all staff and providing all staff with face masks. The company also says it is promoting social distancing measures and sanitizing “commonly touched tools at the beginning and end of shifts.”

Earlier this month, Utah enacted a new immunity law that shields businesses from lawsuits brought forward by employees or customers who claim they were exposed to the coronavirus on their property. The law does not apply to cases of “willful misconduct,” which Flores’ lawsuit alleges.

Former president Barack Obama on Saturday delivered a powerful meditation on the way systemic racism infects the health and safety of black Americans, calling on those watching his virtual commencement speech to use their educations to fight it.

Speaking to graduates of the 74 historically black colleges and universities across the United States, Obama touched on the major headlines of this moment, including the government’s response to the novel coronavirus, the way the pandemic has hit black people especially hard and the fatal shooting of a 25-year-old black jogger named Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia by two white men.

“Injustice like this isn’t new,” Obama continued. “What is new is that so much of your generation has woken up to the fact that the status quo needs fixing; that the old ways of doing things don’t work; that it doesn’t matter how much money you make if everyone around you is hungry and sick; and that our society and democracy only works when we think not just about ourselves, but about each other.”

While trying to defend his comments comparing the Alaska State Capitol coronavirus guidelines to Nazi concentration camps, a Republican state legislator claimed to a reporter that Adolf Hitler was not a “white supremacist” but someone who was “fearful of the Jewish nation.”

Rep. Ben Carpenter (R) of Nikiski made the remarks to an Anchorage Daily News reporter following a contentious email exchange with fellow lawmakers reported by the newspaper. When the Capitol in Juneau opens Monday, members must undergo a health screening, and those who pass will be given a sticker to wear. Carpenter, who disagrees with the measure, replied to all 40 members of the House of Representatives, according to local media.

“How about an arm band that won’t fall off like a sticker will?” Carpenter wrote. “If my sticker falls off, do I get a new one or do I get public shaming too? Are the stickers available as a yellow Star of David?”

Two lawmakers objected to Carpenter’s comments in the email chain.

When reached by the Anchorage Daily News, Carpenter tried to explain himself by saying fear over the coronavirus is a greater threat than the virus. He also dug deeper into the Nazi Germany comparison.

“Can you or I — can we even say it is totally out of the realm of possibility that covid-19 patients will be rounded up and taken somewhere?” Carpenter said. “People want to say Hitler was a white supremacist. No. He was fearful of the Jewish nation, and that drove him into some unfathomable atrocities.”

House Minority Leader Lance Pruitt (R) said Carpenter should “apologize” for the comments he made in the private emails that were posted on the Alaska Landmine’s Twitter account.

As of Saturday, the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services has reported 392 cases of covid-19 and 10 deaths.

In the wake of covid-19, how to safely and fully reopen public transportation has become a major point of discussion at both local and federal levels. Much of the conversation has focused on logistical challenges like sanitation, overcrowding and lost revenue.

However, public transit directly affects access to opportunities based on factors including riders’ neighborhoods, income levels and now — during the pandemic — whether they can work remotely.

These are all issues policymakers will have to consider in their long-term plans. While underinvestment in transit infrastructure is not new, these inequities to access are being brought to the forefront in the coronavirus era.

Health officials said more than 180 people who attended a Mother’s Day church service in Northern California should self-quarantine after one of the attendees tested positive for the coronavirus.

The person tested positive the day after the service, Butte County Public Health department said Friday. Officials didn’t identify the church but Palermo Bible Family Church Pastor Michael Jacobsen confirmed to The Washington Post that officials were referring to his congregation. He said that there were about 160 attendees at the service.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) statewide stay-at-home order, issued March 19, doesn’t permit religious or cultural services. In a news release, Danette York, director of Butte County Public Health, said flouting the orders could cause a setback and force a reversion to “more restrictive measures.”

“At this time, organizations that hold in-person services or gatherings are putting the health and safety of their congregations, the general public and our local ability to open up at great risk,” York said in a statement.

Jacobsen said that there had been fewer than 20 covid-19 cases and no deaths in the county when he decided to proceed with the service. The county had 22 cases and no deaths as of Saturday afternoon.

“I already had to cancel our Easter celebration, which is the first Easter from when I received Jesus into my life that I wasn’t able to be a church service, and that’s very difficult,” he said. “I see church as a very essential part of my life.”

The county’s department of health said it notified those who attended to self-quarantine, but Jacobsen asserted that the county didn’t communicate with his congregation and it was his responsibility to disseminate quarantine guidance.

In Southern California, other health officials had warned against Mother’s Day gatherings after a cluster of five covid-19 cases were identified among attendees of a Pasadena birthday party.

LONDON — Teaching unions and government officials in Britain are locked in a heated debate over plans to reopen elementary schools in England in two weeks.

As part of Britain’s easing of lockdown restrictions, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced last week that he hoped elementary schools in England would start opening in phases at the beginning of June. Only children in kindergarten, first grade and sixth grade would initially return.

But several teachers and doctors unions say that the government is moving too quickly.

The debate was plastered across several British newspapers Saturday morning. “Schools to defy unions and reopen next month,” ran a front-page headline in the Times of London. “Reopening schools on 1 June is too dangerous, say doctors,” said the Guardian.

A number of teachers unions say the government has not addressed teachers’ safety concerns. The British Medical Association, the main doctors union, said reopening schools now risked a second spike in infections.

The city of Liverpool has indicated it will defy government guidance and keep its school gates shut until at least June 15.

Speaking at Friday’s Downing Street news conference, Matt Hancock, the health secretary, said he would not support the phased reopening of schools unless it was safe to do so, “and it is safe to do so.”

“In the same way that it’s terrible news that this virus impacts on the elderly so much, the good news is that it seems to spare children in almost every case,” he said.

In a bid to bridge the gap, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said Saturday that any child in school, as well as their families, would be tested if they showed symptoms.

“School staff can already be tested for the virus, but from the first of June we’ll extend that to cover children and their families if any of them develop symptoms,” he said.

Germany’s Bundesliga league held Europe’s first major league game on Saturday under a new code of sports conduct: No spectators allowed. Coaches, known for getting in the faces of referees and players, are required to keep one meter away and wear masks, as must substitutes seated on the sidelines.

Masks were not required for the players, who per usual put on a show as they hustled up and down the field in an otherwise empty stadium. They were cheered on by spectators visible through video screens and, in a way, the silence of their fans watching from home.

Sports competitions have emerged as a litmus test of what a new normal could look like, as societies and economies push for a return to before while treading cautiously around the still-viral novel coronavirus.

Belarus’s authoritarian president has been an outlier in Europe by allowing its soccer league to continue as the country’s cases and deaths continue to sour.

In contrast, in early May, South Korea permitted its professional baseball league to play ball again as the country more successfully contained its outbreak. Fans, however, are similarly not allowed in, though mask-wearing cheerleaders are. Japan’s very popular baseball league is additionally hoping to restart in June. Taiwan recently started to allow fans at its baseball games, though only 1,000 spectators are allowed into the stadium, with social distancing and contact tracing measures also in place.

Five sailors on the USS Theodore Roosevelt have tested positive a second time for the coronavirus, the Navy confirmed Friday.

Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said that it is “a learning process” to understand how to best adapt to the virus.

“It shows us what we’ve known for a long time — that this is a very stubborn infectious disease,” Hoffman said during a Friday news briefing.

Hoffman said the sailors were removed from the ship after testing positive the first time and that contact tracing was done to determine if others were infected.

The five sailors had gone through at least two weeks of isolation and tested negative twice in a row before they were allowed back on the ship, the Associated Press reported. Once they returned to the ship, the sailors developed influenza-like illness symptoms before they tested positive a second time, AP wrote.

The aircraft carrier has been sidelined in Guam since an outbreak on the ship resulted in more than 1,000 confirmed cases among a crew of more than 4,800.

Colorado health officials on Friday revised the way they count deaths from the coronavirus to include only patients whose death certificates list the cause as covid-19.

The change resulted in a significant downward revision of the state’s official death toll. Colorado now lists 878 deaths “from” the virus and 1,150 deaths “among” covid-19 patients. The department had initially counted all deaths among people who tested positive for the virus.

The state will still be required to report to the federal government the number of deaths among covid-19 patients, which is how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has told states to report death tolls, Gov. Jared Polis (D) said at a news conference on Friday. But after hearing of reports of two people who had died from other causes, Polis said he directed the state to reconsider its methodology.

Although Colorado’s count is lower for cases reported via death certificate, the CDC has advised medical examiners that if they suspect covid-19 without a positive test, they can report it as “probable” or “presumed” on the death certificate.

The change came after Republican state Rep. Mark Baisley on Thursday asked a local prosecutor to file criminal charges against Jill Ryan, executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, claiming she falsified death certificates from what medical examiners or doctors had reported.

The department denied the allegations during a phone call with reporters, Colorado Public Radio reported.

The prosecutor, George Brauchler, a Republican district attorney for the 18th Judicial District, told 9NEWS it was premature to discuss charges before an investigation but that his office would file charges if it did find wrongdoing.

Polis responded to Baisley’s letter during Friday’s news conference, saying “the rhetoric is unfortunate” and his suggestion of criminal charges is “inappropriate.”

“Nobody behind a desk should ever second guess a coroner or an attending physician that lists the cause of death on a death certificate,” Polis said.

The coronavirus pandemic has upended the international hierarchy. Three of the world’s great powers — the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia — have the largest and most deadly outbreaks. Other major players on the world stage struggled with their initial responses. China is on the defensive, as rivals levy blame for its lack of transparency.

Some smaller countries, however, have gained newfound recognition as the world takes note of their early, and still tentative, successes. Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, put it this way: The largest and most powerful nations will need to study what went right among smaller and less powerful ones.

“I’d like to paraphrase what Leo Tolstoy said, that all successful countries are alike; each unsuccessful country is unsuccessful in its own way,” Huang said.

Across the country, Americans continue to clash with government officials as state and local leaders try to thread the needle between allowing businesses to reopen and protecting the public from the spread of the novel coronavirus.

As of Saturday, the majority of U.S. states have partially reopened but were still enforcing some level of physical distancing and crowd control.

The restrictions, which health officials say are critical for controlling the pandemic, have left pockets of people incensed, prompting some to actively defy government guidelines in the name of economic health, leisure or what they believe are their constitutional freedoms.

In Michigan, where a stay-at-home order remains in effect, moviegoers lined their cars at the Capri Drive-in Theater in Coldwater on Friday night to watch screenings of “Trolls,” “Jurassic Park” and “Smokey and the Bandit,” as MLive reported.

Businesses like the drive-in have been deemed nonessential in Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s executive order, but the theater’s owners said they can no longer afford to remain closed.

“It’s our livelihood,” co-owner Tom Magocs told MLive. “It’s the way we make our living.’’

Beauty salons have also emerged as a fault line in disputes over when, and under what circumstances, businesses can safely reopen.

In Salem, Ore., health authorities fined a local salon owner $14,000 for reopening her business on May 5 in defiance of Gov. Kate Brown’s stay-home order. The state’s occupational safety and health office said the move endangered workers.

“I’m being threatened and intimidated and bullied daily by the government,” owner Lindsey Graham said Friday, according to Willamette Week.

Others have directed their anger at specific public officials.

In Oklahoma, a police officer upset with social distancing restrictions admitted to writing a menacing social media post about the mayor of Norman, according to the Oklahoman.

The comment, which authorities later ruled was not a direct threat, called for the mayor to be “pulled out of office and tried on the court house lawn” and appeared to be a reaction to her order barring large gatherings inside places of worship. The police officer was a member of the Facebook group “Re-open Norman” and used the hashtag “#bringbackpublichangings!”

Fear sent Mei Chau’s restaurant spiraling well before New York City halted in-person dining — as much as 20 percent of her business was gone each week starting in late January, until one day there were just three orders.

It was people’s fear of coming to Manhattan’s Chinatown, Chau believes, but also Asian families’ fears of going out as they watched the coronavirus upend China’s most important holiday. It was fear, she says, of being punched, spat on or glared at because of her race or mask on the subway. It was fear of bringing covid-19 to the older generation in an immigrant family’s cramped apartment.

Each on its own was terrifying. But the combination, the 56-year-old says, “is just impossible.” Now a banner on Chau’s website declares that her decades-old Malaysian-French eatery is ready to “REOPEN!” — but staff who have to commute from outside the neighborhood won’t come back yet to Aux Epices, Chau says, and she wakes up sweating from nightmares about crowds.

Greece reopened access to public beaches on Saturday along with stringent restrictions and steep fines in place to maintain social distancing.

Only 40 beach goers are permitted per 1,000 square meters (10,764 square feet), beach umbrellas must be 1.5 meters (5 feet) apart, and groups have to keep a distance of at least 4 meters (13 feet) from other people, according to the Associated Press.

As temperatures hit 98 degrees over the weekend, Greek authorities warned that only swimming and lounging were permitted, while sports games and food operations remained banned.

Businesses violating these beach codes could face fines up to 20,000 euros ($21,650) and a three-month closure.

Greece, which has been considerably effective in containing its virus outbreak, is eager to restart tourism, a key source of income for the economically embattled country. Athens is expected to have the European Union’s worst pandemic-induced recession.

Officials there are weighing reopening restaurants and bars on May 25.

Vietnam has officially recorded no deaths related to covid-19, and it is desperately trying to keep it that way.

But among the country’s 317 confirmed coronavirus cases is a 43-year-old British pilot for Vietnam airlines whose life is on the line in a Ho Chi Minh City hospital. The man’s name has not been released, but he’s referred to as “Patient 91,” or the country’s 91st coronavirus case.

Since contracting the virus in mid-March, the pilot’s health has so severely deteriorated that he’s been on life support for a month and is dependent on a machine to circulate his blood through an artificial lung. On Tuesday, Vietnam’s health ministry said that doctors think a risky lung transplant might be his only chance for survival and are searching for a suitable donor, Reuters reported.

The pilot’s plight has attracted attention and anxiety throughout Vietnam. Several people have even come forward to offer up their lungs, state-run media reported, though according to Vietnam’s medical criteria only lungs from already clinically dead donors can be harvested for donation.

The Vietnamese government has spent more than $200,000 as part of its efforts to save Patient 91, according to the Vietnam News Agency.

Last month Bhutan, which has also officially recorded no covid-19 related deaths, orchestrated a complicated 8,000-mile trip home for a 76-year-old American very sick with coronavirus. The man ultimately pulled through.

New research has bolstered the hypothesis that summer’s heat, humidity, abundant sunshine and opportunities for people to get outside should combine to inhibit — though certainly not halt — the spread of the coronavirus.

The effect of weather on the coronavirus has been the subject of extensive research in recent months and is acutely relevant as the Northern Hemisphere edges closer to Memorial Day and the unofficial start of summer. States and cities are terminating or modifying shutdown orders, and millions of students trying to take classes remotely will soon see their disrupted school year come to an end.

LONDON — British researchers will start training Labrador retrievers and cocker spaniels to see if they can detect covid-19 before a patient shows symptoms.

The trials, which received 500,000 pounds ($593,000) in government funding, will be conducted by researches from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Durham University. They are working with the charity Medical Detection Dogs, who have previously trained dogs to detect some cancers, Parkinson’s and malaria.

Researchers will work with six dogs, who are already able to detect certain cancers. The dogs will be given odor samples from patients at London hospitals who have covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, and those who do not.

James Logan, lead researcher on the project, said in the statement that “respiratory disease can change body odour,” which “makes us hopeful that the dogs can also detect COVID-19.”

“If successful, this approach could revolutionise how we detect the virus, with the potential to screen high numbers of people,” he said.

New Zealand has taken restrictions around the novel coronavirus strictly. So strictly, in fact, that on Saturday a restaurant in Wellington initially turned away Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern because, in keeping with government criteria, they were at capacity.

“Omg Jacinda Ardern just tried to come into Olive and was rejected because it’s full,” a Twitter user named Joey wrote in a post, accompanied by the skull emoji.

Ardern and her partner, Clarke Gayford, did eventually attain seats at a table when one opened up shortly after. Under the country’s guidelines for deconfinement, restaurants can only serve a maximum of 100 people with groups seated at least 1 meter, or about three feet, apart.

Gayford later on Saturday responded to Joey’s tweet by taking the blame for having not made a reservation ahead of time.

“I have to take responsibility for this, I didn’t get organized and book anywhere,” Gayford tweeted. “Was very nice of them to chase us down st when a spot freed up. A+ service.”

A spokesperson for Ardern’s office confirmed the incident to the Guardian and added, “The PM says she just waits like everyone else.”

Ardern has won worldwide praise for her handling of the country’s outbreak, in which only 21 people, all over the age of 60, have died. The country is now edging back to normal.

President Trump took to Twitter over the weekend to parrot a group of anti-lockdown protesters on Long Island who berated a local news reporter covering their demonstration, tweeting “FAKE NEWS IS NOT ESSENTIAL.”

Kevin Vesey, a reporter with News 12 Long Island, shared a video showing him walking through the line of protesters, who shouted at him and angrily confronted him as he filmed.

Trump shared the video three times on Twitter Friday night and Saturday morning, writing, “People can’t get enough of this. Great people!”

In another video explaining what happened, Vesey said the chanting and outrage began when a woman with a megaphone who was at a previous protest on May 1 noticed he was interviewing other attendees and grew frustrated. She was unhappy he reported that they weren’t following social distancing guidelines at the past protest. She and others shouted reproaches, including “you are the virus” and “fake news is not essential.”

“Why are you essential?” said one woman who Vesey said followed him as he recorded the protest. “You’ve got people calling us murderers because of you.”

Not all of the attendees in the video were wearing masks or social distancing. One protester wearing a Trump shirt mocked Vesey for asking him to stay six feet away.

“I’ve got hydroxychloroquine,” the protester responded. “I’m fine.”

The protest in favor of reopening New York, which attracted about 100 people, was organized by Setauket Patriots, a right-wing group that supports Trump.

Vesey later tweeted that anger was “alarming” but that he would still produce “a fair and unbiased story.”

National reporters took issue with Trump promoting the antagonism Friday, especially since the Vesey didn’t mention Trump during the video.

“This is a local news reporter, not one of the national reporters the president goes after,” New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman tweeted. “He went to cover these folks’ stories, stories the president has been trying to amplify. Instead of recognizing that, he just attacks the reporter because reporters = bad.”

A tourist from New York was arrested on Friday in Hawaii after authorities determined he broke the state’s 14-day quarantine mandate after arriving on Oahu earlier in the week.

The man, 23-year-old Tarique Peters of the Bronx, posted photos of himself on Instagram at the beach with a surfboard, sunbathing and walking around Waikiki at night, according to a news release from the governor’s office. Citizens flagged his posts to authorities, and special agents from the Department of the Attorney General began investigating.

Peters left his hotel room “on numerous occasions” and traveled using public transportation, authorities allege.

“We appreciate the assistance of local people who spot flagrant violations of our emergency rules on various social media sites and report them to the appropriate authorities,” Hawaii Attorney General Clare Connors said in the news release.

Peters, who was with a local man when he was arrested, was booked into jail and had his bail set at $4,000, authorities said. Charges are pending against the local man.

Tourism is critical to the state’s economy, but since March Hawaii has implemented strict travel mandates and encouraged tourists to stay away. Anyone traveling to the islands must sign a waiver acknowledging Hawaii’s 14-day quarantine mandate and that violating it is a criminal offense subject to a $5,000 fine and possible prison time.

On Friday, Gov. David Ige said the state is planning to extend its 14-day mandatory quarantine and stay-at-home order through the end of June.

Spain’s prime minister said Saturday that he’ll seek one more extension of the government’s state of emergency, as the country emerges from what was one of Europe’s worst outbreaks and strives to strike a balance between reopening and preventing a new wave.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said he planned to a renew the state of emergency, which grants the government the power to control people’s movement, for about a month, which is longer than recent extensions.

“It should be the last state of emergency [period] and will continue until the end of the rollback,” Sanchez said in a televised statement, according to Spanish media. “For that reason, instead of being a 15-day [extension] it will be for about a month.”

Sanchez has outlined a multistep rollback of the country’s strict lockdown that is intended to take about a month. On Friday, the government announced that most of Spain was ready to progress to Phase 1 of the plan, which permits small gatherings and outdoor cafes to operate at 50 percent capacity.

The hard-hit metropolitan areas of Madrid and Barcelona, as well as parts of the Castilla Leon region, did not meet the epidemiological requirements for moving forward, however, and therefore have remained in Phase 0 of the shutdown.

On Saturday, the country recorded its lowest daily number of new deaths related to covid-19 since mid-March, with 102 confirmed fatalities in the past 24 hours. Overall, at least 27,563 people in Spain have died of the novel coronavirus.

MOSCOW ⁠ — Belarusian cases of covid-19 continue to climb by almost 1,000 cases per day in a nation where the soccer league continues, markets, shops, factories and cafes have stayed open and President Alexander Lukashenko has dismissed global lockdowns as “corona-psychosis.”

The number of reported cases grew by 951 to 28,681 Saturday, far higher than neighboring Ukraine, which has reported 17,858 cases and has four times the population. The number of officially reported deaths reached 169 in Belarus.

As Ukraine and Russia have begun gingerly reopening some facilities, Belarus continues as before. A week ago, the nation held a Victory Day parade, with thousands flocking to the capital Minsk, including elderly war veterans.

“I am absolutely positive that people are better off breathing in fresh air than being locked down,” Lukashenko said Tuesday.

Belarus has been ruled since 1994 by the authoritarian Lukashenko, a former collective farm director, who is seeking reelection in August. Under his leadership opposition figures, activists, bloggers and journalists have been arrested and jailed.

Lukashenko has scoffed at Europe’s coronavirus restrictions and attacked the idea of self-isolation, insisting that no one would die from the virus. His disdain for the problem hampered efforts to prepare for the crisis and left doctors short of protective gear.

A group of activists and bloggers calling themselves bycovid19 sprang up on social media to launch a campaign to crowdfund protective equipment, particularly respirators, for medical staff.

In March, Lukashenko dismissed the idea of isolation and border closures and urged people to get out into the fields to plant the harvest.

“You just have to work, especially now, in a village,” he said. “There, the tractor will heal everyone. The fields heal everyone.” He took to an ice-rink for a hockey game that month, telling reporters “It’s better to die on our feet than live on our knees.”

New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware will open their beaches to the public for Memorial Day weekend, New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) said Friday, even as large parts of the Northeast remain shuttered to contain the coronavirus.

The move could revive economic activity in tourism-heavy parts of the region just as the summer season kicks off, but it comes with public health risks for the states, which still haven’t met some of their own benchmarks for reopening.

To prevent the spread of the virus, Cuomo said the beaches will be limited to 50 percent capacity. Concession stands will be closed, and contact activities such as volleyball will be prohibited. Beachgoers will have to wear masks if they can’t stay six feet apart.

Cuomo said state officials made the decision jointly to avoid a crush of people crossing state lines and crowding the shores during one of the busiest travel weekends of the year.

“We are one multistate region. What one state does will affect other states. That is probably nowhere more clear than when it comes to opening beaches,” Cuomo said in a news conference. “One state doesn’t open beaches, another state does open beaches, you will see people flood to that state.”

A day earlier, Cuomo extended New York’s stay-at-home order to June 13 for most of the state.

In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy (D) has been eager to open the Jersey Shore, one of the state’s main drivers of jobs and revenue. The state has the second-worst infection rate after New York, but confirmed cases have fallen steadily since late April.

“Because of the work of millions of New Jerseyans, of you all out there to slow the spread and flatten and lower the curves, we can confidently take this step today,” he said Thursday. “Memorial Day weekend is still more than a week away, but the data tells us we can make this announcement now.”

Nearly a third of the District’s covid-19 fatalities have been residents of skilled nursing facilities, the city announced Friday, further illustrating the devastating toll of the pandemic on the elderly, injured and sick.

Even as businesses in farther-flung areas of Virginia and Maryland celebrated their first cautious steps toward reopening, the number of new coronavirus cases and deaths in the region continued to rise, and officials made clear that a return to normalcy was not yet on the horizon.

“Today is a big step for us, moving into Phase One,” Gov. Ralph Northam (D) said at his Friday briefing in Richmond, before urging Virginians to remain vigilant about washing their hands, staying home when possible and wearing masks in public. “The last thing that we need as a health issue, the last thing we need as an economic issue is to have to go back to where we’ve been. So let’s work together and not let that happen.”

Many of the states moving most quickly to roll back rules designed to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus lack benchmarks that would require them to reimpose restrictions if infections spike.

That leaves governors who are anxious to jump-start their economies untethered to clear numerical standards, alarming even some of the top medical officials in their states, who warn that new outbreaks are on the horizon.

“There’s just a lot more that needs to be done,” said Scott Harris, Alabama’s chief health officer. “We still feel like we could do a better job with getting real-time information that would help us make those decisions. But we don’t have hard triggers at this point.”

Oregon, one of the first states hit by the coronavirus, began a cautious reopening Friday after months of pandemic restrictions.

Gov. Kate Brown (D) gave businesses in most counties the green light to resume operations. For the first time since March, residents across the state lined up for haircuts, worked out at gyms and trickled back into shops and restaurants, as the Oregonian reported.

The Portland metro area, where most infections are concentrated, remained under a stay-at-home order, and some retailers opted for a “soft reopening,” limiting the number of customers they allowed inside and offering curbside pickups for products.

Brown stressed that the reopening would only succeed if people continued to practice social distancing, infection control and good hygiene. She has required all businesses to provide face coverings and recommended residents wear them in public.

“As we begin the process of reopening and building a safe and strong Oregon, I again ask Oregonians to come together and be smart,” Brown said. “Reopening any part of our state comes with risk. This virus is still very dangerous, and it still poses a great threat.

The reopening came as confirmed covid-19 cases in the state surpassed 3,500. Oregon’s infection rate remained one of the lowest in the country, with about 87 cases per 100,000 people.

Apple and Google’s announcement last month of a joint effort to track the coronavirus by smartphone sparked a wave of excitement among public health officials hoping the technology would help alert them to potential new infections and map the pandemic’s spread.

But as the tech giants have revealed more details, officials now say the software will be of little use. Because of strict rules imposed by the companies, the system will notify smartphone users if they’ve potentially come into contact with an infected person, but it won’t share any data with health officials or reveal where those meetings took place.

Such changes would restore many of the freedoms that were in place before Italy became the epicenter for the virus’s spread in Europe. Italy is under intense economic pressure to reopen its doors and revive its tourism sector, which normally accounts for 13 percent of its GDP.

But the country is also gambling that it can contain any new outbreaks that might come with freer travel.