With over 21,300 coronavirus deaths, US spends Easter Sunday on lockdown

Americans spent Sunday on lockdown as the U.S. toll from the novel coronavirus pandemic surpassed 21,300 deaths and more than half a million confirmed cases over the Easter weekend.

With almost all the country under stay-at-home orders to curb the spread of the disease, many turned to online church services to mark the holiest day in the Christian calendar.

"Future generations will look back on this as the long Lent of 2020, a time when disease and death suddenly darkened the whole earth," Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles wrote to priests and parishioners nationwide, urging them to hold steadfast. "Our churches may be closed but Christ is not quarantined and his Gospel is not in chains."

The United States has recorded more fatalities from the COVID-19 disease caused by the coronavirus than any other country in the world. Roughly 2,000 deaths a day were reported for the last four days in a row, the largest number in and around New York City. Even that is viewed as understated, as New York is still figuring out how best to include a surge in deaths at home in its official statistics. (Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/2w7hX9T)

As the death toll has mounted, President Donald Trump mulled over when the country might begin to see a return to normality.

The sweeping restrictions on non-essential movement that were imposed in recent weeks across 42 states have taken a huge toll on commerce and raised questions over how long business closures and travel curbs can be sustained.

The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits in the last three weeks surpassed 16 million.

The Trump administration sees May 1 as a target date for relaxing the stay-at-home restrictions, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, Stephen Hahn, said on Sunday. But he cautioned that it was still too early to say whether that goal would be met.

"We see light at the end of the tunnel," Hahn told ABC's "This Week," adding, "Public safety and the welfare of the American people has to come first. That has to ultimately drive these decisions"

SUNDAY SERVICES

Most states have issued broad stay-at-home orders that prohibit any large gatherings. In some states, that has sparked legal battles over whether there should be exceptions to attend Easter services in person.

On Saturday, the Kansas Supreme Court upheld an executive order barring more than 10 people from gathering for religious and funeral services. The decision, a victory for Democratic Governor Laura Kelly, followed an attempt by a Republican-led legislative body to overturn the order.

Some religious leaders plan to defy coronavirus bans, saying their right to worship outweighed the warnings.

Reverend Tony Spell told Reuters he expected more than 2,000 to congregate for services on Sunday at his evangelical Life Tabernacle megachurch near Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

U.S. Attorney General William Barr will be monitoring the regulation of religious services, Department of Justice spokeswoman Kerri Kupac wrote on Twitter on Saturday.

"While social distancing policies are appropriate during this emergency, they must be applied evenhandedly & not single out religious orgs," Kupac wrote. "Expect action from DOJ next week!"

In recent days, U.S. public health experts and some governors have pointed to signs that the country is starting to see a turnaround in the fight against the outbreak.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country's top U.S. infectious disease expert, said he was cautiously optimistic and pointed to the New York metropolitan area, which had its highest daily death toll last week but also saw a decrease in hospitalizations, intensive care admissions and the need to intubate critically ill patients.

"Once you turn that corner, hopefully you'll see a very sharp decline and then you can start thinking about how we can keep it that way," Fauci said on CNN's "State of the Union."

"If all of a sudden we decide 'OK, it's May whatever,' and we just turn the switch on, that could be a real problem."

Fauci and other public health experts say widespread testing will be key to efforts to reopen the economy, including antibody tests to find out who has already had the disease and could be safe to return to work.

The FDA's Hahn said he was concerned that some antibody tests on the market that had not gone through the FDA scientific review process "may not be as accurate as we'd like them to be."

"I can assure the American people that what we're doing is using data and science to look at those tests to make sure that they're valid, they're accurate and they're reproducible," he said.

New government data shows a summer surge in infections if stay-at-home orders are lifted after only 30 days, according to projections first reported by the New York Times and confirmed by a Department of Homeland Security official.

Tracking the novel coronavirus in the U.S.

(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg, Doina Chiacu, Ross Colvin, Noeleen Walder, Christopher Bing and Lisa Shumaker; Writing by Daniel Wallis; editing by Diane Craft)

-reuters-

US coronavirus deaths top 20,000 with billions in Easter lockdown

NEW YORK - The United States passed the grim milestone of 20,000 coronavirus deaths Sunday as huge swathes of the globe celebrated the Easter holiday weekend under lockdown at home.

The outbreak has now claimed the lives of at least 20,071 people in the US, which leads the world in deaths and in the number of declared infections -- at least 519,453, according to a tally maintained by Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins University.

Italy, the hardest-hit country in Europe with a population a fifth the size of the US, was also approaching the bleak marker, with 19,468 confirmed virus fatalities.

Hopes began to rise in Western Europe and heavily infected parts of the United States that the pandemic was peaking, however, with many looking to China's Wuhan, the disease's original epicenter, where officials were lifting stay-indoors restrictions and life began to return to normal.

Churches were expected to be empty on Easter Sunday, the climax of Holy Week for the world's two billion-plus Christians, with congregations shuttered at home by global stay-at-home directives aiming to stem a pandemic that has infected 1.7 million and killed more than 100,000.

'LIKE SOLDIERS'

Pope Francis was due to livestream his Easter Vigil from an empty St Peter's Basilica later Saturday, after he presided over a Good Friday service -- also with no attendees -- to kick off the weekend. 

In a call to an Italian television show Friday, he extolled doctors and nurses battling to confront the pandemic.

They "died on the front lines, like soldiers, who have given their lives out of love," he said, according to the Vatican.

The pontiff was praised by Italy's prime minister Giuseppe Conte for his "gesture of responsibility" to observe Easter in private. 

"His words, although spoken far from Saint Peter's Square, which was wrapped in an unreal silence, have reached everyone," said Conte.

Worshipers in Rome stocked up on traditional Easter cakes ahead of the weekend, some piling them onto scooters outside of grocery stores, eager to maintain parts of the holiday tradition.

In the United States a handful of priests and pastors snubbed rules and medical advice and risked arrest announcing they would hold public services in their churches on Sunday.

But most were putting services online, and some were innovating with "drive-in" blessings -- though that also risked enhancing the spread of the virus.

LEVELING

Meanwhile the hardest-hit countries of Europe, and the centers of infection in the United States -- New York and New Orleans -- were seeing signs that infection rates were leveling off.

Numbers out of Spain offered a shred of hope Saturday: 510 new deaths, a dip in fatalities for the third day in a row. 

Newly-reported coronavirus deaths in France fell by one-third from Friday to 635 on Saturday.

"A very high plateau for the epidemic appears to have been reached but the epidemic remains very active," said French health official Jerome Salomon. 

"We must absolutely remain vigilant," he added.

BRITISH PM RECOVERING

Italy meanwhile said the number of daily deaths was starting to level off -- though the government resisted pressure to lift its lockdown, extending confinement measures until May 3.

But Britain on Saturday recorded its second highest daily toll, as virus-stricken Prime Minister Boris Johnson made "very good progress" after being released from intensive care, a spokeswoman said. 

Although global infections stand at 1.75 million, according to an AFP tally of official counts, the real number is thought to be much higher, with many countries only testing the most serious cases. 

In New York and New Orleans, hopes were that a slowdown in the number of new infections, deaths and hospitalizations is pointing to a leveling off in the crisis.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and the state's Governor Andrew Cuomo and were involved in a public disagreement over reopening the city's schools.

De Blasio announced that classrooms would remain closed until the start of the school year in September, prompting Cuomo to snap back at his daily news conference that it wasn't the mayor's call.

"We may do that, but we're going to do it in a coordinated sense with the other localities," Cuomo said, claiming authority over the matter. 

Many experts and the World Health Organization are cautioning countries against lifting lockdown measures too quickly. 

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned Friday that jumping the gun could lead to a "deadly resurgence" of the novel coronavirus, known as SARS-CoV-2.

From the crowded slums of Mexico City, Nairobi and Mumbai to conflict hotspots in the Middle East, there are fears that the worst is yet to come for the world's poorest. 

War-torn Yemen reported its first COVID-19 case, and in Brazil, authorities confirmed the first deaths in Rio de Janeiro's sprawling favelas.

With China already ending its once-severe lockdown in Wuhan, US President Donald Trump said this week that the disease was near its peak in the United States and he was considering ways to re-open the world's biggest economy as soon as possible.

"But you know what? Staying at home leads to death also," Trump said. 

Agence France-Presse

Easter Day blasts at Sri Lanka hotels, churches kill 156

COLOMBO -- A string of blasts ripped through high-end hotels and churches holding Easter services in Sri Lanka on Sunday, killing at least 156 people, including 35 foreigners.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe condemned the attacks as "cowardly" and said the government was working to "contain the situation".

Images circulating on social media and local news stations showed extensive damage at one of 3 churches targeted in the near simultaneous blasts on Sunday morning.

Much of the church roof was blown out in the explosion, with roof tiles and splintered wood littering the floor and pools of blood in between wounded worshipers.

The injured flooded into local hospitals, where officials reported hundreds of wounded were being admitted.

POLICE CHIEF WARNING

The nature of the blasts was not immediately clear and there were no immediate claims of responsibility.

But documents seen by AFP show that Sri Lanka's police chief Pujuth Jayasundara issued an intelligence alert to top officers 10 days ago, warning that suicide bombers planned to hit "prominent churches".

"A foreign intelligence agency has reported that the NTJ (National Thowheeth Jama'ath) is planning to carry out suicide attacks targeting prominent churches as well as the Indian high commission in Colombo," the alert said.

The NTJ is a radical Muslim group in Sri Lanka that was linked last year to the vandalisation of Buddhist statues.

The first blast was reported at St Anthony's Shrine, a well-known Catholic church in the capital Colombo.

A second deadly explosion was then confirmed at St Sebastian's, a church in the town of Negombo, north of the capital.

"A bomb attack to our church, please come and help if your family members are there," read a post in English on the church's Facebook page.

Soon after, police confirmed that a third church in the town of Batticaloa had been hit, along with 3 high-end hotels in the capital.

Hospital sources said British, Dutch and American citizens were among the dead, with Britons and Japanese among those injured in the attacks.

'COWARDLY ATTACKS'

President Maithripala Sirisena said in an address that he was shocked by the explosions and appealed for calm, and the prime minister was expected to speak to the media shortly.

On Twitter, Wickremesinghe wrote: "I strongly condemn the cowardly attacks on our people today.

"I call upon all Sri Lankans during this tragic time to remain united and strong. Please avoid propagating unverified reports and speculation. The government is taking immediate steps to contain this situation."

The hotels targeted in the attack are all popular destinations for tourists, among them the Cinnamon Grand, which is near the prime minister's official residence in Colombo.

An official at the hotel told AFP the blast there had hit the restaurant, and reported at least one person had been killed.

At the Shangri-La hotel, an AFP photographer saw extensive damage on the second floor restaurant, with windows blown out and electrical wires hanging from the ceiling.

'HORRIBLE SCENES'

"Emergency meeting called in a few minutes. Rescue operations underway," Sri Lanka's Minister of Economic Reforms and Public Distribution, Harsha de Silva, said in a tweet on his verified account.

He said he had been to 2 of the attacked hotels and was at the scene at St Anthony's Shrine, where he described "horrible scenes".

"I saw many body parts strewn all over," he tweeted, adding that there were "many casualties including foreigners".

"Please stay calm and indoors," he added.

Embassies in Colombo warned their citizens to shelter in place, and Sri Lankan Airlines told customers to arrive at the airport 4 hours ahead of flights because of ramped-up security in the wake of the attacks.

Only around 6 percent of mainly Buddhist Sri Lanka is Catholic, but the religion is seen as a unifying force because it includes people from both the Tamil and majority Sinhalese ethnic groups.

There have been no attacks in Sri Lanka linked to foreign Islamist groups, despite local media reports that a 37-year-old Sri Lankan was killed in Syria in 2016 while fighting for the Islamic State group.

In January, Sri Lankan police seized a haul of explosives and detonators stashed near a wildlife sanctuary following the arrest of 4 men from a newly formed radical Muslim group.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

EWTN founder Mother Angelica passes away on Easter

MANILA - The popular Poor Clare nun and founder of the Eternal World Television (EWTN) Mother Angelica of the Annunciation, has passed away on Easter Sunday, March 27, at the age of 92.

In a statement released through the Catholic News Agency (CNA), the chairman and the chief executive officer of EWTN Michael Warsaw praised Mother Angelica's "accomplishments and legacies in evangelization" and her "unwavering faithfulness to Our Lord."

"Mother has always and will always personify EWTN, the network that God asked her to found," Warsaw said.

Mother Angelica founded EWTN in 1981 from a garage studio at the Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in Irondale, Alabama.

Currently, EWTN transmits religious programs in a 24-hour-a-day basis, broadcast in 144 countries across the globe including the Philippines through several cable news providers.

"Mother Angelica succeeded at a task the nation’s bishops themselves couldn’t achieve," Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia said in a report from CNA.

"She founded and grew a network that appealed to everyday Catholics, understood their needs and fed their spirits. She had a lot of help, obviously, but that was part of her genius," he added.

Mother Angelica was born on April 20, 1923 in Canton, Ohio. In 1944, she entered the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration in Cleveland and took the name Sister Mary Angelica of the Annunciation.

According to her biography authored by EWTN host Raymond Arroyo, Mother Angelica started recording her first radio program in 1971 thus giving birth to her Catholic media apostolate.

But at one point, Mother Angelica found out that the radio station in which her program aired was planning to air a program that she thought was blasphemous. The nun complained to the station manager but her concerns were ignored.

This made Mother Angelica decide to build a station of her own and turn their garage into a television studio.

The nun became popular around the world with her program "Mother Angelica Live," a Catholic talk show which aired in EWTN twice a week.

TIME magazine once described Mother Angelica as "arguably the most influential Roman Catholic woman in America."

In 2009, she received the papal medal "Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice" from Pope Benedict XVI for her distinguished service to the Church.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Pakistan suicide attack kills 65 celebrating Easter in Lahore

LAHORE, Pakistan - At least 65 people were killed and hundreds injured, many of them children, when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a crowded park in the Pakistani city of Lahore where Christians were celebrating Easter Sunday.

Officials said the bomber had detonated the explosives packed with ball bearings near a children's playing area in the popular Gulshan-i-Iqbal park.

Witnesses said they could hear children screaming as people carried the injured in their arms, while frantic relatives searched for loved ones in nightmarish scenes at the park near the centre of the city of eight million.

Doctors described frenzied scenes at hospitals, with staff treating casualties on floors and in corridors, as officials tweeted calls for blood donations.

"It was a suicide attack. The bomber managed to enter the park and blew himself up near the kids' playing area where kids were on the swings," Lahore's top administration official Muhammad Usman told AFP.

Javed Ali, a 35-year-old resident who lives opposite the park, said the force of the blast had shattered his home's windows.

"After ten minutes I went outside. There was human flesh on the walls of our house. People were crying, I could hear ambulances.

"It was overcrowded because of Easter, there were a lot of Christians there. It was so crowded I told my family not to go."

Yousaf Masih, a father who was searching for his family, told AFP: "My kids came here (to the park). I was at home, I saw the news on TV, but my wife and children were here."

Witnesses said the wounded were first rushed to hospital in rickshaws and other vehicles before dozens of ambulances arrived on the scene.

Usman said the death toll had reached 65 people, with more than 50 children among the injured. A Lahore rescue official confirmed the toll and said the number of injured stood at 340.

The attack was the year's deadliest, with officials saying the toll was set to rise.

There was no official confirmation of who was behind the attack late Sunday.

- 'Cowardly, appalling' -

Sunday's blast was condemned by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who "expressed grief and sorrow over the sad demise of innocent lives," according to a statement by his office.

He was later phoned by his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi who said "the people of India stand with their Pakistani brethren in this hour of grief", according to state media.

The Vatican condemned the attack, calling it "fanatical violence against Christian minorities."

The United States meanwhile labelled the incident "cowardly" and "appalling", while Pakistan's Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai tweeted: "Pakistan and the world must unite. Every life is precious and must be respected and protected."

US presidential contender Donald Trump tweeted "Another radical Islamist attack, this time in Pakistan... I alone can solve."

A military spokesman described the blast as a "suicide attack", adding that intelligence agencies were chasing all leads. Lahore officials said the army had been called to the scene of the attack.

On social media Pakistanis were retweeting the call for blood donations, while Facebook activated its "Safety Check" for Lahore.

The government of Punjab province declared three days mourning.

Christians are a minority in the Muslim giant of around 200 million people, making up an estimated 1.6 percent of the population, and have long faced discrimination.

Attacks targeting children carry a special resonance in Pakistan, still scarred by its deadliest ever militant assault in which Taliban gunmen killed more than 150 people at a school in Peshawar in 2014, the majority of them students.

A military operation targeting insurgents was intensified after that attack, and in 2015 the number of people killed in militant assaults dropped to its lowest since the Pakistani Taliban were formed in 2007.

Lahore, capital of Punjab province, has been relatively peaceful in recent years.

But the insurgents have demonstrated a chilling ability to continue attacks on soft targets.

In January 2016 the Pakistani Taliban launched an assault on a university in Charsadda, near Peshawar, that left 21 dead and spurred a call to arm teachers as parents spoke of fears for their children.

- Chaos in capital -

Sunday's blast came as the army was also deployed on the streets of the capital Islamabad after thousands of protesters clashed with police in chaotic scenes, throwing stones and setting part of a Metro station on fire.

The demonstrators were supporters of Islamist assassin Mumtaz Qadri, who was hanged on February 29 for killing a Punjab governor over his call for blasphemy reform.

Analysts called the execution a "key moment" in Pakistan's long battle against religious extremism.

But it has also exposed deep religious divisions in the conservative country.

The protesters issued a list of demands calling for Qadri to be named a hero and the country's controversial blasphemy laws, which carry the death penalty, to be upheld.

A military spokesman said late Sunday that the army had been deployed to secure the Red Zone around Parliament as the protesters appeared to settle in for the night.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

On Easter, Pope calls for end to war

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Francis, in his Easter address before a huge crowd, on Sunday denounced the "immense wastefulness" in the world while many go hungry and called for an end to conflicts in Syria, Ukraine and Africa.

 "We ask you, Lord Jesus, to put an end to all war and every conflict, whether great or small, ancient or recent," he said in his "Urbi et Orbi" (to the city and the world) message.

Francis, marking the second Easter season of his pontificate, celebrated a Mass to an overflowing crowd of at least 150,000 in St. Peter's Square and beyond.

The crowd stretched back along all of Via della Conciliazione, the boulevard between the Vatican and the Tiber River.

Speaking under a sunny sky after a midnight rainstorm soaked the tens of thousands of flowers that bedecked the square, Francis weaved his message around the suffering of people across the globe.

He prayed to God to "help us to overcome the scourge of hunger, aggravated by conflicts and by the immense wastefulness for which we are often responsible".

Since his election as the first non-European pope in 1,300 years, Francis had made defense of the poor a hallmark of his papacy, often criticizing developed nations and the excesses of capitalism and consumerism.

The 77-year-old pope, wearing white vestments for the service, prayed for the protection of those members of society who are particularly vulnerable to exploitation, abuse and abandonment - women, children, the elderly and immigrants.

Easter is the most important day on the liturgical calendar because it commemorates the day Christians believe Jesus rose from the dead after his crucifixion and the Church sees it as a symbol of hope, peace and reconciliation among peoples and nations.

Bold peace negotiations
The pope called on the international community to "boldly negotiate the peace long awaited and long overdue" in Syria, where more than 150,000 people have been killed in the civil war, a third of them civilians. Millions have fled the country.

"We pray in a particular way for Syria, that all those suffering the effects of the conflict can receive needed humanitarian aid and that neither side will again use deadly force, especially against the defenseless civil population," he said.

Francis asked God to "enlighten and inspire the initiatives that promote peace in Ukraine so that all those involved, with the support of the international community, will make every effort to prevent violence and, in a spirit of unity and dialogue, chart a path for the country's future."

He also asked for an end to violence in Iraq, Venezuela, South Sudan and the Central Africa Republic.

Francis appealed for more medical attention for the victims of the deadly Ebola epidemic in Guinea Conakry, Sierra Leone and Liberia, and care for those suffering from many other diseases spread through neglect and dire poverty.

He called for a "halt to the brutal terrorist attacks" in f Nigeria, an apparent reference to Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram, which earlier this month abducted some 130 girls from a school in the north of the country.

The Easter Sunday services were the culmination of four hectic days of Holy Week activities for the pontiff.

Next Sunday, he will canonize Pope John Paul II, who reigned from 1978 to 2005, and Pope John XXIII, who was pontiff from 1958 to 1963 and called the Second Vatican Council, a landmark meeting that modernized the Church.

Hundreds of thousands of people are due to come to Rome for the canonizations, the first time two popes are be made saints simultaneously and the first canonizations of a pope since 1954.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com