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Nebraska Crossing Outlets says it will fully open its doors on April 24 for brick and mortar shopping.
The outlets will allow its more than 80 tenants to invite customers to shop in what it called a “soft opening.”
Nebraska Crossing Outlets, near Omaha, would become one of the first malls to fully open back up across the country.
Owner and developer Rod Yates told CNN his tenants, which include several global retail brands, asked to use his outdoor outlet as a case study to see what best practices are necessary to start opening storefronts across the country and globe.
“We’ll experiment, we’re going to walk, we’re going to be very, very cautious,” he added.
The mall has largely been open for individual stores to fulfill curbside pick-up orders but haven’t let customers actually inside the stores. This soft opening would change that. The outlet mall is home to retailers like Nike, Adidas, Polo Ralph Lauren, Kate Spade among others.
Some background: Nebraska is one of seven states in the US to have no official stay-at-home order. With less than 1,000 cases statewide, Gov. Pete Ricketts ordered businesses like hair salons, tattoo parlors and strip clubs to be closed until May 31 but only “urged” individuals to practice social distancing guidelines without making them mandatory.
The state’s peak is expected around May 2, eight days after the outlet mall reopens.
Yates said he’s communicated with Ricketts about the outdoor mall opening, saying the governor cautioned against creating any mass opening events — leading to the “soft opening” that will gradually transition to a full opening in May, according to a letter sent to stores.
As a precaution, Yates said the mall bought 100 of infrared forehead thermometers to give to each store, encouraging them to take the temperatures of employees and possibly even customers. But the use is not mandatory. Covid-19 can be contagious even when those infected don’t have fevers.
Yates said he will also leave crowd size regulation up to individual stores. The outdoor mall sits on more than 40 acres of land, Yates said, but shop sizes vary so creating a one-size fits all mandate for stores isn’t ideal. He does not expect all stores will participate in the opening.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Tuesday that the state will have access to 1 million N95 masks.
He said Florida’s Emergency Management Department will also be delivering 1.2 millionprocedure masks, 100,000 face shields, 500,000 gloves, 60,000 containers of hand sanitizer, and 35,000 gowns.
In total, DeSantis said the state will have distributed:
This post was updated to accurately reflect the number of gowns.
President Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro appeared on Fox News after the White House briefing to defend the President’s WHO funding halt and discuss how it could impact US-China relations.
“The World Health Organization is a single failure during this epidemic. They basically hid information from the public, they failed to call this a pandemic long after others had rightfully done so. There is blood on their hands. I think President Trump is absolutely correct to have a full investigation of how that happened and what China’s role might’ve been to that,” Navarro said.
Pressed on how this could impact future trade negotiations with China, he called those “interesting questions” but went on to talk about supply chains.
Asked again later in the interview how coronavirus will impact the US-China relationship, Navarro said, “We have to find out where it originated. We have to understand why China did not tell us for six weeks in which we lost precious time preparing for a pandemic.”
He continued: “This is something we will not forget: China was basically vacuuming up the world’s PPE around the world so that we didn’t have it in New York and people didn’t have it in Milan. That’s a question that has to be answered. The question going forward is will they provide the PPE to the world as we go through this crisis without strings?”
Honolulu will begin requiring people to wear facial coverings when visiting essential businesses starting Monday.
Mayor Kirk Caldwell said the new requirement applies to businesses like grocery stores. People will not be required to have a commercially-produced mask, he said.
The mayor said the order does not apply to people working in offices that are not open to the public, although facial coverings are still recommended at those businesses. People also must cover their faces when riding public transportation.
To avoid confusion, Caldwell said there is one major exception to the rule: no one should wear a mask in a bank.
“Usually when people go into a bank with a mask, it’s not a good outcome,” Caldwell said.
The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), which represents over 900,000 grocery workers, said today that 30 union members have died from coronavirus.
UFCW said another nearly 3,000 food and grocery workers “have been directly impacted by COVID-19,” based on reports from local unions.
Perrone continued: “While tens of millions of Americans were told to work from home for their safety, grocery store and food workers have never had that option. More must be done to protect them and our food supply now.”
The directly impacted workers include those who have tested positive for Covid-19, missed work due to self-quarantine, are awaiting test results, have been hospitalized or are symptomatic, the union said.
The UFCW says it representing 1.3 million people in grocery stores, meatpacking, food processing, retail shops and other industries and has members in all 50 US states, Canada and Puerto Rico.
The largest professional association of physicians, the American Medical Association, labeled President Trump’s announcement that he will put a hold on funding for the World Health Organization as “dangerous.”
AMA President Dr. Patrice A. Harris issued a statement today in response to Trump’s announcement.
Here’s a portion of her statement:
What we know: During a White House press briefing today, Trump announced he will halting funding while a review is conducted.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker praised President Trump for saying during the White House press briefing that it was up to the states to decide when to reopen their economies.
He added: “I think (New York) Gov. (Andrew) Cuomo had it right when he said that the President is not a king. He’s President of the United States of America. And so we’re looking forward to evaluating what it is that we’re going to do going forward. The most important thing that we’ll do is focus on the safety and health of the people of our states. In my case, you know, I’ve made it clear, we need testing, tracing, contact tracing, and we need a treatment. Put that together with readily available PPE, and then you can start to talk about how you will reopen an economy.”
On the issue of acquiring supplies, Pritzker said he isn’t relying on the federal government for help.
“We’ve gotten very little help from the federal government,” he said. “It’s fine. I’ve given up on any promises that had been made. I hope something will get delivered from the federal government, but I don’t expect it anymore.”
The surgery chair of a New York City hospital says more patients are departing than arriving.
Dr. Craig Smith of the New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center also said the number of patients in the Intensive Care Unit and on ventilators appears to be leveling off at two hospitals who are bearing the brunt of those cases.
Smith wrote these details in a daily note to faculty and staff.
There are also less autopsies: Smith says autopsies have become uncommon in most settings, notes “phone consent is not considered acceptable”
He added: “Because phone consent is not considered acceptable—a significant hurdle when visitors are not allowed. We are pursuing solutions to that unintended consequence of an administrative policy that was less often objectionable pre-pandemic.”
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins pressed President Trump on his previous praise for China’s transparency on coronavirus.
“China has been working very hard to contain the coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!” Trump tweeted on Jan. 24, as he and his administration downplayed the outbreak.
Days later, Trump announced he was banning foreign nationals who had traveled to China from entering the US.
“I don’t talk about China’s transparency,” Trump claimed in the Rose Garden Tuesday, citing his travel ban as evidence.
“I was the one person that wanted to do it. You know why? Because I don’t believe everything I hear,” Trump said of his travel ban decision.
According to Johns Hopkins University’s tally of cases in the United States, there are at least 602,989 cases of coronavirus in the United States.
On Tuesday, Johns Hopkins reported 20,382 new cases in the United States.
San Francisco Pride has decided to cancel its parade and celebration this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, the organization announced in a statement today.
The two day event in San Francisco, scheduled for June 27 and 28, would have marked San Francisco Pride’s 50th anniversary with over a million attendees, according to the statement.
“This was not a decision we arrived at lightly,” San Francisco Pride Executive Director Fred Lopez said.
Nonprofit event producers are working to determine alternate ways to celebrate the 50th anniversary through digital platforms.
SF Pride will join other Pride organizations in a worldwide “Virtual Global Pride” event on June 27.
President Trump says he’ll soon reveal details and guidelines for reopening the country but appeared to acknowledge that individual state governors will ultimately determine when to reverse stay-at-home orders.
Only a day earlier, Trump insisted he had absolute authority to determine when states would be able to reopen their economies.
But his message Tuesday was different. He said governors would determine their own plans. And while he said he was authorizing them to do it, there wasn’t any evidence they would require such sign-off.
Trump said he would be “authorizing each individual governor of each individual state to implement a reopening and a very powerful reopening plan of their state.”
He said he would soon speak to all 50 governors about the plans, and indicated some states without major outbreaks could potentially open before May 1.
He said his administration would work to hold governors accountable for the plans.
But he said they’d be working closely with the states.
Watch:
President Trump announced Tuesday he is halting funding to the World Health Organization while a review is conducted.
Trump said at a news conference the review would cover the WHO’s “role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of coronavirus.”
The President said that while the US imposed travel restrictions on China during the early stages of the outbreak, WHO was “opposed to what we did,” he said.
Trump continued: “The decision of other major countries to keep travel open was one of the great tragedies and missed opportunities from the early days.”
California said it has 1,544 new coronavirus cases – the highest number recorded in a single day since the beginning of the outbreak.
These additional cases bring the total in California to 23,338. More than 11% of those patients are health care workers, according to new data from California Department of Public Health.
At least 758 people have died in California due to coronavirus.
Dyson is gearing up for full-scale production of ventilators to help with the coronavirus pandemic.
The company has confirmed that its production lines based at the Hullavington Airfield in England are now in the process of manufacturing ventilator units in preparation for final regulatory approval.
In a letter shared with CNN in March, James Dyson – the company’s billionaire founder – confirmed that the company had received an order from the UK government for 10,000 ventilators.
In a video shared by Dyson today, the company showcased its latest development, highlighting that engineering teams and manufacturers have been working “around the clock” to develop this new ventilator.
The video continued: “The project has brought together engineers, scientists, medical device designers, clinical testing and high technology manufacturing knowledge, to achieve the NHS specification.”
In March, a spokesperson for Dyson told CNN that they hoped to have the ventilators ready for mass production by early April 2020.
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said today that she doesn’t believe the city’s biggest events — French Quarter Festival, JazzFest and Essence Festival — should be held in 2020, but instead push to 2021.
All three events had been postponed in light of the coronavirus pandemic.
Cantrell said she’s been in touch with event organizers but did not give any additional details on those conversations.
As of mid-March, the French Quarter Festival and JazzFest posted on their social media that the events were postponed to the fall of 2020. Nothing new has been updated since then.
Prosecutors are asking a federal judge to postpone the trial of associates of Rudy Giuliani by at least four months until February due to the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on the criminal justice system.
In a letter to Judge Paul Oetken, prosecutors also said they informed lawyers for Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman and two other men charged in a campaign finance scheme that their plans to bring additional charges against the men have also been impacted.
The “timeline for seeking a superseding indictment has been pushed back due to issues involving the availability of witnesses and grand jurors given the pandemic-related travel and social-distancing restrictions,” prosecutors wrote.
Parnas and Fruman had been schedule to go to trial on October 5, about one month before the presidential election. The men, who were central players in Giuliani’s effort to dig up dirt on Joseph and Hunter Biden’s activities in the Ukraine, have pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The coronavirus pandemic has ground the criminal justice system to a halt across the country with grand juries disrupted and criminal and civil trials postponed. In the Southern District of New York trials are postponed until at least June 1.
Prosecutors didn’t object to a request by lawyers for the defendants who sought to postpone the trial because of their difficulty of meeting with their clients, who are based in Florida and California, and prepare for trial.
If the trial is delayed, it would remove the potential for information about Giuliani’s associates spilling into the public just weeks ahead of the presidential election.
Other high profile trials have also been postponed. Michael Avenatti, the celebrity attorney, was set to go to trial this month on charges he stole more than $300,000 from his former client Stormy Daniels. A federal judge set a new trial date for August.
Paul Manafort’s lawyers have also asked for the former Trump campaign chairman to be moved out of prison due to potential health risks from the coronavirus.
There are at least 594,207 cases of coronavirus in the US and at least 25,163 people have died from the virus, according to Johns Hopkins University’s tally of cases.
On Tuesday, Johns Hopkins has reported 11,600 new cases and 1,535 reported deaths.
The totals includes cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as well as all repatriated cases.
Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont said that he and a number of his gubernatorial counterparts think President Trump is off-base with his desire to reopen the nation’s economy by May 1.
Lamont instead reiterated the May 20 date he offered on CNN’s New Day Tuesday morning as more of a realistic timeframe when he could make an informed decision about when to reopen the state.
“I said we’re not gonna be reopening schools before May 20, but by May 20 we’re gonna have a lot of our testing in place by then, we’ll have a lot more of the PPE, the protective gear,” Lamont said. “And that will give us a lot stronger indication about who and when and how people can start getting to work.”
