$484 Billion Pandemic Aid Bill
04/29/2020
300M
Zoom’s daily users surged to more than 300 million in April from a previous maximum total of 10 million, said by Zoom’s chief executive officer Eric Yuan. The Zoom usage skyrocket over the last few weeks as hundreds of millions of people are using this platform for work and leisure, as lockdowns are imposed around the world. However, the huge influx of users on Zoom has raised a lot of issues for the company — mainly privacy concerns and Zoombombing. This has led to several schools, enterprises, and governments stopping the use of Zoom.
$484
Senate passes a $484 billion pandemic aid bill, designed to reduce the strain on U.S. businesses reeling from the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic. The legislation delivers funding to small businesses, hospitals and to enhance COVID-19 testing. The majority of funds $321 billion will be allocated to Paycheck Protection Program — loans for small business, $60 billion — for the economic injury disaster loan fund, $75 billion — to support hospitals and healthcare providers and $25 billion — for coronavirus testing.
200
New York City reported that more than 200 workers have died from the COVID-19 outbreak. A death toll that includes 33 employees of City Hospitals, 63 employees of the Education Department and 31 in the Police Department — this is really such painful news for us said by Mr. de Blasio. By mid –April there were 18% of workers were out sick at the police department, fire department (23%) of its emergency medical responders and 6 percent of its firefighters were out sick, according to city data.
3.9 Million
A big asteroid will pass close to Earth on April 29th (Wednesday), but we have nothing to fear said by NASA. The space agency has named it Asteroid 1998 OR2 and said it will look like it’s wearing a face mask. It will pass at a safe distance, at some 3.9 million miles (6.3 million km) of our planet, which is more than 16 times — the average distance between Earth and the moon. The flyby is expected to occur on Wednesday around 5:56 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, according to NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies.
26.4 M
The U.S Department of Labor reported that U.S unemployment claims have now hit 26.4 million amid coronavirus pandemic. The fallout has left roughly 1 in 6 Americans workers has lost their job, a number that shows the world is facing the sharpest slowdown and the great recession’s impact on the U.S. labor market. According to the NCSL, the highest unemployment rates overall were in Nevada, Pennsylvania, Louisiana. Click here to see the weekly initial jobless claims in 2020.
6
6 new coronavirus symptoms were added to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) list. More and more cases come to light, newer symptoms are being discovered, and now the list of symptoms, tripling the number to 9. The previous 3 symptoms were fever, cough, and shortness of breath, or difficulty breathing. The 6 new symptoms include: Chills, repeated shaking with chills, headache, sore throat, muscle pain, and new loss of taste or smell. The CDC is warning people to get medical attention immediately for any other symptoms that are severe or concerning to you.
50
Facebook announced that it has added a new video calling feature, “Messenger Rooms” that allows users to join group video calls of up to 50 people. Facebook told the feature has released earlier than it had planned due to the lockdown. The new messenger rooms were already launched for some users in the UK starting April 24 and will be available globally in the coming weeks, the FB company told the BBC.