It’s already hard to envision the world we lived in one month ago.
Flashback: A WHO report from March 1 shows a total of 7,169 coronavirus cases outside of China, with just seven countries having recorded even a single fatality and the total death toll under 3,000, including China.
The coronavirus is spreading most widely in countries that should be among the best equipped to handle it. There's no reason to expect that to remain the case.
Where things stand: 88% of new coronavirus cases confirmed on Wednesday came within the OECD club of wealthy nations, which together account for just 17% of the world's population. While that data is based on uneven and inadequate testing, Europe and North America are clearly in the eye of the storm.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu re-entered self-quarantine on Thursday after his health minister, Yaakov Litzman, tested positive for coronavirus, according to the prime minister's office.
Why it matters: The development comes less than 24 hours after Netanyahu exited several days of self-quarantine after one of his aides tested positive last week. Litzman's infection is even more damaging to Israeli senior government officials, including Netanyahu's national security adviser and the director of the Mossad, as many were in close contact with him in the past week and now face self-isolation.
A Pakistan appeals court has overturned the murder conviction and death sentence of the man convicted of killing U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reported early Thursday.
The big picture: Pearl, who was the Journal's South Asia correspondent, was abducted in Karachi in 2002. British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh had his sentence reduced to seven years, and three other men, who were originally given life sentences for helping him, were acquitted, per the BBC. A report by the Pearl Project at Georgetown University alleged Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is being held in Guantanamo Bay over the 9/11 attacks, carried out the journalist's beheading.
Editor's note: This article has been updated with new details throughout.
Social distancing measures around the world are so great they have actually caused the Earth to move less.
The big picture: There is no shortage of ways to measure how much responses to the pandemic have slowed human movement. But the idea that the planet itself has become stiller is truly mind-blowing.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shared with his Cabinet a video he claimed was evidence of Iran concealing coronavirus deaths by dropping bodies in garbage dumps, two Cabinet ministers tell me.
Behind the scenes: Several hours later, Netanyahu's office realized the video had nothing to do with Iran, or with the coronavirus crisis. It was a clip from “Pandemic," a 2007 Hallmark Channel mini-series.
Vice President Mike Pence told CNN Wednesday that White House modeling suggests "Italy may be the most comparable area to the United States" in terms of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
Why it matters: Italy has become one of the global epicenters of the pandemic, with 105,792 cases and 12,428 deaths. Public health experts have warned for weeks that the U.S. would be on the same path if it didn't take drastic measures to stem the spread of the virus.
For more than two years, Republicans and Democrats have more or less agreed the U.S. needs a China policy that acknowledges Beijing's hard authoritarian turn and the serious challenge China's growing power presents to U.S. interests.
Why it matters: The coronavirus crisis is threatening that consensus. The wedge driving Democrats and Republicans apart is concern about racism.
Between March 11 and 23, as China was delivering much-needed medical supplies to Italy, bots pushed two pro-China, Italian-language hashtags, according to a March 30 investigation published by Italian news outlet Formiche.
The big picture: 46.3% of tweets using the peppy-sounding hashtag #forzaCinaeItalia, which means "come on China and Italy," were bots, according to an analysis performed by Alkemy in partnership with Formiche.
The Chinese government has embarked on a highly publicized campaign to provide vital medical supplies to European countries as they fight coronavirus outbreaks within their borders.
Why it matters: Those efforts — and the perception that the European Union has done little to help — are providing fodder for politicians who are eager to hail China and criticize the EU. EU leaders may now have to worry about both Chinese and Russian overtures that weaken European unity.
