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Smashed avocado on toast
A super-fast breakfast, which is a great way to use up over-ripe avocados.
Serves 12
Calories per serving 289
Ingredients
2 thin slices wholegrain sourdough bread (each about 20g)
1 ripe small avocado, stoned, peeled and roughly chopped
25g walnut halves (about ten), roughly chopped
1 plump red chilli, deseeded and diced, or a pinch of crushed dried chilli flakes (optional)
2 tsp balsamic vinegar
Directions
Toast the bread and divide between two plates (or serve on one plate to share).
Place the avocado and walnuts in a small bowl and mash together with a fork.
Spread on to the hot toast, sprinkle with the chilli, if using, and drizzle with the balsamic vinegar. Season with sea salt and ground black pepper to serve.
Non-fast days: Top the avocado toast with one or two freshly poached eggs, or some crumbled feta. A tablespoon of toasted mixed seeds is also a lovely addition.
Cook's tip:Any wholegrain loaf can be substituted for sourdough, if you can’t get hold of it
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Pet Dog in Hong Kong Tests Positive for Coronavirus
NOEL CELIS/AFP via Getty
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A Hong Kong coronavirus patient has revealed her pet dog has a “low level” of the virus, local health authorities confirmed early Friday.
The dog tested “weak positive” for the coronavirus, the city’s agricultural and fisheries department said in a statement, without giving further details.
Officials will carry out further tests to confirm whether the dog has really been infected with the disease, or if it was a result of environmental contamination of its mouth and nose.
If confirmed, the dog would be the first case of a pet catching the coronavirus amid a global epidemic which emerged in central China in December and has infected more than 83,000 people globally.
The pet was collected from the owner’s home on Wednesday, after the woman was diagnosed with the contagion and placed in a hospital isolation ward, AFP reports.
A dog wears a muzzle in JiangTan park in Wuhan, Hubei province, China. Flights, trains and public transport including buses, subway and ferry services remain closed. (Photo by Getty Images)
It would be closely monitored and undergo further tests to confirm if it really has the virus or if “this is a result of environmental contamination of the dog’s mouth and nose,” the department said.
The canine would be held until it returned a negative result.
The dog is being quarantined at an animal facility, the Hong Kong government said. The department strongly advised pets of confirmed virus patients also be put under quarantine.
As Breitbart News reported, last month a Chinese epidemiologist warned coronavirus is not limited to communication between humans.
Dr. Li Lanjuan of the Chinese National Health Commission made clear that mammals are generally at risk of passing the virus.
“If pets go out and have contact with an infected person, they have the chance to get infected. By then, pets need to be isolated. In addition to people, we should be careful with other mammals especially pets,” she told China Central Television (CCTV).
Chinese news outlets and the World Health Organization previously reported pet-to-person transmission remains theoretical as of now.
A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., on Friday dismissed a lawsuit from House Democrats who were seeking testimony from former White House counsel Don McGahn as part of a broader investigation into President Donald Trump.
In a 2-1 decision by a three-judge panel, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said it lacked jurisdiction to hear the case, agreeing with the Trump administration’s position that the U.S. Constitution forbids federal courts from resolving interbranch information disputes.
“The Committee’s suit asks us to settle a dispute that we have no authority to resolve,” the opinion states.
The House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed McGahn in 2019 as part of its investigation into Trump’s potential obstruction of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe. McGahn previously told Mueller’s grand jury that Trump ordered him to direct the Department of Justice to fire Mueller in 2017 in order to end the probe. He did not carry out the order. This incident appeared as one of 10 potentially obstructive acts committed by Trump in Mueller’s final report.
Democrats sought to bring McGahn before the committee to get his testimony on this alleged obstruction. But the White House declared that the president and his direct aides had an “absolute immunity” from congressional investigation and ordered McGahn not to honor the subpoena. The administration never made a formal declaration of executive privilege over McGahn’s testimony.
The court said Democrats will just have to find some other way to force the administration to comply with their demands.
“Congress (or one of its chambers) may hold officers in contempt, withhold appropriations, refuse to confirm the President’s nominees, harness public opinion, delay or derail the President’s legislative agenda, or impeach recalcitrant officers,” the court wrote. “And Congress can wield these political weapons without dragging judges into the fray.”
Democrats haven’t embraced the use of hardball legislative tactics to gain leverage. For a time last year, they entertained the idea of using their own power to arrest or fine recalcitrant administration officials, but ultimately rejected using the so-called “inherent contempt” power.
A name plate for McGahn sits on the witness table prior to a House Judiciary Committee hearing in which he was subpoenaed to testify May 21, 2019, on Capitol Hill. President Donald Trump directed McGahn not to comply with the subpoena. (Photo: Alex Wong via Getty Images)
The majority opinion is clear to state that its decision only applies to certain interbranch disputes and not subpoenas issued by Congress to private individuals or entities. ”[W]e may adjudicate cases concerning congressional subpoenas if they implicate the rights of private parties, as in Mazars,” the opinion reads, noting a key case currently before the Supreme Court where a congressional committee has subpoenaed Trump’s personal financial records from his accounting firm. The opinion also does not overrule any future attempt by Congress to pass a law enabling it to bring disputes with the executive branch to the federal judiciary.
The court acknowledged there are several past instances of Congress using courts to settle disputes between Congress and the White House, including a favorable decision House Republicans got in the Fast and Furious case against former Attorney General Eric Holder. But the court said “the legal basis for that practice is dubious.”
Circuit Judge Judith W. Rogers dissented from the opinion, writing that the majority’s ruling “removes any incentive for the Executive Branch to engage in the negotiations process seeking accommodation, all but assures future Presidential stonewalling of Congress, and further impairs the House’s ability to perform its constitutional duties.”
A concurrence to the majority opinion filed by Judge Karen L. Henderson directly addressed the claim of “absolute immunity” to state that it “rests on shaky legal ground.”
The decision will have immediate implications for Democrats’ efforts to get President Trump’s tax returns. The administration refused their formal request last year, and the case has been stuck in a lower court. The judge in that case paused the proceedings to wait for an outcome in the McGahn case. Now that the appeals court has dismissed it, the lower judge is likely to say Democrats lack standing to sue for the president’s taxes.
Shortly after the McGahn ruling dropped, the judge in the tax case ordered a hearing for next week.
A federal judge had previously ruled that McGahn must comply with the subpoena, writing that “Presidents are not kings” and were subject to congressional oversight.
Heath officials have condemned reports of a dog contracting coronavirus from its infected owner as “mass hysteria”, claiming there is “no evidence” of human-to-pet transmission of the disease.
On Friday, it was widely reported that a Pomeranian, belonging to a 60-year-old woman diagnosed with COVID-19 in Hong Kong, was collected from her home on Wednesday after being placed in a hospital isolation unit.
But a British virology expert has since said there is “no evidence that the human novel coronavirus can infect dogs.”
View photos
A dog wears a home made cover over its snout, which its owner said was a preventive measure against the COVID-19 coronavirus in Beijing. (Getty Images)
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0:56
Coronavirus: The confirmed cases around the world
Jonathan Ball, a Professor of Molecular Virology at the University of Nottingham, said: “We have to differentiate between real infection and just detecting the presence of a virus – these are very different - and the fact that the test result was weakly positive would suggest that this is environmental contamination or simply the presence of coronavirus shed from the human contact that has ended up in the dog’s samples.
“In truth this is incredibly irresponsible because the last thing we need to do is create mass hysteria about the possibility of dogs being infected, and therefore potentially transmitting this virus when there is absolutely no evidence for this whatsoever.”
Hong Kong officials did not offer explanation of why they tested the animal in the first place.
View photos
Stock markets are falling around the world after the sudden escalation of coronavirus cases in South Korea and Italy in the last few days. (Photo by May James / SOPA images/Sipa USA)
They said it was unclear whether the dog had actually contracted the virus or tested positive for low levels due to environmental contamination of the dog's mouth and nose.
But as such, health authorities in the country said all pets of people infected with the coronavirus will be quarantined for 14 days.
Meanwhile, British Veterinary Association President Daniella Dos Santos also highlighted that COVID-19 is only transmittable from human-to human.
View photos
A map showing recorded coronavirus cases in Europe. (PA)
Dos Santos said: “The current advice from the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) remains that the predominant route of transmission is human to human.
“Further advice from the World Small Animal Veterinary Association is that there is currently no evidence that pets can be infected with Covid-19 and this remains the case at the time of commenting on Friday 28 February (11.30am).
Investors betting big against catastrophic diseases are watching the World Health Organization closely as insurance bonds tied to whether the organization labels COVID-19 a pandemic are set to mature in June.
In 2017, the World Bank designed a new way to raise money: Pandemic Emergency Financing bonds. Over $425 million worth of such bonds, which bet against a global outbreak of infectious diseases and will default if WHO declares the coronavirus a pandemic, were sold by the World Bank in its first-ever issuance of catastrophe bonds. In the event of no pandemic, investors would be paid a healthy annualized return. Meanwhile, the World Bank could use the bonds to insure itself against the risk of a global outbreak.
“As an investor, we do not want to lose money,” said Chin Liu, a portfolio manager at Amundi Pioneer, a Boston-based firm that purchased the bonds as a way to diversify the company's $1 billion catastrophe fund. “But then, we also understand if it’s unfortunately triggered, it benefits every single person, including ourselves, to keep the virus controlled.”
For large-scale investors looking for above-average returns in a bloated market, the bonds were the next logical place to hedge against disaster. At the time of issuance, then-World Bank President Jim Yong-Kim heralded the bonds as an opportunity to leverage "capital market expertise to serve the world’s poorest people."
The bonds were administered in two tranches, with Class A bond investors receiving a return of 6.9% annually. Class B bond investors received 11.5% annually. The World Bank raised $225 million in Class A bonds and $95 million in Class B bonds.
The investors, mainly endowments and pension funds, have long bet against natural disasters such as hurricanes, but the 2017 issuance of the bonds marked a shift in the market. Before, investors were betting on the wind speed of hurricanes, but now, they were betting on the likelihood of an infectious disease that could tear through nations across the globe.
"This marks the first time that World Bank bonds are being used to finance efforts against infectious diseases, and the first time that pandemic risk in low-income countries is being transferred to the financial markets," read a statement from the World Bank at the time of issuance.
The conditions under which the payout on bonds will default are staggered based on how rapidly the disease spreads, the number of deaths associated with the illness, and whether the virus crosses international borders.
As of Wednesday, the coronavirus has claimed the lives of more than 2,500 people and infected more than 80,000, with most cases contained to mainland China. This week, the illness has begun to spread outside of China — with more than 100 cases reported in Iran and a run on stores in Italy after the number of infected patients increased 45% on Tuesday alone.
Authorities in Arkansas are getting creative with attempts to thwart drug use in the area and their latest ploy involves the coronavirus threat.
The St. Francis County Sheriff's Office issued a “public service announcement” on Wednesday warning that methamphetamines recently sold in the area may have been “contaminated” with the coronavirus.
“WARNING: If you have recently purchased meth locally, it may be contaminated with the coronavirus,” the message posted to Facebook read.
“Please take it to the sheriff’s office or police department and they will test it for free.”
The tongue-in-cheek warning advised those who are “not comfortable going into an office” to call law enforcement so they can “test your meth in the privacy of your home.”
There have been 60 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the U.S. in total, a figure that includes three individuals repatriated from evacuation flights, and 42 from the Diamond Princess ship that Japanese officials quarantined earlier this month.
The sponsors of upwards of 1,000 clinical trials may be forced to publish data that have gone unpublished over a 10-year period.
A federal judge in the Southern District of New York has ruled that sponsors of clinical trials conducted between 2007 and 2017 are failing to comply with federal law if they do not post their studies’ results to ClinicalTrials.gov, according to STAT.
The decision stipulates that reporting requirements outlined in a 2017 final rule to the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act are applicable to trials completed as far back as 2007, and not just those finished after 2017 as government agencies had mistakenly interpreted the law, reports Endpoints News.
“This decision brings us one step closer to what federal law requires—providing the American public with complete access to clinical trial results on drugs and medical devices approved by the FDA,” the plaintiff’s supervising attorney Christopher Morten tells STAT, adding that the ruling “makes it harder for drug companies, device manufacturers, and other trial sponsors to keep unfavorable trial results secret.”
STAT notes that it had previously investigated the reporting of clinical trial data in 2015, finding that “most research institutions—including leading universities and hospitals in addition to drug companies—routinely break a law that requires them to report the results of human studies of new treatments to the federal government’s ClinicalTrials.gov database.”
Science reported earlier this year that the FDA has not imposed fines for violations, nor has the National Institutes of Health withheld grant funding, despite 2017 statements by both agencies promising to enforce the law with penalties for noncompliance.
Peter Lurie, a former associate FDA commissioner, and Charles Seife, a journalism professor at New York University, brought the lawsuit before the court, arguing that the misinterpretation of the rule had negatively affected their work. “The FDA is in charge of making sure that drugs on the market are safe and effective, but without access to data about those drugs, it’s nearly impossible to understand whether the agency is doing its job properly,” Seife said in a statement on Tuesday, according to STAT.
“The court has set aside that erroneous interpretation of the law and has said that the statute means what it has always said,” Morten tells Endpoints News. “So our hope here is that trial sponsors are going to start, finally, after years of noncompliance, reporting some of that missing data to the patients.”
A spokeswoman for the FDA declined to comment to STAT, while a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services tells the outlet that the agency was “evaluating the Court’s decision with the Department of Justice to determine our next steps.”
