Brazilian tourists wearing protective face masks queue with others to enter the Jeronimos Monastery in Lisbon on March 12, 2020. (Photo by PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA/AFP via Getty Images)
The European Commission has issued a statement condemning President Donald Trump’s travel ban to 26 European countries, announced last night in a widely criticized speech.
“The Corona virus is a global crisis, not limited to any continent and it requires cooperation rather than unilateral action,” the statement said. “The European Union disapproves of the fact that the U.S. decision to impose a travel ban was taken unilaterally and without consultation.”
Countries excluded from the ban include the UK, the Republic of Ireland, Croatia, Cyprus, Romania, and Bulgaria.
It does not apply to legal permanent residents of the U.S., according to the Department of Homeland Security, and most of their family members.
The ban is set to start this Friday evening and last for 30 days. Over the same period, Congress will close the U.S. Capitol to the public, and the White House has canceled tours.
Trump’s speech came in the wake of the World Health Organization’s long-anticipated designation of the coronavirus as a pandemic.
There have been a total of 1,215 cases and 36 deaths reported in the U.S., according to the CDC.
Former first lady Rosalynn Carter has died at the age of 96. The Carter Center in Atlanta announced that the wife of former President Jimmy Carter died Sunday afternoon at her home in Plains, Georgia, with her family at her side.
Communications systems in the Gaza Strip were down for a second day with no fuel to power the internet and phone networks, causing aid agencies to halt cross-border deliveries of humanitarian supplies even as they warned people may soon face starvation.
President Joe Biden has ended the immediate threat of a government shutdown, signing a temporary spending bill a day before much of the government was to run out of money.
A gag order that barred Donald Trump from commenting about court personnel after he disparaged a law clerk in his New York civil fraud trial was temporarily lifted Thursday by an appellate judge who raised free speech concerns.
