“I want you to know he died in the hospital alone, isolated, and scared,” she wrote in an Instagram message to Smithfield Foods.

Women and children are experiencing unprecedented levels of abuse and violence at home as stress and anxiety continue to mount due to the pandemic.

The United States on Friday accused China and Russia of stepping up cooperation to spread false narratives over the coronavirus pandemic, saying Beijing was increasingly adopting techniques honed by Moscow. "Even before the COVID-19 crisis we assessed a certain level of coordination between Russia and the PRC in the realm of propaganda," said Lea Gabrielle, coordinator of the State Department's Global Engagement Center, which tracks foreign propaganda. The Global Engagement Center earlier said thousands of Russian-linked social media accounts were spreading conspiracies about the pandemic, including charging that the virus first detected last year in the Chinese metropolis of Wuhan was created by the United States.

When gas began leaking from a nearby chemical factory and drifting towards his house in southern India, there were no warnings and no alarms, welder Elamanchili Venkatesh said. Venkatesh, who staggered outside blindly, said he coughed up blood before losing consciousness.

The wild plot involved faking his own death, stealing the identity of a Florida attorney, using an app to disguise his voice, and pretending to have prostate cancer, bone cancer, and a brain aneurysm.Unemployed Virginia man Russell Louis Geyer was so determined to hide his assets in bankruptcy proceedings, he even threw his own wife under the bus—duping her into handing over $70,000 and using her email address to inform an attorney he was dead. Geyer, 50, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to contempt of court, bankruptcy fraud, wire fraud, and aggravated identity fraud. He faces up to life in prison.“In an effort to game the bankruptcy system, Mr. Geyer devised a made-for-TV plot that ultimately collapsed under its own weight,” U.S. Attorney Thomas Cullen said in a statement.Minnesota Man Killed Wife, Buried Her Under Home, Then Faked Her Disappearance: Court DocsGeyer and his wife, Patricia Sue Geyer, from Saltville, filed for voluntary bankruptcy in late 2018, listing liabilities of $532,583.80, according to court documents.They were behind on payments for three of their four vehicles, for both their home and a rental property they owned, and for most of their furniture. They hadn’t paid electricity bills, bank overdrafts, credit card bills, and dozens of medical bills, and more than 50 creditors were chasing them for everything from their 65-inch TV to their Kawasaki ZX1000 motorbike. At one point in the bankruptcy proceedings, Geyer told his lawyer, John Lamie, he’d gone to the Mayo Clinic in Florida to be treated for prostate cancer, but it had spread to his bones and he intended to stop treatment.Four months later, according to a criminal complaint, he told Lamie he was now in a hospice in Florida after treatment failed. He said his wife was there, too, and had undergone bypass surgery for a heart condition. She wasn’t cleared to drive back to Virginia, he claimed.Then, a few days before September 5, 2019, when Geyer was due to appear in person at a bankruptcy hearing, Lamie received an email from Geyer’s wife. Her husband was dead, it said. He’d apparently had a brain aneurysm in June while being transported back from Florida after his chemotherapy treatments.Around the same time, Geyer’s attorney got a threatening email from an attorney in Florida who said he’d sold the assets that debtors were trying to recover in the bankruptcy case. “[Patricia] doesn’t know anything about this, and neither does Russell,” the email said. “I have complete control of Russell and told him to kill himself. You will not find him in time.” He ended the email by saying: “I am on a plane out of the country.”However, investigators later found that the Florida attorney whose name was used in the email existed but had nothing to do with the case. Geyer had simply set up a bogus email account using his name.‘Please Come Get Me’: Fatal Indianapolis Police Shooting May Have Aired on Facebook He even used the attorney’s identity to fleece his wife, a registered nurse who earned $3,200 a month, for $70,000. Geyer told his wife he’d won a $1 million settlement in Florida in an unrelated court case but needed her to pay $70,000 in legal fees for the money to be released. He used the bogus email address and an app that disguised his voice to pose as the Florida attorney and confirm the settlement was imminent. “It was all untrue,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Virginia said in a statement on Thursday.The plot unraveled on Sept. 4, the day before the bankruptcy hearing, when a process server visited the couple’s Saltville home to give them a notice to appear.The home was empty but, just as the process server was leaving, Geyer and his wife arrived home in their car and got out—far from the Florida hospice he had claimed to be languishing in. The next day, Patricia Geyer, who said she’d largely let her husband deal with the bankruptcy case, left home to attend the court hearing about an hour after her husband. He never showed up.She told the court she had no idea about her husband’s wild story. She said they hadn’t been in Florida recently, she hadn’t had bypass surgery, and her husband didn’t have cancer. The first time she’d heard of her husband’s supposed death was two days earlier, when Lamie called her to say he’d heard about Geyer’s passing.“A few days ago, [Lamie] called me at work,” she said under cross-examination in court. “I got a message to call him. So I immediately called him and then he told me all this stuff about Russell being dead and all that. It just floored me, so I had no clue.”“Where’s Mr. Geyer now?” a judge asked her.“I couldn’t tell you, because he left the house this morning an hour, hour before me. And he was supposed to come down here and be here at 10:30, and then when I ended up here, he wasn't here. So I don’t know.” After that day in court, she only ever received text messages from Geyer saying he was in a hospital in West Virginia following a suicide attempt. Geyer was tracked down two weeks later and charged with criminal offenses. He underwent a psychiatric evaluation as part of the criminal case but was found to be competent to stand trial.“Despite its complexity and shameless use of deceit, including against his own wife, Mr. Geyer’s scheme failed to account for the FBI’s and the US Attorney’s office’s commitment to protect both fraud victims and our judicial system,” FBI Special Agent David W. Archey said.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

A New York town has launched a diet and exercise program to help residents lose weight to prevent reported risks of obesity and coronavirus outcomes.

Three sisters who worked in Mexico's government hospital system were found murdered by strangling, authorities in the northern border state of Coahuila announced Friday, stirring new alarm in a country where attacks on health care workers have occurred across the nation amid the coronavirus outbreak. Two of the sisters were nurses for the Mexican Social Security Institute and the third was a hospital administrator, but there was no immediate evidence the attack was related to their work. The National Union of Social Security Employees called the killings “outrageous and incomprehensible.”

Former director of national intelligence James Clapper in 2018 said that he hadn't seen evidence that the Trump presidential campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 general election.Clapper was responding to a query from then-representative Tom Rooney, a Florida Republican, during an interview before the House Intelligence Committee. The transcript of the interview was released on Thursday."I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting [or] conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election," Clapper said."That's not to say that there weren't concerns about the evidence we were seeing, anecdotal evidence…[redacted]," Clapper added. "But I do not recall any instance when I had direct evidence of the content of these meetings. It's just the frequency and prevalence of them was of concern."Rooney then asked Clapper, "At what time is collusion collusion, and at what time is it just people that may have an affiliation with the campaign meeting or talking with… the Russian ambassador or somebody that's of Russian origin, and when should that be taken as something that rises to the level of an Intelligence Community concern?""I really can't answer it other than the sort of visceral reaction to why all these meetings with the Russians," Clapper responded. Clapper admitted that it would be "legitimate" for incoming Trump administration officials to meet with representatives of Russia, "but I think there is a line…between that and violating the principle that in this country we traditionally have one President and one administration at a time."The interview was part of a set of 53 transcripts of interviews held by the House Intelligence Committee as part of the Russia investigation. Current committee chairman Adam Schiff had called for the release of the transcripts in 2018.However, after 43 transcripts had been reviewed and redacted by intelligence agencies as of June 2019, Schiff refused to relase the completed transcripts to the public. Current acting DNI head Richard Grenell informed Schiff on Wednesday that all the transcripts were ready for publication.

Thousands of troops paraded before crowds of spectators in Minsk Saturday to mark 75 years since the defeat of Nazi Germany as Belarus held a celebration of Victory Day despite the coronavirus pandemic. Neighbouring Russia cancelled its Victory Day parade over the pandemic and Belarus was the only ex-Soviet country with reported cases to hold the annual event. President Alexander Lukashenko, who has been dismissive of the pandemic and the "psychosis" around the virus, watched in military uniform with top brass as some 4,000 troops marched past and planes and helicopters flew overhead.

President Xi Jinping expresses concern about the threat to its neighbour, and offers to help.

The diagnosis brings the threat of infection into the president's inner circle.

At the Springplank school in the Dutch city of Den Bosch, staff have installed plastic shields around students' desks and disinfectant gel dispensers at the doorways as part of preparations to reopen amid the country's coronavirus outbreak. New infections in the Netherlands have been declining for weeks, and the government on Wednesday announced a schedule to relax some of its lockdown measures, with elementary schools to reopen on May 11. "Our teachers are not worried," said Rascha van der Sluijs, the school's technical coordinator.

Are dentists open for emergency care, and other questions answered by BBC experts.

Ministers have set targets for testing, medical equipment and hospital beds. Have they delivered?

Will life return to how it was once lockdown restrictions are eased, or will some things change for ever?

The number at the heart of the decision whether to lift lockdown.

In response, Boris Johnson suggested a "bigger and more expansive" Tube service in London would help people travel more safely.

The Labour leader says the UK's coronavirus death figures are “not success or apparent success“.

The Foreign Secretary says the prime minister will outline what steps the UK "can responsibly take over the following weeks."

How the government's policy has shifted from the first recorded case to the PM being treated in ICU.

Vulnerable children and victims of domestic violence and modern slavery will get extra support.

The experiment is part of the government's track and trace strategy aimed at limiting a second wave.

Rail union leaders have written to Prime Minister Boris Johnson with "severe concerns".

Banks see stampede for bounce-back loans within hours of the new government scheme going live.

Boris Johnson says doctors had planned what to do if his coronavirus treatment went "badly wrong".

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps says it could help maintain social distancing on public transport.

Reduced hot-desking, staggered shifts and continued home-working form part of a draft government plan.

The leader of the TUC says she cannot recommend the government's draft advice "in its current form".

A large zoo says it needs government grants as it has no visitors or income but still has to look after its animals.

About 8,000 job centre staff have been redeployed to process claims for financial help, minister tells MPs.

With the Lords conducting most of its business remotely, fees for attending are set to be reduced.

The moves could include a gradual reopening of schools and allowing people to spend more time outside.

Their letter says services can be held with "proper measures in place", amid the Covid-19 outbreak.

Ann Clwyd argues against "blanket ban" on over-70s involvement in easing of virus restrictions.

Labour's Dr Rosena Allin-Khan questions Health Secretary Matt Hancock in the House of Commons.

Sir Keir Starmer urges politicians, employers and unions to work together to address public "anxiety".

The UK's chief scientist tells MPs mass testing is "part of the system that you need to get right".

The figure of 29,427 deaths is "a massive tragedy", the foreign secretary says, but steers clear of comparisons.

Countries have "gone their own way" rather than working together, the ex-prime minister says.

UK government advisors say post-pandemic recovery funds should go to firms reducing carbon emissions.

Scotland Yard says Prof Neil Ferguson's behaviour was "plainly disappointing" but rules out fining him.

The NI Executive says agreeing how to relax measures is the most crucial decision it will ever make.

The historic move will be temporary to cope with the coronavirus pandemic, says Commons speaker.

Demand for milk has dropped with the closure of cafes and restaurants during the coronavirus crisis.

The UK records a further 649 deaths, taking the total number of coronavirus deaths to 30,076.

The PM says government is "working hard" to tackle it - and sets 200,000 test aim by end of month.

Nadia Whittome claims she was "sacked" but the care employer says she was no longer needed.

Almost half a million people are at "high risk" of homelessness, local councils warn government.

People will be allowed to exercise outside more than once a day, First Minister Mark Drakeford says.