FOR PROFIT SENIOR CARE

This nursing home chain reported the highest COVID death rate. Then it deleted deaths.

Jayme Fraser and Nick Penzenstadler, USA TODAY
Fri, December 23, 202

Federal regulators will review the official tally of COVID-19 deaths at one of the nation’s largest nursing home chains after the company cut its reported death toll by an unprecedented 42% following a USA TODAY investigation.

Presented with USA TODAY’s findings that Trilogy Health Services had the worst death rate among its peers during last winter’s coronavirus surge, company officials said they discovered they had included deaths in their mandatory weekly reports that should not have been counted.

On Thursday, a chief medical officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services called the resulting changes “concerning.”

“CMS takes reports of data inaccuracy very seriously and will hold any bad actors accountable,” Dr. Lee Fleisher, the agency’s director of clinical standards and quality, said in an emailed statement.

The Midwest chain originally reported 772 deaths at 113 facilities from October 2020 through February 2021. The cut of 325 deaths, which the company said is based on federal guidance, drops its reported rate from highest to third-highest among the nation’s 10 largest nursing home chains.

Dying for Care: This nursing home chain stood out for nationally high death rates as pandemic peaked

Even more deaths could be excluded from the official tally for Trilogy, which operates homes in four states: Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan and Ohio.

Trilogy plans to submit another revision to its data for dozens more weeks beyond those analyzed in USA TODAY’s investigation. Damon Elder, a spokesman for American Healthcare REIT – the real estate investment trust that owns Trilogy facilities and shares in company profits – said Wednesday that he did not know the scale of those additional changes.

The revisions submitted by Trilogy deleted as many deaths as had been removed by a combined 13,500 other facilities. No other chain came close. Most large chains that revised their numbers added deaths, according to a USA TODAY analysis of the data posted on the CMS website.

Map of US
How U.S. nursing homes fared during COVID-19's worst surge
Explore the data


Last week, CMS spokesperson Mark Brager said the agency's policy is to accept revisions to self-reported COVID-19 case data without explanation or review. This week, Fleisher clarified that the agency would review Trilogy’s changes.

Federal rules adjusted for the pandemic allowed facilities to charge a higher rate for people with COVID-19 who were treated at the nursing home instead of being transferred to a hospital.

Asked whether the company’s revised accounting of COVID-19 cases and deaths would be compared to Medicare and Medicaid bills paid by CMS on behalf of residents, Fleisher described “some challenges” but did not specify whether such a review would take place. While COVID-19 tracking data was used to monitor cases and deaths in real time, it did not include the names of people counted, making it difficuilt to match with federal billing records that are tracked in a separate system.

Elder said Trilogy has not been contacted by either CMS or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about its revisions. Since late May 2020, CMS has required facilities to submit weekly reports of new COVID-19 cases and deaths to the National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN), a database run by the CDC.

Explore: When does a nursing home COVID-19 death count? It's complicated.

The government has used the information to award billions of dollars in COVID aid as well as target inspections and identify facilities that might need extra support during outbreaks.

Some academic researchers, who have relied on the data to study how and why COVID-19 has killed more than 140,000 people in nursing homes, called on government officials to step up after learning of Trilogy’s extensive revisions.

David Grabowski, a health care policy professor at Harvard University medical school who studies nursing home performance, called Trilogy’s revisions “suspicious.”

Weekly COVID-19-related deaths in nursing homes

Grabowski said there “should be some consequences” for submitting incorrect data to the national COVID-19 reporting system because of how important the system is to government officials and researchers who use it to understand the pandemic.

“Either they are admitting they submitted bad data or they are going back and altering the data to make themselves look better,” he said. “I don’t like either of those outcomes and both of them speak to the need for increased oversight and accountability.”

Charlene Harrington, who has studied nursing home quality for more than four decades, agreed that CMS should thoroughly investigate.

“I really don't see why CMS would let nursing homes revise their reports without some specific evidence that documents the information,” said the professor emerita at the University of California, San Francisco.

A report from the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which examined the early days of the federal reporting, found the majority of nursing home submissions appeared complete. An updated evaluation is due to be published in September.

Federal regulators “should be asking questions” about significant revisions, such as the one made by Trilogy, said Karen Shen, a Harvard Ph.D. candidate who led a study estimating at least 16,000 people died in nursing homes before mandatory reporting.

Fleisher, the CMS official, said reviews of NHSN submissions are limited by “capacity challenges,” so they typically take place only after the agency receives an inquiry or complaint. It is one reason, he said, “why President Biden’s budget calls on Congress to increase CMS inspection resources by nearly 25%.”

Vince Mor, a professor at the Brown University School of Public Health, said he is concerned that the CDC and CMS do not actively audit or otherwise verify data submitted to the NHSN.

“It is much easier to just blame the incompetency of the facilities reporting,” he said. “It is a miracle that any of the data make any sense at all.”

Another person hoping for government action after Trilogy’s revision: Shana Driver, whose mother died in a Trilogy-owned nursing home in Indiana last winter.

A 103-degree fever suggested and two positive tests confirmed Sue Miller had COVID-19, Driver said, remembering what she learned during conversations with nurses. Two weeks later, the family was approved for final bedside visits inside the COVID-19 ward.

Miller died on Day 4 of their vigil, Dec. 21, 2020, while her son-in-law sat at her bedside playing her favorite Bee Gees songs.

Sue Miller’s death certificate lists COVID-19 pneumonia as the cause of death. Originally, Trilogy reported four deaths that week, all from the pandemic virus. Its revised data shows none.

“I don’t know how they can just erase that,” Driver said. “That just makes me angry. … They are just trying to erase people.”

Elder, the Trilogy spokesman, declined to comment about specific cases. He noted that it was common for deaths or cases to be reported in subsequent weeks rather than the weeks they occurred. Trilogy reported five COVID-19 deaths the week after Miller died. Federal rules require facilities to accurately link cases and deaths to the week they happened.

The revisions were spurred by a first-of-its-kind data analysis by USA TODAY, which identified Trilogy Health Services as reporting COVID-19 death rates twice the national average – 7 per 1,000 residents – during the pandemic’s worst months in nursing homes.

With its revised death numbers, Trilogy ranked No. 3 out of the nation's Top 10 chains –behind the Good Samaritan Society, a nonprofit chain operated by Sanford Health, and Signature HealthCARE, a for-profit chain, USA TODAY found in an updated analysis.

In a written statement, officials from the Good Samaritan Society and Signature HealthCARE did not explain why their average death rates were higher than other large operators, many with facilities in the same states. The companies critiqued the USA TODAY analysis for focusing on the months before vaccines were widely available – when almost half of all COVID-19 nursing home deaths occurred.

“Our nursing homes were dealing with a once-in-a-century pandemic and a virus that disproportionately targets older adults and those with underlying conditions. This is the very population the Good Samaritan Society is called to serve,” President and CEO Nathan Schema wrote.

SignatureHealthCARE’s statement described USA TODAY’s work as part of a “continual barrage of negatively focused media,” detailing the extra expenses the company incurred to provide care during the pandemic and an infection control program launched in early 2021.

“Throughout our ongoing battle and crusade against COVID-19, the long-term care and skilled nursing healthcare sector as a whole has been attacked, and not just by the virus,” read the statement sent by Communications Manager Ann Bowdan Wilder. “Unfortunately, and quite egregiously, our sector has become the maligned focus of media and other high profile, predatory platforms for negative stories, unbalanced reporting, targeted blame, and inflammatory finger pointing.”

Trilogy leaders have disputed USA TODAY’s characterization of the company's facilities compared with its peers, arguing that Trilogy officials had overcounted COVID-19 deaths while many nursing homes undercounted them.

“Reporting practices in several of the states where we operate have recently come under scrutiny, specifically regarding under-reporting of cases and deaths. Therefore, we feel any comparison data with our competitors at this point is unreliable,” Trilogy CEO Leigh Ann Barney said in a video message sent to the “Trilogy family” days before USA TODAY published its findings.

Good Samaritan Society and Signature HealthCARE described their own reporting to the NHSN as complete. Signature operates facilities in some of the same states as Trilogy.

The Indianapolis Star, part of the USA TODAY Network, has extensively reported on deaths at nursing homes in Indiana, including some that state officials said were reported accurately to the federal system but not to the state. The Ohio Health Department similarly audited death reports and found hundreds in nursing homes that had not been counted in its state tally, but it is unclear whether those same deaths had been accurately reported to federal regulators.

Rachel Reeves, a spokesperson for the American Health Care Association, cited the inspector general's audit as proof that facilities, by and large, complied with COVID-19 reporting requirements. That report found 95% of the nation’s more than 15,000 nursing homes completed all required survey fields with no obvious errors, such as wildly unrealistic numbers, although the tallies were not audited.

“Nursing homes come under frequent ‘scrutiny’ as the representative at Trilogy mentions, but that does not necessarily mean underreporting occurred,” wrote Reeves, who represents the largest industry association for nursing homes.

Nursing homes have been the focus of increased inquiry amid the pandemic. One federal OIG report found 1 million of the nation’s 3 million nursing home residents contracted COVID-19 in 2020. The White House is preparing to use its executive authority to tighten industry regulations while some members of Congress say they want to dig into the corporate owners and operators.

'Profiteering, cold-hearted': Nursing home owners should be investigated, congressman says

In a report released last week, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine called for federal officials to expand the government’s tracking and regulation of nursing home companies, highlighting private equity firms and real estate investment trusts as models that should be evaluated.

A majority of Trilogy’s buildings are owned by a real estate investment trust, American Healthcare REIT.

In addition to collecting rent, American Healthcare shares profits from Trilogy's operations – a model allowed under a federal law revised in 2008. The concept was permitted earlier for REITs outside health care to allow them to offer basic services for their properties, such as cleaning. American Healthcare REIT appears to be the first large trust to use RIDEA, or the REIT Investment Diversification and Empowerment Act, in nursing homes.

With complex ownership structures, which often involve a web of related businesses, savvy owners can reduce taxes, shield money from potential lawsuits and route profits up to the top of a corporate chain even as individual facilities report operating in the red. This makes it difficult, experts said, for the federal government to understand how much of its nursing home funding, paid through Medicare and Medicaid claims, actually goes to care as intended.

Contributing: Letitia Stein

Jayme Fraser and Nick Penzenstadler are reporters on the USA TODAY investigations team. Contact Jayme at jfraser@gannett.com, @jaymekfraser on Twitter or on Signal at (541) 362-1393. Nick can be reached at npenz@usatoday.com, @npenzenstadler on Twitter or on Signal at (720) 507-5273.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Nursing home COVID deaths: One chain deletes 42% of its death tally

Texas power prices spike more than 400% in one day as bomb cyclone sends energy demand soaring


Brian Evans
Fri, December 23, 2022

Icicles hang off the State Highway 195 sign in Killeen, Texas.

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

In some parts of Texas, prices for power to be delivered on Friday evening more than quintupled, topping $500 per megawatt-hour.


On Friday night, temperatures in Dallas, Austin and San Antonio are expected to dip below 20 degrees.


Outage data shows roughly 53,000 Texas residents were experiencing a loss of power on Thursday.

Forecasts for below-freezing temperatures in Texas sent power prices surging more than 400% in the span of just one day.

In some parts of the state, prices for power to be delivered on Friday evening more than quintupled from the prior day, topping $500 per megawatt-hour, according to Bloomberg.

On Friday night, temperatures in Dallas, Austin and San Antonio are expected to dip below 20 degrees. Meanwhile, Houston will reach the low 20s, and even south Texas will be in the mid 20s.

Current expectations project electricity usage will climb to 70.9 gigawatts on Friday, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, surpassing the previous record of 69.8 gigawatts. Put into context, one gigawatt is enough energy to power roughly 200,000 homes.

The cold spell is a callback to February of 2021, when a power grid meltdown killed 200 people in the state while outages forced some Texans to burn furniture in their fireplaces to stay warm.

Officials remain confident that the power grid can handle the increased demand. But the grid has already come under strain. Outage data showed roughly 53,000 Texas residents were experiencing a loss of power on Thursday night.

State regulators have taken steps to winterize the necessary equipment to prepare for the freezing weather, although some critics argue more is needed to prepare the state's power grid.

Microsoft and Activision Blizzard file responses to the FTC's antitrust lawsuit

The companies stated their case for why Microsoft should be allowed to buy Activision for $68.7 billion.


Anadolu Agency via Getty Images


Kris Holt
·Contributing Reporter
Fri, December 23, 2022 


Microsoft has filed a formal response to a Federal Trade Commission antitrust lawsuit that seeks to block it from buying Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. It pushed back against the agency's claims that the takeover would harm competition in the gaming industry. The company argued that consumers would benefit. "The commission cannot meet its burden of showing that the transaction would leave consumers worse off, because the transaction will allow consumers to play Activision’s games on new platforms and access them in new and more affordable ways," Microsoft wrote.

The FTC asserted earlier this month that, should the deal close, it "would enable Microsoft to suppress competitors to its Xbox gaming consoles and its rapidly growing subscription content and cloud-gaming business." The agency pointed to Microsoft making some titles from Bethesda (whose parent company ZeniMax it bought last year) exclusive to its own platforms.

In the filing, Microsoft acknowledged that it planned to make three future Bethesda titles exclusive to Xbox and PC. The names of those games were redacted, but Starfield and Redfall will only be available on Xbox, PC and Xbox Cloud Gaming, while the FTC claimed in its complaint that Microsoft plans to make Elder Scrolls VI an exclusive as well.

One of the major sticking points about the deal is the future of Call of Duty. In an attempt to appease regulators, Microsoft has pledged to keep Call of Duty on competitors' platforms for at least 10 years if the acquisition closes, and to bring the blockbuster franchise to Nintendo consoles. Sony hasn't taken Microsoft up on that deal, however.

"The acquisition of a single game by the third-place console manufacturer cannot upend a highly competitive industry. That is particularly so when the manufacturer has made clear it will not withhold the game," Microsoft wrote. "The fact that Xbox’s dominant competitor has thus far refused to accept Xbox’s proposal does not justify blocking a transaction that will benefit consumers."

Microsoft and Activision Blizzard both claim that keeping Call of Duty away from other platforms wouldn't make sense. Activision said in its own filing that making the franchise exclusive "would be disastrous for Xbox," as it would lose billions in game sales and give up "a massive portion of the gamers that Activision has worked so hard to attract and retain." It added that "in a world with nearly unlimited gaming alternatives, making Call of Duty exclusive is not a plausible outcome."

Both companies took issue with the FTC, with Microsoft claiming that its procedures are unconstitutional. "The structure of these administrative proceedings, in which the commission both initiates and finally adjudicates the complaint against Microsoft, violates Microsoft's Fifth Amendment Due Process right to adjudication before a neutral arbiter," Microsoft said in reference to the agency's decision to file the complaint in its own administrative court, rather than in a federal one. The company also argued that hearing the case in the FTC's administrative court "violates Article III of the US Constitution and the separation of powers."

Activision asserted that by disregarding the supposed benefits to consumers and focusing "on supposed harms to Xbox's deep-pocketed competitors," the FTC was straying from the "underlying purpose" of antitrust laws to protect competition instead of competitors. It said the agency was "blinded by ideological skepticism of high-value technology deals and by complaints from competitors" and that it "lost sight of the realities of the intensely competitive gaming industry."

Nevertheless, Microsoft wants to agree on conditions with the FTC and other regulators that will lead to them rubberstamping the deal. “Even with confidence in our case, we remain committed to creative solutions with regulators that will protect competition, consumers and workers in the tech sector. As we’ve learned from our lawsuits in the past, the door never closes on the opportunity to find an agreement that can benefit everyone,” Microsoft president and vice chair Brad Smith said.

"There is no sensible, legitimate reason for our transaction to be prevented from closing. Our industry has enormous competition and few barriers to entry. We have seen more devices than ever before enabling players a wide range of choices to play games," Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said in a statement to Engadget. "Engines and tools are freely available to developers large and small. The breadth of distribution options for games has never been more widespread. We believe we will prevail on the merits of the case.”

The deadline for the acquisition to close is in July. If it hasn't done so by then, Microsoft and Activision will need to renegotiate the deal or abandon it — Microsoft would then face a breakup fee of as much as $3 billion. As Axios notes, though, the FTC's antitrust case is set to go before its administrative court on August 2nd. In the meantime, the agency could still seek a preliminary injunction in federal court to stop the deal from closing.

The proposed acquisition is also facing scrutiny from regulators in the UK and the European Union. The jurisdictions' respective competition agencies are expected to issue rulings on the deal in the first half of 2023.

Microsoft's Response to the FTC's Antitrust Lawsuit by Kris Holt on Scribd

Activision Blizzard's Formal Response to the FTC's Antitrust Lawsuit by Kris Holt on Scribd

Robocall company may receive the largest FCC fine ever

'The largest robocall operation' ever faces a $300 million penalty.




Steve Dent
·Reporter
Thu, December 22, 2022 

The FCC has proposed a $299,997,000 fine against "the largest robocall firm" it has ever investigated, the regulator announced. It would be the FCC's largest fine ever, and targets a firm that made over 5 billion calls in three months, enough "to have called each person in the United States 15 times," it wrote.

The operation is run by Roy Cox, Jr. and Michael Aaron Jones via their Sumco Panama company, along with other domestic and foreign entities. In July of this year, the FCC issued its first ever "K4 Notice" and "N2 Order" directing all US telephone providers to stop carrying traffic related to the car warranty scam calls. "This resulted in a massive, 99 percent drop in the volume of such calls since June, according to [spam blocking app] RoboKiller," the FCC wrote.

The FCC proposed its largest-ever fine because it found the robocallers met the criteria for "egregious violations." Consumers described the calls as "incessant" and "harassment," and the robocallers used dirty practices like calling health care workers from spoofed hospital numbers. The firm also violated multiple FCC rules, like failing to identify the caller at the start of a message.

In the calls, a message would open with something like "we've been trying to reach you concerning your car's extended warranty," and prompt you to speak to a scam "warranty specialist." Robokiller advises users to avoid the calls in the first place if possible, not follow prompts, and above all, never provide personal information like banking details.

FCC proposes largest robocaller fine in history



Zach Schonfeld
Thu, December 22, 2022 


The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Wednesday proposed a record-breaking fine of nearly $300 million for an alleged robocall scheme that involved billions of calls about auto warranties.

The agency said its proposed $299.997 million fine follows the largest robocall operation the FCC has ever investigated, alleging Roy Cox Jr., and Michael Aaron Jones made more than 5 billion robocalls designed to sell vehicle service contracts deceptively marketed as car warranties.

“Maybe it happened to you this last year,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement. “You picked up the phone and someone you don’t know, who you didn’t ask to call, tells you they have been trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty. It’s a scam.”

The commission claimed the two individuals, through their Sumco Panama company, violated federal anti-robocalling and spoofing laws.


The pair allegedly began making the calls as early as 2018, placing 5.19 billion calls to 550 million phone numbers between January 2021 and March 2021.

The individuals allegedly spoofed the phone numbers of hospitals for some of the calls, which were placed during the pandemic, leading confused people to call the hospitals to complain. Other alleged calls originated from foreign entities but were spoofed to make the caller ID appear local to the U.S.

“The calls then misrepresented the product or service being offered and made false or misleading statements to induce call recipients to purchase goods or services,” the FCC said.

Cox and Jones could not be reached for comment.

The FCC said it took initial action against the operation in July by directing U.S.-based voice service providers to stop carrying traffic related to the auto warranty scam calls, an action the agency said led to a massive drop in volume.

“We will be relentless in pursing the groups behind these schemes by limiting their access to U.S. communications networks and holding them to account for their conduct,” FCC Enforcement Bureau Chief Loyaan Egal said in a statement.


U.S. FCC proposes record $300 million fine for 'auto warranty' robocalls



Wed, December 21, 2022 
By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Wednesday proposed a $300 million fine against an auto warranty robocall campaign, the largest-ever penalty proposed by the agency over unwanted calls.

The FCC said that in the scheme run by two California men, Roy Cox, Jr. and Michael Aaron Jones via their Sumco Panama company and other entities, more than 5 billion apparently illegal robocalls were made to more than half a billion phone numbers during a three-month span in 2021 "using pre-recorded voice calls to press consumers to speak to a 'warranty specialist' about extending or reinstating their car’s warranty."

A lawyer for Cox did not immediately comment. A lawyer for Jones could not immediately be identified.

"We will be relentless in pursing the groups behind these schemes by limiting their access to U.S. communications networks and holding them to account for their conduct," said FCC Enforcement Bureau Chief Loyaan A. Egal.

It was the latest government action targeting the robocall operation.

In July, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost sued Cox and Jones and others alleging they orchestrated an "unlawful and complex robocall scheme, at times besieging consumers with more than 77 million robocalls a day to generate sales leads" -- often for fraudulent auto warranty extensions. Cox denied the allegations in a court filing.

The FCC noted that under a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) actions both Jones and Cox are prohibited from making telemarketing calls.

In 2017, a U.S. judge in California approved default judgments against Jones and nine companies the FTC charged with "running an operation that blasted consumers with billions of illegal telemarketing robocalls."

The court permanently banned Jones and the companies from all telemarketing activities and imposed a $2.7 million penalty.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Mark Porter and David Gregorio)

BOOM GO BUST

CarMax’s Woes Renew Concerns About Shaky Used-Vehicle Market




Ed Ludlow
Thu, December 22, 2022 

(Bloomberg) -- CarMax Inc. stumbled through another difficult quarter, dragging down stocks across the automotive industry and deepening concerns over the unsteady US used-car market

The auto dealer cited high inflation and low buyer confidence among the factors that are cooling the once-hot sector. CarMax on Thursday reported third-quarter earnings and sales that fell well short of Wall Street’s already depressed expectations.

“Vehicle affordability remains challenging due to macro factors stemming from broad inflation, climbing interest rates and continued low consumer confidence,” Chief Executive Officer Bill Nash said on a conference call with analysts. The latest results “reflect the continuation of widespread pressures across the used-car industry.”

CarMax shares fell 7.2% at 10:56 a.m. in New York after an earlier decline of 12%, the biggest intraday drop since Sept. 29. That dragged down peers such as Carvana Co., which tumbled 9.7%, as well as auto manufacturers, with Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co. and Stellantis NV each sliding more than 3%.

The issues stoke concerns over the used-vehicle market, after prices soared early in the pandemic while supply-chain snags stalled new-car production. This year, they’ve been ratcheting down rapidly as shortages eased and buyers balked at high sticker prices.

Carvana has been hit by the same pressures, forcing the online automobile seller to explore ways to rework its debt amid solvency concerns. It also has heightened concerns about a spillover into the broader car market, something AutoNation Inc., the largest new-car dealer chain in the US, has warned about.

CarMax on Thursday reported adjusted profit of 24 cents a share in the fiscal third quarter, significantly below the 65-cent average of analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Net sales in the period were $6.5 billion, the Richmond, Virginia-based company said in a statement, also missing analysts’ projections.

What Bloomberg Intelligence Says:

“A gradual backslide in elevated used-vehicle values hasn’t prevented consumers from heading for the exits, prompting a precipitous drop in unit volume for CarMax and motivating a shift toward older vehicles.”

— Kevin Tynan, transportation analyst

It was a “challenging quarter across the board,” Steven Shemesh, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, said in a note. “Between a deteriorating macro backdrop and cost-cutting initiatives the near-term is likely to remain volatile.”

The results echo those from the prior quarter, when Nash warned that consumers had shifted their spending away from large purchases amid challenges around affordability. The company’s second-quarter profit miss also weighed on peers and dragged the broader market.

Combined wholesale and retail units sales in the third quarter fell almost 28% year-on-year. Wholesale volumes were hit by CarMax’s move to shift some units to its retail stores to meet consumer demand for low-priced cars.

Wholesale vehicle gross profit tumbled 46% as the per-unit measure was hurt by a “steep market depreciation,” CarMax said.

--With assistance from Sean O'Kane.

Trump Asked About Troops to Quell Racial Protests, Esper Told Jan. 6 Panel



Billy House
Thu, December 22, 2022

(Bloomberg) -- Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper testified that he and others had to dissuade then-President Donald Trump from using active-duty military troops to quell the racial protests breaking out in the summer of 2020.

Trump was upset about the civil unrest around the country in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota, believing it made the US look weak, Esper said, according to a transcript of his April 1, 2022 deposition by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

The committee has been releasing transcripts of some of its interviews in batches this week and plans to release more in coming days. It is also expected to release its final report on what it learned over a probe that took a year and a half and included interviews with more than 1,000 people.

Esper, a graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point, was named secretary of the army in 2017 and acting defense secretary in 2019. He left the administration the next year.

Esper said he and other top officials, including then Attorney General William Barr, were able to convince Trump there was no adequate predicate for the potential use of the military, including in response to tensions in Lafayette Park across from the White House.

Trump never seemed to have “embraced” the concept that the military should have a secondary role, particularly, for domestic disturbances, he said. “I don’t think he ever embraced it because we would, at subsequent meetings, come back with his inclination to use, again, the military first, the Guard later.”

In another transcript released Thursday, an Ohio carpenter who entered the Capitol with the mob on Jan. 6 said he wished the president had told the crowd to go home earlier than he did — hours after it had broken into the building to try and prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s win.

Stephen Ayres, who pleaded guilty to entering the building, blamed Trump’s “fiery tweets” for stoking the passions of the crowd that day that led to the riot in the Capitol. “It probably helped build and added fuel to that fire,” he said.

--With assistance from Bill Allison, William Turton, Mike Dorning and Erik Larson.

EXPLAINER: Forest carbon credits aim to offset pollution



Climate Carbon Credits Explainer

Flames and smoke rise from a burn zone near the Chambira community, in Peru's Amazon, Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2022. Forest carbon credits aim to protect forests by allowing companies, individuals and governments to cancel out their emissions by paying to plant trees or preserve forests that would otherwise be cut.

 (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)More

SUMAN NAISHADHAM
Thu, December 22, 2022 

WASHINGTON (AP) — For years, airlines have offered passengers concerned by climate change an option: For an extra cost, cancel out the carbon dioxide pollution from their share of a flight, by paying to protect trees.

That’s the idea behind forest carbon credits. Trees absorb carbon from the atmosphere. Forest carbon credits are promises that companies, individuals and governments can purchase to counteract their emissions by paying to plant or protect trees. Here’s a look at this type of carbon credit.

WHAT ARE FOREST CARBON OFFSETS?

Picture a forest at risk of being cut down to make pasture for livestock or fields for crops. A broker arrives and promises to pay the forest owner — which could be a government 

The land gets formally designated a carbon credit project. After that the trees are not supposed to be cut or destroyed by fire. The developer sells these promises and keeps a cut of the money. Far away, a polluting company buys the credits instead of reducing its own emissions by a certain amount.

Trees store carbon in their tissue, which means that the taller and healthier a tree grows, the more carbon it can store. Soils and vegetation also store carbon. When a tree is chopped down, the carbon stored within it is often released into the atmosphere. If the trees are milled into large timber pieces, some of the carbon remains stored.

HOW DO THEY WORK?

One forest carbon offset, like any carbon offset, is equal to one metric ton of carbon dioxide that is avoided, removed or absorbed. A typical passenger car emits about 5 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Forest carbon offsets are a subset of the multibillion-dollar carbon ‘offset’ market.

Three main types of forest carbon offsets exist: credits that sequester carbon by replanting trees, those that protect trees at risk of being chopped down, and others that promise to improve a forest’s management and increase its carbon storage.

HOW DO TREES SEQUESTER CARBON?

Trees absorb carbon through their leaves, which makes them crucial for maintaining a livable climate. Via photosynthesis — the process within plants that turns sunlight into chemical energy — they breathe out oxygen as a byproduct. Carbon is permanently stored in a tree's fibers until it dies and decomposes.

Deforestation accelerates climate change in a couple of ways: It halts plant photosynthesis, so the trees are no longer taking up carbon. It's also often accompanied by burning, which releases lots of carbon dioxide.

WHAT ARE SOME ISSUES WITH FOREST OFFSETS?

The same problem facing all types of carbon offsets: Do they actually work?

The market for forest carbon offsets has ballooned over the past decade, with many policy makers seeing them as a way to combat climate change and even finance a transition to renewable energies. However, environmental groups, scientists and other experts say offset programs can be misleading.

“The issue here is that most voluntary carbon markets are self-regulated,” said Arnaud Brohe, chief executive officer of Agendi, a climate consulting firm, and an expert on carbon markets.

Assessing the climate benefit of a credit is often hard. For a forest carbon credit to be viable, it must do something for the environment that wouldn’t take place otherwise, a crucial concept known as ‘additionality.’ Credits are valid only if those trees were at active risk of being chopped down. If the trees were already protected, the offsets are meaningless.

Another issue is leakage, which is when the protection of one stretch of forest leads to deforestation in another. There are also sometimes problems of double counting, when the same credits are tallied in two different ledgers. For example, with limited regulation, credits issued for trees protected in one place might be counted by that country plus the country that bought the credits, or some other entity.

Experts say sellers of forest carbon offsets often exaggerate the benefits to the environment.

“Even though projects might end up protecting and conserving some lands, the question is how much?” said Danny Cullenward, a California-based energy economist and lawyer who studies carbon emissions.

___

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Burgers, fries and robots: McDonald’s opens 1st mostly automated location in Texas

Story by Sarah Do Couto •

The first mostly automated McDonald's restaurant is currently 

being tested in Fort Worth, Texas.© Getty Images

Robotic supply chain: How automation impacts the food you eat

Duration 2:09
View on Watch

CBS DallasMcDonald's is testing a new to-go format in North Texas
0:37

CBS BostonMcDonald's testing out food conveyor belt
0:17

NewsweekInside America’s First Robot McDonald’s
0:29

At one McDonald's location in Texas, robots are now serving up Big Macs.

Amid a growing desire for fast food giants to automate their processes, the first mostly robot-run McDonald's restaurant is currently being tested in Fort Worth, Texas.

At this location, there are no human cashiers in sight. Even the restaurant itself is smaller and has no seating, designed to serve the grab-and-go crowd, rather than sit-down diners.

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‘Dirty’ jobs for robotic hands — Inside the quest to automate food supply chains


Upon entry, digital tills take customer orders and robots push food through on conveyor belts in designated pick-up areas.

Customers can order through the drive-thru, the company's mobile app or the touch screen kiosks in-store.

A TikTok video showing the new automated location is already on the way to virality. As of this writing, the video has been viewed 1.3 million times.

A McDonald's spokesperson told The Guardian that though the new store is highly technical, it “is not fully automated." There are still human workers employed in the restaurant, though interaction between customers and human employees is very limited.




The spokesperson claimed that “enhanced technology" is in place to allow "the restaurant team to begin preparing customers’ orders when they’re near the restaurant." This is ideal for McDonald's orders picked up by delivery couriers, or for customers who have ordered through the mobile app.

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McDonald's said the goal of the test location is to serve customers with improved speed and accuracy.

Despite the company's enthusiasm for the new automated location, many people are not 'McLovin'' it.

In Texas, minimum wage workers — like those who are employed by McDonald's — make US$7.25 ($9.87) an hour. The living wage in Texas is $16.41 an hour.

Many people on social media felt the automation is a way for fast food giants to avoid paying employees higher wages, a request that has been made by McDonald's workers for years now.

William Melek, the director of the RoboHub at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, said the food supply chain is “one of the most exciting new application areas of robots we’re seeing today.”

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Melek confirmed that today’s advanced robotics have indeed risen to the point of taking over some jobs.

Robots in the food service industry have been designed to handle repetitive tasks and excel in areas where labour shortages are constraining production capacity in the supply chain, Melek noted.

A 2021 Institute for Policy Studies study found that McDonald's was one of 300 companies with the lowest median worker wages in all of the U.S.

— With files from Global News' Craig Lord

Two years after EU exit, UK business feels Brexit blues

Olivier DEVOS
Thu, December 22, 2022 


Two years after Britain's departure from the European Union, bosses of UK businesses are reeling from the cost of Brexit, including some who voted to cut ties with Brussels.

"It's cost, cost, cost with no benefit," noted Adrian Hanrahan, chief executive of a small chemicals company, Robinson Brothers, based in central England and for which the EU remains a key market.

The problem is not the customs duties, largely eliminated by the post-Brexit free trade agreement between London and Brussels, but rather a mountain of new regulatory paperwork.

"We've added probably 25 percent extra now on our administration costs just to cope with the changing paperwork... of getting stuff in from the EU and out of the EU," Hanrahan told AFP.

The company employs 265 people, producing chemicals used by various sectors featuring food, electronics, pharmaceutical and other firms.

Robinson Brothers exports around 70 percent of its products, of which more than half go to the EU.

-'Nothing to help them' -

The company is far from alone in struggling with the consequences of Brexit, with 56 percent of UK businesses facing difficulties adapting to new trading rules, the British Chambers of Commerce said Wednesday.

"Businesses feel they are banging their heads against a brick wall as nothing has been done to help them," said BCC director general Shevaun Haviland.

"The longer the current problems go unchecked, the more EU traders go elsewhere, and the more damage is done."

The government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said it believes the UK economy has entered a recession on fallout from sky-high inflation.

While it repeatedly blames this on Russia's invasion of Ukraine fuelling energy prices, analysts claim Brexit has also pushed up costs.

"There's good causal evidence that the depreciation of sterling immediately following (the 2016 vote for) Brexit led to higher inflation, specifically for goods we import a lot of," London School of Economics researcher Nikhil Datta told AFP.

He added that new trade deals, such as the one struck with Australia, "have been tiny".

Bank of England monetary policy committee member Swati Dhingra told MPs last month that Brexit was to blame for "a much bigger slowdown in trade in the UK compared to the rest of the world".

According to King's College London economist Jonathan Portes, "there is a reasonable degree of consensus that Brexit has reduced UK trade by perhaps 10 to 15 percent compared to a no-Brexit scenario".

The government's own economic forecasting body, the OBR, estimates that Brexit will reduce the country's long-term output by around four percent.

- EU workers -

Complicating matters has been the loss of EU workers in sectors such as health, hospitality and agriculture, even if some of those returning home have been replaced by staff from non-EU countries.

Witnessing the fallout, some high-profile bosses who voted for Brexit are calling on the government to relax the new and tighter immigration rules.

"In respect to immigration, it's definitely not the Brexit I wanted," Simon Wolfson, head of clothing giant Next, told the BBC last month.

Tim Martin, boss of pubs group J D Wetherspoon, is of a similar opinion.

For Hanrahan, Brexit fallout has led questioning whether his company can survive.

"If this continues, then we have no other option but to shrink our offering to remain in business.

"We've had two or three very large German customers tell us that they're no longer going to come to us because it's too complex for them to work with anybody in the UK."

ode-bcp/rl/ach

FORTRESS EUROPA

Greece: EU’s external border is hardening, attitudes are too



















2 / 19
A boy fishes as police border guards on a boat patrol along the Evros River that forms a natural border between Greece and Turkey, on Sunday, Oct. 30, 2022. Greece is planning a major extension of a steel wall along its border with Turkey in 2023, a move that is being applauded by residents in the border area as well as voters more broadly.

(AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

DEREK GATOPOULOS
Fri, December 23, 2022 

LYKOFI, Greece (AP) — Accompanied by a cloud of mosquitos, Police Capt. Konstantinos Tsolakidis and three other border guards set out on a boat patrol along the Evros River that forms a natural frontier between Greece and Turkey.

The route takes them through a maze formed by tall reeds, past clusters of flamingos and boat trippers visiting a nature reserve where the river fans out to meet the Mediterranean.

The Evros — called the Meric River in Turkey — runs through one of the remotest parts of Europe. It’s also becoming one of its most militarized as Greece and the wider European Union work on ways to prevent migrants from entering the country from Turkey.

In 2023, Greece plans to triple the length of a steel border wall. The five-meter (16-foot) high structure, made with sturdy steel columns, has foundation supports up to 10 meters deep and is topped with razor wire and an anti-grip metal scaling barrier.

In army-controlled areas on the Greek side of the border, the EU is funding and testing an advanced surveillance network that uses machine-learning software and an array of fixed and mobile cameras and sensors to detect migrants trying to cross the border.

Critics of the measures argue that Greece is toughening authoritarian policies against migrants and asylum-seekers, operating in the shadows in border areas that are under military control and where outside civilian monitors are denied access. A visit by Associated Press journalists to the Greek-Turkish border area took place under military and police supervision.

Police and border residents say they are just happy that the wall is working.

“It’s impossible to penetrate,” says Tsolakidis, who supervises patrols along a southern section of the border. “It’s been built in areas along the Evros where crossings were most frequent. And the deterrence capacity is 100%.”

In a post-pandemic surge of activity, more than 250,000 migrant crossings have been prevented this year at the land border between Greece and Turkey through late November, according to Greek authorities. During the same period, more than 5,000 people were detained after making it across the river.

Border guards, who use sniffer dogs, loudspeakers and powerful spotlights on patrols, say multiple incidents involving up to 1,000 migrants aren't uncommon in a single day during the summer and early fall when water levels along the Evros hit an annual low.

Small islets, some straddling the midpoint of the river where the border technically lies, seasonally reappear, making crossings easier.

Completed in 2021, the wall currently spans 27 kilometers (17 miles) in three separate sections but is considered to be effective over an additional 10 kilometers (six miles) because of ground conditions. Authorities plan to add up to another 100 kilometers (60 miles) of the steel barrier to cover most of the 192-kilometer (120-mile) land border.

When wall building started at the border a decade ago, it was met with heated political debate and public demonstrations backed by left-wing parties and Greek human rights groups.

Reaction this time around has been muted.

With little discussion, parliament recently passed an emergency amendment sanctioning the extension, with rules for commercial tenders and cost control safeguards both waived through June 30, 2023.

A poll published by private Antenna television found that nearly two thirds of Greek voters support tougher measures to control migration, with just 8.1% arguing that policing needs to be relaxed. Backing for the tougher measures was reported across party lines, and includes more than 60% of voters from the left-wing main opposition party — which officially opposes the wall extension.

The October survey was conducted by the Marc polling company for the private Greek channel.

At one newly built section of the wall, buds of cotton from nearby farms are caught in the razor wire, while wild goats, cut off from their usual grazing grounds, scour the riverbank for something to eat.

A few hundred meters westward, 41-year-old farm worker Stavros Lazaridis tosses bales of hay onto a truck. He says the extension can’t come fast enough.

“Before the wall went up, we had a lot of trouble. More than 200 or 300 (migrants) could cross through the village in a single day. It was out of control,” he said.

The local police station has retrieved pickup trucks stolen by smugglers in border villages and abandoned near a bus station in the northern Greek port city of Thessaloniki. Piles of clothes, dumped by migrants traveling with just a small backpack, are often found near highways in the area.

Border village residents, Lazaridis says, used to be sympathetic to migrants, many of whom are fleeing wars in the Middle East to seek asylum in Europe, but they have grown tired of the nightly disruptions.

“There are old people who live in these villages, many living by themselves, and they are scared to leave their homes,” he said. “It’s quiet here now, but further north where there’s no (wall). things are still crazy.”

Polling data suggests residents of other EU frontier states, including Poland and the Baltic nations, have also become more security conscious as threats like Russia's war in Ukraine draw closer to the bloc’s external borders.

And a flareup in a spat between Greece and Turkey over maritime boundaries and drilling rights has darkened disputes over migration.

Greece has made a series of international complaints after border police in October found 92 male migrants, stripped of their clothing, and accused Turkish authorities of deliberately pushing them over the border.

Turkey has repeatedly accused Greece of carrying out clandestine deportations, known as pushbacks, of potential asylum-seekers, and putting their lives at risk.

Athens is also under fire from major human rights groups, United Nations and EU refugee agencies, and even a government advisory panel that says hundreds of credible accounts have been gathered suggesting that often-violent pushbacks have been occurring at the Greek-Turkish border for up to 20 years.

The U.N. and EU agencies are demanding the creation of an independent border monitoring body, a request that Athens has so far failed to act upon.

Disputes with countries bordering the EU, and the often legitimate security concerns they generate, have reduced attention on migrants in need of international protection and are tempting European governments to adopt hard-line policies, argues Begum Basdas at the Center for Fundamental Rights at the Hertie School in Berlin.

“The militarization of migration is disabling us from seeing the issue as a human rights concern ... and what is really worrying me is the creeping in of authoritarianism through migration management in the European Union,” Basdas said.

“People are not really critical of the securitization or wall building at the borders because they don’t really see the connection between migration and the decay of democratic values in their own environment, in their own rights,” she said.

“But, you know, those walls are literally being built around us.”

 

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Costas Kantouris contributed to this report from Thessaloniki.

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Follow AP’s global migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration