Making wind power more predictable

by Gabe Cherry, University of Michigan
 

A mesonet monitoring station located near Guthrie, Texas. It is one of 132 stations that make up the West Texas Mesonet. Credit: University of Michigan
A computer model that uses existing weather data to map long-term wind patterns at prospective wind turbine sites could help energy companies set up wind turbines more quickly and less expensively. The model eliminates the need to deploy dedicated wind monitoring stations. It could also make wind energy more reliable by enabling networks of turbines that are strategically placed to generate a more consistent stream of energy.


A team led by U-M assistant professor of industrial operations and engineering Eunshin Byon developed the model. We sat down with Byon recently to learn more about her work.

Is siting wind turbines really more complicated than just finding a windy spot?

As wind becomes a more and more important part of our energy supply, finding a windy spot will no longer be enough. We'll need to predict how the wind patterns at a given site will vary from day to day and month to month.

Currently, the only way to get a year of wind data for a specific site is to set up a meteorological station on that site and collect data for a year. That's not practical from a financial or time standpoint, especially as deployment of wind turbines continues to ramp up. And we believe we've found a better way.

Why is it important to have longer-term data about wind patterns?

The wind isn't always blowing in a given spot, but it's always blowing somewhere. If power companies can predict where and when the wind will blow, they can design their networks so that, when one turbine is likely to be idle, another is likely to be generating power

How does your method measure wind patterns without setting up a measuring station?

Instead of measuring wind patterns at the actual wind turbine site, we've used existing data from automated weather stations called mesonets. We've built a computer model that can use their data to estimate wind patterns at any location within a radius of about 22 miles from the mesonet station.

Tell me more about these Mesonet stations. What are they used for today?

Mesonets are networks of relatively simple, automated weather monitoring stations that are used to monitor localized weather patterns. They're spread all over the country and generally run by universities and other public entities. Michigan State University operates one here in Michigan. For our study, we used data from the West Texas Mesonet, which is operated by the National Wind Institute at Texas Tech University.

How accurate is your model compared to an actual monitoring station?

We found that our model accurately measured wind speed to within one meter per second. So it's very accurate. We determined those figures by setting up a dedicated monitoring station at a test site and compared its actual wind data to the estimated data from our model for the same site.

Does generating a model like this require a lot of computing power?

A model that predicts wind patterns at a single site is not very computing-intensive and can be done on an ordinary laptop.

What else could this technology be used for?

These mesonet stations collect a variety of weather data, and that could be useful for modeling other properties, like solar radiation levels. That could help solar energy installers site their installations more effectively as well. Solar power is growing even faster than wind right now, so that could be very important.

What are the next steps for this research?

We're looking at adapting our models to use Numerical Weather Prediction data—this is the larger-scale data that's used to generate the weather forecasts we all rely on. That data could enable us to get predictions of more types of patterns that are even more accurate and available in more areas.

The work is detailed in a paper titled "Probabilistic Characterization of Wind Diurnal Variability for Wind Resource Assessment." It is published in the January 2020 issue of IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy.


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Supporting structures of wind turbines contribute to wind farm blockage effect

More information: Youngchan Jang et al. Probabilistic Characterization of Wind Diurnal Variability for Wind Resource Assessment, IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy (2020). DOI: 10.1109/TSTE.2020.2965444

Energy efficiency could prevent the need to build up to 50 power plants in Indonesia

by Virginie Letschert, and Michael McNeil, The Conversation

Saving energy can save money and the environment. Credit: Mohamed Hassan/ Pixabay
Indonesia's electricity demand is growing rapidly. Robust economic growth combined with unprecedented urbanisation and industrialisation are driving this demand.

Based on the Ministry of Energy and Mineral … esources statisctics, daily peak electricity demand is also increasing rapidly. It is officially projected to double by 2030 to over 160 gigawatts (GW).

Domestic appliances and equipment, such as air conditioners (ACs), lighting, refrigerators and TVs, will lead energy demand in Indonesia by 2030, representing as much as 70% of the load during peak time at 8pm.

To meet the rising demand, Indonesia plans to build 87GW of additional power – the equivalent of 175 medium-size (500 megawatt) power plants—by 2030.

However, our research identifies strategies to cut electricity consumption by 25GW by 2030, equal to 35% of the peak electricity consumption in that year. The adoption of efficient technologies would reduce electricity use in lamps, air conditioners, refrigerators and other appliances.

With these technologies, Indonesia can avoid building 50 of the planned power plants by 2030.

Efficient technologies to reduce load

Our model forecasts energy demand by appliance types and analyses different scenarios of technology adoption to understand their impacts on future electricity loads.

We found the efficient technologies provide the same service to the households (lighting, cooling, etc) but use less energy. This makes them as much as 50% less expensive for consumers to run.


For example, common technologies are LEDs (light-emitting diodes), which produce more light with less heat loss, inverter ACs, which allow the AC to work at variable speed, and increased refrigerator insulation, which will keep food compartments cold longer.

While some Indonesians have already chosen to buy efficient technologies, tens of millions of energy-consuming products are entering households for the first time in the coming years.

Therefore, it is important to have strong policies in place to eliminate inefficient products and promote efficient ones in the market.

In particular, with sales of air conditioners growing at 7.5% every year in Indonesia, we find over half of the potential savings could come from this product alone.

Further research by our team has shown efficient cooling technologies using an inverter drive are available in Indonesia at a cost not necessarily higher than the inefficient ones.

In terms of climate impacts, we found efficient appliances and lighting could achieve nearly 27% of the energy sector emission-reduction target. That's 84.5 million tons of CO₂ saved by 2030. This makes it an essential tool in reducing carbon emissions (decarbonisation) of Indonesia's energy sector, along with deployment of renewable energy.

The ministry has introduced the national sectoral targets for energy conservation into the National Elecricity Master Plan, or RUKN, to reduce energy consumption for the first time in 2019.

The plan stipulates that 37GW of the projected 166GW peak demand in 2030 can be avoided through energy conservation for the next ten years.

Energy conservation relies on energy-efficient technologies (this is what our research focuses on) as well as changes in consumer behaviours (such as turning off the light when you leave a room).

Recommendations

As electricity demand grows in Indonesia at the same time as the country pursues clean energy, energy efficiency is a critical tool for financial viability and energy security.

Energy efficiency means using less energy to perform the same task. Technologies now offer us the benefits of energy efficiency. Energy-efficiency policies support the deployment of these technologies.

We recommend that Indonesia consider energy efficiency as a resource for meeting the country's future energy needs.

Even with low coal prices, energy efficiency is the cheapest way to provide electricity to the Indonesian people.

Typically, we have found the cost of saving a unit of electricity (kWh) is around 2-3 cents, compared to the typical household electricity rate of 10-11 cents/kWh in Indonesia.

Energy efficiency will also help with the integration of renewable energy (like solar PV) by reducing the evening peak demand and the need for energy storage systems or expensive plants that are run only for high demand, such as gas-fired "peaker" plants.

Because of the shape of the load—high peak demand at 8pm—the system will need additional capacity that baseload cannot meet, i.e. coal.

We recommend the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources turn to the 37GW energy conservation target to help the country meet its climate commitments of 29% unconditional emission reduction by 2030.

We hope our research can help prioritise policy action and track progress towards the country's clean energy and climate goals.

Implementing these targets will help save the government money, reduce local and global pollution, and ultimately will reduce costs for Indonesian consumers.

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Provided by The Conversation

Ultraviolet light can be used against coronavirus — just not in the way Trump imagines

Jon Ward Senior Political Correspondent, Yahoo News•April 25, 2020

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s mention Thursday of treating COVID-19 with ultraviolet light was part of a rambling digression that included speculation about administering disinfectants to patients, prompting confusion and alarm from medical experts.

The president’s invocation of pseudoscience — which he claimed on Friday had been a joke intended “sarcastically” to provoke reporters — overshadowed the news from the briefing about evidence, first reported last week by Yahoo News, that ultraviolet light does destroy the coronavirus. Researchers have shown it can be used to disinfect surfaces and kill viruses in ambient air in ways that could be used to reduce transmission in public spaces.

“Continuous very low dose-rate far-UVC light in indoor public locations is a promising, safe and inexpensive tool to reduce the spread of airborne-mediated microbial diseases,” wrote a team of researchers in a 2018 paper published in Scientific Reports.

Transmission of the coronavirus is thought to be more common through particles spread through the air than by contact with hard surfaces, but scientists are still working to understand how the virus spreads.

Yet if commercially available UV products were to mitigate some of the risk of contracting the coronavirus, that might help ease the transition out of a total lockdown. “This approach may help limit seasonal influenza epidemics, transmission of tuberculosis, as well as major pandemics,” the scientific researchers wrote in 2018.

The key is advances in UV lighting technology, specifically the advent of “far-UVC” lamps, which operate at a wavelength of 222 nanometers, a frequency that doesn’t penetrate skin or the outer layer of the human eye. Previously, disinfecting ultraviolet could not be used in public spaces because the wavelengths used, of 254 nanometers and up, can cause skin cancer and damage the eyes.

A pedestrian in Madrid on Friday. (Samuel de Roman/Getty Images)

By contrast, the 2018 paper found that “far-UVC light cannot penetrate even the outer (non living) layers of human skin or eye” but that “because bacteria and viruses are of micrometer or smaller dimensions, far-UVC can penetrate and inactivate them.”

David Brenner, director of Columbia University’s Center for Radiological Research, said earlier this week that far-UVC light “can be safely used in occupied public spaces, and it kills pathogens in the air before we can breathe them in.”

“Most approaches focus on fighting the virus once it has gotten into the body. Far-UVC is one of the very few approaches that has the potential to prevent the spread of viruses before they enter the body,” Brenner said.

A group of researchers at the Center for Radiological Research published a study in 2017 that “tested the hypothesis that there exists a narrow wavelength window in the far-UVC region, from around 200-222 nm, which is significantly harmful to bacteria, but without damaging cells in tissues.”

A UV sanitizer wand. (Kirk McKoy/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

The study found that far-UVC light kills pathogens “without the skin damaging effects associated with conventional germicidal UV exposure.”

Two other studies have examined the impact of far-UV light on skin using mice and found that “222 nm-UVC lamps can be safely used for sterilizing human skin.”

One company, Healthe, is already selling a few different UV light products, including far-UV lights meant to be used in public spaces. One is a downlight that can be installed in the ceiling of an average room. There is also a portal, similar to a metal detector, that claims it “inactivates over 90% of contaminants” if a person stands — arms up — inside the portal for 10 to 12 seconds.

The company says another way to use ultraviolet is to irradiate air as it passes through a sealed unit, like a building air-conditioning system. Since that doesn’t expose people to the rays, it can use different, more powerful wavelengths.

Despite these advances, public attention was distracted on Friday by the continued controversy over the president’s remarks the previous day.

President Trump at the coronavirus task force daily briefing on Thursday. (Mandel Ngan/AFP)

“I was asking a question sarcastically to reporters like you, just to see what would happen,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “I was asking a sarcastic question to the reporters in the room about disinfectant on the inside.”

He claimed he had not asked his medical experts in the White House briefing room on Thursday to look into injecting disinfectants into the human body. “I thought it was clear,” he said.

But the president’s comments on Thursday were anything but clear. His remarks were so jumbled it was hard to know what exactly he meant at times.

Trump spoke on Thursday just after the head of the Science and Technology Directorate at the Department of Homeland Security, Bill Bryan, had spoken to reporters about the impact of sunlight on coronavirus particles in outdoor public spaces, and had also mentioned testing bleach as a disinfectant.

“So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light — and I think you said that that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it. And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way, and I think you said you’re going to test that too. It sounds interesting.

“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs,” Trump said. “So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, you’re going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds — it sounds interesting to me. So we’ll see. But the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute, that’s — that’s pretty powerful.”

Later in the briefing, Trump asked Dr. Deborah Birx, a medical expert on his coronavirus task force, about the possibility of using heat or light to treat a COVID-19 infection — rather than kill the coronavirus in the environment.

“Not as a treatment,” she replied.

Sunlight destroys coronavirus quickly, say US scientists

This transmission electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2 -- also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus that causes COVID-19 -- isolated from a patient in the US. Virus particles are shown emerging from the surface of cells cultured in the lab. The spikes on the outer edge of the virus particles give coronaviruses their name, crown-like. Credit: NIAID-RML

The new coronavirus is quickly destroyed by sunlight, according to new research announced by a senior US official on Thursday, though the study has not yet been made public and awaits external evaluation.

William Bryan, science and technology advisor to the Department of Homeland Security secretary, told reporters at the White House that government scientists had found ultraviolet rays had a potent impact on the pathogen, offering hope that its spread may ease over the summer.

"Our most striking observation to date is the powerful effect that solar light appears to have on killing the virus, both surfaces and in the air," he said.

"We've seen a similar effect with both temperature and humidity as well, where increasing the temperature and humidity or both is generally less favorable to the virus."

But the paper itself has not yet been released for review, making it difficult for independent experts to comment on how robust its methodology was.

It has long been known that ultraviolet light has a sterilizing effect, because the radiation damages the virus's genetic material and their ability to replicate.

A key question, however, will be what the intensity and wavelength of the UV light used in the experiment was and whether this accurately mimics natural light conditions in summer.

"It would be good to know how the test was done, and how the results were measured," Benjamin Neuman, chair of biological sciences at Texas A&M University-Texarkana, told AFP.

"Not that it would be done badly, just that there are several different ways to count viruses, depending on what aspect you are interested in studying."

Virus inactivated

Bryan shared a slide summarizing major findings of the experiment that was carried out at the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center in Maryland.

It showed that the virus's half-life—the time taken for it to reduce to half its amount—was 18 hours when the temperature was 70 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit (21 to 24 degrees Celsius) with 20 percent humidity on a non-porous surface.

This includes things like door handles and stainless steel.

But the half-life dropped to six hours when humidity rose to 80 percent—and to just two minutes when sunlight was added to the equation.

When the virus was aerosolized—meaning suspended in the air—the half-life was one hour when the temperature was 70 to 75 degrees with 20 percent humidity.

In the presence of sunlight, this dropped to just one and a half minutes.

Bryan concluded that summer-like conditions "will create an environment (where) transmission can be decreased."

He added, though, that reduced spread did not mean the pathogen would be eliminated entirely and social distancing guidelines cannot be fully lifted.

"It would be irresponsible for us to say that we feel that the summer is just going to totally kill the virus and then if it's a free-for-all and that people ignore those guides," he said.

Previous work has also agreed that the virus fares better in cold and dry weather than it does in hot and humid conditions, and the lower rate of spread in southern hemisphere countries where it is early fall and still warm bear this out.

Australia, for example, has had just under 7,000 confirmed cases and 77 deaths—well below many northern hemisphere nations.

The reasons are thought to include that respiratory droplets remain airborne for longer in colder weather, and that viruses degrade more quickly on hotter surfaces, because a protective layer of fat that envelops them dries out faster.

US health authorities believe that even if COVID-19 cases slow over summer, the rate of infection is likely to increase again in fall and winter, in line with other seasonal viruses like the flu.


Explore furtherCoronavirus could become seasonal: top US scientist

© 2020 AFP

Perfect storm: Lombardy's virus disaster is lesson for world

by Nicole Winfield  APRIL 26, 2020

In this April 16, 2020 file photo, medical staff tend to a patient in the emergency COVID-19 ward at the San Carlo Hospital in Milan, Italy. As Italy prepares to emerge from the West's first and most extensive coronavirus lockdown, it is increasingly clear that something went terribly wrong in Lombardy, the hardest-hit region in Europe's hardest-hit country. By contrast, Lombardy's front-line doctors and nurses are being hailed as heroes for risking their lives to treat the sick under extraordinary levels of stress, exhaustion, isolation and fear. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni, file)
As Italy prepares to emerge from the West's first and most extensive coronavirus lockdown, it is increasingly clear that something went terribly wrong in Lombardy, the hardest-hit region in Europe's hardest-hit country.

Italy had the bad luck of being the first Western nation to be slammed by the outbreak, and its official total of 26,000 fatalities lags behind only the U.S. in the global death toll. Italy's first homegrown case was recorded Feb. 21, at a time when the World Health Organization was still insisting the virus was "containable" and not nearly as infectious as the flu.

But there is also evidence that demographics and health care deficiencies collided with political and business interests to expose Lombardy's 10 million people to COVID-19 in ways unseen anywhere else, particularly the most vulnerable in nursing homes.

Virologists and epidemiologists say what went wrong there will be studied for years, given how the outbreak overwhelmed a medical system long considered one of Europe's best, while in neighboring Veneto, the impact was significantly more controlled.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, are deciding whether to lay any criminal blame for the hundreds of dead in nursing homes, many of whom don't even figure into Lombardy's official death toll of 13,269, half of Italy's total.

By contrast, Lombardy's front-line doctors and nurses are being hailed as heroes for risking their lives to treat the sick under extraordinary levels of stress, exhaustion, isolation and fear. One WHO official said it was a "miracle" they saved as many as they did.

Here's a look at the perfect storm of what went wrong in Lombardy, based on interviews and briefings with doctors, union representatives, mayors and virologists, as well as reports from Italy's Superior Institute of Health, national statistics agency ISTAT and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which advises developed economies on policy.

In this Feb. 28, 2020 file photo, a sunny day is reflected in a restaurant window where a sign with a hashtag reads "Milan doesn't stop" as a pizza maker puts a pizza in an oven, in Milan, Italy, As Italy prepares to emerge from the West's first and most extensive coronavirus lockdown, it is increasingly becoming apparent that something went terribly wrong in Lombardy, the hardest-hit region in Europe's hardest-hit country. Unions and mayors of some of Lombardy's hardest hit cities say the country's main industrial lobby group, Confindustria, exerted enormous pressure on authorities to resist lockdowns and production shutdowns on the grounds that the economic cost would be too great in a region responsible for 21% of Italy's GDP. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, file)

CAUGHT UNPREPARED

Italy was the first European country to halt all air traffic with China on Jan. 31, and even put scanners in airports to check arrivals for fever. But by Jan. 31, it was already too late. Epidemiologists now say the virus had been circulating widely in Lombardy since early January, if not before.

Doctors treating pneumonia in January and February didn't know it was the coronavirus, since the symptoms were so similar and the virus was still believed to be largely confined to China. Even after Italy registered its Feb. 21 case, doctors didn't understand the unusual way COVID-19 could present itself, with some patients experiencing a rapid decline in their ability to breathe.


"After a phase of stabilization, many deteriorated quickly. This was clinical information we didn't have," said Dr. Maurizio Marvisi, a pneumologist at a private clinic in hard-hit Cremona. "There was practically nothing in the medical literature."

Because Lombardy's intensive care units were already filling up within days of Italy's first cases, many primary care physicians tried to treat and monitor patients at home. Some put them on supplemental oxygen, commonly used for home cases in Italy.

That strategy proved deadly, and many died at home or soon after hospitalization, having waited too long to call an ambulance.

Reliance on home care "will probably be the determining factor of why we have such a high mortality rate in Italy," Marivi said.

In this Thursday, March 12, 2020 file photo, a worker wearing a mask and protective clothing walks between the emergency structures that were set up to ease procedures at the Brescia hospital in northern Italy. As Italy prepares to emerge from the West's first and most extensive coronavirus lockdown, it is increasingly clear that something went terribly wrong in Lombardy, the hardest-hit region in Europe's hardest-hit country. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

Italy was forced to use home care in part because of its low ICU capacity: After years of budget cuts, Italy entered the crisis with 8.6 ICU beds per 100,000 people, well below the OECD average of 15.9 and a fraction of Germany's 33.9, the group said.

As a result, primary care physicians became the front-line filter of virus patients, an army of mostly self-employed practitioners who work within the public health system but outside Italy's regional hospital network.

Since only those with strong symptoms were being tested because Lombardy's labs couldn't process more, these family doctors didn't know if they themselves were infected, much less their patients.

With so little clinical information available, doctors also had no guidelines on when to admit patients or refer them to specialists. And being outside the hospital system, they didn't have the same access to protective masks and equipment.

"The region was extremely behind in giving us protective equipment and it was inadequate, because the first time, they gave us 10 surgical masks and gloves," said Dr. Laura Turetta in the city of Varese. "Obviously for our close contact with patients, it wasn't the correct way to protect ourselves."

The Lombardy doctors' association issued a blistering letter April 7 to regional authorities listing seven "errors" in their handling of the crisis, key among them the lack of testing for medical personnel, the lack of protective equipment and the lack of data about the contagion.

The regional government and civil protection agency defended their efforts, but acknowledged that Italy was dependent on imports and donations of protective equipment and simply didn't have enough to go around.

In this Feb. 28, 2020 file photo, people enjoy a sunny day while sitting at a cafe, in Milan, Italy. As Italy prepares to emerge from the West's first and most extensive coronavirus lockdown, it is increasingly becoming apparent that something went terribly wrong in Lombardy, the hardest-hit region in Europe's hardest-hit country. Unions and mayors of some of Lombardy's hardest hit cities say the country's main industrial lobby group, Confindustria, exerted enormous pressure on authorities to resist lockdowns and production shutdowns on the grounds that the economic cost would be too great in a region responsible for 21% of Italy's GDP. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, file)Some 20,000 Italian medical personnel have been infected and 150 doctors have died.


LOST WEEKS

Two days after registering Italy's first case in the Lombardy province of Lodi, sparking a quarantine in 10 towns, another positive case was registered more than an hour's drive away in Alzano in Bergamo province. Whereas the emergency room of the Lodi-area hospital was closed, the Alzano ER reopened after a few hours of cleaning, becoming a main source of contagion.

Internal documents cited by Italian newspapers indicate the handful of serious pneumonia cases the Alzano hospital saw as early as Feb. 12 were likely COVID-19. At the time, Italy's health ministry recommended tests only for people who had been to China or been in contact with a suspected or confirmed positive case.

By March 2, the Superior Institute of Health recommended Alzano and nearby Nembro be sealed off as the towns in Lodi had been. But political authorities never implemented the quarantine recommendation there, allowing the infection to spread for a second week until all the Lombardy region was locked down March 7.

"The army was there, prepared to do a total closure, and if it had been done immediately maybe they could have stopped the contagion in the rest of Lombardy," said Dr. Guido Marinoni, head of the association of doctors in Bergamo province. "This wasn't done, and they took softer measures in all of Lombardy, and this allowed for the spread."

Asked why he didn't seal off Bergamo sooner, Premier Giuseppe Conte argued the regional government could have done so on its own. Lombardy's governor, Attilio Fontana, shot back that any mistake "was made by both. I don't think that there was blame in this situation.''

In this April 14, 2020 file photo, a car gets out of the Pio Albergo Trivulzio eldercare facility, in Milan, Italy. As Italy prepares to emerge from the West's first and most extensive coronavirus lockdown, it is increasingly becoming apparent that something went terribly gistered more dead in nursing homes than any other region, nearly half of the 6,773 dead registered from Feb. 1-April 15, 40% of whom were either positive or had COVID-19 symwrong in Lombardy, the hardest-hit region in Europe's hardest-hit country. Lombardy reptoms, according to a survey of the Superior Institutes of Health. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, file)

Lombardy has one-sixth of Italy's 60 million people and is the most densely populated region, home to the business capital in Milan and the country's industrial heartland. Lombardy also has more people over 65 than any other Italian region, as well as 20% of Italy's nursing homes, a demographic time bomb for COVID-19 infections.

"Clearly, with the benefit of hindsight, we should have done a total shutdown in Lombardy, everyone at home and no one moves," said Andrea Crisanti, a microbiologist and virologist advising the Veneto regional government. But he acknowledged how hard that was, given Lombardy's outsize role in the Italian economy, which even before the pandemic was heading toward a recession.

"Probably for political reasons, it wasn't done," he told reporters.

INDUSTRIAL LOBBYING

Unions and mayors of some of Lombardy's hardest hit cities now say the country's main industrial lobby group, Confindustria, exerted enormous pressure to resist lockdowns and production shutdowns because the economic cost would be too great in a region responsible for 21% of Italy's GDP.

On Feb. 28, a week into the outbreak and well after more than 100 cases were registered in Bergamo, the province's branch of Confindustria launched an English-language social media campaign, #Bergamoisrunning, to reassure clients. It insisted the outbreak was no worse than elsewhere, that the "misleading sensation" of its high number of infections was due to aggressive testing, and that production in steel mills and other industries was unaffected.

Confindustria launched its own campaign in the larger Lombardy region, echoing that message, #Yeswework. Milan's mayor proclaimed that "Milan doesn't stop."

Giulio Gallera, Health Counselor for the Lombardy Region attends a news conference presenting a new hospital Ospedalefieramilano to treat coronavirus patients in Milan, Italy, Tuesday, March 31, 2020. As Italy prepares to emerge from the West's first and most extensive coronavirus lockdown, it is increasingly becoming apparent that something went terribly wrong in Lombardy, the hardest-hit region in Europe's hardest-hit country. The intensive care hospital was unveiled to great fanfare on March 31, the fruit of a 21 million euro fundraising campaign spearheaded by Lombardy's Fontana, of the right-wing League party, to try to relieve pressure on the region's overtaxed ICUs which on that date were near capacity at 1,324 patients. In the end, the Milan field hospital was barely used, treating only a few dozen patients. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

At the time, Confindustria Lombardy chief Marco Bonometti acknowledged the "drastic measures" needed in Lodi but sought to lower the sense of alarm.

"We have to let people know they can go back to life as it was, while safeguarding their health," he said.

Even after the Rome-based national government locked down all of Lombardy March 7, it allowed factories to stay open, sparking strikes from workers worried their health was being sacrificed to keep Italy's industrial engine rolling.

"It was a huge error. They should have taken the example where the first cluster was found," said Giambattista Morali of the metalworkers' union in the Bergamo town of Dalmine. "Keeping factories open didn't help the situation; obviously it worsened it."

Eventually, all but essential production was shut down nationwide March 26. Confindustria's national president, Carlo Bonomi, has been urging that industry be reopened, but in a safe way.

"The paradigm has changed," Bonomi told RAI state television. "We can't make Italians secure if we don't reopen factories. But how do we make factories safe to secure Italians?"

It's a tough sell, given Lombardy is still adding an average of 950 infections daily, while other regions add from a few dozen to 500 apiece, with most new cases registered in nursing homes. Italy is set to begin a gradual reopening May 4, leading with regions farther south where the outbreak is more under control.

In this Tuesday, March 17, 2020 file photo, a woman walks outside the Pesenti Fenaroli hospital, in Alzano Lombardo, near Bergamo, the heart of the hardest-hit province in Italy's hardest-hit region of Lombardy, Italy. As Italy prepares to emerge from the West's first and most extensive coronavirus lockdown, it is increasingly becoming apparent that something went terribly wrong in Lombardy, the hardest-hit region in Europe's hardest-hit country. Two days after Italy registered its first positive case in the Lombard town of Codogno, sparking a lockdown of Codogno and nine nearby towns, another positive case was registered Feb. 23 more than an hour's drive away in the hospital of Alzano Lombardo in the province of Bergamo. Whereas the emergency room of Codogno's hospital was shuttered after its first positive case, the ER of Alzano's hospital reopened after a few hours of cleaning, fast becoming one of Bergamo's main sources of contagion. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, File)

Lombardy probably will be last to fully open, with its 72,000 confirmed cases, 70% of Italy's total, and estimates that the real number could be 10 times that.

A COSTLY FIELD HOSPITAL

Perhaps no initiative better illustrates Italy's confused coronavirus response than the 200-bed field hospital built in less than two weeks on the grounds of Milan's convention center.

The hospital was unveiled to great fanfare on March 31, the fruit of a 21 million euro ($23 million) fundraising campaign headed by Lombardy's governor, a member of the right-wing League party, to try to ease pressure on regional ICUs, which on that date were near capacity at 1,324 patients.

The national civil protection agency opposed the plan, arguing it could never equip it with ventilators or personnel in time. Instead, the agency, which reports to the rival 5-Star-Democratic government in Rome, preferred smaller field units set up outside hospitals and a program to move critical patients elsewhere.

In the end, the Milan field hospital was barely used, treating only a few dozen patients. Since it opened, Lombardy has seen pressure on its ICUs fall considerably, with just over 700 people needing intensive care today.

Fontana, the governor, defended the decision and said he would do it again, telling Radio 24: "We had to ... prepare a dam in case the epidemic overcame the embankment."

Lombardy region president Attilio Fontana arrives to attend a news conference presenting a new hospital Ospedalefieramilano to treat coronavirus patients in Milan, Italy, Tuesday, March 31, 2020. As Italy prepares to emerge from the West's first and most extensive coronavirus lockdown, it is increasingly becoming apparent that something went terribly wrong in Lombardy, the hardest-hit region in Europe's hardest-hit country. The intensive care hospital was unveiled to great fanfare on March 31, the fruit of a 21 million euro fundraising campaign spearheaded by Lombardy's Fontana, of the right-wing League party, to try to relieve pressure on the region's overtaxed ICUs which on that date were near capacity at 1,324 patients. In the end, the Milan field hospital was barely used, treating only a few dozen patients. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
NURSING HOME 'MASSACRE'

While the regional government was focused on building the field hospital and scrambling to find ICU beds, its testing capacity lagged and Lombardy's nursing homes were in many ways left to fend for themselves.

Hundreds of elderly have died in Lombardy and across Italy in what one WHO official has termed a "massacre" of those most vulnerable to the virus. Prosecutors are investigating dozens of nursing homes, as well as measures taken by local health authorities and the regional governments that may have worsened the problem.

Lombardy has more nursing homes than any other region, housing at least 24,000 elderly, and it registered more dead at those facilities than others too. Of the 3,045 dead from Feb. 1 to April 15 in the region, 1,625 were either positive for the virus or showed its symptoms, according to preliminary results from a survey by the Superior Institute of Health.

Of particular attention to prosecutors was the March 8 decision by the regional government to allow recovering COVID-19 patients to be put in nursing homes to free up hospital beds. The region says it required the homes guarantee the patients would be isolated, but it's not clear who was responsible to ensure that or whether anyone checked.

Even before that, staff at some homes said management prevented them from wearing masks for fear of scaring residents.

A March 30 regional decree, again aimed at easing pressure on Lombardy's ICUs, told nursing home directors to not hospitalize sick residents over 75 if they had other health problems. The decree said it was "opportune to treat them in the same facility to avoid further risks of decline in transport or during the wait in the emergency room."

In this Tuesday, March 17, 2020 filer, death notices are seen on a board along an empty road in Alzano Lombardo, near Bergamo, the heart of the hardest-hit province in Italy's hardest-hit region of Lombardy, Italy, Tuesday, March 17, 2020. As Italy prepares to emerge from the West's first and most extensive coronavirus lockdown, it is increasingly becoming apparent that something went terribly wrong in Lombardy, the hardest-hit region in Europe's hardest-hit country. Two days after Italy registered its first positive case in the Lombard town of Codogno, sparking a lockdown of Codogno and nine nearby towns, another positive case was registered Feb. 23 more than an hour's drive away in the hospital of Alzano Lombardo in the province of Bergamo. Whereas the emergency room of Codogno's hospital was shuttered after its first positive case, the ER of Alzano's hospital reopened after a few hours of cleaning, fast becoming one of Bergamo's main sources of contagion. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, File)

For the elderly at a nursing home in Nembro, one of the hardest-hit towns in Bergamo province, the decree amounted to a death warrant. But it wasn't the first or only one that gave the home's managers the sense that they were being abandoned.

When management proactively barred visitors on Feb. 24 to try to protect residents and staff from infection, local health authorities responded by threatening sanctions and a loss of accreditation for cutting off family visits, said the facility's new director, Valerio Poloni.

In the end, 37 of the 87 residents died in February and March. Its doctor, as well as Poloni's predecessor as director, also tested positive, were hospitalized and died. A nursing home resident couldn't get admitted to the hospital in late February because the ER was too crowded.

The facility's health director, Barbara Codalli, said she was told to use her existing resources to treat the sick. "The patient returned a few hours later, and a few days later the patient died," she told La7 television.

To date, none of the surviving residents has been tested. Poloni said tests were expected to begin in a few days. Two more residents died so far in April, but the situation seems under control.

''We are tranquil,'' he said.

© 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved..

Colleen Barry in Soave, Italy, contributed to this report.

Italy's far-right League hurt by response to coronavirus in heartland

Sara Rossi, Emilio Parodi  APRIL 25, 2020

MILAN (Reuters) - The coronavirus crisis has left Italy’s northern economic powerhouse a disaster zone and raised awkward questions for far-right opposition leader Matteo Salvini’s League party, which has dominated the region’s politics for years.

Ever since its creation as a separatist movement in the 1980s, the League’s heartland has been in the prosperous small towns of Lombardy around the financial capital Milan, the area that has now borne the brunt of the COVID-19 crisis.

Under Salvini’s leadership, the League has become Italy’s strongest party, mixing nativist and anti-immigration policies with harsh criticism of the European Union that has at times included threats to quit the euro.

But the crisis in his home region has dented Salvini’s once all-conquering image, making it harder to land attacks on Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s coalition government in Rome, which Salvini quit spectacularly last year in a failed attempt to force a new election.

Two months after the first outbreak of COVID-19 in a small town outside Milan, Lombardy remains one of the world’s worst-hit regions, accounting for half of Italy’s 26,000 dead.

As local families have seen elderly relatives dying alone in overflowing hospitals or nursing homes, the League-led regional government, which runs the health system, has faced increasing criticism from its own supporters.

“For us seeing the hospitals full and the ambulances that didn’t arrive was unthinkable,” said Ivan Dallagrassa, who runs a building company in Gorno near Bergamo and lost an uncle and probably an aunt to COVID-19. “At the last elections I voted for the League because I liked Salvini but I wouldn’t do it again.”

The troubles in Lombardy have started to undermine national support for the party, which had already been losing ground to parties like the right-wing Brothers of Italy group, while Conte has enjoyed sky-high approval ratings of over 60 percent.

A poll on Sunday by the Ipsos institute for the Corriere della Sera newspaper put the League on 25.4 percent, down from 31.1 a month ago, accelerating a steady slide since it took 34.3 to become the largest party in European elections a year ago.

HALF OF ITALY’S DEAD

The regional government has been criticised for communication missteps, policy zig-zags, lack of early testing and failing to procure enough protective equipment. Magistrates have begun investigating a wave of deaths in the region’s nursing homes.

Salvini’s own position, like those of many politicians on all sides, has shifted during the crisis. Early on he blamed foreigners, demanding to close Italy’s borders; he was then a sceptic of shutting down business, before ultimately joining calls for a strict lockdown.


Whatever stance he has taken on the national level, his fortunes are tied to the performance of his party in administering the region it dominates.

Local officials point to actions they have taken, including setting up a huge emergency hospital, bringing in millions of protective masks and setting aside billions of euros to boost the economy.

“There’s no justification for these attacks,” regional governor Attilio Fontana, a close Salvini ally, told local TV station ETV last week, saying much of the criticism was motivated by “political speculation”.

But while criticism from opponents may be predictable, many normally sympathetic voices have also expressed deep misgivings.

“The main criticism I would make of the management of this crisis by the region of Lombardy is organisational failure,” said Roberto Francese, who heads a centre-right administration as mayor of Robbio, 50 kilometres southwest of Milan.

Lombardy officials have also had to defend pre-crisis health reforms, which favoured big hospitals and private sector providers and stripped down local services now seen as vital to treating patients before they end up in intensive care.

“Local medical services have gone backwards, it’s true,” said Lorenzo Demartini, a hospital radiologist and a former League mayor of Mede, near Milan. “They have been dismantled, I can confirm it.”

By contrast, the League governor in neighbouring Veneto, Luca Zaia, has emerged strengthened from the crisis, widely praised for decisive action backed by a strong local health system that kept hospital admissions down.

While the League has weathered previous storms, Lorenzo Pregliasco, head of political analysis firm Youtrend, said the “mishandling of a huge crisis affecting ordinary people” was a very different problem from the financial scandals that regularly blight Italian politics.

“The party’s appeal is based on Salvini’s charismatic leadership but also on a reputation for pragmatic and effective government at local level,” he said. “That has been damaged.”

Coronavirus Killed The Mass Protest So They've Gone Online. But They’ll Be Back.

Lockdown measures have stopped many protesters from going outside. So they're getting creative.

Christopher Miller BuzzFeed News Contributor Posted on April 25, 2020

Miguel Schincariol / Getty Images

Images of the president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, projected onto a wall in protest at his handling of the pandemic.

How do you protest against the government if coronavirus lockdown measures mean you can’t go outside?

Simple.

Drop a pin.

By sticking thousands of pins embedded with protest messages onto online maps, Russians who are angry about lost jobs and lack of financial aid from the government were able to make themselves be heard by authorities and each other.

Using Yandex.Maps and Yandex.Navigator mobile apps — the Russian version of Google Maps — the virtual protesters dropped their first pins in front of government buildings in the southwestern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don on Monday. But it wasn’t long before more appeared outside government buildings and politically symbolic locations in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Nizhny Novgorod, and even in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, according to local media reports. Their numbers quickly grew from hundreds to thousands protesting together across Russia.

Their beef? The impact of sweeping safety measures imposed in an attempt to stop the novel coronavirus outbreak in Russia, which as of Friday evening had recorded 68,622 cases and 615 deaths, according to government data. (The death toll remains low compared to other countries with a similar number of cases.) Because of those measures, which include orders to self-isolate at home — and, in the case of Moscow and Rostov on Don, the need to apply for special permits to leave home or else face a hefty fine and possible arrest — the demonstrators did not physically gather on the cities’ streets and squares, so they did it virtually.

Most of the participants demanded that Russian authorities introduce an official state of emergency, which would provide citizens with social assistance from the government, or else lift restrictions preventing people from going to work. Thousands of comments appeared on the apps over the course of the sprawling digital protests.

“No money to pay off loans! What are we supposed to do?” read one protest message posted in Rostov on Don that was seen by Global Voices, which covered the digital demonstrations and aggregated local media reports. “OK, so cancel taxes, loans, and so on,” and “declare a state of emergency or stop restrictions on people,” read others.



Дон-ТР@VestiDonTR
#ростов В Ростове устроили виртуальный митинг из-за введения новых пропусков https://t.co/HfKYtz2GFt01:19 PM - 20 Apr 2020
Reply Retweet Favorite


A virtual protest is being held in Rostov due to the introduction of new restrictions.

Watching as the protests spread, Alexander Plushchev, a popular blogger, asked followers on his Telegram channel, “I feel that by this evening, digital rallies will have taken over the whole country. Don’t those in the Kremlin get that?”

If 2019 was the year of the street protest, of tear gas and rubber bullets, 2020 might be the year the street protest died, or perhaps fell into a deep sleep, and went online.

“Before the coronavirus, there were quite dynamic public protests in so many different places, especially in the past six months, in Iran and in Hong Kong, in Moscow last summer … All over the world,” said Rachel Denber, deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia division at Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The deadly coronavirus pandemic has disrupted months-long protest movements across the world. Streets and squares in cities have gone eerily quiet.

Yet, as with the Russian protesters, some civil society activists and protest movement leaders are coming up with creative solutions to voice their discontent in this new era of social distancing and national lockdown orders.


Amnesty Hungary@AmnestyHungary
In #Poland the parliament will soon vote on two new laws - one to restrict #abortion, the other to ban #SexEducation We cannot take the streets, so we'll #ProtestAtHome @amnestyPL #NieSkladamyParasolek #StrajkKobiet @elzbietawitek @MorawieckiM @RyszardTerlecki08:37 AM - 15 Apr 2020


In neighboring Ukraine, for example, protesters held a Zoom conference call against the government’s decision to cut state funding to cultural programs. In Poland, protesters published photographs and posters on social media in support of women’s rights and against proposed laws to restrict abortion and ban sex education. Activists in Chile projected videos of demonstrations and of victims of state repression on public buildings.

There are some who push the physical boundaries of protesting in this moment of limits. In Brazil people expressed their anger at President Jair Bolsonaro’s controversial handling of the pandemic by banging pots and pans together while hanging out of their windows and stepping out onto their balconies. In Sao Paolo some protesters projected a picture of him laughing onto buildings to show their disgust. And in Hong Kong, a newly formed union born out of the pro-democracy movement that has been interrupted by the coronavirus went on strike to demand a ban on entries from mainland China to stop the spread of the virus.

Iavor Rangelov, an assistant professorial research fellow focused on human rights and security, transitional justice and civil society at the London School of Economics and Political Science, told BuzzFeed News that in many ways the current lockdown is accelerating trends that first appeared before the coronavirus

“The push by governments of different stripes to restrict the space for protest and social mobilization is one example,” he said. Another, he added, had forced activists to start doing more campaigning and organizing online.

Whether these protest methods can be effective and will sustain the larger movements remains to be seen and likely depends on how long governments keep measures restricting access to public spaces in place.

If the new, pandemic-inspired protest methods do turn out to be effective, Rangelov said it may lead governments to further restrict digital spaces. But this could have unforeseen consequences too.

“That carries more risks for activists but also for governments, when all ‘valves’ for protest get closed down the pressure builds up and may trigger much more disruptive and destabilizing forms of protests,” he said.

“Social movements that have been mobilizing around inequalities and injustices feel vindicated as the pandemic has exacerbated many of them and made them more visible. They are also frustrated that they can’t take full advantage of the opening to mobilize around these issues as much as they feel they should, especially offline.”

He added: “What will be important to watch is how broader society responds to some of their ideas and agendas that until recently were seen as marginal and utopian, but now seem possible.”


Amir Levy / Getty Images
Israelis protest under coronavirus restrictions on April 19, 2020.

Alexander Clarkson, a lecturer in European and international studies at King’s College London, said that we tend to overestimate the extent to which any single event leads to some radical change in protest movements.

“Lockdowns may in the long term ... change the way in which social movements think about things. Or, I actually think public health will become a dimension of protest movements established in preexisting causes in which it wasn’t,” he said. “I have more doubts about it being fundamentally transformative in the way social movements operate. As the lockdowns loosen, movements will come out into the streets increasingly and they’ll just go back to using these old tools they always did.”

Perhaps a sign of that came last weekend, when thousands of Israelis stood six feet apart in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square to protest what they felt was the erosion of democracy under the current government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In several US cities, people unhappy with state-ordered shutdowns have also flouted federal recommendations and opted for the more traditional method of protest: gathering in public. And they have done so with support from President Donald Trump, who urged supporters to “liberate” states that have imposed public safety measures.

Meanwhile, two dozen nurses from National Nurses United stood at a safe distance from each other in protest outside the White House on Tuesday. They demanded more personal protective equipment for themselves and others on the front line of the pandemic.

“The digital protest is just a means of expressing yourself at a moment in time because other means are not there,” Clarkson said.

If serious change in the context of protests is to emerge from the pandemic, Clarkson thinks it will come from the side of law enforcement. “People are talking about social movements changing, I think it will be policing that could change.”

“In an environment where, if the state is trying to do track-and-tracing, trying to maintain social distancing, trying to police and monitor a whole range of new potential infractions, and then on top of that deal with [protesters] … we may see states becoming even more brutal,” Clarkson said.

In a sign that Russia is unlikely to tolerate either, Yandex — which has come under increasing influence from the government — began digitally dispersing the online protesters by deleting their protest messages almost as quickly as they appeared.


Олег Степанов@olsnov
Прямо сейчас Яндекс разгоняет «несогласованный митинг» против Путина на Красной площади! Москвичи оставляют сотни комментариев, но администраторы их мгновенно удаляют. Попробуйте сами https://t.co/RCrZAqosdp01:26 PM - 20 Apr 2020

Right now Yandex is dispersing an “unsanctioned protest” against Putin on Red Square! Muscovites are posting hundreds of comments, but administrators are instantly deleting them. Try for yourself.



Christopher Miller is a Kyiv-based American journalist and editor.
Contact Christopher Miller at millerjchristopher@gmail.com.

Native American Tribes Say They’re At Risk Of Losing Out On Potentially Millions Of Coronavirus Stimulus Dollars

Tribal governments are challenging the Treasury Department’s decision to make certain for-profit Native corporations eligible for stimulus funds intended to help tribes respond to the pandemic.

Zoe Tillman BuzzFeed News Reporter
Reporting From Washington, DC April 24, 2020

Kristin Murphy / The Deseret News via
Vehicles line up for COVID-19 testing outside of the Monument Valley Health Center in Oljato-Monument Valley in Utah, April 17.

WASHINGTON — Dozens of Native American tribal governments have raced to court in the past week to try to stop the Treasury Department from allowing for-profit Native corporations to access a special pool of $8 billion in federal coronavirus relief money.

The tribes argue that if Alaska Native corporations, or ANCs, are eligible for the funds, it could cost federally recognized tribal governments millions of dollars in aid. In court papers, the tribal governments said they needed the money to provide immediate relief to communities hit by the pandemic, including buying personal protective equipment, expanding testing for COVID-19 (the disease caused by the novel coronavirus), and delivering meals to the elderly and children.

Congress intended the money for “desperate tribal governments,” Nicole Ducheneaux, a lawyer for the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, told a judge on Friday afternoon.

“COVID-19 is causing devastating harm in Indian country,” lawyers for a group of tribal governments wrote in one of three lawsuits filed in the past week. “By way of just a few examples, as of April 15, 2020, the Navajo Nation alone has reported 921 cases and 38 deaths related to COVID-19. The Pueblo of Zuni has reported 33 cases. And the Cherokee Nation has reported 28 cases with one fatality as of April 9. Native Americans suffer from disproportionately high rates of diabetes, cancer, heart disease, asthma, which subject them to greater risk of fatal complications from COVID-19.”

As part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) that became law in late March, Congress designated $8 billion in funding for “Tribal governments.” What exactly qualifies as a “tribal government” is at the heart of the legal fight that’s quickly bubbled up in a federal district court in Washington, DC.

ANCs were established by a 1971 law governing how Alaska Natives manage and benefit from their land. In court papers, one ANC argued that these corporations are in a position to help tribe members during the pandemic and that their for-profit status shouldn’t get in the way of accessing stimulus funds. The ANCs and the Treasury Department argue Congress used language in the stimulus package that allowed these corporations, which serve as holding companies for a variety of business interests, to apply for the money.

US District Judge Amit Mehta heard arguments on Friday via video and telephone. The tribal governments that sued want the judge to issue an immediate order to stop money from going to the corporations. Justice Department lawyer Jason Lynch told Mehta that the Treasury Department would hold off distributing the money until at least April 28. Mehta said he’d rule by April 27.

There are 574 federally recognized tribal governments that have a government-to-government relationship with the United States, and 237 ANCs throughout Alaska, according to court filings. The ANCs have shareholders — primarily members of Native American tribes — and boards of directors, and they serve as holding companies for businesses that range from construction and pipeline maintenance to janitorial and food services.

The tribal governments argue that allowing the ANCs to apply for coronavirus relief money could reduce the amount available to all the tribes. They offered two hypothetical scenarios in court papers: If the money were divided equally among 811 entities instead of 574, it would mean the tribal governments would get approximately $10 million instead of $14 million. And if the money were divided up proportionally based on a combination of factors that included land, they said, the ANCs would disproportionately benefit given the millions of acres that they cover across Alaska.

The tribal government said in court papers that the money they’d normally get from businesses that operate on tribal lands and fund health care, law enforcement, and other services for tribal members had “evaporated overnight” due to the pandemic.

The Treasury Department contends that the language of the CARES Act didn’t exclude ANCs from being eligible for the money, and that the court should not second-guess the executive branch’s “time-pressed determination” about how to distribute the funds. Congress used a definition of “Indian tribe” in the CARES Act from another law, the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, which covers ANCs, and the Treasury Department is arguing that a board of directors is a type of governing body.

During arguments on Friday, Mehta asked Riyaz Kanji, a lawyer for one set of tribal governments, if they’d be satisfied if the Treasury Department said it would only give money to ANCs that were delivering the kind of health care and other public services that tribal governments were delivering. Kanji said the best option would be for the money to go to the tribal governments, who could then decide how best to spend it.

Mehta also questioned why Congress used a definition of “Indian tribe” that included ANCs if it meant to exclude the corporations from the stimulus money. Kanji said it was Congress’s “habit” and “pattern” to use that definition when legislating issues related to Native American affairs.

According to Lynch, the Treasury Department is still deciding how to divide the money. Mehta asked if he knew the agency’s algorithm or methodology. Lynch said he didn’t, and that even if he did he wouldn’t be able to share it because it was part of the nonpublic “predecisional” process.

A lawyer for one of the ANCs that filed a "friend of the court" (or amicus) brief asked Mehta for time to argue at the end of the hearing, saying there had been “misinformation” about ANCs she wanted to address. Mehta denied the request, saying he wasn’t giving argument time to any of the groups that filed briefs but weren’t part of the lawsuit.


Zoe Tillman is a senior legal reporter with BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC.

SEE

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/05/a-judge-sided-with-native-american.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/04/native-american-tribes-say-theyre-at.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com2020/05/extreme/-lockdown-shows-divide-in-hard.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/05/usa-small-tribes-seal-borders-push.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/05/south-dakota-gov.html


https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/05/trump-cant-mask-his-message-to-indian.html

CLOSING BARN DOOR AFTER THE FACT
U.S. Labor Department issues new guidance for meatpacking workers

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Labor Department issued new guidelines on Sunday for U.S. meatpacking and meat-processing plants that have seen a rash of coronavirus outbreaks, saying employees should be spaced at least 6 feet (1.8 m) apart and screened before they start working.

The interim guidance from the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration also recommended temperature checks and the wearing of cloth face coverings as a protective measure.

The guidance was issued jointly with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“As essential workers, those in the meatpacking and processing industries need to be protected from coronavirus for their own safety and health,” OSHA’s deputy assistant secretary, Loren Sweatt, said in a news release.


COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, has spread widely through U.S. slaughterhouses where large groups of employees often work shoulder to shoulder.

More than 5,000 U.S. meat- and food-processing workers have been infected with or exposed to the new coronavirus, and 13 have died, the country’s largest meatpacking union said on Thursday.

Meat suppliers including Tyson Foods Inc, Brazilian-owned JBS USA, and WH Group Ltd’s Smithfield Foods have all closed pork plants.


Many labor unions, Democrats and worker advocates have criticized OSHA for what they say has been an inadequate response to the pandemic. OSHA had recommended employers take various steps, rather than adopting emergency standards requiring them.

The slaughterhouse shutdowns are disrupting the U.S. food supply chain, crimping the availability of meat at retail stores and leaving farmers without outlets for their livestock.

New Brunswick
Harvey woman turns old fur coats into fashionable new accessories

Jessie McFadyen has collected thousands of fur coats from across Canada and the U.S. to make into new products

HOW TO USE FUR RESPONSIBLY; RECYCLE, REUSE

Elizabeth Fraser · CBC News · Posted: Feb 23, 2020 

Jessie McFadyen takes old fur coats and turning them into hats, purses and scarves. (John McFadyen/Submitted)

Jessie McFadyen keeps a collection of old fur coats hanging inside a small wooden shop beside her home in southwestern New Brunswick.

The 55-year-old buys them from Kijiji and Value Village. If she's lucky, some people donate their old coats made from coyote, raccoon and fox fur. 

"Just fur everywhere," she said.

McFadyen makes numerous hats every year out of old coats she finds online or in second-hand shops. (Jessie McFadyen/Submitted)

McFadyen refashions the thousands of coats she's kept over the years into headbands, earmuffs, scarves, purses, mittens and hats.

"I'm using something that a woman years ago … wore to make herself feel good," the seamstress said. "And now I make things from your mother's coat or your grandmother's coat. It's a cherished keepsake."

Fur coats have become unpopular in recent years, but sometimes the old coats just don't fit anymore. 

At first, the Harvey woman made the products on a regular Singer sewing machine. She has since upgraded to a fur sewing machine. (John McFadyen/Submitted)

"We have these things called shrinking closets," McFadyen said with a laugh at her home in Harvey, a village about 42 kilometres southwest of Fredericton. 

The New Brunswick crafter came up with the idea after her husband, John, came home with a muskrat coat he bought at a yard sale for $10 about 30 years ago.

"I said quote — unquote, 'What the hell are you going to do with that?'" 

From old to new

McFadyen has been sewing since she was a little girl, making doll outfits, aprons and pairs of shorts.

"I've always sewn, whether it was hemming a pair of pants or shortening a pair of sleeves."

But she'd never worked with fur. 

"I didn't know what he was going to do with it."  

People use the fur accessories for snowmobiling, snowshoeing and other outdoor activities. (Jessie McFadyen/Submitted)

The muskrat coat sat inside her closet for a few years until John made her a pair of slippers to keep her feet warm in winter.

From there, the duo kept going. 

"We made slipper after slipper after slipper," said McFadyen, who is also the owner of Fur 'N' Things.

Then the couple moved on to making different winter accessories from muskrat, beaver and raccoon. 

The accessories are so warm, people use them for skiing, snowmobiling, snowshoeing and dog sledding. 

Good for the environment 

McFadyen learned to sew the fur products from video, books — and with a lot of support from her husband.

"The rest is all self-taught and trial and error,"

McFadyen, who graduated top of her class in Grade 12 home economics, started sewing products together with her metal Singer sewing machine and a leather needle.

Over the years, she upgraded to an industrial sewing machine and from there, she to a fur machine.

"Fur is slippery to work with."

McFadyen also makes Christmas ornaments out of old fur coats. (Jessie McFadyen/Submitted)

Although she's been sewing for more than 30 years, McFadyen was forced to slow down after doctors removed a benign tumour from her brain a few years ago.

But she's still a perfectionist. 

"If I don't like the look of something, it could be one stitch or a whole item, if I don't like the look of it I take it apart and redo it.

McFadyen said repurposing old fur is important for the environment because the old coats can be turned into something new, rather than being sent to the landfill. 

"It's environmentally friendly," she said. "I'm recycling, that's a good thing." 

Fur 'makes environmental sense'

Alan Herscovici, former director of the Fur Council of Canada, said fur clothing is an example of durable and long-lasting material.

"We've got to get away from this fast-fashion throwaway culture, where things look nice, but they don't last too long," he said. "They're not too expensive, so you buy new things all the time. Throw the rest away and don't think of the mountains of garbage that build up.

Rather than synthetic clothing that come from petrochemicals that aren't biodegradable, he said, people should consider buying clothing made of natural materials that are better quality and can be reused.

"Fur coats are one of the few clothing articles that can be taken apart, totally remodelled and restyled," he said.

"That makes environmental sense."

Then if people don't want to wear these items, the fur can be taken to the back garden compost ,where it can biodegrade and return to the soil. 

"It's a long-lasting recyclable, natural clothing material that's produced sustainably," he said. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Elizabeth Fraser

Reporter/Editor

Elizabeth Fraser is a reporter/editor with CBC New Brunswick based in Fredericton. She's originally from Manitoba. Story tip? elizabeth.fraser@cbc.ca