The science of gossip (and why everyone does it)

© Shutterstock Research has found that the average person spends 52 minutes a day talking about someone who isn't present.

People feed off gossip. It's one reason why, in the 1960s, the National Enquirer swapped the gory, gruesome headlines they were known for with celebrity scoops and scandal. The switch gave the tabloid access to supermarket checkout lines and the "enquiring minds" in them.

But it's not just tabloid readers who love to dish. Social scientists have found that everyone is hardwired to pay attention to gossip, and to participate in it. In fact, it's an evolutionary adaptation -- it's become human nature to spill the tea.

"We're the descendants of people who were good at this," said Frank McAndrew, a psychology professor at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. "In prehistoric times, people who were fascinated by the lives of other people were more successful."

McAndrew, an expert on human social behavior and gossip, explains that to thrive in the time of cavemen, we had to know what was happening with the people around us.

"Who is sleeping with whom? Who has power? Who has access to resources? And if you weren't good at that, you weren't very successful," he said.

Gossip generally has a negative connotation, especially when you think about hurtful rumors, or tabloids and a person's right to privacy.

But in everyday life, researchers say, our chatter about other people tends to be relatively boring and neutral and serves its own unique purpose.

52 minutes of gossip a day

Most researchers define gossip as talking about someone who isn't present and sharing information that isn't widely known.

And according to an analysis by researchers at the University of California Riverside, the average person spends 52 minutes every day doing exactly that.

Yet the majority of our gossip is harmless. About 15% of our gabbing involves negative judgment -- or what researchers call "evaluative" -- but outside of that, the average person is just documenting facts, such as "she's stuck late at work," or "he had to go to the hospital." This kind of neutral chitchat actually helps us build friendships, community or learn information that's vital for having a social life, said Megan Robbins, a UC Riverside psychology professor.

"You can establish a relationship by talking about other people and finding out something about others in the group," she said. "Even for those types of gossip that are evaluative, you're saying, 'I'm trusting you with this information.'"

Although gossiping is often stereotyped as a feminine, low-class or uneducated pastime, Robbins said that everyone does it.

"Our data debunked all of the stereotypes," Robbins said. "As a social species, we have to talk about people. We don't live in isolation, and we talk about people who inevitably sometimes are not present."

Everyone gossips -- and it's not all bad

The practice becomes purely harmful when it doesn't provide any opportunity for social learning, scientists say, such as with rude comments about someone's appearance or health and comments that are blatantly untrue.

Where judgmental or negative gossip can be useful is when it provides cultural learning and compels people to behave better.

Robbins said there is compelling research that gossip might serve as a check on people's moral behavior, deterring potential cheaters or slackers in a group setting because we care about our reputations and the risk of others gossiping about our bad decisions.

It can also be a way to figure out unwritten rules. For example, when we start a new job, the water cooler talk helps us find out what is acceptable office attire, who we might want to avoid working with on a team project, and whether it's acceptable to take a monthlong vacation.

"Sharing gossip with someone is a bonding mechanism," McAndrew said. "It does kind of increase morale."

This human habit isn't limited to a certain age group. Sociology professor Stacy Torres studied this habit among elderly people living alone in New York city. Her research revealed that older adults engaged in gossip at local restaurants and shops as a way to connect with others, maintain social ties and combat loneliness.

"This is something that we see across different cultures and different ages, although it may sort of take a different flavor," said Torres. "A lot of them would say, 'Oh I don't want to partake,' or 'I need to watch what I say,' but then would show up every day and participate."

Torres, who is now based at the University of California San Francisco, added that gossip gives us the opportunity to vent about people while allowing us to still maintain positive social ties with them overall. Even when the elders' gossip seemed to be negative or rude, it usually came from a place of thoughtfulness.

"They had nicknames for each other, some that were disparaging, but it was obvious they were thinking about each other," Torres said. For example, they'd call each other names but then tack on a comment about reaching out to them: 'Has anyone heard from old so-and-so?'"

"There was an element of concern," Torres said, "and they were checking on (each other)."


Why do we care about celebrities?

Humans are hardwired to care about the lives of people who are friends, foes or family. Researchers call those people "socially important." But why do we care about famous people we've never actually met?

"What's going on is that our caveman brains are unprepared to deal with (modern communication). In those days, if you knew a lot about someone, by definition they were socially important to you," McAndrew said.

This is especially true today thanks to the internet and social media, which means we know a lot about people we don't actually know. Being privy to that information tricks our brains into thinking celebrities are socially important to our lives. One of McAndrew's studies showed that we even gravitate toward celebrity tabloid stories about people of the same gender and age group.

"They're our cohort -- they might be our rivals or allies," McAndrew explained. "Consciously, you know they don't matter and you're not going to meet them, but they press the same buttons in our brains as people who do matter to us."

Celebrity gossip also gives us common ground with others. Pop culture knowledge gives us something to talk about during those awkward small talk encounters or at parties where we don't know many people.

"You might even think about keeping up with celebrities as a social skill," McAndrew said. "It makes you know about things that other people care about."

If you're worried that your gossip is excessive or otherwise harmful, start by examining the reasons why you think you have an issue, McAndrew said, as it may be that you're not using the skill appropriately.

"Bad gossipers are either people who indiscriminately blab everything they have heard to anyone who will listen, or they are individuals with a clearly selfish agenda in which gossip is designed to damage the reputations of their rivals," he said. Those who do it well "know things but are trusted to be discreet. They have the well-being of others on their radar."

If you notice that "your gossip is hurting your relationships or taking time away from other things you need to be doing," McAndrew said, it may be time to cut back. He suggested you try avoiding the situations or people that bring out the worst in you.

Glaciers Will Tell the Story of COVID-19 for Centuries to Come



© The Washington Post - Getty Images Scientists from the Ohio State University say that Earth’s crust will carry evidence of COVID-19 (coronavirus) likely for the rest of Earth’s long timeline.

Climate researchers who study historical climate events say there are links to today.
Scientists study history by pulling enormous cores of ice out of deep holes.
The ice "records" events like drought and disease, but must be studied with historical records.

Scientists from the Ohio State University say that Earth’s crust will carry evidence of COVID-19 (coronavirus) likely for the rest of Earth’s long timeline. That’s because of both environmental signs of a global pandemic and the way pathogens like viruses and bacteria are effectively “flash frozen” in snow and ice.


The scientists, from OSU’s Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center, have tested ice cores in some of the world's most remote areas for viruses. These cores are most useful as a way to corroborate the human historical record.

“[If] all you have are the ice core records, and you don’t have the human history, you might miss the connection,” said Byrd Center geography researcher Ellen Mosley-Thompson in a statement. One example is of a high amount of dust in cores dating back to the 1300s, which scientists can’t place or contextualize without some written record, such as contemporary notes about a drought or even a volcanic eruption.

The same is true in reverse: It’s impractical for scientists to search entire ice cores for evidence of a viral pathogen at some point in the past. Instead of that needle in a haystack, they need bookends on a smaller time frame, and that guidance comes from the historical record. “[I]f you are looking for evidence of old viruses, then you have to know precisely where to look in the cores,” Mosley-Thompson said in the OSU statement.

In the case of the dusty core from the 1300s, the cause was a “major drought” that lasted for more than four decades. Combined with that, the human population was impacted and reduced by the plague. And, the statement says, “On some glaciers the ice that formed during the years of the Plague contains less lead than ice that formed during preceding years, likely because mining and smelting activities sharply dropped off during that time.”

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The multifaceted impact of a global pandemic had similar hallmarks even in the 1300s. The human cost of illness affected everything, from culture to industry to Earth itself. And a drought and illness event that lasted for decades was enough to pull down some of the world’s great contemporary civilizations, including “the Akkadian empire in Mesopotamia, societies around the Indus River and the Yangtze River in Asia, and the Old Kingdom in Egypt,” the statement says.

COVID-19 is already affecting Earth's atmosphere, the scientists say. From the statement:
As people stayed home and drove less, nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide levels dropped over China and throughout much of the United States. Both are potent pollutants that primarily form by burning gas and oil – the fossil fuels that power most of our vehicles. That decrease in nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide levels will be evident in the nitrate and sulfate levels in ice cores retrieved by future glaciologists.

So the scientists believe there are parallels between events like the ones in the 1300s and the global pandemic happening today. One interesting difference, of course, is that the world is now totally interconnected. In the 1300s, entire civilizations could thrive and perish without ever meaningfully contacting each other. Today, any group that suffers affects everyone—and can ask everyone for help.

“I suspect there are some lessons here that would be useful today,” Mosley-Thompson concluded. Indeed, humankind has faced pandemics and catastrophes for all of history. What we can change is how we respond.

Trump administration to restore partial funding to World Health Organization - Fox News

May 15 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump's administration is set to restore partial funding to the World Health Organization, Fox News reported late on Friday, citing a draft letter.

The Trump administration will "agree to pay up to what China pays in assessed contributions" to the WHO, Fox News reported, quoting from the letter.

Trump suspended U.S. contributions to the WHO on April 14, accusing it of promoting China's "disinformation" about the coronavirus outbreak and saying his administration would launch a review of the organization. WHO officials denied the claims and China has insisted it was transparent and open.

The United States was the WHO's biggest donor. If the U.S. matches China's contribution, as the Fox report adds, its new funding level will be about one-tenth of its previous funding amount of about $400 million per year.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru. Editing by Gerry Doyle)

Another casualty of the coronavirus: scientific research


Ecologists have been unable to gather water samples vital to understanding the impact of climate change on state forests. Marine biologists who regularly collect data about conditions in the Gulf of Maine have been stuck on land, while others who do aerial surveys critical to monitoring endangered whales have been grounded.\

© Serdar Sakinan Carin Ashjian, a WHOI biologist, has been studying zooplankton aboard a German icebreaker attached to an ice floe in the Arctic Ocean. Now, she's experiencing an additional two months on the ship, as another team of scientists go through a period of quarantining before she can be replaced.

With much of the world still shut down, the coronavirus has hampered the painstaking work of many scientists whose findings rely on regularly collected data and seasonal experiments.


The loss of that work — much of which can’t be replicated or done at another time — could have a long-lasting impact on scientists’ understanding of everything from the warming of our oceans to the demise of certain species.Opinion: The parallels between the coronavirus and the climate crisis

“Long-term environmental data sets have never been impacted to the extent we’re experiencing now,” said Doug Levey, director of the division of environmental biology at the National Science Foundation, which subsidizes nearly a quarter of all basic research at US universities.

From the tundra to the tropics, much of the work of the agency’s grantees has been halted, including long-term studies at remote outposts in Alaska and field sites in Puerto Rico, he said.

That has meant decades of research will now have gaping holes in their data — gaps that are especially significant now, given what could be learned from a time when people are having less of an effect on the environment because of the global shutdown.

“Because humans have such a direct impact on ecosystems, it is likely that many ecosystems will respond in ways we have never previously witnessed,” Levey said. “Without scientists in place to record the details, however, many of those unexpected phenomena will go unexplained.”

At Harvard Forest in Petersham, David Foster worries about losing data that have informed three decades of research about local woodlands.

Among the losses since March has been the collection of vital water samples that can’t be stored in university labs. “This thwarts studies of hemlock loss, climate change, and connections between forests and oceans,” said Foster, director of Harvard Forest, one of the nation’s oldest managed forests.

At the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the pride of its fleet of research vessels — the new, 240-foot Neil Armstrong — has been tied up at the pier since it returned from its last voyage in March. Its crew remains onboard, quarantined, waiting for clearance to head back to sea with a new team of scientists.

The Armstrong had been scheduled to take Canadian scientists to collect data about plankton, toxic algae, and temperature in the waters off the Maritimes in Atlantic Canada, part of a series of studies that has been underway since 1998.

That mission was canceled, as was another by the institution’s other large ship, the Atlantis, which was supposed to take part in a multinational effort to better understand how the smallest parts of the ecosystem circulate through different depths of the oceans.

“These are significant blows to the science and will have a large impact,” said Rob Munier, the institution’s vice president of marine facilities and operations.

It’s unclear when they will be allowed back on the water.

“The uncertainty has been the hardest part,” said Munier, noting that WHOI has trips planned in Greenland and Iceland this summer. "Scientists prepare for these trips for years, and graduate students rely on the data to complete their dissertations.”

A different challenge for some scientists has been getting stuck in remote locations when the pandemic hit.

Since February, Carin Ashjian, a biologist, has been studying zooplankton aboard a German icebreaker attached to an ice floe in the Arctic Ocean. She’s now experiencing an additional two months on the ship, as another team of scientists go through a period of quarantining before she can be replaced.

Unlike colleagues back home, Ashjian has been able to conduct her research without much interruption.

“As I sit in my lab, photographing copepods,” she wrote to colleagues at Woods Hole, “I reflect on how what I thought would be surreal (working on a ship frozen into the ice in the middle of the Arctic Ocean) is now normal, and the world that I left behind is the one that is surreal. I cannot imagine what it is like at home.”

One of her replacements, Stephen Archer, a senior research scientist at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Maine, has been quarantined at a hotel in Germany, awaiting confirmation that he’s not infected with the virus before he can be sent to the ship.

Both worry that the project could be more profoundly affected by COVID-19.

“Developing a plan for how to keep the experiment going in the face of the pandemic has been a huge effort,” Archer wrote from his hotel in Germany. “It would be extremely sad and a major loss to science (and society) if we were not able to achieve the full year of measurements as planned.”

At the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, scientists who monitor the health of the remaining 400 endangered North Atlantic right whales couldn’t fly over Cape Cod Bay when more than half of their population usually congregate there in early spring.

Other research they do on humpback whales also stopped.

“When we and others can’t fly, we lose a lot of knowledge,” said Charles “Stormy” Mayo, director of the center’s right whale ecology program. “We lose information on injuries, which is critical to their management.”

Across the bay in Plymouth, long-term studies of birds at the conservation group Manomet have suffered.

Trevor Lloyd-Evans, director of the group’s landbird conservation program, said the shutdown has hampered a 54-year banding operation at their observatory. Another blow to their research came when colleagues had to cancel what he described a “crucial season” of surveys of shorebirds that breed in the Arctic.

He described the past two months as a “lost spring” of research.

“What if keystone species are vanishing from large areas, and we do not have the basic data to recognize this?” he said. “Our predictions are only as good as the data we enter into our analyses.”

27 million Americans may lose health insurance coverage: Report

DEAR JOE AND WALL ST DEMOCRATS
NO ONE LIKES NOR WANTS THEIR EXPENSIVE INSUFFICIENT WORKPLACE HEALTHCARE EXCEPT THE INSURANCE COMPANIES

Soaring unemployment numbers could translate into nearly 27 million people losing their health insurance, according to a new report.

© Kathy Willens/AP Edgar Chun, left, who was laid off from his job as a mover in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, appeals to Pastor Juan Carlos Ruiz for emergency food aid in front of Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, in the Brooklyn, New York, May 12, 2020.

"Between March 1st and May 2nd, 2020, more than 31 million people had filed for unemployment insurance," notes the Kaiser Family Foundation report, which was released Wednesday.

"Actual loss of jobs and income are likely even higher, as some people may be only marginally employed or may not have filed for benefits."

Along with losing their jobs, Americans who previously had health insurance coverage through their employers will lose that, too.

Eight states including California, Texas, Pennsylvania, New York, Georgia, Florida, Michigan and Ohio will account for roughly half of the people who lost health insurance they previously had through their job, the report estimated.

Those individuals may be eligible for subsidized coverage under the Affordable Care Act, for Medicaid, or may continue their employer insurance through COBRA.

But COBRA insurance is often expensive, since former employees generally pay the entire premium themselves. On average, annual COBRA insurance premiums are $7,188 for a single person and $20,576 for a family, according to KFF.

The losses not only come in the middle of a global pandemic but also when many Americans, even those with health insurance, are struggling to pay for medical care. Before the pandemic, 1 in 3 Americans said that they wouldn't be able to pay a $400 medical bill without selling their belongings or borrowing money.MORE: Middle-class Americans getting crushed by rising health insurance costs

Government programs like Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act are crucial safety nets for the newly unemployed as the economic downturn continues. Yet the Trump administration continues to challenge the health care law, arguing that the Supreme Court should overturn it.

"Given the health risks facing all Americans right now, access to health coverage after loss of employment provides important protection against catastrophic health costs and facilitates access to needed care," KFF notes.

In a First, Renewable Energy Is Poised to Eclipse Coal in U.S.


Brad Plumer
2 days ago

















The Kintigh Generating Station in Somerset, N.Y., the state’s last coal-burning plant, just before it was shut down in March.4 SLIDES © Libby March for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The United States is on track to produce more electricity this year from renewable power than from coal for the first time on record, new government projections show, a transformation partly driven by the coronavirus pandemic, with profound implications in the fight against climate change.

It is a milestone that seemed all but unthinkable a decade ago, when coal was so dominant that it provided nearly half the nation’s electricity. And it comes despite the Trump administration’s three-year push to try to revive the ailing industry by weakening pollution rules on coal-burning power plants.

Those efforts, however, failed to halt the powerful economic forces that have led electric utilities to retire hundreds of aging coal plants since 2010 and run their remaining plants less frequently. The cost of building large wind farms has declined more than 40 percent in that time, while solar costs have dropped more than 80 percent. And the price of natural gas, a cleaner-burning alternative to coal, has fallen to historic lows as a result of the fracking boom.

Now the coronavirus outbreak is pushing coal producers into their deepest crisis yet.

As factories, retailers, restaurants and office buildings have shut down nationwide to slow the spread of the coronavirus, demand for electricity has fallen sharply. And, because coal plants often cost more to operate than gas plants or renewables, many utilities are cutting back on coal power first in response.

“The outbreak has put all the pressures facing the coal industry on steroids,” said Jim Thompson, a coal analyst at IHS Markit.

In just the first four and a half months of this year, America’s fleet of wind turbines, solar panels and hydroelectric dams have produced more electricity than coal on 90 separate days — shattering last year’s record of 38 days for the entire year. On May 1 in Texas, wind power alone supplied nearly three times as much electricity as coal did.

The latest report from the Energy Information Administration estimates that America’s total coal consumption will fall by nearly one-quarter this year, and coal plants are expected to provide just 19 percent of the nation’s electricity, dropping for the first time below both nuclear power and renewable power, a category that includes wind, solar, hydroelectric dams, geothermal and biomass.

Natural gas plants, which supply 38 percent of the nation’s power, are expected to hold their output steady thanks to low fuel prices.

The decline of coal has major consequences for climate change.

Coal is the dirtiest of all fossil fuels, and its decline has already helped drive down United States carbon dioxide emissions 15 percent since 2005. This year, the agency expects America’s emissions to fall by another 11 percent, the largest drop in at least 70 years. While the pandemic has made these projections uncertain, the decline is expected to come partly because Americans aren’t driving as much, but mainly because coal plants are running less often.

Even if coal does manage to beat expectations and rebound later this year, experts say that the dramatic shift in the nation’s electricity system is unlikely to be just a blip.

Utilities and large technology companies, major consumers of electricity, are increasingly turning to wind and solar farms for their power, both because renewables keep getting cheaper as technology improves but also because of concerns over air pollution and climate change. Large power companies, including Duke Energy in the Southeast and Xcel Energy in the Midwest, are currently planning to retire at least four dozen large coal plants by 2025, and no utility is currently planning to build a new coal facility.

“The grid is changing so much faster than anyone expected,” said Daniel Cohan, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University. “A decade ago, I was teaching my students that coal was the ‘baseload’ source that runs all the time, and solar was something you might sprinkle in if you want to pay more. Now coal’s been pushed to the margins and it’s wind and solar that are the cheapest options.”

At the same time, electric companies used to worry that using more than just a tiny fraction of wind and solar would make it difficult to keep the nation’s lights on, since the sun isn’t always shining and the wind isn’t always blowing. But since then, utilities have discovered ways to tackle this problem by using technologies like natural-gas plants that can be quickly turned on to meet spikes in demand, better weather forecasting and, increasingly, vast battery storage projects such as those planned in Nevada and California.

The Energy Information Administration expects wind and solar generation to increase this year, although the Covid-19 outbreak is likely to put many projects on hold as supply chains are disrupted. For instance, Pacificorp, a major utility in the Northwest, said it was facing challenges in completing a large 503-megawatt wind farm under construction in Wyoming, though a spokesman said the company was trying to find “creative solutions” in order to meet a November deadline.

Last week, the Internal Revenue Service signaled that it would provide some flexibility for wind and solar developers at risk of missing deadlines for finishing projects this year in order to qualify for a key federal tax subsidy.

The decline of coal power has created turmoil across the industry. Mining companies have laid off hundreds of workers in states like Wyoming and Montana. In April, Longview Power, which operates one of the nation’s youngest and most advanced coal power plants, in West Virginia, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, citing the pandemic as a factor.

Analysts said that coal power could see a moderate rebound next year if natural gas prices rise from their current lows. Still, even under that scenario, the E.I.A. does not currently see coal overtaking renewable energy.

For now, it is often cheaper for many utilities to generate electricity from natural gas than coal because of a nationwide gas glut, thanks in part to a warm winter that reduced demand for gas heating, combined with the boom in hydraulic fracturing. In places like Texas, natural gas is frequently an abundant side product produced by drillers that use fracking to extract crude oil.

More recently, however, the coronavirus has caused oil prices to crash worldwide. Many oil drillers are now being forced to shut down their wells, which could mean less natural gas next year and potentially higher gas prices, helping coal recover.

There is a wild card, however: If the financial pain caused by the pandemic leads utilities to speed up their decisions to retire more coal plants, the industry would have a much harder time bouncing back in the years ahead. Once a coal-burning plant is closed, it is difficult to restart.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if we do see some companies accelerate their plans to retire more coal plants,” said Manan Ajuha, a power industry analyst at S&P Global Platts.

One danger sign for many coal plants is that they are running less frequently. Back in 2010, the average U.S. coal plant ran at about 67 percent of its capacity. Last year, that fraction dipped below one-half for the first time in decades and is slipping further this year.

“The less you use these plants, the more expensive they are to keep around,” said Seth Feaster, a data analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. His group recently estimated that, by 2025, coal could make up 10 percent or less of the electricity generated in the United States.

The latest example: This month Great River Energy, a cooperative based in Minnesota, said it planned to close its giant Coal Creek Station, a 1.1 gigawatt coal plant in North Dakota, by 2022. While a utility official attributed the decision to long-term economic trends, not the pandemic, the closure is notable for what will replace it: The utility plans to add 1.1 gigawatts of new wind capacity, a small amount of gas, as well as a first-of-its-kind battery that can store wind power for long periods.

The coal industry, for its part, says that many of these retirements may prove shortsighted. Michelle Bloodworth, the chief executive of America’s Power, an industry trade group, argued that coal plants remained a critical pillar of the nation’s electricity mix and a valuable hedge in case natural gas prices rise, as they have done in the past during particularly severe winter storms when demand for gas heating can spike.

“The coal fleet is not dead,” Ms. Bloodworth said. “There is still a significant amount of coal that’s going to be needed in the future to make sure we don’t risk and threaten the reliability of the grid.”

While President Trump came into office vowing to save the coal industry and revive mining jobs, he has so far been unable to do so. His push to relax costly air pollution rules on coal plants have not stopped the plant closures. And several plans by the administration to indirectly subsidize coal plants, on the grounds that they can improve grid reliability, have gone nowhere.

The United States is not yet at the point reached in Britain, which now goes for weeks at a time without using any coal power at all. But some parts of the United States are now getting an early preview of life where coal is on the decline and renewables are soaring.

“In some parts of the country, we’re now seeing renewable penetration hit 60 or 70 percent on some days,” said Nat Kreamer, chief executive of Advanced Energy Economy, a clean-energy business group, “and no one’s screaming that they can’t do that.”

Trump's USDA fights court ruling protecting food benefits during pandemic

CHICAGO, May 13 (Reuters) - The Trump administration, aiming to tighten rules for federal food benefits, has appealed a federal judge's ruling that temporarily enabled hundreds of thousands of people to maintain food stamp benefits during the coronavirus pandemic, according to court documents.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, provides free food to 36 million Americans. During the pandemic, millions of U.S. residents have lost jobs, and thousands have waited in lines at food banks.

Last year, Congress blocked a Trump administration-backed effort to tighten the rules through the Farm Bill. Since then, the administration has tried changing rules at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the program.

Critics said the appeal will hurt poor Americans, noting that last month the U.S. economy lost 20.5 million jobs, the steepest plunge in payrolls since the Great Depression.

Bing COVID-19 tracker: Latest numbers by country and state

"The lines at food banks have never been longer," said U.S. Representative Marcia Fudge, an Ohio Democrat. "And by any reputable account the worst is yet to come."

The USDA announced the rule in December and President Donald Trump said at the time many Americans receiving food stamps do not need them given the strong economy and low unemployment. The rule, set to take effect on April 1, limits each state's ability to waive work mandates, effectively requiring more food stamp recipients to work.

In March, Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., granted a preliminary injunction and a stay on part of the rule, noting food needs during the pandemic.

"As a global pandemic poses widespread health risks, guaranteeing that government officials at both the federal and state levels have flexibility to address the nutritional needs of residents and ensure their well-being through programs like SNAP, is essential," Howell wrote in her March 13 opinion.

USDA filed a notice on Tuesday saying it would appeal the order, according to court documents.

In an email to Reuters, USDA said it has been "extremely aggressive" to ensure food needs are met during the pandemic.

"While we’re currently in a very challenging environment, we do not expect this to last forever," the agency said, adding "we must prepare our workforce to rejoin the economy when our nation reopens."

U.S. law generally limits how long adults without disabilities or dependents can receive food stamps, unless they meet work requirements. States can apply for limit waivers due to tough economic conditions. Counties with unemployment rates as low as 2.5% have been included in waived areas. (Additional reporting by Tom Polansek in Chicago; Editing by David Gregorio)

Georgia officials trying to stop large, invasive lizard that eats 'anything they want'

Joel Shannon, USA TODAY 

An invasive lizard that grows up to four-and-a-half feet long is causing concern for Georgia wildlife officials who are attempting to eradicate it from the state after years of sightings.

"They eat just about anything they want," said Georgia Department of Natural Resources Wildlife biologist John Jensen in a May 8 video about the Argentine black and white tegu.

While the lizards have not been a threat to humans and common household pets, Georgia officials say people should avoid leaving pet foods outside, as it can attract the lizard. They are not known for being aggressive towards humans, although sometimes they may chase people.

The reptiles grow large, reproduce fast and eat a wide variety of things, from fruit to eggs, birds and small mammals. Tegus pose a threat to native wildlife, including gopher tortoises, a candidate for Endangered Species Act listing. They have been documented using gopher tortoise burrows and eating tortoise eggs and the young.

© Denis Farrell, AP A black and white Argentine Tegu lizard sticks out its tongue at the Yebo Gogga exhibition at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, in May 2015.

Jensen said the DNR is setting traps for the reptiles and asking for sightings to be reported. But "if you're able to safely and humanely dispatch of the animal, we encourage that," Jensen said.

Watch: 5 things to know about the invasive species

Worried about 'murder hornets'?: These other dangerous bugs are more common

This marks the third year the lizards have been trapped in southern Georgia, the Orianne Society said in a Monday Facebook post. Tegus have been causing problems in Florida for years.

They are popular in the pet trade but trouble when released in the wild. In Georgia's Toombs and western Tattnall counties, the lizards have been spotted crossing dirt roads, have turned up on game cams and even gotten trapped in a farmer’s shop.

If tegus are reproducing in the wild, catching them early is crucial. Once established, as with Florida’s two known populations, the only effective response is trying to stem their numbers and spread.

Multiple invasive species have been causing concern for United States wildlife officials this spring. Asian giant hornets, which gained notoriety for the nickname "Murder Hornets," have been spotted in the Pacific Northwest. And giant gypsy moths were recently spotted in Washington state as Gov. Jay Inslee issued an emergency proclamation.

The Great Irony of America’s Armed Anti-Lockdown Protesters

  Firmin DeBrabander   © The Atlantic

In recent weeks, the nation has been treated to an unsettling sight: angry men with assault rifles protesting various state lockdowns in response to the coronavirus pandemic. These demonstrations reached an ugly peak in Michigan last month—though they may yet worsen as the pandemic persists—when armed protesters rushed into the capitol building, and put on a chilling display of fury and intimidation. They claimed to be exercising their democratic rights of free speech and gun ownership. But there is something profoundly undemocratic about this form of demonstration.

Michigan lawmakers were understandably shaken when the armed throng surged into the capitol atrium; some donned bulletproof vests. The protesters screamed in the faces of stoic policemen who refused them entry to the Senate gallery. Many demonstrators sported fatigues and tactical gear, and also dark face masks—not so much out of public-health concern, mind you, though that was surely a handy excuse to seem even more menacing.

[Read: What the ‘liberate’ protests really mean for Republicans]

One immediately wonders: Why the guns? Are they necessary for this protest—any protest? A cursory glance at modern history reveals that some of the most effective demonstrations were strictly nonviolent. What did the lockdown protesters hope to add to their message with ominous assault rifles that they could not otherwise convey? Were they unsure that onlookers would appreciate the intensity of their anger?

Looking at these images, my reaction is not fear but its opposite: an overwhelming sense of the protesters’ impotence. That they carried guns suggests they were less than confident in the manifest justice of their cause or the seriousness of their passion, which they needed to amplify. It also indicates a kind of desperation and ignorance—they either don’t know about the tradition and practice of civic protest, or decided to largely abandon it. In any case, they could not have reasonably expected a democratic response to their show of force.

The governor could not submit to their demands—though President Donald Trump urged otherwise, and called the protesters “good people,” despite their intimidation (and assorted racist paraphernalia): To negotiate with these demonstrators would set an awful precedent. It would suggest that anyone can make public-policy demands at the end of a gun barrel—though the point of democracy is precisely to dispense with violence in policy negotiations. In that respect, many were right to dub the armed protesters “terrorists.” Though they might object to the title, the protesters certainly seemed to relish the intimidation they caused—they wanted to issue a threat of violence, and, indeed, armed insurrection.

The protesters complained of government tyranny—as they saw it, the governor was making univocal decisions contrary to the public interest. But real tyrants do not tolerate protest, much less armed protest. Under real tyranny, you don’t march around with your assault rifles, yelling into policemen’s faces. That is a death wish—the height of stupidity.

[Joshua Feinzig and Joshua Zoffer: A constitutional case for gun control]

Under real tyranny, you don’t reveal your weapons at all—and you don’t identify yourself as a threat. A real tyrant will dispatch armed threats out of hand. That the protesters were so brazen suggests they knew full well that they live in no tyranny. They were respected, and left unharmed, because we have the rule of law. Put otherwise: These men could angrily shake their weapons in the air, and play the role of armed insurrectionists—costumes and all—because their government actually protects them.

This is the great irony, of course—that these men are enjoying a surfeit of justice, though they refuse to recognize it. It is impossible to imagine people of a different skin color angrily marching with military-style weapons and being treated with similar generosity by law enforcement. As Representative Rashida Tlaib noted on Twitter, “Black people get executed by police for just existing, while white people dressed like militia members carrying assault weapons are allowed to threaten State Legislators and staff.”

Unfortunately, while these armed protesters benefited from the rule of law, they unwittingly undermined it. For their demonstration certainly looked lawless—or made the rule of law seem absent, or tenuous at best. Rule of law is largely a matter of faith, and it requires the broader population to buy in. When some do not, or when some doubt that the rule of law still pertains, and they act as if it did not, this risks undermining it for everyone else—who then gird themselves for looming chaos.

[Conor Friedersdorf: How to protect civil liberties in a pandemic]

In our current context, this means that the sight of angry—unhinged—individuals in our midst may inspire others to be similarly armed and on edge. This is a possibly disastrous development as tensions rise in the protracted fight against the pandemic, and economic catastrophe lingers, upending the lives of millions.

Furthermore, armed protests are inimical to the traditions of free speech and assembly. When you see protesters in military garb brandishing assault rifles, it does not inspire you to debate them—nor is it intended to. The protesters’ military demeanor is not meant to invite discussion; it’s meant to end it. Guns communicate—of themselves. In this case, they say that the time for debate, as well as any sort of nicety, is just about over, and others need to shut up and listen while the people with the guns talk, or issue demands.

Assembly under these conditions cannot and will not be tolerated for long. Governments are often eager to place limitations on public protest, to make it rare and less disruptive. Armed protest provides the perfect excuse to curtail and restrict assembly. Especially if, God forbid, one such protest were to erupt in violence. We enjoy the right of assembly, and we—all of us—can make proper use of it, only so long as it is peaceful.

Whether they admit it or not, when these men carry military-style guns in protest, they send the message that they have occupied the public sphere, and that others are not really welcome. The public sphere is less public in that regard—and these protesters are fed up with a diversity of viewpoints. Armed protesters don’t want to deliberate or debate, or even tolerate the opposition. When they appear, democracy ends.

US IMPERIALISM adds Cuba to blacklist on counterterrorismAFP
The United States said Wednesday it had added Cuba to a blacklist of countries that do not fully cooperate on counterterrorism, denouncing the presence of Colombian leftist guerrillas.

© ADALBERTO ROQUE 

Havana's Revolution Square stands nearly empty on May Day 2020 as a precaution against the coronavirus pandemic

Cuba joined four US adversaries -- Iran, Syria, North Korea and Venezuela -- in failing to be certified for 2019 under a US counterterrorism law that affects defense exports.

It was the first time that Cuba was not certified since 2015. The State Department pointed to the presence of negotiators from Colombia's ELN rebels, who traveled to Havana in 2017 to negotiate with the Bogota government but have not returned.

"Cuba's refusal to productively engage with the Colombian government demonstrates that it is not cooperating with US work to support Colombia's efforts to secure a just and lasting peace, security and opportunity for its people," the State Department said.

A senior official in Havana responded that Cuba was in fact "a victim of terrorism," a reference to attacks over the decades by militant anti-communists.

"There is a long history of terrorist acts committed by the US government vs. Cuba and complicity of US authorities with individuals and organizations that have organized, financed and executed such actions from US territory," Carlos F. de Cossio, the foreign ministry official in charge of US relations, wrote on Twitter.

Colombian President Ivan Duque, a conservative ally of the United States, broke off talks with the ELN after a January car bomb attack on a Bogota police academy killed 21 recruits.

The militants have been demanding, unsuccessfully, that Colombia grant safe passage for its negotiators to return from Cuba.

The State Department move will have little practical effect on Cuba, which does not import weapons from the United States, its arch-rival.

But the step is the latest by President Donald Trump to increase pressure on Cuba and move away from the reconciliation efforts under his predecessor Barack Obama.

The counterterrorism cooperation list is separate from State Department designations of state sponsors of terrorism, which have far-reaching legal effects and can pose major impediments to foreign investment.

The Obama administration removed Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism in 2015 as it established diplomatic relations, although Trump's State Department has flirted with putting it back on.

The ELN is said to operate in about 10 percent of Colombia but is a smaller player than the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which reached a landmark peace agreement with the government in 2016.