Citgo sues Miami firm over millions lost in Venezuela fraud
By JOSHUA GOODMAN

In this March 4, 2020 file photo, opposition leader Juan Guaido listens during a legislative session being held at a religious, private school in Caracas, Venezuela, an alternative location due to the government continuously blocking their access to National Assembly chambers. Guaidó said Monday, May 11, 2020 that two U.S.-based political advisers have resigned following a failed incursion into Venezuela aimed at capturing President Nicolás Maduro. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos, File)
MIAMI (AP) — When the U.S. recognized Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the nation’s rightful leader last year it did more than just trigger a bitter feud with socialist leader Nicolás Maduro. Increasingly, it’s also unleashing a torrent of lawsuits.

The latest came Tuesday, when the Guaidó-appointed board of Citgo, the U.S. subsidiary of Venezuela’s state oil company, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Houston against a former contractor seeking to recover millions of dollars in damages.

The lawsuit accuses José Manuel González and his Miami-based Petroleum Logistics Service Corp. of providing gifts including cash, jewelry, private artwork, chartered flights and even a handpicked Houston apartment to senior executives at Citgo. In exchange, officials paid González $20 million between 2014 and 2018 to provide goods and services to Citgo’s parent company, PDVSA, at inflated prices.


“Citgo lost millions of dollars as a result,” the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit follows a similar complaint filed by Citgo two weeks ago against former Miami congressman David Rivera for allegedly breaking a $50 million consulting contract with PDVSA. The company has also sought a U.S. court order blocking bondholders from exercising collateral rights over the state-owned refiner and invalidating $1.7 billion in debt.

Both lawsuits highlight the increasingly tight relationship between Guaidó and the U.S. Justice Department. As attorneys for the new Citgo board, under subpoena, sift through internal documents trying to get a handle on the company’s legal vulnerabilities it’s found common cause with prosecutors targeting vast corruption in Venezuela’s bankrupt petroleum industry. To date, 28 individuals have been charged as part of the ongoing probe by prosecutors in Houston, Miami and Washington.

Among the many who have pleaded guilty is González, who was arrested arriving to Miami International Airport in 2018 on charges of paying $629,000 in bribes to the former general manager of Bariven, PDVSA’s procurement subsidiary. In pleading guilty to one count of conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, González also admitted to funneling kickbacks to officials at PDVSA and Citgo.

The latest lawsuit, reflecting the evidence presented in the criminal complaint against González, does not name the five Citgo officials who allegedly took bribes. But all of them were members of a special department charged with procurement efforts on behalf of PDVSA.

Official E, who according to the indictment was a senior executive from 2013 through November 2017 and whose duties included “overseeing all of Citgo’s operations,” appears to have benefited the most, receiving from González original artwork, a flight on a private jet and an apartment to his liking in the Houston area after expressing displeasure with his corporate lodging.

Official E is José Pereira, the former acting president of Citgo, according to two people familiar with the federal investigation on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing proceedings.

Pereira is one of the so-called “Citgo 6” who have been detained by Maduro’s government since traveling together to Caracas around Thanksgiving 2017 for a meeting called by Pereira’s predecessor, then Oil Minister Nelson Martinez, that ended up being a trap. They’ve since been charged in Venezuela with corruption stemming from a never executed plan to refinance some $4 billion in Citgo bonds by offering a 50% stake in the company as collateral.

“It’s unfair to accuse someone of corruption when they are unlawfully jailed and unable to even defend themselves,” Pereira’s wife and two sons said in a statement. They questioned the motives for accusing Pereira of wrongdoing and added that he never lived in an apartment since moving to the U.S. in October 2013 and didn’t own any expensive artwork.

All of the men were U.S. citizens except Pereira, who was a permanent resident. There’s no indication that any of the other detained men were involved in the alleged acts of corruption described in the lawsuit or indictment against González. Martinez, who was also imprisoned, died in state custody in 2018.

Venezuela has owned Citgo since the 1980s. It has three refineries in Louisiana, Texas and Illinois in addition to a network of pipelines crisscrossing 23 states that provides around 5% of U.S. gasoline.

Guaidó and his allies took over Citgo’s boardroom shortly after the Trump administration recognized him as Venezuela’s president in January 2019 and tightened sanctions on PDVSA and Maduro, barring Americans from doing business with either.

The takeover of the U.S.′ fifth-largest oil refiner was heralded as a major boost in the opposition’s bid to remove Maduro. But it also made it potentially responsible for paying the company’s — and Venezuela’s — mounting pile of unpaid debts.

This month, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Guaido’s attorneys to protect the refinery from seizure by a Canadian gold firm, Crystallex International Corp., which is trying to collect a $1.4 billion arbitration award stemming from Hugo Chavez’s nationalization of its assets a decade earlier.

JUST ANOTHER BLASPHEMY LAW
Police surround Hong Kong legislature before anthem debate

By ZEN SOO

1 of 11
Riot police stand guard outside the Legislative Council building in Hong Kong, Wednesday, May 27, 2020. Hong Kong's legislature begins debate on a bill that would criminalize insulting or abusing the Chinese national anthem. Opponents see the proposal as part of growing central government infringement on freedoms in the semi-autonomous territory. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)


HONG KONG (AP) — Police massed outside Hong Kong’s legislature complex Wednesday before lawmakers debate a bill that would criminalize abuse of the Chinese national anthem in the semi-autonomous city.

Protest calls went out Tuesday night, urging people to surround the legislature buildings and block roads in an attempt to derail the proceedings, but they didn’t materialize.

The police reported small incidents of obstruction of traffic and the city’s subways at certain stations. Seven people, most of them teenagers, were arrested for possession of items fit for unlawful purposes, such as petrol bombs, helmets, gas masks and scissors and screwdrivers.


The bill makes it illegal to insult or abuse the “March of the Volunteers.” Those found guilty could face up to three years in prison and a maximum fine of HK$50,000 (US$6,450).

The anthem bill was first proposed in January 2019, after Hong Kong spectators jeered at the anthem during high-profile, international soccer matches in 2015.

Anti-China sentiment has been on the rise in Hong Kong since 2014 protests, known as the Umbrella Revolution, that stemmed from the Chinese government’s decision to allow direct election of the city leader only after it screened candidates. In the end, the plan for direct elections was dropped.

The move by Beijing was seen as curtailing democracy in Hong Kong, a former British colony that was handed back to China is 1997 under a “one country, two systems” framework that promises the city freedoms not found on the mainland.

The debate over the bill also comes as Beijing moves to enact a national security law for Hong Kong, aimed at forbidding secessionist and subversive activity, as well as foreign interference and terrorism, after a monthslong pro-democracy protest movement last year that have at times resulted in violent clashes between police and protesters.

Critics say that the national anthem bill is a blow to freedom of expression in the city, while Beijing officials previously said that the law would foster a patriotic spirit and the country’s socialist core values.

THE WORKERS OF THE WORLD 
HAVE NO NATIONAL ANTHEM 
WE HAVE THE INTERNATIONALE'

For trade students, online classes can’t replicate hands-on

By ASTRID GALVAN and REBECCA SANTANA

PINK COLLAR JOB
In this Friday, May 8, 2020 photo, Christa Schall poses outside her cosmetology school, Casal Aveda Institute, in Austintown, Ohio. More than 8 million students in the U.S. are enrolled in technical colleges, seeking certification in skilled trades like welding, phlebotomy and cosmetology. But unlike students at traditional colleges, their learning can't easily translate into Zoom courses, they learn through hands-on demonstrations. Now, many are eager to get back into the classroom, and some are reeling because they won't get to graduate on time. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak)


PHOENIX (AP) — Like students across the U.S., Christa Schall was working toward graduation when the coronavirus closed her school. But unlike many, she can’t finish her classes online — her cosmetology program, like the coursework at many technical and trade schools, requires hands-on training.

Schall needs to cut, paint and style hair at the Aveda Institute in Ohio to graduate and get her license to practice, but weeks of closures have put her behind. Her last client, a woman who got her highlights retouched every two weeks, panicked when she learned the salon was closing after her mid-March appointment. Schall had her own moment of panic, realizing her life would be on hold. Now, instead of graduating in September, she must wait until spring.

Traditional students “can take that learning anywhere. For us, we have to do it a certain way,” she said.

For Schall and other students at technical and trade colleges, the coronavirus is disrupting their education in a very different way than that of more traditional college students. Learning how to stick a needle in someone’s vein or mix just the right amount of hair color for the perfect shade doesn’t translate well to Zoom meetings. Those specialized skills, known as career and technical education, require hands-on learning.

About 8.4 million students are seeking postsecondary certificates and associate degrees in career and technical education fields, according to the Association for Career and Technical Education. Many are black or Hispanic and come from low-income households, according to the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce analysis. For many, technical careers are a path out of poverty. Roughly 30 million American jobs that pay a median income of $55,000 require less education than a bachelor’s degree, the ACTE reports.


Across the country, teachers and students in technical training classes have had to adapt to class closures rapidly and creatively.

Butler Tech, which teaches Ohio high school and post-secondary students subjects ranging from police academy to welding, has started slowly reopening campus after being closed for several weeks.

When the pandemic first hit, it had to transition to online learning quickly. Jon Graft, the school’s superintendent and CEO, said Butler has learned some valuable lessons about having to teach in a completely different way.

“There will be a new normal for us because of the lessons we’ve learned being forced upon being online and virtual learning,” Graft said.


In Linda Romano’s New York high school nursing aide class, students at home used frying pans to learn how to use a bedpan on a patient. Romano used a doll she found in her daughter’s old bedroom to demonstrate how to perform a bed bath.

“I think they’re getting a better education because they’re really, really thinking about this skill and the aspects that go along with it,” Romano said. it,” Romano said.

But Romano and her students face many hurdles. Students don’t have the materials they need to learn, and some don’t have access to a computer and have to use their cell phones. They won’t be able to take their state licensing exam to be official nurse’s aids. And they won’t have their traditional pin ceremony, Romano said.

As part of his agriculture courses at a high school near Columbus, Missouri, Scott Stone leads a greenhouse class each year where students grow and tend plants on site. Stone, a teacher for 23 years, had never taught online when students were sent home in March.

Because the students can’t access the greenhouse, they are taking care of plants at home. Stone talks with them about their weekly development, asking them to describe what the plants smell and feel like.

“It’s like being a first-year teacher all over again,” Stone said.

The stakes are higher for postsecondary students like Tara Ferguson, who is studying to become a phlebotomist at Atlanta Technical College. Ferguson was heading into a hands-on area of instruction when schools began to close and shift to online learning.

But, as anyone who has had blood drawn would likely agree, the intricacies of feeling for a vein and poking it with a needle “just can’t be done online,” Ferguson said.

For Ferguson, a pharmacy technician and single mom of a 13-year-old daughter, becoming a phlebotomist would be a bump in pay and more stability.

She was supposed to start the clinical side of her education, when students train at a local medical facility to draw blood from various types of patients, on May 18.

But as the date approached and uncertain whether the class would go forward, she decided to drop it. So instead of completing her studies in August, getting her certification and going into the workforce, she hopes she can finish by early next year.

“This will put it way back. I don’t even know how long,” she said. “When do I get to move on to that next step?”

___

This story was first published on May 23, 2020. It was updated on May 26, 2020 to make clear that high school teacher Linda Romano also has struggled with online teaching because of a lack of access her students have to necessary materials and because her students won’t be able to take their nurse’s aid exams, among other difficulties.

Big Oil loses appeal, climate suits go to California courts

In this March 9, 2010, file photo a tanker truck passes the Chevron oil refinery in Richmond, Calif. A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday, May 26 against major oil companies in lawsuits brought by California cities and counties seeking damages for the impact of climate change. A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said state courts are the proper forum for the lawsuits alleging that Big Oil promoted petroleum as environmentally responsible when producers knew it was causing damage. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)


LOS ANGELES (AP) — Big Oil lost a pair of court battles Tuesday that could lead to trials in lawsuits by California cities and counties seeking damages for the impact of climate change.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected arguments by energy companies and ruled state courts are the proper forum for lawsuits alleging producers promoted petroleum as environmentally responsible when they knew it was contributing to drought, wildfires, and sea level rise associated with global warming.

The lawsuits claim Chevron, Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, BP, Royal Dutch Shell and other companies created a public nuisance and should pay for damage from climate change and help build sea walls and other infrastructure to protect against future impact — construction that could cost tens of billions of dollars.


The ruling overturned a decision by one federal judge, who had tossed out lawsuits brought by the cities of San Francisco and Oakland.

“It is time for these companies to pay their fair share,” San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera said in a statement applauding the ruling. “They should not be able to stick taxpayers with the bill for the damage they knew they were causing. We will continue to hold these companies accountable for their decades-long campaign of public deception about climate change and its consequences.”

While the rulings were victories for the coastal counties and cities — all in the San Francisco Bay Area except for the tiny city of Imperial Beach in San Diego County — and cheered by environmental groups, it could take years before they ever get to a jury, if they make it that far.

The 3-0 rulings are expected to meet continued challenges that could include a review by a larger 9th Circuit panel and, eventually, review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

An appeals court in Virginia ruled that a similar case brought by Baltimore belonged in Maryland courts and lower federal courts in other cities have issued similar decisions.

A group that is a project of the National Association of Manufacturers issued a statement saying climate liability lawsuits should be resolved by the Supreme Court to prevent years of court proceedings.

Chevron did not say how it would proceed but said the cases involve issues of national law and policy and do not belong in state courts.

“In whichever forum the cases are ultimately determined, these factually and legally unsupported claims do nothing to sensibly address the significant national economic, legal and policy issues presented by climate change,” said Sean Comey, a Chevron spokesman.


Ann Carlson, an environmental law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the rulings move the cases closer to the discovery process and requesting potentially damaging documents.

“This means they can depose top executives about what they knew and when they knew it and what oil companies did to fund a campaign to dissuade the American public that climate change was happening,” said Carlson, who has provided free counsel to cities in the cases. “The oil companies’ strategy is to keep the light from shining on their own behavior. This gets closer to allowing plaintiffs to shine that light.”

The ruling written by Judge Sandra Ikuta, picked for the court by President George W. Bush, move the cases back to state courts, where they were initially filed. The other judges on the panel were nominated by Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

Oil companies got the cases transferred to San Francisco federal court, where two judges reached different conclusions.

After holding a unique five-hour “tutorial” by top researchers on the science of climate change, U.S. District Judge William Alsup in 2018 threw out the Oakland and San Francisco litigation. He ruled Congress and the president — not the courts —- were best suited to address the contribution of fossil fuels to global warming.

“The problem deserves a solution on a more vast scale than can be supplied by a district judge or jury in a public nuisance case,” Alsup wrote.

In cases brought by the the counties of San Mateo, Marin and Santa Cruz, and the cities of Richmond and Imperial Beach, Judge Vincent Chhabria ruled the cases belonged in state court, but he allowed the oil companies to appeal.

The companies had argued that federal law controls fossil fuel production, and Congress has encouraged oil and gas development. They said the harm claimed was “speculative” and part of a complex chain of events that includes billions of oil and gas users and “environmental phenomena occurring worldwide over many decades.”

Death and denial in Brazil’s Amazon capital

AP PHOTO ESSAY

 https://apnews.com/54423b73d8be5fbc2a491bcc60f10285



MANAUS, Brazil (AP) — As the white van approached Perfect Love Street, one by one chatting neighbors fell silent, covered their mouths and noses and scattered.

Men in full body suits carried an empty coffin into the small, blue house where Edgar Silva had spent two feverish days gasping for air before drawing his last breath on May 12.

“It wasn’t COVID,” Silva’s daughter, Eliete das Graças insisted to the funerary workers. She swore her 83-year-old father had died of Alzheimer’s disease, not that sickness ravaging the city’s hospitals.

But Silva, like the vast majority of those dying at home, was never tested for the new coronavirus. The doctor who signed his death certificate never saw his body before determining the cause: “cardiorespiratory arrest.”

His death was not counted as one of Brazil’s victims of the pandemic
Eliete das Graças, top right, cries as SOS Funeral workers, wearing protection equipment, close the coffin of her father Edgar Silva, amid the new coronavirus pandemic in Manaus, Brazil, Tuesday, May 12, 2020. Eliete das Graças said her father had Alzheimer's and died at home after two days of fever and difficulty breathing. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)


A cat stares at a SOS Funeral worker who will remove the body of a man with pre-existing health conditions who died at his home amid the new coronavirus pandemic in Manaus, Brazil, Saturday, May 9, 2020. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)


This story was produced with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Manaus is one of the hardest hit cities in Brazil, which officially has lost more than 23,000 lives to the coronavirus. But in the absence of evidence proving otherwise, relatives like das Graças are quick to deny the possibility that COVID-19 claimed their loved ones, meaning that the toll is likely a vast undercount.

As ambulances zip through Manaus with sirens blaring and backhoes dig rows of new graves, the muggy air in this city by the majestic Amazon River feels thicker than usual with such pervasive denial. Manaus has seen nearly triple the usual number of dead in April and May.

Doctors and psychologists say denial at the grassroots stems from a mixture of misinformation, lack of education, insufficient testing and conflicting messages from the country’s leaders.

Chief among skeptics is President Jair Bolsonaro, who has repeatedly called COVID-19 a “little flu,” and argued that concern over the virus is overblown.






Asked by a reporter about the surging number of deaths on April 20, Bolsonaro responded, “I’m not a gravedigger, OK?”

He has resisted U.S. and European-style lockdowns to contain the virus’ spread, saying such measures aren’t worth the economic wreckage. He fired his first Health Minister for supporting quarantines, accepted the resignation of a second one after less than a month on the job, and said that the interim minister, an army general with no background in health or medicine, will remain in charge of the pandemic response “for a long time.” In a cabinet meeting last month, a visibly enraged Bolsonaro insulted governors and mayors enforcing stay-at-home measures.

The president’s political followers are receptive to his dismissal of the virus, as determined as he is to proceed with life as usual.

On a recent Saturday in Manaus, locals flocked to the bustling riverside market to buy fresh fish, unaware of the need for social distancing, or uninterested. As swamped intensive-care units struggled to accommodate new patients airlifted from the Amazon, the faithful returned to some of the city’s evangelical churches. Coffins arriving by riverboat did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of young people at clandestine dance parties. And in the streets, masks frequently covered chins and foreheads rather than mouths and noses.


For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms. But for some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause severe illness such as pneumonia and lead to death.

The new sickness made its way to Manaus in March, in the middle of the rainy season. At least that’s when health officials first became aware of it in the capital of Amazonas state, which is at once remote and international. One precarious road connects the city to the rest of Brazil, and other municipalities are hours away by boat. But tropical fauna and flora normally draw tourist cruises up the Amazon, and business people fly in from around the world, to visit its free trade zone. Just last October, Manaus sent a delegation to China looking for investors.

The city’s first virus fatality was reported on March 25 and deaths have surged since then. But due to a lack of testing, just 5% of the more than 4,300 burials performed in April and May were confirmed cases of COVID-19, according to city funeral statistics.
Home wakes are no longer permitted. But workers from SOS Funeral, which provides free coffins and funeral services to those who can’t afford them, have found homes packed with relatives touching the bodies of loved ones, hugging each other and wiping away tears with ungloved hands—a potentially contagious farewell.Home wakes are no longer permitted. But workers from SOS Funeral, which provides free coffins and funeral services to those who can’t afford them, have found homes packed with relatives touching the bodies of loved ones, hugging each other and wiping away tears with ungloved hands—a potentially contagious farewell.



Overwhelmed emergency services have encountered similar reluctance to acknowledge viral risk. Ambulance doctor Sandokan Costa said patients often omit the mention of COVID-19 symptoms, putting him and his colleagues at greater risk. “What has most struck me is people’s belief that the pandemic isn’t real.”

Costa fell ill with the virus in late March but has worked non-stop since recovering and is astonished to see his fellow citizens on the streets acting as though nothing is going on. There is a stigma attached to the new disease, he said. “Coronavirus has become something pejorative.

Health care officials attribute much of that to Bolsonaro’s handling of the pandemic.

Rather than take precautions, Bolsonaro has supported the use of chloroquine, the predecessor of an anti-malaria drug that U.S. President Donald Trump has advocated for treatment of coronavirus and is taking himself to ward it off. Bolsonaro ordered the Army’s Chemical and Pharmaceutical Laboratory to boost its chloroquine production despite a lack of clinical proof that it is effective. A large study recently published in the Lancet medical journal suggests that the malaria drugs not only do not help but are also tied to a greater risk of death in coronavirus patients.

In Manaus, scientists stopped part of a study of chloroquine after heart rhythm problems developed in a quarter of people given the higher of two doses being tested.

Visiting the hard-hit Amazon capital was a priority for Bolsonaro’s second health minister, Nelson Teich, who donned a body suit to tour several hospitals. But he resigned days later after disagreeing with the president’s demand that the ministry recommend chloroquine be prescribed to patients with mild coronavirus symptoms.




But even with vast under-reporting, Amazonas state has the highest number of deaths by COVID-19 per capita in the country with more than 1,700 fatal victims.

Poor and crowded neighborhoods have been particularly affected. Unable to afford private consultations and fearing the chaos of the public health system, many only sought medical help when it was too late. Others preferred to die at home rather than alone at a hospital.

Lima’s administration has come under fire for spending half a million dollars (2.9 million Brazilian reais) to buy 28 ventilators at quadruple the market price from a wine importer and distributor. The breathing machines were deemed inadequate for use on coronavirus patients after inspections by the regional council of medicine and Manaus’ health surveillance office.

Lima denies any wrongdoing. Asked if he would have done anything differently to confront the virus, the governor shook his head.

“Even if I had stopped it (economy), if I had closed the city for 30 days, no one goes in and no one goes out. At some point I would have had to open and at some point the virus would have gotten here,” he said.

The virus has, in the meantime, spread upriver from Manaus, creeping into remote towns and indigenous territories to infect indigenous tribes. The sparsely populated but vast rainforest region is completely unprepared to cope. Some towns can’t get oxygen tanks refilled or don’t have breathing machines, forcing nurses to manually pump air into lungs. When they do have machines, power cuts frequently shut them down.
The riverside Educandos neighborhood is seen from above in Manaus, Brazil, Saturday, May 16, 2020. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

Many patients are being airlifted to Manaus, the only place in the state of 4 million people with full intensive care units.

Although health experts warn that the pandemic is far from over in the Amazon region, or the rest of the country, national polls show adherence to lockdowns and quarantines falling, and a growing number of Brazilians are neglecting local leaders’ safety recommendations.

“Every day there are different messages coming from the federal government that clash with measures by the cities and states, and with what science says” said Manaus-based physician Adele Benzaken.

A public health researcher who until last year lead the HIV/AIDS department at the Health Ministry, Benzaken already has lost four colleagues in the pandemic.






Meanwhile, misinformation and disinformation about the virus is swirling, some of it shared by the president himself. On May 11, Instagram labeled one of his posts as fake news after he falsely claimed a state had seen a drop in respiratory disease this year. Facebook also blocked one of his posts in March that showed him praising the healing powers of chloroquine to supporters.










One false claim circulating on social media said the death rate in Manaus plummeted the day after the health minister’s visit. Another purported to show an empty coffin being unearthed at Manaus’ cemetery, implying the city was inflating its death toll. But the photo was taken in Sao Paulo three years ago.

Still, the messages take root and spread like jungle foliage.

“My opinion is that they’re making this up and trying to make money from it” Israel Reis, 54, said outside Manaus’ fish market. He didn’t specify who “they” might be.






Reis, who recently lost his job in an electronics maintenance company due to the pandemic, spoke without a mask and said he “of course” agrees with Bolsonaro the severity of the pandemic is exaggerated and death toll inflated.







He recently advised his nephew against seeking help at the local health clinic for an earache. “Any dizziness and they’ll say it’s that thing,” he said, referring to the virus.

One recent late afternoon, a group of paunchy middle-aged men seated in plastic chairs on the sidewalk debated measures to fight the virus. The street bar, just a few blocks from a police station in downtown Manaus, was operating in violation of state COVID-19 restrictions, yet officers in a passing squad car didn’t even slow down to reprimand them.

Icy beer provided relief from the sweltering heat, and tropical insects had begun sounding their pre-dusk drone. The men, too, were getting worked up.

“Put on your mask!” yelled one friend.

“I don’t need one!” screamed another, Henrique Noronha.

Noronha, 52, argued that only the elderly and those with health problems should stay home – as Bolsonaro affirms -- and the fit should return to normal. Despite his age and full figure, Noronha didn’t believe he’s at risk.






“This virus came to clean things up,” he said. “But I’ll be fine.”

#ABOLISHICE
An Immigrant Man In ICE Custody Died After Contracting The Coronavirus

More than 1,000 people detained by ICE have tested positive for the coronavirus so far.

CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY 

Hamed Aleaziz BuzzFeed News Reporter

May 25, 2020

David Goldman / AP
A detention officer at a facility in Georgia housing ICE detainees, Nov. 15, 2019.

A 34-year-old Guatemalan man who tested positive for COVID-19 died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody at a Georgia hospital on Sunday, according to an internal government report obtained by BuzzFeed News.

Santiago Baten-Oxlaj, 34, had been in ICE custody at Stewart Detention Center, in Lumpkin, since early March and had been granted a voluntary departure to Guatemala, ICE later confirmed in a press release.

Baten-Oxlaj was arrested on March 2 at a probation office in Marietta, Georgia, "pursuant to his conviction for driving under the influence," ICE said. On March 26, an immigration judge granted him voluntary departure. "At the time of his death, Baten was awaiting departure from the United States," ICE added.

On April 17, he was admitted to a local hospital for treatment of decreased oxygen saturation levels, hospital officials tested the man for COVID-19 and the result was positive.


On Sunday, he died at the hospital, according to the report, which listed his preliminary cause of death as COVID-19.

ICE said it "is undertaking a comprehensive agency-wide review of this incident, as it does in all such cases."

His death comes weeks after a 57-year-old man in ICE custody in San Diego died after testing positive for COVID-19. The San Diego County medical examiner's office said the man, Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejia, died of acute respiratory failure due to pneumonia resulting from COVID-19. He was the first immigrant in ICE custody to die of the disease.

As of May 16, 1,201 immigrant detainees have tested positive for the disease in ICE custody out of 2,394 who have been tested.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, medical experts and immigrant advocates have warned that the highly contagious coronavirus would put detainees at risk. They have pointed to the inherent problems within jails — like a lack of necessary space to accommodate proper social distancing guidelines — that put people in danger. Advocates have used these arguments as a way to push for more releases.

Agency officials have said that high-level experts are monitoring best practices and issuing guidelines on when to isolate certain detainees and to screen those entering facilities. In many situations, detention officials are separating immigrants who have been exposed to the virus and keeping them isolated.

In March, ICE officials began assessing their inmate population to locate “vulnerable” detainees, including those who are over 60 or pregnant. So far, they have released more than 900 detainees, and detention numbers are the lowest they have been in several years.

Federal judges across the country have ordered the release of nearly 400 ICE detainees since the beginning of the pandemic, citing the preexisting medical conditions of the immigrants released and the potential for life-threatening complications from COVID-19.

"COVID-19 does not respect prison walls. The raging global pandemic outside of Calhoun County Correctional Facility and a confirmed case within the facility pose a serious risk to those inside,” wrote US District Judge Judith E. Levy, according to the Detroit News, in an order releasing two immigrants from custody in one case. “For plaintiffs, the emergence of COVID-19 at the Calhoun County Correctional Facility transforms a generalized yet substantial risk into a specific and immediate risk," Levy added.

"The number of COVID-19 cases in detention facilities nationwide further highlights the stark reality that communal confinement, even with the precautions defendants have employed, creates a significant risk of COVID-19 infection."

Sunday’s death comes also as congressional officials press ICE officials for more details on their efforts to limit the spread of the disease within the local and private jails across the country that hold immigrant detainees.

“Despite our repeated attempts to secure information, ICE has failed to fully respond to our requests, casting serious doubt on its preparedness for this crisis,” wrote Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney and Rep. Jamie Raskin, Democrats on the House oversight committee, in a letter to DHS officials earlier this month. “ICE has failed to take this crisis seriously [...] At each step of the way, the agency has waited rather than acted, prioritizing continued detention of thousands of non-violent detainees regardless of the life-and-death consequences for immigrants, employees, contractors, or their families.”

ICE officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the death.


MORE ON THIS
An Immigrant Who Tested Positive For The Coronavirus Has Died In ICE Custody

Hamed Aleaziz · May 6, 2020

Hundreds Of Immigrant Detainees Considered Vulnerable To The Coronavirus May Be Released

Hamed Aleaziz · April 7, 2020

ICE Must Release 10 Chronically Ill Immigrants After A Judge Said They’re Not Safe From The Coronavirus While In Custody

Hamed Aleaziz · March 31, 2020

Hamed Aleaziz is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in San Francisco.

Bill Gates Conspiracy Theories Have Circulated For Years. It Took The Coronavirus Pandemic To Turn Him Into A Fake Villain.

After months of conspiracy-mongering, people around the world are demanding Gates be arrested for crimes against humanity. Here’s how things got so bad.

Ryan BroderickBuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on May 22, 2020

BuzzFeed News; AP Images

On May 14, Italian politician Sara Cunial uploaded a video to her Facebook profile calling former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates a criminal and demanding he be tried for crimes against humanity.

It was a speech she made in the Italian Parliament in early May, in which Cunial, who represents a district in northern Italy, claimed Gates was developing a vaccine for COVID-19 to enslave the world’s population.

“The real goal of all of this is total control,” Cunial said, “absolute domination of human beings, transformed into guinea pigs and slaves, violating sovereignty and free will. All this thanks to tricks disguised as political compromises.

Cunial’s speech has been viewed on her page over 500,000 times and shared 30,000 times, and it’s been uploaded to countless other pages on Facebook and YouTube channels. Despite Facebook’s third-party fact-checkers marking the video “partly false," one version of it has been watched almost 1 million times.

Cunial is wrong about Gates using a vaccine for COVID-19 to commit genocide — but she is far from alone in believing it.

The online campaign against him encompasses a myriad of alternate realities created by anxious and isolated social media users, including debunked claims about 5G cellular technology, anti-vaccination rhetoric, QAnon content, and the conspiracy theory du jour, like the idea that sunlight can kill the coronavirus. And it's not just limited to the fringe: According to a Yahoo News/YouGov poll released Friday, 44% of Republicans in the US believe that Gates plans to use a COVID-19 vaccination as a way to implant microchips in people and monitor their movements.

“We’re concerned about the conspiracy theories being spread online and the damage they could cause to public health,” Mark Suzman, CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, told BuzzFeed News. “At a time like this, when the world is facing an unprecedented health and economic crisis, it’s distressing that there are people spreading misinformation when we should all be looking for ways to collaborate and save lives. Right now, one of the best things we can do to stop the spread of COVID-19 is spread the facts.”

There’s little chance Gates will be arrested by the Italian government — he lives in Washington state, for one — but the backlash against him reflects a very real and dangerous refusal to accept a COVID-19 vaccine if one were to become available. Even before the pandemic, between 10% and 22% of people in countries across Europe didn’t trust that vaccines were safe.

The paranoia around the former Microsoft CEO has been building for months, festering in Facebook Groups and YouTube comment sections. Here’s how the conspiracy theorists, panicked and ignorant people, and technology platforms that allowed the hoaxes to grow turned Bill Gates into the villain of the coronavirus pandemic.

The most popular version of the rumor stems from a tabloid in Ghana.

In 2010, a former staffer with a government health initiative in Ghana claimed that a community health initiative, partially funded by the Gates Foundation, had tested the contraceptive Depo-Provera on unsuspecting villagers in Navrongo, a remote town in the country, as part of an illicit “population experiment.”

The woman making the charge, Mame-Yaa Bosumtwi, was the Ghanian-born, US-educated communications officer for a separate Gates-funded initiative by the Ghanaian government and Columbia University. The program used cellphones to improve healthcare access for women and children in rural areas. Bosumtwi had clashed with another team member, James Phillips, a demographer at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health; when her contract was not renewed, she took her professional gripes with Phillips to the Ghanaian press and filed a lawsuit against Columbia for millions of dollars in damages.

After the lawsuit was dismissed, Bosumtwi went back to the press with a much more shocking claim: Without evidence, she said that Phillips's project in rural Ghana had experimented with Depo-Provera on women as a test run for a broader population control campaign. Patients had been abused. Some had died.

Wanted posters with Phillips’s face sprouted across the country. Protesters mobilized outside Columbia’s research center in Navrongo. Ghanaian health officials called her claims libel, and community leaders and women from the rural area condemned them as false. But death threats escalated so badly that two members of Phillips's team had to be evacuated across the border to Burkina Faso.

As Bosumtwi’s allegations of Gates-funded genocide were spreading throughout Ghana, in 2011 a women's rights group in the US called the Rebecca Project for Human Rights published a report titled "Non-Consensual Research in Africa: The Outsourcing of Tuskegee." The report claimed, without evidence, that unethical medical experiments had been undertaken by US researchers in Africa — focusing on Phillips.

“Researchers allegedly injected thousands of impoverished and illiterate Ghanaian women with a Pfizer contraceptive, Depo-Provera, and administered other unidentified oral contraceptives during human research experiments to reduce population and modify health care," the report read.

The report was written by Kwame Fosu, the Rebecca Project’s chief financial officer and policy director. The Italian-born son of Ghanaian diplomats, Fosu left out a key detail — that he was the father of Bosumtwi’s child. Although that connection might have undermined his credibility if it were made public, in 2013 Fosu released a second report, titled "Depo-Provera: Deadly Reproductive Violence Against Women." The report claimed a massive conspiracy involving international organizations — including the Gates Foundation, the United States Agency for International Development, the UN Population Fund, and Pfizer — had pushed a dangerous contraceptive on black women living in poverty in African countries.

"Melinda Gates announces her four-billion dollar contraceptive strategy featuring Depo-Provera as the optimum choice for women of color,” Fosu wrote. “These beautiful females, oblivious that they are being insidiously exploited as diversionary cynical props to mask Gates' egregious intent, are in an unprecedented Depo-Provera campaign with serious racist implications to prevent their very births."

In the US, Fosu’s white papers circulated among right-wing groups that claimed “abortion was a form of black genocide." And they had an impact within Africa as well. In 2014, Zimbabwe’s registrar general, Tobaiwa Mudede, warned women to avoid contraceptives because they were a Western ploy to limit the continent's population. That same year in Kenya, all 27 members of the nation’s Conference of Catholic Bishops declared a World Health Organization–UNICEF campaign to administer neonatal tetanus vaccines to pregnant women “a disguised population control program.”

In the years that followed, the allegations of a Gates Foundation–led black genocide in Africa may have subsided, but the conspiracy theory that Gates could be using vaccines to depopulate the planet has stuck around.



Sopa Images / Getty Images
A protester wearing a dinosaur costume holds a placard that says "Bill Gates Wants You Extinct Like Me" during a demonstration in Huntington Beach, California.


At their core, these conspiracy theories revolve around the idea that Gates is using his wealth to control the planet. As old as baseless claims that the Illuminati or the Freemasons control the world and as new as the digital revolution, they blend imaginary concerns about the hidden masters of the world and basic misunderstandings of science.

Named for the Microsoft cofounder and his wife, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was launched in 2000 and is the largest private foundation in the world. In 2008, Gates transitioned out of his role with Microsoft to give himself more time to its programs and grants, which primarily focus on enhancing healthcare, reducing extreme poverty, and expanding educational opportunities and access to information technology.

While it’s completely false to say the Gates Foundation is trying to depopulate the planet, the work the foundation does is in fact influenced by overpopulation concerns popularized in the ’60s and ’70s. Gates himself has publicly acknowledged several times over the last decade his debt to the work of biologist Paul R. Ehrlich, whose 1968 book The Population Bomb brought the concept of global overpopulation into the public consciousness and was mentioned in the Gates Foundation’s annual letter in 2012.


Gates wrote about Ehrlich again in 2013, calling him “the country’s, and perhaps the world’s, most prominent environmental Cassandra" and lauding his work, even if the foundation's cofounder concluded it was too fatalistic:

“We know now that Ehrlich was extremely wrong and that following his scientific certainties would have been terrible for the poor."

So while Gates is not spending his retirement trying to commit eugenics on a global scale and is in fact actively opposed to the wing of the environmentalist movement that advocates for such a thing, it’s a connection that has been hard to shake. Spend enough time in online fever swamps and you’ll start seeing the same words over and over again — “Bill Gates,” “population control” — skipping right over the fact that Gates is against the idea.

Gates has remained a popular target for those with attenuated ties to reality. In 2016, Infowars connected him to a conspiracy theory that Zika fever could be a bioweapon. In 2018, Infowars wrote that Gates was “indirectly responsible for both Ebola and Zika outbreaks'' and was planning a global pandemic known as “Disease X.” The same year, conspiracy theory site NewsPunch published an article with the headline “Bill Gates Admits ‘Vaccines Are Best Way to Depopulate,’” which went viral enough for fact-checking site Snopes to debunk it. Conspiracies about Gates have proliferated on Facebook and YouTube as well. In January 2019, a now-debunked and -deleted article from Transcend International, a nonprofit media outlet, went viral, claiming Gates believed vaccines were too dangerous to give to his own children.

These claims have often taken a political valence: In 2018, footage leaked of Gates mocking President Donald Trump for not knowing the difference between HPV and HIV. But beyond partisanship, Gates — with his tech-made money and philanthropic efforts to improve public health — has become an avatar of populist rage at those who possess technical fluency, an elite education, and well-stamped passports.


The first rumor connecting Gates to COVID-19 was spread at the very beginning of the outbreak by QAnon YouTuber Jordan Sather. In January, when the virus was still localized in Wuhan, China, Sather claimed that the novel coronavirus was a “new fad disease” that had been “planned" by Gates.

The QAnon community believes Trump is waging a secret war against a deep state, secret messages about which are leaked out on anonymous online message boards like 8chan by an insider with “Q-level” security clearance. Gates and other wealthy liberals like George Soros are believed to be part of a global cabal of Satanists who secretly control the world.

The crux of Sather’s conspiracy hinged on a 2015 patent filed by the Pirbright Institute in Surrey, England, which covered the development of a weakened form of a coronavirus that could be used as a vaccine to prevent respiratory diseases in birds and other animals. This is a standard way that vaccines are made, for everything from the flu to polio.

As the virus spread out of China, hoaxes about Gates did as well, with social media companies only attempting to limit their reach weeks after they began. Melanie Smith, a cyberintelligence analyst at Graphika, a network analysis company, told BuzzFeed News: “I think social media platforms only really stepped up to the plate to deal with coronavirus disinfo in March.”

In the early months of the outbreak, Smith said, many mainstream users were exposed to seriously fringe ideas, including one that falsely claimed that Gates was depopulating the planet. "Gates has created a vaccine and it will be tested in African countries before it's tested anywhere else,” she said, explaining the conspiracy theory.

Regardless of how Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have battled conspiratorial content about COVID-19, it wasn’t enough. By April, Gates had become the main target.

In April, the “black genocide” narrative was reignited. Diamond and Silk, pro-Trump influencers and former Fox News personalities, declared they would never take a COVID-19 vaccine created by Gates because he had used African people as “guinea pigs.” Conservative commentator Candace Owens tweeted the same month that “vaccine-criminal Bill Gates” had used “African & Indian tribal children to experiment w/ non-FDA approved drug vaccines.”

A petition calling for Gates’ arrest was posted on the White House's page for citizen queries on April 10. As of Friday, it had 572,723 signatures, thanks in part to being shared on Facebook Groups like “Refuse Corona V@X and Screw Bill Gates" and a Bulgarian conspiracy theory group called “Hidden Knowledge 2.” The petition received even more attention after it was covered by NewsPunch.

That same month, a now-deleted YouTube video full of misinformation about Gates, titled “Dr. SHIVA Ayyadurai, MIT PhD Crushes Dr. Fauci Exposes Birx, Clintons, Bill Gates, And The W.H.O” was watched more than 6 million times, with close to half a million shares on Facebook. At the same time, many explicitly anti–Bill Gates groups formed on Facebook, the biggest of which was “Collective Action Against Bill Gates. We Wont Be Vaccinated!!” According to social metrics site CrowdTangle, its 100,000-plus members regularly post some of the most-shared content on the platform about the former Microsoft CEO. "This is the shit eating grin Bill has on whenever talking about the coronavirus," one recent post read.

A petition calling for Gates’ arrest was posted on the White House's page for citizen queries on April 10. As of Friday, it had 572,723 signatures.


But “Collective Action Against Bill Gates" is hardly the only group. The pushback against him is a focal point for several previously unlinked misinformation communities, such as anti-vaxxers, 5G truthers, New Agers, and QAnon supporters. These groups, which range in size, have names like “#SayNoToBillGates,” “STOP BILL GATES: He’s A Treasonous Murderous Psychopath & Must Be Stopped,” “TAG DONALD J TRUMP: STOP BILL GATES,” and “Fauci & Gates to prison worldwide Resistance.”

A Facebook spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that many groups featuring anti-vax content have a pop-up warning when a user joins them, warning them of harmful misinformation.

“Anyone who searches for and joins a group related to COVID-19 or vaccines is then directed to accurate information from health organizations,” the spokesperson said. “Additionally, we are working to remove these types of groups from the recommendations we show people.”


Sean Gallup / Getty Images
Two protesters, one holding a sign referencing Bill Gates, the other a German flag, stand on a water fountain during a protest rally in Berlin against coronavirus lockdown restrictions, May 9.

In early May, a little over 100 people met on the steps of the state Parliament building in Melbourne, Australia, and chanted "arrest Bill Gates." One speaker at the protest, Fanos Panayides, runs a Facebook Group called "99% unite Main Group 'it's us or them,'" which since he started it on April 8 has grown to more than 37,000 members who have made more than 900,000 posts, comments, and reactions, according to social media analytics site CrowdTangle.

Anti-Gates signs have appeared over the last month in Long Island; London; Nottingham, England; and Annapolis, Maryland. Gates was also the focus of a violent anti-COVID-19 lockdown protest in Germany over the weekend.

Conspiracy theories have also appeared on Indian social media. Drawing on a false claim that dates back to at least 2014, Health Impact News, a pseudoscience website that promotes conspiracy theories about 5G and vaccines, claimed on May 19 that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation had been sued and “put on trial" before the Supreme Court of India regarding the deaths and injuries caused by trials of Gardasil, the HPV vaccine. One version of the claim featured a photo of Gates and Dr. Anthony Fauci together with text that read, “Well, well, well, Globalist population control Bill Gates shortly after his trip to India with Dr. Fauci.”

Although there was in reality no lawsuit, there really was a study in India funded by the Gates Foundation. In 2010, the trials, conducted by the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health, was canceled after local media reported that seven girls had died after taking part in it. Investigations carried out by the Indian government determined that the deaths were unrelated to the vaccine.

So when Cunial stood up in the Italian Parliament last week and demanded Gates be arrested for “crimes against humanity," it wasn’t random. It was a crossover win for the COVID-19 conspiracy theorists. Amid heckles and jeers, Cunial called upon other Parliament members to defy any plans for a compulsory vaccination against COVID-19.

Cunial is a former member of the Five Star Movement (M5S), an antiestablishment party that won the most seats in Italy's 2018 general election. Her Facebook page is full of anti-vax, anti-5G, and COVID-19 misinformation. She’s also a supporter of the ID2020 microchip theory: the belief that the ID2020 Alliance, a nongovernmental organization that advocates for digital IDs for undocumented people and refugees, is working with Gates to build a surveillance state with tracking devices in the COVID-19 vaccine.

She’s far from the only anti-vaxxer among the M5S or its former members. The party campaigned on objections to vaccinations. Observers of Italian politics have argued that vaccine skepticism is one of the central tenets of what M5S stands for.

A member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies condemned Cunial’s “absurd and unfounded theories” on Twitter, but, her speech was nevertheless seized on by Russian state media, amplified by the American far right, and shared in various ways on Facebook and YouTube.

Two versions of Cunial’s speech were removed on Thursday by YouTube after they were flagged by BuzzFeed News. YouTube spokesperson Farshad Shadloo said the videos violated the site's policies around medical misinformation.

“We’re committed to providing timely and helpful information at this critical time, including raising authoritative content, reducing the spread of harmful misinformation, and showing information panels, using CDC data, to help combat misinformation,” Shadloo said. “We have clear policies against COVID misinformation, and we quickly remove videos violating these policies when flagged to us.”

A scan of the YouTube comments about Cunial will make you wonder how to untangle the confusion. A report from RT about Cunial’s speech was shared on Tuesday to “X22 Report [Geopolitical],” one of the larger QAnon Facebook Groups.

“Ironically fact checker blocked this earlier on me. ... It's literally what they say. It's ridiculous,” one user wrote, referring to the fact that Facebook’s third-party fact-checkers have flagged several versions of Cunial’s video as “partly misleading.”

“The fact checker and Politifact is owned by Gates and Soros, so you won't know the truth,” another commenter erroneously replied, going on to call down a curse on them in ornate language: “But hell be their homes and what they fear the most on earth be their torment 1000 times over for eternity.” ●

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THIRD WORLD USA
“I Am Only Earning $300 A Week”: Here’s What People Are Making For Essential Work
“The take-home pay is completely ludicrous for what we do.”

Venessa Wong BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on May 22, 2020

Charlie Riedel / AP

They’re keeping your grocery shelves stocked, preparing your takeout, and packaging your sex toys for delivery, putting their lives at risk in the process. And in return, they’re often taking home less money than they would collect in unemployment benefits — sometimes a lot less.

WHEN THE RIGHT WING SAYS WORKERS ARE GETTING PAID TO STAY HOME THEN ITS TIME TO TELL THE BOSSES TO PAY MORE NOT REDUCE UI

The coronavirus pandemic has served as another reminder that many of the workers who are most essential to our everyday lives are also paid the least. BuzzFeed News spoke with essential workers around the country about how much they are bringing home each week during the emergency, and what it’s like to make so little when your work is so important.

Many of them already earned close to minimum wage before the pandemic; now they’re also dealing with slashed hours as businesses wrestle with lockdowns. The federal government’s $600-per-week unemployment benefit being offered through July as part of the economic relief package — the equivalent of $15 per hour for a 40-hour workweek — exceeds the hourly wages of an estimated 17 million US workers. It’s also more than any of the people we spoke to were earning in take-home pay.

According to a new paper by the Becker Friedman Institute for Economics at the University of Chicago, the relief package “pays bonuses to some workers who are laid off [...] but provides no additional pay for otherwise similar ‘front-line’ workers.” For instance, “Janitors who worked at businesses which are closed can get UI [unemployment insurance] benefits equal to 158% of their prior earnings, while janitors who continue to work at increased health risk in businesses deemed ‘essential’ have no guarantees of any hazard pay or increased earnings.” The researchers found 68% of workers who are eligible for unemployment benefits will receive more than their lost earnings.


Adam Lau / AP

All signs point to there being little pressure for higher pay in the foreseeable future. The unemployment rate is expected to remain above 10% through 2021, and companies that have been offering enhanced pay to employees working through the coronavirus crisis are now phasing it out. Kroger, Starbucks, Amazon, and Rite Aid have recently ended, or plan to end, their hazard pay, which generally had been an extra $2 to $3 per hour.The House of Representatives last week passed a $3 trillion relief package that would include a fund for hazard pay that gives workers an additional $13 per hour on top of their regular wages, and an extension of the expanded unemployment benefits until January. Republicans have said the bill has no chance of passing the senate; Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said yesterday that any future stimulus bill will not include an extension of the $600 per week unemployment benefit.

Here's how six essential workers described their current situation to BuzzFeed News in interviews conducted in recent weeks. All have been edited for clarity and length; we gave companies mentioned the chance to respond and have included their replies.

Alex

Checkers, Tampa, Florida
$9.50 per hour | Net pay: about $200 per week


Courtesy Alex

At Checkers, I’m making $9.50 per hour. I used to work 38 to 40 hours a week, now I’m down to 22 to 25 hours. I’m also landscaping about 32 hours a week.

I moved a few months ago so it would be a little more convenient; Checkers is down the street so I can walk now. I’d think I would have more money in my pocket because I’m not paying for transportation, but I don’t because I’m now getting fewer hours. Everything was going decent, but once this happened, it’s been a little shaky.

I’m appreciative to be able to make money. But none of our customers respect social distancing. They just put blue tape down, but most people don’t know why the blue tape is there. We try to tell them, but it’s a hassle and people get aggravated. The workplace isn’t that safe. Our masks are just pieces of cloth cut out to resemble a mask and no one is getting tested. I don’t have any health insurance. The health insurance that they offer pays for nothing. Most places don’t accept that insurance or it doesn’t cover anything. So it’s better for me to just pay out of pocket.

Checkers is an essential business because it’s food. And I’m thankful for the opportunity. But I believe the level of risk does not match for the type of work I’m doing. Part of me is like, They should allow us to stay home, but the other part of me is like, I still need money.

I wish they gave us paid sick leave at this horrible moment. We’re working, but we’re not offered hazard pay, paid sick leave, or affordable healthcare. They’re not being good to us as individuals. We just really wish people would take more consideration of us.

I might make more money on unemployment, but I’ve never been the type of person that likes to sit in the house all day. I’m a very active person and try to go out and make as much money as possible. I think I’d go crazy sitting in the house all day. And I’d be worried, in my job, that by the time I come back there would be loopholes that I have to jump through. I just don’t trust the process — not with my job and the managers they have there.

My last paycheck was like $410 for two weeks. I make less than $1,000 from Checkers every month and my rent is $1,200, not counting lights or water or anything. The landscaping job, if I wasn’t blessed with that, I would either be homeless or waiting for them to start the eviction process when coronavirus is over.

Checkers told BuzzFeed News its company-owned restaurants offer paid sick leave and closure pay, and that it offers health insurance to full-time workers after 60 days of employment. The company is now offering employees extra pay through July 13 (it declined to share how much the temporary raise is) and said there is an employee relief fund. “Many of our restaurants were forced to close early due to curfews, limiting the number of late-night hours ... Now, as curfews are being lifted, those hours have returned, and we are actually struggling to staff our restaurants currently because unemployment pay is so high,” a spokesperson said.

Angelica

McDonald’s, Los Angeles
$15.30 per hour | Net pay: about $240 per week


Courtesy Angelica
Angelica's paystub for a recent two-week period at McDonald's
RIGHT CLICK TO ENLARGE


I’ve worked for McDonald’s for 15 years and at this particular store for eight years. I do a little bit of everything. I’m the prep person, so I prep salad, bread, anything that needs to be prepped, and I wash dishes, everything like that. I don’t have much contact with customers.

I make $15.30 per hour. I used to get 30 to 32 hours a week but since COVID-19, they were only giving me 20 hours a week.

I started feeling nervous when the news was reporting that this was something really dangerous. I was coming to work, and knowing we don’t have the right protection — masks, gloves, hand sanitizer — I started to feel really scared. On my way to work, my husband could provide me with transportation, but on my way back home I had to take two buses, and you don’t know who is on the bus. But I was also scared not to have money for my family.

I went on strike. My last day of work was April 8 — that day the manager had to go out and buy some masks because a coworker of mine had tested positive and was in the hospital. And it was hard to maintain 6 feet of distance between each other and work. McDonald’s should have closed the store and disinfected it...and put all the workers on quarantine to clean the restaurant.

After I found out my coworker was positive, my three kids went to live with their grandma, about a 30-minute drive away.

McDonald’s told BuzzFeed News it is now offering bonuses equal to 10% of an employee’s pay earned in May to those working at company-owned restaurants, and that it has implemented a variety of safety measures.

Angelica spoke to BuzzFeed News through a Spanish-English translator; she has filed a complaint to California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health.
Steve

King Soopers, Littleton, Colorado
$19.16 per hour | Net pay: about $570 per week


Courtesy Steve
Steve and his pay stub from King Sooper
RIGHT CLICK TO EXPAND


I work for King Soopers — which is under the Kroger umbrella — in Littleton, Colorado. I do produce, maintenance, utility work. Monday and Tuesday I come in at 4 a.m. and try to get the floors cleaned and help out in other departments. Wednesday through Friday, it’s 7 to 3:30. I have a good gig, I get weekends off because I’ve been there for a while. My pay is $19.16 per hour. And then there was hazard pay of $2 per hour.

The first four weeks were completely hectic, with people lined out the door. We’d open up and they would just come rushing through the door. It was a panic attack. Everyone was nervous. Everyone was scared. People would run for the toilet paper because it was the new world money. So we let people into the paper goods aisle 10 at a time — you had to start regulating people and telling them how to act. And a couple of weeks ago, some meatpacking plants shut down, ground beef was the new world money. The first five or six weeks it was very scary, but it’s just the new normal.

There was a free COVID testing program for employees at our main office warehouse. I spent 45 minutes in my car to go get tested. It was a great thing, but the company wouldn’t share with us when someone tested positive. With our night crew, I know that we had at least four confirmed cases. So there were a bunch of us who were close to it and some went out on self-quarantine because they have heart and lung conditions and some COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and were nervous.

In the stores, I love that they’re making us wear masks and providing gloves, but I don’t understand why the customers don’t have to wear masks. I don’t want to get political, but there are patriots who are just going to get up in there.

The store is taking our temperature when you come in for your shift, but there’s no way in hell those things are calibrated correctly. It’s a handheld thermometer that they put on your head and squeeze. In the last two weeks, I’ve only had one temperature over 95 degrees. They say I’m 91, 92 degrees, and I’m like, I am 2 degrees away from a cadaver. Really, OK? I don’t think it matters to them. They’re just doing the routine.

Kroger is offering bonuses now but cutting hazard pay, and there’s really no reason. The take-home pay is completely ludicrous for what we do. It costs about $1,000 to rent a studio apartment in this part of Colorado. And you have to work for Kroger a whole year to get health benefits. If there’s a government solution for hazard pay, give it to the farmers and smaller businesses. Kroger’s huge, they’re making the money, and the stock is doing quite well now.

Kroger did not reply to a request for comment.

Monica

Amazon warehouse, Concord, North Carolina
$15 per hour plus hazard pay | Net pay: about $500 per week


Courtesy Monica
Monica and her pay stub from Amazon
RIGHT CLICK TO ENLARGE


I work on everything: nonessential and some essential. I grab a case full of items that people have ordered, I scan it, put it into a box, and send it down the line. My regular days are Thursday through Sunday and every day is a 10 hour day, so I’m at 40 hours. If I pick up overtime, I can be near 60 hours. They offered us double overtime, but it ends in May, and the extra $2 per hour is going to be gone. I’ve been here since October. So I’ve been through peak season. This is just another peak for me.

People are ordering everything but the right thing. I don’t know how many boxes of hair dye I have packed, toys — and by toys I mean sex toys — just everything besides what Amazon said they were going to do, sending out essential items. I understand you’re home, you’re bored, but you gotta dye your hair? If people were only ordering essential items, I would feel differently, because it would mean y’all are taking it seriously. And if people aren’t ordering nonessential items, they would have the chance to clean the facility and I could be at home, self-quarantining. Amazon had 30 cases at another facility. They should clean all facilities to prevent it from happening.

I don’t know how long this pandemic is going to last. I’m really tired of coming to work, busting my behind to pack hair dye. That’s where I draw the line. Don’t get me wrong. I like my job, but this ain’t it. I really used to like Amazon, but after this, I’m over it.

I wear a mask when I go to work. I’m getting scanned for my temperature. It’s weird. It’s stressful. People are yelling at you to stay 6 feet away. People telling you if you’re caught not staying 6 feet away from each other, that’s an automatic write-up. Do you know how many people you have working in here? How? It’s impossible. There are people who I know come to work, and just turn around. Because they can’t handle it. I try to stay calm, think about something else, stay positive.


I’m bringing home $1,000 every two weeks. It’s not worth it. The hazard pay is, like, $2? I know my worth, and I’m not worth $2. And they’re taking it back anyway. I want to be able to go see my family, but I don’t want to go home infected. I’ve thought about taking unemployment, but I can’t. I’d be bored. And everything outside is closed now — I’d get the [unemployment] check and then what? So I go to work to pay my bills.

An Amazon spokesperson said: “We’ve paid our team and partners nearly $800 million extra since COVID-19 started while continuing to offer full benefits from day one of employment. With demand stabilized, next month we’ll return to our industry-leading starting wage of $15 an hour. We’re proud that our minimum wage is more than what most others offer even after their temporary increases in recent months.” Regarding cleaning, she added, “We’ve implemented a series of preventative measures to help keep our employees, partners, and customers safe ... Each site goes through enhanced cleaning and sanitization multiple times a day.”
Sarah

La Puente, California
$11.50 per hour

I’m a drive-thru worker. I serve burgers and fries and chicken teriyaki and stuff at my uncle’s burger place; we had to cut a lot of hours for other employees so it’s mostly family working there now. I earn $11.50 an hour, but I’m not as concerned about the wages — it all goes back to the family anyway — but whether we’re really essential. Why are we open still? How is social distancing going to work if we keep fast-food places open? You tell us to stay home, but we’re still open — it doesn't make sense.


Grocery stores should be open. But fast-food places shouldn’t be open now. And that’s why the pandemic is not slowing down and this lockdown is getting longer. Is it against liberty to force people to cook? I see mostly couples, teenagers, regulars. I see a lot of single dads who can’t cook. Or nurses who don’t have time to cook. But it’s mostly people who just want to get out of the house.

I want to stay home too. But it’s about serving our regulars and maintaining continuity, my uncle says, because it’ll be open and close, open and close with this virus. My uncle is thankful that we can still open, and I think that it’s wrong that we’re still open. It’s not that I don’t want to make money with him. I'm just concerned for his health too. It’s a personal opinion, and that’s why we have the law to set everything objectively.

We’re deep cleaning everything now — we took all the chairs out and we’re bleaching everything, and taking cushions off the booths. I’m guessing we’re not going to reopen the dining room for a long time. Rebuilding a cool place to hang out is tough. We just have to hope that people will still like the energy we give off.
Anonymous

A wireless retailer, California
$14.25 per hour | Net pay: about $300 per week


Courtesy Anonymous
The anonymous worker's pay stub
RIGHT CLICK TO ENLARGE

I work for an authorized retailer for Verizon with stores around the country. Since everything happened, malls shut down, so we had to be relocated to stores 30-plus miles away from their home. I’m driving an additional 15 miles to work each day. Some friends are driving 60-plus miles in a day. And they cut us down to about 24 hours because now we’re overcrowding stores that normally have three or four employees but now have eight to 10 employees. I have friends who have been reduced to 8 or 12 hours. Our pay is hourly and commission-based, but since the stores are overcrowded [with employees], the commission has been almost nonexistent for a month and a half now. So we’re all working part-time hours at close to minimum wage.

I earn $14.25 per hour. After taxes and deductions, I am only earning $300 a week. Honestly I am not making enough to pay my bills. Yes, landlords are being more lenient and allowing us to be late, but that’s only the surface of my bills. I’ve really been struggling the last six weeks. My landlord is just telling us to pay what we can when we can, but it’s been difficult. All of my paycheck is going to rent. My car payment has been deferred. I take what I can each week for rent, and I receive SNAP cash for food.

A lot of us are comparing the situation here to corporate locations owned by the wireless carriers, and those employees are being taken care of. They got paid leave, got pay increases of $1 or $2. So when we compare our situation to theirs, it’s pretty unfortunate.

Almost every day someone brings up whether or not you really do want to go on unemployment right now. I’ve applied just to see if I can get back some of the lost wages from being cut back, and I have yet to receive an answer. My coworkers have done the same. I started in January so I don’t have seniority, so when they talk about layoffs, I figure I come to mind, being someone who is fairly new to the company. There are people who volunteered to leave, but we really don’t know if people are going to have a job to come back to.

I’m trying to be on the front line and do what I can. I want to keep working, establish myself at the company, and make sure my position is secured. In the first two weeks, it was a lot slower, but now there’s more traffic. Everyone is on edge, and it’s gotten more difficult and competitive with more employees per store. It causes a lot of tension at work and no one knows what the future is. I’m waiting to hear if I'm going to be laid off or if my hours will be reduced further.


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Venessa Wong is a technology and business reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.