Pandemic curtails most U.S. Pride events, but some will march on

Ben Kellerman

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The coronavirus pandemic has forced the cancellation of most Pride events this year, but organizers of a march in Manhattan on Sunday expect to draw tens of thousands of people to the streets in solidarity with protesters demanding an end to racial injustice and police brutality.


Rainbow flags fly at Rockefeller Center in midtown Manhattan in support of the LGBT community, prior to the 51st anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, in New York City, New York, U.S., June 26, 2020. REUTERS/Mike Segar

The second annual Queer Liberation March will cap a month of Pride events, virtual and live, during which the celebration of LGBTQ lives has merged with the nationwide demonstrations ignited by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last month.

“It has to be centered on the movement for Black lives, it has to be focused on issues of police brutality,” said Jay W. Walker, co-founder the Reclaim Pride Coalition, the group organizing the march.

The group staged its first protest last year by walking in the opposite direction to New York City’s marquee Pride parade, rejecting that event’s large uniformed police presence and the ubiquitous corporate-sponsored floats that normally drift down Manhattan’s 5th Avenue each year.


This year, the march promises to be the city’s main in-person event on Pride Sunday, after the official parade was canceled in April for the first time in its 50-year history due to the pandemic.

On June 28, 1969, patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, fought back during a police raid, sparking days of sometimes violent demonstrations against harassment and giving birth to the modern LGBTQ rights movement.

Activists memorialized the first anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion with what they called Christopher Street Liberation Day, starting an annual Pride tradition that is now celebrated around the world.

Marches and rallies with a focus on racial injustice, and the struggle of Black transgender people in particular, are planned in other U.S. cities on Sunday.


In Chicago, a Pride march will aim to draw attention to the historic origins of Pride as a movement of protest.

Grassroots activist group ACTIVATE:CHI said it was working with the organizers of this year’s Pride, spurred on by “the current political, social, and economic climate coupled with the clear inability of our government to protect the most vulnerable members of our communities.”


Reporting by Benjamin Keller in New York; Additional reporting and writing by Maria Caspani in New York; Editing by Daniel Wallis
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

'The money's gone': Wirecard collapses owing $4 billion

Arno Schuetze, John O'Donnell

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Wirecard collapsed on Thursday owing creditors almost $4 billion after disclosing a gaping hole in its books that its auditor EY said was the result of a sophisticated global fraud.

The payments company filed for insolvency at a Munich court saying that, with 1.3 billion euros ($1.5 billion) of loans due within a week its survival as a going concern was “not assured”.

Wirecard’s implosion came just seven days after EY, its auditor for more than a decade, refused to sign off on the 2019 accounts, forcing out Chief Executive Markus Braun and leading it to admit that $2.1 billion of its cash probably didn’t exist.

“There are clear indications that this was an elaborate and sophisticated fraud involving multiple parties around the world,” EY said in a statement.

EY said while it was completing the 2019 audit, it was provided with false confirmations with regard to escrow accounts and reported them to the relevant authorities.

RELATED COVERAGE

Factbox: German payments firm Wirecard goes from boom to bust

Wirecard declined to comment following EY’s statement.

The financial technology company is the first member of Germany’s prestigious DAX stock index to go bust, barely two years after winning a spot among the country’s top 30 listed companies with a market valuation of $28 billion.

“The Wirecard case damages corporate Germany. It should be a wake-up call for reforms,” said Volker Potthoff, chairman of corporate governance think-tank ArMID.

Creditors have scant hope of getting back the 3.5 billion euros they are owed, sources familiar with the matter said. Of that total, Wirecard has borrowed 1.75 billion from 15 banks and issued 500 million in bonds.

“The money’s gone,” said one banker. “We may recoup a few euros in a couple of years but will write off the loan now.”

‘TOTAL DISASTER’

The collapse of Wirecard, once one of the hottest fintech companies in Europe, dwarfs other German corporate failures. It has shaken the country’s financial establishment with Felix Hufeld, head of regulator BaFin, calling it a “total disaster”.

German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz described the collapse as a “scandal”, acknowledging it was time to review regulation.

“We must rethink our supervisory structures,” said Scholz, adding he had asked his ministry to come up with ideas in the next few days.

“If legal, legislative, regulatory measures are needed, we will embrace them and implement them,” he said. “A scandal like Wirecard is a wake-up call that we need more monitoring and oversight than we have today,” he said.

Wirecard shares, which were suspended ahead of an earlier announcement that it would seek creditor protection, crashed 80% when trading resumed. They have lost 98% since auditor EY questioned its accounts last Thursday.


EY, one of the world’s “Big Four” accountancy and consulting firms, faces a wave of litigation in a debacle that has drawn comparisons with Arthur Andersen’s disastrous oversight of U.S. energy company Enron.

German law firm Schirp & Partner said that with Wirecard now effectively sidelined, it would file class actions against EY on behalf of shareholders and bondholders.

“It is frightening how long Wirecard AG was able to operate without being objected to by the auditors,” partner Wolfgang Schirp said.

Wirecard’s new management had been in crisis talks with creditors but pulled out on Thursday morning “due to impending insolvency and over-indebtedness”.

The insolvency filing did not include its Wirecard Bank subsidiary, which holds an estimated 1.4 billion euros in deposits and is already under emergency management by BaFin.

FILE PHOTO: The headquarters of Wirecard AG, an independent provider of outsourcing and white label solutions for electronic payment transactions is seen in Aschheim near Munich, Germany April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Michael Dalder/File Photo

‘COMPLETE VINDICATION’

A second source close to talks with creditors said although the company had a healthy core, it had faked two-thirds of its sales. This meant there was no way it could repay all its debt, notwithstanding all the legal challenges it will face.

The ascent of Wirecard, which was founded in 1999 and is based in a Munich suburb, was dogged by allegations from whistleblowers, reporters and speculators that its revenue and profits had been pumped up through fake transactions.

Braun fended off the critics for years before finally calling in outside auditor KPMG late last year to run an independent investigation.

KPMG, which published its findings in April, was unable to verify 1 billion euros in cash balances, questioned Wirecard’s acquisition accounting and said it could not trace hundreds of millions in cash advances to merchants.

“Today is a complete vindication for those that exposed the fraud,” said Fraser Perring, who bet on a fall in Wirecard’s shares and co-authored a 2016 report that alleged fraud.

The Munich prosecutor’s office, which is investigating Braun on suspicion of misrepresenting Wirecard’s accounts and of market manipulation, said: “We will now look at all possible criminal offences.”


Braun was arrested on Monday and released on bail of 5 million euros a day later. Former chief operating officer Jan Marsalek is also under suspicion and believed to be in the Philippines, according to justice officials there.

($1 = 0.8903 euros)

Native Americans protesting Trump trip to Mount Rushmore

By STEPHEN GROVES June 26, 2020

FILE - In this Sept. 11, 2002, file photo, the sun rises on Mt. Rushmore National Memorial near Keystone, S.D. as the flag is flown at half staff in honor of the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against the United States. President Donald Trump is planning to kick off Independence Day weekend in South Dakota with a show of patriotism _ fireworks popping, fighter jets thundering overhead and revelers crowding beneath a piece of classic Americana _ Mount Rushmore. (AP Photo/Laura Rauch, File)


SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — President Donald Trump’s plans to kick off Independence Day with a showy display at Mount Rushmore have angered Native Americans, who view the monument as a desecration of land violently stolen from them and used to pay homage to leaders hostile to Indigenous people.

Several groups led by Native American activists are planning protests for Trump’s July 3 visit, part of Trump’s “comeback” campaign for a nation reeling from sickness, unemployment and, recently, social unrest. The event is slated to include fighter jets thundering over the 79-year-old stone monument in South Dakota’s Black Hills and the first fireworks display at the site since 2009.

But it comes amid a national reckoning over racism and a reconsideration of the symbolism of monuments around the globe. Many Native American activists say the Rushmore memorial is as reprehensible as the many Confederate monuments being toppled around the nation.

“Mount Rushmore is a symbol of white supremacy, of structural racism that’s still alive and well in society today,” said Nick Tilsen, a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe and the president of a local activist organization called NDN Collective. “It’s an injustice to actively steal Indigenous people’s land, then carve the white faces of the colonizers who committed genocide.”

While some activists, like Tilsen, want to see the monument removed and the Black Hills returned to the Lakota, others have called for a share in the economic benefits from the region.

Trump has long shown a fascination with Mount Rushmore. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said in 2018 that he once told her straight-faced that it was his dream to have his face carved into the monument. He later joked at a campaign rally about getting enshrined alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. And while it was Noem, a Republican, who pushed for a return of fireworks on the eve of Independence Day, Trump committed to visiting South Dakota for the celebration.

Some wildfire experts have raised concerns the pyrotechnics could spark fires, especially because the region has seen dry weather this year. Firefighters called in crews from two other states to help Thursday as a blaze consumed approximately 150 acres (61 hectares) about 6 miles (10 kilometers) south of the monument.

The four faces, carved into the mountain with dynamite and drills, are known as the “shrine to democracy.” The presidents were chosen by sculptor Gutzon Borglum for their leadership during four phases of American development: Washington led the birth of the nation; Jefferson sparked its westward expansion; Lincoln preserved the union and emancipated slaves; Roosevelt championed industrial innovation.

And yet, for many Native American people, including the Lakota, Cheyenne, Omaha, Arapaho, Kiowa and Kiowa-Apache, the monument is a desecration to the Black Hills, which they consider sacred. Lakota people know the area as Paha Sapa — “the heart of everything that is.”

As monuments to Confederate and Colonial leaders have been removed nationwide, some conservatives have expressed fear that Mount Rushmore could be next. Commentator Ben Shapiro this week suggested that the “woke historical revisionist priesthood” wanted to blow up the monument. Noem responded by tweeting, “Not on my watch.”

The governor told Fox News on Wednesday, “These men have flaws, obviously every leader has flaws, but we’re missing the opportunity we have in this discussion to talk about the virtues and what they brought to this country, and the fact that this is the foundation that we’re built on and the heritage we should be carrying forward.”

Tim Giago, a journalist who is a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, said he doesn’t see four great American leaders when he looks at the monument; he sees four white men who either made racist remarks or initiated actions that removed Native Americans from their land. Washington and Jefferson held slaves. Lincoln, though he led the abolition of slavery, approved the hanging of 38 Dakota men in Minnesota after a violent conflict with white settlers there. Roosevelt is reported to have said, “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every 10 are ...”

The monument has long been a “Rorschach test,” said John Taliaferro, author of “Great White Fathers,” a history of the monument. “All sorts of people can go there and see it in different ways.”


The monument often starts conversations on the paradox of American democracy — that a republic that promoted the ideals of freedom, determination and innovation also enslaved people and drove others from their land, he said.

“If we’re having this discussion today about what American democracy is, Mount Rushmore is really serving its purpose because that conversation goes on there,” he said. “Is it fragile? Is it permanent? Is it cracking somewhat?”

The monument was conceived in the 1920s as a tourist draw for the new fad in vacationing called the road trip. South Dakota historian Doane Robinson recruited Borglum to abandon his work creating the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial in Georgia, which was to feature Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson.

Borglum was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, according to Mount Rushmore historian and writer Tom Griffith. Borglum joined the Klan to raise money for the Confederate memorial, and Griffith argues his allegiance was more practical than ideological.
Native American activists have long staged protests at the site to raise awareness of the history of the Black Hills, which were seized despite treaties with the United States protecting the land. Fifty years ago, a group of activists associated with an organization called United Native Americans climbed to the top of the monument and occupied it.

Quanah Brightman, who now runs United Native Americans, said the activism in the 1970s grew out of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. He hopes a similar movement for Native Americans comes from the Black Lives Matter movement.

“What people find here is the story of America — it’s multidimensional, it’s complex,” Griffith said. “It’s important to understand it was people just trying to do right as best they knew it then.”

The White House declined to comment.

Former National security officials are questioning the White House's claim Trump never knew about a Russian bounty on US troops

Tom Porter 

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Gina Haspel and President Donald Trump attend the swearing-in ceremony for Haspel as CIA director at agency headquarters, May 21, 2018 in Langley, Virginia. Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Russia placed a bounty on the heads of US troops in Afghanistan, and Trump chose not to act after being briefed on the matter, according to a report Friday by The New York Times. 

The White House on Saturday pushed back against the story, claiming that "neither the President nor the Vice President were briefed on the alleged Russian bounty intelligence."

But former national security officials questions say that if this is true, it exposes huge failings in the Trump administration's national security apparatus and want to know why the president would have been kept in the dark.

After an explosive report claimed that a Russian military intelligence unit in Afghanistan offered a bounty to Taliban-linked militias to kill US and coalition soldiers, the questions critics want answers to is 'what did the president know', and 'why didn't he act?'

In a statement Saturday evening, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said that neither President Trump nor Vice President Mike Pence had been briefed on the intelligence.

The New York Times story on Friday claimed the president had been made aware of the matter in March, but chose not to act.

"The CIA Director, National Security Advisor, and the Chief of Staff can all confirm that neither the President nor the Vice President were briefed on the alleged Russian bounty intelligence...The United States receives thousands of intelligence reports a day, and they are subject to strict scrutiny," McEnany said in a statement.


But former national security officials question the plausibility of the denial and say that even if true, it exposes huge failings in the Trump administration.

David Priess, a CIA agent during Bill Clinton and George W Bush's presidency, delivered the President's Daily Briefing to top intelligence officials after 9/11.

The briefing is a daily summary of plots and emerging threats to US national security across the globe.

In a thread on Twitter, he laid out the various possibilities, noting the White House was not disputing the truth of the intelligence. He concluded that if the president was not made aware of it constituted a failing by the national intelligence community. If he had, it represented a grave failing by the president himself.
—Office of the DNI (@ODNIgov) June 28, 2020

"Maybe the assessment was briefed only sub-POTUS because it was judged not to merit his attention. (This would be at odds with reporting just now by the same NYT trio—that it was, in fact, in the President's Daily Brief.) If so, shame on the system," he wrote.
—David Priess (@DavidPriess) June 28, 2020

"Maybe POTUS was, in fact, orally briefed on it—but White House officials have decided to lie about it, perhaps in a weak attempt to avoid the logical next question: Why hasn't the commander in chief responded to such a grave development? If so, shame on them. And on him."

Several Obama administration officials also expressed their alarm.

Susan Rice, President Barack Obama's national security adviser, said that even if the denial were true, and the intelligence never made its way to the president, it would signal the incompetence of the Trump administration.


"I don't believe this for a minute, but if it were true, it means that Trump is not even pretending to serve as commander in chief. And no one around him has the guts to ask him to. More evidence of their deadly incompetence," she wrote, following the White House denial.

Her deputy at the time, Ben Rhodes, wrote: "In addition to being almost certainly a lie, the idea that Trump wouldn't be briefed on Russia putting a bounty on US troops is even crazier than him being briefed and doing nothing."

Asha Rangappa, a former CIA agent who works as an analyst for CNN, questioned why John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence, had not been fired if it was accurate that the president had not been apprised about the threat to the lives of US forces from an international adversary.
—Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) June 28, 2020

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on criticism of its statement Saturday.


The report has again raised questions about Trump's relationship with Russia, which has dogged him throughout his presidency.

As recently as May — about two months after sources told the Times he had been told of the Russian plot — Trump was calling for Russia to be reinstated into the G7, a meeting of the world's major economies from which Russia was excluded after the 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

On Saturday, Trump's rival for the presidency, Democrat Joe Biden, accused Trump of betraying his duty as president.

"His entire presidency has been a gift to Putin, but this is beyond the pale," Biden said during a virtual town hall Saturday. "It's a betrayal of the most sacred duty we bear as a nation to protect and equip our troops when we send them into harm's way. It's a betrayal of every single American family with a loved one serving in Afghanistan or anywhere overseas."

Trump denies briefing on reported bounties against US troops
By LYNN BERRY and ZEKE MILLER

President Donald Trump pumps his fist as he walks on the South Lawn after arriving on Marine One at the White House, Thursday, June 25, 2020, in Washington. Trump is returning from Wisconsin. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
THE FASCIST FIST OF FRANCO AND THE FALANGE

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Sunday denied that he had been briefed on reported U.S. intelligence that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing American troops in Afghanistan, and he appeared to minimize the allegations against Moscow.

American intelligence officials concluded months ago that Russian officials offered rewards for successful attacks on American service-members last year, at a time when the U.S. and Taliban were holding talks to end the long-running war, according to The New York Times.

Trump, in a Sunday morning tweet, said “Nobody briefed or told me” or Vice President Mike Pence or chief of staff Mark Meadows about “the so-called attacks on our troops in Afghanistan by Russians.”

“Everybody is denying it & there have not been many attacks on us,” he said.

The White House had issued a statement Saturday denying that Trump or Pence had been briefed on such intelligence. “This does not speak to the merit of the alleged intelligence but to the inaccuracy of the New York Times story erroneously suggesting that President Trump was briefed on this matter,” press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said.

Trump’s director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe, also said neither the president nor vice president was “ever briefed on any intelligence alleged” in the Times’ report and he said the White House statement was “accurate.”

Trump’s tweet came a day after presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said that the report, if accurate, was a “truly shocking revelation” about the commander in chief and his failure to protect U.S. troops in Afghanistan and stand up to Russia.

Russia called the report “nonsense.”

“This unsophisticated plant clearly illustrates the low intellectual abilities of the propagandists of American intelligence, who instead of inventing something more plausible have to make up this nonsense,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

A Taliban spokesman said the militants “strongly reject this allegation” and are not “indebted to the beneficence of any intelligence organ or foreign country.”

John Bolton, a former national security adviser who was forced out by Trump last September and has now written a tell-all book about his time at the White House, said Sunday that “it it is pretty remarkable the president’s going out of his way to say he hasn’t heard anything about it, one asks, why would he do something like that?”

Bolton told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he thinks the answer “may be precisely because active Russian aggression like that against the American service members is a very, very serious matter and nothing’s been done about it, if it’s true, for these past four or five months, so it may look like he was negligent. But of course, he can disown everything if nobody ever told him about it.”

The Times, citing unnamed officials familiar with the intelligence, said the findings were presented to Trump and discussed by his National Security Council in late March. Officials developed potential responses, starting with a diplomatic complaint to Russia, but the White House has yet to authorize any step, the report said.

Trump responded to Biden on Twitter, saying “Russia ate his and Obama’s lunch during their time in office”

But it was the Obama administration, along with international allies, that suspended Russia from the Group of Eight after its unilateral annexation of Crimea from Ukraine — a move that drew widespread condemnation.

Biden criticized Trump for “his embarrassing campaign of deference and debasing himself” before Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Trump tweeted that “Nobody’s been tougher” on Russia than his administration.

Trump denies being told about Russian bounties to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Sunday said he was never briefed about Russian efforts to pay bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan, blasting a New York Times report that he had been told about the rewards but had not acted to respond to Moscow.

The White House on Saturday also denied that Trump was briefed on U.S. intelligence regarding the affair but it did not address the merits of the intelligence. The Director of National Intelligence also said Trump and Vice President Mike Pence were not briefed, and called the Times report inaccurate.

“Nobody briefed or told me, @VP Pence, or Chief of Staff @MarkMeadows about the so-called attacks on our troops in Afghanistan by Russians, as reported through an ‘anonymous source’ by the Fake News @nytimes. Everybody is denying it & there have not been many attacks on us,” Trump tweeted, calling on the newspaper to reveal its source.

The Times on Friday reported that U.S. intelligence had concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit linked to assassination attempts in Europe had offered rewards for successful attacks last year on American and coalition soldiers, and that Islamist militants or those associated with them were believed to have collected some bounty money.

Russia’s foreign ministry dismissed the report.

Democrats said the report and Trump’s denial were the latest evidence of the president’s wish to ignore allegations against Russia and accommodate President Vladimir Putin.

“There is something very wrong here. But this must have an answer,” U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi told ABC’s “This Week” program.

“You would think, the minute the president heard of it, he would want to know more, instead of denying that he knew anything,” she said, adding that Trump has already given “gifts” to Putin by diminishing U.S. leadership in NATO, reducing U.S. forces in Germany and inviting Russia back into the G8.

Reporting by Susan Heavey and David Morgan; Editing by Alistair Bell

After waves of virus deaths, care homes face legal reckoning

By JOHN LEICESTER June 26, 2020

1 of 12  https://apnews.com/de5541c2d5e5d06d195e2dffaf74fafa

In this photo taken Friday June 5, 2020, Monette Hayoun, Dr Robert Haiun, and Gilbert Haiun, from right, look at photos of their brother Meyer Haiun on a computer during an interview in Ivry sur Seine, south of Paris. Families whose elders died behind the closed doors of homes in lockdown are filing wrongful death lawsuits, triggering police investigations. One suit focuses on the death of Meyer Haiun, a severely disabled 85-year-old in a Paris home managed by a Jewish charitable foundation headed Eric de Rothschild, scion of Europe's most famous banking dynasty. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)


PARIS (AP) — The muffled, gagging sounds in the background of the phone call filled Monette Hayoun with dread.

Was her severely disabled 85-year-old brother, Meyer, choking on his food? Was he slowly suffocating like the Holocaust survivor who died a few months earlier in another of the care home’s bedrooms, a chunk of breakfast baguette lodged in his throat?

Meyer Haiun died the next day, one of the more than 14,000 deaths that tore through care homes for France’s most vulnerable older adults when they were sealed off to visitors during the coronavirus’ peak.

Three months on, the questions plague Monette: How did her brother die? Did he suffer? And, most gnawing of all, who is responsible?

“All the questions that I have about Meyer, maybe the truth isn’t as bad as what I imagine,” she says. Still, she adds, “You cannot help but imagine the worst.”

As families flock back to nursing homes that first reopened to limited visits in April and more widely this month, thousands no longer have mothers, fathers, grandparents and siblings to hug and to hold.


This photo dated March 15, 2020, shows Meyer Haiun in the Paris care home, la Residence Amaraggi, where the 85-year-old died 11 days later. Taken by his brother, Robert Haiun, this is the last photo the family has of Meyer. In France, a reckoning is beginning for 14,000 deaths in care homes, a cataclysm that scythed through the generation that endured World War II. Families whose elders died behind the closed doors of homes in lockdown are filing wrongful death lawsuits, triggering police investigations. (Courtesy of Robert Haiun via AP)

With graves so fresh that some still don’t have headstones, grieving families across the country are increasingly demanding a reckoning, turning to lawyers to try to determine why almost half of France’s nearly 30,000 COVID-19 deaths hit residents of nursing homes, scything through the generations that came of age after World War I, endured the next world conflict and helped rebuild the country.

Many homes had few, even no deaths. But others are emerging with their reputations in tatters, having lost scores in their care. Increasingly, homes are facing wrongful death lawsuits accusing them of negligent care, skimping on protective equipment and personnel, and lying to families about how their loved ones died and the measures they took to prevent infections.

Because COVID-19 proved particularly deadly for older adults, nursing homes across the globe quickly found themselves on the pandemic’s front lines. In the United States, nursing home residents account for nearly 1 in 10 of all coronavirus cases and more than a quarter of the deaths. In Europe, care home residents account from one-third to nearly two-thirds of the dead in many countries.

To stave off infections, many homes sealed themselves off. In France, the government closed access to the country’s 7,400 medicalized facilities for the most dependent older adults on March 11, six days before putting the entire country in lockdown. But by then, the coronavirus already was starting to take its toll.

A fat yellow file of complaints on the desk of Paris lawyer Fabien Arakelian is one measure of the fury of families determined to get answers. The first complaint he filed targeted a home that he says lost 40 of its 109 residents; the pile has only grown since.

Arakelian himself lost his grandfather in a nursing home before the pandemic.

“Unlike these families, I was lucky enough to be able to accompany him to the end, give him a final kiss, say a final goodbye. They didn’t get that, and it can never be given back to them,” he says. “That’s why I am fighting.”

An urgent need for answers also is driving Olivia Mokiejewski. Among them: Why did the care-home worker she saw sitting next to her grandmother when they video-chatted during lockdown not wear a mask or gloves and also pass the phone from one person to the next without disinfecting it?

Her grandmother, Hermine Bideaux, was rushed to the hospital 11 days later, after her worried granddaughter asked a family friend who is a doctor to be allowed to visit her. The doctor said he found the 96-year-old in a desperate state -- barely conscious, feverish and severely dehydrated. Diagnosed in the hospital with COVID-19, she clung on for three days before dying April 4.

Mokiejewski has filed a manslaughter and endangerment suit accusing the Korian Bel Air home on the southwest outskirts of Paris of failing to prevent the spread of the disease. That was followed by a suit brought by the niece of an 89-year-old who sat with Mokiejewski’s grandmother during the video call and who died two days after her.

Signaling that the accusations warrant looking into, Paris-region prosecutors have accepted both complaints and five others like them and turned them over to police investigators.

Korian, a market leader in the industry, says the residence isn’t at fault.

“The staff fought daily, day and night, to protect the residents with a lot of courage and lots of devotion,” said Emmanuel Daoud, a lawyer for the home.

Mokiejewski has set up a support group for families seeking redress called the 9,471 Collective, named for the number of care-home deaths on May 5, when the group was founded. She acknowledges that evidence-gathering could be a challenge.

“Everything happened behind closed doors, among people with cognitive disorders,” she says. “They are perfect victims, perfect witnesses for this type of establishment. They have no memories. They’re no longer sure. They’re lost. Their friends have gone.”

Arakelian’s latest suit was filed this week on behalf of Monette Hayoun, alleging manslaughter and endangerment in the March 26 death of her brother in the Amaraggi Residence in Paris.

The director at Amaraggi, reached by telephone, said she did not want to be quoted. The charitable foundation that manages the home did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.

The Residence Amaraggi nursing home (AP Photo/Michel Euler).

In emails to residents’ families, managers had acknowledged at least 19 deaths among its 80 residents in March and April. Meyer was among the first to go.

As a child, Meyer had contracted diphtheria and meningitis, and raging fevers damaged his brain. He had a knack for memory games and was able to recite family birthdates and phone numbers, but couldn’t alert people when he was thirsty or hungry. On the sliding scale used in France to measure dependency, Meyer was graded GIR 1, reserved for people in beds and wheelchairs who require continual care.

When Amaraggi closed its doors in March, Monette told her two other brothers that Meyer would not survive without his daily visits from two external assistants the family had hired to keep him fed, hydrated, clean and clothed. On March 10, one of the brothers, Robert Haiun, a doctor, wrote to the home’s managers, pleading for an exception to the no-visitors rule.

“The Amaraggi Residence is permanently under-staffed,” the brother wrote. “In this particularly delicate period, this under-staffing risks becoming worse as the workload increases for all the staff and residents become fragile. By taking away this help for lunch, the afternoon snack and the evening that we have put in place for Meyer, Amaraggi is shouldering a great responsibility that we cannot accept because this concerns our brother’s life.”

Meyer’s helpers tried gaining access in subsequent days, but were turned away, the family says.

Before the coronavirus lockdown, Monette, Robert and Gilbert Haiun took turns to ensure that their brother, Meyer, always got a visit from at least one of them every day (AP Photo/Francois Mori).

In lockdown, only Robert was able to use his status as a doctor to visit Meyer, twice. The second visit filled him with despair: He felt Meyer had the same exhausted look as their mother when she died at age 105 in 2017.

Robert says the home’s doctor called the afternoon of Meyer’s death to say he suspected he was falling sick himself with COVID-19 and was leaving. But first, he promised to put Meyer on an intravenous drip because Robert was concerned his brother was too weak to eat or drink and was becoming dehydrated.

About three hours later, the doctor called again: A nurse had found Meyer dead in his room.

Robert says that when he asked about the drip, “He told me, `I gave the order but I don’t know if it was done.’”

He is torn about taking legal action.

“It will be very difficult to prove that there was clear and flagrant neglect,” he says. “At best, we’ll prove negligence and what will that solve?”

Already, the difficulty of gaining information has evidenced itself: Only on May 4, after repeated pleas from relatives, did managers disclose that 19 residents had died, saying they previously withheld that information because “it appeared to us to be particularly worry-inducing and harmful to communicate this data to the families.”

The family of the 82-year-old Holocaust survivor who choked to death last September has chosen not to file suit, dissuaded by the prospect of taking on the home’s operator — the Casip-Cojasor Foundation, headed by Eric de Rothschild, a scion of Europe’s most famous banking dynasty.

The foundation has a long, proud history of assisting needy Jews, and Meyer Haiun’s parents were among those who benefited from its charity when they moved from Tunisia to France in the 1960s.

Philippe Chekroun, the son-in-law of the man who choked, said he felt it “would be pointless for just two or three of us to go up against a machine, a steamroller like the Casip.”

“How can you go to trial against people like that, knowing that the person who controls all this is the Rothschild family?” he said. He asked that his father-in-law’s name not be published.

Monette worked into the small hours at night preparing her wrongful death suit. Finishing the complaint felt cathartic, a concrete act in memory of her brother. "I feel like a 100 kilogram weight has been lifted," she said. This photo shows her holding a picture of Meyer flanked by their parents (AP Photo/Francois Mori).

But Monette Hayoun cannot let go: She feels she betrayed the promise she made to their mother that she would always protect her brother.

A week after Meyer’s death, the family received a brief email from Amaraggi’s chief nurse, saying: “He didn’t call out for anyone and didn’t leave a message.”

That was no comfort for his family: Meyer barely spoke, and he could not write.

___

VIDEO: Stricken by diphtheria and meningitis as a child, Meyer barely spoke and couldn’t alert people when he was thirsty or hungry, leaving him dependent on continual care.

#EndTheForeverWar

Afghanistan War Exposed: An Imperial Conspiracy

•Jun 26, 2020

Empire Files

Abby Martin covers the whole truth about the Afghanistan War, from the CIA construct of the 80's through today's senseless stalemate. Two decades, three administrations, tens of thousands of lives; it's time to #EndTheForeverWar. Keep Empire Files independent and ad-free: https://www.patreon.com/empirefiles Watch Abby's interview with Afghanistan combat veteran for more information about the senseless Forever War: https://youtu.be/-thYBWf_AIM FOLLOW // https://twitter.com/EmpireFiles // https://twitter.com/AbbyMartin LIKE // https://www.facebook.com/TheEmpireFiles MERCH // https://empirefiles.store MUSIC by Anahedron // https://open.spotify.com/artist/3tmcV... MUSIC by Fluorescent Grey // https://open.spotify.com/artist/4lPW7...

Black candidates push race debate into GOP-held districts

By SARA BURNETT and CASEY SMITH

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In this Friday, June 19, 2020, photo Jeannine Lee Lake, Democratic candidate for Indiana's 6th congressional district, speaks to the crowd gathered for Juneteenth day event in Columbus, Ind. The reenergized movement against racial inequality and police brutality following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis has amplified the voices of Black candidates across the country. Among them is Lake, who is challenging Rep. Greg Pence, the vice president's brother, in a deeply conservative Indiana district. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
COLUMBUS, Ind. (AP) — It was a scene Jeannine Lee Lake never would have imagined when she first ran against Greg Pence, Vice President Mike Pence’s brother, for a rural Indiana congressional seat two years ago: an almost entirely white crowd of more than 100 people marching silently in the Pences’ hometown this month, offering prayers for Black people killed by police and an end to systemic racism.

Leading them was Lake, who is in rematch against Pence. She is the only Black woman running for federal office in Indiana this fall.

The Democrat, who lost badly in 2018 and again faces long odds in the deeply conservative district, has spent much of the past few weeks at events such as the one in Columbus on Juneteenth. In communities across a district that is 93% white, Lake has talked about seeing her children pulled over by police and “harassed for no reason.” She has spoken the names of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other Black people killed by police, telling crowds “we’re here to call for change.”

“In no way, shape or form is 2018 the same as the 2020 race in regard to the grassroots effort and the galvanization of the movement that is now Black Lives Matter,” said Lake, 50. “It’s just a total shift.”

The reenergized movement against racial inequality has amplified the voices of Black candidates, in some cases pushing the political debate over race into Republican-leaning areas. Democrats say they’ve seen a significant boost in fundraising and other engagement for candidates running on racial justice issues, and believe it could help the party flip some Republican-held districts in November.

Polls show usually broad bipartisan support for some change to the nation’s criminal justice system. But lawmakers in Washington are at an impasse after far-reaching federal legislation passed the Democrat-led House on Thursday over objections from Republicans. Pence voted no, saying he opposes changes to the qualified immunity system that shields officers from liability.

In Arkansas, Democratic state Sen. Joyce Elliott says she’s seeing new momentum in her bid to unseat GOP Rep. French Hill and become the state’s first Black woman elected to Congress. She began running digital ads shortly after Floyd’s death last month. In them, she spoke about her experience integrating a school in the 1960s where she and other Black students weren’t wanted

It was the kind of fundraising appeal that typically would bring in about $1.50 for every $1 a congressional campaign spent on the ad buy. This ad cost Elliott’s campaign about $2,500 and raised $24,000 within one week, said Julia Ager, president of Sapphire Strategies, the digital firm for Elliott’s campaign. Other Black candidates are seeing a similar trend, she said.

“The environment is different, and that environment has created a boon of support,” Ager said. For people who are tired of inaction and want to see more Black people in Congress, “it seems like a clear place to direct money.”

Elliott, 69, has also been traveling to Black Lives Matter protests around the district, which includes Little Rock and its suburbs and has been represented by a Republican for more than a decade. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the kidney donor speaks to crowds from the back of a pickup truck, often to predominantly white audiences. She tells her story of overcoming adversity, mentioning the people in school who didn’t want her or other Black students there. At one recent event, the crowd gathered in the shadow of a Confederate statue, where the discussion turned to trying to have it removed.

After a lifetime of feeling like she had to “push, push, push,” Elliott said, “now it feels like this is a big warm embrace.”

Her campaign has been backed by EMILY’s List, which supports women in politics, and the Congressional Black Caucus PAC.

“I’m feeling now as if a door has opened,” Elliott said. “People can look at someone like me and say, ‘Why not Joyce Elliott? Isn’t she the right person for this moment?’”

In North Carolina, Democrats saw Pat Timmons-Goodson as a strong candidate for a newly redrawn congressional district held by Republican Rep. Richard Hudson even before the discussion over policing and racial inequality was reinvigorated.

Timmons-Goodson was the first Black woman on the Supreme Court of North Carolina and served on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, where she helped write recommendations on policing. In 2016, President Barack Obama nominated her to the federal court, though the nomination was among those blocked by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and other Republicans.

Timmons-Goodson received national attention during that debate, as the seat on the court was left vacant for years and became part of a national fight over the courts. But her campaign says support for her candidacy exploded in recent weeks. Timmons-Goodson reported fewer than 1,000 individual contributions for the first quarter of 2020. In the quarter that ends Tuesday, the campaign expects to report some 20,000 contributions.

Lake may have a tougher fight ahead in Indiana, but she’s had to order more campaign signs and more than doubled her ranks of campaign volunteers. Pence’s campaign largely ignores her bid.

Other Black activists tell Lake they’re considering running for office, too. Her campaign also is organizing “Candidates for Change” events, which will be held in more than half the district’s 19 counties and will focus on issues of policing, inequality and systemic racism — conversations that may not have occurred before in some places. Even as the pandemic has canceled much campaigning, the protests have gone on.

“I’m going to keep on going, as long as they do,” she said.

___

Burnett reported from Chicago. Smith is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Scientists say they've pinpointed the reasons why people protest. They're all visible in Black Lives Matter demonstrations.''

MK Manoylov JUNE 27,2020

Demonstrators gather at the Lincoln Memorial during a protest against racial inequality in the aftermath of the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, in Washington, U.S., June 6, 2020. Carlos Barria/Reuters


Researchers from the Netherlands looked at the scientific literature covering why people protest.

From the existing published papers, the authors came up with five overarching theories: grievances, efficacy, emotions, identity, and social embeddedness.

Though the study was published in 2013, protesters participating in the Black Lives Matter movement today show similar reasons for making their voices heard in the streets.

There are many reasons why people protest, but researchers in the Netherlands say they've teased out the motivations fueling the desire to join public demonstrations like the Black Lives Matter rallies happening across the country in the wake of George Floyd's killing.

Psychologist Bert Klandermans and sociologist Jacquelien van Stekelenburg, both of VU Amsterdam, looked at the social psychology literature on protests since the 1950s. They mainly looked at books and articles about protest analysis with a social psychological approach, and focused on Western democratic countries, van Stekelenburg told Insider.

The authors say you can think of protest as a type of market metaphor — the type seen in an economics class. In economics, consumers demand a product and suppliers give it to them. Enough aggrieved citizens will demand protests, and then organizations will need to help supply them by coordinating when and where a protest happens.

Van Stekelenburg equates the role of marketing in economics to mobilization, or getting people from their homes and into the streets, for protests. Marketers identify demands and help lead consumers to the best product for that demand. Protest mobilizers see that people are angry and help guide protesters to the street at a certain date and time. While it may sound crass, you can think of why people protest as why they would buy a product.


The reasons why protests occur are unique, and the paper focused on social psychology and not behavioral economics. The study, published in Current Sociology Review in 2013, found five main factors behind why people protest — and they mirror what we see in Black Lives Matter demonstrations today.

Demonstrators protest against racial inequality in the aftermath of the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on June 6, 2020. Bastiaan Slabbers/Reuters

Grievances
Citizens must be angry about something, which creates a demand for change.

"Most of the time, nothing happens," Klandermans said. "They're angry, they're angry, and they are angry, and then nothing happens."

But Klandermans explained that when a grassroots organization or a political leader comes along, they can help mobilize these angry citizens into action.

Efficacy
Efficacy is an individual's belief that they can change their conditions or policies through protest, the researchers wrote.

They base this statement on 2008 research finding that those who feel high efficacy are also more likely to participate in a protest. The authors also used older research from 1999 suggesting that group rather than personal efficacy prompted people to protest.

Mariah Parker has been the Athens-Clarke county commissioner for Athens, Georgia, since 2018. Parker helped organize protests for a variety of issues and has recently participated in some of the past 10 Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the college town.

"We have all the energy as young folks," Parker told Insider. "When we gather collectively and have a show of strength in terms of sheer numbers, I think that can be pretty powerful."

An aerial view of Hollywood Boulevard painted with the words 'Black Lives Matter’ as protests continue in the wake of George Floyd’s death on June 13, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. The message, fully displayed as 'All Black Lives Matter', was painted in rainbow colors to represent diversity within the black LGBTQ+ community amid Pride celebrations supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. Mario Tama/Mario Tama/Getty Images
Identity
The more you identify with a group, the more likely you are to participate in protests benefiting that identity, van Stekelenburg said. Even if you're not a part of that group, identifying with others creates an awareness of your shared fate in your political system, which can spur you into action.

"I, as a Latina identifying woman, grew up in the melting pot bubble that is South Florida," Dayami Gomez, an NYC Buddy System Coordinator for Brooklyn, told Insider. "It wasn't until I moved to New York City last year that I became surrounded by [racism and police brutality]."

Gomez described watching and intervening when racism affected her Black and brown peers. The deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor broke their hearts and hers.

"I became restless," Gomez said. "I didn't know how or what I was going to do, so I just got up, got dressed, and went outside to join my community."

Emotions

"Anger is seen as the prototypical protest emotion," Klandermans and van Stekelenburg wrote in their study, which posited protests as group-based anger transformed into action.

Anger, rather than other emotions like shame, despair, or fear, also gives people a more adversarial relationship with authorities, the authors wrote.

Demonstrators march during a peaceful protest against police brutality and racism on June 6, 2020 in Dallas, Texas. Cooper Neill / Stringer / Getty Images

Social Embeddedness
People came together to make protests occur. Talking to others about what's wrong in your society creates shared grievances and emotions instead of personal ones, van Stekelenburg said.

These networks also help identify "what's making us mad, who's to be blamed, and what can we do about it," she said.

And when other social networks or political leaders create the means to mobilize, it's these social networks that keep people accountable. Social networks are of the "utmost importance" for protests to occur, van Stekelenburg said.

The NYC Buddy System helps people find others to attend BLM protests with. It also gives information on where and when protests will happen.

"The reason I first got involved was because I supported the BLM movement but felt that reposting and donating didn't seem like enough," Emely Jude, an NYC Buddy System Coordinator for Queens, told Insider.

Jude couldn't physically protest due to family members at high-risk for COVID-19, but she saw the NYC Buddy System as one way to participate in the social movement.

"This was all started to help those who were going to protests, rallies, chalk-writings, etc, to be able to have a group or someone to go with if they were planning on going alone," Jude said. "It has been a unifying feeling getting to see how willing people are to help one another, even if it's to simply answer a question."

On The Day George Floyd Died, Police Across The US Shot And Killed At Least Five Other Men

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