Biden’ My Time: Soviet Newspaper Reveals What the Democratic Candidate Did Back in the USSR


© REUTERS / Kevin Lamarque

There was a well-publicised Bernie Sanders trip to the USSR in 1988, but Joe Biden, the would-be Democratic presidential candidate, visited America's Cold War foe years before, when the geopolitical situation was much more complex.

Joe Biden visited the Soviet Union in August 1979 as part of a five-day Senate mission to discuss disarmament.

A brief piece in the Pravda newspaper, published on 27 August that year, recapped Biden’s visit to Leningrad at the helm of a group of US senators.
They reportedly paid tribute to victims of the Second World War at a local cemetery, with the 36-year-old Biden saying: “Humanity is thankful to Leningraders for their great feat. The peace they achieved must become the goal of our life.”

The Americans also went to the Hermitage Museum and the Peterhof Palace, before attending a dinner with members of the city executive committee, according to the article.

Biden, then the Democratic senator from Delaware and head of the European Affairs sub-committee of the Foreign Relations Committee, was leading a group of lawmakers who were uncertain about the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) with the Soviet Union.

A month prior to the visit, the two nuclear-armed superpowers signed the SALT II treaty, which would put broad limitations on strategic offensive weapons. US Congress refused to ratify the agreement, and Biden, a vocal supporter of the deal, took some of the senators to the USSR to bring them on board and educate Soviet leaders about their concerns.

The trip left him with the impression that the Soviet leadership was genuinely prepared to consider deep cuts to its nuclear and conventional arsenal, but the war in Afghanistan that started in December 1979 upended the decade-long detente, and the SALT II treaty was never ratified.

The Biden-led group of senators also visited Moscow, where they met with then-Soviet Prime Minister Aleksei Kosygin, Defence Minister Dmitry Ustinov, and several other high-profile members of the government and parliament (some details of the trip have been declassified).

Recalling those talks during a 2011 visit to Russia, Biden said that Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev was “sicker than we thought then”.

Biden recounted: “He excused himself and left the meeting early and turned it over to Kosygin, Premier Kosygin, who in his opening statement said the following – I will never forget it – he said: ‘Before we begin our discussion, Senator, let’s agree that we do not trust you, and you do not trust us. And we both have good reason.’”

‘Convenient Excuse’: Trump New Hampshire Rally Called Off Due to Low Ticket Sales, Not Bad Weather


© AP Photo / Mary Altaffer

When US President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign called off a rally in New Hampshire over the weekend, they claimed it was because of a tropical storm bearing down on New England. However, a figure close to the campaign has claimed the reason was actually embarrassingly low ticket sales.

It now appears Tropical Storm Fay, which swept through the northeastern US over the weekend, was nothing more than a “convenient excuse” for Trump to cancel a planned rally in the storm’s path, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.

“It’s the perfect timing,” an unidentified outside adviser to the Trump 2020 campaign told NBC on Friday. “The weather may have been dissuading people to attend, but many weren’t coming to begin with because of the virus.”

The rally was supposed to be held outdoors in the coastal city of Portsmouth, but forecasters predicted the storm would pass before Trump’s 8 p.m. event on Saturday. The storm made landfall in New Jersey on Thursday before heading north across eastern New York and western Vermont, crossing the border into Canada by 5 p.m. on Saturday.

According to NBC, when Trump campaigned in the Granite State in 2016, he packed a stadium of 11,000, but this time around, far fewer people wanted to risk the storm or potential COVID-19 infection to attend. In addition, the canceled Saturday rally was to be held inside a large airport hangar, not at a downtown sports venue.

A contributing factor might have been the campaign’s strategic decision not to hype the Portsmouth rally, having suffered an embarrassing reversal last month in Tulsa, Oklahoma, when a rally for which Trump expected record attendance instead turned out to be a dud: just 6,200 people showed up to an auditorium that seats 19,000, and for which Trump boasted 1 million had applied for tickets.

Trudeau urges Trump to think twice ABOUT ALUMINIUM TARIFFS 
By James McCarten | News, US News, Politics | July 13th 2020

Aluminum in a smelter is seen at the Alouette aluminum plant in Sept-Iles, Que., on Tuesday, May 21, 2019. File photo by The Canadian Press/Jacques Boissinot

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urged Donald Trump to think twice Monday before imposing new tariffs on Canadian aluminum, saying the sector is emerging from the pandemic-induced production stance that prompted the White House to consider such measures in the first place.

Trudeau, who said in a news conference he had spoken to the U.S. president earlier in the day, told him that with the North American economy getting back up to speed, Canada's aluminum smelters would soon be back producing value-added specialty products for the American auto sector.

The spectre of new tariffs emerged last month after Canadian producers, unable to shut down production and with their usual customers hamstrung by the impact of COVID-19, were forced to make a more generic form of aluminum and ship it to warehouses in the United States.

That alarmed certain U.S. smelter owners and operators, who have been urging the U.S. trade representative's office to slap fresh levies on imports from Canada.

The pandemic "caused certain disruption in the aluminum sector that is starting to realign itself, given the economies are starting up again and manufacturing is getting going," Trudeau said after his call with Trump.

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"I impressed upon him that it would be a shame to see tariffs come in between our two countries at a time where we're celebrating NAFTA and at a time where we want our businesses and our manufacturers to get going as quickly as possible."

Canada has been on the outside looking in when it comes to the coming into force of NAFTA's successor, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which took shape in 2017 and 2018 before a backdrop of steadily worsening relations between Trump and Trudeau.

While Trump welcomed Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to a celebratory event at the White House last week, Trudeau kept his distance, citing the tariff dispute and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic among his reasons. A readout from Monday's call said the prime minister "expressed regret" for being unable to attend.

The U.S. trade representative reportedly gave Canada a deadline of July 1 to impose export restrictions — the very day the USMCA took effect. That deadline has come and gone without a hint from either the White House or U.S. trade ambassador Robert Lighthizer about what happens next.

Trudeau said he and Trump also discussed the Canada-U.S. border, where non-essential travel has been curtailed since March in an effort to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus. The 30-day bilateral agreement to limit discretionary cross-border travel without restricting trade or essential workers has been extended three times and is now set to expire July 21.

Since the last extension, however, the public health crisis in the U.S. has exploded.

More than 100,000 new COVID-19 cases were identified over the weekend, particularly in southern states that reopened early, with Florida emerging as the new epicentre. Canada has had 108,000 confirmed cases in total, compared with more than 3.3 million cases and 135,000 deaths in the U.S. to date.

Hospitals in major urban centres across the United States are again nearing capacity and health care workers face another critical shortage of personal protective equipment like masks and respirators.

Recent polls suggest Canadians remain unequivocally opposed to reopening the border any time soon — a predictable symptom of the accelerating crisis in the U.S., said Kathryn Friedman, a University at Buffalo law professor and Wilson Center global fellow.

But there could be other lingering foreign-policy irritants at play, she added.

"I wonder if the United States had treated our dear neighbour, friend and ally a little bit better over the last three-and-a-half or so years, if the reaction would be as harsh," Friedman said. "Maybe people are just like, 'Well, too bad, I don't care if you want to open the border.'"

Friedman is among several Canada-U.S. experts, border community leaders, northern state lawmakers and others who want to see a plan for when the time comes to lift the restrictions.

"I think we have to have this conversation," she said. "I think we have to engage the right people now, so that when the border restrictions are eased, whenever that's going to be, they are done so responsibly."

It's less a question of when and more a question of how, Friedman said — what sort of controls, testing and screening measures and other tools will need to be in place even after the emergency has passed.

"I'm more concerned that the climate will change, and some relevant government officials won't have given any thought to how this border opening is going to take place," she said.

"We have to get our act together and really think more clearly about how we're going to handle these kinds of situations in the future, and really use science-based data — an evidence-based, science-based approach — to health screenings when it comes to border restrictions and border policies."

Trudeau demurred Monday when asked whether this time, Canada and the U.S. might negotiate a closure that lasts longer than the standard 30-day window.

"We will be discussing with our American partners what the next steps should be, and I think this is a situation that is evolving rapidly and we need to keep responding to the situation on the ground."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 13, 2020

How Fauci's relationship with the White House appeared to break down through the coronavirus response

President Donald Trump with Dr. Anthony Fauci on May 15, 2020. Throughout the White House's coronavirus response, slews of reports have detailed Fauci's fading relationship with the administration, though Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, emerged as an expert voice in the White House's chaotic response to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

In the early days of the response, President Donald Trump praised Fauci, saying at a March press briefing he was "doing a tremendous job working long, long hours."

However, Fauci's relationship with the White House has since grown distant from the outside as he was cut from appearances, openly broke with the administration on claims about the virus, and said in a recent interview he hadn't briefed the president in two months, though he didn't reveal why.

Dr. Anthony Fauci was announced as a member of the White House coronavirus task force on January 31. Fauci emerged early on as the widely recognized face of the US coronavirus response, offering sober forecasts and prevention recommendations as Trump largely downplayed the threat of the virus (and even floated conspiracy theories and unproven cures).

However, in recent months, Fauci appears to have been sidelined by the White House as the coronavirus response has grown politically charged. President Donald Trump's administration was even reported to be attempting to discredit the infectious disease expert as states across the US are experiencing large surges in outbreaks of the virus.

Here's a timeline of the reported decline in the relationship between the infectious disease expert and the White House:

NYC reported zero deaths from wo months after announcing the task force as the administration was ramping up its response amid rising outbreaks across the country, Trump praised Fauci at a March 13 press briefing, calling him "Tony" and saying the expert was "doing a tremendous job working long, long hours."
By early April, reports began to surface that indicated Fauci and Trump's relationship had begun to sour.
On April 12, Fauci told CNN that "no one is going to deny" the US could have saved lives by instituting containment measures earlier on in the pandemic based on prior warnings from public-health experts.
Later that day, Trump retweeted a post that included the hashtag "#Fire Fauci," which raised alarms that the public-health expert could be the latest in a line of administration officials ousted by the president.
Fauci later walked back his comment and defended Trump's record with the coronavirus response. 

Following a May 4 interview on CNN, Fauci was noticeably absent from public appearances for about two weeks, before a May 21 town hall on CNN, where he said the public would "probably be seeing a little bit more" of him.
On June 1, CNN reported that Fauci said he hadn't spoken to Trump in two weeks.
As cases surged across the US in June and Trump continued to downplay outbreaks, Fauci found other platforms to speak out on the state of the country through other outlets.
"As a country, when you compare us to other countries, I don't think you can say we're doing great," he said on a FiveThirtyEight podcast aired July 9. "I mean, we're just not."
In an interview with the Financial Times published on July 10, Fauci revealed he hadn't seen the president since June 2 and hadn't briefed him in at least two months, though he continued meetings with the task force. 

Fauci's apparently distant relationship with the White House took a turn in mid-July when an unnamed White House official told CNN that the administration had drawn up a list of "wrong" things Fauci had said in February and March that have since been scrapped from his recommendations for Americans.
Peter Navarro, a trade adviser for Trump, told the Post in a statement on Fauci's distance from the White House that while "Dr. Fauci has a good bedside manner with the public, but he has been wrong about everything I have ever interacted with him on."
Press secretary Kayleigh McEnany bat down reports characterizing Trump and Fauci as at odds, saying at a July 13 press briefing that "the notion of opposition research and 'Fauci versus the president' couldn't be further from the truth," and the two "have a good working relationship."

Trump echoed McEnany, telling reporters later that day he has a "very good relationship" with Fauci and does not intend to fire him. 

THE KISS OF DEATH, HE INTENDS TO FIRE HIM ON A FRIDAY

EU, Turkey clash over Hagia Sophia, Mediterranean drilling

EU IMPOTENT LIKE UN

THE UN WILL HAVE TO SURROUND UNESCO SITES WITH PEACE KEEPERS

TO STOP THEIR NATIONALIZATION

1 of 12 https://apnews.com/3017394f54b5ecc13fc13384a7cfb110
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell speaks during a media conference after a meeting of EU foreign ministers at the European Council building in Brussels, Monday, July 13, 2020. European Union foreign ministers met for the first time face-to-face since the pandemic lockdown and will assess their discuss their relations with China and Turkey. (Francois Lenoir, Pool Photo via AP

BRUSSELS (AP) — Turkey and the European Union clashed on Monday over Ankara’s decision to change the status of Hagia Sophia from a museum to a mosque and its continued energy exploration in disputed Mediterranean waters.

After their their first face-to-face meeting in months, the 27 EU foreign ministers said that they “condemned the Turkish decision to convert such an emblematic monument as the Hagia Sophia,” EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said.

“This decision will inevitably fuel the mistrust, promote renewed division between religious communities and undermine our efforts at dialog and cooperation,” he said after the meeting of EU foreign ministers.

He said there was “broad support to call on the Turkish authorities to urgently consider and reverse this decision.” Hagia Sophia was originally built in Istanbul as a Christian cathedral, and the pope and others have expressed their sadness and criticism of the move by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Greek government spokesman Stelios Petsas said Monday that the EU was “faced with a challenge and insult” meted out by Erdogan.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu hit back and rejected international intervention concerning its decision to convert Hagia Sophia back into a mosque.

“Hagia Sophia was left as a legacy as a mosque and must be used as a mosque,” Cavusoglu told state broadcaster TRT. “We strongly reject comments that amount to an intervention in Turkey’s sovereign rights.”

Borrell was in Turkey last week where he also discussed Ankara’s disputes with Greece and Cyprus over energy exploration in the eastern Mediterranean region. Turkey has dispatched warship-escorted vessels to drill for gas in an area where Cyprus insists it has exclusive rights. The Turkish government has said it’s acting to protect its interests in the area’s natural resources and those of Turkish Cypriots.

Petsas said that Turkish drilling was blatantly contrary to international obligations and international law” and said that Greece would be looking to prepare a list for possible “political, diplomatic and financial” sanctions.

Again, Cavusoglu stood firm.

“If Greece were to turn away from its maximalist ways and agree to a fair sharing (of rights), and if it were to convince Cyprus to a fair sharing of revenues (from the exploration of natural resources), then 80% of our problems would solved,” Cavusoglu said.

Borrell said there were no immediate decisions at Monday’s meeting but that the ministers would revisit the issue at their next meeting in Berlin in August.

Even as the rift between both sides was deepening, the 27 EU ministers couldn’t get that close among themselves either. It was their first in-person meeting since the coronavirus lockdown set in, but because of social distancing rules, there was only room for lots of elbow bumping for a greeting and little reading of lips, since ministers were wearing masks around the meeting table.

___

Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, and Derek Gatopoulos in Athens, Greece, contributed to this report.

#PRISONINDUSTRIALCOMPLEX

Congress questions private ICE detention center CEOs about pandemic response

July 13 (UPI) -- Four CEOs of private-sector immigrant detention companies defended their response to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic in front of a congressional subcommittee Monday.

Since the pandemic began, more than 3,000 detainees, 280 contractors and 45 ICE employees have tested positive for COVID-19. Two detainees and five contractors have died of complications after contracting COVID-19, a statement from Chairwoman Kathleen Rice, of the Border Security, Facilitation and Operations Subcommittee.

Rice said transfers between facilities and inadequate medical care are two factors spreading COVID-19 among detained populations.

Members of the House Homeland Security Committee requested testimony from heads of CoreCivic, Geo Group, Management and Training Corp and LaSalle Corrections after the DHS Inspector General issued a June report saying that facilities lacked the space to practice social distancing and lacked space to isolate detainees with symptoms or a coronavirus diagnosis.

More than 80 percent of the 34,000 immigrants in ICE custody are housed at privately run detention facilities. Contractors are paid $130 per day to house detainees.

Rice said ICE officials refused to attend the virtual hearing saying that the White House advised the agency not to testify in Congress unless the hearings were held in person.

CEOs said they worked with ICE to maintain best practices and that employees and detainees were tested regularly for symptoms and were then tested for COVID-19. Employees and detainees had access to masks, and were tested regularly, they said.

Whistleblowers from the Government Accountability Project and about 30 detainees who spoke to The New York Times have said that social distancing in ICE facilities is difficult, as 50-75 detainees are kept in each "pod" and that PPE for detainees is difficult to acquire.

Nearly half of the employees at a CoreCivic facility in Eloy, Ariz., recently tested positive for the virus, where CEO Damon Hininger, CEO of CoreCivic said that masks were "optional" for detainees.

Other committee members had questions about their specific local detention centers.

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"My office has heard reports of dozens and even hundreds of detainees being moved in and out of the Colorado facility with little or no notice to their families of their lawyers," said Joe Neguse, D-Colo.

Neguse asked about a disinfectant called HALT that was allegedly being used by Geo Group contractors in "crowded and confined spaces" in the Aurora, Colo., facility, saying that detainees were complaining of bloody noses and skin rashes.

George Zoley, CEO of Geo Group also denied to Neguse that detainees were asked to "volunteer" to clean common areas under threat of solitary confinement if they refused. The ACLU filed a $5 million class-action lawsuit in 2014 alleging that Geo Group had forced detainees to work as "slave labor" in the kitchens and laundry rooms for $1 per day.

ICE has worked within Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations and reduced the density of detainees to 70 percent in its facilities, said Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., the panel's ranking member.

The federal agency also released 900 detainees across the country who "posed a low risk to public safety," Higgins said.

Higgins complained that ICE contractors were doing their best to work with guidelines set by the CDC and Congress.

"We create ever moving goalposts for hardworking federal employees and contractors who are simply doing their jobs abiding by the laws as prescribed by Congress," Higgins said.

upi.com/7021718

A 51-Year-Old Immigrant Man From Mexico Has Died In ICE Custody After Testing Positive For COVID-19

The death comes more than a month after a Guatemalan man who tested positive for COVID-19 died in ICE custody.

Last updated on July 13, 2020,

Ted S. Warren / AP

A 51-year-old Mexican man has died in ICE custody at a Florida hospital after testing positive for COVID.

Onoval Perez-Montufa, 51, had been in ICE custody since June 15 and was detained at the Glades County Detention Center in Florida before he died on Sunday, ICE said in a statement. Perez-Montufa was a patient at Palm Beach County hospital since July 1 after reporting shortness of breath while in ICE detention.

He tested positive for COVID-19 on July 2, ICE said. The cause of death on Sunday was not immediately known.

Perez-Montufa's death comes more than a month after a 34-year-old Guatemalan man who had tested positive for COVID-19 died in ICE custody at a Georgia hospital in May. That man, 34-year-old Santiago Baten-Oxlaj, had been in ICE custody at Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin since early March, the agency confirmed in a statement.

There are currently 883 cases of COVID-19 among the 22,579 inmates in ICE custody.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, medical experts and immigrant advocates have warned that the coronavirus would put detainees at risk. They have pointed to the inherent problems within jails — such as 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.

In March, ICE officials began assessing their inmate population to locate “vulnerable” detainees, including those who are over 60 or are pregnant.

Federal judges across the country have ordered the release of 502 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.


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Adolfo Flores is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in McAllen, Texas..


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

Sea vegetables could become tasty new nutrition source


Sea asparagus and sea purslane are harvested by Professor Megan Davis (L) and staff as part of an aquaculture study at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. Photo by Megan Davis/Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute

ORLANDO, Fla., July 13 (UPI) -- Aquaculture experts and fish farm operators in Florida say a potential new crop, sea vegetables, could provide a tasty source of nutrition and generate revenue.

The native Florida vegetables that grow in salty areas near the ocean can be cultivated in fish farms using fish waste for fertilizer, according to new research. Such crops could provide a new sustainable and environmentally friendly source of nutrition, researchers say.

"I think there's a huge market for these sea veggies, which are more nutritious than even kale, the most nutritious soil-farmed plant," said Megan Davis, professor of aquaculture at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute in Fort Pierce, about 120 miles southeast of Orlando.

Davis led a 10-week study this spring to determine the best growing conditions for sea vegetables. Plants in the study were sea asparagus, which looks similar to regular asparagus; sea purslane, harvested for the fleshy leaves on long red stems; and saltwort, a smaller frilly plant.

RELATED Florida indoor farming firm turns pandemic disruption into opportunity

The plants are high in minerals, such as zinc and iodine, and vitamins, but Davis said she is awaiting a detailed nutrition analysis from the harvest.

"Obviously, a lot of people eat seaweed, but I think these sea vegetables appeal to a broader public. They have a crisp salty taste," Davis said.

Besides Florida, the sea vegetables are native to other coastal regions around the world. For the Harbor Branch experiment, they were grown in tanks that also raise fish, shrimp, urchins and oysters.

RELATED Iowa farm group restoring habitat for bees, fish

The vegetables were grown in three different types of hydroponic media -- sand, clay pebbles and only water with nutrients. Davis and other researchers used the waste from the marine life to provide nutrients, or fertilizer.

She said the sand provided the best growth in the study, which received $25,000 in funding from the state's marine-themed specialty license plate sales. One of the plants grew to weigh 2 pounds in 10 weeks.

Companies that farm fish, shrimp and clams said they were impressed with the findings by the institute, which is part of Florida Atlantic University.

RELATED Florida team studies hydroponic hemp as toxic algae remed

Shrimp farmer Robin Pearl said he'd like to add sea vegetables to his product lineup at his company, American Penaeid in Pine Island, Fla., 120 miles south of Tampa.

"We currently sell shrimp to many high-end restaurants, and we'd offer sea vegetables to the chefs who like new, interesting cuisine," Pearl said.

With 100 acres of shrimp tanks, Pearl's company has plenty of shrimp waste to use as fertilizer, he said.

"We've thought about doing this before, but we've been too focused on the business of growing shrimp. Given what we've learned, it might make sense now," Pearl said.

Shrimp are among many farmed marine products that could complement sea vegetables, said Carolina Panoff, sales and marketing manager at Seaventures Clam Co. in Fort Pierce.

Seaventures, founded in 2018, sells young clams to clam farmers. The company plans to grow sea vegetables, Panoff said.

"Sea vegetables look like an incredible market to get into. Seaweed is super healthy, and frankly, it should be available in every grocery store in the near future," Panoff said.

Poll: Most in U.S. wear mask in public 'always' or 'very often'
SURVIVAL OF THE FIT TESTED 

THESE PEOPLE WILL GET THE VIRUS ITS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME
Protesters rally against a mandatory statewide mask order in Ohio, at Edgewater Park in Cleveland, Ohio, on Saturday. Photo by Aaron Josefczyk/UPI | License Photo

MOST AMERICANS ARE NOT AS STUPID AS TRUMP, THE GOP OR THE TRUMP BASE

July 13 (UPI) -- Nearly three-quarters of Americans say they always wear a face mask when in public or do so "very often," a new Gallup poll showed Monday.

The survey examined mask use among respondents and found the numbers vary a bit along different demographics.

According to the poll, 44 percent said they "always" wear a mask away from their home, while 28 percent said they do so "very often."
Eleven percent said they wear a mask in public "sometimes," 4 percent said they "rarely" do and 14 percent said they "never" do.

"Although a broad majority of Americans are wearing masks in public at least very often, fewer are doing so all the time recommended by the CDC and other health officials," Gallup wrote. "Since April, a growing minority of U.S. adults are eschewing mask usage."

Gallup said in another survey last week that 86 percent of respondents said they'd worn a mask in public and 11 percent said they'd never considered it.

Monday's survey found that women (54 percent), Democrats (61 percent) and residents in the U.S. Northeast (54 percent) are most likely to always wear a mask in public. The lowest share (33 percent) was seen in the Midwest.
Researchers said the findings are from the probability-based online Gallup Panel survey that was conducted between June 29 and July 5.

DEVELOPMENT RUSH 

State of emergency called in Arctic after Russian fuel spill

It was the second Russian fuel spill in the Arctic in two weeks 



Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a virtual meeting near Moscow on the remedial action after the diesel fuel spill in Norilsk on June 19. A second spill in the Arctic Sunday caused officials there to call a state of emergency. Photo by Alexei Nikolsky/EPA-EFE

July 13 (UPI) -- The Taimyr District administration declared a state of emergency in the Arctic's Tukhard settlement located in the country's Krasnoyarsk Region Monday after a pipeline lost pressure and released jet fuel into the environment.

The pipeline, owned by the Nornickel Company subsidiary Norilsktransgas, is used to transfer fuel to a tank. It lost pressure Sunday, causing the line to break.

"According to updated information, a total of 55 cubic meters of fuel contaminated over 30 square meters of soil," the district said in a statement. "The fuel has also spread into two bodies of water connected by a stream."

Authorities said the spill was contained and prevented from spreading into the Bolshaya Kheta River with the use of seven lines of containment booms.

The company said 44.5 tons of fuel spilled for about 15 minutes. Nornickel, a mining company, said there was no threat to life or to the health of people in the area, but an internal investigation into what happened has started.

It was the second Russian fuel spill in the Arctic recently. Two weeks ago, 20,000 tons of diesel fuel spilled into a river at a power plant near Norilsk, a town just north of the Arctic Circle. In that case, four power plant employees were arrested on charges of violating environmental regulations.

Norilsk's mayor was also charged with negligence. Sergey Dyachenko, the chief operating officer of Norilsk Nickel, blamed global warming for thawing permafrost beneath it for the spill.