Sunday, November 15, 2020


After thousands of Trump supporters rally in D.C., violence erupts when night falls

President Trump’s supporters had celebrated for hours on Saturday, waving their MAGA flags and blaring “God Bless the U.S.A.” as they gathered in Washington to falsely claim that the election had been stolen from the man they adore. The crowd had even reveled in a personal visit from Trump, who passed by in his motorcade, smiling and waving.


VIDEO Trump supporters and far-right groups take to the streets of D.C.

But that was before the people who oppose their hero showed up and the mood shifted, growing angrier as 300 or so counterprotesters delivered a message the president’s most ardent backers were unwilling to hear: The election is over. Trump lost.

On stark display in the nation’s capital were two irreconcilable versions of America, each refusing to accept what the other considered to be undeniable fact.

While much of the day unfolded peacefully, brief but intense clashes erupted throughout. Activists spewed profanity and shouted threats, threw punches and launched bottles. On both sides, people were bloodied, and at least 20 were arrested, including four whose allegiances remain unknown on gun charges. The chaos also left two officers injured.



VIDEO Protesters clash as night falls in D.C.



When darkness fell, the counterprotesters triggered more mayhem as they harassed Trump’s advocates, stealing red hats and flags and lighting them on fire. Scuffles continued into the night as the provocateurs overturned the tables of vendors who had been selling pro-Trump gear and set off dozens of fireworks, prompting police to pepper-spray them.

At 8 p.m., violence broke out five blocks east of the White House between the president’s supporters, who wielded batons, and his black-clad detractors, many of whom had participated in racial justice rallies throughout the summer. As the groups approached the same intersection, they charged each other, brawling for several minutes before police arrived and cleared the area.

In the melee, a D.C. fire official said, a man in his 20s was stabbed in the back and taken to the hospital with serious injuries.

Hours later, with midnight approaching, a group of marchers unfurled a massive “TRUMP LAW AND ORDER” banner and laid it atop Black Lives Matter Plaza. Afterward, they carried it as close as they could get to a White House barricaded behind rows of high steel fencing.

The daytime demonstrations were urged on by Trump, who refuses to concede to Joe Biden or allow a formal transition to begin. On Saturday morning, as the president’s devotees remained in D.C. to fight for him, he headed to Trump National Golf Club in the Virginia suburbs for a round.


VIDEO Trump supporters in D.C. cheer as president's motorcade rushes by


After a week in which more than 750,000 Americans were diagnosed with the novel coronavirus, almost none of his backers wore masks. Among their ranks were white nationalists, conspiracy theorists and far-right activists carrying signs demanding action that was already being taken: “Count the legal votes.”

Trump had thrilled them when his motorcade appeared on Pennsylvania Avenue shortly after 10 a.m., prompting fans to scramble to the side of Freedom Plaza to catch a glimpse.

“He drove right past me. I saw him. He waved right past me,” one man said as he tried to collect himself.

A group of women huddled around a phone, looking at a video of Trump’s appearance near a Walt Whitman quote inscribed in the stone beneath them: “The President is there in the White House for you, it is not you who are here for him.”

© Matt McClain/The Washington Post 
People wave to President Donald Trump's motorcade Saturday as it drives past Freedom Plaza as supporters gathered for the Million MAGA March in D.C.

Then the appearance of counterprotesters sparked bursts of conflict, though they could have become far more violent had police not worked to keep the feuding sides separate. When a small group holding bright orange “Refuse Fascism” posters arrived at the edge of Freedom Plaza, they were almost immediately surrounded by Trump fans shouting “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” into their faces.

The women leading the tiny march fought their way up 14th Street, repeatedly breaking out of the crowd, only to be engulfed again.

“Trump, pack your s---! You’re illegitimate!” they yelled into their megaphone.

One pro-Trump man attempted to gouge the opposition with a flag bearing the president’s name. Another grabbed a woman’s neon orange poster and hit her with it.

When the women made it to the barrier set up by police across the street, Trump supporters filled the entire intersection, blocking them. Police arrived on bikes and, after several minutes, moved the crowd back. Shortly after, the group began singing the national anthem.

Nearby, on the street beside inscriptions from Abraham Lincoln recognizing the District as a place of freedom, people piled atop a U-Haul truck with a flag of a gun and the words “Come and take it.”

© Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post 
A Trump supporter is pushed back by a DC Police officer after trying to make his way towards the crowd gathered at Black Lives Matter Plaza. 

Later, near Union Station, another altercation broke out.

Roland Biser, a 69-year-old Pentagon employee who had attended a pro-Trump rally, was driving home when he said he saw a young man throw a rock at a group of Trump supporters. The rock grazed a woman, he said, and may have hit someone else.

Biser pulled over as a crowd quickly surrounded the young man and three others with him, all of whom were Black. Nearly a hundred Trump supporters quickly surrounded them before a dozen U.S. Capitol Police officers rushed in and separated the groups.

As police escorted the four young men away, the crowd taunted them, chanting “U.S.A.!”

“I didn’t do anything!” said one of them, who had been handcuffed. The 21-year-old D.C. resident insisted that it was the Trump supporters who had come after him.

A few minutes later, police removed the cuffs off and let him go.

© Matt McClain/The Washington 
Post Trump supporters face off with counter protesters along 14th Street in downtown D.C. during the Million MAGA March

A family of four on Capital Bikeshare bikes — the father with an American flag tied around his neck like a cape — were cut off by a line of counterprotesters as they tried to leave a tense scene outside the Supreme Court about 1 p.m.

“Get out of our city!” a young woman in black yelled.

“You lost, losers!” shouted a man.

The father and his teenage son began to chant “U.S.A.!” and raised their fists as police officers surrounded the family and pushed them out of the crowd.

“Why would you bring your kids here? It’s dangerous,” observed a man nearby, a helmet on his head and respirator hanging around his neck.

On a day when the president’s supporters touted a vast array of falsehoods, his spokeswoman, Kayleigh McEnany, offered perhaps the most ludicrous.

“More than one MILLION marchers for President @realDonaldTrump descend on the swamp in support,” she tweeted, vastly exaggerating the crowd size.

Hours before the official rally began, the Trump believers had started gathering Saturday morning at Freedom Plaza.

“They think we’re stupid,” a young White man with a microphone told the crowd. “They’re underestimating The Donald. They’re underestimating The Donald’s supporters.”

“They’re stupid!” a young White woman replied.

Speakers who addressed the aggrieved legions included Alex Jones, a discredited conspiracy theorist most famous for tormenting the families of school shooting victims, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, a recently elected congresswoman from Georgia who has promoted QAnon, which falsely alleges that famous Democrats belong to a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles.

 Proud Boys march outside Freedom Plaza in Washington to protest the election results. (Photo by Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post)

Among the rallygoers were members of the Proud Boys, an extremist group known for their black-and-yellow garb and endorsements of violence. Some wore flak jackets and helmets. “Stand Back, Stand By,” read several of their shirts, referencing the president’s directive to them during a September debate.

As conservative speakers at Freedom Plaza derided the news media, including Fox News, the Proud Boys marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, leading hundreds in chants of “F--- antifa!” and shouting down stray opponents who yelled “Black lives matter!”

“All lives matter!” they screamed back.

Marching with them was D.C. resident Justin Anthony, who waved a satirical sign that read, “Sue anyone who did not vote for this great American.”

He led chants to the tune of “Count only Trump votes” and danced around in a large mock police uniform with the name “Officer Pudge” on its badge.

Almost no one got it, he said. They joined in, asked for pictures, cheered.

“It’s crazy,” he said. “Like, they really don’t see how insane this is.”

Near the Supreme Court, a line of riot police stood facing a few dozen protesters resting homemade shields on the ground as a MAGA throng chanted and churned behind them.

“F--- antifa!” they shouted in unison.

“Who’s antifa?” one Trump supporter wondered.

“I don’t know,” another responded. “But they don’t like her!”

Snippets of speeches from the court’s steps floated over the crowd between roaring cheers. Listeners climbed trees on the Capitol grounds, where they hung onto trunks and flipped off counterprotesters with their free hands.

A woman standing next to a barricade prayed over a well-worn Bible, an American flag sticking out of her purse.

On the other side of the police line, behind the line of homemade shields stamped with the letters BLM, a man with a cane also hunched over a book: “Black Reconstruction in America,” by W.E.B. Du Bois.

At midday, along the east end of Freedom Plaza, a lone counterprotester stood on the sidewalk holding a sign that read “Trump is the fraud.” He wore a gray cloth mask.

A succession of Trump supporters approached the curb, unmasked, to offer their opinions of his solitary demonstration.

“Why didn’t your mother abort you?” one screamed. “You’re mentally disturbed, and you’re a coward, and you’re a f-----. I hope you get AIDS."

“I just feel strongly about the disinformation that’s being peddled on the Internet about fraud in this election,” said the counterprotester, a 40-year-old D.C. man who declined to give his name because he is a federal employee and feared repercussions at work.

As a thin film of sweat formed on his face, an elderly woman in red MAGA gear paused and stared at him sadly.

“We feel bad for you that you can’t see the truth,” she said.

“I feel the same way about you,” he replied.

Marissa Lang, Michael Miller, Peter Jamison, Justin Wm. Moyer, Clarence Williams, Peter Hermann, Fredrick Kunkle, John Woodrow Cox Moriah Balingit, Julie Zauzmer, Katie Mettler, Rachel Chason, Emily Davies, Michael Brice-Saddler and David Nakamura contributed to this report.

MAGA March: Trump supporters, far-right leaders and counterprotesters meet in Washington

Anti-Trump protesters clashed with supporters of the President and law enforcement Saturday evening in the nation's capital as they tried to make their way to a hotel where Trump supporters were staying.
© Jacquelyn Martin/AP 
With the U.S. Capitol in the background, supporters of President Donald Trump rally at Freedom Plaza, Saturday Nov. 14, 2020, in Washington.

By Julia Jones and Sara Sidner, CNN 

At least 20 people were arrested, according to LaToya Foster, a spokesperson for DC Mayor Muriel Bowser. Foster said two officers with the DC Metropolitan Police were injured.

The skirmishes came after a day of largely peaceful demonstrations by thousands of President Donald Trump's supporters of all stripes, including right-wing and far-right groups, to protest the election results


Smaller groups of counter demonstrators gathered downtown and near the Supreme Court in support of President-elect Joe Biden's electoral victory -- which the President has falsely described as fraudulent.

Many groups that attended the planned rallies have distinct core beliefs, but on Saturday were united in their unwavering support for the President. They included anti-government groups such as the Oath Keepers, far-right groups such as the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters, conspiracy theorists such as Alex Jones and Republican members of Congress.

Word of at least three different pro-Trump events circulated on social media in recent days -- "Stop the Steal," "March for Trump" and "Million MAGA March." Throngs began pouring into Freedom Plaza, just east of The White House, hours before the noontime events.

Organizers for the "March for Trump" event -- which obtained the permit for the rally -- did not respond to CNN's requests for comment.

Trump took notice of the gatherings and tweeted on Friday that he might make an appearance. Before Saturday's rallies, the President's motorcade passed cheering and waving supporters on his way to a golf outing.

Mainstream conservative voices and elected officials such as Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona and Rep. Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania were advertised as speakers for the "March for Trump" event.

The "Million MAGA March" announced its notable attendees would include conspiracy theorists and others like podcaster Nick Fuentes, who participated in the deadly 2017 Charlottesville "Unite the Right" rally, and Mike Cernovich, who pushed the "pizza gate" conspiracy theory.

Leadership and members of the Proud Boys, a far-right group that Trump asked to "stand back and stand by" during the first of two 2020 presidential debates, were in attendance.

Ben Hovland, a senior federal election security official appointed by Trump, has called the President's accusations of a rigged election "insulting" and "laughable."
© Julio Cortez/AP
 Throngs of President Donald Trump supporters poured into Freedom Plaza during demonstration.

While there had been warnings of potential violence, the daytime activities were mostly peaceful, without any major incidents.

To those who have been tracking far right and extremist groups for years, Saturday's rally illustrates the thinning of a line between the mainstream right and far-right extremists.

Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism, said he expected the vast majority of participants to be there solely to show their support for Trump, but the event was an opportunity for extremists to be mingling with that demographic.

"There's a platform there, there are pro-Trump supporters and conservatives, and people who want to express their support for this President, who are going to be mingling, if you will, with extremists," Segal said.

Just as misinformation about the elections made its way from fringe platforms into the Twitter feeds of the President's inner circle, Segal feared the Saturday march could have been its physical manifestation, spreading not only wrong information but hateful, extremist rhetoric.

"The fact that this sort of space is attracting those who buy into this idea that something is being stolen and taken away, and that extremists may be adjacent to them is a concern more broadly of the normalization of the extremists and of what could happen when you get a bunch of people together who are upset."
© Leah Millis/Reuters 
Throngs of "Stop the Steal" protesters gathered in Washington, DC 


This phenomena explains what’s wrong with Trump’s supporters’ brains: report


Published on November 15, 2020 By Tom Boggioni
A woman comes face-to-face with Donald Trump at a 2016 rally (Reuters)

In a column for the Daily Beast, Jay Michaelson suggests Donald Trump “dead-enders” will never accept that the president lost his re-election because they are not psychologically capable of letting go of their deeply held beliefs.

As Michaelson writes, Donald Trump has spent the last four years distorting reality to serve his own ends and his rabid followers have lapped up his lies because they comport with their own beliefs and cognitive dissonance rules their world.

“Human beings will do just about anything to resolve contradictions between our deeply held beliefs about the world and the reality of the world itself. Cognitive dissonance is so unpleasant, so disordering and catastrophic for the ego, that no amount of absurd, tortured reasoning is worse than reality contradicting a deeply held belief,” he wrote before adding, “All of us try to resolve cognitive dissonance, but the Trump movement has been a years-long exercise in it. Election denial is its latest manifestation. But before that came COVID denial, science denial, climate denial, ‘alternative facts,’ the inability of Trump’s most devoted fans to see him for the obvious con man that he is, and, at the movement’s very core, denial of the social and demographic changes that are transforming America.”

As the columnist notes, supporters of the president who have been buffeted by reality are increasingly reaching for far-fetched conspiracy theories which helped along groups like QAnon.

“Cognitive dissonance is also a primary reason that people resort to conspiracy theories, which Trumpworld increasingly resembles, not only in fringe manifestations like QAnon but in the allegation of widespread fraud in the presidential election, which, of course, has no factual basis whatsoever and is, at this point, simply a conspiracy theory writ large,” he explained. “In this light, QAnon isn’t some weird, fringe phenomenon with no connection to populist politics. It’s a logical extension of the populist worldview. If ‘the people’ are actually the majority, then a sinister minority—Jews, ‘coastal elites’, the media, the Satanic pedophiles, whoever—is actually in control. It’s a short jump from that to full-blown conspiracy madness. And when the anointed messenger of ‘the people’ turns out to be a buffoon chiefly interested in his own enrichment, well, that must all be a ruse. Or a media conspiracy. Or whatever.”

You can read more here (subscription required).
Exclusive: Drugmakers offer Canada C$1 billion to scrap some pending pricing rules
Canada's Minister of Health Patty Hajdu speaks in parliament during Question Period in Ottawa

Allison Martell
Sun, 15 November 2020

TORONTO (Reuters) - The pharmaceutical industry has made a last-ditch C$1 billion ($761 million) proposal to the Canadian government in hopes of fending off parts of a drug pricing crackdown set to go into effect on Jan. 1, according to industry documents reviewed by Reuters.

The remaining regulations would still reduce drugmakers' revenue by at least C$19.8 billion ($15.1 billion) over 10 years, according to an industry estimate.

If other costly reforms are shelved, the industry is willing to spend C$1 billion over the same period to boost local manufacturing and commercialization, and on new programs to improve access to drugs for rare diseases.

The government has argued that Canada's patented drug prices are too high, trailing only the United States and Switzerland, and that other countries with lower prices enjoy similar access to prescription medicines.

Innovative Medicines Canada (IMC), the industry's lobby group in Canada, met with Minister of Health Patty Hajdu on Oct. 16, and submitted a written proposal the following week, but has not yet heard back, IMC President Pamela Fralick said.

"We have come forward with some considerable options for government to consider, and there just does not seem to be that interest," Fralick said in an interview. "We felt it was time to let Canadians know what the government is, in fact, passing up."

In a statement, the health minister's office said the government will always consider proposals "about different ways to achieve the Government's objectives," but also noted that "no amendments to the regulations are currently in development."

"The position of the Government of Canada remains unchanged — Canada has among the highest patented medicine prices in the world, and these high prices negatively affect the ability of patients to access new medicines," said the statement.


Reuters reported in February 2019 that the industry had offered to give up C$8.6 billion in revenue over 10 years to head off the pricing reform plan.

The industry has since backed down on one part of the plan, which will change the comparison countries Canada's Patented Medicine Prices Review Board (PMPRB) uses as a benchmark to set some maximum prices. The PMPRB will drop the United States and Switzerland from its comparisons, and add nations with lower prices.

But the regulations also empower the PMPRB to consider the cost-effectiveness of new drugs, and their potential impact on government budgets, an approach the industry has fought for years.

Drugmakers and some patient groups argue that price reductions, and the uncertainty associated with the complex cost-benefit analysis that will be required for some new medicines, will make pharmaceutical companies less likely to launch new drugs in Canada's relatively small market.

While Canadian sales are not material to most global drugmakers, the new regulations could inspire similar reforms in other countries, or more directly affect foreign prices. Many countries set drug prices based in part on those in other countries, so price cuts could ripple across the globe.

The United States, the world's biggest prescription drug market, is a notable exception, with unregulated drug pricing.


That could change. The Trump administration had floated a plan that would take prices in other countries into consideration, although nothing has come of it. U.S. President-elect Joe Biden's platform similarly promised a new review board that would base payments by the government's Medicare health plan partly on prices in other countries.

IMC did not offer much detail on how a rare disease program could work, but said it could improve "access and sustainability." Drugs for rare diseases are particularly costly.

In some other countries, like Scotland, specially negotiated programs bring expensive rare disease drugs to market at a discount or with spending capped, giving drugmakers more time to prove their worth.

(Reporting by Allison Martell in Toronto; Editing by Denny Thomas and Bill Berkrot)

CANADA
As COVID-19 relief programs wind down, bankruptcies are starting to spike again

CBC/Radio-Canada
© Joe Raedle/Getty Images The number of Canadians on a financial knife's edge is set to grow as pandemic support programs continue to wind down.

After a lull in the early days of COVID-19, more and more Canadians are starting to declare bankruptcy again, and experts in the field say government has to do more and soon or the economy could face a tsunami of insolvencies in the coming months.

The Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy Canada reported this week 7,658 Canadians filed insolvencies in September, an increase of almost 19 per cent from the previous month's level and the highest since the COVID-19 pandemic began in March.

Despite the economic hardship that the pandemic has brought, bankruptcy proceedings actually slowed to a crawl for most of 2020 because the unprecedented slew of support programs gave many Canadians a boost to their incomes — and often a temporary respite from their debts, enough to keep their heads above water.

"In the early days of COVID, everything went on pause, including collections," licensed insolvency trustee Andre Bolduc said in an interview. "Finances went on the back burner but things are slowly getting back to the new normal."

The insolvency rate is actually about a third lower than it was this time last year, but experts like Bolduc expect it to multiply over the coming winter months and likely eclipse previous highs. "Before COVID a majority of households were living paycheque to paycheque," he said. "[Their] debts didn't go anywhere, [so] they will still be there after COVID."

Liz Mulholland, CEO of Prosper Canada, a charity dedicated to expanding economic opportunity for Canadians living in poverty, describes the situation as "a slow motion train wreck that's going to unfold over the next six months."

That's because while many parts of Canada's economy have largely recovered, that isn't the case for low-income Canadians, who were the most likely to lose a job to the pandemic and the least likely to have recovered one by now.

While many Canadians have managed to make ends meet, Mulholland estimates that as much as 25 per cent of the population are watching their financial position "worsening by the week. They are moving inexorably toward that financial cliff of insolvency and they will go over it sometime this winter," she said.

Government programs such as the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) were a lifeline for many of them, but with that program finished and now transferred into the less generous Canada Recovery Benefit — which is itself set to expire next year — the number of Canadians on a financial knife's edge is set to grow.

Michelle Pommells, CEO of Credit Counselling Canada, says those income support programs certainly helped, as did much publicized mortgage deferral programs that gave roughly one in six Canadian borrowers a temporary reprieve on interest payments. But those programs are also winding down now.

"For families that got into trouble, deferrals have helped but there's no such thing as a free lunch," she said in an interview.

Credit counselling


Pommells says even before the pandemic many people were not taking advantage of credit counselling services that can often help them find a path out of a financial quagmire.

She says the typical person going insolvent tends to have between four and six revolving lines of credit and is often shuffling debt from one into the next. "They are just moving the ball along until finally they can no longer acquire credit and then at that point it's pretty dire," she said. "Every month the pit of debt gets deeper [and it can be] tremendously difficult to get out of."

Insolvencies can take the form of a bankruptcy, where a borrower gets their debt wiped out but at the cost of losing any of their assets — and also find it next to impossible to borrow in the future. Or they can be what's called a proposal to creditors, where the borrower agrees to pay back a portion of what they owe, with the creditor's OK.

Credit counselling aims to give borrowers the tools they need to not slip beneath the waves again. Pommells said the recidivism rate (the number of people who end up going through the process again) is 0.01 per cent. "It works," she said.

Mulholland agrees that a big part of stemming the tide of insolvencies will be credit counselling programs. That's why she worries about other useful programs that were cut off at the knees by the pandemic.

Beyond the emergency programs created during the pandemic, low income Canadians are at risk of missing out on regular benefit programs because of shutdowns. Nearly three-quarters-of-a-million low income Canadians rely on free tax clinics to file their taxes. About 400,000 did so before lockdowns in March closed them all. A small number have since reopened, but she says it's likely that many people who use them still haven't filed their 2019 taxes yet.

That means 35,000 low-income seniors aren't eligible for the Guaranteed Income Supplement they would otherwise be entitled to. That's up to $917 a week. And the Canada Child Benefit pays out up to $6,000 a year per child to Canadian families, but it too depends on tax filings. Even beyond emergency programs, those two could be "paying rent and putting food on the table," Mulholland said.

It's why Prosper is asking the federal government to restart funding for a whole slew of programs that target those who need it most. Against the backdrop of a $343-billion federal deficit, the ask is a relative pittance — $15 million to help 750,000 Canadians most in need access financial health services they likely already qualify for.

Mulholland says other countries, including the U.K., Australia and New Zealand, have spent far more on similar initiatives, because the cost of inaction far outweighs the cost of the programs themselves.

"If 20 per cent of your population is in this boat, that's a real brake on your recovery [because] there is no consumer confidence. They are not going to be out there spending money," she said.

"As my mother would say, you're being penny wise and pound foolish."
Trump’s student loan cliff threatens chaos for Biden

At midnight on New Year’s Eve, President Donald Trump’s pause on student loan payments for 33 million Americans is set to expire, just three weeks before President-elect Joe Biden is slated to take over.
© Evan Vucci/AP Photo 
President Donald Trump walks away after speaking Nov. 5 in the White House briefing room.

The Education Department started warning borrowers through text messages and emails this week that their monthly payments will resume in January. Even though Trump said this summer that he planned to later “extend” the freeze beyond Dec. 31, a White House spokesperson declined to comment on whether the president is still considering another executive action to move the expiration date.

If Trump doesn’t act unilaterally and Congress doesn’t act to avert the cliff either, Biden could waive his own executive wand once inaugurated, though the president-elect's campaign will not divulge his plans. The intervening weeks of limbo could cause mass confusion and uncertainty for borrowers. For the incoming president, the economic and administrative mess could take months to untangle, consuming the early days of his Education Department.

The federal student loan system “was not designed to start and stop at the same time for 30 million borrowers,” said Scott Buchanan, executive director of the Student Loan Servicing Alliance, a trade group that represents the companies that collect and manage loan payments on behalf of the Education Department.



https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/politics/trump-s-student-loan-cliff-threatens-chaos-for-biden/ar-BB1b1T7E?ocid=msedgntp



“It would be very chaotic,” he said.

In March, it took a couple of weeks for the Education Department to fully suspend student loan payments after the CARES Act bestowed those benefits, and there were some administrative hiccups. The Trump administration was sued for failing to fully halt debt collections against defaulted borrowers. And one of the department’s loan servicers incorrectly reported data about the paused payments to credit bureaus about more than 5 million borrowers, lowering their credit scores in some cases.

The student loan relief has kept borrowers out of default and delinquency over the last eight months, with the pandemic cratering the economy and unemployment skyrocketing. The benefits have even modestly helped improve the credit scores of student loan borrowers during the pandemic, especially for borrowers who were pulled out of default, according to analyses by the New York Fed and Urban Institute.

In an unusual alliance, loan industry officials are advocating alongside congressional Democrats, higher education groups and consumer organizations, all warning that suddenly turning back on the federal government’s massive student loan apparatus — mostly frozen since March — in the midst of a presidential transition could lead to anguish for everybody involved.

The Education Department’s previous, targeted payment pauses in response to natural disasters have led to spikes in delinquencies among borrowers after the relief, noted Debbie Cochrane, executive vice president of The Institute for College Access & Success.

“It’s hard to think that this goes well for borrowers,” she said. “Helping borrowers get back into repayment smoothly has never been done at this scale.”


Gallery: Biden could wipe out $50,000 of student debt per borrower without Congress. Here are 3 other areas where he can help the struggling US economy even with a GOP-controlled Senate. (Business Insider)
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/politics/trump-s-student-loan-cliff-threatens-chaos-for-biden/ar-BB1b1T7E?ocid=msedgntp


Nearly 41 million federal student loan borrowers have had interest suspended on their loans since March 13, beginning with the CARES Act and continued under Trump’s executive action over the summer. Roughly 33 million of those borrowers have had their payments paused, and the Education Department has stopped seeking to collect from the 8 million other borrowers who were in default.

A Pew survey earlier this fall found that 58 percent of borrowers who said their payments had been paused during the pandemic reported that they would face difficulty if they were required to resume making those payments in the next month.

Advocates for extending the benefits say turning payments on in the midst of a surge of coronavirus cases and unemployment levels that remain high would result in an increase in defaults.

“There’s no indication that we are through the pandemic, and it’s a bit of a mystery why the administration that has extended the benefits already wouldn’t extend them once again,” Cochrane said.

When Trump took executive action in August to provide the loan forgiveness, he said, “Today I’m extending this policy through the end of the year, and we’ll extend it further than that, most likely right after Dec. 1.”

Many Democrats, including Sens. Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), are pushing the incoming Biden administration to use executive authority to go further than merely pausing payments by outright canceling billions of dollars of outstanding debt.

Biden during the campaign committed to canceling $10,000 per borrower as an immediate economic stimulus during the coronavirus pandemic, though he has not promised to bestow that debt relief through executive action, as progressives want.

The looming expiration of student loan benefits will likely present a more immediate and pressing challenge for the beginning days of the Education Department under Biden, which may have to scramble to reinstate the relief.

In Congress, lawmakers could attach an extension of the student loan relief to a stimulus deal or year-end government funding bill. But Democrats and Republicans have disagreed for months about whether to include an extension of the student loan benefits as part of an economic rescue package.

House Democrats’ stimulus legislation would extend the freeze on student loan payments until next October and keep the interest rate at zero until at least that time — or longer if the unemployment rate remains high.

Senate Republicans’ latest stimulus proposal did not include an extension of the benefits, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said he wants to pursue a smaller pandemic relief bill during the lame-duck session.

Consumer advocacy groups, labor unions and civil rights organizations have already urged the Trump administration and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to act to extend the benefits for at least another nine months.

“If the cliff isn’t resolved, borrowers will find it harder than ever to make ends meet as they are thrown back into repayment or forced collections while the economy continues to suffer,” the groups wrote in a letter to DeVos last month. “Waiting to address the cliff will cause unnecessary stress, confusion, and errors for borrowers, servicers, and collectors alike.”

Biden inherits a widening gap in American education. It could affect economic growth.


Leticia Miranda 


In his first address to the nation as president-elect, Joe Biden made it clear that he will make education a priority during his administration. He noted in his victory speech that his wife, Jill, is a teacher and that educators “will have one of your own in the White House.”
© Provided by NBC News

But Biden is also inheriting an educational system that is more troubled than at any time in modern history. The number of new coronavirus cases among children in the month of October was the highest since the pandemic started, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. School districts, including those in Boston, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, are delaying reopening plans left and right. New York City is also contemplating moving to all remote learning.


It is so troubling that on Thursday Jerome Powell, chair of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System, identified children as one of the groups he is most concerned about. “It’s kids who are not getting the education they should be getting," he said.

This latest news has forced some of the nation’s top education experts to revise estimates about the long-term economic impact for children who are missing school. Researchers on a study released in September from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development predicted that children who are part of this online learning generation are expected to see 3 percent shaved off their earnings over time. They estimated an even higher drop of 4 to 5 percent for children with less access to extensive educational resources.

In recent days, researchers recalculated these figures and expect the impact to be much worse, with losses of 5-6 percent in lifetime earnings for all children in this generation of online schooling. The nation will lose $25-30 trillion over the rest of the century, according to the report, which relates labor market earnings to a cross-analysis of individual pay and test scores.

“The school closures hurt everybody who is in K-12 in spring of 2020 because they were locked out of school,” said Eric Hanushek, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University and co-author of the OECD report. ”These are permanent losses unless we do something about it.”

The education level of people entering the workforce has a significant impact on the rate at which the economy grows in the long run, Hanushek told NBC News. A more educated person is more likely to have a job, work longer hours and be paid more. Higher education levels also correspond to improved health and lower rates of mortality and crime, according to a 2013 report from the Economic Policy Institute. All of these dynamics contribute to a faster growing economy, Hanushek said.

That’s especially troubling for students like Amiracle Johnson, 11, from Long Island, New York, a sixth grader who shares her family's HP laptop computer and a Chromebook, on loan from her school, with two siblings in a makeshift at-home classroom. She has no in-person learning, and in the spring, Amiracle's father lost his position as a porter at a pressing company and her mother left her job at a nursing home because she feared getting infected with the virus. The family lived on about $1,200 a month over the summer. But their expenses are two to three times that.

“With the remote learning, you have to keep the cable on, and they’re not giving out any breaks,” Kevin Johnson, Amiracle’s father, told NBC News.
© Kevin Johnson Amiracle, a sixth-grade student in Longwood, on New York's Long Island, with her brother Khalif. (Kevin Johnson)

Economic chasm

Education researchers and economists are all finding that the long-term economic consequences of such a prolonged period without in-person schooling are devastating. Gross domestic product, a figure used by economists to gauge the overall size and health of the economy, could drop by 2.9 percent for the remainder of the century as this generation of kids enters the workforce, according to Hanushek.

“We’re talking about significant losses into the future,” he said. “That makes it harder to think about how we compensate disadvantaged kids because this will subtract from resources of the nation as a whole.”

Leading into the pandemic, the public school system had already undergone a decade of punishing budget cuts leading to historic teacher strikes in 2018 over pay and staffing. Last summer, President Donald Trump threatened to cut more funding to public schools that refused to reopen, even though 90 percent of state budgets are paid by state and local taxes. He backtracked in August telling reporters at an education event with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos that he preferred any stimulus money to “follow the student.”

“You know, why are we paying if a school is closed? Why are we paying the school?” Trump said. “I’d rather give it to the student, the parents, and you do your own thing.”

But nearly every level of government agrees that online learning, and prolonged periods out of school, can stunt a child’s educational growth. While there is no clear cut parallel in history to the coronavirus pandemic, academics and educators have pointed to the impact long periods out of school had on children during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Doug Harris, a professor of economics at Tulane University, found that it took students two years to catch up. Only Black and low-income students fell 2 to 4 percent behind the path they were on before Hurricane Katrina shut down schools. White and higher-income students experienced no declines, he told NBC News.

“We know there was an initial dip in scores and students didn't learn much in the aftermath of the hurricane,” Harris said. “The upshot is that the degree to which kids catch up is dependent on what schools do. That’s the wild card — how quickly can schools reopen and how able they can target resources for kids with disadvantages or disabilities.”

As families deal with their own economic crisis at home, school districts scramble to balance in-person and remote learning with fading financial support. The federal CARES ACT provided a $13.2 billion lifeline for schools to weather the pandemic. But educators have told Congress they need more funding to cover the costs of operating school remotely this school year. In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has threatened to slash school budgets by 20 percent if Congress does not pass another stimulus bill — a threat that may pierce some school districts more than others.

Longwood Central School District, where Amiracle goes, has been hard at work trying to offer its students resources. It offered Chromebooks and WiFi hot-spot devices to student households based on need. More than half, or 53 percent, of students in Longwood Central School District are considered economically advantaged.

“We’ve been very prudent in designing budgets that were giving us what we need year-to-year. As long as the revenues that have been promised to us from the state come through, we will skate on by,” Longwood Central School District Superintendent Michael Lonergan told NBC News. “We just worry about what the future will bring because of the economy.”
Rainy day funds

To make up for the losses that are anticipated through online learning, some parents are turning to any financial savings they have to ensure their kids don’t fall further behind.

“Parents at all levels of income are struggling,” said Deborah Stipek, a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education. "It’s hard even if you have a high income and are able to work from home. You worry about whether your child is getting the kind of education that you want them to get.”

The market for private tutors and teachers to lead small learning pods for students has been booming, several education companies and teachers told NBC News. Jill Cooper, a former part-time substitute teacher in Houston, told NBC News that she jumped at the opportunity to lead a learning pod this fall.

“I prefer it over teaching because you get to know the kids so well,” said Cooper, who leads three learning pods with a total of five kids for $30 an hour. “I can drive away at 3 and I don’t have any papers to grade.”

Online learning companies have also expanded their services to cater to this growing market for private tutors this academic year. Waine Tam, CEO of the online teacher and school matching company Selected, told NBC News that about half of all inquiries it received at the end of summer were requests for learning pods. Teachers on the Selected platform can make anywhere from $30,000 in a city like Tulsa to $60,000 in a city like New York, depending on their rate. Even at these prices, parents are willing to pay to pool their resources with other families and pay, said Tam.

“Pod teachers are being paid a premium because of the novelty and newness of the role, and the supply dynamic is skewed in favor of the teacher,” he said. “Parents are in high need.”
Becoming a teacher

Without significant funds, in September, Amiracle's mother, Felicia, pinned up a set of multiplication tables and a schedule for each of their three children in a corner of the family's home office. Since their kids started remote learning in March, Kevin and Felicia have shared the teaching responsibilities. But neither of them is a teacher and their teenage son has already advanced in his education past their skills, which makes it difficult to help him at home.

“They were good students and fit in with everyone at school,” Amiracle's father said. “But now I guess they just don’t want to do the home schooling.”

Kevin Johnson started a new job as a valet at a car dealership in Long Island last week, making $15 an hour, $2 less than he made as a porter. Felicia is still receiving unemployment as she stays at home to help the kids with school. They are now faced with an excruciating decision: continue their fall into poverty on a single income or leave their children to teach themselves at home. Either way, their kids lose, Johnson said. While Amiracle has always earned good grades and taken on extra credit, her father said she’s increasingly overwhelmed because she’s essentially teaching herself.

“I feel like the kids are getting cheated on education, and we’re already far behind as Americans in that department,” he said. “We’re making our kids dumber by not giving them the best way to learn.”
In Wyoming, a Covid surge, a struggling energy economy and thriving haven for the rich

Oil prices plummeted in April as the coronavirus mangled the world energy’s markets — and Wyoming’s economy went with it.
© Provided by NBC News

Ben Kesslen 2 hrs ago

Anyone who knows the least-populated state’s economy will tell you Wyoming is an energy hub, producing 40 percent of the country’s coal and 15 times more energy than it consumes. In 2018, its energy production was third only to Texas and Pennsylvania. But by the second quarter of 2020, the state had lost 1 in 5 energy jobs due to price decline.

In Douglas, Wyoming, a small city of around 6,000 and the county seat of Converse, most revenue comes from sales tax related to the energy industry, City Administrator Jonathan Teichert said. So far, they’ve netted about a third of the revenue they had by this time last year.

“We’ve made a 25 percent cut in our budget from last year, and that probably was too optimistic,” he said. 
© J. David Ake Image: Wyoming energy (J. David Ake / AP file)

When oil tanked, companies shut down wells and laid off workers. Teichert said school enrollment is down this year because unemployed residents simply picked up their families and left. It has been tough times for many residents left without many employment options and only now grappling with Covid-19 cases surging, eight months into the pandemic.

In much of Wyoming, the energy industry has “already gotten the cheap and easy oil and gas resources,” said Kyle Tisdel, an attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center who studies the state’s boom-and-bust economy. So corporations turned to more expensive methods like horizontal fracking.

“You’re talking about a break-even point of $50, $60 a barrel, and oil is floating around $40 to $45,” he said. “All signs are showing we aren’t going to be up much higher than that for the foreseeable future.”

Without profits, the companies leave. “The communities shoulder the burden and are the first to feel the impacts,” Tisdel said.

But if you don’t live in the state, Wyoming might just seem like the open frontier, where celebrities like Kanye West go to escape and relax, or perhaps lease their land rights to fracking companies.

When California was plagued by wildfires, YouTube and makeup mogul Jeffree Star went to his house in Wyoming.

“It’s such a weird atmosphere here in California,” Star said on his Instagram story. “That means it’s time to go to Wyoming, so I’m going to hop on the jet right now and just get away for a few days.”

This scenario, where the energy companies will flee from the state on a moment’s notice, while the super rich flee to the state, is a signal of “structural decline,” Tisdel said.

This summer, as unemployment climbed statewide, Jackson Hole, the popular ski destination and one of the most economically unequal areas of America, had as busy a season as ever. The real estate industry shattered records with sales up 14 percent and over $1.5 billion in real estate spent in just the first nine months of 2020.

Still, while corporations might be leaving, the wealthy are coming in part because of the place Wyoming holds in public imagination, Justin Farrell, a sociology professor at Yale University and author of the book “Billionaire Wilderness,” said.

For the rich, Wyoming embodies escape, both from the pandemic and other problems, where open skies and empty pastures can help you clear your mind. As states locked down, Wyoming stayed open. “We have been socially distancing the entire 130 years that we have been a state,” Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said on "Fox & Friends" in April, explaining why Wyoming hadn’t issued a stay-at-home order.

The wealthy had already shown up by then, and the way they continue to experience the pandemic looks very different from most others in the state. Covid-19, in Wyoming and elsewhere throughout the country, has laid these disparities bare.

If you live on a multimillion-dollar ranch in Jackson Hole, you have access to private doctors. You might have even brought your own ventilator with you when you fled to the state, Farrell said. But elsewhere in the state, where there are only about 5 people per square mile, residents are left vulnerable to the labor market and broadly lack access to health care. Populations are older and more health-compromised on average, and many people live far from clinics.

Luxury retreats like Jackson Hole do translate into more money spent in the community, sure, but the elites who move to Wyoming, which has no income tax, are often doing so to shelter from taxes. Farrell believes the politicians in the state are “choosing the ultrawealthy over their neighbors” and Wyoming needs to do more to hold big corporations accountable that come to Wyoming for its resources, “use it up and leave” and abandon the workers who made them rich.

© Wyoming's Famed National Parks Continue Phased Reopening
 (George Frey / Getty Images file)

Now, the virus’s spread is out of control in Wyoming, like it is in much of the interior West. The state reported a 475 percent increase in cases in late October, and since then, the spread has continued. The state has logged more than 21,300 cases of the coronavirus since the start of the pandemic, over 15,000 of which have occurred since Oct. 1.

“The crisis is here, and it’s going to get worse,” Farrell said.

In hard-hit New York City, about 1 in 32 residents contracted Covid-19. In Albany County, Wyoming, home to Laramie, it’s about 1 in 18. The state does not have a mask mandate, but Albany County put one in place last week, only a few days after a state representative who had tested positive for the coronavirus died and the governor announced he had to isolate after being exposed to the virus during a meeting that included White House coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx.

In Converse County, Wyoming, public health nurse manager Darcey Cowardin and her team are working to flatten the curve of their own case surge. The frontier county of a little over 13,500 people has recorded 396 cases, and as of Friday had 118 active cases. Those are astronomical numbers for such a small community.

“Our hospital is getting hit pretty hard,” Cowardin said. The contact tracer is overwhelmed, the virus is finding its way into schools and masking is a nightmare to enforce. Most of the spread is coming from family gatherings, bars and local events.

“The bottom fell out,” Cowardin said of the energy sector’s collapse. “Add the pandemic, and our community and county have been hit very hard.”

Part of the problem is that for a long time, the virus didn’t materialize too strongly in Converse. In August and September, Wyoming was recording a few dozen cases statewide on a bad day. The crisis that was unfolding across the country didn’t seem like it would come, a lot of residents felt. And when it did, tiny hospitals had no way to be ready, and not everybody was on board to stop the spread.

“We are in a community where nobody wants to be told what to do,” she said. “There’s just this pocket of people that don’t want to accept that this is a thing.”

Cowardin said a First Amendment group came into the public health department’s office in Douglas recently, harassing and videotaping them after they were asked to wear masks. The phone lines have been flooded with people, many from out of state, yelling horrible things at employees.

“It’s so hard to be in public health right now,” she said.

She also said it’s hard to meet needs. Food banks and local aid resources are in higher demand than ever. Contact tracing became so slammed with cases that the county is no longer able to reach out to people who need to quarantine and is asking people with the coronavirus to do their own contact tracing if they can. People in the county have been left with long-term complications from the illness, and deaths are rising.

Not too far from Cowardin’s office in Douglas is drag queen superstar RuPaul Charles’ massive ranch, which spans 60,000 acres. RuPaul told NPR earlier in March the ranch “is really land management.” He leases the mineral and water rights to fracking companies and the grazing rights to ranches.

When RuPaul is in Converse County and its surrounding areas though, he doesn’t concern himself much with what’s happening around or underneath him. “I meditate, and I pray,” he said. “And I have a lovely time paying attention to the stillness. And there's a lot of stillness on the ranch.”
Protesters in Belarus dispersed with stun grenades

Belarusians took to the streets of the capital Minsk on Sunday in a fresh demonstration against strongman leader Alexander Lukashenko as anger mounted over the recent death of an opposition activist.
 A Belarusian rights group said more than 300 people were detained, including journalists

Armed and masked police dispersed protesters with tear gas and stun grenades and deployed water cannon, local media reported, shortly after the latest march began against the ex-Soviet country's strongman leader.

Belarusian rights group Viasna said at least 328 people were detained, including journalists.

Some 15 metro stations were closed and mobile internet access was limited, an AFP journalist reported.

Tens of thousands have taken to the streets of cities throughout Belarus every weekend since August 9 when Lukashenko claimed a sixth presidential term in elections that his critics and Western countries said were rigged.

The EU has slapped sanctions on officials in the authoritarian country for rigging the vote and waging a brutal crackdown on post-vote demonstrations that led to mass arrests and allegations of torture and abuse at the hands of the security services.

Sunday's rally comes after thousands of demonstrators turned out in Minsk Friday to mourn the death of a protester who was pronounced dead one day after police arrested him.

Roman Bondarenko, 31, died in Minsk after police arrested him following a dispute in a city square that has become a regular meeting place for the opposition.

He was arrested by police on Wednesday after an altercation between residents and masked men who removed red and white ribbons, the colours of the opposition, hung in a building courtyard in Minsk.

Bondarenko was pronounced dead on Thursday after suffering brain damage, triggering a wave of outrage among the Belarusian opposition, who believe Lukashenko's security forces are ultimately responsible.

- 'Devastating' -

Exiled opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya described the former soldier Bondarenko as a "man who was killed because he wanted to live in a free country".

On Sunday she described the crackdown on protesters with "gas, grenades and firearms" as "devastating" and called for international support for the demonstrators.

"We ask our allies to stand up for the Belarusian people and human rights. We need a humanitarian corridor for the injured, support for the media, international investigation of crimes," she wrote on Twitter.

Lukashenko said Friday he had asked investigators to probe the incident "honestly and objectively".

At least four people have died in demonstrations against Lukashenko since August and the EU on Friday condemned Bondarenko's death saying it could warrant further sanctions.

Lukashenko, who has the firm backing of longstanding ally Russian President Vladimir Putin, has refused to stand down and instead suggests reforms to the constitution to placate the opposition.

pop-jbr/erc


Belarus police arrest dozens in street protests


MOSCOW (Reuters) - Police in Belarus on Sunday arrested dozens of people in Minsk demonstrating against Alexander Lukashenko, leader of the ex-Soviet country, a witness said and several media outlets reported
.
© Reuters/STRINGER FILE PHOTO

The witness said police used rubber bullets against the protesters. Interfax news agency said police had used tear gas to disperse the crowd near the Pushkinskaya metro station.

Mobile internet has been also down across the city, according to the witness.

Belarus is in a political crisis as tens of thousands of Belarusians have taken to the streets each week since an election in August, calling for Lukashenko to resign after 26 years in power. Lukashenko has rejected opposition accusations that the election was rigged in his favour.

Thousands of people have been arrested and rights groups say hundreds of detainees have reported being subjected to beatings and other abuse.

The street rallies were re-ignited following a death of a 31-year old anti-government protester Roman Bondarenko, who died in hospital on Thursday following what demonstrators said was a severe beating by security forces.

The interior ministry denied responsibility for Bondarenko's death, saying he had been killed in a scuffle with civilians.

(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by Jane Merriman)


Peru president faces calls to resign after three protesters killed

The head of Peru's Congress has called for the "immediate resignation" of interim president Manuel Merino after a violent crackdown on protests against his new government left at least three dead and more than 60 injured.
© ERNESTO BENAVIDES 
Supporters of ousted Peruvian president Martin Vizcarra have taken to the streets in protest

Thousands have taken to the streets in days of protests against Merino following the ouster of his popular predecessor Martin Vizcarra, who was impeached on corruption allegations on Monday.

"I ask Mr. Merino to evaluate his immediate resignation," Congress head Luis Valdez said in a statement Saturday night to Channel N television.

Lawmakers will meet in an emergency session on Sunday to discuss Merino's resignation, a statement released later on the Congress Twitter account said.
© ERNESTO BENAVIDES
 Riot police take position during clashes with supporters of ousted Peruvian president Martin Vizcarra in Lima

The ultimatum came after news of the death of three protesters during a massive and peaceful march in Lima, which was violently repressed by police firing shotgun pellets and tear gas.

Lima mayor Jorge Munoz, from the same center-right Popular Action party as Merino, also demanded the resignation of the president.

"I just found out about the third death" in the protests, said the Archbishop of Lima, Carlos Castillo, deploring the police crackdown in a statement to state television.

Police reported two deaths, while the National Human Rights Coordinator indicated it was investigating whether there were four.

The Ombudsman's Office said the first fatality, a 25-year-old man, was killed by pellet shots to the head and face. At least 63 protesters were injured, the health ministry said.
© ERNESTO BENAVIDES 
A demonstrator is helped by fellow protestors after being injured during clashes with riot police in Lima

The police tactics have been criticized by the UN and rights organizations such as Amnesty International since the protests began on Tuesday.

- Ministers resign -

Seven of the 18 ministers in Merino's cabinet announced their resignation Saturday night after the police crackdown, according to local media.

The political crisis appeared to be heading towards the resignation of Merino, whose whereabouts were unknown early Sunday.

"I'm calling him and I can't get through, I have no idea if he has resigned. I'm not a fortune teller," Prime Minister Antero Flores Araoz, the government's number two, told RPP radio.

Lima's international airport said it was closed due to the night curfew.

Merino has remained silent since the crackdown on Saturday and the call for his resignation.

At around 2:00 am (0700 GMT) Sunday, the government released a photo of Merino meeting with his cabinet, but doubts arose as to when it was taken because it showed the health minister who had resigned hours earlier.
© ERNESTO BENAVIDES 
At least three people have been killed and dozens injured in the protests against the ousting of Peru's popular president Martin Vizcarra

- Tear gas -

Thousands took to the streets on Saturday in opposition to Merino, the former Congress speaker who assumed office on Tuesday as Peru's third president in four years.

© Christian SIERRA IMAGES
Lima residents gather on the iconic Plaza San Martin square to protest the ousting of popular president Martin Vizcarra by Congress over corruption allegations and the consequent appointment of Manuel Merino, as demonstrations continue across the country.

The mostly young protesters gathered in various cities to oppose what they call a parliamentary coup against ousted president Vizcarra.

The largest march in Lima attracted thousands of people, with police again using tear gas fired from helicopters to disperse protesters who were threatening to march towards the Congress building.

VIDEO Peruvians protest in support of ousted President Vizcarra


They carried signs reading "Merino, you are not my president" and "Merino impostor" while chanting.

The municipal authorities in Lima turned off the public lighting in Plaza San Martin on the crowd gathered there.

The plaza has been the center of protests in the capital.

A group of protesters approached the area around Merino's home, east of Lima, banging pots and drums.

Archbishop of Trujillo Miguel Cabrejos urged the government to engage in dialogue and respect the right to protest.

"It is essential to listen and attend to the cries and the clamor of the population to regain confidence, tranquility and social peace," he said in a statement.

When he took office on Tuesday, Merino said he would respect the calendar for the next general elections, scheduled for April 11, 2021 and would leave power on July 28, 2021, the day when Vizcarra's mandate was to end.

Vizcarra had broad popular support since succeeding Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, the former Wall Street banker who was forced to resign under threat of impeachment over corruption allegations in 2018.

Congress impeached and dismissed Vizcarra on Monday over allegations he took kickbacks from developers when he was governor of the Moquegua region in 2014, charges he denies.

ljc/fj/dga/mtp/fox


Alberta doctors say new COVID-19 rules may not be enough to avoid further restrictions

Author of the article: Ashley Joannou  Publishing date: Nov 14, 2020 •
Dr. Lynora Saxinger was one of the more than 400 doctors who signed a letter earlier this week calling for temporary mandatory changes to curb the spread of COVID-19 in Alberta. PHOTO BY SHAUGHN BUTTS /Postmedia, fil

Two University of Alberta infectious disease specialists say new temporary COVID-19 restrictions could have been more effective if they were implemented sooner.

As of Friday, indoor group fitness activities and performances are banned and bars and licensed restaurants are under liquor and closing curfews in much of the province until Nov. 27.

Dr. Leyla Asadi and Dr. Lynora Saxinger say the changes might not be broad enough now that active cases have reached record levels and there is limited contact tracing available along with increased hospitalization.

Asadi said the new restrictions are “simply inadequate.”

“If these measures have been put in place six weeks ago, then maybe they would have been a good start at that point and maybe it would have helped us to control the spread,” she said.

Alberta has seen record-breaking active case levels over the past month. On Friday, the number of hospitalized patients grew to 240, with 54 in intensive care units. Chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw has previously said 70 ICU beds are set aside for COVID-19 patients.

Numbers got so high last week that the province stopped doing contact tracing except in high-priority settings such as continuing care and health-care facilities or schools.

Saxinger said the restrictions probably would have had a more beneficial impact earlier. She said limited contact tracing means the government is basing its restrictions on where hotspots used to be. Approximately 83 per cent of cases reported between Nov. 5 and 11 have an unknown origin.

“Right now, one of the things that bothers me the most is that we’re kind of flying blind, in terms of where transmission is occurring right now,” she said.

Asadi and Saxinger were among more than 400 doctors who signed a letter earlier this week calling for temporary mandatory changes to curb the spread of COVID-19. That includes a directive to work from home, the limiting of contacts, restrictions on group recreation and sports activities and the suspension of group indoor activities, including full shutdowns for indoor dining, bars, casinos, religious services and theatres.

Premier Jason Kenney has resisted shutting down businesses completely for fear of the economic fallout, but said Thursday stricter conditions are on the table if these latest rules don’t bring case numbers down.

Saxinger said the new rules are a sign the government understands theseverityof the situation but said it will need to see improvements such as lower positivity rates faster than the standard 14-day waiting period to avoid further measures.

“During that 14 days, frankly, all heck can break loose,” she said.

Asadi maintains that closing all indoor dining temporarily, while providing financial supports to businesses, is a better move than what the government has done to get the virus under control. Bars and restaurants will still lose money by having to stop selling liquor at 10 p.m. and close entirely by 11 p.m., she said.

“So it doesn’t serve the economy or the health-care system optimally. It could potentially be damaging to both,” she said.

Steve Buick, press secretary for Health Minister Tyler Shandro, said in a statement the government is making its decisions based on the best current advice of health experts and that the government “must carefully weigh all factors when making decisions.”

Dr. Ari Joffe of the Stollery Children’s Hospital has argued the impact of a lockdown could be worse than the pandemic itself because of the impact on the economy, a potential future reduction in health spending and people’s mental health among other things.

He said the latest restrictions are the government’s attempt to find a balance.

“I would not want them to do anything more extensive than what they have done,” he said. “Because then I think the cost benefit will be causing far more harm than good. Everything has trade offs.”


More than 70 Alberta doctors implore for 'sharp' lockdown; province reports another 644 cases

'If this rate of increase continues unabated, our acute care health system will be overrun in the near future,' medical professionals wrote in a letter addressed to the premier

Author of the article: Stephanie Babych
Publishing date:Nov 10, 2020 • 
Cars are directed inside for COVID-19 testing at the Richmond Road testing site in Calgary on Sunday, November 8, 2020. The province is experiencing a dramatic surge in COVID-19 cases. PHOTO BY GAVIN YOUNG/POSTMEDIA

More than 70 of Alberta’s physicians, medical professionals and infectious disease specialists are pleading for a “sharp” two-week lockdown to slow the spread of COVID-19, giving contact tracers time to catch up and easing the pressures on the health-care system.

The short lockdown — referred to as a “circuit breaker” — would allow the government to better formulate targeted regional public health measures that would reduce the spread of infections, the health-care professionals said in a letter addressed to the premier Monday.

A circuit breaker is a temporary lockdown with a set end date, rather than an extended lockdown until cases drop past a certain point. It’s a strategy being used by several European governments to “reset” infection rates so public health authorities have time to plot the best path forward.

“We are deeply concerned over the state of the COVID-19 pandemic in Alberta. Over the last three weeks, we have watched the numbers of cases, hospitalizations and ICU admissions dramatically increase,” the medical professionals wrote in the letter.

While lockdowns and restrictions have a significant impact on people’s ability to earn an income and socialize with friends and family, it is “clear that a minimal impairment approach and requests to the people of Alberta to voluntarily stop holding social gatherings in their homes is unlikely to significantly slow the rate of spread,” the doctors explained.

The 74 people who signed the letter are intensive care physicians, emergency physicians, general internists, pulmonologists, infectious disease specialists and family physicians, primarily located in Edmonton and Calgary.

In their letter, group members critiqued the government’s limit on social gatherings of 15 people which expanded to all regions under COVID-19 watch, and the “strong request” to Calgarians and Edmontonians to stop inviting friends to their homes.

“There have been advances in the care of critically ill COVID-19 patients based on research over the last nine months that have resulted in significant reductions in mortality and time to recovery. However, if the rate of COVID-19 spread continues, the consequences to the people of Alberta will be catastrophic,” they said.

“If this rate of increase continues unabated, our acute care health system will be overrun in the near future.”

Acute care beds and operating rooms will be overtaken by COVID-19 patients sooner than later if the upward trend doesn’t stop, the medical professionals explained. Experience grappling with the pandemic in Europe and the United States shows that mortality rates of COVID-19 and other patients increase “dramatically” if these resources are overwhelmed.

During Monday’s update, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta’s chief medical officer of health, said “all options are on the table for discussion,” which includes a circuit-breaker lockdown.
Alberta’s chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw.
 PHOTO BY CHRIS SCHWARZ/GOVERNMENT OF ALBERTA

“I think the circuit-breaker idea is an interesting one; it’s what British Columbia announced this weekend and you’ll note they targeted some of the same kinds of activities that we are targeting here,” said Hinshaw.

Due to a dramatic spike in cases throughout Metro Vancouver, the British Columbia government banned indoor and outdoor social gatherings for two weeks so people cannot visit with others outside of their household.

In Alberta, another 644 cases of COVID-19 were confirmed during Monday’s update — with a positivity rate of about five per cent — bringing the total number of active cases to 7,965.

An additional 1,646 cases and 11 deaths were reported over the weekend, including a record-breaking 919 cases reported Saturday.

Hospitalizations continue to rise, which Hinshaw said is concerning, as 192 Albertans are reportedly in hospital, including 39 in intensive-care units.

Seven people died from COVID-19 on Sunday, bringing the provincial death toll to 369. One previous death was confirmed post-mortem as not linked to the novel coronavirus.

Among the deaths was a woman in her 90s at Extendicare Cedars Villa in Calgary, as well as six Edmontonians.

Hinshaw said the mandatory and voluntary restrictions in place now offer Albertans the opportunity to be part of the solution before stronger restrictions are imposed.



Premier Jason Kenney invoked arguments around civil liberties when he rebuked the idea of a lockdown and downplayed the effects of the coronavirus during a news conference Friday.
TRUMP WANNABE
He said Alberta can “continue to lead the way as the freest province in the country” if the current restrictions are followed.

Hinshaw said she understands people’s fatigue and frustration right now, but urged them to continue taking public health orders seriously.

“If you have not gotten sick and you don’t know anyone who has either, you must do everything possible to keep it that way,” she said.

Outbreak declared at Calgary Drop-In Centre, Alpha House and transitional housing

An outbreak has been declared at Calgary Drop-In Centre after 11 cases have been identified. As well, outbreaks have been declared after two cases were linked to Alpha House and five to one of its transitional housing units.

Offsite testing is being conducted as staff and clients are screened. This is a reflection of greater community transmission, Hinshaw said.

Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi said it’s imperative for Calgarians to keep themselves and others safe by following public health measures closely, including the request to refrain from hosting others at home.

“If we can do this through the winter, God willing, there will be a vaccine in the spring and this thing will be in our rear-view mirror. But if we overwhelm the hospitals before then, we have created a lifetime of misery for ourselves,” said Nenshi.

— With files from Madeline Smith


Nearly 6,000 Calgary Catholic district students, staff now in isolation

Author of the article:Jason Herring
Publishing date:Nov 14, 2020 •
Calgary Catholic School District offices in downtown Calgary.
 PHOTO BY JIM WELLS /Postmedia


Alberta’s second wave of COVID-19 is forcing many students and educators to stay home.

In a letter to parents Friday, the Calgary Catholic School District said it now has nearly 6,000 staff and students isolating across its 118 schools due to the novel coronavirus. The isolations are the result of “approximately 200 positive cases.”

It’s a significant spike for the school district, which reported 3,877 staff and students isolating due to 137 positive cases one week ago. The division has 59,000 students.

The surge has led the CCSD to put a pause on all extracurricular activities, starting on Monday. Only regularly scheduled credit courses will take place in the district’s schools, a decision which will be re-evaluated “in a few weeks.”

“We must do everything in our powers to keep students, staff and families safe. It is our hope that this short-term sacrifice will help change the curve,” read the letter signed by chief superintendent Bryan Szumlas.

“Please continue to pray for all those impacted by COVID-19, especially our students and staff.”

The decision to halt extracurricular activities comes the day after the Alberta government announced a series of new public-health measures meant to buck recent COVID-19 trends, including a temporary, two-week cancellation of all indoor group fitness and non-professional team sports activities in regions including Calgary and Edmonton.

According to Alberta Health’s school status map, there are now 10 CCSD schools with five or more active COVID-19 cases, with an additional 10 reporting at least two cases.

On Thursday, Premier Jason Kenney said the province would not consider closing down schools as cases of the coronavirus rise across Alberta and within schools. Chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw said there is little evidence of virus transmission within schools.

“When we’re looking at the cases in schools and school-aged children in particular, it’s a very small proportion. The last time we looked at that specifically, it was about six per cent of children who had acquired the infection in a school,” Hinshaw said.

“It does not seem to be the major driver of community transmission.”

There has likely been in-school transmission in 141 Alberta schools, Hinshaw said, with about half only recording one new case as a result.

At the Calgary Board of Education, there are now just under 2,000 students and 195 staff in isolation.

— With files from Brodie Thomas