Why America's economic recovery is stumbling as experts badly misjudge the labor market

bwinck@businessinsider.com (Ben Winck) 

 A BevMo store on April 2 in Larkspur, California. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

April's jobs report was a big miss, suggesting the hiring rebound many anticipated was an illusion.

Virus fears, childcare pressures, and unemployment benefits all likely drove the weak payrolls read.

Biden has proposed massive packages focused on jobs, but they likely face months of negotiation.

The Democratic political advisor James Carville became famous in the 1990s for his phrase, "It's the economy, stupid."

After April's shockingly disappointing jobs report, it looks more like: "It's not the economy, stupid. It's the virus."

March's strong jobs data - along with widespread projections of a coming economic boom - had raised optimism among economists for a continued recovery in the labor force. It prompted Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to deem March an "inflection point" for the reopening of the economy, and experts saw it kicking off a season of outsize payroll increases. But the drop in April makes clear the virus continues to bite.

Economists had expected payroll gains to reach 1 million, but the country added just 266,000 jobs last month. It was the smallest monthly increase since January and the biggest miss of payroll forecasts in more than two decades. The unemployment rate rose to 6.1%, female employment declined, and while hard-hit sectors like leisure and hospitality had healthy gains, most others posted either meager growth or shed jobs entirely.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Friday release underscores just how much the labor market still has to recover, and that the climb won't be as easy as most economists anticipated. Even if April stands out as a gloomy outlier, the average pace of payroll growth suggests it may take years to fully recoup the millions of jobs lost to the pandemic.

What went wrong?

The jobs report was such a shock that it's hard to find a single explanation at first glance. It also highlights just how inadequate forecasting tools are for measuring this unique economic moment.

Economists typically use a combination of quantitative and qualitative data to estimate growth. Indicators like weekly jobless claims and hours worked join anecdotal evidence and broad surveys to create forecasting models. Economists' calculations, when tallied together and averaged, usually come close to guessing monthly payroll additions.

The April data serves as a wake-up call for the many forecasters who didn't even come close to guessing correctly. Whether models overlooked details like COVID-19 fears, or bullish biases tarnished forecasts, economists need to reconcile how they were so wrong.

The disappointment was likely fueled by several factors instead of one solvable hurdle. Despite President Joe Biden's overdelivering on vaccinations, the country is far from placing the coronavirus pandemic behind it. Daily case counts still averaged about 50,000 at the end of last month, and highly contagious strains continue to spread across the US.

The coronavirus pandemic has also been notable for the "she-cession," hurting female employment much more than men. The absence of affordable childcare and lack of in-person schooling around the country likely kept some Americans home instead of working, as seen in the April report, which showed women - who disproportionately take on childcare responsibilities - losing jobs through the month.
How big is the labor shortage?

Last month, several businesses across the manufacturing and service sectors reported difficulties in finding workers. The jury is still out on how widespread worker shortages might be, as about 10 million Americans remain unemployed. On one hand, some economists suggested boosted unemployment benefits cut into the incentive to find work. Strong wage growth in the leisure and hospitality sector also signals businesses may need to lift compensation to attract workers.

"The benefits are due to expire in September, but perhaps people think jobs will be just as easy to find then as they are now, so why take a job today?" Ian Shepherdson, the chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said. "If people continue to resist taking the jobs on offer at the pay on offer, then wages will have to rise more quickly."

The Chamber of Commerce called on lawmakers to withdraw the federal benefit to unemployment insurance following the April report. The supplement results in 25% of recipients earning more from unemployment benefits than by working, Neil Bradley, the executive vice president and chief policy officer at the Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement.

"We need a comprehensive approach to dealing with our workforce issues and the very real threat unfilled positions pose to our economic recovery from the pandemic," he added.

The April data does not quite agree with the chamber's argument, showing labor demand overshadowing anecdotes of a supply shortage. April job gains were strongest in lower-wage industries and in sectors with in-person jobs. The composition of last month's job additions "doesn't scream supply constraints as the problem," Nick Bunker, an economist at Indeed, wrote on Twitter.

Separately, the number of Americans temporarily laid off ticked slightly higher in April. That also signals labor demand wasn't as robust as businesses' anecdotes suggested.

In other labor-market data, the steady decline in weekly jobless claims now looks much less encouraging for the recovery. The April uptick in unemployment comes as filings for unemployment benefits fell throughout the month to numerous pandemic-era lows. The drops initially seemed to signal that more Americans were returning to work, but BLS's report suggests the downtrend has more to do with Americans dropping out of assistance programs than finding employment.

It could take months for the government to lend a hand

Much of the past few months' promising job gains were linked to massive stimulus packages. The CARES Act helped a sharp hiring rebound after initial COVID-19 lockdowns in March 2020. And Biden's $1.9 trillion plan in March spurred stronger economic activity last month.

The president has since rolled out two new spending proposals, the larger of which would spend $2.3 trillion on job creation. The American Jobs Plan would create millions of jobs by funding traditional infrastructure projects, clean-energy initiatives, and nationwide broadband, Biden said in a speech Thursday. Biden's administration has at other times cited a Moody's Analytics projection of 2.7 million new jobs from the American Jobs Plan.

The smaller package, named the American Families Plan, could support hiring in its own right by overhauling the care economy, as it seeks to provide paid family and medical leave and childcare support.

But such support is likely months away. Republicans have balked at both plans, criticizing their hefty price tags and the tax hikes proposed to offset them. Democrats seem to face a challenge in passing the package on a party-line vote via reconciliation, as some moderates in their party have yet to throw their full support behind the follow-up packages as they exist.

To be sure, the April report represents just one month of hiring. May numbers could show a healthy rebound and revive the positive trend. The economy is not even fully reopened from virus-safety considerations yet, so rebounds are likely.

But with additional fiscal support far on the horizon and economists highlighting a number of obstacles hindering job growth, the resurgent spring recovery for jobs that many economists were predicting is gone.

With 8 million Americans out of work, why are more companies not filling jobs?

By Ann Saphir and Lucia Mutikani

© Reuters/EILEEN MESLAR FILE PHOTO: Matt Arnold, CEO of Look Trailers, tours the company's utility trailer manufacturing facility in Middlebury

SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As the economy revs up to meet the rapacious demand of tens of millions of newly vaccinated Americans, employers say they cannot fill their yawning need for labor.


Take Alex Washut. In January he mapped out hiring plans for his two breakfast and lunch eateries in western Massachusetts and figured he'd need to hire 20 new cooks, servers, dishwashers and other staff by May. He has doubled wages in some cases but has managed to hire only five; most of the time, he said, job candidates never even show for their interviews.

At the same time, the U.S. economy is down more than 8 million jobs since before the pandemic, and Federal Reserve officials say the true unemployment rate is closer to 10% than the 5.8% a government report is expected to show on Friday.

Analysts estimate U.S. employers added nearly a million new jobs last month, but the question is not why U.S. employers hired so many, but why they did not hire more?

What gives? It's a long list, but here are some of the highlights:

* Parents - particularly mothers - cannot work because closures or shortened hours at schools and daycare keep them home to watch their kids.

* Would-be workers remain concerned about health risks amid a pandemic still claiming about 700 American lives daily.

* Stock market gains have given some older workers the cushion to retire.

* Some younger workers are finding jobs in new fields, shrinking the labor pool for the industries they left behind.

* Many employers need to fill jobs requiring skills that sidelined workers may not have.

* Employers complain that enhanced unemployment benefits and other government aid are keeping workers on the sidelines, content to collect a check rather than work for a living. Data released by the Labor Department on Thursday showed more than 16 million people are still receiving some form of unemployment benefit, now more than a year into the pandemic.

"We recognize that the labor supply has been affected by the pandemic... (but) are seeing little evidence though that enhanced unemployment benefits are currently affecting Americans' willingness to work," Whitehouse spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said on Thursday.

What's that all add up to? In a nutshell, this: A National Federation of Independent Business survey showed a record 42% of small businesses had job openings they could not fill in March.

Economists say that if employers need workers so badly, they would raise pay. So far, that's not happening. U.S. compensation rose more quickly than expected in the first quarter, but the boost came mostly from one-time bonuses to financial sector workers, and was not broadly shared.

"The full sentence is 'I can't find workers at the wage I am willing to offer.' Full stop," said ADP chief economist Nela Richardson. "You can find workers."

Graphic: The jobs hole facing Biden - 

https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-ECONOMY/JOBS/xlbpgygrnpq/chart.png

EYES ON SEPTEMBER

Over the next several months analysts will watch intently to see how the labor market adapts to the biggest changes since after World War Two, when millions of soldiers returned home and wartime assembly lines shut down. It may be the end of summer before there is any real clarity.

"Ultimately as we get into September and we see schools reopening and some decline in unemployment insurance benefits we do expect for a lot of these labor scarcity issues to be alleviated," Deutsche Bank economist Matthew Luzzetti said.

Or, as Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester put it on Wednesday, as vaccinations rise and more schools return to in-person learning, "We'll get to that better equilibrium in the labor market between supply and demand."

It is not unusual for it to take time for labor markets upended by a recession to work out kinks.

After the last downturn, Fed surveys showed employers grousing about worker shortages in 2012, when the unemployment rate was above 8%. When compensation began to rise in earnest several years later, workers flooded back to the labor market.

"What we saw was that labor supply generally showed up," Fed Chair Jerome Powell said last month. "In other words, if you were worried about running out of workers, it seemed like we never did."

This time, with the economy projected to grow at its fastest pace since 1984, the rebalancing may be quicker. The Fed will be watching what happens with wages, and prices.



Graphic: Jobs and job openings -

 https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-ECONOMY/JOBS/azgvogmkmvd/chart.png

BACK TO THE KITCHEN? NOPE

Some workers in industries hard hit by job losses, such as restaurants and retail, have moved sectors entirely, said Bill Spriggs, chief economist with the AFL-CIO and a professor at Howard University.

Some people who had low-paying jobs before the pandemic were struggling to cover their bills even before the crisis and may be searching for more financial security, he said.

Richard Bunce, 33, was working as an executive chef in South Philadelphia when the pandemic hit. His eatery shut for six weeks, reopened for takeout, and then shut again.

Laid off, Bunce said he "decided I needed to do something different." He went to coding school, graduated in December and had a job offer two weeks later. He has since had a couple of offers to get back into the restaurant business. "I don't plan on doing that," he said.

Bunce's gain is the restaurant industry's loss. Washington-based restaurant operator Knead Hospitality is so desperate for workers it is offering hiring bonuses of up to $1,000 for servers, line cooks and bartenders.

Washut, the Massachusetts restaurateur, said he figures that to entice people collecting unemployment benefits he would have to set starting hourly pay at $19, up from $15 now. That would mean bumping wages even higher for existing staff or risk them feeling short-changed. To pay for all those raises, he would have to jack up prices on his $12 plates of Caribbean jerk chicken hash and eggs. "And who will pay $20 for an order of hash?"

Jimmy Nigg, who runs the Monkey Barrel Bar in Denver, is in a similar boat. He often finds himself in the kitchen making $5.95 cheeseburgers or behind the bar serving $6 craft beer because he can't find staff, though he now offers line cooks nearly $19 an hour.

Still, he's betting the upward wage pressure is temporary.

By September, he said, people will be willing to take "$15 or $16 because they are so desperate."

Graphic: Jobs in real time -

 https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-ECONOMY/REOPENING/azgvoaggdvd/chart.png

(Additional reporting by Howard Schneider, David Brunnstrom and Merdie Nzanga in Washington and Jonnelle Marte in New York; Editing by Dan Burns and Dan Grebler)

REVISIONIST REPUBLICANS

Lawmaker's ridiculous explanation for the three-fifths compromise on slavery (opinion)

Opinion by Kate Masur 

Speaking to the Tennessee House of Representatives on Tuesday, State Representative Justin Lafferty became the latest politician to reveal how little many Americans, including those in positions of power, know about this country's history.

© Tennessee House of Representatives

The Constitution's "three-fifths compromise," he said, was designed "to ensure that southern states never got the population necessary to continue the practice of slavery everywhere else in the country," and he asserted that the framers adopted this clause "for the purpose of ending slavery."

The three-fifths compromise, also known as the three-fifths clause, was not created to constrain the population of slave states nor was it intended to help end slavery. The clause was a compromise between contending visions of freedom and power in the new nation. It helped secure the influence of slaveholders and their allies in the federal government for decades to come, without doing a thing to curb or end the abhorrent practice of slavery.

The inaccuracies and misstatements of Lafferty and other Republicans, who are now seeking to prevent schools from teaching the fact-based history of slavery and racism in the United States, are "Exhibit A" for why we urgently need that history in our classrooms.

In 1787, the delegates who assembled in Philadelphia to draft the Constitution confronted complex questions of how to structure a national legislature and whether to ground representation in an enumeration of the population. They also debated whether, if a population count were used, enslaved people would be given the same weight as free people.

When the convention met, a number of northern states had already begun the process of abolishing slavery. But delegates to the convention, almost half of whom were slaveholders themselves, were overall too invested in slavery and too committed to limiting the power of the federal government to set the nation on a direct course toward abolition.

About 700,000 enslaved people lived in the country at the time, mostly in the southern states. Under sanction of state law, enslavers forced Black people to labor without pay, held them captive on farms and plantations and bought, sold and mortgaged them without regard for their humanity.

Yet during the convention's contentious debates about structuring Congress, some southerners insisted that if the House of Representatives was going to be based on a count of the population, then enslaved people must be treated as full "persons" in that count. This, of course, would maximize slave states' representation in Congress.

On the other side, some northern delegates claimed that enslaved people should not be counted at all for purposes of representation. They argued that southerners couldn't both insist on holding human beings as property and claim them as people when it suited their interests. Gouverneur Morris, a delegate from Pennsylvania, pointed up the hypocrisy: "Upon what principle is it that the slaves shall be computed in the representation? Are they men? Then make them Citizens and let them vote. Are they property? Why then is no other property included?"

Ironically, then, leaders who were invested in slavery wanted the enslaved to be considered full persons, while those who stood mostly for freedom wanted them not counted at all. As historian Patrick Rael has written, "Each section's interest demanded that it argue against its own principles."

The convention finally arrived at the compromise position that enslaved people would count as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of determining representation in the House, a formula that was later incorporated into the structure of the Electoral College. The three-fifths ratio itself did not originate in 1787; it had also been adopted as a basis for taxation at a 1783 meeting of the Continental Congress, but did not go into effect because it wasn't ratified by the states.

The Constitution's three-fifths clause helped slaveholders advance their interests on the national stage, at least in the short term, giving them more power than they would have had if the enslaved were not counted at all. It put enslavers in a strong position to garner crucial patronage appointments. It also gave them and their allies the edge in close contests, including the election of 1800, in which slaveholder Thomas Jefferson ultimately won the presidency, and the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which provided for the deportation of Native peoples across the southern states.

Yet the compromise was not powerful enough to guarantee permanent southern dominance, especially in the face of demographic change. In the decades following the nation's founding, slaveholders' grip on federal power was imperiled by larger population growth in the North, and they grew to rely on their strength in the Senate to block legislation that might diminish the protections that slavery enjoyed.

For many White southerners, Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860 was the breaking point. Elected almost exclusively by voters in the free states, Lincoln and the Republicans had pledged to stop slavery's spread. Southern separatists, faced with the possibility that slaveholding interests might never again prevail in the US government, broke with the Constitution and tried to form a separate nation, dedicated to preserving slavery and White supremacy.

In their veneration for the founding, Lafferty and other Republicans are reluctant to grapple with this nation's history as it actually unfolded. Neither the three-fifths clause nor any other constitutional measure led inevitably to slavery's abolition. Powerful White Americans persisted in defending the right to own Black people as property. It was, finally, a civil war in which more than 700,000 people perished that forced White southerners to give up those claims.

All this is not a matter of opinion or of politics. It's a matter of historical fact.

Officeholders should not fear that American children will learn these truths. To the contrary they should fund and support history teaching that tells the whole story, in all its difficulty and drama, to give future generations the tools they need to confront the challenges of their own times.

Prospects dim for passage of LGBTQ rights bill in Senate

WASHINGTON — Controlling Congress and the White House for the first time in a decade, Democrats were hopeful that this would be the year they finally secured civil rights protections for LGBTQ Americans.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Then came a new debate over women’s and girls sports.

Legislation that would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is running aground in the Senate, partly knocked off course by the nationwide conservative push against transgender participation in girls and women’s athletics that has swept state legislatures and now spilled into the halls of Congress.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said the House-passed legislation would “in effect repeal Title IX” by making it easier for transgender women to play on girls teams. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., said that allowing “male-bodied athletes” to compete against females would “totally undermine” girls basketball. Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., said the bill would “decimate” female athletic competition.

Democrats are frustrated by the shift in the debate, saying there’s ample evidence that the Republican claims are false and overblown.

The International Olympic Committee has allowed transgender athletes to compete for years under specific parameters, and, to date, there have been no known transgender women compete in the Olympics. Only one known transgender woman has competed at the Division I level in the NCAA. And though legislators in around 30 states have introduced legislation to ban or limit transgender athletes from competing on teams that align with their gender identity, few lawmakers have been able to cite specific cases in their home states where it became an issue.

“We are waiting for this avalanche of problems,” said the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, characterizing the Republicans’ argument. “They haven’t really surfaced.”

But Republicans are unyielding in their opposition to the legislation, spurred on by conservative groups who are pushing anti-transgender laws nationwide. With no Republicans signed on, for now, Democrats are unlikely to win the 60 votes needed to pass the Equality Act, potentially putting the issue in limbo indefinitely.

“It’s very discouraging, but in many ways not surprising, that Republicans are so focused on the trans community to build up opposition,” said Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I. He called the GOP arguments over sports a solution in search of a problem.

Sports are just the latest front in the decadeslong GOP culture war over LGBTQ rights that has focused increasingly on transgender Americans since 2015, when the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage. Conservative groups including The Heritage Foundation, Family Policy Alliance and the Christian legal network Alliance Defending Freedom have been engaged for much of the past two decades in advocacy against the LGBTQ rights movement. An earlier push by those groups to enact laws requiring transgender people to use public bathrooms corresponding to the sex on their birth certificate sputtered amid backlash.

Republicans contend the Equality Act would open the floodgates for transgender girls and women to play on female sports teams and hurt others’ chances to compete. While the bill does not explicitly mention sports or touch Title IX protections against sex-based discrimination, they say extending the protections to gender identity would eliminate “private spaces” for cisgender women, including sports teams.

They have repeatedly pointed to one example in Connecticut, where two transgender high school runners in Connecticut won several championships. A lawsuit filed by the runners’ teammates was recently thrown out.

“I have to say, as the father of two young girls, that girls sports has had a profound impact in their lives,” Cruz said at a hearing on the bill.

“The discipline, the teamwork, the camaraderie, the competitiveness, that girls sports teaches, is effectively destroyed from this bill.”

Christiana Holcomb, a lawyer with Alliance Defending Freedom, contends that the Equality Act would supersede Title IX “and force vulnerable girls to share intimate spaces with men who identify as female.”

AGAIN WHY NOT TALK ABOUT TRANS BOYS IN SPORTS OR BATHROOMS

GOP opposition to the bill goes beyond sports, however. Republicans have stalled earlier iterations of the legislation while making different arguments, including that it would infringe on religious freedom.

Democrats say that none of those objections hold weight and that it’s long past time to make clear that the nation’s civil rights laws explicitly include sexual orientation and gender identification. Passage of the law would outlaw discrimination in employment, housing, loan applications, education, public accommodations and other areas, as it did for women and racial minorities in an earlier era.

President Joe Biden pushed for the bill in his address to Congress last month, speaking directly to transgender Americans “watching at home, especially young people, who are so brave. I want you to know, your president has your back.”

The lead sponsors of the bill, Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Cicilline, say they know they have work to do. Merkley says he is working with Republicans and civil rights organizations “to find a path forward that will bring senators together behind a vision of full equality for LGBTQ Americans.”

The legislation has support from the Women’s Sports Foundation, a group that has advocated for women’s and girls sports for more than 40 years. The group says the GOP narrative on transgender athletes is a distraction from more important issues, including pay inequity and the harassment and abuse of female athletes.

“Let us be clear, there are many real threats to girls' and women’s access and opportunity in sports,” the group said. “However, transgender inclusion is not one of them.”

Many of the state legislators who have pushed the bills to ban transgender girls from competing on girls sports teams couldn’t cite any local examples, according to a review by The Associated Press in March. The AP reached out to two dozen state lawmakers sponsoring such measures as well as the conservative groups supporting them and found only a few times it’s been an issue among the hundreds of thousands of American teenagers who play high school sports.

Stella Keating, a 16-year-old transgender girl from Washington state, testified to the Senate that she wanted to join her school’s bowling team because her friends were on it.

“I can tell you that the majority of transgender people who join sports just want to hang out with their friends,” Keating said. “And that’s basically it.”

___

Crary reported from New York. Associated Press writers Lindsay Whitehurst in Salt Lake City and Anne Peterson in Portland, Ore., contributed to this report.

Mary Clare Jalonick And David Crary, The Associated Press

Vatican conference features Fauci, Francis - and Aerosmith

ROME — The CEOs of vaccine-makers Pfizer and Moderna joined cardinals, academics and the lead guitarist of Aerosmith in opening a unique Vatican conference on COVID-19, other global health threats and how science, solidarity and spirituality can address them.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The three-day online conference, which began Thursday and ends Saturday with a virtual audience with Pope Francis, was planned well before the pandemic erupted last year.

Organizers said the event has only taken on more relevance amid a growing appreciation of the need for global access to health care, new advances in vaccine technology and greater understanding of the mental health cost of loneliness.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the immunologist who leads the U.S. pandemic response, opened the meeting by saying the pandemic had confirmed to him that faith and science are constantly evolving — and that scientists in particular must humbly admit they don’t have all the answers all the time.

One answer the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said he did have was that the key to overcoming current vaccine hesitancy is pairing the right medical message with the right messenger.

“You have someone who’s a deeply religious person who will listen to their clergy. That’s different than me with a suit going into an area telling people to do something,” he said.

Fauci was referring to the religiously inspired resistance to taking COVID-19 vaccines that were indirectly developed using lines of cells derived from aborted fetuses. The Vatican has declared that all COVID-19 vaccines are not only morally licit, but that people have a moral responsibility to get the jabs to protect others.

The multidisciplinary conference was originally scheduled to take place at the Vatican in May 2020 but was postponed a year and eventually put online due to the pandemic.

The virtual format, however, has allowed for an even greater variety of participants.

A Harvard neuroscientist is leading a conversation about brain health and rock stars with Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry. Soprano Rene Fleming is participating in a panel discussion on the role of music in treating cardiac patients. Supermodel Cindy Crawford has a slot to talk about “beauty from the inside out,” and Chelsea Clinton is teaming up with an Italian public health official to promote equal access to health care.

Pfizer chief executive Albert Bourla told the conference in recorded remarks that the race to produce a COVID-19 vaccine had created unprecedented examples of collaboration and efficiency. He recalled that Pfizer didn’t have a final commercial agreement signed with its development partner, German firm BioNTech, until January - after Pfizer-BioNTech jabs were already going into arms.

Bourla recalled he and BioNTech’s chief executive, Dr. Ugur Sahin, did a virtual handshake “through the Zoom camera” and got to work.

“They shared their intellectual property with us, we shared our intellectual property with them,” he said. “Agreements that will gather billions of dollars were just put on hold just to make sure that we are all focusing on making the vaccine happen.”

Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel, for his part, said the Trump administration’s vaccine development drive, dubbed Operation Warp Speed, allowed Moderna to not only clear regulatory hurdles faster than usual but to take business risks it normally wouldn’t have because it had government funding.

The fact that mRNA vaccines have now been approved for use by federal regulators will only spur more development in the new technology, Bancel said.

“Today, we know that we can get an mRNA vaccine authorized by the regulator. And in business, (the difference) between believing and knowing is a huge difference in your willingness to take the risk,” he said.

The conference, which featured prominent U.S. journalists as moderators and academics in a variety of fields, also had a religious component. Rabbis, cardinals, imams and representatives of Christian denominations are discussing the role of religion and spirituality in health.

It’s the fifth time the Vatican’s culture ministry has teamed up with the Cura Foundation to mount a conference that aims to pair advances in science and technology with ideas about how to deliver them effectively, efficiently and at a lower cost.

“People are very focused on the pandemic. It’s changed our lives in many, many ways. But there are also other areas of our health that are impacted,” said Dr. Robin Smith, the Cura Foundation's founder and president.

The goal of the conference, she said, is to put aside political, religious and ideological differences and focus on improving health care around the globe.

“We really want to sort of check all that at the door and say, ‘How can you make a difference? How can we help?'"

Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press

AND FOR ALL THOSE CURIA IN THEIR CASSOCKS

Man gets house arrest for 'racist' attack on Chinese student riding Toronto bus

TORONTO — A man who went on a racist tirade and grabbed a masked female Chinese student on a city bus at the start of the pandemic has been handed four months house arrest

.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

In sentencing Michael Hennesy, 47, for assault, the Ontario court judge noted the physical attack was relatively minor but still had a severe effect on the victim.

"This offence shows how vulnerable society is to the ugly reality of racism and how quickly it can spread, and how scared and vulnerable its targets are," Judge Howard Borenstein said. "Racism is awful on its own given the dehumanizing effects it can have, and it often can lead to physical violence, which is what occurred here."

Evidence was that the student from China was sitting minding her own business on a downtown bus on an afternoon in February last year when Hennesy boarded. The student was wearing a medical mask.

In the four minutes he was on the bus, Hennesy declared himself Canadian, hurled profanities at her, insulted Chinese people, and told her to go back to where she came from.

The student began recording the tirade, prompting Hennesy to grab her arm in an effort to get her phone. She hit him across the face, screamed at him, and hung on to her phone, court documents show.

Hennesy, who pleaded guilty last month, turned himself in after TV broadcast his image.

The pandemic has sparked a surge in crimes against Asian people across North America, with victims often blamed for COVID-19 amid false allegations that China had deliberately unleashed the virus.

In its recent annual report, Toronto police said members of various Asian communities had become targets.

"Victims were subject to derogatory comments, and were either punched, pushed or spat on by the suspect(s)," the report said.

In sentencing the first-time offender, Borenstein referenced the "disturbing increase" in anti-Asian sentiment.

The impact on the student, he said, was "extreme." Among other things, she said she was unable to finish her semester, felt forced to move, and needed therapy.

As mitigating factors, the judge noted Hennesy, who has long battled addictions, was drunk at the time, had apologized to the student, and was in counselling. His childhood was at times abusive and violent. He was five when his father killed his mother, the judge said.

After living in shelters or community housing for the past eight years, he has now moved back to his native Newfoundland.

Despite Hennesy's assertions, backed by a doctor, therapist and sister, that he showed no signs of racism before the attack, Borenstein was skeptical.

"The aggravating features of this case is the racist nature of this attack and its impact on (the student) and beyond her, to others especially in the Asian community who feel more insecure and unsafe when this happens," the judge said.

Borenstein opted for the four months house arrest along with a year's probation, and ordered Hennesy to do 30 hours of community service.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 7, 2021.

Colin Perkel, The Canadian Press

Leader of world's largest vaccine manufacturer flees India after threats from rich and powerful

National Post Staff 

The CEO of the Serum Institute in India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturers, has fled India, claiming he and his family had been threatened by some of the most powerful people in the country.

© Provided by National Post Adar Poonawalla, chief executive officer of Serum Institute of India Ltd., poses for photograph in Pune, Maharashtra, India, on Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2015.

In an interview with the Times of London, published on Saturday May 1, Adar Poonawalla said he flew to London after enduring phone calls from chief ministers of Indian states, business leaders and others demanding that they receive the vaccine first.

“‘Threats’ is an understatement,” Poonawalla said. “The level of expectation and aggression is really unprecedented.”

The Serum Institute has been producing over 600 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine month, supplied around the world. It is also responsible for supplying 90 per cent of India’s vaccines, as the second COVID-19 wave ravages the country, killing up to 4,000 people a day.

“It’s overwhelming. Everyone feels they should get the vaccine. They can’t understand why anyone else should get it before them,” he said. “They are saying if you don’t give us the vaccine it’s not going to be good. It’s not foul language. It’s the tone. It’s the implication of what they might do if I don’t comply.”

The situation, at a point, had gotten so bad that several people had surrounded Poonawalla’s company multiple times, and accused him of profiting from the COVID-19 vaccines, he said.

In April, the institute put a price tag on the supply of domestic vaccine Covishield, charging private hospitals Rs.600 (C$9.94) per vaccine dose supply and government and state hospitals Rs. 400 per dose supply (C$ 6.63).

“Everything falls on my shoulders, but I can’t do it alone…I don’t want to be in a situation where you are just trying to do your job, and just because you can’t supply the needs of X, Y or Z, you really don’t want to guess what they are going to do,” Poonawalla told The Times.

He told the outlet that he planned to stay in London for an ‘extended period of time’, but hours after the interview was published, tweeted that he would return in a few days.

The pharmaceutical company plans to begin production of the vaccines in London in the coming days, according to Poonawalla.

“There’s going to be an announcement in the next few days,” he said.

Staunch anti-India Kashmir politician dies in police custody

© Provided by The Canadian Press

SRINAGAR, India — A prominent politician in Kashmir who challenged India’s rule over the disputed region for decades died Wednesday while in police custody. He was 78.

Mohammed Ashraf Sehrai was admitted to a government hospital with multiple ailments on Tuesday from a jail in the southern Jammu region, officials and his family said.

Officials did not immediately announce the cause of death.

Sehrai’s son, Mujahid Sehrai, said authorities and doctors told him that his father had tested positive for COVID-19 and that his oxygen levels had dropped early Wednesday.

He said his father was denied proper medical care in jail and complained of ill health when they spoke 10 days ago.

“He told us several times in the last few months during his two phone calls a week to home that he was not getting proper medical treatment,” his son said. “We moved to a court on April 16 with a petition seeking proper medical assistance for him but the court was yet to review it.”

For the past year, political and civic groups have urged the government to release political prisoners from overcrowded jails where coronavirus infection rates are high.

V.K. Singh, the region’s director-general of prisons, said jail officials promptly provided medical help to Sehrai. “He was suffering from multiple ailments and we did whatever we could do as per mandate and resources with the prisons department,” he told The Associated Press.

Sehrai was arrested last July under the Public Safety Act, which allows authorities in Indian-controlled Kashmir to imprison anyone for up to two years without trial.

All Parties Hurriyat Conference, the main separatist grouping in Kashmir, said authorities had left Sehrai unattended in jail until his condition worsened. In a statement, it said it “deeply regrets this inhuman attitude of the authorities and is pained by it.”

It also expressed concern about the health of hundreds of other Kashmiri political detainees as India faces a massive health crisis because of an explosion of coronavirus cases. Last week, the grouping said the prisoners were being denied “even basic amenities,” leading to “serious health problems among the prisoners.”

Sajad Lone, a pro-India Kashmiri politician, called Sehrai a “transparently honest politician.”

“Have we become so weak that an old infirm dying person is a threat to the state?” he said in a tweet.

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said it was deeply grieved over Sehrai’s death and expressed concern over the health and safety of Kashmiri prisoners.

Sehrai “remained incarcerated in Indian jail under squalid conditions despite serious deterioration of his health and the prevailing COVID-19 crisis,” it said in a statement.

India has arrested thousands of Kashmiris under the Public Safety Act since 1989, when an armed rebellion erupted in Indian-controlled Kashmir seeking the region’s independence or merger with Pakistan, which controls another part of the territory. Rights groups say India has used the law to stifle dissent and circumvent the justice system, undermining accountability, transparency, and respect for human rights.

Sehrai was one of the staunchest supporters of Kashmir’s merger with Pakistan. He was head of Tehreek-e-Hurriyat, an anti-India political group, and a member of the largest religious and political group, Jama’at Islami.

He spent more than 16 years in various Indian jails in a political career that spanned nearly six decades. His son was killed in a gunfight with Indian troops in April last year in the region’s main city of Srinagar. He was member of Kashmir’s main rebel group.

Mohamad Junaid, a New York-based Kashmiri political anthropologist, said “there is no difference between killing and actively creating the conditions of someone’s death.” In a tweet he said, “When a state can’t take care of its own people, how could it ever look after the health of political dissidents it has declared as enemies and imprisoned?”

Sehrai is survived by his wife, two daughters and three sons.

Aijaz Hussain, The Associated Press

Medics: 200 Palestinians hurt in Al-Aqsa clashes with police

JERUSALEM — A night of heavy clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound and elsewhere in Jerusalem left more than 200 Palestinians wounded, medics said Saturday, as the city braced for even more violence after weeks of unrest.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Nightly protests broke out at the start of the holy month of Ramadan over police restrictions at a popular gathering place and have reignited in recent days over threatened eviction of dozens of Palestinians from their homes in east Jerusalem, which is claimed by both sides in the decades-old conflict.

It was unclear what set off the violence at Al-Aqsa, which erupted when Israeli police in riot gear deployed in large numbers as thousands of Muslim worshippers were holding evening prayers at the sprawling hilltop esplanade.

Throughout the night large groups of protesters could be seen hurling rocks as Israeli police fired rubber bullets and stun grenades. At one point, the police entered one of the buildings in the complex, which includes the Al-Aqsa mosque and the iconic golden Dome of the Rock.

The Palestinian Red Crescent emergency service said 88 of the wounded were hospitalized. The Palestinian Health Ministry said 83 people were wounded by rubber-coated bullets, including three who were shot in the eye, two with serious head injuries and two with broken jaws.

The Israeli police said protesters hurled stones, fireworks and other objects at them, wounding 17 officers, half of whom were hospitalized. “We will respond with a heavy hand to all violent disturbances, riots and attacks on our forces,” it said in a statement late Friday.

The Al-Aqsa mosque compound is the third holiest site in Islam. It is also the holiest site for Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount because it was the location of the biblical temples. It has long been a flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and was the epicenter of the 2000 Palestinian intifada, or uprising.

Some 70,000 worshippers had attended the final midday Friday prayers of Ramadan at Al-Aqsa, the Islamic endowment that oversees the site said. Thousands protested afterwards, waving the green flags of the Islamic militant group Hamas and chanting pro-Hamas slogans.

At the beginning of Ramadan in mid-April, Israel blocked off a popular gathering spot where Palestinians traditionally socialize at the end of their daylong fast. The move set off two weeks of clashes before Israel lifted the restrictions.

But in recent days, protests have grown over Israel's threatened eviction in Sheikh Jarrah in east Jerusalem of dozens of Palestinians embroiled in a long legal battle with Israeli settlers trying to acquire property in the neighbourhood.

The United States said it was “deeply concerned” about both the violence and the threatened evictions, and was in contact with leaders on both sides to try and de-escalate tensions.

“It is critical to avoid steps that exacerbate tensions or take us farther away from peace,” the U.S. State Department said in a statement. “This includes evictions in East Jerusalem, settlement activity, home demolitions, and acts of terrorism.”

The European Union also urged calm. It said the potential evictions were of “serious concern," adding that such actions are "illegal under international humanitarian law and only serve to fuel tensions on the ground.

Neighbouring Jordan, which made peace with Israel in 1994 and is the custodian of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, has also condemned Israel's actions, as has the Gulf kingdom of Bahrain, which normalized relations with Israel last year in a U.S.-brokered deal.

Israelis and Palestinians are bracing for more unrest in the coming days.

Saturday night is “Laylat al-Qadr” or the “Night of Destiny,” the most sacred in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Worshippers will gather for intense nighttime prayers at Al-Aqsa.

Sunday night is the start of Jerusalem Day, a national holiday in which Israel celebrates its annexation of east Jerusalem and religious nationalists hold parades and other celebrations in the city. On Monday, an Israeli court is expected to issue a verdict on the evictions.

Israel captured east Jerusalem, along with the West Bank and Gaza — territories the Palestinians want for their future state — in the 1967 Mideast war. Israel annexed east Jerusalem in a move not recognized internationally and views the entire city as its capital.

The Palestinians view east Jerusalem — which includes major holy sites for Jews, Christians and Muslims — as their capital, and its fate is one of the most sensitive issues in the conflict. In a call to Palestine TV late Friday, President Mahmoud Abbas praised the “courageous stand” of the protesters and said Israel bore full responsibility for the violence.

Israel's Foreign Ministry had earlier accused the Palestinians of seizing on the threatened evictions, which it described as a “real-estate dispute between private parties,” in order to incite violence.

Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip and opposes Israel's existence, has called for a new intifada.

Protest groups affiliated with Hamas said they would resume demonstrations and the launching of incendiary balloons along the heavily-guarded Gaza frontier. Hamas has largely curtailed such actions over the past two years as part of an informal cease-fire that now appears to be fraying.

In an interview with a Hamas-run TV station, the group's top leader Ismail Haniyeh addressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by name, warning him not to “play with fire.”

“Neither you, nor your army and police, can win this battle,” he said. “What’s happening in Jerusalem is an intifada that must not stop.”

___

Akram reported from Gaza City, Gaza Strip.

Joseph Krauss And Fares Akram, The Associated Press

Protesters demand justice for Mexico metro crash victims

Hundreds of protesters gathered in Mexico's capital on Friday demanding justice for the people killed when an elevated metro line with a history of problems came crashing down.

© CLAUDIO CRUZ People light candles and place flowers at the site of a Mexico City metro rail accident that left 26 dead and sparked calls for justice

The death toll climbed to 26 on Friday after a woman hospitalized with injuries from the accident died. "Our deepest condolences," Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum tweeted, adding that officials will continue to monitor the rest of the injured.

© CLAUDIO CRUZ Rescue workers use cranes to remove the wreckage of a metro train that fell as an overpass collapsed in Mexico City

At the site of the accident, demonstrators who had set off from various parts of Mexico City converged and paid tribute to the victims with candles and flowers.

"I'm here in solidarity with all the people who died. They no longer have a voice," said Briseida Noguez, a local resident.

"What happened is due to negligence, due to corruption," she told AFP.

Some minor scuffles broke out with the police who tried at times to prevent the protesters from approaching the scene of the tragedy.

But in the end, the police made way for the demonstrators who approached the place where the overpass collapsed on Monday night, sending two carriages and their passengers plunging down.

Demonstrators shouted "justice!" and "present" as the names of the victims were readout.

"It's a disgrace for society, for our community. I hope that all the people rest in peace and hopefully receive justice," said 21-year-old Erick Medina.

The protesters carried banners blaming left-wing politicians, who have run the capital since 1997.  THEY ARE NOT LEFT WING THEY ARE NEOLIBERAL SOCIAL DEMOCRATS

The metro line which partially collapsed, the city's newest, has been plagued by a series of problems since it was inaugurated in 2012.

Norwegian engineering company DNV has been asked to help prosecutors with the investigation into the disaster, which has prompted accusations of negligence and demands for justice from devastated relatives.

The furor has engulfed two of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's political proteges and leading contenders to be his left-wing party's candidate in the 2024 presidential elections.

One of them, Mexico City Mayor Sheinbaum, faces questions about whether the network has been properly maintained since she took office in 2018.

The other, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, oversaw the development and inauguration of the line involved in the crash in his former position as Mexico City mayor.

Lopez Obrador has promised an in-depth investigation to uncover the truth behind the accident, while urging people not to speculate about who is to blame.

Defects, damage suspected in Mexico metro disaster

The collapse of a Mexico City metro overpass that left 26 people dead could have been caused by defects in the steel beams or damage to the joints, experts told AFP.

© CLAUDIO CRUZ Rescue workers use cranes to remove the wreckage of a metro train that fell as an overpass collapsed in Mexico City

The capital's mayor, Claudia Sheinbaum, said after Monday's accident, which also left 80 injured, that a beam holding up the section of elevated track had given way.

Norwegian engineering company DNV has been asked to help prosecutors with the investigation into the disaster, which has prompted accusations of negligence and demands for justice from devastated relatives.

© PEDRO PARDO Relatives mourn Juan Luis Diaz, one of the 25 victims of Mexico City's metro disaster

Sergio Alcocer, a researcher at the engineering faculty of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said that the collapse "may be due to a defect in the steel" used to make the beams.

Like other experts, he based his initial suspicions on a police video showing the moment when an elevated part of metro line 12 collapsed, sending two carriages plunging towards the ground.

Juan Manuel Fuentes, technical director of Mexican structural engineering firm Quasar, said that "the deafening vibration" on some of the sections of the line also could have caused the overpass's joints to weaken.

© CLAUDIO CRUZ 'It was not an accident, it was negligence' reads the sign at the site of the metro line crash in Mexico City

According to a senior Mexico City official, Jesus Antonio Estevas, "it is clear that there was a failure in the metal structures" of the section of elevated track that came crashing down.

- 'Golden Line' -

Line 12, also known as the Golden Line, is 24.5 kilometers (15 miles) long and was built at a cost of around $1.2 billion -- 70 percent more than originally planned.

It was inaugurated in 2012 by then-mayor Marcelo Ebrard -- now foreign minister -- who, along with Sheinbaum, is at the center of the political furor unleashed by the tragedy.

In 2014, operations were suspended along 12 stations of the line for just over a year due to a deterioration in the track, rail fastenings and railroad ties, also known as sleepers.

The same year, the Mexico City authorities hired the French engineering company Systra to determine the causes and recommend measures to solve the issue.

Systra found that there was "a problem with the contact between the rails and the wheels," Tatiana Graffeuil told AFP on behalf of the firm.

The company recommended work to repair the rail tracks, which it monitored, but its involvement was not related to the structure of the overpass, she added.

- Poorly designed? -

While the line was partially suspended, the fastenings, track ballast and train springs were replaced along with other measures, a former metro director told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The French company Triacaud Societe Organise (TSO) also carried out another assessment in 2014.

Since then, TSO has been in charge of maintaining the rails, ballasts and switches, a source close to the firm told AFP.

Sheinbaum, facing questions about whether the section was properly maintained, said after the crash that "every day a maintenance process is carried out on line 12 at different points."

Alcocer, the engineering expert, said that the video of the collapse clearly shows that "as the train passes the beam breaks, which indicates a type of failure that occurs in metal components and may be due to a defect in the steel of the plates."

It is also possible that the beams were "poorly designed or overloaded," or not properly welded together, he added.

Fuentes noted that the metal part of the beam was attached to a layer of concrete with shear bolts, which he said could have detached, in part due to vibrations from the train.

"Welding or shear bolt failures are sudden. It's almost impossible to predict" during maintenance work, he said.

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