Coronavirus accelerates decline of slumping coal industry

FILE - This Tuesday, July 2, 2019 file photo shows Eagle Butte mine in in Gillette, Wyo., following the closure of the Blackjewel mines.The coal industry was already hurting before the coronavirus. The pandemic has made things a lot worse. Production is down along with electricity demand, with office and school lights off across the nation. (Josh Galemore/The Casper Star-Tribune via AP, File)
APRIL 18, 2020

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Travis Deti has been working the phones to try to get government support for the U.S. coal industry during the coronavirus pandemic. Between recent calls, the head of the Wyoming Mining Association tried to unclog a sink at home.

But unlike Deti’s sink, which eventually started flowing again with help from a plumber, aid remains stubbornly clogged for an industry whose already rapid decline is accelerating because of the economic effects of the virus.

“We’d take anything right now,” said Deti, whose group represents companies that produce about 40% of the nation’s coal.

FILE - This Sept. 5, 2019 file photo shows a poster urging locals to stay strong amid hardship in a Gillette, Wyo, storefront on the Eagle Butte mine just north of Gillette. The coal industry was already hurting before the coronavirus. The pandemic has made things a lot worse. Production is down along with electricity demand, with office and school lights off across the nation. (AP Photo/Mead Gruver, File)

Coal demand has tanked over the past decade amid competition from cheap natural gas and expanded renewable energy sources. Coal companies have faced a reckoning as the world looks to combat climate change and move away from fossil fuels despite President Donald Trump’s effort to revive the industry.

Now, the pandemic has made things worse. Lockdowns have shut off lights and computers in offices and schools, sapping demand for electricity provided by coal-fired power plants. Americans stuck at home binge-watching Netflix aren’t coming close to making up for that drop in demand, expected to be 3% for 2020.

The safety of workers is another issue. In the most productive coal region in the U.S. — Wyoming and Montana’s Powder River Basin — companies are staggering shifts and running more buses to and from mining towns to create more space between workers.

Companies have temporarily suspended operations at mines in Pennsylvania, Illinois and Virginia to stop the spread of the virus. Some miners are only working two or three days a week.

“There is no consistency from mine to mine, even within the same company,” said Phil Smith, spokesman for the United Mine Workers of America, a union representing thousands of coal miners primarily in the eastern U.S.

Even before the virus, companies were forced into bankruptcy and workers faced furloughs and layoffs. Six of the top seven U.S. coal companies have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy since 2015 and analysts expect more as the economy dives.

There are bright spots, however. The worldwide decline in electricity consumption, along with less fuel being burned for transportation, has meant clearer skies. Particulate pollution is down almost 19% in India and 6% in China since before the outbreak, according to Fiona Burlig with the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute. The decrease in the U.S. is a modest 0.5%.

The U.S. is expected to see a 7.5% drop in climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions tied to reduced production — that is until carbon dioxide emissions surge next year as the economy rebounds, according to projections by the Energy Information Administration.

But there is little doubt of the crushing effect of the virus’s economic fallout on coal. In January, before the pandemic took hold in the U.S., coal production was forecast to drop 14% this year. With the coronavirus and a mild winter that meant less electricity needed to heat homes and businesses, that drop is now expected to be as much as 25% — falling to levels not seen in 55 years.

“It will simply be that renewables and gas will keep their market, and coal, being the more expensive fuel, is going to get pushed out even more than it would,” said Seth Feaster of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

St. Louis-based coal company Foresight Energy, which employs 800 people, may be the industry’s first coronavirus-related casualty. It filed for federal bankruptcy protection in March, citing in part “a slowdown in the global economy due to concerns over the coronavirus.”

The National Mining Association last month asked Congress and the White House for $822 million in federal assistance by reducing or eliminating royalties, taxes and fees.

“If we can stay operating, that’s the big thing for us,” said Deti of the Wyoming group.

Congress has shown little willingness so far to help, and none of the industry’s requests were included in the $2 trillion coronavirus relief bill. Analysts doubt any significant aid will come.

“Typically, when you think about industries that the government has protected, it’s large, strategically vital industries,” said Benjamin Nelson, a senior credit officer with Moody’s Investors Service. “So, in an industry that’s in a steep, secular decline, I think there’s less incentive to get involved.”

One U.S. lawmaker from a coal state, Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, said mining companies could apply for relief but that there are bigger challenges for the economy than propping up coal corporations. The priority should be small businesses, he said.

“They are the ones that, quite frankly, we need to make sure are able to survive through this,” Tester said.

Even if the industry gets what it wants, the boost would be only temporary and leave the same fundamental problem: a lack of demand, said Feaster of the energy economics institute.

“Both royalty relief and tax relief depend on your ability to produce or make a profit,” Feaster said. “If there’s no demand and nobody wants to buy, that doesn’t really help you.”

___

Brown reported from Billings, Montana. Associated Press reporter Dylan Lovan contributed from Louisville, Kentucky.

Ventilator from old car parts? Afghan girls pursue prototype
In this Wednesday, April 8, 2020 photo, a group of young girls are developing two types of cheap ventilator devices using Toyota car spare parts to help the fight against the coronavirus pandemic in Herat, west of Kabul, Afghanistan. Afghanistan faces the pandemic nearly empty-handed. It has only 400 ventilators for a population of more than 30 million. So far, it has reported just over 700 coronavirus cases, including 23 deaths, but the actual number is suspected to be much higher since test kits are in short supply. (AP Photo/Hamed Safarazi)

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — On most mornings, Somaya Farooqi and four other teen-age girls pile into her dad’s car and head to a mechanic’s workshop. They use back roads to skirt police checkpoints set up to enforce a lockdown in their city of Herat, one of Afghanistan’s hot spots of the coronavirus pandemic.

The members of Afghanistan’s prize-winning girls’ robotics team say they’re on a life-saving mission — to build a ventilator from used car parts and help their war-stricken country battle the virus.

“If we even save one life with our device, we will be proud,” said Farooqi, 17.

Their pursuit of a low-cost breathing machine is particularly remarkable in conservative Afghanistan. Only a generation ago, during the rule of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban in the late 1990s, girls weren’t allowed to go to school. Farooqi’s mother was pulled from school in third grade.

After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, girls returned to schools, but gaining equal rights remains a struggle. Farooqi is undaunted. “We are the new generation,” she said in a phone interview. “We fight and work for people. Girl and boy, it does not matter anymore.”

Afghanistan faces the pandemic nearly empty-handed. It has only 400 ventilators for a population of more than 36.6 million. So far, it has reported just over 900 coronavirus cases, including 30 deaths, but the actual number is suspected to be much higher since test kits are in short supply.

Herat province in western Afghanistan is one of the nation’s hot spots because of its proximity to Iran, the region’s epicenter of the outbreak.

This has spurred Farooqi and her team members, ages 14 to 17, to help come up with a solution.

In this Wednesday, April 8, 2020, photo, a group of young girls are developing two types of inexpensive ventilator devices using Toyota car spare parts to help hospitals care for patients infected with the coronavirus in Herat province west of Kabul, Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Hamed Safarazi)

On a typical morning, Farooqi’s father collects the girls from their homes and drives them to the team’s office in Herat, zigzagging through side streets to skirt checkpoints. From there, another car takes them to a mechanic’s workshop on the outskirts of the city.

In Herat, residents are only permitted to leave their homes for urgent needs. The robotics team has a limited number of special permits for cars.

So far, Farooqi’s father hasn’t been able to get one, but the girls are in a hurry. “We are concerned about security driving out of the city but there is no other option, we have to try to save people’s lives,” Farooqi said.

At the workshop, the team is experimenting with two different designs, including an open-source blueprint from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The parts being used include the motor of a Toyota windshield wiper, batteries and sets of bag valve masks, or manual oxygen pumps. A group of mechanics helps them build the frame of a ventilator.

In this Wednesday, April 15, 2020, photo, Somaya Farooqi works with a team of five young girls is developing cheap ventilators from Toyota car spare parts to help the fight against the coronavirus pandemic in Herat, west of Kabul, Afghanistan. Afghanistan faces the pandemic nearly empty-handed. It has only 400 ventilators for a population of more than 30 million. So far, it has reported just over 700 coronavirus cases, including 23 deaths, but the actual number is suspected to be much higher since test kits are in short supply. (AP Photo/Hamed Safarazi)

Daniela Rus, a professor at MIT, welcomed the team’s initiative to develop the prototype. “It will be excellent to see it tested and locally produced,” she said.

Tech entrepreneur Roya Mahboob, who founded the team and raises funds to empower girls, said she hopes Farooqi’s group will finish building a prototype by May or June. In all, the team has 15 members who work on various projects.
The ventilator model, once completed, would then be sent to the Health Ministry for testing, initially on animals, said spokesman Wahid Mayar.

Farooqi, who was just 14 years old when she participated in the first World Robot Olympiad in the U.S., in 2017, said she and her team members hope to make a contribution.

“Afghans should be helping Afghanistan in this pandemic,” she said. “We should not wait for others.”

In this Wednesday, April 8, 2020 photo, a group of young girls are developing two types of cheap ventilator devices using Toyota car spare parts to help the fight against the coronavirus pandemic in Herat, west of Kabul, Afghanistan. Afghanistan faces the pandemic nearly empty-handed. It has only 400 ventilators for a population of more than 30 million. So far, it has reported just over 700 coronavirus cases, including 23 deaths, but the actual number is suspected to be much higher since test kits are in short supply. (AP Photo/Hamed Safarazi)

Factory shutdowns near WWII demobilization levels in US
April 15, 2020

FILE - In this April 13, 2020 file photo, a worker wears a mask as he cleans up an area outside an entrance at Boeing Co.'s airplane assembly facility in Everett, Wash., north of Seattle. American industry collapsed in March as the coronavirus pandemic wreaked havoc on the U.S. economy. Manufacturing and overall industrial production posted the biggest drops since the United States demobilized after World War II. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)


WASHINGTON (AP) — American industry collapsed in March as the pandemic wreaked havoc on the U.S. economy. Manufacturing and overall industrial production posted the biggest declines since the United States demobilized after World War II.

The Federal Reserve reported Wednesday that manufacturing output dropped 6.3% last month, led by plunging production at auto factories that have entirely shut down. Overall, industrial production, which includes factories, utilities and mines, plummeted 5.4%. The declines were the biggest since 1946 and far worse than what economists had expected.

The lockdowns and travel restrictions imposed to combat COVID-19 have brought economic activity to a near-standstill. Output dropped 3.9% at utilities and 2% at mines as oil and gas drilling plunged, the Fed said.

Factories were running at 70.2% of capacity last month, down from 75.1% in February and lowest since 2010 when the U.S. economy was still recovering from the 2007-2009 Great Recession.

“The outlook is bleak for the industrial sectors,″ James Watson and Gregory Daco at Oxford Economics wrote in a research note. “With the global coronavirus recession leading to a sudden stop in activity at home and around the world, factory output is likely to fall even further in April. Major supply chain disruptions, reduced energy activity and tighter financial conditions will continue to represent major headwinds in the coming months.″ They say industrial production could drop 15% overall

In another sign that industry is in a full-scale retreat, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s index for manufacturing in New York state plummeted an unprecedented 57 points this month to -78.2, lowest lowest level in records dating back to 2001.

For meat plant workers, virus makes a hard job perilous

In this April 13, 2020, photo, Kulule Amosa steps out of the apartment she shares with her husband who works at the Smithfield Foods pork processing plant in Sioux Falls, S.D. He tested positive for the coronavirus this week after an outbreak at the plant. (AP Photo/Stephen Groves)


APRIL 19, 2020

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — Kulule Amosa’s husband earns $17.70 an hour at a South Dakota pork plant doing a job so physically demanding it can only be performed in 30-minute increments. After each shift last week, he left exhausted as usual — but he didn’t want to go home.

He was scared he would infect his pregnant wife with the coronavirus — so much so that when he pulled into the parking lot of their apartment building, he would call Amosa to tell her he wasn’t coming inside. When he eventually did, he would sleep separately from her in their two-bedroom apartment.

“I’m really, really scared and worried,” Amosa said Monday.
In this April 14, 2020, photo, a package of Smithfield Foods breakfast sausage sits in a shopping cart outside of a local grocery story, in Des Moines, Iowa. The surge of coronavirus cases at Smithfield Foods in Sioux Falls, S.D. has highlighted the vulnerability of meat processing workers, who stand shoulder-to-shoulder on the line and congregate in crowded locker rooms and cafeterias. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall) 

This was no abstract worry: At the Smithfield Foods plant, the locker rooms were so tightly packed Amosa’s husband told her he sometimes had to push his way through a crowd. Coughs echoed through the bathrooms. The plant in Sioux Falls clocked so many cases that it was forced to close this week. It has reported 518 infections in employees and another 126 in people connected to them as of Wednesday, making it among the largest known clusters in the United States. A 64-year-old employee who contracted COVID-19 died Tuesday, according to his pastor.

The concentration of cases has highlighted the particular susceptibility of meat processing workers, who stand shoulder-to-shoulder on the line and congregate in crowded locker rooms and cafeterias. As many as half a dozen plants have shut because of outbreaks. Because the workers who slaughter and pack the nation’s meat are vulnerable, so, too, is the supply of that meat. Smithfield CEO Kenneth Sullivan said the closure of the plant, which produces roughly 5% of the U.S. pork supply each day, was “pushing our country perilously close to the edge in terms of our meat supply.”

Amosa and her husband, who are originally from Ethiopia, once saw working at the plant, where she also had a job until she became pregnant, as key to building their new life in the United States: It was well paid, union employment that gave them a community. But amid the coronavirus pandemic, the couple found themselves — like many workers whose jobs cannot be done remotely — exposed on two fronts: Both their health and their livelihoods were at risk. The couple agreed to speak to The Associated Press on the condition that Amosa’s husband not be named because he feared losing his job.

The plant is vital to a burgeoning immigrant community in Sioux Falls, offering opportunities for even those without a college degree or fluent English. Smithfield offers pay starting at over $15 an hour, health insurance and plenty of overtime.



The plant has attracted a diversifying workforce to the city, where Somali and Vietnamese restaurants have joined diners and craft breweries. But the city remains fairly divided, with many immigrants living in neighborhoods near the plant, which employs 3,700 people in a city of about 180,000.

(THIS IS THE RESULT OF REAGAN POLICIES OF AMNESTY, DEREGULATION AND SELF REGULATION IN ORDER TO UNION BUST BY DRIVING WAGES DOWN IN THE MEAT PACKING INDUSTRY)

The outbreak at the plant has also presented a significant test to a governor who has resisted issuing sweeping stay-at-home orders. As Republican Gov. Kristi Noem was pressed again this week to impose tighter restrictions on Sioux Falls, her response instead was to announce that the state would give wide access to an anti-malarial drug championed by President Donald Trump as a promising treatment for COVID-19, but that has yet to be proven effective.

Noem has fired back, arguing that plant workers were deemed essential and would have been reporting for duty regardless.

For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, but, for some, especially the elderly or infirm, it can cause severe illness and lead to death.

Even before the coronavirus began sickening workers, jobs in the meatpacking industry have been considered among the most dangerous in the U.S. Workers are exposed to a long list of dangers from hazardous chemicals to sharp knives. Just last month, a maintenance worker at a Tyson Fresh Meats plant in Kansas died after investigators say he got caught up in the assembly line belt.

The work is physical, starting with butchering hogs that weigh nearly 300 pounds (135 kilograms). On the processing line, repetitive-motion injuries are common. One worker at Smithfield described often waking up with his right hand so swollen he couldn’t make a fist. 
FILE - In this April 9, 2020, file photo, a car with a sign calling for a safe and healthy workplace drives past Smithfield Foods in Sioux Falls, S.D., during a protest on behalf of employees after many workers complained of unsafe working conditions due to the COVID-19 outbreak. The surge of coronavirus cases at Smithfield Foods has highlighted the vulnerability of meat processing workers, who stand shoulder-to-shoulder on the line and congregate in crowded locker rooms and cafeterias. (Erin Bormett/The Argus Leader via AP, File)

Union leaders and immigrant advocates cheered the decision to close the plant indefinitely but wish more had been done sooner.

Smithfield spokeswoman Keira Lombardo said difficulty in getting masks and thermal scanners led to delays in implementing some safety measures when the plant was open. But she said last week the plant was adding extra hand-sanitizing stations, scanning employees’ temperatures before they entered and installing Plexiglas barriers in some areas.

Six current employees interviewed by the AP who, like Amosa’s husband, insisted on anonymity because they feared they would be fired described far more haphazard measures. They said they were given flimsy masks made of hairnet-like material, hand-washing stations were in disrepair, and there was pressure to keep working even if they felt sick.

One employee told his supervisor on March 30 that he had a fever the previous day, but he was told to report to work and not to tell anyone about the fever. He worked that day, missed the next two and returned when the fever broke, he said.
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“No one asked if I went to the doctor, if I was tested,” the employee said.

Lombardo said Smithfield “fully rejects any claims that employees were pressured to report to work,” calling it “completely counterproductive” to do so.

Smithfield has said it plans to clean the plant and implement more protections in the hopes of reopening. The Centers for Disease Prevention and Control sent a team to the plant this week to examine how it can be safely restarted.

But that may be difficult. Workers say they cannot fathom how butchering lines could be reconfigured to accommodate social distancing.

Meanwhile, Amosa and her husband are both home now — nervously awaiting their first child. But they also have a new worry: His coronavirus test came back positive Tuesday.

___

Associated Press writer Amy Forliti in Minneapolis, Minnesota, contributed to this report

SEE  

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=SMITHFIELD

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=TYSON

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=MEAT+PACKING

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=COVID19

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=JBS

‘They’re killing us,’ AFRICAN AMERICAN Texans 

say of Trump EPA rollbacks

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Activist Hilton Kelley poses along the railroad tracks that divide East and West Port Arthur Monday, March 23, 2020, in Port Arthur, Texas. "Now we may not drop dead that day," Kelley said of the environmental protection rollbacks, and the communities surrounding the refineries and plants. "But when you're inundated day after day...we're dead. We're dead." (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
HOUSTON (AP) — Danielle Nelson’s best monitor for the emissions billowing out of the oil refineries and chemical plants surrounding her home: The heaving chest of her 9-year-old asthmatic son.

On some nights, the boy’s chest shudders as he fights for breath in his sleep. Nelson suspects the towering plants and refineries are to blame, rising like a lit-up city at night around her squat brick apartment building in the rugged Texas Gulf Coast city of Port Arthur.

Ask Nelson what protection the federal government and plant operators provide her African American community, and her answer is blunt. “They’re basically killing us,” says the 37-year-old, who herself has been diagnosed with respiratory problems since moving to the community after Hurricane Harvey in 2017.


“We don’t even know what we’re breathing,” she says.

The Texas Gulf Coast is the United States’ petrochemical corridor, with four of the country’s 10 biggest oil and gas refineries and thousands of chemical facilities.

Residents of the mostly black and Latino communities closest to the refineries and chemical plants say that puts them on the front line of the Trump administration’s rollbacks of decades of public health and environmental protections.

Under President Donald Trump, federal regulatory changes are slashing requirements on industry to monitor, report and reduce toxic pollutants, heavy metals and climate-damaging fossil fuel emissions, and to work transparently with communities to prevent plant disasters — such as the half-dozen major chemical fires and explosions that have killed workers and disrupted life along the Texas Gulf Coast over the past year alone.

And that plunge in public health enforcement may be about to get even more dramatic. Last month, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Andrew Wheeler, a coal lobbyist before Trump appointed him to the agency, announced enforcement waivers for industries on monitoring, reporting and quickly fixing hazardous releases, in cases the EPA deems staffing problems related to the coronavirus pandemic made compliance difficult.

Since then, air pollutants in Houston’s most heavily industrialized areas have surged as much as 62%, a Texas A & M analysis of state air monitor readings found.

EPA says it is balancing public and business interests in trimming what the Trump administration considers unnecessary regulations.

“Maintaining public health and enforcing existing environmental protections is of the upmost importance to EPA,” agency spokeswoman Andrea Woods said by email. “This administration’s deregulatory efforts are focused on rooting out inefficiencies, not paring back protections for any sector of society.”
A playground outside the Prince Hall Village Apartments sits empty near one of the petrochemical facilities in Port Arthur, Texas, Monday, March 23, 2020. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

But environmentalists call the EPA’s waiver during the coronavirus crisis the latest in a series of alarming moves.

“Traditionally less data and enforcement has never added up to cleaner air, water or land for communities of color and lower wealth communities,” said Mustafa Santiago Ali, head of the EPA environmental justice office under President Barack Obama.

On the Texas Gulf Coast, African Americans under segregation were shunted to low-lying coastal areas prone to high water — literally on the wrong side of the tracks, Port Arthur activist Hilton Kelley says. bumping over those rails on a tour of his industrial neighborhood. As Texas towns grew, refineries, interstates and other, dirtier industries moved to those areas.

Stopping at the site of a razed public housing project where he was born in a bedroom looking out on the refineries, Kelley recalls, “always hearing about someone dying of cancer, always smelling smells, watching little babies using nebulizers.”

During the Obama administration, Kelley traveled to Washington for signing ceremonies for rules tightening regulations on pollutants and other health threats, and requiring industries to do more to report hazardous emissions. These days, Kelley’s trips to Washington are to protest rollbacks relaxing those rules.

”That’s a death sentence for us,” Kelley says, driving past the the sickly yellow light of a refinery burning off methane gas. “Now we may not drop dead that day,” he says. “But when you’re inundated day after day...we’re dead. We’re dead.”

In Houston, one of the country’s largest cities without zoning rules, the exposure to toxins is compounded. In Hispanic Galena Park, a developer this year fracked an oil and gas well just hundreds of yards (meters) from a school. In another Hispanic community, Manchester, chemical storage tanks tower over single-story frame homes, encasing all but their porches and driveways.

Before dawn one day last month a headache-inducing chemical stench suffused the neighborhood as a child waited for a school bus. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicle rolled by. Latino residents, afraid of attracting official attention, lay low and don’t often complain, resident and activist Juan Flores says.

Even before the Trump administration began the rollbacks, Houston’s urban freeways and industries were pumping enough poisonous refinery chemicals, heavy metals, and diesel and car exhaust to “almost certainly” be to blame for some respiratory problems and early deaths, as well as an “unacceptable increased risk” for cancers and chronic disease, concluded a landmark city task force, started in 2005 to study the health impacts.

Residents of some predominantly minority Houston neighborhoods face at least three times the cancer risks of Americans overall, according to a 2014 EPA assessment, the most recent available.

Last year, state health officials confirmed a cancer cluster in one African American Houston neighborhood where residents had for years complained that creosote from a former rail yard was killing multiple members of families. One woman drove around with a mock human skeleton in her passenger seat to try to draw attention to the deaths.

Among other health harms, Houston’s African American families, many of them in neighborhoods near one of the nation’s largest clusters of petrochemical plants, report twice as many asthma cases as the city’s white families, according to a federal government study.

One recent day, 50-year-old Felicia Lacy hummed a hymn in the early-morning darkness as she nuzzled her 4-year-old granddaughter, Kdynn, who lay in bed with a plastic oxygen mask on her face. Lacy wakes the girl at 5:30 a.m each morning for an hour of asthma treatment.

Lacy blames Houston’s polluted air for the asthma-related pneumonia that killed a son at 27, and for the little girl’s asthma and her own. She takes her own turn at the nebulizer after she gets the child off to preschool.

Lacy doesn’t often allow Kdynn and another grandchild play outside, no matter how much they plead.

“I can’t have it happen to them,” she says, referring to her son’s asthma death. “Not on my watch.”

In 2017, Hurricane Harvey released hundreds of millions of gallons of contaminated industrial products and hundreds of tons of air toxins. Low-lying black and Latino neighborhoods were devastated, including Galena Park, which for days became an island cut off by a half-billion gallons of toxic industrial wastewater.

Over the past year, additional chemical disasters have been similarly life-changing.

“Boom! Boom! Boom!” resident Cruz Hinojosa says, describing life in Galena Park.

Six major chemical plant and facility fires and explosions in the area since March 2019 have killed at least four people, destroyed hundreds of homes and sent tens of thousands of people fleeing or hunkering down under shelter-in-place orders. The disasters poured cancer-causing xylene, benzene and other petrochemicals into the air, nauseating residents.

Port Arthur and Houston residents say it’s difficult to find out from authorities what they’re breathing and how bad it is.

After Hurricane Harvey, EPA and state officials declined to have a NASA monitoring plane gauge the threat from chemical releases. An EPA internal watchdog faulted authorities’ failures in tracking toxic releases, which included turning off air monitors to protect them from damage.

A joint investigation by The Associated Press and Houston Chronicle a year later found the toxic contamination far more widespread and extensive than authorities reported.

Woods, the EPA spokeswoman, said the NASA offer came more than two weeks after Harvey made landfall, and at a time when EPA and Texas environmental regulators were going out day and night with hand-held monitors and other equipment to gauge hazardous emissions.

“Any assertion that EPA’s decision not to accept NASA’s flight offer obstructed information-gathering that would have helped Houstonians, particularly those in low-income communities near industrial facilities, is misleading and does not reflect the more effective monitoring efforts that were in place,” Woods wrote.

Three years after Harvey, community activists have taken monitoring into their own hands.

Last month, Bridgette Murray, a retired nurse and community leader in Houston’s African American community of Pleasantville, snapped cellphone pictures of neighborhood volunteers erecting the last of seven new air monitors, given to the community by an environmental group.

In Galena Park, Flores, the activist in that Latino community, is moving on a project to install air monitors at schools, after toying with the idea of giving each schoolchild a monitor to dangle off their backpacks.

The aim of the monitors, Flores says, is not to warn children when the air is unsafe for them to play outside, but to alert them when plant emissions are low enough to make outside activities safe.

“We have to defend ourselves,” Flores says. “Because the federal government isn’t going to do it.”

‘Cartels are scrambling’: Virus snarls global drug trade

CORONAVIRUS VS CRIMINAL CAPITALISM

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This March 2020 photo provided by the U.S. Border Patrol's San Diego Tunnel Team shows a tunnel under the Otay Mesa area of San Diego, Calif. Federal authorities seized a panoply of narcotics inside the newly discovered underground passage connecting a warehouse in Tijuana with south San Diego. The bust of $30 million worth of street drugs was also notable for its low amount of fentanyl - about 2 pounds. (U.S. Border Patrol via AP)


APRIL 19,2020

NEW YORK (AP) — Coronavirus is dealing a gut punch to the illegal drug trade, paralyzing economies, closing borders and severing supply chains in China that traffickers rely on for the chemicals to make such profitable drugs as methamphetamine and fentanyl.

One of the main suppliers that shut down is in Wuhan, the epicenter of the global outbreak.

Associated Press interviews with nearly two dozen law enforcement officials and trafficking experts found Mexican and Colombian cartels are still plying their trade as evidenced by recent drug seizures but the lockdowns that have turned cities into ghost towns are disrupting everything from production to transport to sales.


Along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border through which the vast majority of illegal drugs cross, the normally bustling vehicle traffic that smugglers use for cover has slowed to a trickle. Bars, nightclubs and motels across the country that are ordinarily fertile marketplaces for drug dealers have shuttered. And prices for drugs in short supply have soared to gouging levels.

“They are facing a supply problem and a demand problem,” said Alejandro Hope, a security analyst and former official with CISEN, the Mexican intelligence agency. “Once you get them to the market, who are you going to sell to?”

Virtually every illicit drug has been impacted, with supply chain disruptions at both the wholesale and retail level. Traffickers are stockpiling narcotics and cash along the border, and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration even reports a decrease in money laundering and online drug sales on the so-called dark web.

This March 2020 photo provided by the U.S. Border Patrol shows drugs seized from a tunnel under the Otay Mesa area of San Diego, Calif. Federal authorities seized a panoply of narcotics inside the newly discovered underground passage connecting a warehouse in Tijuana with south San Diego. The bust of $30 million worth of street drugs was also notable for its low amount of fentanyl - about 2 pounds. (U.S. Border Patrol via AP)

“The godfathers of the cartels are scrambling,” said Phil Jordan, a former director of the DEA’s El Paso Intelligence Center.

Cocaine prices are up 20 percent or more in some cities. Heroin has become harder to find in Denver and Chicago, while supplies of fentanyl are falling in Houston and Philadelphia. In Los Angeles, the price of methamphetamine has more than doubled in recent weeks to $1,800 per pound.

“You have shortages but also some greedy bastards who see an opportunity to make more money,” said Jack Riley, the former deputy administrator of the DEA. “The bad guys frequently use situations that affect the national conscience to raise prices.”

Synthetic drugs such as methamphetamine and fentanyl have been among the most affected, in large part because they rely on precursor chemicals that Mexican cartels import from China, cook into drugs on an industrial scale and then ship to the U.S.

“This is something we would use as a lesson learned for us,” the head of the DEA, Uttam Dhillon, told AP. “If the disruption is that significant, we need to continue to work with our global partners to ensure that, once we come out of the pandemic, those precursor chemicals are not available to these drug-trafficking organizations.”


Cartels are increasingly shifting away from drugs that require planting and growing seasons, like heroin and marijuana, in favor of synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, which can be cooked 24/7 throughout the year, are up to 50 times more powerful than heroin and produce a greater profit margin.

Though some clandestine labs that make fentanyl from scratch have popped up sporadically in Mexico, cartels are still very much reliant upon Chinese companies to get the precursor drugs.

Huge amounts of these mail-order components can be traced to a single, state-subsidized company in Wuhan that shut down after the outbreak earlier this year, said Louise Shelley, director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center at George Mason University, which monitors Chinese websites selling fentanyl.

This April 17, 2020 image from a website shows an offer for a chemical known as "99918-43-1" made in China. According to C4ADS, a Washington research group, the price of the chemical, which can be used to make fentanyl, has risen since late February 2020.

“The quarantine of Wuhan and all the chaos there definitely affected the fentanyl trade, particularly between China and Mexico,” said Ben Westhoff, author of “Fentanyl, Inc.”

“The main reason China has been the main supplier is the main reason China is the supplier of everything — it does it so cheaply,” Westhoff said. “There was really no cost incentive for the cartels to develop this themselves.”

But costs have been rising and, as in many legitimate industries, the coronavirus is bringing about changes.

Advertised prices across China for precursors of fentanyl, methamphetamine and cutting agents have risen between 25% and 400% since late February, said Logan Pauley, an analyst at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, a Washington-based security research nonprofit. So even as drug precursor plants in China are slowly reopening after the worst of the coronavirus crisis there, some cartels have been taking steps to decrease their reliance on overseas suppliers by enlisting scientists to make their own precursor chemicals.

“Because of the coronavirus they’re starting to do it in house,” added Westhoff.

This April 16, 2020 image from a website shows an offer for the chemical xylazine made in China. According to C4ADS, a Washington research group, the price of the chemical, which can be used as a cutting agent for heroin, has risen since late February 2020.Some Chinese companies that once pushed precursors are now advertising drugs like hydroxychloroquine, which President Donald Trump has promoted as potential treatment for COVID-19, as well as personal protective gear such as face masks and hand sanitizers.

Meanwhile, the gummed up situation on the U.S.-Mexico border resembles a stalled chess match where nobody, especially the traffickers, wants to make a wrong move, said Kyle Williamson, special agent in charge of the DEA’s El Paso field division.

“They’re in a pause right now,” Williamson said. “They don’t want to get sloppy and take a lot of risks.”

Some Mexican drug cartels are even holding back existing methamphetamine supplies to manipulate the market, recognizing that “no good crisis should be wasted,” said Joseph Brown, the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Texas.

“Some cartels have given direct orders to members of their organization that anyone caught selling methamphetamine during this time will be killed,” said Brown, whose sprawling jurisdiction stretches from the suburbs of Dallas to Beaumont.

To be sure, narcotics are still making their way into the U.S., as evidenced by a bust last month in which nearly $30 million worth of street drugs were seized in a new smuggling tunnel connecting a warehouse in Tijuana to southern San Diego. Shelley said that bust was notable in that only about 2 pounds of fentanyl was recovered, “much lower than usual shipments.”

This March 2020 photo provided by the U.S. Border Patrol's San Diego Tunnel Team shows an agent in a tunnel under the Otay Mesa area of San Diego, Calif.

Trump announced earlier this month that Navy ships were being moved toward Venezuela as part of a bid to beef up counter-narcotics operations in the Caribbean following a U.S. drug indictment against Nicolás Maduro.

But the pandemic also has limited law enforcement’s effectiveness, as departments cope with drug investigators working remotely, falling ill and navigating a new landscape in which their own activities have become more conspicuous. In Los Angeles County, half of the narcotics detectives have been put on patrol duty, potentially imperiling long-term investigations.

Nonetheless, Capt. Chris Sandoval, who oversees special investigations for the Houston-based Harris County Sheriff’s Office, said there’s a new saying among his detectives: “Not even the dope dealers can hide from the coronavirus.”

___

Bleiberg reported from Dallas. AP writers Erika Kinetz in Rieti, Italy, Mark Stevenson in Mexico City and Stefanie Dazio in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

___

Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org

SEE
 https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/04/special-report-peruvian-coca-farmers-to.html

Global health crisis pits economic against health concerns

1 of 21

A mother and her child are reflected as they pass a mural by artist FAKE, titled "Super Nurse", paying tribute to all healthcare and medical professionals in times of the coronavirus, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Sunday, April 19, 2020. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

By WILL WEISSERT, JILL COLVIN and FRANK JORDANS APRIL 19, 2020

WASHINGTON (AP) — The global health crisis is taking a nasty political turn with tensions worsening between governments locked down to keep the coronavirus at bay and people yearning to restart stalled economies and forestall fears of a depression.

Protesters worrying about their livelihoods and bucking infringements on their freedom took to the streets in some places. A few countries were acting to ease restrictions, but most of the world remains unified in insisting it’s much too early to take more aggressive steps.

In the United States, there was clear evidence of the mounting pressure. The Trump administration says parts of the country are ready to begin a gradual return to normalcy. Yet some state leaders say their response to the pandemic is hindered by a woefully inadequate federal response.

Washington state’s Democratic governor, Jay Inslee, even accused President Donald Trump of encouraging insubordination and “illegal activity” by goading on protesters who flouted shelter-in-place rules.

“To have an American president to encourage people to violate the law, I can’t remember any time during my time in America where we have seen such a thing,” Inslee told ABC’s “This Week.″ He said it was ”dangerous because it can inspire people to ignore things that actually can save their lives.”

Doctor Meenal Viz holds a banner as she protests outside Downing Street in London, as the country is in lockdown to help curb the spread of the coronavirus, Sunday, April 19, 2020. The doctor who is pregnant protested about the lack of PPE and protection for NHS health workers. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Trump supporters in several states ignored social distancing and stay-at-home orders, gathering to demand that governors lift controls on public activity. The largest protest drew thousands to Lansing, Mich., on Wednesday, and others have featured hundreds each in several states. The president has invoked their rallying cry, calling on several states with Democratic governors to “LIBERATE.”

Vice President Mike Pence sidestepped questions Sunday about why Trump seemed to be encouraging efforts to undermine preventive measures his own government has promoted. Inslee nonetheless likened Trump’s response to “schizophrenia.” Larry Hogan, the Republican governor of Maryland, said it “just doesn’t make any sense.”

“We’re sending completely conflicting messages out to the governors and to the people, as if we should ignore federal policy and federal recommendations,” Hogan said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”


FILE - In this April 2, 2020, file photo, a sign advising people to stay home due to COVID-19 concerns is displayed at a MUNI bus stop in San Francisco. On the morning of March 15, as Italy became the epicenter of the global coronavirus pandemic, a half dozen high-ranking California health officials held an emergency conference call to discuss a united effort to contain the spread of the virus in the San Francisco Bay Area. That call and the bold decisions that came in the hours afterward have helped California avoid the kind of devastation from the virus in parts of Europe and New York City. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)


Shutdowns that began in China in late January and spread globally have disrupted economic, social, cultural and religious life and plunged the world into a deep economic slump unseen since the Great Depression. Tens of millions of workers have lost their jobs and millions more fear they’ll be next.

With the arc of infection different in every nation and across U.S. states, proposals have differed for coping with the virus that has killed more than 165,000.

Restrictions have begun to ease in some places, including Germany, which is still enforcing social distancing rules but on Monday intended to begin allowing some small stores, like those selling furniture and baby goods, to reopen.

Authorities in Spain, which had some of Europe’s strictest restrictions and a virus death toll only exceeded by the U.S. and Italy, said children will be allowed to leave their homes beginning April 27. Albania planned to let its mining and oil industries reopen Monday, along with hundreds of businesses including small retailers, food and fish factories, farmers and fishing boats.

The death toll in the U.S. climbed past 41,000 with more than 746,000 confirmed infections, while the global case count has passed 2.38 million, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University of national health reports. The European Center for Disease Control said the continent now has more than 1 million confirmed cases and almost 100,000 deaths from the coronavirus.

A woman wearing a face mask passes by a screen showing precautions against the coronavirus at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul, South Korea, Sunday, April 19, 2020. South Korea's prime minister says the country will maintain much of its social distancing guidelines until May 5 but will relax some limits. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

The actual extent of the pandemic is likely to be significantly higher due to mild infections that are missed, limited testing, problems counting the dead and some nations’ desires to underplay the extent of their outbreaks.

The International Monetary Fund expects the global economy to contract 3% this year. That’s a far bigger loss than 2009′s 0.1% after the global financial crisis. Still, many governments are resisting pressures to abruptly relax lockdowns.

“We must not let down our guard until the last confirmed patient is recovered,” South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in said Sunday.

In Britain, which reported 596 more coronavirus-related hospital deaths on Sunday, officials also said they’re not ready to ease efforts to curb the virus’s spread. U.K. minister Michael Gove told the BBC that pubs and restaurants “will be among the last” to leave the lockdown, which is now in place until May 7.

France’s health agency urged the public to stick to social distancing measures that have been extended until at least May 11 and Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said people could be required to wear masks on public transportation, and suggested no one plan faraway summer vacations even after that.

Trump is pushing to begin easing the U.S. lockdown in some states even before his own May 1 deadline, a plan that health experts and governors from both parties say will require a dramatic increase in testing capacity nationwide. But Pence insisted in television interviews Sunday that the country has “sufficient testing today” for states to begin reopening their economies as part of the initial phases of guidelines that the White House released last week.

The Trump administration has repeatedly blamed state leaders for delays, but governors from both parties have been begging the federal government for help securing in-demand testing supplies such as swabs and chemicals known as reagents. Republican Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio made a direct appeal to Washington: “We really need help ... to take our capacity up,” he said on NBC’s ”Meet the Press.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said his state can’t begin lifting restrictions until it is able to test more people daily. “Right now, we’re not even close as a nation, let alone as a state, to where we should be on testing,” he said.

Trump pushed back in a tweet before his scheduled Sunday evening briefing at the White House. “I am right on testing. Governors must be able to step up and get the job done. We will be with you ALL THE WAY!” he wrote.

A man looks on during the Utah Business Revival rally, calling for Utah's economy to be reopened, in Salt Lake City on Saturday, April 18, 2020. Utah Gov. Gary Herbert said Friday the state is aiming to reopen restaurants and gyms and resume elective surgeries in early May under a plan to gradually reopen the economy that has been decimated by the coronavirus pandemic. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Economic concerns that have increasingly collided with measures to protect public health are now popping up throughout the U.S.

Business leaders in Louisiana have slammed New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell for imposing restrictions that they say have unfairly shuttered economic activity outside the city. A full-page ad in Baton Rouge’s “The Advocate” newspaper on Sunday urged an easing of lockdowns, even as the New Orleans Times-Picayune featured nearly nine pages of obituaries in a city hard-hit by the virus.

States including Texas and Indiana have announced plans to allow some retail and other activity to resume and some restrictions were either lifted or set to be on beaches in Florida and South Carolina. But in New York, where the daily coronavirus death toll hit its lowest point in more than two weeks on Sunday, officials warn that New York City and the rest of the hard-hit state aren’t ready to ease shutdowns of schools, businesses and gatherings.

Geopolitical and religious tensions stretching back centuries have further complicated the global response to the virus. But Jordan’s King Abdullah II said the outbreak has made “partners” out of “our enemies of yesterday, or those that were not friendly countries yesterday — whether we like it or not.”

“I think the quicker we as leaders and politicians figure that out, the quicker we can bring this under control,” he told CBS’ “Face the Nation.″

___

Jordans reported from Berlin. Associated Press writers worldwide contributed to this report.

APRIL 22 EARTH DAY 50

     GLOBAL EARTH DAY 2020

     (C)RON COBB

EARTH DAY 2020 FAQ

When is Earth Day 2020?

What is the theme for Earth Day 2020?

What is the history of Earth Day?

What was the result of the first Earth Day?

What can I do for Earth Day 2020?

EARTH DAY LIVE

FIND A DIGITAL EARTH DAY EVENTUse the options on your left to filter by your interests

Please email technical issues to action@earthday.org .

REGISTER A DIGITAL EVENT


EARTH DAY 2020 THEME: CLIMATE ACTION

The enormous challenges — but also the vast opportunities — of acting on climate change have distinguished the issue as the most pressing topic for the 50th anniversary. Climate change represents the biggest challenge to the future of humanity and the life-support systems that make our world habitable.

At the end of 2020, nations will be expected to increase their national commitments to the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. The time is now for citizens to call for greater global ambition to tackle our climate crisis. Unless every country in the world steps up – and steps up with urgency and ambition — we are consigning current and future generations to a dangerous future.

Earth Day 2020 will be far more than a day. It must be a historic moment when citizens of the world rise up in a united call for the creativity, innovation, ambition, and bravery that we need to meet our climate crisis and seize the enormous opportunities of a zero-carbon future.







BUILDING ON THE EARTH DAY LEGACY

The first Earth Day in 1970 mobilized millions of Americans for the protection of the planet. On April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans — 10% of the U.S. population at the time — took to the streets, college campuses and hundreds of cities to protest environmental ignorance and demand a new way forward for our planet. The first Earth Day is credited with launching the modern environmental movement and is now recognized as the planet’s largest civic event.

Earth Day led to passage of landmark environmental laws in the United States, including the Clean Air, Clean Water and Endangered Species Acts. Many countries soon adopted similar laws, and in 2016, the United Nations chose Earth Day as the day to sign the Paris Climate Agreement into force.

Photo Credit: University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability via Flickr

New York City’s Fifth Avenue is filled with thousands of people when the street was closed to motor traffic for the First Earth Day on April 22, 1970
Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS | Photo Credit: Tommy Japan via Flickr

Climate strikers take to the streets of New York City in September 2019 for global strikes coordinated by the Fridays for Future youth climate movement | Photo Credit: Inma Galvez-Shorts

“Despite that amazing success and decades of environmental progress, we find ourselves facing an even more dire, almost existential, set of global environmental challenges, from loss of biodiversity to climate change to plastic pollution, that call for action at all levels of government,” said Denis Hayes, the organizer of the first Earth Day in 1970 and Earth Day Network’s Board Chair Emeritus.

“Progress has slowed, climate change impacts grow, and our adversaries have become better financed,” said Earth Day Network president Kathleen Rogers. “We find ourselves today in a world facing global threats that demand a unified global response. For Earth Day 2020, we will build a new generation of environmentalist activists, engaging millions of people worldwide.”

EARTH DAY 50

What Is Earth Day Live? The Largest Online Mass Mobilization in History

Union of Concerned Scientists 

By Ken Kimmell

The COVID-19 crisis has upended the world, threatening the health and lives of millions, shattering the global economy, and imposing an unprecedented physical isolation upon us. It has changed so much almost overnight, including how we advocate for action on an even bigger long-term threat — climate change.

For this upcoming 50th anniversary of Earth Day, youth and other climate activists had planned on holding a massive worldwide strike and thousands of public demonstrations to demand that leaders in the public and private spheres take action on climate change. Of course, in-person gatherings are not possible right now. But in a remarkable showing of agility and creativity, the US Youth Climate Strike Coalition has transformed the event into the largest online mass mobilization in history — Earth Day Live, which will take place April 22–24.

Get Ready

Earth Day Live is a three-day event focused on climate action and participation in our democracy. Its centerpiece is a non-stop 72-hour livestream that will include performances, training sessions, and a wide range of events designed to engage, inform, and inspire millions of people nationwide.

Thousands have already RSVP'd, hundreds of local livestreams across the country have registered, and the event will feature many high-profile celebrities and other public figures. If you haven't yet RSVP'd, definitely do so today!

For more information on the event, you can watch and share a short promo video on your social media channel of choice, whether it's Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Or you can download the video to make your own posts. Also check out the work of the Stop the Money Pipeline Coalition; their work will be central to activities on Day 2 of Earth Day Live and they have produced #PeopleNotPolluters art that you can use and share.

What else can you do to support Earth Day Live? Sign up and tell your friends to sign up. Add a Facebook frame or Twibbon frame. Use and follow these hashtags on social media: #EarthDayLive, #EarthDay, #StrikeWithUs, and #ClimateStrike. Or simply follow and amplify the Youth Climate Strike Coalition on Twitter.

United for Action

At UCS, we stand united with the youth-led movement that is organizing Earth Day Live and the next generation of science and climate advocates who are participating in it. We aim to support them as they help boost and elevate the need for climate action, and are active members of the youth climate strike's adult coalition.

We are also members of the Stop the Money Pipeline coalition and calling for the financial institutions that fuel climate change by funding and insuring fossil fuel companies to end their support of climate destruction. And we are working on increasing voter registration and turnout of pro-science voters in the 2020 election by building the Science Rising movement to help empower students, scientists, and science supporters with opportunities to participate in civic engagement and democratic activities in their communities.

The past weeks have taught us all some hard lessons: having the best available science is not just important — it is a matter of life and death. And there is no substitute for effective action by governments at the national and international level to address crises at the scale that is needed.

We are also learning — yet again — that when disaster strikes, it exerts the highest costs on the most vulnerable. These lessons from the COVID-19 crisis apply forcefully to climate change as well — and I am heartened by the powerful way that the youth-led movement will remind us of these vital truths over the next several days, and inspire all of us to act upon them.

Ken Kimmell is president of the Union of Concerned Scientists and has more than 30 years of experience in government, environmental policy, and advocacy.

3 Ways to Celebrate Earth Day All Through April (on Lockdown, of ... ›

Earth Day Live ›

https://blog.ucsusa.org/ken-kimmell/what-is-earth-day-live-the-largest-online-mass-mobilization-in-history

While other colleges struggle, for-profits hope for revival 

WHAT A FRIEND WE HAVE IN BETSY DEVOS

(SUNG TO THE TUNE OF WHAT A FRIEND WE HAVE IN JESUS)

By COLLIN BINKLEY AP APRIL 19, 2020

FILE - In this Nov 24, 2009 file photo, a University of Phoenix billboard is shown in Chandler, Ariz. Some of the nation’s largest for-profit colleges are ramping up advertising, hiring recruiters and offering discounts for online classes as they predict that the coronavirus will steer more Americans back to school, helping revive the industry. (AP Photo/Matt York, File)
Some of the nation’s largest for-profit colleges are ramping up advertising, hiring recruiters and offering discounts for online classes as they predict the coronavirus pandemic will push unemployed workers back to school, helping revive the industry.

New marketing campaigns target Americans who have been ordered to shelter at home. Capella University, an online college, is promising “flexible education for uncertain times.” The University of Phoenix is telling students that they’re “online, but never on your own.”

Some chains are offering scholarships for students whose finances have taken a hit or for those pursuing careers in nursing, teaching and other fields expected to be in high demand after COVID-19 cases subside.

To critics, it’s nothing more than a marketing ploy to capitalize on crisis. But leaders of some for-profit colleges say they’re preparing for what they believe will be a surge in demand for online education.

Millions of Americans are at home and out of work, and those college leaders believe more people will try online classes. Even after traditional campuses reopen, they think students will be reluctant to return to dorms and classrooms buzzing with students.

“Hundreds of thousands of students are either going to be concerned about their health, or they’re literally not going to be able to go back to their dorms,” said Karl McDonnell, CEO of Strategic Education, Inc., the owner of Capella and Strayer universities. “We expect that demand, broadly, is going to dramatically increase as a result of this.”

The industry’s opponents are raising alarms about the potential upturn, saying it could come at the expense of students. They warn that the sector has a history of using aggressive marketing tactics to lure students into programs with little academic value.

Even as critics call for greater scrutiny, the federal government is giving the industry a financial lift. Last month, the Trump administration and Congress allotted more than $1 billion to for-profit colleges as part of a $2.2 trillion rescue package.

During past recessions, colleges of all types have seen their enrollments rise. Workers who lose jobs often turn to colleges to update their skills or change careers. But this time, traditional colleges are bracing for losses. Schools are scrambling to move their classes online, but many fear that students will be unable to afford tuition next fall, and that others will want to stay closer to home.


For online colleges, a market dominated by for-profit schools, the conditions could be ripe for a resurgence, analysts say.

The American Public University System, a for-profit online college, is offering a 50% discount for up to two online classes this summer, a deal directed at students at schools with limited online courses. Students will be encouraged to the transfer credits back to their home schools, officials say, but the company believes some will want to stay at the online college.

“We don’t want to hurt institutions. But if fall enrollments at traditional face-to-face institutions are deferred, I think you’ll see students either take a year off or they’ll say, you know what, I’ll study somewhere online,” said Wallace Boston, the school’s president.

At Strayer and Capella, officials are telling students at historically black colleges that they can take free online classes this fall if their campuses don’t reopen on time. Capella is also offering a new “Front Line Heroes” discount for students in teaching or nursing.

“Now is not the time to make a quick buck on anyone,” said McDonnell, chief of the schools’ parent company. “We think we’ll be in a good position to continue to serve the country. But now our view is, let’s just do whatever we can to be helpful.”

Other companies are hiring more recruiters. As unemployment began to surge last month, Zovio, the parent company over the online for-profit Ashford University, announced it would add 200 enrollment advisers.

Any upswing would be an improvement for the industry, which reached its peak enrollment in 2010 before going on to lose half of its students by 2017. During that span, major chains, including Corinthian Colleges, collapsed as the Obama administration cracked down. Others have gone bankrupt even with allies under President Donald Trump.

Before the pandemic, education analysts saw little hope for a major turnaround. But the scale of unemployment has been so dramatic that it could outweigh other factors working against the industry, said Trace Urdan, managing director at Tyton Partners, a consulting firm and investment bank.

Urdan expects for-profit colleges to see a boost, although it could be curtailed by rising competition from nonprofit schools and other companies in the online market. Some competitors have also boosted marketing, including Western Governors University, an online school that’s offering $3,000 scholarships for those affected by the pandemic.

To critics, the flurry of activity brings echoes of the 2008 recession, when for-profit colleges enrolled record numbers of students but left many of them with heavy debt and few job prospects.

A new study by the advocacy group Veterans Education Success found that some chains have been spending more on Facebook ads during the pandemic. “This aggressive and deceptive targeting will once again harm veterans’ academic and economic prospects,” the group said.

In an open letter to state and federal politicians, two student advocacy groups are calling for sharper oversight as colleges are given flexibility to move programs online. The letter warns that for-profits will be tempted to create programs that boost revenue but do little to prepare students for jobs.

“A perfect storm is brewing for a rip-off revival to parallel the predatory for-profit college boom of the 2000s. And the most vulnerable students will inevitably pay the heaviest price,” said the letter, signed by leaders of the National Student Legal Defense Network and the Institute for College Access and Success.

The letter draws attention to the industry’s history of poor outcomes, noting that students at for-profit colleges default on their loans at nearly four times the rate of students at public community colleges.

But supporters say the industry has improved. The worst schools have closed, and those left are more concerned about graduation rates than enrollment levels, said Steve Gunderson, president and CEO of Career Education Colleges and Universities, an industry lobbying group.

Gunderson said he expects a modest boost but nothing like the surge a decade ago. While some institutions grow, he predicts some others will have to shut down.

“Our schools are suffering just like everybody else in the American economy,” Gunderson said. “The era of double digit growth in this sector is long gone. And it will not be coming back.”

---30---

India’s Kerala State Shows Way in Coronavirus Fight

THE POOREST STATE IN INDIA IS THE MOST PROGRESSIVE

By Anjana Pasricha April 19, 2020 
Medical staff members of a government-run medical college collect swabs from people to test for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at a newly installed Walk-In Sample Kiosk in Ernakulam in the southern state of Kerala, India, April 6, 2020.
NEW DELHI - Before many countries had fully grasped the devastation that COVID-19 would bring, health authorities in India’s southern state of Kerala were closely monitoring a 20-year-old student who returned from Wuhan, China on January 25.

Days later, as soon she reported some uneasiness in her throat, she was shifted to an isolation ward in a hospital and her family members were placed in quarantine. Tests showed she had COVID 19 — she became India’s first case of the dreaded infection.

The state moved fast because by mid-January it had already put in place a strategy to isolate people who showed symptoms in hospitals, trace their contacts and put them in home quarantine.

Three months on, Kerala is being hailed for not just flattening the curve of the deadly infection even as it spikes in many parts of the country but for having an extremely low mortality rate. Only three of 400 reported cases have died so far – less than one percent, significantly less than the rest of India or in many parts of the world. About two-thirds of the patients, including a 93-year-old man and his 88-year-old wife have been cured – the country’s best recovery rate.

Indians wearing surgical masks walk out of the government general hospital where a student who had been in Wuhan is kept in isolation in Thrissur, Kerala state, Jan. 30, 2020.

Health experts attribute the state’s success to two factors — what they call a “formidable” primary health care system and the experience it gleaned in the last two years when it handled another deadly virus outbreak.

Ruled by a coalition of communist and left-wing parties, Kerala spends the most in India on health and has the highest literacy rate in the country.

“We have doctors, nurses and paramedics in every village,” said K.N. Harilal, a member of the Kerala State Planning Board. "So, we have a strong army of health care workers to fight epidemics.”

The brain damaging Nipah virus, for which also there is no cure, surfaced in the state in 2018 and 2019 but was tamped down with the same strategy of tight surveillance and contact tracing. As a result, terms like quarantine and isolation became household words in Kerala even before the pandemic.

“You can’t imagine the terror we went through at that time, and fear is a very good trainer,” said Rajeev Sadanandan, the state’s former health secretary who was on the frontlines of tackling the Nipah virus. “So, when coronavirus came, the state was ready for it.”

However, tackling coronavirus was a more herculean task for the state of 34 million. It has a high population density. Hundreds of students enrolled in Chinese universities, including those in Wuhan, and tens of thousands working in Middle Eastern countries headed back amid the coronavirus scare, some bringing the virus with them. All had to be kept under surveillance.
 

Municipal workers in protective gear carry the body of a woman who died of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), to a crematorium in Ahmedabad, India, April 17, 2020.

In some cases, these migrant workers returned home after two or three years. “They had already been in quarantine from their families for so long. So, a lot of awareness building campaigns had to be done to educate people to resist the temptation of mingling closely with family members and spreading the infection,” said Harilal.

Inevitably there have been bumps. Like the rest of India, Kerala had a shortage of testing kits. And there were instances of people who evaded or broke the quarantine protocol after returning from overseas.

One three-member family that hit local headlines managed to slip through screening at airports when they failed to report that they had travelled to Italy and subsequently went on to visit crowded places like markets, a hotel and a bank. It set in motion frantic efforts to track their primary and secondary contacts. Twelve teams that included medical workers, police and volunteers worked for days to prepare the travel path of the family, using GPS data from their phones, eventually tracing more than 4,000 people who then had to be placed under observation and quarantine.

Indian workers walk with garbage after cleaning an isolation ward at a hospital for observing people suspected to have a new coronavirus infection in Kochi, Kerala state, Feb.4, 2020.

Officials give much of the credit to local level health workers. “Every health worker knows how to take charge of their population, how to trace the contacts, how to teach them about home quarantine. ‘I won’t slip up, this won’t get out on my watch,’ that pride is there in the system,” said Sadanandan.

He points to his own experience when he went into home quarantine on returning to Kerala from Delhi – the state was one of the few that asked not just overseas but also domestic travelers to stay at home. “I would get daily calls inquiring ‘are you getting a cough, do you have fever, are you feeling stressed?’ I was given numbers to contact in case I needed them,” he recalled. “I could make out that they were under tremendous pressure with so many people to contact, but the calls always came.”

In several cases, local communities pitched in by cooking food for those who were in quarantine or those stuck far away from their homes.

Policy makers admit that there are still many battles ahead. Most of all there is the risk of a fresh round of infections when an influx of residents from overseas and other states arrives after India’s stringent countrywide lockdown is lifted.

“Hundreds of thousands would have to be quarantined, tested and, if positive, treated, ensuring there is no secondary spread,” the state’s finance minister, Thomas Isaac wrote in the Indian Express newspaper. “We do not want to lower our guard and rest on the laurels.” He pointed out that a lockdown was not enough to tackle coronavirus — preparedness was the key.

But even if Kerala does finally overcome the challenge of coronavirus better than the rest of the country, many ordinary people share the same worries that are sweeping India — lost livelihoods that may not return anytime soon. The concerns are even higher for this tiny coastal state, whose picturesque backwaters and tea estates on rolling green hillsides make tourism a key sector and where many families depend on remittances sent by overseas workers.

Anoop Murali, who left his small family farm five years ago for the city to ferry tourists around in a rental car, has returned to his village. He does not know when or if visitors will come back. “I simply don’t know what to do. There is no work at all, maybe we have to go back to farming. That’s all we talk about these days,” he said bleakly.

---30---

UH OH!
WHO: No Evidence Survivors of COVID-19 Are Immune from the Disease
By Lisa Schlein April 19, 2020 
A member of the medical personnel works as patients suffering from coronavirus disease (COVID-19) are treated at the intensive care unit at CHIREC Delta Hospital in Brussels, Belgium, April 18, 2020.


GENEVA, SWITZERLAND - Senior World Health Organization officials say there is no evidence that people who have survived a bout of coronavirus become immune from the deadly disease and cannot pass the infection on to others.

The coronavirus pandemic continues to spread across the world with breathtaking speed and no immediate end in sight.

Anxious governments increasingly are grabbing on to the hope that those who have become sickened by this infectious disease will become immune and not pass it on to others.

They are pinning their hopes on serologic tests that look for antibodies in a person’s immune system to clarify the number of people who have been exposed to the virus. Knowing this, they argue, would allow them to send these people back into the workforce without risk of their getting infected or of infecting others.

But head of WHOs emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, Maria Van Kerkove said these serologic tests may not be able to provide the information governments are seeking.

“Right now, we have no evidence that the use of a serologic test can show that an individual is immune or is protected from reinfection. What the use of these tests will do will measure the level of antibodies and it is a response that the body has a week or two later after they have been infected with this virus,” she said.

These tests will be able to measure the level of antibodies, but Van Kerkove said that does not mean that somebody with antibodies is immune to the disease.

Executive Director of WHO health emergencies, Michael Ryan, cautions countries to be prudent and not fix on these tests as a way of establishing the status of an individual. He said there is a lot of uncertainty about the effectiveness of the available tests.

“Nobody is sure whether someone with antibodies is fully protected against having the disease or being exposed again. Plus some of the tests have issues of sensitivity; they may give a false negative result and we may actually have someone who believes they are seropositive or they are protected actually in a situation where they may be exposed and in fact they are susceptible to the disease,” he said.

Ryan said a lot of work still lies ahead to standardize the tests and make sure they are validated. He said great care must be taken to ensure they are not misused but are used in ways that enhance public health.

Detroit’s Jewish community ‘condemns’ behavior, signage of ‘Operation Gridlock’ protestors
Nazi, swastika imagery used just days before Holocaust Remembrance Day

Dawn Perreca protests on the front steps of the Michigan State Capitol building in Lansing, Mich., Wednesday, April 15, 2020. Flag-waving, honking protesters drove past the Michigan Capitol on Wednesday to show their displeasure with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's orders to keep people at home and businesses locked during the new coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya) (Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

DETROIT – The Jewish Community Relations Council of Detroit (AJC) has publicly condemned the behavior and signage of protestors that participated in “Operation Gridlock” on Wednesday.

Thousands of Michigan residents swarmed the Lansing capitol to protest Michigan Gov. Whitmer’s stay-at-home order -- which they called a “government overreach on steroids” -- amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Photos and videos from the protest show individuals holding posters with swastikas, comparing Whitmer to Adolf Hitler.

AJC released a statement Thursday condemning the usage of these symbols at the protest.

“Regardless of one’s political views, the use of such imagery and symbolism is inexcusable,” AJC said. “The Nazi imagery is particularly galling as it comes only days before Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), which begins on Monday night.”

AJC is requesting the protest organizers to condemn the behavior, as well.

“The JCRC/AJC condemns these actions and asks the organizers of the protest, the Michigan Conservative Coalition, to immediately condemn the use of all hate speech and, specifically, the imagery used at yesterday’s rally,” AJC said.