Pence ordered borders closed after CDC experts refused

By JASON DEAREN and GARANCE BURK

1 of 4
Vice President Mike Pence arrives at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, Ga., Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2020. (Alyssa Pointer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — Vice President Mike Pence in March directed the nation’s top disease control agency to use its emergency powers to effectively seal the U.S. borders, overruling the agency’s scientists who said there was no evidence the action would slow the coronavirus, according to two former health officials. The action has so far caused nearly 150,000 children and adults to be expelled from the country.

The top Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doctor who oversees these types of orders had refused to comply with a Trump administration directive saying there was no valid public health reason to issue it, according to three people with direct knowledge of the doctor’s refusal.

So Pence intervened in early March. The vice president, who had taken over the Trump administration’s response to the growing pandemic, called Dr. Robert Redfield, the CDC’s director, and told him to use the agency’s special legal authority in a pandemic anyway.

Also on the phone call were Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, and acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf. Redfield immediately ordered his senior staff to get it done, according to a former CDC official who was not authorized to discuss internal deliberations and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The CDC’s order covered the U.S. borders with both Mexico and Canada, but has mostly affected the thousands of asylum seekers and immigrants arriving at the southern border. Public health experts had urged the administration to focus on a national mask mandate, enforce social distancing and increase the number of contact tracers to track down people exposed to the virus.

But Stephen Miller, a top aide to President Donald Trump who has been a vocal opponent of immigration, pushed for the expulsion order.

“That was a Stephen Miller special. He was all over that,” said Olivia Troye, a former top aide to Pence, who coordinated the White House coronavirus task force. She recently resigned in protest, saying the administration had placed politics above public health. “There was a lot of pressure on DHS and CDC to push this forward.”

Title 42 of the Public Health Service Act gives federal health officials unique powers during a pandemic to take extraordinary measures to limit transmission of an infectious disease. One of those is the ability to stop the flow of immigration from countries with high numbers of confirmed cases, a legal authority the CDC does not normally have.

Public health experts say the administration’s pattern of dismissing science-based decision making in favor of political goals has endangered many, including President Donald Trump himself, who on Friday confirmed he and the first lady had tested positive for the coronavirus.

“The decision to halt asylum processes ‘to protect the public health’ is not based on evidence or science,” wrote Dr. Anthony So, an international public health expert at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in a letter to Redfield in April. “This order directly endangers tens of thousands of lives and threatens to amplify dangerous anti-immigrant sentiment and xenophobia.”

Since the order went into effect on March 20, nearly 150,000 people — including at least 8,800 unaccompanied children who are normally afforded special legal protections under a court settlement and federal law — have been sent back to their countries of origin without typical due process. Many have been returned to dangerous and violent conditions in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

Pence’s spokeswoman Katie Miller, who is Stephen Miller’s wife, called the account of the phone call “false.”

“Vice President Pence never directed the CDC on this issue,” she said in an email.

Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project described the order as “a complete bypass of the entire asylum system and (the) system protecting unaccompanied children.”

“That is what the Trump administration has been trying to do for four years and they finally saw a window,” he added.

Miller started his campaign for the order by button-holing the coronavirus task force staff to try to get the issue on its agenda, according to Troye. The task force did not take the issue up immediately, said Troye. The administration had already passed a nonessential travel ban, which public health experts had largely supported. The CDC spurned Miller’s idea, too. In early March the agency’s Division of Migration and Quarantine, led by Dr. Martin Cetron, refused to support the order because there was not a strong public health basis for such a drastic move, according to three people with knowledge of his decision.

White House officials were undeterred. They turned to lawyers at CDC’s parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. In a call with CDC’s senior leadership, attorneys for both agencies urged CDC to use its public health authority to turn people back at the borders. Border officials said they wanted to protect their agents, and American lives.

By mid-March, CDC’s scientists still refused to comply. That’s when Pence and Wolf called with the message to get it done and quickly.

An HHS lawyer then wrote the order and submitted it to Redfield, who reviewed it and signed it. Redfield declined to comment through a CDC spokesperson, because the order is currently in litigation.

“They forced us,” said a former health official involved in the process. “It is either do it or get fired,”

Trump described the order as originating at CDC, when it had not. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has decided to exercise its authority ... to give Customs and Border Protection the tools it needs to prevent the transmission of the virus coming through both the northern and the southern border,” Trump told a March 20 at coronavirus task force press briefing.

“So we’re treating the borders equally — the northern border and the southern border,” he said. “A lot of people say that they’re not treated equally. Well, they are.”

In recent months, Trump has highlighted the decision to shut down the border as an argument for his reelection in November.

And the Title 42 order has been renewed multiple times since it first passed as a month-long temporary measure. Mark Morgan, the acting Customs and Border Protection commissioner, said in August that the expulsions were necessary to protect his agents, and that 10 CBP employees had died after contracting COVID-19.

“It’s a great — it’s a great feeling to have closed up the border,” Trump said that same month after being updated on border wall construction in Yuma, Arizona. “Now people come in, if they come in, through merit, if they come in legally. But they don’t come in like they used to.”

Before March, Central American children who crossed into the U.S. alone were generally sent to facilities overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services. HHS shelters are required to be state licensed, have beds and provide schooling. Most children are eventually placed with family or friends who serve as sponsors while they await their day in court.

Under the Title 42 order this year, the administration instead detained some migrant children in hotels, sometimes for weeks, before expelling them to their home countries.

After witnessing a gang member murder a young man and being threatened, one 16-year-old decided to leave Honduras over the summer and arrived at the border near El Paso on July 4, where he was taken into government custody, detained in a hotel and told he would be deported, his father said. He was allowed to stay after the ACLU filed a suit challenging the Title 42 expulsions and in August was reunited with his father in Texas, where he is now attending school online.

“He was really worried they wouldn’t let him reunite with me, and they didn’t let him see anyone, so he was just waiting for them to send him back to Honduras,” his father, Carlos Emilio Barrera, told AP. “He’s doing better now because he’s taking classes in school and he’s hoping he will have the opportunity to one day get asylum, but he still sometimes has dreams that he’s back inside locked up.”

The administration’s move not to grant migrant children their normal due process is currently being challenged in court.

“I don’t know how you could look another CDC scientist in the eye after doing this,” Dr. Josh Sharfstein, a former FDA deputy commissioner and a Johns Hopkins professor, said of Redfield. “It’s undermining the purpose of having an agency that uses evidence to protect public health.

“It’s a profound dereliction of duty for a CDC director.”

___

A previous version of this story gave an incorrect spelling for the first name of Pence aide Marc Short.

Burke reported from San Francisco.

___

To contact AP’s investigative team, email investigative@ap.org

History on screen: East Germany through its filmmakers’ eyes
By DAVID RISING

1 of 12

In this Wednesday, June 17, 2020 photo Gunnar Dedio, German film producer and managing director of PROGRESS Film GmbH poses for a photo between rolls of film in the archive of PROGRESS Film, in Leipzig, Germany. A new project is underway to digitize thousands of East German newsreels, documentaries and feature films 30 years after Germany’s reunification. The movies that are being scanned, transcribed and posted online provide a look inside a country that no longer exists but was a critical part of the Cold War. (AP Photo/Jens Meyer)


BERLIN (AP) — As John F. Kennedy peered over the Berlin Wall into communist East Germany in 1963, red curtains blocked the U.S. president’s view through the Brandenburg Gate and a banner perched in front of it accused the United States of breaking an international agreement “to prevent the rebirth of German militarism.”

A western newsreel documented the crowds cheering Kennedy on the western side as well as the East German stunt, the narrator noting that Kennedy didn’t get a good look at the gate, because “the Iron Curtain was supplemented by a giant cloth one, as the Communists made sure he saw their propaganda.”

That might have been the final word on the visit, were it not for a new project, 30 years after Germany’s reunification, to digitize thousands of East German newsreels. The movies being scanned, transcribed and posted online provide a perspective from inside a country that no longer exists but was a critical part of the Cold War.

The East German Augenzeuge, or Eyewitness, newsreel on the Kennedy visit trumpeted the prank as a triumph, scoffing that the American president got an “unexpected surprise instead of the great view into the East German capital promised by his Secret Service” and allegedly had to cut his visit from “20 minutes to five.”

“History and who we are is a narrative, so it’s very important to compare the different narratives,” said Gunnar Dedio, a film producer and media entrepreneur who last year bought Progress, the company holding the license rights to the East German film collection.

“It’s not only the propaganda side of it, but also the whole societal side, where we can understand much better the differences in the Germany of today — why people who were socialized in East or West are still quite different often in their thinking, because their backgrounds, their history, was quite different.”

Dedio charges license fees to documentary producers, museums and others wanting to use the films, but they’re currently available to view online for free.

The cellar of his Leipzig operation is stacked floor-to-ceiling with canisters of 35mm film reels, each labeled, catalogued and waiting to be scanned, a process that is expected to take another two to three years. In all there are more than 12,000 films, including some 2,000 newsreels — one made every week the German Democratic Republic, or DDR by its German initials, existed.

The online offerings include digitized films from other archives, like western newsreels and a series of home movies featuring Adolf Hitler’s girlfriend, and later wife, Eva Braun, enjoying holidays with family, friends, pets and the Nazi dictator himself as German armies marched through Europe.

Though some of the better-known movies have been available on DVD for a long time, having the entire collection available is a goldmine for researchers, said Stefan Wolle, the head of research for Berlin’s DDR Museum, who is not affiliated with the project.

“For me, and for us, these films are terribly important and valuable, partially as historical documents, which tell a lot about the time from the perspective of the time — the ideology, the cultural policies. And they’re also artistically valuable,” he said.

Germany was divided into four occupation zones after World War II, the Soviet-influenced East Germany and West Germany’s American, British and French sectors.

In the Soviet sector, authorities in 1946 founded DEFA, a monopoly film production company that used the famous Babelsberg studio outside Berlin and its personnel to start making movies meant to reeducate the German people after years of Nazi rule.

DEFA soon broadened its productions to highlight wider themes of communism, like the emancipation of women and the redistribution of wealth, in feature films, documentaries and newsreels.

In 1950, the year after East Germany was established as a country, the authorities formed another company, Progress, as a state monopoly to distribute DEFA films and to import foreign productions.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, DEFA’s studios were sold and its film collection was given to a state-run foundation. Progress went through a couple of hands before being acquired by Dedio’s company in 2019.

DEFA teams shot around the world from the Eastern perspective, exploring the inequities of South Africa under apartheid while it was still largely tolerated by Western nations, focusing on the civil rights movement and Vietnam War protests in the U.S., and looking at the 1967 six-day war between Israel and its neighbors as an act of “imperialist aggression” by Tel Aviv in collusion with “the U.S.A and other NATO countries.”

The films feature leaders like Fidel Castro, Mao Zedong, Kim Il Sung, Indira Gandhi, Yasser Arafat, Ho Chi Minh and Salvador Allende, as well as prominent individuals such as American civil rights activist Angela Davis and actors and entertainers like Marlene Dietrich, Jane Fonda, and Louis Armstrong.

“It’s a picture to show that ’Our system is right and that the Western democracies are very far from being good societies, and some of it is, of course, propaganda,” Dedio said. “But some of it seen with eyes from today is very, very interesting and revealing. It shows what wasn’t captured on the western side of the Iron Curtain.”

As anti-government sentiment grew in East Germany during the 1980s, directors were emboldened to slip messages about topics that were verboten to talk about overtly past the strict state censors, such as by filming buildings in disrepair in the background of scenes to document the country’s crumbling infrastructure.

“Most of the time, they find these very small ways to express what they really think, in metaphors, in symbolic ways, in very intelligent ways, where it was difficult for the censorship to intervene. But for the majority of people, it was clear how it was meant,” said Dedio, who was born in the East German city of Rostock in 1969 and grew up watching DEFA films.

A documentary on the underground music scene made just before the fall of the Berlin Wall features a beach concert of the East Berlin punk band Feeling B, several of whose members later found fame as part of the post-reunification band Rammstein.

A group of youths, their pants cuffed and boots laced high as they dance wildly in the sand, wouldn’t have looked out of place in a New York. London or Toronto mosh pit in the 1980s, a reminder that beyond the official rhetoric, most residents on the east side of the Iron Curtain were just ordinary people living their lives.

“You see a lot of real life in pictures out of the East which you can’t find in the official propaganda,” Dedio said.

New space toilet reaches the final frontier


By Chelsea Gohd - Space.com 

A robotic Cygnus spacecraft successfully blasted off from Virginia late Friday (Oct. 2) carrying nearly 4 tons of gear, including a new space toilet, to the International Space Station.

A Northrop Grumman Antares rocket lit up the night sky alongside a nearly full moon at 9:16 p.m. EDT (0116 GMT on Oct. 3) as it launched the Cygnus NG-14 mission to the space station from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia.

The craft is hauling 7,624 lbs. (3,458 kilograms) of cargo that includes scientific equipment, an experimental space toilet, food, hardware and other supplies for the Expedition 63/64 astronauts living and working on the space station.

The launch came after a series of delays due to weather this week and less than 24 hours after a launch abort late Thursday (Oct. 1) due to a ground support equipment issue.

Along with crew supplies and hardware, the launch today sent a number of exciting scientific investigations and equipment to the space station. One of the most anticipated items onboard is a new space toilet, formally known as the Universal Waste Management System. The astronauts on the space station will test the $23 million commode for future use on station and by future crews on missions to the moon.

The Cygnus is carrying a number of other investigations as well. For example, the radish-growing experiment Plant Habitat-02 aims to expand our knowledge of growing plants and food in space. With this experiment, researchers will test how the plants grow with different light and soil conditions. This "could help optimize growth of the plants in space as well as provide an assessment of their nutrition and taste," according to a NASA statement.

Another experiment will help scientists develop more effective and safer cancer treatments. While Testing cancer drugs in microgravity could help reveal treatments that "make good candidates for safer, more effective, and affordable medicines to treat leukemia and other cancers," NASA wrote in the same statement.

Another experiment will use a customized 360-degree camera that launched to the station in December 2018 to create an immersive virtual reality experience that will allow people to experience what life is really like inside the space station and even "outside" on spacewalks. And a different investigation will examine a unique process that could help astronauts on the space station to produce water and energy by converting the urea in human urine into ammonia.

Additionally, Estée Lauder will be launching not an experiment, but a skincare serum to the space station. There, astronauts will photograph the commercial product in the space station's cupola window. This endeavor is part of NASA's efforts to engage more with commercial activity in low Earth orbit. 

Launch delays and details

Tonight's launch was previously scheduled to take place Tuesday evening (Sept. 29), but the liftoff was delayed "due to poor weather conditions anticipated Tuesday and Wednesday," NASA wrote. An attempted launch on Thursday was aborted two minutes and 40 seconds before liftoff due to the ground support equipment glitch. Northrop Grumman engineers were able to identify and address the issue in time for tonight's successful launch.

The Cygnus is built by Virginia-based company Northrop Grumman, which, like SpaceX, holds a space station resupply contract with NASA. Northrop Grumman named this Cygnus spacecraft the S.S. Kalpana Chawla, paying homage to astronaut Kalpana Chawla who, along with six other astronauts, died in the 2003 Columbia space shuttle tragedy. Chawla also flew on Columbia in 1997 as a mission specialist and primary robotic arm operator. She was the first woman of Indian origin to ever go to space.

NG-14 is the 14th launch for Cygnus and the spacecraft's 13th mission to the space station.

"As the 14th flight to the ISS, the Cygnus has been a workhorse for us in bringing cargo and removing cargo from the ISS ... it's brought up tens and tens of tons of metric tons of cargo. And it's key [in bringing] a lot of the research, crew supplies, critical spares that we need on ISS in order to continue operations," Dorth said. 

Docking with the space station

The Cygnus spacecraft will arrive at the space station on Sunday (Oct. 4). There, NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy, the expedition 63 commander, will grapple the craft with the station's robotic arm. Flight engineer and Roscosmos cosmonaut Ivan Vagner will act as a backup.

After capturing Cygnus, with help from mission control in Houston, the station's robotic arm will rotate and install the craft on the space station's unity module, where it will remain until mid-December before departing to burn up in Earth's atmosphere.

Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Long-term jobless caught in a squeeze that imperils recovery

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER and ALEXANDRA OLSON

FILE - In this Sept. 2, 2020, file photo, a shopper walks by one of several vacant retail spaces among the outlet shops in Freeport, Maine. The U.S. unemployment rate dropped to 7.9% in September, but hiring is slowing and many Americans have given up looking for work, the government said Friday, Oct. 2, in the final jobs report before the voters decide whether to give President Donald Trump another term. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, File)


WASHINGTON (AP) — This spring, Magdalena Valiente was expecting her best year as a Florida-based concert promoter. Now, she wonders if the career she built over three decades is over.

Back in March, Valiente had been busy planning three tours and 42 live events, including concerts for the Panamanian reggaeton star Sech and the Miami Latin pop band Bacilos. Earning well into six figures during good years, Valiente was hoping to help her youngest son, a high school junior, pay his way through college.

But with live events canceled, things have turned bleak. She is relying on unemployment benefits and Medicaid and has applied for food stamps. She has lost hope that the crisis will end soon.

“I worked up from the very bottom when I started in this business in my twenties,” said Valiente, a single mother in Fort Lauderdale. “There weren’t many other women, and it was hard. It’s not easy to let it go.”

Millions of Americans in the industries hit hardest by the viral pandemic face a similar plight. Their unemployment has stretched from weeks into months, and it’s become painfully unclear when, if ever, their jobs will come back. In the entertainment field where Valiente worked and in other sectors that absorbed heavy job losses — from restaurants and hotels to energy, higher education and advertising — employment remains far below pre-pandemic levels.

These trends have raised the specter of a period of widespread long-term unemployment that could turn the viral recession into a more painful, extended downturn. People who have been jobless for six months or longer — one definition of long-term unemployment — typically suffer an erosion of skills and professional networks that makes it harder to find a new job. Many will need training or education to find work with a new company or in a new occupation, which can delay their re-entry into the job market.

On Friday, the government reported that employers added 661,000 jobs in September, normally a healthy gain. Yet it marked the third straight monthly slowdown in hiring. The nation has regained barely half the 22 million jobs that were lost to the pandemic and the widespread business shutdowns it caused in March and April.

In a worrisome trend, a rising proportion of job losses appear to be permanently gone. When the virus erupted in March and paralyzed the economy, nearly 90% of layoffs were considered temporary, and a quick rebound seemed possible. No longer. In September, the number of Americans classified as permanently laid off rose 12% to 3.8 million. And the number of long-term unemployed rose by 781,000 — the largest increase on record — to 2.4 million.

“We have a real chance of there being massive long-term unemployment,” said Till Von Wachter, an economics professor at UCLA.

The nation now has 7% fewer jobs than in February. Yet the damage is far deeper in some sectors. The performing arts and spectator sports category, which includes Valiente’s industry, has lost 47% of its jobs. It hasn’t added any net jobs since the coronavirus struck.

Hotels are down 35%, restaurants and bars 19%, transportation 18%. Advertising, one of the first expenses that companies cut in a downturn, is down 9%.

Higher education has lost 9% of its jobs. Many classes have been delayed or moved online, reducing the need for janitors, cafeteria workers and other administrators. Normally during recessions, the education sector adds jobs to accommodate people returning to school to seek marketable skills or education. Not this time.

Ashley Broshious took years to develop skills that now seem much less in demand. A manager and sommelier at a Charleston restaurant, Broshious is one of just six certified advanced sommeliers in South Carolina. Still, she was laid off in March. And when the restaurant owner reopened one of his two establishments, she wasn’t rehired.

Now, Broshious receives about $326 a week in unemployment benefits. That’s not nearly enough to pay the $2,400 monthly rent on her home, as well as student loans, car insurance and credit card debt from a trip to Hawaii she took while still working.

“When you spend your entire life building this career,” Broshious said, “it’s hard to start over.”

Some economists note hopefully that this recovery has progressed faster than many analysts expected and may keep doing so. Matthew Notowidigdo, an economist at the University of Chicago’s Booth School, and three colleagues predicted in a research paper that the rapid recall of temporary workers will lower unemployment to 4.6% a year from now. That would suggest a much faster recovery than the previous recession.

Three-quarters of the temporarily laid off aren’t bothering to look for work, Notowidigdo said, based on an analysis of government data, apparently because they’re confident of being recalled. And while the number of job openings has declined by about 17% compared with a year earlier, according to Glassdoor, it remains far higher than during the Great Recession.

In July, the most recent month for which government data is available, there were 2.5 unemployed workers, on average, for each job opening. That’s much better than the six unemployed per job opening during the depths of the Great Recession.

“There are still a lot of people finding jobs fairly rapidly,” Notowidigdo said.

Still, more than one-third of workers who have been laid off or furloughed now regard their job loss as permanent, according to a survey by Morning Consult. That’s up from just 15% in April.

Some economists, like Sophia Koropeckyj of Moody’s Analytics, see rising cause for concern. Koropeckyj estimates that 5 million people will struggle to find work even after the virus has been controlled. Jobs likely won’t return to pre-pandemic levels until late in 2023, she said in a research note.

Even among some people who have managed to land new jobs, the pandemic recession has upended their financial lives.

Angela Grimley worked her way up through several Marriott Hotels in Philadelphia to become an event manager, only to have the recession kick her back down the ladder. After months of unemployment, Grimley, 38, found a part-time job answering customers’ calls and emails for the Pennsylvania General Store, which sells food and souvenirs found only in Pennsylvania.

She loves the work. And she feels fortunate that her boyfriend, whom she lives with, is still working. But before the pandemic Grimley had received a new job offer as a conference and event manager at a marketing company involved in healthy parenting products. The job would have paid much more and provided health and retirement benefits, which her part-time job doesn’t. But the offer vanished in the pandemic.

The damage to her finances “keeps me up at night,” Grimley said. Having had to buy health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, she’s discovered that some of her doctors won’t accept her new insurance.

For Valiente, no concerts are scheduled until August 2021. Yet she’s no longer confident that the public will be ready even then for packed concerts of thousands of people.

At 52, she said, it’s hard to contemplate a career change.

“By the end of the year, if things look worse, I’ll have to come up with a plan B, but I don’t know what that will be in the music business,” Valiente said. “I don’t want to go into debt because I’m not young, and I don’t have another 30 years of working.”

___

Olson reported from New York.

Seismic search for oil in Atlantic Ocean looks dead for now

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Seismic exploration for oil and gas off the south Atlantic coast is unlikely to proceed this year because permits expire Nov. 30, federal officials and company representatives told a federal judge Thursday.

The testing shoots blasts of air, using the vibrations to map where oil and gas might be present below the ocean floor. Environmentalists sued in federal court in Charleston seeking to block the exploration because the work has been shown to harm marine animals like the endangered North Atlantic right whale.

President Donald Trump recently banned oil drilling off the coasts of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, reversing previous support. But lawyers for the U.S. Department of Commerce and five interested companies had still sought to proceed with testing.

The Post and Courier of Charleston reports that the government said in a Thursday hearing there’s no way to extend the permits after they expire on Nov. 30, meaning they will be moot before the case can go to trial.

Industry groups said it was impossible to get boats in the water before that date.

U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel has not issued an order ending the litigation, but “as a practical matter, the case is over,” said Catherine Wannamaker, an attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center.

“We’re excited about this,” she said. “It’s been a long battle for us and it’s a big victory for our waters and right whales,” she said.

A spokeswoman for industry group International Association of Geophysical Contractors declined to comment on the case, as did a spokesman for the National Marine Fisheries Services, which issued the permits at the center of the litigation.

There is nothing stopping the exploration companies from re-applying for permits to search in the new year.

Two types of permits are required to conduct the work. The permits at the center of the case were called Incidental Harassment Authorizations, or basically, permission to disturb sea life during seismic work.

“Since these companies can apply again, we need a more permanent, long-term ban on offshore drilling and seismic testing at the federal level,” said Alan Hancock of the Coastal Conservation League.

cal Survey May Have Found Secret Chambers In King Tut’s Tomb

David Bressan Contributor
Science
I deal with the rocky road to our modern understanding of earth


View of the bust of one of history's great beauties, Queen Nefertiti of Egypt, hosted today Berlin's ... [+] DDP/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

The Valley of the Kings is a valley in Egypt where, for a period of nearly 500 years from the 16th to 11th century BCE, rock-cut tombs were excavated for the pharaohs and powerful nobles of the New Kingdom. In 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter was searching here for the tomb of Tutankhamen, a relatively minor pharaoh who ruled over Egypt from 1332 to 1323 BCE. On November 4, 1922, a boy accidentally stumbled on a stone that turned out to be the top of a flight of steps cut into the bedrock. One month later, Carter entered the pharaoh's tomb.

Asked if he could see anything in the darkness of the burial chamber, to which Carter responded "yes, wonderful things."

Tutankhamon died unexpectedly aged just 19, and archaeologists long suspected that the tomb wasn't built primarily for him, but was a collective tomb used by his family.

In 2015, egyptologist Nicholas Reeves noted on high-resolution images of the tomb's interior some straight lines and cracks in the painted walls of Tutankhamun’s burial chamber, which he suggested could indicate the presence of hidden doorways to hidden chambers beyond. He speculated that the tomb could host the mortal - and lost - remains of Queen Nefertiti, among the wives of Tutankhamun's father, and celebrated for her beauty as shown by the famous 3,300-year-old bust.

Using Ground Penetrating Radar (or GPR), Japanese researcher Hirokatsu Watanable found two anomalies in the bedrock behind the tomb walls, interpreted as cavities filled with metallic and organic objects. However, a similar survey done by American geophysicist Dean Goodman in March 2016 didn't confirm the previous anomalies. Goodman excluded the presence of any anomalies or cavities in the solid bedrock.

In 2018, a third survey, this time by an Italian research team, found no evidence of marked discontinuities due to the passage from natural rock to artificial blocking walls in the tomb, concluding that there are no hidden chambers immediately adjacent to the tomb of Tutankhamun. However, the study couldn't exclude larger chambers or passages in the broader area around the tomb.

The most recent survey, done in 2019, mapped not only the inner burial chamber, but also a wider area around the tomb. The team combined three different geophysical survey methods to get a three-dimensional map of the bedrock. Magnetometry and electrical resistivity imaging measure the bedrock's magnetic and electric properties, with voids appearing as missing data, and GPR sends electric signals into the underground, reflected by pockets of air or disturbed soil layers.

Surprisingly enough, the team noted a quite large anomaly in the data, believed to be a corridor-like space almost 6 feet high and 30 feet long running parallel to the tomb's entrance gallery. However, electromagnetic interference by a ventilation system installed in the tomb prevents to follow the alleged corridor into the mountain using geophysical suvey methods. The breath and sweat of almost 1,000 people a day visiting the tomb caused mold to grow on the walls. To prevent any further damage in January 2019 a modern ventilation system was installed.

Results of the 2019 geophysical surveys showing the large cavity of the tomb KV 62 (Tutankhamun’s ... [+] PORCELLI ET AL. 2020

Only an archaeological dig could give us certainty at this point. Leading Egyptian archaeologists remain skeptical of the claims. Already in the past, they noted, geophysical surveys showed voids where none were found during later archaeological excavations. Natural occurring discontinuities in the bedrock, like joints or mineral veins, can result in "ghost signals" resembling artificial structures.

Many egyptologists also exclude that Nefertiti, married to the pharao Echnaton, is buried here. Echnaton tried to replace the divine pantheon worshipped by ancient Egyptians with one single Sun-God, openly opposing the powerful priesthood ruling the ancient city of Thebes. Thebes, controlling the access to the Valley of the Kings during the New Kingdom, would not allow a burial of a relative of the heretic pharao there, so the experts. If Nefertiti's tomb still exists, it may be hidden somewhere far away from Thebes and the Valley of the Kings.

450-Million-Year-Old Fossil Named After Actor Who Played ‘Doctor Who’

David Bressan Contributor FORBES Science
I deal with the rocky road to our modern understanding of earth
Sep 24, 2020

The new trilobite fossil Gravicalymene bakeri is named after Britsih actor Tom Baker, who played one of the doctors in Doctor Who.

 SMITH & EBACH2020

Two Australian paleontologists - Dr Smith and co-author Dr Ebach - named a newly described fossil species dating back 450 million years after British actor Tom Baker, who between 1974 and 1981 played the fourth incarnation of the eponymous hero in the longest-running science-fiction television series of all time - Doctor Who.

The new trilobite, a marine arthropod resembling modern pill bugs or roly-polies but only distantly related, is named Gravicalymene bakeri.


Actor and Doctor Who star Tom Baker at the SFX Weekender 2010. (Photo by Rob Monk/SFX ... [+] FUTURE VIA GETTY IMAGES

The fossil was found already in 1997 in the Gunns Plains under curious circumstances. While driving the valley on the north-west coast of Tasmania, Australia, Ebach stopped at a convenient boulder to relieve himself, when he noted that the shale-rock surface was covered in trilobites.

But it wasn't until recently that the two scientists realized it was a new species. Dr Smith, 30, didn't watch the original run of Doctor Who with Baker as the fourth Doctor, but fell in love with the character while watching repeats in the early 2000s: "He was my inspiration to go into science. He used science, to help people." The adventures of the time traveling character inspired him to study real time travel. "The area of science I specialize in is bio-stratigraphy which is all about dating the age of Earth and its rocks," said Smith. Dr Ebach watched the originals in the 1970s, and said Baker's Doctor Who also inspired him to explore the natural world.
Gravicalymene belongs to a group of trilobites with worldwide distribution. Similar species have been previously found in North America and Europe. In the Ordovician, a geologic period spanning from 485 to 443 million years ago, Earth was a very alien planet. Australia and all the other modern continents formed Gondwana, a super-landmass surrounded by a global ocean. The first primitive plants were appearing on the barren land and the sea was ruled by soft-bodied creatures, squid-like orthoceratides, jellyfish and sea lilies. Fifty million years after the first trilobites crawled around the bottom of the ocean, the first fish-like animals evolved.

The Ordovician sea some 450 million years ago, a group of trilobites is crawling along a forest of ... [+] GETTY

For more than 200 million years trilobites thrived and diversified into many species, some as bizarre as the fictional monsters the Doctor battled over eons. Still, as nothing lasts forever, they went extinct during the Great Permian Extinction, the largest mass die-off in the history of Earth, some 252 million years ago.

Baker commented on the new discovery in a letter to the two scientists.

"I am delighted to be entitled at last. I hope the Who world will share my joy. Will I be allowed to tack "Fossil" on official correspondence? I hope the Who world will celebrate this fresh honour and will spread the news to those who live in remote places. Happy days to all the Who fans everywhe

For The First Time, Scientists Successfully Extract DNA From Insects Embedded In Tree Resin

David Bressan Contributor FORBESScience
I deal with the rocky road to our modern understanding of earth

Movie prop used by Sir Richard Attenborough in the film Jurassic Park on view at the Amazing Amber exhibition in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 2013. GETTY IMAGES

Somewhere in South America, a miner finds a piece of amber. Inside the hardened tree resin, he notes what seems to be a mosquito. Using advanced equipment, scientists extract the last meal of the blood-sucking insect. Thanks to the genetic code perfectly preserved in the still intact blood cells, the scientists then clone a dinosaur. The novel and later successful movie franchise "Jurassic Park" popularized the idea that amber could preserve soft tissue and even DNA-molecules over millions of years. But real attempts to extract DNA from amber or similar substances were unsuccessful to this day, and resin-embedded samples were deemed unsuitable for genetic examinations.

Unlike in the movies, fossil tree resin is not a good choice to preserve DNA, a fragile molecule carrying genetic instructions for the development, functioning, growth and reproduction of all known organisms. When a viscous substance traps a small animal, the soft tissues start to decay immediately and most DNA is lost before the entire animal is even encapsulated. Even if some DNA is preserved, the resin's chemical compounds will react with it, destroying it over time.

A study published in the journal PLOS ONE attempted to determine if and how long the DNA of insects enclosed in resinous materials can be preserved. The researchers collected small ambrosia beetles that were trapped in the resin of amber trees (Hymenaea) in Madagascar. The chemical composition of this modern tree resin is very similar to fossilized amber. The samples were stored for 2 to 6 years and then processed.


Tree resin with embedded ambrosia beetles. D.PERIS

The study concluded that although it is very fragile, DNA was still preserved in the samples. First attempts using ethanol to dissolve the resin surrounding the beetles proved to be counterproductive. The alcohol reacts with the resin, destroying any DNA. This observation may explain why past attempts to extract DNA were always unsuccessful. Even after perfecting the extraction process switching chemicals, new problems emerged. The polymerase chain reaction (or PCR) is widely used to replicate small fragments of DNA, but the researchers discovered that this method is not very effective with DNA extracted from resinous materials. It is possible, so the authors, that substances found in the resin inhibit the chemicals used to copy single DNA strings. Only after carefully cleaning the samples and repeating the PCR-process various times, enough DNA was replicated to study the genomics of the embedded organism.

It is still not clear just how long the DNA can survive inside the resin. The researchers will apply the new method to other examples of resin-embedded insects, from most recent to the oldest one, to determine the decay rate of DNA. Water also seems to play an essential role in the preservation potential. The resin creates a fully waterproof barrier, keeping moisture in the tissue. This could also affect the stability of the genetic material.

Despite their optimism to add this type of analysis of fossil DNA to more common methods - like DNA recovered from skeletal material, mummified and frozen tissues - the researchers have no intention of raising dinosaurs. It seems more than unlikely that functional DNA can survive more than 1 to 2 million years in amber.

Melting Ice Reveals A Mass Grave Of Mummified Penguins

Adélie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae) looking newly dead but the animal actually had been preserved in ice S.D. EMSLIE

David Bressan Contributor FORBES

In 2015 ornithologist Steven Emslie was studying penguin colonies along the shores of Antarctica’s Ross Sea, when he heard about pebble mounds associated with guano deposits on Cape Irizar, a rocky outcrop surrounded by water and ice.

Guano forms as the corrosive poop of generations of nesting birds reacts with rocks and soil. But no active colonies have ever been recorded at the site, even by early Antarctic explorers spotting and naming the cape in 1901.

Visiting the site, Emslie came across of what seemed at first a fresh penguin carcass resting on older remains, including bones, feathers, and eggshell. Later sampling and carbon-dating put the carcass at a minimum of 800 to 1,100 years old, with some of the older remains found at the site dating back to 1,375-2,340 and 2,750- 5,145 years ago. The pebble mounds were nests, suggesting that the site was a former penguin colony.



The abandoned nesting site on Cape Irizar. S.D. EMSLIE

Bones of Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) excavated from teh pebble mounds at the site. S.D. EMSLIE 2020

The varying ages imply at least three periods of occupation and abandonment of this site, according to the paper published in the journal Geology.

The Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica supports nearly one million breeding pairs of Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) annually. There also is a well-preserved record of abandoned penguin colonies on the continent that date from before the Last Glacial Maximum some 45,000 years ago.

As penguins need pebbles for their nests, during breeding season they will visit ice-free spots. Emslie speculates that the penguins abandoned the newly discovered colony during the onset of the Little Ice Age, a period of cooling between 1300 to 1850, which covered the former ice-free area in snow and ice. With the average annual temperature of this part of the continent rising nowadays by between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius since the 1980s, the resulting snowmelt exposes the remains, and decomposition begins

David Bressan

I'm a freelance geologist working mostly in the Eastern Alps. I graduated in 2007 with a project studying how permafrost, that´s frozen soil, is reacting to the more visible recent changes of the alpine environment. Studying therefore old maps, photographs and reports, I became interested in the history of geology and how early geologists figured out how earth works, blogging about it in my spare time. Living in one of the classic areas of early geological research, I combine field trips with the historic maps, figures and research done there. But geology is more than a historic or local science, as geological forces shaped and still influence history worldwide

Australia's 'no jab, no pay' rule has little effect on anti-vaxxer parents – study


Experts say the policy prompts people happy to vaccinate their children but doesn’t work on those who oppose vaccination science


Melissa Dave Sun 4 Oct 2020

 

Australia’s ‘no jab no pay’ policy has seen a drop in first-dose measles, mumps and rubella vaccinations. Photograph: Burger/Phanie / Rex

Australia’s “no jab, no pay” policy has been associated with a drop in the number of children catching up on their first dose of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, suggesting the policy has had little impact on those who reject vaccination science.

However, the policy was associated with more children catching up on their second dose of the vaccine and on their diphtheria–tetanus–pertussis vaccine, especially in lower socioeconomic status areas, the study published in the Medical Journal of Australia on Monday found.

Coalition's 'no jab, no pay' policy elicits mixed feelings in health professionals
Read more

The no jab, no pay policy, introduced from January 2016, meant family and childcare payments would be withheld from people who claimed to be “conscientious objectors” to vaccination.

To examine the impact of the policy, researchers from the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance and the University of Sydney analysed data from the Australian immunisation register for catch-up vaccinations of children aged five to under seven.
Advertisement

They examined data from between January 2013 and December 2014, before the policy was introduced, to establish a baseline. They then compared that with data from the same age group during the first two years of the policy to December 2017, and examined data from children aged seven to under 10 and young people aged 10 to under 20 after the policy was introduced.

“The proportion of children aged five to less than seven years who received catch-up MMR1 [first dose measles, mumps and rubella vaccine] vaccination was 13.6% (4,719 of 34,793 unvaccinated children) during the baseline period and 12.9% (4,169 of 32,321 unvaccinated children) during the ‘no jab, no pay’ period,” the study found.

“Of 407,332 incompletely vaccinated adolescents aged 10 to less than 20 years, 71,502 (17.6%) received catch-up MMR2 [second dose measles, mumps and rubella vaccine] during the first two years of ‘no jab, no pay’. This increased overall coverage for this age group from 86.6% to 89.0%. MMR2 catch-up activity in this age group was greater in the lowest socioeconomic status areas than in the highest socioeconomic status areas (29.1% v 7.6%), and also for Indigenous than for non-Indigenous Australians (35.8% v 17.1%).”

State-specific “no jab, no play” policies, adopted by four of eight jurisdictions by January 2020 and which permit children to attend childcare only if they are fully vaccinated “should not have affected our findings as they target children under five years of age”, the study stated.

The associate director of the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance, Dr Frank Beard, led the study and said the findings suggested that while monetary sanctions were effective in promoting catch-up vaccination, their impact varied with socioeconomic disadvantage.

He said this did not mean disadvantaged groups were vaccine refusers, given many of them had received their first dose of MMR1 and of diphtheria–tetanus–pertussis vaccine. More likely, issues such as access or language barriers might have been a more important factor in not receiving ongoing doses. Withholding family and childcare tax benefits would also affect this group more, prompting them to catch up under the policy, he said.

Previous research had found wealthier parents appeared more likely to register a vaccine objection compared with more financially disadvantaged families.

“This study found there was just no major change to that vaccine-objector group with the ‘no jab, no pay’ policy,” Beard said. “But on the positive side, a substantial number of people did catch up vaccination which led to modest increases in overall vaccine coverage. It was always thought by experts that the policy might have little impact on vaccine refusers. This study certainly provides evidence to support that.”

Prof Julie Leask, an expert on vaccination attitudes and behaviour from the University of Sydney, said the policy simply served as a prompt for people already happy to vaccinate their children – but did not work on those who actively rejected vaccines.

It's time to inject some sense into the nonsense peddled by the anti-science crowd
Melissa Davey
Read more

“We did in-depth interviews with this group for up to two hours, and we have done a number of studies with these vaccine-refusal groups now, and what we hear from them is that when you take away choice it causes a psychological reaction and it’s an anger towards having one’s choice removed,” Leask said.

“That caused people to dig down more, and we saw that coming through in this study with parents continuing not to vaccinate despite the policy, and in fact it suggests some who were on the fence said, ‘That’s it, if they force me I won’t do it at all.’ ”

Leask was concerned that by removing the conscientious objector exemption, which required people to have a signed note from their doctor or nurse, it removed an opportunity for healthcare providers to engage with those who refused vaccinations.

“At least there was more of a chance of engagement with mainstream medical services which would continue to give parents opportunities to review their decision,” she said.

“Another aspect often ignored in thinking about no jab no pay is that it means significant financial hardship for a minority of families who are vaccine refusers and that doesn’t just impact the parents, it means the kids are missing out too.”

New Caledonia rejects full independence from France again

By Mathieu Rosemain


PARIS (Reuters) - The South Pacific archipelago of New Caledonia voted against independence from France on Sunday for the second time in as many years, a provisional final count showed.

A surprise “yes” vote would have deprived Paris of a foothold in a region where China is expanding its influence, and dented the pride of a colonial power whose reach once spanned large parts of Africa, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific.

The “no” vote won 53.26% of votes cast votes, a narrower margin of victory than in the 2018 poll.

The result will bring relief to President Emmanuel Macron’s government, whose attention had been focused on the coronavirus pandemic in the run-up to the referendum.

“Voters have had their say. They confirmed their wish to keep New Caledonia a part of France. As head of state, I salute this show of confidence in the Republic with a profound feeling of gratitude,” Macron said in a televised statement.

New Caledonia became a French colony in 1853. Tensions have long run deep between pro-independence indigenous Kanaks and descendants of colonial settlers who remain loyal to Paris.



Sunday’s referendum was the second of up to three permitted under the terms of the 1998 Noumea Accord, an agreement enshrined in France’s constitution and which set out a 20-year path towards decolonisation.

France stood ready to organise a further vote within two years if that was the wish of New Caledonians, at which point both sides would have to accept the result, Macron said.

“We have two years to look to the future,” the president continued.

The island chain already enjoys a large degree of autonomy but depends heavily on France for matters such as defence and education.

Turnout was high at 85.6% of eligible voters - after a stronger-than-expected independence vote in the 2018 referendum.




New Caledonia lies some 1,200 km (750 miles) east of Australia and 20,000 km (12,500 miles) from Paris.

Under French colonial rule the Kanaks were confined to reserves and excluded from much of the island’s economy. The first revolt erupted in 1878, not long after the discovery of large nickel deposits that are today exploited by French miner Eramet’s subsidiary SLN.

Today, its economy is underpinned by annual French subsidies of some 1.3 billion euros ($1.5 billion) and nickel deposits that are estimated to represent 25% of the world’s total, and tourism.

The territory has, however, largely cut itself off from the outside world to shield itself from the coronavirus. It has registered only 27 cases of COVID-19.

For a third referendum to take place, a third of the local assembly in New Caledonia must vote in favour of one.

Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne and Mathieu Rosemain in Paris; Writing by Lidia Kelly and Richard Lough Editing by William Mallard and Angus MacSwan

New Caledonia votes on becoming independent from France

CHARLOTTE ANTOINE-PERRON, Associated Press •October 4, 2020

1 / 9
New Caledonia France Referendum
A woman casts her ballot in a voting station of Noumea, New Caledonia, Sunday, Oct.4, 2020. Voters in New Caledonia, a French archipelago in the South Pacific, were deciding Sunday whether they want independence from France in a referendum that marks a milestone in a three-decade decolonization effort. If voters choose independence, a transition period will immediately open so that the archipelago can get ready for its future status. Otherwise, New Caledonia will remain a French territory. (AP Photo/Mathurin Derel)

NOUMEA, New Caledonia (AP) — Voters in New Caledonia turned out in large numbers Sunday to decide whether the archipelago in the South Pacific should get independence from France and break ties that were first established in the mid-19th century.

Sunday's independence referendum is part of a three-decade decolonization effort aimed at settling tensions on the archipelago between native Kanaks seeking independence and residents willing to remain in France.

More than 180,000 voters were invited to answer the question: “Do you want New Caledonia to gain full sovereignty and become independent?”

“Today is not a day like any other. Everyone woke up with the will to express oneself (through the vote). This is a historic day,” Robert Wayaridri, 60, told The Associated Press.

In Noumea, the capital, large lines of people waited to vote under the hot sun, sometimes for hours. Almost 80% of voters had already casted their ballots one hour before poll stations closed, according to the French ministry of the Overseas.

Across the archipelago, horns and cheers could be heard all day in the streets, and some people waved pro-independence flags in a relaxed atmosphere.

The FLNKS movement leading the independence campaign called on its supporters to stay “calm and respectful.”

Polling stations closed at 6 p.m. (9 a.m. in mainland France). Results are expected later Sunday.

If voters choose independence, a transition period will immediately begin so that the archipelago can get ready for its future status. Otherwise, New Caledonia will remain a French territory.

Corine Florentin, who was born in Noumea 52 years ago, said she voted against independence because she wants to “remain French.”

"We can live together, all races together, and design our common future,” she said.

A student at the University of New Caledonia, Guillaume Paul, 18, also voted “no” because he wants the archipelago to keep its ties with France.

“What would the country become if it was independent? There is a real danger that without the financing brought by France, the university would disappear, ” he said.

But Joachim Neimbo, 22, was in favor of independence.

“I voted yes, because that’s my people’s combat. We want the recognition of our identity, our culture. I think we are able to manage ourselves,” he said.

Taguy Wayenece, 25, also voted “yes” to independence.

“We need to return to tradition, to working in the fields, to stay with the tribe. Modern life is too complicated for us," he said.

Two years ago, 56.4% of voters who participated in a similar referendum chose to keep the region's ties with Paris.

Both referendums are the final steps of a process that started 30 years ago after years of violence that pitched pro-independence Kanak activists against those willing to remain in France.

The archipelago now counts 270,000 inhabitants, including both native Kanaks, who once suffered from strict segregation policies and widespread discrimination, and descendants of European colonizers.

New Caledonia became French in 1853 under Emperor Napoleon III — Napoleon’s nephew and heir — and was used for decades as a prison colony. 

1. 18th Brunaire of Louis Bonaparte - Marxists Internet Archive

   https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/18th-Bru… · PDF file

   The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte Written: December 1851-March 1852; Source: Chapters 1 & 7 are translated by Saul K. Padover from the German edition of 1869; Chapters 2 through 6 are based on the third edition, prepared by Engels (1885), as translated and published by Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1937; First Published: First issue of Die Revolution, 1852, New York; Transcription ...

   • File Size: 993KB

   • Page Count: 68

It became an overseas territory after World War II, with French citizenship granted to all Kanaks in 1957.

Biden leads by 10 points as majority of Americans say Trump could have avoided coronavirus: Reuters/Ipsos poll


NEW YORK (Reuters) - Democrat Joe Biden opened his widest lead in a month in the U.S. presidential race after President Donald Trump tested positive for the coronavirus, and a majority of Americans think Trump could have avoided infection if he had taken the virus more seriously, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Sunday.

The Oct. 2-3 national opinion poll gave little indication of an outpouring of support for the president beyond Trump’s core group of followers, some of whom have gathered outside Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where the president has been hospitalized.

Trump has repeatedly dismissed the severity of the pandemic as something that would disappear on its own, chiding Biden as recently as last week for wearing a protective mask, even as the coronavirus infected millions of people and forced businesses and schools to close.

Among those adults who are expected to cast ballots in the Nov. 3 election, the poll found that 51% were backing Biden, while 41% said they were voting for Trump. Another 4% were choosing a third-party candidate and another 4% said they were undecided.

Biden’s 10-point edge over Trump is 1 to 2 points higher than leads Biden posted over the past several weeks, though the increase is still within the poll’s precision limits of plus or minus 5 percentage points.

With about a month to go before the election, Biden has maintained an early advantage in securing the national popular vote. But to win the presidency, a candidate must prevail in enough states to win the Electoral College, and state polls show that Trump is nearly as popular as Biden in battleground states.

Trump, 74, was transferred to Walter Reed on Friday, hours after tweeting that he was diagnosed with COVID-19. The announcement set off a dizzying split-screen experience for many: as media alerts lit up cell phones and television chyrons about Trump feeling feverish and needing oxygen, several other Republican leaders who had been in close proximity with the president announced that they, too, had tested positive.

Most Americans continue to be deeply worried about the virus, and the poll found that 65%, including 9 in 10 registered Democrats and 5 in 10 registered Republicans, agreed that “if President Trump had taken coronavirus more seriously, he probably would not have been infected.”

Only 34% said they thought that Trump has been telling them the truth about the coronavirus, while 55% said that he was not and 11% were unsure.

Of those polled, 57% of Americans said they disapproved of Trump’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic overall, up about 3 points from a poll that ran late last week.

Americans also appear to be largely supportive of curtailing the 2020 presidential race to ensure everyone’s safety.

Sixty-seven percent of Americans want to stop in-person campaign rallies and 59% think the presidential debates should be postponed until Trump recovers from the coronavirus.

It is unclear at this point how Trump’s diagnosis will impact the next presidential debate, which is scheduled for Oct. 15. The first vice presidential debate between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Mike Pence is scheduled for Thursday.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online, in English, throughout the United States. It gathered responses from 1,005 U.S. adults, including 596 likely voters.

Only about 61% of voting-age Americans actually voted in the 2016 election.

Reporting by Chris Kahn; Editing by Dan Grebler

HONEST Canadians have returned 830,000 pandemic benefit payments

Kathleen Harris

Canadians have made more than 830,000 repayments of COVID-19 emergency aid benefits to which they were not entitled – a statistic some say reflects mass confusion over fast-tracked federal programs 

IT DOES NO SUCH THING 

IT SHOWS THE EFFICENCY AND EFFICACY OF THE PROGRAMS AND THE HONESTY OF CANADIANS WHOM CONSERVATIVES ATTACK AS LAZY AND UNWORTHY

OF UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME AS THESE PROGRAMS SHOW

.

© Creative Touch Imaging Ltd/NurPhoto One of the many stores forced to close due to the financial strain of the 4-month lockdown seen during the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on July 31, 2020. Ontario has entered 'stage 3' of the 3 stage reopening plan following a 4-month lockdown to flatten the curve of the virus. Some three million jobs were lost in Canada over March and April due to the pandemic, and 2.5 million more had their hours and earnings slashed. By last month, some 3.1 million were affected by the pandemic, including 1.4 million who weren't at work due to COVID-19. (Photo by Creative Touch Imaging Ltd./NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The figures provided to CBC News by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) include repayments from recipients of the Canada emergency response benefit (CERB) and Canada emergency student benefit (CESB).

CRA said all of the repayments were voluntary.

"There are various reasons why voluntary repayments have been made: if applicants applied in error for a CERB payment from both Service Canada and the CRA for the same period, if an applicant later realized that they were not eligible for the benefit, or if an applicant returned to work earlier than expected," said CRA spokesperson Christopher Doody in an email.

Conservative MP and national revenue critic Philip Lawrence said he blames the high number of repayments on the federal government failing to explain the benefit programs to Canadians.

"During the pandemic, the Liberals continuously sent mixed messages to Canadians who were applying for emergency benefits. This caused confusion for many Canadians who were unclear if they were eligible for the benefits or not," Lawrence said.

"It was important for the Trudeau government to get the communication of these benefits right. Unfortunately, they failed to do so and left Canadians behind."

CRA said it could not cite a dollar sum for the repayments because the money is retained in a general account, along with other unrelated payments.

Rushed programs led to confusion

Toronto-based Labour lawyer Lluc Cerda called the number of repayments "huge" — and also blamed a lack of clarity on the federal government's part when it launched these benefits in the chaotic early days of the pandemic.

He said people often couldn't get through to busy CRA or Service Canada call centre agents — and when they did reach an agent, they were sometimes given contradictory information.

"I think with the way the plan was rushed into place – and I mean, the times called for it – there's definitely a lot of confusion and I think that's a large part of why people are paying it back," Cerda said.

Widespread uncertainty also may have led some people to apply for benefits, then "park" the money until tax time against the possibility that it would have to be repaid, he said. Cerda added that the uncertainty may have deterred some people who were actually eligible for benefits like CERB from even applying.

20,000 tips on suspected abuse

CRA also told CBC News it has received more than 20,000 confidential tips about suspected cheating related to COVID-19 emergency aid programs.

All anonymous tips are reviewed for evidence of fraud.

In June, the Liberal government proposed legislation that would have imposed fines or even jail time on people who deliberately lied on CERB applications. It backtracked after a public and political outcry.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau justified the move as a way to ensure integrity of the program, saying the government would crack down on the small minority of "deliberate fraudsters" but was not looking to penalize anyone who collected money unintentionally.

"We're not looking to punish people who made honest mistakes," he said.

At the time, the government was under pressure from the Conservatives to bring in stronger controls to weed out fraudulent claims and maintain an incentive for people to return to work where possible.

CRA said it will take steps to verify that claimants were eligible to receive payments. The agency keeps records showing who received the benefits and for how long; those records will be cross-checked with tax slips from employers and other relevant information to validate eligibility at tax filing time.

In cases where recipients are found to be ineligible, they will be contacted to make repayment arrangements, CRA said.