Ruling renews fairness debate in Boston Marathon bomber case

JUST SAY NO TO THE DEATH PENALTY

FILE - In this April 17, 2013 photograph, flowers and signs adorn a barrier, two days after two explosions killed three and injured hundreds, at Boylston Street near the of finish line of the Boston Marathon at a makeshift memorial for victims and survivors of the bombing. A federal appeals court has overturned the death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, Friday, July 31, 2020, saying the judge who oversaw the case didn't adequately screen jurors for potential biases. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)


“Boston Strong” remains a “vibrant” rallying cry more than seven years after the marathon bombing killed three people and injured more than 260 others, a federal appeals court noted as it threw out the death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

But even as the ruling opened old wounds, it raised familiar questions about whether Tsarnaev can receive a fair hearing in the city where the bombs exploded — a community that may now be asked to relive unspeakable trauma.

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held Friday that jurors were not adequately screened for bias ahead of Tsarnaev’s 2015 trial, describing media attention in the case as “unrivaled in American legal history.”

The three-judge panel ordered a new penalty phase — this time with more searching questions for prospective jurors — to decide whether the 27-year-old should be executed.

Tsarnaev “will spend his remaining days locked up in prison,” the judges made clear, “with the only matter remaining being whether he will die by execution.”

The Justice Department is expected to appeal. Legal observers predict prosecutors will turn straight to the U.S. Supreme Court without asking for a hearing before the full 1st Circuit. The U.S. government recently resumed federal executions following a 17-year pause and, under President Donald Trump, has pursued capital punishment in an increasing number of cases.

“When it comes to death penalty cases, the U.S. Supreme Court has been much more pro-prosecution than many of the circuit courts,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

Should Friday’s ruling stand, attention will shift to whether an impartial jury can be impaneled in a city still traumatized by the 2013 attack. Tsarnaev’s defense team may renew its request to transfer the case out of Boston, where they have long contended public opinion is immutably slanted.

“Everybody in the community understands where ‘Boston Strong’ came from,” Dunham said. “The question will be whether that’s so ingrained in the community that jurors can’t set it aside and fairly determine the outcome of this case.”

Tsarnaev’s case is uniquely complicated in that an entire city — if not the whole country — considered itself the target of the bombing, said George Kendall, an attorney who filed a brief contending it was a mistake to hold the trial in Boston. Prosecutors said Tsarnaev and his brother intended the attack to punish the U.S. for wars in Muslim countries.
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“This was not just a horrific crime against the individuals who were killed and hurt,” Kendall said in an interview Saturday. “This was an attack on the city of Boston and a deliberate attack on its most cherished tradition.”

Robert Bloom, a Boston College law professor who has followed the case for years, said a new penalty phase would force the community to relive the bombing.

“My hope is that the government will decide not to put the victims through this again,” Bloom said, noting Tsarnaev had been willing to plead guilty before trial had the government taken the death penalty off the table.

Tsarnaev’s lawyer echoed Bloom in an email to The Associated Press following Friday’s ruling.

“It is now up to the government to determine whether to put the victims and Boston through a second trial, or to allow closure to this terrible tragedy by permitting a sentence of life without the possibility of release,” David Patton wrote.

Tsarnaev’s attorneys did not dispute his involvement in the attack, but argued he was less culpable than his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who died in a gunbattle with police a few days after the bombing.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was convicted of 30 charges — including conspiracy and use of a weapon of mass destruction — all but a few of which were upheld in the appellate ruling.

The appellate judges differed on whether the case should be moved to another jurisdiction but noted that, “given the sizable passage of time, the venue issue should look quite different the second time around.”

“Two of the three judges indicated it was not error to have the trial in Boston, so the opinion may actually help keep it in Boston in the future,” said Brian Kelly, a former assistant U.S. attorney known for his prosecution of crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger.

Marty Weinberg, a veteran defense attorney, said a second penalty phase would be “made enormously more difficult by the widespread knowledge — particularly in the Boston area — that another jury previously decided upon death.”

___

Mustian reported from New York and Ring from Stowe, Vermont. AP journalist Alanna Durkin Richer contributed from West Harwich, Massachusetts.

Airlines, unions pin hopes for more payroll cash on politics

FILE - In this July 22, 2020 photo, a ticketing agent for Delta Airlines hands a boarding pass to a passenger as he checks in for a flight in the main terminal of Denver International Airport in Denver. Unions are gaining support in Congress for another $32 billion in federal aid to protect airline workers from layoffs for another six months. Still, it's too early to say how the issue will turn out. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)

With tens of thousands of airline workers facing layoffs this fall, labor groups are pushing Congress for more federal money to keep them on the payroll until next spring.

The unions have gained significant support among Democrats. They hope that the prospect of mass layoffs weeks before a pivotal election will sway some Republican votes.

The airline industry has been battered by the virus pandemic. In March, companies got $32 billion to help cover payroll costs for six months in exchange for not laying off workers. The money and the ban on layoffs both end Oct. 1, meaning there could be large-scale job cuts less than five weeks before the Nov. 3 election.

“Ultimately the White House will be responsible for that, and so will the 23 Republican senators who are up for re-election,” said Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants. “I don’t believe that’s a political risk that anyone is willing to take.”

But approval is far from certain. Airlines are already downsizing — persuading thousands of workers to take voluntary buyouts or early retirement. And they have lined up billions of dollars in private borrowing, giving them a better chance of surviving a long slump in travel.

The CEO of Southwest Airlines said he supports an extension of federal dollars for airline payrolls, but he doesn’t see the same urgency in Washington.

Back in the spring, “there was broad support from Congress, the administration and even the president,” Gary Kelly said. “This time around, that is not the case.”

Kelly made the comments in an employee video after a union representing flight attendants and other Southwest employees asked him to publicly support the payroll-aid extension.

Thirteen airline unions have joined to lobby Congress for a six-month extension of the payroll provision. Of the total, $25 billion would go to passenger airlines.

Major airlines support the extension, but they are keeping a low profile. Union and airline representatives fear that if the big airlines openly lobby for the money, it could be portrayed as a bailout.

Airlines for America, the trade group for the biggest U.S. carriers, said it is not pursuing new government help but would take it if no new conditions were attached. A group representing smaller carriers, the Regional Airline Association, has been more vocal in urging Washington to approve the money — two of its members have already shut down during the pandemic and a third is in grave jeopardy.

The union campaign is showing signs of momentum. This week, more than 220 lawmakers in the House — mostly Democrats, but joined by 29 Republicans — endorsed the money, which they hope to include in a new coronavirus-relief package being negotiated on Capitol Hill. Prospects in the Republican-controlled Senate and the Trump administration are less clear, however.

In the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., did not include airlines in his $1 trillion coronavirus relief proposal. Some Senate Republicans say McConnell’s measure is already too expensive, and they could object to tacking on another $32 billion.

The Trump administration hasn’t stated its position on a second round of relief. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said recently that airlines need more help to survive the travel downturn caused by the pandemic but gave no details. The Treasury Department declined to comment on the matter this week.

The issue will be decided when negotiators try to reconcile McConnell’s plan and a $3.5 trillion coronavirus-relief bill that the House passed in May.

It is unknown exactly how many jobs airlines will cut. United Airlines sent layoff notices to 36,000 employees and warned pilots this week that there could be more furloughs — the industry’s term for termination of workers who have rehiring rights — later this year or in 2021. American Airlines notified 25,000 workers, Delta Air Lines warned more than 2,500 pilots, and smaller airlines also sent out notices. Southwest said it doesn’t expect to furlough anybody in 2020.

U.S. airlines had about 750,000 employees before the pandemic hit, according to their trade group.

The original payroll aid in grants and low-interest loans was approved as air travel collapsed by 95%. The money was intended to save airline jobs until travel rebounded, but that has not happened. Slow growth in May and June stopped in July, and U.S. air travel is still down more than 70% from a year ago.

House Transportation Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., said in a letter Monday to House and Senate leaders of both parties that travel won’t recover by Oct. 1.

“Without further relief from Congress, mass layoffs among airline industry workers are inevitable — and their magnitude will eclipse those of any furloughs the industry has ever seen,” DeFazio wrote.

___

David Koenig can be reached at www.twitter.com/airlinewriter

LIKE HIV 

In Africa, stigma surrounding coronavirus hinders response

1 of 9  https://apnews.com/b12f98423f0495589c7e4680dde4c115
FILE - In this April 30, 2020, file photo, mourners gather to bury an elderly man believed to have died of the coronavirus but whose family asked not to be named because of the social stigma, in Mogadishu, Somalia. A dangerous stigma has sprung up around the coronavirus in Africa — fueled, in part, by severe quarantine rules in some countries as well as insufficient information about the virus. (AP Photo/File)


KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — After 23 days in quarantine in Uganda — far longer than required — Jimmy Spire Ssentongo walked free in part because of a cartoon he drew. It showed a bound prisoner begging for liberation after multiple negative tests, while a health minister demanded to know where he was hiding the virus.

“The impression was that we were a dangerous group and that what was necessary was to protect the rest of society from us,” said Ssentongo, a cartoonist for Uganda’s Observer newspaper who was put in quarantine when he returned from Britain in March.

The fear he describes is indicative of the dangerous stigma that has sprung up around the coronavirus in Africa — fueled, in part, by severe and sometimes arbitrary quarantine rules as well as insufficient information about the virus.

Such stigma is not unique to the continent: Patients from Ecuador to Indonesia have been shamed when their diagnosis became known.
But with testing in Africa limited by supply shortages and some health workers going without proper protective gear, fear of the virus on the continent as it approaches 1 million confirmed infections is hindering the ability to control it in many places — and also discouraging people from seeking care for other diseases.


This cartoon published on April 9, 2020, by cartoonist Jimmy Spire Ssentongo shows a prisoner, bound and kneeling, begging for liberation after multiple negative coronavirus tests, while a health minister demands where the virus is hiding. The widely circulated cartoon illustrated how Ssentongo and others in Uganda felt after a quarantine stay so long that some people bribed their way out and others went on a hunger strike, Ssentongo told The Associated Press. (Jimmy Spire Ssentongo via AP)

The way people were treated early in this pandemic is “just like the way, early on in the HIV epidemic, patients were being treated,” Salim Abdool Karim, an epidemiologist who chairs South Africa’s COVID-19 ministerial advisory committee, told a World Health Organization event last month. People with HIV were often shunned by their own families, and reports of health workers refusing to care for them were common in the 1990s.

Now, some people avoid testing for the coronavirus “because if they test, they’re ostracized,” Karim said.

Or simply locked away. Ssentongo, who was released from quarantine on the 24th day after testing negative three times, told The Associated Press that he and others were poorly treated at the facility, a hotel. Like him, many were held for far longer than the required 14 days, and he saw some bribe their way out. He was among those that went on hunger strikes in a bid to be freed.


FILE - In this April 18, 2020, file photo, a boy wearing a face mask carries a small bowl of "githeri", or mixed beans and maize, for him to eat as he walks past a mural warning people about the risks of the coronavirus, painted by graffiti artists from the Mathare Roots youth group, in the Mathare slum, of Nairobi, Kenya. A dangerous stigma has sprung up around the coronavirus in Africa — fueled, in part, by severe quarantine rules in some countries as well as insufficient information about the virus. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga, File)

“It was dehumanizing,” said Ssentongo, who also noted that there was no social distancing at the facility, and medical workers were rarely seen and inconsistent in their efforts to control the virus. A medical team once took a woman suspected of having the virus from her room and sprayed her with disinfectant, but ignored her partner.

In neighboring Kenya, people in quarantine reported similar poor treatment and discrimination.

At one facility, those inside said their money was rejected by the staff and the surrounding community when they tried to buy food, according to a Human Rights Watch report in May. At another, kitchen staff sometimes declined to serve them, forcing a security guard to bring the food.

Some humanitarian groups warn that stigma could set back Africa’s pandemic response.

FILE - In this July 8, 2020, file photo, people walk past an informational mural warning people about the dangers of the new coronavirus and how to prevent transmission, with words in Swahili reading "We are the Cure", painted by youth artists from the Uweza Foundation, in the Kibera slum, or informal settlement, of Nairobi, Kenya. A dangerous stigma has sprung up around the coronavirus in Africa — fueled, in part, by severe quarantine rules in some countries as well as insufficient information about the virus. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga, File)

In Somalia, “our teams are seeing people who have tested positive running away from their homes out of fear of being stigmatized by the community,” Abdinur Elmi, an official with the aid group CARE, said in a statement.

As a result, the group said, contact tracing has become nearly impossible in the Horn of Africa country, which has one of the world’s weakest health systems after nearly three decades of conflict.

Worryingly, the stigma has attached to health and aid workers in some places.

In the West African nation of Burkina Faso, a nurse’s assistant who found employment as a cleaner in a hospital said her uncle gave her an ultimatum: quit or leave home.

“He said, ‘Pack your bags and find another place to live,’” said the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to avoid retribution from her family.

Health Minister Pierre Somse, of Central African Republic, said humanitarian workers have been targeted because the idea has spread that Westerners, who often do such work, brought the virus. He urged governments to “de-dramatize” the response to calm panicked communities.


FILE - In this Thursday, May 28, 2020 file photo, Samson Waithaka rides a bicycle with informational messages warning about the new coronavirus in the Mathare slum, or informal settlement, of Nairobi, Kenya. A dangerous stigma has sprung up around the coronavirus in Africa — fueled, in part, by severe quarantine rules in some countries as well as insufficient information about the virus. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga, File)

Aid workers have raised similar concerns about how the response is described in Uganda, where health officials frequently speak of “hunting down” suspected patients.

The blaring horns and sirens of the vehicles used by those tracing the contacts of the infected add to a sense of fear in some communities, such as the village of Bugomoro near the Congo border, said Charles Kaboggoza. The World Vision official said he witnessed discrimination against the family of a man who tested positive after returning from Afghanistan in March.

“The people had stopped them from going to fetch water from the (well),” he said. “It was really stigmatizing.”

Some accused the patient of bringing a “curse” to the community, he said.

Stigma is also having a negative effect on health care more broadly. In CARE-supported health centers in Somalia, the number of people seeking consultations for communicable diseases has fallen by 26% since the first case of COVID-19 was recorded in the country, “with fear of stigma for having the virus being a major factor,” according to the group.

Some leaders are aware of the dangers of stigma and are countering it.

In South Africa, which has more than half the confirmed virus cases on the continent, President Cyril Ramaphosa praised the family of diplomat Zindzi Mandela, daughter of anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela, for publicly saying that she had tested positive before she died.

On Twitter, Ramaphosa’s health minister, Zweli Mkhize, encouraged South Africans to be tolerant as “it can happen to anybody in any house.”

The Rev. Sammy Wainaina, of Kenya’s All Saints Cathedral, who received treatment for the virus in an intensive care unit in June, said he felt compelled to publicly share his status. Consequently he was “treated badly,” he said, recalling people in his neighborhood who seemed eager to avoid him.

Still, he encouraged others to follow his lead.

“When you keep quiet,” he said, “stigma continues to grow.”

___

Associated Press writers Cara Anna in Johannesburg and Sam Mednick in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, contributed to this report.

___

Follow AP pandemic coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and 

https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

AP PHOTOS: Year on, India’s lockdowns ruin Kashmir’s economy

ANOTHER VIOLATION OF UN JURISDICTION WITH NO CONSEQUENCE

1 of 17 https://apnews.com/93a036dbbdbd6fee52f934db3e35a685
A Kashmiri shopkeeper sits at the entrance of his half closed shop during lockdown in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, July 27, 2020. Indian-controlled Kashmir's economy is yet to recover from a colossal loss a year after New Delhi scrapped the disputed region's autonomous status and divided it into two federally governed territories. (AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan)

Pigeons fly at a deserted market area during lockdown to stop the spread of the coronavirus in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, July 22, 2020. Indian-controlled Kashmir's economy is yet to recover from a colossal loss a year after New Delhi scrapped the disputed region's autonomous status and divided it into two federally governed territories. (AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan)

A Kashmiri boatman rows his boat through a closed floating market on the Dal Lake during lockdown to stop the spread of the coronavirus in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, July 17, 2020. Indian-controlled Kashmir's economy is yet to recover from a colossal loss a year after New Delhi scrapped the disputed region's autonomous status and divided it into two federally governed territories. (AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan)

#KASHMIR IS #INDIA'S #GAZA

SRINAGAR, India (AP) — A year ago, Abdul Rashid was making a living by selling flowers to tourists in hundreds of ornate pinewood houseboats in Dal Lake in Srinagar, the main city in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

When India suddenly scrapped disputed Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status, followed by an unprecedented security clampdown, economic ruin ensued.

“It was not just a political change. It destroyed our livelihood,” said Rashid, 60, who has now turned to growing vegetables to feed his family.

Days before the Aug. 5, 2019, decision by the central government in New Delhi, authorities asked hundreds of thousands of tourists, Hindu pilgrims and migrant workers to leave the territory, shutting its economy. Since then, tens of thousands of jobs have been lost.






The stunning Himalayan region has known little but conflict since 1947, when British rule of the subcontinent divided it between the newly created India and Pakistan.

After a series of political blunders, broken promises and a crackdown on dissent, Kashmiri separatists launched a full-blown armed revolt in 1989, seeking unification with Pakistan or complete independence. India dubbed the insurgency terrorism abetted by Pakistan, a charge Islamabad denies.

Hundreds of the colorful hand-carved houseboats, known as shikaras, lie deserted, mostly anchored still on the desolate lake. Hotels are empty and there are hardly any tourists.

Some businesses had resumed with the partial lifting of the security and communication clampdown earlier this year. However, Indian authorities enforced another harsh lockdown in March to combat the coronavirus pandemic, further emaciating the local economy.

The Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industries pegged the economic loses in the region at $5.3 billion and about half a million jobs lost since August last year.

The 7-decade-old Hotel Standard in Srinagar had a staff of 30, according to its manager Khurshid Ahmed. Now there are just three. The only activity inside the once-bustling place is by the cleaning staff.

Mohammed Rajab, a taxi driver for 37 years, hasn’t been hired even once since last August. “I parked my taxi at our stand few days before August 5 last year. It’s still there along with 250 others,” he said.

Tens of thousands of daily wage workers, like Rajab, have suffered the most.

Mohammad Lateef, a boatman, used to ferry tourists around the lake. He now sells cucumbers and cigarettes to locals along its banks.

“We’ve not earned a single penny for a year now,” said Ghulam Qadir Ota, a houseboat owner. “All we have are these boats. We don’t have any other means to earn.”

HEALTHCARE FOR SALE
Siemens Healthineers to buy US cancer care firm Varian

BERLIN (AP) — Germany-based Siemens Healthineers said Sunday it will buy U.S. cancer therapy and research company Varian in a deal worth around $16.4 billion.

Siemens Healthineers, in which industrial conglomerate Siemens holds a majority stake, said it will buy all shares in Varian Medical Systems, Inc. for $177.50 per share in cash.

It said that the acquisition is expected to close in the first half of 2021, and requires the approval of regulators and Varian shareholders. Varian’s board of directors unanimously approved the agreement, it added.

Palo Alto, California-based Varian had revenues in the 2019 fiscal year of $3.2 billion, Siemens Healthineers said in a statement. Varian says it employs about 10,000 people around the world.

Siemens Healthineers said it plans to finance the acquisition with a mix of debt and equity.

It plans to issue new shares this year, a move that Siemens said will reduce its stake in Erlangen-based Siemens Healthineers to about 72% from 85%

Scientists study coronavirus outbreaks among minks in Europe

NOT BATS OR CATS NOR RATS
FILE - In this Dec. 6, 2012, file photo, minks look out of a cage at a fur farm in the village of Litusovo, northeast of Minsk, Belarus. Coronavirus outbreaks at mink farms in Spain and the Netherlands have scientists digging into how the animals got infected and if they can spread it to people. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits, File)

REMEMBER THAT EUROPE WAS THE SOURCE OF THE VIRUS IN NEW YORK

MADRID (AP) — Coronavirus outbreaks at mink farms in Spain and the Netherlands have scientists digging into how the animals got infected and if they can spread it to people.

In the meantime, authorities have killed more than 1 million minks at breeding farms in both countries as a precaution.

The virus that first infected people in China late last year came from an animal source, probably bats, and later spread from person to person, as other coronaviruses had done in the past. Some animals, including cats, tigers and dogs, have picked up the new coronavirus from people, but there hasn’t been a documented case of animals spreading it back to humans.
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The outbreaks among the minks on farms in the Netherlands and Spain likely started with infected workers, although officials aren’t certain. But it also is “plausible” that some workers later caught the virus back from the minks, the Dutch government and a researcher said, and scientists are exploring whether that was the case and how much of a threat such a spread might be.

The outbreak at the Spanish mink farm near La Puebla de Valverde, a village of 500 people, was discovered after seven of the 14 employees, including the owner, tested positive in late May, said Joaquín Olona, regional chief of agriculture and environment. Two other employees got infected even after the operation was shut down.

More than 92,000 minks were ordered killed at the farm in the Aragon region of northeastern Spain, with nine out of 10 animals estimated to have contracted the virus.

After the Dutch outbreaks began in April, professor Wim van der Poel, a veterinarian who studies viruses at Wageningen University and Research, determined that the virus strain in the animals was similar to the one circulating among humans.

“We assumed it was possible that it would be transmitted back to people again,” the virus expert said, and that’s what appeared to have happened with at least two of the infected workers.

Richard Ostfeld, a researcher at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York, said that if confirmed, these would be the first known instances of animal-to-human transmission.

“With the evidence for farmed mink-to-human transmission, we definitely need to be concerned with the potential for domesticated animals that are infected to pass on their infection to us,” Ostfeld said by email.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says some coronaviruses that infect animals can be spread to humans and then spread between people, but it adds that this is rare.

FILE - In this Dec. 6, 2012, file photo, minks look out of a cage at a fur farm in the village of Litusovo, northeast of Minsk, Belarus. Coronavirus outbreaks at mink farms in Spain and the Netherlands have scientists digging into how the animals got infected and if they can spread it to people. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits, File)

Both the World Health Organization and the Paris-based World Organisation for Animal Health are studying the transmission of the virus between animals and people. Several universities and research institutes also are examining the issue.

The WHO has noted that the transmission on the mink breeding farms could have happened both ways. But WHO’s Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove said at a news conference last month that such transmission was “very limited.”

“This gives us some clues about which animals may be susceptible to infection and this will help us as we learn more about the potential animal reservoir of (the virus),” she said, referring to cases in the Netherlands and Denmark, another major producer of mink fur.

While scientists think the virus originated in bats, it may have passed through another animal before infecting people. A WHO team is currently in China, planning to study the issue.

More than 1.1 million minks have been killed on 26 Dutch farms that recorded outbreaks, according to the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority. The government announced Thursday that minks at a 27th farm also were infected and would be killed.

FILE - In this Sept. 4, 2015, file photo, a mink sniffs the air as he surveys the river beach in search of food, in meadow near the village of Khatenchitsy, northwest of Minsk, Belarus. Coronavirus outbreaks at mink farms in Spain and the Netherlands have scientists digging into how the animals got infected and if they can spread it to people. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits, File)
The Netherlands, which has some 160 mink farms, is the world’s fourth-biggest producer of the prized fur after Denmark, China and Poland, according to Wim Verhagen, director of the Dutch federation of fur farmers. Spain has 38 active mink breeding operations, most of them in northwestern Galicia.Both Spain and the Netherlands have tightened hygiene protocols at mink farms and banned transportation of the animals and visits to the buildings where they are kept.

China, which produces about a third of the mink fur market, and the United States have not reported any virus outbreaks in minks or in animals at other farms.

—-

Corder reported from The Hague. Associated Press writers Maria Cheng in London and Ken Moritsugu in Beijing contributed.

___

Follow AP’s pandemic coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

Omar, seeking 2nd term, is targeted for her celebrity

CELEBRITY OR INFAMY IT IS STILL PATRIARCHY

By STEVE KARNOWSKI and MOHAMED IBRAHIM

1/7 Fifth Congressional District candidate, Democrat Antone Melton-Meaux, answers questions during an interview in his Minneapolis office Wednesday, July 22, 2020. Melton-Meaux is giving Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar an unexpectedly strong, well-funded primary challenge in one of the country's most heavily Democratic congressional districts, which includes Minneapolis and some suburbs. (AP Photo/Jim Mone) 
ALL THE PICTURES IN THIS ARTICLE ARE OF THIS GUY FREE PROMO

OMAR FACES OPPOSITION NOT ONLY FROM REPUBLICANS BUT THE DNC ESTABLISHMENT 

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — As Democrat Antone Melton-Meaux meandered through racks of headscarves and clouds of spice and pepper, he carried a pointed message to the voters he courted at the city’s largest Somali market: I want to focus on the work, not being famous.

There’s no missing the target of the dig: Rep. Ilhan Omar. Omar, a liberal Democrat, made history two years ago as the first Somali-American elected to Congress and went on to make countless headlines for making controversial statements on Israel, for tangling with President Donald Trump and for a personal life that became tabloid fodder.

All the attention has helped make Omar a progressive star, but it’s also drawn criticism and a surprisingly strong primary challenger in Melton-Meaux. The Black attorney and mediator is raising millions in anti-Omar dollars and shaking up what was expected to be an easy race.

The heated primary is playing out in a city already wrestling with racial divisions and political identity. Melton-Meaux has drawn support from some traditional Democrats uncomfortable with Omar’s style — highlighting a generation gap that has dogged Democrats this year. He’s raised big money from pro-Israel groups with strong support in the city’s first-ring suburbs. And his bid has prompted a fight for votes in the Black and Somali-American communities, each roiled by this summer’s uprising over George Floyd’s death.

“She has been ineffective in Washington because she is divisive, and she’s focused on her celebrity,” Melton-Meaux said.

Omar dismisses the criticism, along with Melton-Meaux, who she said is simply the beneficiary of deep-pocketed opponents who want to take her down.

“This campaign really isn’t about whether Ilhan is doing the work,” she said. “It’s about how effective we’ve actually been and how people don’t want that effectiveness to continue.”

Omar, 37, ordinarily would be expected to crush any opponent in the Aug. 11 primary in the heavily Democratic Minneapolis-area district. The former refugee from Somalia gained fame as one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress and as a charter member of “The Squad” of four progressive freshmen women of color.

But she quickly got into trouble with comments about Jews, money and Israel that even fellow Democrats denounced as anti-Semitic and led to apologies. Omar also became a favorite Twitter foil for Trump, who last year basked when supporters at a political rally chanted of Omar, “Send her back!”

She came under renewed scrutiny when she split up with her husband, then married her Washington political consultant, Tim Mynett, months after denying that they were having an affair. Conservatives raised ethical questions and filed a federal complaint over Omar’s campaign paying Mynett’s firm more than $1 million for advertising, fundraising and other services, but the law doesn’t prohibit such an arrangement.
THIS FROM THE PARTY OF CHILD RAPISTS AND GRIFTER IN CHIEF 

Melton-Meaux’s fundraising haul has bankrolled a $1.4 million TV ad buy and an extensive mail campaign that attacks Omar on ethics. He’s also pledged to focus on the district’s needs and on not missing votes, as Omar did 40 times last year. (She says many were due to the death of a family member and that most were procedural.) He said that when she does vote, it isn’t always in the district’s interests, citing her vote against the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal.

Melton-Meaux seemed to find some support for his message during a July visit to what should be prime Omar turf — a mall filled with shops catering to the city’s large Somali American community.

THERE WERE NO PICTURES OF OMAR SO I ADDED THIS ONE

Khadra Hassan told Melton-Meaux that her tiny clothing store in the Karmel Mall has been devastated by the coronavirus pandemic, and complained that the government doesn’t have a plan for helping small businesses like hers survive.

“The situation is the same all around you, with all of us,” she told him. A campaign aide promised to get back with Hassan on how she could seek help. Later, Hassan told a reporter that Melton-Meaux might get her support.

“We are looking for the person who’s going to most help us and come back to the community and focus on the things that we need on the ground,” she said through an interpreter. “And then we will make our decision. But right now we need an active person who’s willing to work for what’s happening right here in the district.”

Melton-Meaux raised over $3.7 million by June 30, most of it from big contributors, including over $530,000 from two political action committees that back Israel, NORPAC and Pro-Israel America.

Jeff Mendelsohn, executive director of Pro-Israel America, recalled Omar’s allegation that U.S. politicians supported Israel because it was “all about the Benjamins,” and her suggestion that American Jews have divided loyalties.

SHE WAS CORRECT OF COURSE DESPITE THE PREDICTABLE WHINING

The local Jewish community appears split, with many younger politically progressive Jews supporting Omar while others have endorsed Melton-Meaux.

State Sen. Ron Latz, a Democrat who is Jewish and has sometimes been critical of Omar, backs Melton-Meaux in part for what he sees as a more balanced perspective on Middle East issues than the pro-Palestinian Omar. 

PRO ISRAEL ANTI PALESTINE IS OF COURSE THE AMERICAN VERSION OF BALANCE “She seems to have found a way to restrain herself for some number of months now,” he said. “But I think that restraint has been externally imposed. We clearly know her personal inclinations because she kept saying things that were offensive to the Jewish people until the reaction got so hot that she felt she had to quiet herself down.”

Omar has some critics within the African American community, including civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong, who said Omar hasn’t paid enough attention to the heavily Black neighborhoods of north Minneapolis.

“She hasn’t built strong relationships with the people who live in north Minneapolis, and she hasn’t spent the time here to learn about the issues that impact us, or working to craft solutions to the challenges that we face,” she said.

Omar raised nearly $3.9 million through June 30, mostly from far more small donors than Melton-Meaux, and still enjoys the support of most Democratic heavyweights. Omar pointed out the party considers her district “the engine of voter turnout for our state” and is counting on her network in November to quash Trump’s dream of carrying Minnesota.

Charlie Rounds, 64, an LGBTQ advocate in Minneapolis, said he hadn’t decided between Omar and Melton-Meaux. But he said the argument that Omar cares more about fame than service doesn’t wash with him. He saw the outside money against her as Islamophobia.

“I don’t think that was Rep. Omar’s choice, I don’t think she set out to be a star,” he said. “It’s because she’s a Muslim woman and there’s a lot of people that just are going to do anything to defeat her because she’s Muslim — we have to look at that reality.”

Nour Ali, 37, a Somali American who works in the Minneapolis Public Schools system, said he’s committed to Omar.

“She does care about the real issues that’s going on, she always speaks her mind and she’s always available,” he said. “She was at the protests talking about police brutality, that’s something that shows she is relating to the people and she cares about the cause and connected to the people.”

Protests in the long term: How is a lasting legacy cemented?

FILE - In this September 1916 file photo, demonstrators hold a rally for women's suffrage in New York. The Seneca Falls convention in 1848 is widely viewed as the launch of the women's suffrage movement, yet women didn't gain the right to vote until ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. (AP Photo)


NEW YORK (AP) — What sort of staying power does it take for a protest movement to be judged a success?

This year, without a centralized team of senior leaders, perhaps the largest protest movement in U.S. history has been unfolding nationwide since the May 25 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. By some calculations, more than 15 million Americans have taken part — decrying racial injustice, reinforcing the message of Black Lives Matter.

There’s no way to know now what the movement’s legacy will be — whether it will wither or compel major breakthroughs in curbing racism and inequality. But at this moment, other major protest movements of the past — both in the United States and elsewhere — can offer clues about what endures or what, at least, leaves a tangible legacy.
FILE - In this April 14, 1963 file photo, two ministers lead protest marchers in a civil rights demonstration in Birmingham, Ala., which was later broken up by police. The U.S. civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s achieved monumental changes over a 15-year period, including landmark federal laws. Yet racism and discrimination remain pervasive problems in 2020. (AP Photo/Horace Cort)

“It’s important to see the changes over time and not be discouraged,” says Beth Robinson, a history professor at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.

By some measures, it took the women’s suffrage movement in the United States more than 70 years before it won voting rights for American women. In the late 1980s, HIV/AIDS activists motivated by anger and fear made huge advances in just a few years thanks to a confrontational protest campaign.

The U.S. civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s achieved monumental changes over a 15-year period, including landmark federal laws. Yet racism and discrimination remain pervasive problems today.

“After Martin Luther King was assassinated, the movement kind of fractured and lost momentum,” says Tyler Parry, a professor of African American history at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. “After the major laws were passed, many white Americans felt that was adequate.”

FILE - In this Thursday, Sept. 14, 1989 file photo, protestors lie on the street in front of the New York Stock Exchange in a demonstration against the high cost of the AIDS treatment drug AZT. The protest was organized by the gay rights activist group ACT UP. In response to protests, the FDA agreed to speed testing and approval of new therapies — a key step in curbing the high death toll from AIDS. Activist Larry Kramer, who died in May, said the protesters’ sense of rage made a difference. “Until you have anger and fear, you don’t have any kind of an activist movement,” he told Metro Weekly, a Washington-based LGBT publication, in 2011. (AP Photo/Tim Clary, File)

The civil rights movement had some fundamental assets that helped sustain it, according to James Ralph, a Middlebury College historian. It had multiple prominent leaders in addition to King, and multiple national organizations that generally agreed on key goals even as they sometimes differed on tactics. That approach produced such tangible successes as the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

This year’s protest movement has mobilized larger numbers of people and is more diverse. But it’s too early to gauge what tangible results it will achieve. Parry advises the new wave of activists to maintain the multiracial nature of the movement and work doggedly at every level to address inequities.

“What the modern movement needs to do is not be complacent if one or two things change,” says Parry, who advises both depth and endurance: “If you destroy a few Confederate monuments, don’t stop there.”

SINCE THE BEGINNING

Protest movements have been at the core of U.S. history since before independence, and the American Revolution itself commenced after a more than decade of protests against British-imposed taxes. Over the ensuing decades, there was scarcely a lull.

The Revolutionary War had barely ended when, in 1791, the Whiskey Rebellion flared — a multistate protest against a liquor tax imposed by the new federal government. Anti-slavery protests hastened the outbreak of the Civil War. The Seneca Falls convention in 1848 is widely viewed as the launch of the women’s suffrage movement, yet women didn’t gain the right to vote until ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920.

FILE - In this Saturday, Jan. 21, 2017 file photo, a crowd fills Independence Avenue with the Washington Monument in the background, during the Women's March on Washington. The largest single-day protest in U.S history — the Women’s March — came the day after Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Compared to that long struggle, the protests of HIV/AIDS activists achieved tangible goals within a few years of organizing in the 1980s. Activists staged “die-in” demonstrations, provoked mass arrests, and in 1988 converged by the hundreds outside the Food and Drug Administration’s headquarters for day-long acts of civil disobedience.

In response, the FDA agreed to speed testing and approval of new therapies — a key step in curbing the high death toll from AIDS. Activist Larry Kramer, who died in May, said the protesters’ sense of rage made a difference.

“Until you have anger and fear, you don’t have any kind of an activist movement,” he told Metro Weekly, a Washington-based LGBT publication, in 2011.

The largest single-day protest in U.S history — the Women’s March — came on Jan. 21, 2017, the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration. An estimated half million people marched in Washington, supporting women’s rights and assailing Trump’s misogynistic remarks. Millions more marched in several hundred other U.S. cities and scores of foreign countries.

Assessing the march’s impact is difficult. With Trump in office and Republicans controlling the Senate, there’s been no breakthrough legislation on reproductive rights, immigration or other issues. Yet the mobilization lent strength to the MeToo movement, which began nine months later and caused hundreds of prominent men facing sexual misconduct allegations to lose jobs and reputations.

FILE - In this Saturday, March 24, 2018 file photo, organizer Rasleen Krupp, 17, leads a "March for Our Lives" protest for gun legislation and school safety in Cincinnati in conjunction with a Washington march spearheaded by teens from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., where over a dozen people were killed in February. Congress failed to pass tough new gun-control measures in the aftermath of the massive March for Our Lives protests. Nonetheless, gun-control activists have taken credit for numerous election victories, notably helping Democrats take control of Virginia’s legislature in 2019. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Some protest movements are short-lived but leave enduring legacies. Consider the Occupy Wall Street movement that emerged in New York City in 2011. It was criticized for lacking racial diversity and a specific agenda yet helped change the discourse about economic inequality with its

“We are the 99%” slogan and denunciations of the wealthy 1%. 

THIS WAS THE MOST IMPORTANT REVOLUTIONARY STATEMENT SINCE THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO

WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE

AGAINST GLOBALIZATION!

Nelini Stamp, a director of strategy and partnerships for the Working Families Party, cites Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as politicians whose economic platforms reflect the spirit of the New York protest.

In 2006, millions turned out to protest legislation in Congress seeking to classify undocumented immigrants as felons, and penalizing anyone who assisted them. The bill passed the U.S. House but died in the Senate.

Chris Zepeda-Millán, a professor at UCLA in the departments of Chicana/o studies and public policy, credits the protests for stopping the bill and encouraging voter registration among Latinos. But he said the protests also intensified congressional polarization, dimming prospects for any immigration overhaul and citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

Congress also failed to pass tough new gun-control measures in the aftermath of the massive March for Our Lives protests organized in 2018 by students from the Parkland, Florida, high school, where a gunman killed 17 people. Nonetheless, gun-control activists have taken credit for numerous election victories, notably helping Democrats take control of Virginia’s legislature in 2019.

One advantage for U.S. protest movements: Government security forces generally permit them to mobilize. The recent deployment of federal tactical teams in Portland, Oregon, outraged protesters and Oregon officials but has been the exception, not the norm.

FILE - In this Friday, Jan. 28, 2011 file photo, anti-government activists clash with riot police in Cairo, Egypt, to challenge President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule. In 2011, a fruit seller in Tunisia who died after setting himself afire to protest economic conditions touched off a mass uprising against autocrats in the Arab world, in what became known as the Arab Spring. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

BEYOND AMERICAN SHORES

Outcomes can be different in other parts of the world. Hong Kong has a long tradition of public demonstrations dating from its days as a British colony. Many of its people strongly supported the 1989 student-led pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

Until this year, marches and candlelight vigils were held annually to commemorate victims of the military crackdown, and hundreds of thousands turned out to oppose moves by Beijing to impose its political will on the city. More recently, however, protest activity has been tamped down since Beijing enacted a sweeping security law banning speech seen as promoting secession.


FILE - In this Friday, Sept. 13, 2019 file photo, demonstrators hold up the mobile phone lights as they form a human chain at the Peak, a tourist spot in Hong Kong. Hong Kong has a long tradition of public demonstrations dating from its days as a British colony. However, protest activity has been tamped down since Beijing enacted a sweeping security law in June 2020, banning speech seen as promoting secession. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

In 2011, a fruit seller in Tunisia who died after setting himself afire to protest economic conditions touched off a mass uprising against autocrats in the Arab world — what became the Arab Spring.

There were inspirational moments, notably in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, where hundreds of thousands of people converged in daily protests, televised globally, that eventually pressured strongman Hosni Mubarak into stepping down.

However, subsequent turmoil brought to power general-turned-politician Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, whose government has muffled dissent. Uprisings in Libya and Syria — once unthinkable street protests against dictators — turned violent. Hundreds of thousands have died in Syria, while Libya after the fall of Moammar Gadhafi is an ungovernable, dangerous mess.

Texas A&M’s Robinson emphasizes that protest movements produced many of the freedoms and protections Americans treasure — including several Depression-era initiatives undertaken during President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Yet, she says, those reforms didn’t fully benefit women or people of color, setting the stage for the new wave of dissent from the 1950s through the 1970s.

“With protest movements, it’s three steps forward, two steps back,” Robinson says. “We all want this perfect victory, to close the book and say that oppression is over ... but it’s unlikely that those are going to be achieved completely.”

She adds: “It’s always going to be a long march to justice.”

___

Associated Press reporters Deepti Hajela in New York and Zeina Karam in Beirut contributed to this report.

Portland police declare unlawful assembly during protest



Black Lives Matter protesters march through Portland, Ore. after rallying at the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse on Sunday, Aug. 2, 2020. Following an agreement between Democratic Gov. Kate Brown and the Trump administration to reduce federal officers in the city, nightly protests remained largely peaceful without major confrontations between demonstrators and officers. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

A Department of Homeland Security officer stands watch as fellow officers extinguish a fire lit by protesters behind the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse on Sun, Aug. 2, 2020, in Portland, Ore. Following an agreement between Democratic Gov. Kate Brown and the Trump administration to reduce federal officers in the city, nightly protests remained largely peaceful without major confrontations between protesters and officers. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

A Department of Homeland Security officer emerges from the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse after demonstrators lit a fire on Sunday, Aug. 2, 2020, in Portland, Ore. Following an agreement between Democratic Gov. Kate Brown and the Trump administration to reduce federal officers in the city, nightly protests remained largely peaceful without major confrontations between protesters and officers. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

The Portland Police Bureau declared an unlawful assembly Saturday night when people gathered outside a police precinct in Oregon’s largest city and threw bottles toward officers, police said.

Until that point, federal, state and local law enforcement had been seemingly absent from the protests Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The demonstrations — that for weeks ended with tear gas, fireworks shot towards buildings, federal agents on the street and injuries to protesters and officers — have recently ended with chanting and conversations.
Activists and Oregon officials urged people at Saturday night’s protest in Portland to re-center the focus on Black Lives Matter, three days after the Trump administration agreed to reduce the presence of federal agents.

Groups gathered Saturday evening in various areas around downtown Portland to listen to speakers and prepare to march to the Justice Center and Mark O. Hatfield Courthouse.

A Black Lives Matter protester, who declined to give her name, examines a memorial for Black lives lost to violence on Saturday, Aug. 1, 2020, in Portland, Ore. Following an agreement between Democratic Gov. Kate Brown and the Trump administration to reduce federal officers in the city, nightly protests remained largely peaceful without major confrontations between demonstrators and officers. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

Black Lives Matter protester Synnamon, who declined to give a last name, rallies at the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse on Saturday, Aug. 1, 2020, in Portland, Ore. Following an agreement between Democratic Gov. Kate Brown and the Trump administration to reduce federal officers in the city, nightly protests remained largely peaceful without major confrontations between demonstrators and officers. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

One of the more popular events, “Re-centering why we are here - BLM,” was hosted by the NAACP. Speakers included activists as well as Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley and Portland City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty.

Merkley and Hardesty spoke about policies they are putting forward, including to cut police funding and restrict chokeholds.

“The next thing we need you to do is vote like your life depends on it, because guess what, it does,” Hardesty said.

For the first time since the presence of federal agents in Portland diminished law enforcement and protesters noticeably clashed Saturday night.

As one group of protesters gathered outside the courthouse another marched to a precinct for the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office and Portland Police Bureau.

Police stated that protesters threw glass bottles and directed lasers at officers. Just before 10 p.m., Portland police declared an unlawful assembly and told people to disperse or they may be subject to use of force or be arrested. Police could be seen charging, multiple times, at protesters in the area.

Police say a person in the crowd threw a glass jar or bottle filled with paint, striking an officer in the head. The officer was not injured.

Two people were arrested during the protest.

At the courthouse, the scene was different. Around 11:30 p.m. hundreds of people remained, standing and listening to speakers.

By midnight, protesters again began to march through the streets downtown.

Thursday and Friday’s protests also attracted more than 1,000 people — both nights were relatively peaceful. In a news release early Saturday, the Portland Police Bureau described Friday’s crowd as subdued and said there was no police interaction with protesters.

At one point during Friday’s protest, a lone firework was shot at the courthouse. In the weeks past the action would be met with more fireworks or teargas canisters being dropped over the fence into the crowd. This time, protesters chastised the person who shot the firework, pleading to keep the demonstration peaceful.

The relative calm outside a federal courthouse that’s become ground zero in clashes between demonstrators and federal agents had come after the U.S. government began drawing down its forces under a deal between Democratic Gov. Kate Brown and the Trump administration.

Portland had seen more than two months of often violent demonstrations following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. In early July, President Donald Trump sent more federal agents to the city to protect the federal courthouse, but local officials said their presence made things worse.

___

Sara Cline is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues.

A QUANTUM SUPER SPREADER EVENT

Annual Sturgis rally expecting 250K, stirring virus concerns

YOU CAN'T GET THESE GUYS TO WEAR HELMETS
LET ALONE MASKS

By STEPHEN GROVES

FILE - In this Aug. 5, 2016 file photo, bikers ride down Main Street in downtown Sturgis, S.D., before the 76th Sturgis motorcycle rally officially begins. South Dakota, which has seen an uptick in coronavirus infections in recent weeks, is bracing to host hundreds of thousands of bikers for the 80th edition of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. Over a quarter of a million people are expected to rumble through western South Dakota. (Josh Morgan/Rapid City Journal via AP, File)

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — Sturgis is on. The message has been broadcast across social media as South Dakota, which has seen an uptick in coronavirus infections in recent weeks, braces to host hundreds of thousands of bikers for the 80th edition of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

More than 250,000 people are expected to rumble through western South Dakota, seeking the freedom of cruising the boundless landscapes in a state that has skipped lockdowns. The Aug. 7 to 16 event, which could be the biggest anywhere so far during the pandemic, will offer businesses that depend on the rally a chance to make up for losses caused by the coronavirus. But for many in Sturgis, a city of about 7,000, the brimming bars and bacchanalia will not be welcome during a pandemic.

Though only about half the usual number of people are expected at this year’s event, residents were split as the city weighed its options. Many worried that the rally would cause an unmanageable outbreak of COVID-19.

“This is a huge, foolish mistake to make to host the rally this year,” Sturgis resident Lynelle Chapman told city counselors at a June meeting. “The government of Sturgis needs to care most for its citizens.”

In a survey of residents conducted by the city, more than 60% said the rally should be postponed. But businesses pressured the City Council to proceed.

Rallygoers have spent about $800 million in past years, according to the state Department of Tourism. Though the rally has an ignominious history of biker gangs and lawlessness, bikers of a different sort have shown up in recent years — affluent professionals who ride for recreation and come flush with cash. Though the rally still features libertine displays, it also offers charity events and tributes to the military and veterans.

The attorney for a tourism souvenir wholesaler in Rapid City wrote to the City Council reminding that a judge found the city does not solely own rights to the rally and threatening to sue if the city tried to postpone it. Meanwhile, the Buffalo Chip, which is the largest campground and concert venue that lies outside the bounds of the city, made clear that it would hold some version of the rally.

Rod Woodruff, who operates the Buffalo Chip, said he felt he had little choice but to proceed with the rally. He employs hundreds of people in August and a smaller full-time staff.

“We spend money for 355 days of the year without any return on it, hoping people show up for nine days,” he said. “We’re a nine-day business.”

Woodruff felt he could pull off a safe event, allowing people to keep their distance from one another at the outdoor concerts at his campground. He said he was emboldened by the July 3 fireworks celebration at Mount Rushmore, where 7,500 people gathered without any reported outbreaks after the event, according to health officials.

In the end, Sturgis officials realized the rally would happen whether they wanted it or not. They decided to try to scale it back, canceling city-hosted events and slashing advertising for the rally.

Jerry Cole, who directs the rally for the city, said organizers are not sure how many people will show up, but that they’re expecting at least 250,000. Travel restrictions from Canada and other countries have cut out a sizeable portion of potential visitors, he said.

Others think the rally could be the biggest yet.

“It’s the biggest single event that’s going on in the United States that didn’t get canceled,” Woodruff said. “A lot of people think it’s going to be bigger than ever.”

When the rally is over, every year the city weighs all the trash generated to estimate how many people showed up. This year, they will also conduct mass coronavirus testing to see if all those people brought the pandemic to Sturgis.

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Follow Stephen Groves on Twitter: https://twitter.com/stephengroves