CANADA 
The Age of the Airship May Be Dawning Again

Dirigibles ruled the skies once. Can they make a comeback?

BY JUSTIN LING FEBRUARY 29, 2020

FOREIGN POLICY ILLUSTRATION/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS/GETTY IMAGES/OCEANSKY

You might think that the tragic end of the Hindenburg disaster in 1937 marked a clear end to the airship era. The famous footage of the German airship plunging in flames became the overwhelming image of a seemingly doomed technology.

You would be wrong.

For decades, the Goodyear fleet of blimps have been the only working airships most people had a chance of seeing in real life. But a handful of companies are looking to bring back the spectacular dirigibles.

The government of Quebec will be pitching 30 million Canadian dollars (23 million in U.S. dollars) to Flying Whales, a French company, to start building its massive zeppelins. The company has only been around since 2012, and it hasn’t gotten any of its airships off the ground—yet. The plan has been derided by opposition parties, not as a flying whale but as a white elephant.

But cargo airships may actually make a tremendous amount of sense. They are relatively cheap, they can carry enormous amounts of material, and they emit significantly less greenhouse gas than other modes of transportation.

The compelling arguments for dirigible travel put these airships in a class of technology, with nuclear power and lunar colonization, that is experiencing an unexpected modern renaissance.

Flying Whales’ LCA60T model, according to the company, will be able to carry up to 60 metric tons of goods, travel up to 62 miles per hour, and serve remote areas with ease. If all goes according to plan, the company hopes to get the first airship off the ground in 2022.

There’s still a healthy dose of skepticism around the company’s lofty promises. Its main backers, prior to Quebec’s financial endorsement, have been the French National Forest Agency and the Chinese government.

Flying Whales’ website is enigmatic, and the section of the site explaining the airships’ structure isn’t particularly helpful—the description of its structure reads “what else… – Hi George :)” while if you’re looking for details on their “safe lifting gas” it reads, somewhat snarkily, “helium obviously.”

It’s that last point that might make the whole idea completely untenable: There might just not be enough helium left.

The R-100 airship, circa 1920. THEODOR HORYDCZAK/U.S. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
A slow, steady return

While the most famous airship may be the Hindenburg, it was hardly the first—nor was it the last.

For a time in the first half of the 20th century, airships were fashionable, practical, and futuristic. But their calamitous track record ultimately soured the public.

Less remembered, perhaps because its downing was never immortalized on an album cover, was the English airship R101. The dirigible was dubbed the “socialist airship,” as it was designed and built by the United Kingdom’s state aviation department. The R101 was constructed as part of a state-sponsored competition, pitting government engineers against private-sector workers. The “capitalist airship,” the R100, was designed and constructed by a scrappy engineering team on a remote airbase in Yorkshire.

The opulent socialist airship was rushed to flight, even amid a variety of problems. It took off, en route to British India, just as its capitalist competitor set off for Canada. The government airship sagged and crashed into the French countryside just a day into its voyage, killing 48 of the 54 onboard—including the aviation minister—while the private airship conducted a celebrated tour of Montreal and Toronto before heading back to London. (“Everybody’s talking about the R100,” goes the chorus of a song from the iconic francophone Canadian folk singer La Bolduc.)

Most airships of the day took off using the highly flammable hydrogen—thanks mostly to an American monopoly on helium, its nonflammable alternative. Washington had banned the export of the gas, in part over fears of the military uses of the airships, which had been used in the world’s first air raids on London during World War I.

The helium-buoyant American ships weren’t always safe, either. The USS Akron carried out several successful flights across the continent, but it was ultimately pushed down by strong winds in 1933 and crashed into the Atlantic, killing 73 people on board and two rescuers.

As U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt remarked after the Akron went down, “ships can be replaced, but the Nation can ill afford to lose such men.” Eventually, governments stopped replacing the ships.

The USS Akron over New York City in the early 1930s. U.S. NAVY/INTERIM ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGESBut it was the 1937 Hindenburg disaster, made famous by the newsreel footage of the zeppelin bursting into a ball of flames as it tried to dock at the Lakehurst air base in New Jersey, that really scuttled the industry. The United States’ decision to lift its helium ban after the crash did little to revive faith in airships. The U.S. Navy used its small fleet for anti-submarine warfare and reconnaissance in World War II, but the airship industry was effectively dead.

It would stage a comeback, in a limited way, some decades later, when Goodyear opted for nonrigid airships—blimps—for its advertising campaigns. Airship Industries came around in the 1980s, promising a return of the dirigible. Its ships, like Goodyear’s ships, had no rigid structure inside, meaning they could carry only limited cargo and no more than 14 passengers. The airships of earlier in the century had immense metal structures inside, allowing them to carry more. These new nonrigid ships were made famous by Bond villains, Pink Floyd, and, later, by Ron Paul supporters.

Fame aside, the blimps had little use for commercial air travel or cargo transport. The niche purpose of the blimps meant Airship Industries was hemorrhaging money, and it shut down by the end of the decade.

As with many other commercially nonviable products, airships later found a home in the U.S. military. There was a hope that the dirigibles, which are capable of taking off and staying aloft for prolonged periods of time, would be ideal for persistent aerial surveillance.

The contractor Northrop Grumman was awarded a $517 million contract to build a surveillance airship in 2010, and it managed to build a successful prototype in 2012. The contract was axed a year later. Raytheon was awarded nearly $3 billion for its model, which tethered the airship to a mooring and allowed for constant surveillance of a wide area for a month at a time.

One of Raytheon’s spy blimps was tested in Maryland, where it hung eerily in the sky above suburban homes. In 2015, it broke loose from its mooring and drifted haplessly through Pennsylvania, trailed by fighter jets, before crashing in a field. Raytheon’s hopes of building more surveillance dirigibles crashed with it.

A similar program in Afghanistan, which became notorious among Kabul residents, saw even worse results. The tethers that kept the Big Brother balloons in place were notorious for snaring helicopter blades—one incident killed five American and British service members.

An aerial visualization of the Ocean Sky airship. KIRT X THOMSEN


A commercial appeal?

The market for military airships and commercial blimps remained limited thanks to past failures, though not dead entirely.

The cruise company OceanSky is forging ahead with plans to send a passenger airship to the Arctic, using a ship originally designed under the U.S. military’s surveillance program, with a planned voyage in 2023.

Many are banking that the real future of airships, however, is in cargo.

In the vast expanses of the Canadian north, there has long been a need for reliable transportation. Many communities are only accessible by road when winter rolls around and the ground and lakes are solid enough to drive on, if they are accessible by road at all. That means basic goods need to be stockpiled when the weather is cold or flown in by cargo plane—never mind supplies to build long-term infrastructure. Many of these remote communities are reliant on gas generators and are facing shortages of reliable housing stock.

The airships also promise to be a boon for economic development, if they work.

In 2016, a junior mining company in Quebec inked an agreement with U.K.-based Straightline Aviation to use a design being developed by Lockheed Martin to haul rare earth minerals from a remote open-pit mine—the road that was initially planned would have cut across a caribou migration path. That plan went belly-up when the minerals company went bankrupt, although Straightline is forging ahead with plans to offer commercial and tourism flights.

The interior of the Ocean Sky airship. HYBRID AIR VEHICLES LTD AND DESIGN Q

Stranded resources and communities are a policy concern in Canada, Alaska, Greenland, Russia, and elsewhere. Flights are expensive and carbon dioxide-intensive, and they require airport infrastructure. Shipping is more viable as Arctic ice melts, but that often requires deep-water ports and can have damaging impacts on marine life. It’s part of why people keep coming back to airships.

That’s the niche Quebec Premier François Legault is hoping Flying Whale can fill in the province’s remote north.

It’s why the French forestry sector is interested in the ships as well. The promise of lifting lumber from far-off places earned the company praise from French President Emmanuel Macron as one of the “industries of the future.”

The opportunity is also caveated with an array of risks and problems. There is no guarantee that the airships will even fly in the frigid north—Le Journal de Quebec reported that the airships will need a significant amount of water, which may be hard to come by amid Arctic temperatures.

Quebec seems unphased.

“If we don’t take risks, we go nowhere,” Legault told reporters earlier in February. Quebec’s investment earned it a 25 percent stake in the project, which in turn brought derision from opposition politicians—one questioned whether the government was inhaling helium when it made the decision.

The money puts Quebec on par with China in the project—Beijing put in $4.9 million for its 24.9 percent stake, through the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China General and the Ministry of Science and Technology. China has plenty of Arctic ambitions itself—and vast distances to cover in its underpopulated west.

The Hindenburg disaster in Lakehurst, New Jersey, on May 6, 1937. FINE ART IMAGES/HERITAGE IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES


A lack of lift

There’s one massive drawback for the airship industry: The world is almost out of helium.

In recent years, helium prices have skyrocketed as supply has dwindled. Far from just being used in party balloons and blimps, the gas is necessary for MRI scanners and rocket engines. Stockpiles of helium often escape, and are wasted, during other extractive projects. While there have been shortages before, helium is a nonrenewable resource and can take an enormously long time to generate—estimates suggest the earth’s supply could be gone this century.

If the world runs out of helium, it’s not clear that there’s a good alternative. The dangers of hydrogen are well established, and the gas behind the Hindenburg disaster is unlikely to make an air travel comeback.

Hypothetically, there could be an airship lifted by a vacuum—that is, by material that can contain nothing at all inside but withstand the atmospheric pressure from the outside. It is, at this point, science fiction, although NASA has posited that some kind of vacuum airship could eventually be used to explore the surface of Mars.

Airship companies seem satisfied with helium for the time being. OceanSky cruises has a reassuring FAQ on its website, telling those looking to join them on an airship trip to the North Pole that 600 of their cruise ships “would account for just 1% of annual helium consumption” and that each ship “stays filled with the same helium as from its inception, less a tiny annual leakage.”

If these airships can take off despite carrying a century of failed projects, a lack of its necessary resource, and economic justifications that still seem more wishful thinking than reality—it might just be the return of the zeppelin.


Justin Ling is a journalist based in Toronto.

FOREIGN POLICY MAGAZINE

Coronavirus: How do biosafety laboratories work?

Biosafety laboratories allows scientists to investigate highly pathogenic viruses, to develop diagnostic procedures and to create vaccines. 

Multilevel safety systems prevent pathogens from escaping into the environment.

AIDS, MERS, SARS, avian flu, swine flu, Hendra, Lujo, Marburg, Lassa, Nipah, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, Ebola — in the past decades, barely a year has passed without a new pathogen being discovered that can cause serious illness in humans.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), hitherto unknown viruses and a string of new infectious diseases that are transmissible from animals to humans (zoonoses) could become a global threat to health.

Special laboratories are needed to identify the respective pathogens as quickly and reliably as possible and to develop methods for diagnostics, therapy and vaccine production. Rapid and reliable diagnostics under high-security conditions are also absolutely essential when a bioterrorist attack is suspected.

Four biosafety levels

The respective pathogens are divided into four biosafety levels (BSL) or pathogen/protection levels.

At the lowest level of biosafety, precautions may consist in regular hand-washing and minimal protective equipment. At higher biosafety levels, stricter requirements are stipulated that the premises, equipment and work procedures must fulfill when handling these pathogens.

Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) is commonly used for research and diagnostic work involving various microbes that can be transmitted by aerosols and/or cause severe disease. Surprising as it might seem, the coronaviruses SARS-COV-1, MERS-CoV and the new SARS-COV-2 are currently classified only as BSL-3.

Ebola research in a high-security laboratory

Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) is the highest level of biosafety precautions. It is appropriate for work with agents that could easily be aerosol-transmitted within the laboratory and cause severe to fatal diseases in humans, and for which there are no available vaccines or treatments.

These include a number of viruses such as the Ebola virus, the Marburg virus, the Lassa virus and the virus that causes Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever. Other pathogens handled at BSL-4 include the Nipah virus, the Hendra virus and some flaviviruses.

Worldwide research in a few laboratories

Because of the complex protective measures involved, there are only around 50 high-security laboratories working at BSL-4 worldwide. Around a dozen of them are in the US, followed by the United Kingdom with almost 10 and Germany with four.

There are two high-security BSL-4 laboratories in the People's Republic of China, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which made the headlines as a possible source of the novel coronavirus SARS CoV-2.

Read more: Did coronavirus really originate in a Chinese laboratory?

How safe is a BSL-4 Laboratory?

BSL-4 laboratories are designed to diagnose and investigate life-threatening pathogens without endangering the staff or the population at large.

For this reason, such high-security laboratories are physically and organizationally separated from surrounding buildings in such a way that unauthorized persons cannot even get near the facilities. There are also strict access controls, video surveillance and other security measures. BSL-4 laboratories are completely independent, airtight units with their own air, power and water supplies, specially secured against technical faults.

Multilevel safety systems prevent pathogens from escaping into the environment. For one thing, the air pressure in the laboratory is negative, so that if a leak were to occur, the air would be unable to escape. In addition, the air flowing in and out is filtered through a multilevel system (HEPA filter) to ensure that it is pure, and all waste products and wastewater are completely inactivated.

Read more: Yuval Noah Harari on COVID-19: 'The biggest danger is not the virus itself'

The entire exhaust air is decontaminated by a complex filter process

All walls, ceilings and floors of a BSL-4 Laboratory are lined with a waterproof, easy-to-clean material, and the surfaces must be resistant to acids, alkalis and solvents as well as disinfectants. Scientists enter and leave the laboratory through a series of airlock security doors. The doors are mutually interlocked so that the air always flows toward the laboratory when the doors are opened and closed.

Even if an aircraft were to crash into such a BSL-4 laboratory or a bomb were to explode near or in one, there would be no danger, according to the Robert Koch-Institute, Germany's federal disease control and prevention agency. This is because the very heat-sensitive viruses would be completely inactivated by the heat generated during such an event. The institute also points out that the pathogens all occur naturally in certain regions of the world and that terrorists could more easily obtain them there.

Who works in the laboratories?

Access to the laboratory is restricted to a small number of selected, specially qualified staff, and is strictly monitored.

They wear inflatable full-body protective suits with their own air supply. To protect the hands, two to three pairs of gloves must be worn on top of each other, with the outer pair being tightly attached to the cuffs of the suit.

Since the work in the full-body protective suit, which weighs around 10 kilograms (22 pounds), is very stressful both physically and psychologically, the daily working time for each scientist is around three hours.


BSL-4 laboratories are completely independent, airtight units with their own air, power and water supplies

Only those pathogens that are actually needed for the research work are stored in the laboratories, and only in very small quantities.

Contaminated blood, tissue or sputum samples are processed in so-called safety workbenches under a glass cover; the laboratory technicians have to place their hands into the fixed gloves of the safety workbench to reach through to the substances.

Four-eyes principle

At the end of the work session, the working materials are put under lock and key. All objects used are decontaminated in an autoclave cleaning system at high heat and pressure. Laboratory waste or waste water is "inactivated," i.e., viruses that may be adhering to it or contained in it are killed.

Before leaving the laboratory, employees must first shower in their protective suits with highly diluted peracetic acid or similar antimicrobial agents to disinfect themselves. Afterward, the employees undress and shower again.

Since there are no measuring instruments for virus contamination, two employees usually work together, checking their suits for damage and helping each other to dress and undress. This process takes between 15 and 30 minutes.


7 OF THE DEADLIEST SUPERBUGS
Klebsiella pneumoniae
Approximately 3-5% of the population carry Klebsiella pneumoniae. But most people can carry it without becoming sick. It's different for those with a weakened immune system or acute infections. They could suffer severe gastrointestinal infections, pneumonia, blood poisoning — it depends on where the bacteria settles. Klebsiella pneumoniae is a critical-priority drug-resistant bug, says the WHO.

GO HERE FOR PHOTO ESSAY 1234567

Date 23.04.2020
Author Alexander Freund

Psychedelic mushrooms for depression: 'This is the one that changed things'

Psychedelic drugs like psilocybin are back in human trials to treat people with mental health conditions. It's a second revolution for a class of drugs shunned by 1960s society. But more research is needed. Here's why.



Psilocybin was shunned by mainstream society in the 1960s as "Substance 1" — dangerous and of no medical use. And for decades, evidence suggesting that psilocybin could be therapeutic lay buried in books. But over the past decade, a resurgence in psychedelic research has yielded new insights, with some labs running human trials.

David Nutt calls it the "brave new world of psychedelic psychiatry." Nutt is a neuro-psycho-pharmacologist and professor at Imperial College London. He suggests psychiatry is slowly emerging from a 30-year dark age, during which anti-depressants were the only accepted medicinal treatment for mental health conditions.

Apart from being costly, Nutt says anti-depressants help only a small percentage of the people who take them. Side effects can include a blunting of the emotions.

"I like to think of it as a force field," says Nutt. "They protect you. They cocoon you from the stresses of life, which are many and repeated, and they allow your brain to heal."

But the effects only last as long as you take anti-depressants. When you come off them, you can experience severe withdrawal symptoms. And perhaps more importantly, anti-depressants do not deal with the root cause of depression or anxiety, says Nutt.

Meanwhile, psilocybin appears to offer a different and longer-lasting alternative.

Nutt and his team of researchers have been concluding a second human trial of psilocybin to treat depression.

Read more: Coronavirus and mental health: 'We are not made for social isolation'

Neuropsychopharmacologist David Nutt warns of severe withdrawal symptoms of anti-depressants.

Controlling the trip

Volunteers with moderate to severe depression are given a 25 milligram (0.000881849 ounce) pill of psilocybin. That's a macrodose which causes a powerful, deep "trip" for about four hours.

But it's not like hippies tripping in a field. The tests are done in a controlled environment, with two therapists assigned to each volunteer.

"Depressed people having a trip aren't having fun," says Nutt. "They are often going back to the most horrible experiences of their lives and reliving things which they've often forgotten but which are causing the depression."

The therapists prepare the volunteers for what they might experience. They hold the volunteers' hands during the test to provide a sense of security. And after the trip, the therapists help the volunteers make sense of the experience through psychotherapy.

"This is not something you just go and do outdoors by yourself," says Nutt. "This is serious medicine. This is powerful medicine." A glimpse of the first clinical trial at Imperial College London can be found in this youtube video:

Rapid and lasting effects

In one trial, 20 patients who had not responded to treatment for depression, were given two doses of psilocybin one week apart. Nutt's team found rapid and long-lasting improvements in the patients' health. None of the patients required traditional anti-depressants for the first five weeks after the tests. Six months later, they had follow-up tests that showed many of their symptoms had stayed away.

But there was no control group—no way to compare the results directly. A team under Robin Carhart-Harris at the Centre for Psychedelics Research in London is now running similar tests with such controls in place.

Patient testimonies, available online, report huge improvements in health. One patient, called Andy, says that all standard treatments had failed him. No therapy had helped him find an underlying cause for his depression. But he says psilocybin gave him a missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle. It was "the one that changed things."

Read more: Happiness, where are you?


Andy participated in the first ever clinical trial of psilocybin to treat depression

Science and society

It's been difficult for some health professionals and scientists to accept any therapeutic benefits of psilocybin despite the evidence.

For decades, doctors have told people how dangerous these drugs are—and those dangers or risks are real when psychedelics are taken in uncontrolled, so-called "recreational," settings.

In controlled settings, however, psychedelics could offer patients, suffering from depression or addiction, treatments that work better for them than traditional anti-depressants, or plain will power.

"They should at least have the opportunity of treatments which might work for them," says Nutt. "To deny them that on the basis of some kind of moral philosophy against drugs is, I think, unethical."

Stephen Ross, a psychiatrist based in New York, has had to confront that belief himself. In his entire medical training at the University of California, Los Angeles, there was no mention of psychedelics.

Psilocybin is the active ingredient found inside magic mushrooms

Psychedelics buried deep in literature

Then in 2006, Ross heard about a conference, marking the 100th birthday of Albert Hofmann, a Swiss scientist who discovered lysergic acid diethylamide and synthesized psilocybin.

Ross was puzzled. "Why would anybody be celebrating the discovery of LSD? All I had heard about LSD from my training was that it was a bad, dangerous drug."

So, he started looking into the medical history and found a huge body of research hidden in plain sight. The 1950s, 60s and 70s were a rich time for psychedelic research. Among the reports Ross found, there was a strong focus on using LSD to treat alcoholism. As an addiction psychiatrist, Ross' curiosity was piqued.

But with LSD shunned as a Substance 1 drug, it was a struggle to get funding for research.

To increase his chances at success, Ross turned to psilocybin, a psychedelic that like LSD had been branded a Substance 1 drug, but it was one with "less cultural baggage." And he turned to a condition with less social stigma than depression or addiction: cancer.

Read more: Never tried LSD - the drug my father discovered

Stephen Ross is conducting clinical trials of psilocybin on terminal cancer patients.

Psilocybin and cancer
"Cancer is a very scary thing in any culture. Cancer patients start to have this existential distress, where they feel hopeless, that life is meaningless, pointless," says Ross, now associate professor at New York University's School of Medicine. "And there's no treatment for that kind of existential distress."

In 2016, Ross completed the first human trial with psilocybin to reduce depression and anxiety in 29 patients with terminal cancer.

He says that psilocybin helps people reconceptualize cancer as "a part of their life," rather than it being their whole life.

"A lot of patients come out of the experience and say that they connected to this profound sense of love or universal love or God's love, or that the feeling of love was profoundly healing to them," says Ross.

Read more: Differences in personality: What psychiatrists can learn from mice to treat depression

The spheres show connectivity inside a human brain.

Under the influence of a psychedelic drug like psilocybin, more and more neurons interact with each other. These neurons may not have been interacting before because the mind was in a rut or fixed pattern of thinking. Psychedelics add flexibility. A placebo is shown to compare how evident the effect is.

Careful, it's a new revolution
Psychedelics could also be used to treat other conditions, including anorexia, obsessive compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and personality disorders.

But Ross says we still need to be careful with psychedelics. He says there may be a bias among researchers—after years of struggling to get psychedelic studies funded, combined with the excitement of new results—to believe that psilocybin will cure everything.

Their work is finding a new audience and perhaps a new form of acceptance, with popular science books out on the shelves. But researchers say there is a lot more work to be done before psychedelics can be used in medicinal treatment.

"I'm not saying that psychedelics should be used clinically yet at all. We need more research," says Ross. And even then, psychedelic treatments may not be for everyone. Researchers warn against using psychedelic treatments with patients suffering a psychosis, or young people whose brains are still developing.

Link to the documentary: A New Understanding: The Science of Psilocybin

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Date 24.04.2020

Thailand's tourist drought leaves space for shy sea mammal

Human intrusion and marine pollution have made dugong sightings in southern Thailand rare in recent years.

Six dugongs swimming together Wednesday were part of a larger group of dugongs cruising slowly in shallow waters off southern Thailand.Thailand Department of National Parks via AP

April 23, 2020, By Associated Press
BANGKOK — It’s rare to see a threatened species of sea mammal in shallow waters in southern Thailand but thanks to travel restrictions that have stripped popular destinations of crowds of tourists, a large group of dugongs has made their presence known.

Drone video footage released by the Department of National Parks shows a 30-strong herd of dugongs on Wednesday off Libong island in Trang province. They were feeding on sea grass and occasionally surfaced to breathe.

Naturalists report other marine animals are also taking advantage of the tourism slump that is leaving coastal regions tranquil and undisturbed.

Human intrusion and marine pollution have made dugong sightings in southern Thailand rare in recent years.

“It’s quite unusual,” marine scientist Thon Thamrongnawasawat told The Associated Press on Thursday when asked about the dugongs. “This species of mammal is very sensitive to speed boats and people. When they are gone, they feel free to gather in a large group and come close to shore.”

Dugongs – closely related to the manatee or sea cow – are officially classified as vulnerable. They can grow up to 3.4 meters (11 feet) in length. Thailand’s population is put at around 250. Last year a record number of dead dugongs were found in Thai waters.

VIDEO As coronavirus slows travel, pollution is slowing down too APRIL 1, 2020 01:05

Their fate captured attention last June after images circulated of Thai veterinarians cuddling an ailing baby dugong and hand-feeding her with milk and sea grass.

Despite the care, she died two months later. An autopsy found a large amount of plastic waste in her intestines that had caused gastritis and blood infection.

Thon said there were also reports this week of large schools of sharks coming unusually close to shore in several places in southern Thailand, and a sighting of a pod of false killer whales.

Video from park rangers on Phi Phi island shows 70-100 blacktip sharks in the shallow waters of the Maya Bay, made famous in the Leonardo DiCaprio movie “The Beach.” The bay was closed to tourists in June 2018 for ecological recovery, and the island’s entire national park has been shut since March to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Park rangers also counted 10-15 false killer whales, another protected species, near the popular tourist island of Koh Lanta, the first time they have been seen in that area.

Associated Press

Earth Day at 50: Why the legacy of the 1970s environmental movement is in jeopardy

Changing global and political landscapes have made the kind of broad and bipartisan agreements reached in the 1970s seem impossible.

A young girl wears a "Let Me Grow Up" sign as residents mark Earth Day in Philadelphia's Fairmount Park on April 22, 1970.AP

April 22, 2020, By Denise Chow

The first Earth Day, held on April 22, 1970, marked a turning point for U.S. environmentalism, capturing the growing activism of the 1960s and putting the country on track to create the Environmental Protection Agency and many major pieces of legislation in the 1970s.

Fifty years later, those efforts are at risk of being rendered null.


For the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day, veteran climate activists are offering words of warning about the changing global and political landscapes that have made the kind of broad and bipartisan agreements reached in the 1970s seem impossible.

“What’s disturbing to me about what’s happened over the last 50 years is this steady drift of the Republican Party toward opposing environmental action and dismantling 50 years of environmental progress,” said Michael Mann, a professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University.

And with countries around the world in the grips of the coronavirus pandemic, some experts fear that climate action could fall by the wayside as nations attempt to restart their economies. Rather than investing in infrastructure to support renewable energy and focusing efforts on reducing carbon dioxide emissions, for example, countries could revert back to the status quo in a bid to recoup coronavirus-related economic losses.

Bicyclist mark Earth Day on April 22, 1970 in Denver.Bill Peters / Denver Post via Getty Images

But the path ahead won’t be easy. Humanity is quickly running out of time to keep global warming below2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) and slow the most damaging impacts of climate change. And even with aggressive action, the planet is still at risk of rising seas, drought, wildfires, extreme weather and other potentially damaging consequences of the warming that has already happened.

Still, David Muth remembers when taking environmental action wasn’t always a partisan fight.

As the director of Gulf restoration for the National Wildlife Federation, Muth knows that climate policies have always been hard-won, but beginning in the 1960s, as the severity of human-caused pollution was becoming more apparent, people started to demand change.

It was a movement that sparked huge protests, teach-ins and culminated in the organization of the first Earth Day, an event devoted to raising public awareness about threats to the environment.

The mobilized efforts paid off. Over the next decade, a flurry of science-based legislation aimed at protecting the planet was introduced — a legislative heyday for environmentalists that included the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970, the Clean Water Act in 1972 and the Endangered Species Act in 1973, among others.

EARTH DAY BEGAN WHEN WE SAW THIS IMAGE BROADCAST BY NASA

FROM THE APOLLO MOON MISSION OF 1969

VIDEO Watch NASA's lookback at 50 years of Earth Day APRIL 21, 2020 02:11

“We cleaned up the surface waters of the United States, we cleaned up the air, we salvaged many species on the brink of extinction, we took a hard look at how we treat wetlands and barrier islands, and we didn’t do a lot of stupid things because of the National Environmental Policy Act,” Muth said. “All these seminal pieces of legislation were passed in the 1970s.”

This period of time was significant because it kicked off an era of mostly bipartisan support for environmental action, said Mann, who rose to prominence after publishing a paper in 1998 that showed temperature changes on Earth over the past millennium. The plot, which was almost flat before curving sharply upward in the 20th century from human activities, was dubbed the “hockey stick” and has become an iconic representation of humanity’s role in global warming.

Though support for climate science now tends to be divided along party lines, many key environmental policies were introduced by Republican administrations, including those of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

IN THE TRADITION OF THAT GREAT REPUBLICAN OUTDOORS MAN

AND PRESIDENT TEDDY ROOSEVELT 

President Richard M. Nixon signs two bills, the Water Quality Improvement Act and the creation of Point Reyes National Park in California, in Washington, D.C., April 3, 1970.AP

While not perfect, some of the most pivotal environmental policies from the 1970s have had a demonstrable impact. In an editorial published April 17 in the journal Science, James Morton Turner, an associate professor of environmental studies at Wellesley College, and Andrew Isenberg, a professor of American history at the University of Kansas, examined their legacy.

“In 2010, the Clean Air Act and its 1990 amendments were estimated to prevent 3.2 million lost school days, 13 million lost workdays, and 160,000 premature deaths,” they wrote. “The Clean Water Act is responsible for substantial declines in most major water pollutants. Scientists estimate that the Endangered Species Act has prevented the extinction of 291 species and helped 39 species to a full recovery.”

But President Donald Trump has moved to significantly weaken many existing environmental protections.

In August 2019, the Trump administration announced changes to how the Endangered Species Act would be applied, reducing protections for some species while also making it easier to remove a species’ endangered classification. The following month, the administration rolled back clean water regulations implemented by the Obama administration that limited chemicals and harmful substances that could flow into streams and other waterways. And in November 2019, Trump began the year-long process of withdrawing from the landmark Paris climate agreement.

According to The New York Times, these changes are among more than 90 environmental rules that have been reversed or weakened since Trump took office.

How the global lockdown is affecting our environment APRIL 22, 2020 03:47

“It’s very frustrating, this whole attack on our system of environmental protection,” Muth said. “We’re rolling the dice unnecessarily.”

But the post-pandemic recovery period could also give countries a chance to reassess.

“As we move out of the emergency response phase, do we put investments into the economy of the future, or do we put everything back to where it was?” said Robert Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers University.

But the pandemic could also induce the opposite response, by forcing people to take stock of their values and broader societal goals. For instance, the outbreak demonstrated how lifestyle changes can have an impact — however fleeting — on the environment. Countries under coronavirus lockdowns, such as China, Italy and the U.S., experienced unintended climate benefits such as declines in pollution and greenhouse gases as a result of reduced air travel, restrictions on movement within cities and significant slowdowns of industrial activities.

While these climate benefits are only temporary, they did demonstrate what can happen even on short-term scales, according to Mann.

“We can see in real time the impact that we can have on the environment if we choose to curtail certain type of activities,” he said.

The pandemic has also demonstrated the importance of cooperation among countries on matters of global importance. After all, climate change — like a virus — pays no regard to borders.

Mann maintains that though the post-coronavirus recovery will likely be challenging, the pandemic’s silver lining could be that it sets off efforts to protect the health and safety of people, their communities and the planet — similar to the citizen-led initiatives that surrounded the first Earth Day celebrations.

“We have a real opportunity here for change,” he said. “As they say, it’s always darkest before dawn. We may see the tipping point we’ve all been waiting for on climate change action.”

Denise Chow is a reporter for NBC News Science focused on the environment and space.

Earth's insect population shrinks 27 percent in 30 years

“Ongoing decline on land at this rate will be catastrophic for ecological systems and for humans," said Michigan State University expert Nick Haddad.

Beekeeper Sean Kennedy inspects a swarm of honey bees on Monday in Washington.Andrew Harnik / AP

April 24, 2020, By Associated Press

KENSINGTON, Maryland — The world has lost more than one quarter of its land-dwelling insects in the past 30 years, according to researchers whose big picture study of global bug decline paints a disturbing but more nuanced problem than earlier research.

From bees and other pollinators crucial to the world’s food supply to butterflies that beautify places, the bugs are disappearing at a rate of just under 1 percent a year, with lots of variation from place to place, according to a study in Thursday’s journal Science.

That’s a tinier population decline than found by some smaller localized studies, which had triggered fears of a so-called insect apocalypse. But it still adds up to something “awfully alarming,” said entomologist Roel van Klink of the German Centre for Integrative Biology, the study’s lead author.

VIDEO Bees bring buzz as urban hives grow in DetroitJUNE 29, 2018 02:56

“The decline across insect orders on land is jaw dropping,” said Michigan State University butterfly expert Nick Haddad, who wasn’t part of the study. “Ongoing decline on land at this rate will be catastrophic for ecological systems and for humans. Insects are pollinators, natural enemies of pests, decomposers and besides that, are critical to functioning of all Earth’s ecosystems.”

Insect declines are worst in North America, especially the Midwestern United States, and in parts of Europe, but the drop appears to be leveling off in the U.S. in recent years, said the study that pulled together earlier research on more than 10,000 species with data from 1,676 locations.

The Midwest lost 4 percent of its bugs a year. The big global losses seem to be around urban and suburban areas and croplands, where bugs are losing their food and habitat, van Klink said.

University of Delaware entomologist Douglas Tallamy, who wasn’t part of the study, said he would drive through the Midwest where there were supposed to be lots of butterflies and other insects but would see only corn and soybeans in an insect desert.

Some outside scientists said the results made sense, but worried that the study lacked research and data from some large areas, such as the tropics and Africa.

Co-author Ann Swengel, a citizen scientist who’s tracked butterflies for more than 30 years, recalled that when driving around Wisconsin a few decades ago, she would “look out in a field and you’d see all these Sulphur butterflies around. I can’t think of the last time that I’ve seen that.”

A clouded sulphur butterfly in Cromwell, Conn.Michael Thomas / AP

The study detailed quite different losses from place to place and from decade to decade. That tells scientists that “we’re not looking for a single stressor or we’re not looking a global phenomenon that is stressing insects in the same way,” said University of Connecticut insect expert David Wagner, who wasn’t part of the study. What’s happening, he said, is “absolutely intolerable.”

Van Klink didn’t find a link to climate change in the insect loss. But he did see an overarching theme of creeping urbanization, which absorbs land where insects live and eat, and general loss of habitat from farming that takes away weeds and flowers bugs need.

While land bugs were dwindling, freshwater insects, such as mayflies, dragonflies and mosquitoes, are increasing at more than 1 percent a year, the study found. But those thriving freshwater insects are a tiny percentage of bugs in the world.

That improvement of freshwater species, likely because rivers and streams got cleaner, shows hope, scientists said.

Swengel said she saw another sign of hope on a cloudy day last year in Wisconsin: she and her husband counted 3,848 monarchs, reflecting recent local efforts to improve habitat for the colorful migrating butterfly.

“It was absolutely magnificent,” she said. “It’s not too late.”

Associated Press

Will oil's price slump be worse for the economy than the effects of the coronavirus?
While the coronavirus is a temporary crisis, the hangover from the oil crash could linger well into 2021.

Workers secure drilling pipe sections on an oil drilling tower near Almetyevsk, Russia, on July 31, 2015.Andrey Rudakov / Bloomberg via Getty Images file


April 22, 2020 By Martha C. White

The prospect of cheaper gas at a time when most Americans are holed up at home is not much of a silver lining to the coronavirus pandemic. Energy analysts say there is little upside to the unprecedented plunge in oil prices that sent crude oil futures spiraling into negative territory on Monday, spooking Wall Street.

Patrick DeHaan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, predicted that the national average gas price could drop below $1.50 a gallon in the coming weeks, noting that a few states have already hit this benchmark. But he said drivers shouldn’t expect to see gas fall as sharply as crude prices. “Unfortunately for motorists, it may not fully make it to the pump, given that stations are trying to keep the doors open — even with volume down 50 to 70 percent,” he said.

VIDEO Dow drops as oil market continues to crumble APRIL 21, 2020 01:50
Analysts also note that the concept of “negative oil,” as President Donald Trump referred to it in a news briefing on Monday, is more theoretical than actual. Although it suggests that a seller would have to pay a buyer to physically take a shipment of oil, it is largely a “paper transaction” by the financial instruments that hold oil futures contracts.

Paper or not, prices tumbling into negative territory is a symptom of a very real problem: With demand for everything from gasoline to jet fuel plummeting, producers are literally running out of places to store oil once it leaves the ground.

Trump on Monday floated the idea of solving that problem by purchasing roughly 75 million barrels of oil, the spare capacity in the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, as well as banning imports of Saudi Arabian oil. Neither is likely to be terribly effective, analysts say.

“Refineries are set up to handle specific slates of crude. You can't simply disallow Saudi oil and replace it with American oil,” said Stewart Glickman, energy equity analyst at CFRA Research. Oil has variations in density and sulfur content, and refineries can’t process the kind of oil extracted from American soil.

“Putting a tariff on Saudi crude would do nothing to address the underlying problem,” said Jim Burkhard, vice president and head of oil markets research at IHS Market. “A tariff will not conjure up demand growth.”

“It’s not a terrible idea to fill the SPR with prices where they are, but there is a limit,” Glickman said.

Glickman said American oil producers need prices of at least $20 a barrel just to cover day-to-day operations. For the industry to make money in the longer term, including investing in exploration and equipment, prices need to be roughly double that.

If prices don’t regain stability, analysts’ biggest fear is that the U.S. energy sector won’t be able to bounce back. “The longer oil remains this low, the more risk there is that when demand rebounds, oil production won’t,” DeHaan said.

Michael Moebs, CEO and economist at financial consulting firm Moebs Services, said plummeting oil prices could drive interest rates — already at historic lows — down even further, a prospect that could have negative implications for banks and destabilize financial markets already shaken by the coronavirus pandemic. “It would be a double-whammy. We see COVID causing a problem… But that’s going to pass,” he said.

By comparison, the hangover from the oil crash could linger well into 2021.

“Oil and gas investment has grown to be a large and important source of U.S. business investment and employment over the past 10 to 15 years, so the decline in prices and falling investment will have a negative impact on the U.S. economy,” Burkhard said.

Although jobs in energy will be the first dominos to fall — especially smaller producers who don’t have the financial cushion to withstand a sustained downturn — they won’t be the last, said Daniel Zhao, senior economist at Glassdoor.

“There also will be spillover effects to businesses that service those industries, everything from car sales to retail spending to real estate," he said.

“It’s not just drilling wells and producers, it's everything that goes downstream… pipelines, refineries, petrochemicals, oil field services,” said Peter McNally, global energy sector lead at investment and research firm Third Bridge.

“There are much broader economic implications this time. It’s not just oil seeing demand drop — it's pretty much every industry,” McNally said.

“Employment in the oil industry is probably going to stay under pressure until we start to see futures prices go above $40 a barrel, and we don’t see that,” Glickman said.

“On a net basis, this is pretty atrocious for the U.S. economy,” he said.

Martha C. White is an NBC News contributor who writes about business, finance and the economy.

1 in 5 Russians want gays and lesbians 'eliminated,' survey finds
“There is this feeling you are targeted,” one LGBTQ activist in St. Petersburg said.

A gay pride rally in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2017. A poll released in Russia this week found that 32 percent of respondents wanted to “isolate” gay men and lesbians from society.Olga Maltseva / AFP via Getty Images file

April 24, 2020, By Elizabeth Kuhr

Nearly 1 in 5 Russians want to “eliminate” gay and lesbian people from society, according to a new survey, a finding that has incited fear and anger among LGBTQ activists in the country.

“There is this feeling you are targeted, and that 18 percent believe I should be eliminated is just awful,” said Svetlana Zakharova, an out lesbian living in St. Petersburg. “It was very emotional.”

The survey, published this week by the Levada Center, a nongovernmental research organization based in Moscow, also found that 32 percent of respondents wanted to “isolate” gay men and lesbians from society, compared to 9 percent who wanted to “assist” them.

"A lot of people in Russia would not want to see gay people existing ... Not necessarily to kill them but to have a society where this does not exist as a phenomenon.”

EKATERINA KOCHERGINA, LEVADA CENTER

One of the researchers, Ekaterina Kochergina, said she and her team wanted to measure the “social distance” — which in this context is unrelated to the global pandemic — between the Russian population and groups considered by some to be “deviant.” In addition to sexual minorities, the survey looked at how ostracized feminists, pedophiles, terrorists and people living with HIV/AIDS are from Russian society.

“The more unfavorable, the more social distance between us and them,” Kochergina explained.

Kochergina acknowledged moral concerns about the phrasing of the questions and the selection of identities included in the survey. She said the use of the word “eliminate” in the survey means “to make something disappear from your reality,” not to physically destroy people, and that the questions were about identity groups as “phenomena.”

“A lot of people in Russia would not want to see gay people existing,” said Kochergina. “Not necessarily to kill them but to have a society where this does not exist as a phenomenon.”

The survey, which polled over 1,600 people from 50 Russian regions in face-to-face interviews, was part of the Levada Center’s ongoing research for its “Soviet Man” project. Started in 1989, Soviet Man aims to document the changing social perspectives of Russian people since the fall of the Soviet Union.

“The idea is to try to understand what is the ‘Soviet person,’” Kochergina said. “It’s an archetype.” She said that while perspectives on social issues are evolving, some Russians still harbor negative opinions of people who are different. “Other means dangerous,” she explained.

Zakharova, who serves as a board member and the communications manager for the Russian LGBT Network, the country’s largest LGBTQ organization, said the Levada Center’s survey was damaging and could trigger more hatred in a nation where “the level of hatred and violence … toward different groups” is already “very high.”

“These questions published read ‘how to deal with those people,’ and there is the answer: ‘liquidate,’” said Zakharova, who thinks the language used should be illegal. “It’s not about phenomena for me; it’s totally about social groups.”

Kochergina chalked the 18 percent up to Russians “who are very aggressive toward anyone who is marked as ‘the other.’” These people, she said, would vote to “eliminate” or “isolate” anyone different from themselves.

Zakharova, however, fears that the wording of the survey questions, particularly the “eliminate” one — even if it was not intended to mean physical elimination through violence — will lead Russians to believe that this is in the realm of possibility.

“It is very scary and very worrying,” she said, adding that there are anti-LGBTQ Russian “groups that are very active and very aggressive and very visible, and they feel supported by the government.”

Russia passed a law in June 2013 that bans distributing information on LGBTQ relationships and issues to minors. Under the legislation, also known as the “gay propaganda law,” any act or event that authorities deem to promote homosexuality to children is punishable by a fine. After the law passed, the country saw an increase in anti-LGBTQ violence, according to a 2014 Human Rights Watch report.

In a 2019 Russian LGBT Network poll, more than half of the LGBTQ people surveyed reported experiencing at least one type of violence or abuse due to their gender identity and/or sexual orientation: 56 percent reported experiencing psychological abuse, 12 percent reported physical violence and 4 percent reported sexual abuse. Over the past several years, there have also been a number of disturbing reports of state-sponsored detention, violence and torture against gay and bisexual men in Chechnya, a semiautonomous Russian region

“The state gives the signal that LGBT people are not real people, that they are second- or even third-class citizens,” Zakharova said. “This is scary.”

Despite reports of increased violence and the enactment of the “gay propaganda law,” Kochergina said the situation has improved over the past three decades, when the Soviet Man project first started.

“Things from a political point of view have become worse, but still somehow Russian consciousness tries to be better,” she said, noting that in 1989, the survey’s first year, 35 percent of those polled wanted to “eliminate” gays and lesbians, compared to 18 percent in the latest findings. This year’s Soviet Man survey also found 79 percent of Russians want to “assist” people with HIV/AIDS, an increase from 53 percent in 1989.

“It’s nice to see that actually the willingness to see homosexuals, to accept them, is actually rising,” Kochergina said.

She pointed to a separate survey released by the Levada Center last year that found Russian attitudes toward LGBTQ people — while still predominantly negative — have improved, especially among young, educated women. Twenty percent of last year’s participants said they completely agree that gay men and lesbians should have equal rights in Russia, compared to just 7 percent in 2013 when the “gay propaganda law” was passed. The 2019 data also found that those with gay and lesbian acquaintances have more positive attitudes toward sexual minorities.

While Zakharova said the situation for the country’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community is indeed dire, the Russian people are “not as homophobic as authorities or federal mass media try to portray them.” While the government may be treating the community worse, she added, the situation on the whole “is slightly changing for the better.”

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Elizabeth Kuhr is an NBC News producer based in London.

Lesbian couple's custody case takes China into uncharted legal waters

The couple's case has stirred debate over LGBTQ rights and put a spotlight on a legal vacuum created by the absence of a same-sex marriage law.


April 24, 2020, By Reuters

BEIJING - A Chinese lesbian couple's landmark court battle over the custody of their two children has stirred debate over LGBTQ rights and put a spotlight on a legal vacuum created by the absence of a same-sex marriage law.

Shanghai resident Zhang Peiyi split up with her partner last year. The partner has since broken off communication and taken their two toddlers away to an unknown location.


So Zhang has turned to the courts, filing a case in the eastern province of Zhejiang this month, to fight for custody of one of the children, the one she gave birth to, and visitation rights to the other.

A court has accepted the case but hearings have yet to begin.

"Even if I can find them, I won't be able to see them," Zhang told Reuters. "I thought who else can help me? I could only find a lawyer."

The case is the first of its kind in China and has attracted media attention. It is likely to be complicated by the fact that Zhang and her partner are women and not legally married, at least not in China, where marriage is defined as a union between a man and a woman.

More LGBTQ couples are choosing to have families but many find themselves pushing up against the limits of the law if the relationship ends, said Yang Yi, a program officer at LGBT Rights Advocacy China.

"There are more than 100 assistive reproductive companies that target gay couples," said Yang.

Yang said there have been custody battles between same-sex couples before but they were settled out of court.

'Rights and interests'

Zhang and her former partner had their children with the help of reproductive technology in the United States. Zhang's partner provided the eggs for the embryos and then each of them carried a separate embryo to full term.

While they were there, they also got married. However, that is not recognized in China, nor is there an existing law for Zhang's claim over the children.

Traditionally in custody disputes, the law recognizes the birth parent. While Zhang can claim that she gave birth to one child, her partner can claim that she is the parent by blood.

The court will have to decide whether Zhang can claim custodial rights or is it only her partner who provided the egg and therefore has the genetic connection.

Another question is whether an LGBTQ parent can claim custodial rights over a child who they raised but may not have any biological relationship to, as is the case with Zhang's other child, whom her partner carried to term.

The case has stirred public interest with social media posts attracting more than 380 million views this week.

"I can't say whether I support gay people ... but I support this opportunity to give them their legitimate rights and interests," said one social media user.

For Zhang, the key is the legalization of same-sex marriage.

"The focal point is how can you determine who is a child's mother. But if you consider that there are two mothers, then it will return to the issue of same-sex marriage," she said.

Zhang supports a campaign for the legalization of same-sex marriage. Though the prospect of the legislation looks slim, she said she won't give up.

"You may feel like it wouldn't happen very quickly, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything," Zhang said.

"So you need to, bit by bit, make it happen."

Few Hispanic business owners got coronavirus relief loans, Latino survey finds

“Lupita’s taquería or Juana’s quinceañera shop didn’t get money, while Ruth’s Chris (Steakhouse) and major hotel chains are getting millions of dollars.”

Women are reflected in the window of a closed business in New York on April 23, 2020.Spencer Platt / Getty Images

April 24, 2020, By Suzanne Gamboa

A survey of more than 500 Latino small-business owners who applied for coronavirus relief loans found that just 97 of them received money while the rest have never heard back on their applications.

The League of United Latin American Citizens and the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce conducted the survey that was sent to members of both organizations and that solicited responses publicly.

The organizations weeded out responses from people who were not Latino small-business owners. Of 871 responses received Friday morning, 546 were Latino small-business owners.

“The survey only confirms what we already know, that the Paycheck Protection Program money went to Wall Street billionaires and very little of it trickled to the mom-and-pop shops and small businesses of America,” LULAC National President Domingo García said. “Lupita’s taqueria or Juana’s quinceañera shop didn’t get money while Ruth’s Chris (Steakhouse) and major hotel chains are getting millions of dollars.”

Related Coronavirus package falls short for lenders to Latino, minority businesses

The Ruth's Chris chain announced Thursday it is returning its $20 million small-business loan from the program after heavy backlash.

The survey asked whether the owners applied for and whether they got a loan from the $349 billion Paycheck Protection Program created by Congress to provide forgivable loans to small businesses so they could pay and continue to employ their workers during the coronavirus crisis.

The program ran out of money in 13 days, leaving many small businesses standing in line with pending applications or cut off from applying.

The majority of the Latino business owners who applied for the loans did so through their existing bank or lender, the survey found. Major banks where Latinos applied included Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Frost Bank and PNC.

None of the 31 who applied to Wells Fargo were approved. NBC News has reached out to Wells Fargo for comment.

"It was HORRIBLE!" a business owner said in the survey. "I have been with Wells Fargo my whole business life, 30 years and they did nothing to help me! I felt like I have been used!"

Wells Fargo said in a statement is "working as quickly as possible" to prepare applications from small business customers for the latest round of funding Congress provided. The bank said it has mobilized thousands of employees and launched new technology to get their applications processed.

There were 198 respondents who said that they did not apply for loans. These included people who said they tried and gave up, frustrated by a cumbersome process, or said they didn’t know about the loans or how to go about getting them, said Juan Proaño, co-founder and CEO of Plus Three, a technology company that analyzed the survey data.

Proaño was among the first to apply for a loan at Bank of America, but faced trouble getting an application before the bank changed some eligibility criteria. Also, emails regarding the loan were sent to his company by a third party they didn't recognize and ended up in a spam folder. His application is pending, he said.

Frost Bank, based in the majority Latino city of San Antonio, approved the greatest share of the loans and the highest number with 60 percent or 6 of 10 approved, the survey found.

It was followed by PNC Bank, which approved 14 percent or 1 of 7 applications; JPMorgan Chase, 12 percent or 5 of 42; and Bank of America, 11 percent or 5 of 44 applications.

Some of the banks added in their own restrictions to government criteria for the loans, including requiring applicants to have an existing loan or a line of credit with the bank to apply.

“Latinos have historically been redlined and denied loans to start and maintain businesses since the early 1900s and we are seeing that tradition today,” Garcia said.

The survey data release comes the day after Congress approved a second small-business relief package of $484 billion, which has been criticized by community lenders who provide loans to Latino and other minority and women small-business owners and for “distressed” and rural area. The lenders said the bill set aside too little money for such “underserved” proprietors.

Experts have said that Latino wealth and income, which had just been rebuilt to where it was before the Great Recession, could be decimated by the economic fallout of the coronavirus crisis.

LULAC and other Latino organizations had pressed Congress to set aside $50 billion for minority businesses in the small-business relief package that the House approved Thursday. LULAC is a civil rights organization founded in 1929 to combat discrimination, including economic racism.

“They failed again,” Garcia said. “It’s a pay-to-play scheme to deny Latino businesses the same opportunities that others have.”

NBC Latino

Suzanne Gamboa is a national reporter for NBC Latino and NBCNews.co

© 2020 NBC UNIVERSAL

Coronavirus checks aren't coming for many in America's Latino and Asian communities
It is imperative that states take the lead to ensure no one is left out of the recovery.

People walk past a closed restaurant in Los Angeles on March 20, 2020.

Qian Weizhong / Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images file IRONIC
April 21, 2020, By Sonja Diaz and Paul Ong

Coronavirus has torn through communities at unprecedented rates, stretching health care systems to their breaking points and bringing the economy to a standstill. It’s been said that the coronavirus is a great equalizer, but we now know from what little racial and ethnic data that exists, communities of color are disproportionately hurting.

It’s been said that coronavirus is a great equalizer, but we now know from what little racial and ethnic data that exists, communities of color are disproportionately hurting.

Our most vulnerable neighborhoods are falling through the cracks. And as stimulus money starts to hit bank accounts across the country, we need to focus on the many people in America who will not be getting any help as quarantine drags on. In the absence of additional federal leadership and funding, it's up to states and cities to step in and protect those most at risk from health and economic catastrophe.

California and Los Angeles County provide a case study underscoring why a one-size-fits-all approach simply will not work.

The big airlines got greedy — now they want a bailout MARCH 23, 2020 04:11

In March, the Economic Policy Institute estimated that California will lose over 1.6 million jobs by this summer, close to a quarter of which will be in the leisure, hospitality and retail sectors. Nowhere will this be more acutely felt than Los Angeles County where fashion, food and tourism are staples of our economy. And a recent report released by the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, and Ong & Associates finds this could affect Latino and Asian neighborhoods the most, leaving families scrambling for solutions without the means to pay rent or put food on the table. These communities are also the ones that will likely not receive a fair share from emergency financial relief programs.

While many people have been able to socially distance while continuing to work, our research suggests that Latino and Asian workers disproportionately rely on low-wage jobs in industries where the most layoffs in the wake of COVID-19 are occurring. They are also more likely to be employed in low-wage blue-collar manufacturing jobs that have been shut down. These workers are grandparents, parents and children who live on the brink of poverty on the best of days. Now with the loss of their jobs, they are facing an uncertain future.

In Los Angeles County, our research finds that approximately 30 percent of Latino majority neighborhoods and 20 percent of Asian majority neighborhoods will face economic uncertainty versus just 3 percent of white majority neighborhoods due to the impact of COVID-19 on the service and retail sectors.

There was hope that the federal government would step up to meet the needs of these uncertain times. But the CARES Act stimulus packages don't go far enough.

Right now, to qualify for CARES unemployment benefits, you must not only work enough hours at a single place of employment but have earned enough wages to rise above the minimum threshold put in place by the state. If you’ve been unemployed for an extended period, however, and only recently secured a new job, you may not be eligible. Further, many service workers, including fast-food workers or hotel cleaners, are part time and often hold more than one job to make ends meet. If one of those jobs is deemed an essential service, many states will reduce benefits based on the wages an individual continues to earn.

Related
Coronavirus unemployment numbers are staggering. And the real number is higher.

Los Angeles County’s neighborhoods also demonstrate the widespread financial pain that entire communities will face by excluding undocumented immigrants from relief. Even with California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to extend relief to undocumented immigrants, the coverage and benefit levels are capped at $1,000 per household, with only enough money in the fund for about 150,000 people in a state where the undocumented population is over 2 million. And across the nation, an estimated 11.3 million undocumented immigrants could face the same predicament.

Ignoring these glaring deficiencies is not only inhumane in the midst of a crisis but shortsighted. As the two youngest and fastest-growing populations in the nation, Latinos and Asians will help determine how and when we rebound from this pandemic.

Exclusion of residents from economic recovery efforts is being driven by both lack of knowledge about the magnitude of the burdens these neighborhoods bear as well as racialized politics that have demonized far too many residents and painted them as unworthy of assistance. Either way, we have a humanitarian crisis that must be addressed.

It is imperative that states take the lead to ensure no one is left out of the recovery. This requires recovery programs focused on those who are at highest risk of not receiving federal COVID-19 relief. Further, states should create a wage replacement program for those ineligible for unemployment insurance. States must also impose accountability measures, such as collecting and analyzing data for demographic groups and neighborhoods to ensure COVID-19 relief is actually reaching those most in need.

No one is exempt from this deadly virus, but those with the least resources will carry the heaviest burden if we fail to act. Our nation, states and local communities have a stake in resolving this crisis, and our moral compass and ability to thrive in the future depends upon our leaders making the right choices now.

Sonja Diaz is founding director of the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative.

Paul Ong is director of Ong & Associates, a public-interest socioeconomic consulting firm, and is trained as an urban planner and economist.