Friends Say George Floyd Always Went Out Of His Way To Help People Who Were Less Fortunate

"He was articulate. He was grounded. He was spiritual. He was an athlete. He was an organizer. He was a comforter. He was an encourager."

Amber JamiesonBuzzFeed News Reporter

Posted on May 27, 2020

Facebook: christina.u.dawson

“One day it’s going to be you and God. You’re going up or you’re going down,” George Floyd says in a video circulating on social media in which he calls on young people to avoid gun violence.

Floyd, 46, died in police custody on Monday after a white police officer pushed his knee into his neck on the ground outside a supermarket in Minneapolis. Video footage showed Floyd saying "I can't breathe" until he became unresponsive, but even then the officer continued to keep him in a neck hold.

Floyd's family did not immediately respond to BuzzFeed News' request for comment, but they, along with friends, have been sharing stories of his life online and with the media.

Floyd, also known as Big Floyd, reinvented himself over and over again. In the 1990s, he was part of a rap crew from Houston's Third Ward, working with DJ Screw, a well-known local musician.

“Floyd was my brother. We called each other 'Twin,'” former NBA player Stephen Jackson said in a video posted to Instagram on Tuesday. Jackson, who grew up with Floyd in the Third Ward, shared photos of him in his high school football uniform.

Instagram: @_stak5_

"Made it to state championship," Jackson wrote. "Bruh wasn’t no bum. Had hoop game too."

The mother of his 6-year-old daughter told the Houston Chronicle that he'd received a football scholarship to Florida State University after playing for Yates High School.

In recent years, Floyd moved to Minnesota.

"He was changing his life," Jackson said in the Instagram video. "He went to Minnesota. He was driving trucks. I just sent him up two or three boxes of clothes. My boy was doing what he was supposed to do."

Vanita Williams, a friend, met Floyd through his work driving trucks and as a security guard at a downtown Salvation Army homeless shelter.

Instagram: @_stak5_

"He was sober. He showed me resources," Williams said. "He gave us hugs and told us it was going to be OK. He told us we could make it. He was such a big brother to me."

Williams said Floyd embraced people of all backgrounds, including trans people, sex workers, people experiencing homelessness, and people with addictions.

"He gravitated towards the less fortunate," Williams said, "the downtrodden, the ones they said wasn't going to make it."

She said Floyd would give people a few dollars, new clothes, or whatever small thing he could.

"Whatever he needed to do, he would help you," she said.

He also worked as a security guard at Conga Latin Bistro in Minneapolis.

"This person was my employee, and a very good friend," Jovanni Thunstrom wrote on Facebook. Thunstrom also told local station KSTP that Floyd would drive patrons who were drunk home to make sure they were safe.

“He wanted me to teach him how to Bachata dance," Thunstrom said. "And I gave up because I couldn't turn him because he was [6 feet 6 inches]."

Facebook

His former girlfriend Christina Dawson shared photos of Floyd smiling, wearing his security T-shirt, and cuddling a dog.

"They really killed my baby!!" she posted. "THAT KING DID NOT HAVE TO DIE BEFORE HIS TIME."

Instagram: @_stak5_

Floyd was popular with women because of his charm and height, Williams said.

"There’s going to be so many women going to come out of the woodwork when they hear," she added. "He was a big teddy bear."

She added, "You could talk to a thousand people and nobody is going to have anything bad to say about him."

His brothers and cousin also spoke to CNN's Don Lemon about their search for justice after the four officers involved were fired.

"It definitely warms my heart to see we have so many people willing to support and to protest and to give him a voice," said his cousin Tera Brown, "and keep this going because he was a very loving person. And he didn't deserve what happened to him."

His friends agreed.

"He was articulate. He was grounded. He was spiritual. He was an athlete. He was an organizer. He was a comforter. He was an encourager," Williams told BuzzFeed News. "I could just go on and on and on about who he was."

• 
  Amber Jamieson is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

  Contact Amber Jamieson at amber.jamieson@buzzfeed.com.

  Got a confidential tip? Submit it here.
• 
  

Congress Asked The CDC For Data On How The Coronavirus Is Affecting Communities Of Color. The CDC Sent Back Links To Its Public Website.

“The Trump Administration would prefer to ignore the disproportionate impact this crisis is having on communities of color,” said Sen. Patty Murray.

Kadia GobaBuzzFeed News Reporter

Reporting From

Washington, DC

Posted on May 28, 2020, at 11:05 a.m. ET

Robyn Beck / Getty Images

Local residents fill out paperwork at a mobile COVID-19 testing station in Compton, California, April 28. St. John's Well Child and Family Center is providing testing sites in African American and Latino communities that have been neglected in terms of testing as compared to wealthier areas of Los Angeles County.

BuzzFeed News has reporters around the world bringing you trustworthy stories about the impact of the coronavirus. To help keep this news free, become a member and sign up for our newsletter, Outbreak Today.

---

WASHINGTON — As communities of color are disproportionately dying from the coronavirus, Congress asked the CDC to collect national data on the race and ethnicity of COVID-19 cases and deaths.

On the day of the deadline set in law by Congress, the CDC responded with a page of links that referred back to its public website.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, “should be embarrassed by the lazy, incomplete, 2.5-page copy-and-paste job it calls a ‘report’ on the racial disparities of COVID-19 cases,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren tweeted last week.

Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the CDC, sent the report to Congress on March 15. The links that CDC forwarded include some racial and ethnic data on the coronavirus, but it is incomplete. The report includes a link to the CDC’s updating data on cases and deaths across the US, but only includes race and ethnicity information for less than half of the 1.7 million people who have tested positive for COVID-19.

The report also linked to the CDC’s data on hospitalizations broken down by race and ethnicity, but that page only includes data from specific network hospitals in 14 states, totaling just about 10% of the US population.

“This wholly inadequate response tells us nothing except what we already knew: the Trump Administration would prefer to ignore the disproportionate impact this crisis is having on communities of color,” Sen. Patty Murray, the lead Democrat on a Senate Health Committee, said in a statement.

The CDC did not respond to several questions on how it obtained its data or the timeframe in which it will update the information. And while incomplete, Redfield wrote that the CDC data does suggest “a disproportionate burden of illness and death among racial and ethnic minority groups,” adding that “studies are underway to confirm these data.” The CDC did not respond to BuzzFeed News’ requests to specify what kind of studies are being conducted.

The report comes after Congress passed its most recent coronavirus stimulus package, which required the CDC to report COVID-19 race and ethnicity data to several congressional committees, as they investigate the disproportionate effects of COVID-19 on black and Hispanic people.

Last month, a group of bipartisan members of Congress urged the Trump administration to gather data on high-risk communities in order to better understand the racial disparity and aid those communities in response to the pandemic.

Health experts say complete reports are key to addressing COVID-19 disparities in communities of color.

“Thus far, the fragmented data we are getting from HHS, state, and local sources paint a very fragmented, but troubling picture,” Northeastern University health policy expert Leo Beletsky told BuzzFeed News in an email. “Systematic national data are necessary to understand the full scope of the issue and to target resources where they are most needed.

Beletsky went further to suggest the administration’s slow-walk of the data is an effort to avoid criticism of its coronavirus response and conversations about longstanding health disparities among people of color.

“Ultimately, these data will force some very difficult conversations about bungled responses so far, as well as about broader questions of race and racism in America. This is why agencies are dragging their feet on making these analyses available to lawmakers and the public.”

Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley, who also signed onto the initial letter to the CDC asking for race and ethnicity data for COVID-19, told reporters on Wednesday that black people represent nearly 40% of all COVID-19 cases in Boston (38% according to city data), despite being 25% of the population.

“We will use every tool at our disposal to uncover why this administration waited so long to take any action and make clear the grave consequences of their inaction,” Pressley told reporters on a call. “And while oversight is critical, we must also keep up the pressure on this administration to take action now before we are robbed, unnecessarily, of even more lives.”

Sen. Tim Scott, the lone black Republican senator and the only GOP member to call on the CDC to provide race and ethnicity data of COVID-19 victims, is instead urging states to report their own data.

“In South Carolina, we regularly receive and can readily access disaggregated demographic data on both cases and fatalities,” Scott told BuzzFeed News in a statement. “Our model is effective and consistent, and I hope other states and stakeholders would follow suit in reporting these critical numbers that can only help us stop the spread in our most vulnerable communities.”

As of Wednesday, black people, who make up about 27% of South Carolina’s population, accounted for 52% of the coronavirus cases, according to state data.

The House-passed Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act (HEROES) also would require the CDC to provide race and ethnicity data to Congress with money to assist states with their collection of data. But that bill has not passed the Senate, where Republicans have said the legislation is dead on arrival.

In the meantime, the CDC is still required to provide another report within 30 days of the one just released.

“We are not done pushing for answers and action here, not by a long shot,” Murray said.

The Trump Administration Wants To Cut Back A Billion-Dollar Healthcare Program. Hospitals Say Now Is A Really Bad Time.

The Trump administration has been fighting in court with public and nonprofit hospitals since 2017 over a plan to slash the reimbursement rates for drugs prescribed to Medicare patients.

REMEMBER WHEN AUSTERITY WAS THE NEWEST THING OF THE NEO-LIBERALS, ITS NOW THEIR OLD THING IN FACT ITS THEIR ONLY THING TO SOLVE ALL PROBLEMS  

Zoe TillmanBuzzFeed News Reporter
Reporting From Washington, DC Posted on May 27, 2020

Win Mcnamee / Getty Images
President Donald Trump makes remarks during an event on protecting seniors with diabetes in the Rose Garden, May 26.

WASHINGTON — In 2018, Park Ridge Health, a not-for-profit healthcare network in western North Carolina that serves a large population of lower-income patients, delayed plans to buy a new CT scanner for stroke patients.

The Trump administration had drastically scaled back a federal drug reimbursement program that benefitted public and not-for-profit hospitals. Park Ridge, now called AdventHealth Hendersonville, stood to lose $3.3 million per year, the hospital’s chief financial officer wrote in a court affidavit, and it wasn’t just the CT scanner on the line — that money went toward a variety of services for elderly and poor patients, including new cancer treatment facilities, women’s healthcare, and partnerships with nonprofits on issues like prescription drug abuse.

Park Ridge and other hospitals have been battling with the administration in court for three years over a plan to slash by nearly 30% the reimbursement rate that hospitals get for certain drugs prescribed to Medicare patients. The hospitals won the first round. The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit heard arguments in November and has yet to rule, and for now the cut is still in effect. In the meantime, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is exploring another way to make the cut if they lose the case, over the objection of hospitals.

The litigation predates the coronavirus pandemic, but the stakes are higher as hospitals nationwide lose tens of billions of dollars weekly while nonessential services and elective surgeries are on hold because of the ongoing crisis.


“If [hospitals] lost that money now, it would make an already dire financial situation worse,” Lindsay Wiley, director of the Health Law and Policy Program at American University Washington College of Law, wrote in an email to BuzzFeed News.

Hospitals that serve a high proportion of lower-income patients can buy outpatient drugs at a discounted price through what’s known as the 340B program. Until 2017, these hospitals were reimbursed by the federal government for drugs prescribed to Medicare patients at a higher rate than the discounted price the hospitals paid.

The CMS announced in 2017 that it was slashing the reimbursement rate from 6% above the average price of the drugs to 22.5% below the average cost. The agency said the program gave hospitals an incentive to overprescribe drugs and cost patients more money, and shouldn’t provide a windfall to subsidize other services.

Hospitals that opposed the change argued that they had put money earned through the program — which can run in the millions of dollars for a hospital each year — into services for poor and underserved communities, as Congress intended.

The CMS estimated that cutting the reimbursement rate for the drugs would reduce the amount of money paid to hospitals by $1.6 billion in 2018 alone. Scaling back that funding would actually increase the rates paid by the government for other services for Medicare patients — the payment system has to be “budget neutral” — but Park Ridge and other hospitals that took the administration to court said they still expected net losses of millions of dollars.

Many hospitals that participate in the 340B program “are in the red to begin with,” said Maureen Testoni, president and CEO of 340B Health, a membership group for hospitals and health systems that participate.


“So on top of that, you add this pandemic and all the financial turmoil that this has caused,” Testoni said. The pandemic has highlighted “how critical [hospitals] are ... and what an important role they play. And, financially, they’re not in a situation where they can play that role when they have this big financial reduction.”

While waiting for the DC Circuit to rule, the CMS is exploring ways to move forward with the rate cut even if it loses. Last month, the agency launched a survey to collect data from 340B hospitals that the CMS says would address the issues that led the lower court judge to rule against the government. Hospitals opposed the survey and asked the agency to at least delay it, saying they’d have to divert resources that are already stretched thin during the pandemic to respond.

"Now is not the time to distract hospitals’ attention from the vital job at hand to complete a CMS survey on drug acquisition costs."


“Now is not the time to distract hospitals’ attention from the vital job at hand to complete a CMS survey on drug acquisition costs. By launching the survey with no notice on April 24 and providing less than three weeks to respond, CMS is creating an unnecessary burden on hospitals at the worst possible moment,” Testoni wrote in a May 4 letter to the agency. The agency didn’t respond.


Representatives of hospitals involved in the lawsuits declined interview requests, citing the pending litigation. The American Hospital Association, a lead plaintiff, declined an interview request but sent a statement:

“The COVID-19 pandemic has created the greatest financial crisis in history for America’s hospitals and health systems, with our field losing over $50 billion each month. While it is too soon to have precise data on the full impact of this pandemic, the unlawful Medicare cuts that we are contesting in federal court have added significantly to the financial pressure all hospitals face,” the group said.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services did not return a request for comment. In court, the Justice Department has argued that the district court judge lacked authority to review the rate cut at all, and that even if he could, the government had the power to bring the rate in line with what the available data showed hospitals were paying for the drugs.

“[O]vercompensation for some drugs or treatments means reduced payments for other drugs and treatments, and correcting overcompensation permits more equitable distribution of limited funds,” Justice Department lawyers argued in the government’s brief to the DC Circuit. “The result of bringing the Medicare payment amount for 340B drugs into alignment with average acquisition cost was therefore the redistribution of the anticipated $1.6 billion in savings, resulting in a 3.2% increase in the Medicare payment rates for non-drug items and services.”

Congress created the 340B program in 1992. Healthcare providers eligible for the program can buy outpatient drugs at discounted rates from pharmaceutical companies. When hospitals prescribe those drugs to patients covered by Medicare — the federal insurance program for people who are over the age of 65 or have disabilities — they submit claims to the government for reimbursement.

Starting in 2006, Congress gave the CMS two options to set the drug reimbursement rate. It could rely on what hospitals were actually paying to buy drugs if it had “statistically sound survey data” or, if that wasn’t available, the average sales price of the drugs. If the agency used the second, alternative option, Congress set a default rate: the average sales price plus 6%.

In the summer of 2017, the Trump administration announced a plan to change the rate. Under the new rule, the Medicare agency said it would pay the average sales price of drugs minus 22.5%. That rate would come closer to matching the discounted rate hospitals were paying through the 340B program, the agency said.

Hospitals don’t have to track or disclose how they use money saved through the program. Kelly Cleary, who spent three years as the chief legal officer for the CMS, said hospitals had provided examples of how they were using the funds to expand services into underserved areas and provide free or low-cost care.

“The money was going toward a purpose that was consistent with their mission,” said Cleary, who was involved in the CMS’s effort to change the rate and defend it in court. She returned to private practice last month as a partner at the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.

The chief financial officer for the Henry Ford Health System, which serves patients in Detroit and Jackson, Michigan, wrote in a court affidavit that even if the cut meant that reimbursement rates increased for other Medicare services, the hospital network still expected to lose around $8.5 million by the end of 2018 — money that had gone toward services for patients with low incomes, such as free and low-cost medications, a free community clinic, and mobile health units.

The margin between what the Henry Ford Health System paid for drugs through the 340B program and what it received back from Medicare helped hospitals in that network provide care for “underserved and indigent populations … that would otherwise be financially unsustainable,” the officer wrote.

In support of the rate cut, the CMS pointed to a 2015 report by the Government Accountability Office that showed hospitals participating in the program had an incentive to prescribe more drugs than hospitals that weren’t in the program, and that meant higher copayments for Medicare patients who were prescribed more drugs or higher-priced drugs. The agency concluded hospitals were receiving too much of a net financial benefit.

“While we recognize the intent of the 340B Program,” the agency wrote in a November 2017 notice in the Federal Register, “we believe it is inappropriate for Medicare to subsidize other activities.”

It’s a position that aligned the government with the pharmaceutical industry, which argued that some hospitals had abused the program. Drugmakers pointed out that even with a cut to the reimbursement rate, the healthcare providers would still get the benefit of discounted drugs. A representative of PhRMA, a membership group for the pharmaceutical industry, declined an interview request, but sent BuzzFeed News a copy of comments the group submitted in support of the cut.

“PhRMA is concerned that the 340B program continues to grow rapidly and without patient benefits, thus increasingly departing from its purpose and statutory boundaries,” the group wrote. “This growth in the 340B program creates market-distorting incentives that affect consumer prices for medicines, shift care to more expensive hospital settings, and accelerate provider market consolidation.”

Hospitals that supported the program, meanwhile, said the proposal punished providers who work with vulnerable patients, and they urged the CMS to focus its efforts instead on bringing down drug costs.

The agency disputed that the plan was punitive and said that “lowering the price of pharmaceuticals is a top priority” but was outside the scope of what it was considering at the time.

Hospitals and hospital associations began suing the administration shortly after the rule became final in November 2017. They argued that the CMS had come up with the new rate using a process that Congress hadn’t approved. The agency admitted that it didn’t have the “statistically sound” survey data on what hospitals were actually paying for the drugs — the first method Congress had laid out — so instead it used an estimate of average purchase costs compiled by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, an agency that advises Congress.

The problem with the government’s approach, the hospitals argued, was that Congress had said the CMS could either use survey data on purchase costs or the average sales price of the drugs, but not a hybrid of the two. Congress had given the CMS authority to “adjust” rates, but cutting the reimbursement rate by nearly 30% was more than just an adjustment, the hospitals said.

US District Judge Rudolph Contreras in Washington, DC, sided with the hospitals. In a December 2018 opinion, he wrote that the rate cut’s “magnitude and its wide applicability inexorably lead to the conclusion” that the agency had “fundamentally altered” what Congress had spelled out.

The judge stopped short of blocking the rule and ordering the government to reimburse hospitals for the difference between the previous rate and the CMS’s new, lower rate, however, writing that it was “likely to be highly disruptive.” He noted that the payment system had to stay budget neutral, which meant the money would need to come from another source, a “quagmire that may be impossible to navigate” given how much money the government paid out of Medicare each year. He asked for more briefing on what the agency should do to fix the problem, but that issue was put on hold as the administration took the case to the DC Circuit.

A three-judge DC Circuit panel heard arguments on Nov. 8 and has yet to release a decision. In the meantime, hospitals have continued to file lawsuits as their claims for reimbursement at the previous, higher rate are rejected; earlier this month, a hospital system in Jacksonville, Florida, which is part of the University of Florida, filed a new suit in federal court in Washington. And the CMS is going ahead with its survey over the objections from hospitals.

“The pandemic amplifies the significance of this policy, but the fact remains that there were winners and losers with the policy and it’s always going to be a zero-sum game,” Cleary said. “If the court rules against the agency and the agency is forced to walk back the policy, that stands to negatively impact thousands of hospitals.”

Wiley, of American University, told BuzzFeed News that even before the pandemic, the fight over the 340B program highlighted how hospitals and drugmakers were “actively throwing each other under the bus” in the broader debate about who was to blame for the high cost of prescription drugs and what the federal government should do about it.

“Which stakeholders voters perceive to be the heroes of the pandemic response could affect health reform and reimbursement politics for years to come,” she wrote.

If you're someone who is seeing the impact of the coronavirus firsthand, we’d like to hear from you. Reach out to us via one of our tip line channels.


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Zoe Tillman is a senior legal reporter with BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC.

U.S. judge orders 15 banks to face big investors' currency rigging lawsuit

CRIMINAL CAPITALISM BANK ROBBERY


IT INCLUDES THE ROYAL BANK OF CANADA 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Thursday said institutional investors, including BlackRock Inc and Allianz SE's Pacific Investment Management Co, can pursue much of their lawsuit accusing 15 major banks of rigging prices in the $6.6 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market.

U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield in Manhattan said the nearly 1,300 plaintiffs, including many mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, plausibly alleged that the banks conspired to rig currency benchmarks from 2003 to 2013 and profit at their expense.

"This is an injury of the type the antitrust laws were intended to prevent," Schofield wrote in a 40-page decision.

The banks, which sometimes controlled more than 90% of the market, included Bank of America, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Scotland, Societe Generale, Standard Chartered and UBS or various affiliates.

In their complaint, the plaintiffs accused the banks of improperly sharing confidential orders and trading positions, and using chat rooms with such names as "The Cartel," "The Mafia" and "The Bandits' Club."

Banks were also accused of using deceptive trading tactics such as "front running," "banging the close" and "taking out the filth."

The banks countered that the plaintiffs pointed to no transactions where the alleged manipulation caused losses.

Schofield dismissed portions of some the claims, and dismissed some Allianz plaintiffs from the case.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The litigation began in November 2018, after the plaintiffs "opted out" of similar nationwide litigation that had resulted in $2.31 billion of settlements with most of the banks.

Those settlements followed regulatory probes worldwide that led to more than $10 billion of fines for several banks, and the convictions or indictments of some traders.

Investors typically opt out of litigation when they hope to recover more by suing on their own.

The case is Allianz Global Investors GMBH et al v Bank of America Corp et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 18-10364.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Aurora Ellis)

International students wonder if U.S. business school worth it in coronavirus era

Humeyra Pamuk
Jan Wolfe

By Humeyra Pamuk and Jan Wolfe

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - This summer, dozens of incoming students at New York's Columbia Business School had planned to sail around the coast of Croatia for a week to get to know each other. Instead, they are chatting online and playing icebreaker games on Zoom.

With the coronavirus still spreading, social gatherings like the sailing trip organized by students are on hold, and there is a good chance that when school starts in September, many classes and events will be held online.

Columbia and other elite U.S. business schools like Harvard Business School and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania have said they will likely move to a "hybrid" model of virtual and in-person learning.

It is a far cry from the typical MBA experience which features close contact with fellow students, in-person networking events, trips overseas and lunch sessions with CEOs. The changes have some students reconsidering the value of a degree that can cost upwards of $100,000 a year in tuition, housing, and other fees.

International students, who make up roughly 35 percent of the student body at most elite U.S. business schools, are particularly unsure about the decision.

"The virtual environment might take away a chunk of the MBA experience," said a 27-year-old student from China who was admitted to Wharton and is considering whether to defer for a year.

"That's what a lot of people including myself are thinking through now," said the student, who declined to be identified because of concerns about his visa status and employment prospects.

The United States has been hard hit by the coronavirus outbreak, with more than 1.7 million cases and over 100,000 deaths. Higher education has been upended with most schools sending students home in the spring and moving classes online.

The U.S. hosts over a million international students at its higher education institutions, according to the State Department data. International candidates account for 36 percent of people who enroll in full-time U.S. MBA programs, according to Graduate Management Admission Council, an association of business schools.

If institutions do not resume in-person learning, enrollment, particularly among international students, is likely to take a hit, according to a GMAC survey.

Only 43 percent of the international MBA candidates surveyed said they planned to enroll if programs begin online. Forty-eight percent of them indicated they would defer in that scenario.

Half a dozen international students who have been accepted to the Class of 2022 at U.S. business schools told Reuters they have lots of doubts: Will online classes be fulfilling? What happens to on-campus recruitment events? Even if daily life resumes, will the job market take years to recover?

"The most important part of the MBA is recruiting and even that is going to be virtual," said a second Chinese student admitted to Columbia Business School, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "I don't need people to teach me basic accounting. I already know all that."

He said he still plans to attend as it was too late to change his plans.

TRAVEL OBSTACLES

For international students who press ahead with the MBA, another challenge may be getting to the United States.

Most air travel has been restricted, and the State Department in March suspended routine visa services worldwide.

The department said it is engaging with U.S. schools to help international students navigate the visa process, but it declined to provide specifics.

With so much uncertainty, business schools are taking unusual steps to accommodate students.

Harvard is allowing students to defer for a year and Wharton has said it will grant a deferral to international students who cannot start the program on time because of a visa issue.

Columbia told students in May that it would not allow deferrals, but advised students who cannot matriculate for a particular reason to contact the admissions team.

Some students, facing visa delays, travel restrictions and the increased cost and hassle of flying, intend to start the semester online.

"I plan to stay at my home in Beijing and take the courses remotely," a third Chinese student admitted to Columbia said.

Sanjeev Khagram, the dean of the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University, said he is telling international students that "virtual teams" are the future, so adjusting to online interaction has its upsides.

"Being effective in this virtual world actually gives them a competitive advantage," Khagram said.

Meanwhile, the sailing trip for incoming Columbia students is on hold indefinitely.

"Although this spring/summer isn't unfolding how we hoped it would, our class is developing a unique bond over this shared once in a generation experience," the organizers said on the event's website.

(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Jan Wolfe; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Alistair Bell)

Go-go bars gone as coronavirus hits Bangkok's sex district

Jiraporn Kuhakan, Matthew Tostevin


MAY 29, 2020 

BANGKOK (Reuters) - The black leather party masks that performers May and Som wear for their fetish shows in Bangkok are definitely not the sort to stop the coronavirus.


An 18+ sign is seen inside the Patpong museum at the nightlife and sex trade district, during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Bangkok, Thailand, May 26, 2020. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha

Behind closed doors, they practise for the day when health restrictions are lifted and tourists return, but they have no idea when and worry that the city’s infamous Patpong red-light district could be very different by then.

“This kind of place will be the last to reopen,” said May 31. Like Som, she goes only by her Thai nickname.

“Even when it does reopen, customers will be worried about their safety,” she said at the BarBar club on Patpong’s Soi 2 street. BarBar and other clubs such as “Bada Bing” and “Fresh Boys” are shuttered and the nights are largely silent.

Thailand shut bars and clubs in mid-March as coronavirus cases surged. It halted international passenger flights, stopping the tourism that had made Bangkok the world’s most visited city for four years.

Patpong went dark.


But residents say the decline had already begun for a red-light district that flourished in the 1970s as a rest stop for U.S. forces in Indochina.

“This COVID-19 is an accelerant of change,” said Michael Ernst, an Austrian 25-year veteran of the district and former bar owner who opened the Patpong Museum weeks before the new coronavirus reached Thailand.

“The go-go bar and its very one-dimensional concept of a stage and ladies dancing on it with a number. I think that’s already over, they just don’t know that yet.”
SHIFT

The number of go-go bars in Patpong district has waned in recent years as business has moved to other parts of Bangkok or online and as sex tourism has become a smaller part of the overall tourism industry for Thailand.

For decades, tourism figures were skewed towards men. But the growing importance of Chinese visitors in particular changed that. In 2018, more than 53 percent of tourists were women.


Nonetheless, Patpong’s nightlife district employed thousands of people, mostly young women. Most are now among the 2 million Thais the state planning agency believes may be made unemployed this year because of the impact of the virus.

BarBar is still paying some workers. But the manager of at least one go-go bar on Soi 2 just abandoned the lease.

Patpong had never known it as bad, said 70-year-old Pratoomporn Somritsuk, who for 35 years has run the Old Other Office drinking den.

“A lot of ladies here working in nightlife are mostly from a poor family or upcountry,” she said. “They have no chance to go work in a company.”

The lockdown has meant the whole sex industry has collapsed. Online escort service Smooci said activity in Bangkok fell to 10 percent in April.

Thailand has now begun to lift some movement restrictions with infections at over 3,000 and deaths nearly 60, but neither rising rapidly. There is talk of tourism resuming.

But a health ministry spokesman said that nightlife venues would be among the last to reopen.


“In the new normal, Patpong will have to adapt a lot. It may end up looking different, but this change will be for the better,” Rungruang Kitpati said.

Social distancing and the sex industry are hard to make compatible, however.

“I can provide alcohol gel or temperature checks,” said 38-year-old Jittra Nawamawat, one of BarBar’s founders. “But staying one metre apart is impossible.”


Additional reporting by Panarat Thepgumpanat and Chayut Setboonsarng; Editing by Kay Johnson and Raju Gopalakrishnan

With a gay protagonist, Pixar short ‘Out’ makes history


CANADIAN, EH

By JAKE COYLE
This image released by Pixar Animation Studios shows a scene from the animated short film "Out," featuring a gay protagonist, the first in Pixar's 25-year history. (Pixar Animation Studios via AP)

This undated image released by Pixar Animation Studios shows Steven Clay Hunter, director of the Pixar Animation short "Out." (Pixar Animation Studios via AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — In Steven Clay Hunter’s 23 years as an animator at Pixar, he has drawn a seven-armed octopus, a Canadian daredevil and a wheezing toy penguin. But there were scenes he never expected to animate until he began working on his short, “Out.”

Hunter wrote and directed the nine-minute Pixar film, which recently debuted on Disney+. It’s about a man named Greg who, while packing up to move, temporarily switches bodies with his dog, Jim. While frantically trying to hide evidence of his boyfriend, Manuel, Greg discovers the courage to reveal his sexual orientation to his parents.


Greg, who’s loosely based on Hunter, is Pixar’s first LGBTQ protagonist. And while “Out” includes some more typically Pixar material (a pair of rainbow animals, a cameo from Wheezy of “Toy Story”), it features images never seen before in the 25 years of the studio, or in the longer history of Disney. Like when Greg and his boyfriend, Manuel, hug each other.

“The first time I drew Greg and Manuel holding each other in the bedroom, I was bawling my face off,” says Hunter. “All this emotion came welling up because I realized I had been in animation for decades and I had never drawn that in my career. It just hit me.”

“Out” is a small movie on a streaming service, not one of Pixar’s global blockbusters. But it has already had an outsized impact and been celebrated as a milestone for inclusion in family entertainment. GLAAD called it “a huge step forward for the Walt Disney Company.”

“‘Out’ represents the best of Disney and Pixar’s legacy as a place for heartwarming stories about finding one’s own inner strength in the face of life’s challenges,” said Jeremy Blacklow, GLAAD’s director of entertainment media.

From his home in Oakland, California, Hunter, a 51-year-old animator making his directorial debut, has humbly taken in the warm responses. He managed to meet his producer, Max Sachar, for a celebratory, socially distanced glass of rose last weekend. But he’s been reluctant to talk about such a personal film.

“I felt like this was something I had to do,” said Hunter in one of his first interviews. “I didn’t come out until I was 27 and I’m 51 now, and I feel like I’m still dealing with it. You can’t hide who you are for half of your life and then not carry that baggage around. You’ve got to process it somehow. I got lucky enough to process it in the making of this movie.”


It’s part joke, part truth that “Out” is labeled “based on a true story.” The first shot is of a magical dog and cat jumping through a rainbow. Hunter has had a dog named Jim but, naturally, hasn’t experienced a canine “Freaky Friday.” But the central story is autobiographical.

“The relationship of Manuel and Greg is something I went through,” he says. “I wasn’t out to my family and I was in a relationship but they didn’t know about him. It took a toll on our relationship and we ended up breaking up because of that. And that break-up led to me coming out to my family, over the phone in a conference room at Pixar.”

Hunter first came up with the idea of a coming-out film five years ago. But it was the Pixar SparkShorts program, which is meant to discover new voices and experiment with different techniques, that presented Hunter with an opportunity. After working on the Spark short “Purl,” he pitched “Out.” It was greenlit and finished by December.

“It was cool that he was telling this coming out story but he was doing so while coming out as a filmmaker,” says Sachar. “It was really wonderful for everyone to be a part of and witness.”

LGBTQ characters have been increasingly appearing in Disney films but often do so fleetingly. Gaston’s sidekick LeFou (Josh Gad) was suggested to be gay in 2017’s live-action “Beauty and the Beast.” Pixar’s “Onward,” released earlier this year, featured what many consider Disney’s first outwardly gay animated character: a police officer voiced by Lena Waithe who refers to her girlfriend. Some Middle East nations banned the film.

“Out,” finally, is far more straightforward. It includes, for example, a tender kiss between Manuel and Greg. To animate it, Hunter approached Wendell Lee, the only other gay animator still at Pixar from Hunter’s early days with the company.

“I just went to him and said, ‘You’ve got to animate this.’ And he was like, ‘Heck yeah,’” says Hunter. “I said: I want a kiss. I don’t want a peck.”

Hunter recently watched “Out” with his family, who live in Canada, over Zoom. It was a moment of connection that he hopes plays out similarly for others during quarantine. For young and old, gay and straight, “Out” is about being proud of who you are, whoever you are.

Reflecting on the film’s significance, Hunter on Thursday noted the passing of playwright and AIDS activist Larry Kramer. “Out,” not coincidentally, came out on Harvey Milk Day.

“We’re just an extension of that. We’re moving toward more visibility. It doesn’t mean we’re taking over. We’re just trying to tell our stories like everyone else,” says Hunter. “And we’re not going anywhere. We’re here to stay.”

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Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

Debate over $600 in jobless aid to intensify as claims rise
THERE SHOULD BE NO DEBATE, THE BOSS SHOULD PAY BETTER , THEN YOU WOULD GO BACK TO WORK

ANY MONEY WE DO MAKE WE SPEND UNLIKE THE PENNY PINCHING 1%

#FIGHTFOR15, UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME $2000 MONTHLY, PAID CHILD CARE, WAGES FOR HOUSEWORK

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER

FILE - In this Thursday, April 2, 2020 file photo a sign explains the closure of a shop in the Pike Place Market in Seattle. As the coronavirus outbreak has caused record number of people to seek unemployment benefits Washington state officials said Thursday that impostors have used the stolen information of tens of thousands of people to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in unemployment benefits. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson,File)


WASHINGTON (AP) — A debate in Congress over whether to extend $600 a week in federally provided benefits to the unemployed looks sure to intensify with the number of people receiving the aid now topping 30 million — one in five workers.

The money, included in a government relief package enacted in March, is set to expire July 31. Yet with the unemployment rate widely expected to still be in the mid-teens by then, members of both parties will face pressure to compromise on some form of renewed benefits for the jobless.

Democrats have proposed keeping the $600-a-week payments through January in a $3 trillion relief package that the House approved this month along party lines. Senate Republicans oppose that measure. They have expressed concern that the federal payments — which come on top of whatever unemployment aid a state provides — would discourage laid-off people from returning to jobs that pay less than their combined state and federal unemployment aid now does.


So far there are no formal negotiations on another relief package. But analysts say the need to address the fate of the $600 weekly benefits could force a resolution of the issue this summer.

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, are promoting a plan that would provide $450 a week for laid-off workers who return to their jobs, as a “back to work” bonus. This payment would also expire by July 31, though.
Larry Kudlow, the top White House economic adviser, said earlier this week that the proposal is “something we’re looking at very carefully.”

Separately, Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., vice chair of the Joint Economic Committee, has proposed reducing the $600 benefit to $300 in stages by the end of the year. This plan, Beyer suggested in an interview, would sharply reduce the number of people who are receiving more money from jobless aid than they would from working.“If you solve that problem, there’s a good chance of extending unemployment,” Beyer said.

Typically, state unemployment aid replaces only about one-third to one-half a laid-off worker’s pay to encourage the recipients to seek new work. The $600 in federal benefits was added as a way to replace all of an average worker’s lost income. But because those who have lost jobs since the virus hit are disproportionately low-wage workers, most of them are receiving more in unemployment aid than they did from their old jobs, economists estimate.

Shannon Conway, director of operations at R&L Hospitality Group in Richmond, which owns five restaurants and a catering company, said she and other restaurant operators have encountered reluctance from some of their laid-off workers to return.

That’s partly because of the $600-a-week in federal unemployment aid, she said. But another factor is the uncertainty about what the restaurant business will look like in the coming weeks and months, Conway added. It’s unlikely that servers will earn anything close to what they used to, she said.

“Recalling staff is definitely an issue,” Conway said. “Why would they give up a sure thing when they know we don’t know what’s going to happen through these early stages of reopening? I can’t guarantee them their same shifts.”

Madelyn Figgers, 26, lost her job as a server in March at one of the restaurants Conway operates, Lunch and Supper. Figgers said the extra $600 in unemployment benefits has allowed her to keep up with all her bills and rent.

“I don’t think I would be able to stay afloat without the $600,” she said.

Figgers acknowledged that the extra money would make her hesitant to return to her old job, particularly if it was for fewer hours than she had before. But she also knows that legally she is required to accept an offer for work, or risk losing all her benefits.

So far, Figgers hasn’t been asked to return. But she doubts that the restaurant industry will return to what it was, when she could earn $300 in tips on a busy weekend night. She is considering leaving the industry and is looking for administrative jobs that she could do from home.

Research by University of Chicago economist Peter Ganong and two of his colleagues has found that, because of the extra $600, two-thirds of laid-off workers are receiving benefits that exceed the paychecks they previously earned from working. One-fifth could receive at least twice their previous pay.

Ganong says that such large payments could delay some laid-off workers from switching to new careers that might be more in demand in the future.

But he also thinks that Congress should keep an enhanced benefit in place because more jobless aid is crucial in the midst of a deep recession. Jobless benefits enable recipients to pay for necessities and cover more bills, including, crucially, their rent or a mortgage, Ganong said.

He proposes replacing the flat $600-a-week payments with a percentage increase to each recipient’s benefit check, with the goal of matching the worker’s previous earnings but not going much higher. Congress did not initially take this route, in part because of doubts that states’ antiquated unemployment systems could handle such a change, but that could be addressed by the end of July, Ganong said.

Andrew Stettner, senior fellow at The Century Foundation, said that unemployment benefit payments are on track to top $70 billion in May, a significant stimulus for the economy.

“The job market has not made a big comeback, and the enhanced unemployment aid is one of the most important fiscal boosts that the federal government can provide to families and the economy,” he said.

___

AP staff writers Sarah Rankin in Richmond and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.

Shots fired during Denver protest of Minneapolis man’s death

By THOMAS PEIPERT

1 of 22
Denver Police Department officers clear a man who fell to the street after they used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse a protest outside the State Capitol over the death of George Floyd, a handcuffed black man who died in police custody in Minneapolis, late Thursday, May 28, 2020, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)


DENVER (AP) — Protesters swarmed Denver on Thursday, blocking traffic and smashing vehicles while running from gunfire and police tear gas after a demonstration against the death of a black man in Minneapolis police custody turned violent.

Hundreds of demonstrators stood in the downtown streets and chanted as darkness fell outside the Colorado State Capitol, where protesters spray-painted graffiti and broke car windows. In other areas of downtown Denver, police in riot gear fired gas canisters, used rubber bullets and walked in a phalanx through the streets to drive protesters away. The protest briefly spilled over onto Interstate 25, blocking all lanes of traffic until police used tear gas to disperse the crowd.




The protests continued into the night, despite Denver Mayor Michael Hancock pleading for calm.

“I certainly understand everyone’s frustration and sense of pain and disgust following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis,” he said in a video posted on Twitter. “But I want to plead to everyone. Let’s demonstrate, but let’s demonstrate peacefully. Leave the weapons home.”

Earlier in the protest, gunfire outside the state Capitol sent people running for cover. Gary Cutler, a spokesman for the Colorado State Patrol, said the shots were fired in a park across the street. Most of the protesters already had left the area and were marching downtown.

Cutler said the Capitol building was locked down, and everyone inside was safe. No injuries have been reported from the shots.

State Rep. Leslie Herod, who was protesting at the Capitol, tweeted, “We just got shot at.” She later said, “We will not be deterred by this unspeakable act of violence.”

Police spokesman Kurt Barnes said it’s unclear if the protesters were being targeted, and no one has been arrested.

About six or seven shots were fired, he said.

Several hundred protesters had gathered to call for justice following the death of Floyd, who died in police custody in Minneapolis on Monday after an officer knelt on his neck for almost eight minutes. In footage recorded by a bystander, Floyd pleaded that he couldn’t breathe.

Some among the Denver protesters carried signs reading “Black Lives Matter” and chanted, “Hey, hey. Ho, ho. Racist police got to go.”

Aerial footage showed several protesters smashing the windows out of at least two vehicles parked outside the Capitol, and others spray-painted graffiti on the Capitol steps.

A cellphone video shot by protester Anabel Escobar, 29, showed a man on the hood of an SUV making its way through the crowd in front of the Capitol. The video showed the driver speeding up and then apparently trying to run the man over after he fell off the hood. The vehicle sped away as other protesters chased it. It was unclear if the man on the hood was injured.


Gov. Jared Polis said Thursday night he was “absolutely shocked” by the video.

“Coloradans are better than this,” he said. “I share the immense anguish we all feel about the unjust murder of George Floyd. But let me be clear, senseless violence will never be healed by more violence.”

As the protest started, The Denver Police Department tweeted a message from Chief Paul Pazen sending condolences to Floyd’s family and saying the city’s officers do not use the tactics employed by the Minneapolis officers.

He called that type of force “inexcusable.”

Four Minneapolis police officers have been fired, and the mayor has called for the officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck to be criminally charged.

The death has led to violent protests in Minneapolis and demonstrations in other cities, including Los Angeles.

7 shot at Louisville protest over fatal police shooting

In a photo provided by Jada W., protesters gather Thursday, May 28, 2020, in downtown Louisville, Ky., against the police shooting of Breonna Taylor, a black woman fatally shot by police in her home in March. At least seven people were shot during the protest. (Jada W. via AP)
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — At least seven people were in Louisville as protesters turned out to demand justice for Breonna Taylor, a black woman fatally shot by police in her home in March.

Louisville Metro Police confirmed in a statement early Friday that there were at least seven shooting victims, at least one of whom is in critical condition. The statement said there were “some arrests,” but police didn’t provide a number.

“No officers discharged their service weapons,” police spokesman Sgt. Lamont Washington wrote in an email to The Associated Press. Washington said that all seven were civilians.

Around 500 to 600 demonstrators marched through the Kentucky city’s downtown streets on Thursday night, the Courier Journal reported. The protests stretched for more than six hours, ending in the early hours of Friday as rain poured down.

“Understandably, emotions are high,” Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer tweeted just before midnight, sharing a Facebook post asking for peace that he said was written on behalf of Taylor’s mother. “As Breonna’s mother says let’s be peaceful as we work toward truth and justice.”

Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical tech, was shot eight times on March 13 after Louisville narcotics detectives knocked down the front door. No drugs were found in the home.

Attention on Taylor’s death has intensified after her family sued the police department earlier this month. The case has attracted national headlines alongside the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery in a Georgia neighborhood in February.

Thursday’s demonstration came as protesters across the country — from Los Angeles to Memphis, Tennessee, to New York to Minneapolis itself — have demonstrated against the death of a black man, George Floyd, in Minneapolis police custody.

Around 12:20 a.m., Fischer tweeted a video that he said was a message from Taylor’s family.

“Louisville, thank you so much for saying Breonna’s name tonight. We are not going to stop until we get justice,” a woman says in the video. “But we should stop tonight before people get hurt. Please go home, be safe and be ready to keep fighting.”Meanwhile, live video from downtown Louisville around 12:30 a.m. showed some protesters behind makeshift wooden barricades, which appeared to be made out of picnic tables spray-painted with the words “You can’t kill us all.” A small fire inside a trash can was visible in the middle of the street.

Police in body armor and face shields held batons and lined up around Louisville City Hall. They appeared to fire rubber bullets and deploy tear gas canisters, fogging the air and inducing coughs among the remaining members of the crowd. Protesters were shown filming police with their cellphones.

Kentuckians are still under social distancing mandates driven by the coronavirus pandemic. Many protesters wore masks.

Chants early Friday included “No justice, no peace” and “Whose streets? Our streets.”