YA THINK
Experts worry CDC is sidelined in coronavirus response

NEW YORK (AP) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has repeatedly found its suggestions for fighting the coronavirus outbreak taking a backseat to other concerns within the Trump administration. That leaves public health experts outside government fearing the agency’s decades of experience in beating back disease threats are going to waste.

“You have the greatest fighting force against infectious diseases in world history. Why would you not use them?” said Dr. Howard Markel, a public health historian at the University of Michigan.

The complaints have sounded for months. But they have become louder following repeated revelations that transmission-prevention guidance crafted by CDC scientists was never adopted by the White House.


The latest instance surfaced Thursday, when The Associated Press reported that President Donald Trump’s administration shelved a CDC document containing step-by-step advice to local authorities on how and when to reopen restaurants and other public places during the current pandemic.

The administration has disputed the notion that the CDC had been sidelined, saying the agency is integral to the administration’s plans to expand contact tracing nationwide.

But it’s clear that the CDC is playing a much quieter role than it has during previous outbreaks.

The nation’s COVID-19 response has seen a strange turn for the CDC, which opened in 1946 in Atlanta as The Communicable Disease Center to prevent the spread of malaria with a $10 million budget and a few hundred employees. Today, the agency has a core budget of more than $7 billion — a sum that has been shrinking in recent years — and employs nearly 11,000 people.

The CDC develops vaccines and diagnostic tests. Its experts advise doctors how best to treat people, and teach state, local and international officials how to fight and prevent disease. Among the CDC’s elite workforce are hundreds of the world’s foremost disease investigators — microbiologists, pathologists and other scientists dispatched to investigate new and mysterious illnesses.

In 2009, when a new type of flu virus known at the time as swine flu spread around the world, the CDC held almost daily briefings. Its experts released information on a regular basis to describe the unfolding scientific understanding of the virus, and the race for a vaccine.

The federal response to the coronavirus pandemic initially followed a similar pattern.

CDC first learned in late December of the emergence of a new disease in China, and the U.S. identified its first case in January. In those early days, the CDC held frequent calls with reporters. It also quickly developed a test it could run at its labs, and a test kit to be sent to state health department labs to detect the virus.


But February proved to be a disaster. The test kit was flawed, delaying the ability of states to do testing. A CDC-run surveillance system, meant to look for signs of the virus in people who had thought they had the flu, was slow to get off the ground. Officials at the CDC and at other federal agencies were slow to recognize infections from Europe were outpacing ones from travelers to China.

But politically speaking, one the most striking moments that month was something that the CDC — in the eyes of public health experts — got perfectly right.

In late February, Dr. Nancy Messonnier — a well-respected CDC official who was leading the agency’s coronavirus response — contradicted statements by other federal officials that the virus was contained. “It’s not so much a question of if this will happen anymore, but rather more a question of exactly when this will happen – and how many people in this country will have severe illness,” she said.

Stocks plunged. President Donald Trump was enraged.

The White House Coronavirus Task Force moved to center stage. Vice President Mike Pence took control of clearing CDC communications about the virus. CDC news conferences stopped completely after March 9. Messonnier exited the public stage.

CDC Director Robert Redfield continued to keep the low profile he’s had since getting the job. Two other task force members — Dr. Deborah Birx, the task force coordinator, and Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health — became the task force’s chief scientific communicators.

Health experts have praised Fauci, but they say CDC’s voice is sorely missed.

“At the White House briefings, they (CDC) should be talking about antibody tests and if they work. How long do people have the virus if they’re infected? What are the data for that? The issue ought to be front and center. These are the questions CDC can answer,” said Dr. James Curran, a former CDC star scientist who is now dean of Emory University’s public health school.

The government has continued to look to CDC officials for information and guidance, but there have been repeated instances when what the agency’s experts send to Washington is rejected.

In early March, administration officials overruled CDC doctors who wanted to recommend that elderly and physically fragile Americans be advised not to fly on commercial airlines because of the new coronavirus, the AP reported.

Last month, USA Today reported that the White House task force had forced the CDC had to change orders it had posted keeping cruise ships docked until August. The post was altered to say the ships could sail again in July, the newspaper reported.

And last week, officials nixed CDC draft guidance that was researched and written to help faith leaders, business owners, educators and state and local officials as they begin to reopen.

The 17 pages of guidelines were never approved by Redfield to present to the White House task force, said an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. They were only discussed at the task force level once the drafts leaked publicly, and no decisions about them were ever made.

Still, the CDC guidelines were the subject of intense debate at the upper echelons of the White House. Some officials saw them as essential to helping businesses and other organizations safely reopen.

Others, including chief of staff Mark Meadows, did not believe it appropriate for the federal government to set guidelines for specific sectors whose circumstances could vary widely depending on the level of outbreak in their areas, according to a person familiar with the discussion. What was necessary for a coffee shop in New York and one in Oklahoma was wildly different, in their view.

They worried about potential negative economic impact from the guidelines, and some aides expressed doubts about whether the government should be prescribing practices to religious communities.

The decision not to issue detailed sector guidance is also in keeping with the White House’s strategic decision to leave the specific details of reopening to states. While Trump had at one point claimed absolute authority to detail how and when states open, he’s adopted a largely hands-off approach as more and more states begin to lift lockdowns.

Trump suggests his decision is in keeping with the principles of federalism, but White House aides acknowledge that it also lessens the political peril for the president — who has come under pressure from conservative allies, particularly in states that haven’t experienced wide outbreaks, to swiftly reopen the country.

On a conference call Thursday afternoon with the House members on the White House’s “Opening Up America” panel, lawmakers in both parties pressed the White House to release sector-specific guidance of the sort currently held up by the administration.

“There was clear bipartisan support for the need to have CDC guidance and the need to have best practices,” said Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla.

The CDC did not respond to a Thursday request for an interview with Redfield.

In a recent interview with the AP, the agency’s No. 2 administrator, Dr. Anne Schuchat, was asked to address reports that CDC recommendations were being ignored in Washington.

She paused, and then replied slowly.

“The CDC is providing our best evidence-based information to policy makers and providing that on a daily basis to protect the American people,” she said, without further comment.

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Dearen reported from Gainesville, Florida. Miller reported from Washington.

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This story has been corrected to reflect the proper spelling of the last name of Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla.

Becoming ‘King of Ventilators’ may result in unexpected glut

THE CRISIS OF CAPITALISM IS OVERPRODUCTION

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FILE - In this April 20, 2020, file photo a ventilator waits to be used for a COVID-19 patient going into cardiac arrest at St. Joseph's Hospital in Yonkers, N.Y. An analysis of federal contracting data by The Associated Press shows the Department of Health and Human Services is now on track to exceed 100,000 new ventilators by around July 13, about a week later than the 100-day deadline Trump first gave on March 27. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)


WASHINGTON (AP) — As requests for ventilators from the national stockpile reached a crescendo in late March, President Donald Trump made what seemed like a bold claim: His administration would have 100,000 within 100 days.

At the time, the Department of Health and Human Services had not ordered any new ventilators since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in January. But records show that over the following three weeks, the agency scrambled to turn Trump’s pledge into a reality, spending nearly $3 billion to spur U.S. manufacturers to crank out the breathing machines at an unprecedented pace.


An analysis of federal contracting data by The Associated Press shows the agency is now on track to exceed 100,000 new ventilators by around July 13, about a week later than the 100-day deadline Trump first gave on March 27.

By the end of 2020, the administration is expected to take delivery of nearly 200,000 new ventilators, based on the AP’s review of current federal purchasing contracts. That would more than double the estimated 160,000 ventilators hospitals across the U.S. had before the pandemic.

“We became the king of ventilators, thousands and thousands of ventilators,” Trump boasted in an April 29 speech.

But over the past month, demand for ventilators has decreased even as the U.S. death toll from the novel coronavirus has surged past 80,000. After observing unusually high death rates for coronavirus victims who were put on ventilators, many doctors are using them only as a last resort.

That’s raising the unexpected prospect that the United States could soon be awash in surplus ventilators, so much so the White House is now planning to ship thousands overseas to help boost the virus response of other nations.

In a speech to Republican members of Congress on Friday, the president credited his son-in-law, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, with heading up the effort to purchase the ventilators.

“We built, and we built, and we built,” Trump said. “Now we have nine factories that are throwing out ventilators at numbers that nobody can believe. It was really — there’s not been anything like that, since the Second World War, where we did the same thing with other types of product.”

Daniel Adelman, a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business who teaches health care analytics, said the U.S. government is now buying more than twice the number of ventilators it needs, even under a worst-case scenario forecasting the spread of COVID-19.

But Adelman said mathematical models cannot predict with certainty how many ventilators will be needed if there is a resurgence of the coronavirus later in the year or if there is another pandemic in the future.

“It seems incongruent with the forecasts that you’re seeing,” Adelman said of the government purchases. “I’d probably rather they order too many rather than ordering too few.”

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In patients with severe cases of COVID-19, the virus attacks the lungs, causing fluid to collect in tiny air sacs called alveoli. That makes it difficult for the lungs to transfer oxygen from the air to the blood, which can be deadly. To treat these low oxygen levels, doctors have historically relied on ventilators.

The Strategic National Stockpile, the federal government’s emergency reserve of medical supplies, had about 16,660 ventilators ready to deploy at the start of March, with an additional 2,400 out for maintenance.

By the middle of the month, health officials and governors in states with the worst virus outbreaks began expressing concerns that the supply of breathing machines could run out, potentially leaving thousands of critically ill patients gasping for air.


Among those calling for additional ventilators was Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.), who predicted on March 24 that all of the ventilators in his state would be in use, and patients in need would be left without proper treatment. Cuomo said projections showed New York would need at least 30,000 additional ventilators to get through the mid-April peak of the outbreak. At that point, FEMA had sent New York 400.

Trump expressed skepticism at Cuomo’s figures even as his administration rushed to send New York 4,000 additional ventilators — about one-quarter of the nation’s entire emergency stockpile. Still, Cuomo pleaded for more.

“You pick the 26,000 people who are going to die,” Cuomo said at a news conference,

It wasn’t just New York, however. Similarly dire projections of a ventilator shortfall were also then circulating within the White House.

“The scariest day of my life was about a month ago when, after a long day of meetings, my team told me that we were going to be needing 130,000 ventilators; that we were short hundreds of thousands of ventilators,” Trump recounted in an April 14 briefing. “I had governors requesting unreasonable sums that the federal government just didn’t have.”

By late March, a bipartisan chorus of state governors and members of Congress were calling on the president to exercise his emergency authority under the Defense Production Act to force U.S. companies to produce ventilators.

Trump had resisted invoking the Korean War-era law, which grants the president sole authority to direct U.S. industrial production of critical supplies in times of national emergency, saying the private sector was stepping up production of ventilators and other medical supplies on its own.

But on March 27, Trump changed course, announcing that he would invoke the Defense Production Act to produce ventilators, which meant companies would have to give priority to federal orders over other customers.

“In the next 100 days — well, first of all, we’ve already delivered thousands of them — but within the next 100 days, we will either make or get, in some form, over 100,000 additional units,” Trump said.

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By the start of April, FEMA officials confirmed to the House Oversight and Reform Committee that demand for ventilators would soon outpace the available supply. To ration what was left, FEMA Administrator Peter Gaynor directed that the remaining ventilators in the national stockpile be designated as a “strategic national asset” — to be provided to states only on a case-by-case basis where hospitals could demonstrate an “exigent need” to sustain life within 72 hours.

Federal purchasing records show that three months into the pandemic, HHS, which includes the Strategic National Stockpile, had not yet placed any orders for new ventilators in 2020.
Full Coverage: Virus Outbreak

That changed within three days of Trump’s March 27 edict, with HSS signing a $350 million deal with Zoll Medical Corp. Records show a flurry of about a dozen big orders with other ventilator makers over the next two weeks, most of them no-bid contracts exempted from the typical federal purchasing rules due to the national emergency.

In a typical year, U.S. companies produce about 29,000 ventilators, according to data cited by the White House. Though several domestic manufacturers had already announced they were adding extra shifts and hiring additional workers to ramp up production, AP’s analysis of HHS contracts show that even with the emergency no-bid orders the traditional medical device makers would deliver about 73,990 new ventilators by July 6 — the 100-day mark since Trump’s March 27 pledge.

It was clear additional industrial capacity would be needed to get 100,000 units by the president’s deadline.

General Motors, which had shut down auto production, had already entered into a partnership on March 20 with Ventec Life Systems, a small ventilator company, to simplify an off-the-shelf design for rapid production at GM’s Kokomo, Indiana, plant.

Though GM had announced it was “working night and day” to launch production, Trump accused CEO Mary Barra via Twitter of dragging her feet, and revived his long-running feud with the company over its 2019 closure of an Ohio factory that Trump had pledged to save.

“As usual with ‘this’ General Motors, things just never seem to work out,” Trump tweeted on March 27. “General Motors MUST immediately open their stupidly abandoned Lordstown plant in Ohio, or some other plant, and START MAKING VENTILATORS, NOW!!!!!!”

GM had sold the Lordstown factory in 2019.

The president also took aim at Ford Motor Co., tweeting that the rival automaker should also “GET GOING ON VENTILATORS, FAST!!!!!!”

On April 8, HHS announced it had reached a $489.4 million deal with GM to produce 30,000 ventilators by the end of August, with the first 6,132 delivered by June 1.

The following week, HHS announced a $336 million contract with Ford and General Electric, which teamed up to make 50,000 of GE Healthcare’s ventilators by July 13.

Assuming all the companies meet their deadlines, AP’s analysis shows the national stockpile should surpass 100,000 new ventilators by mid-July.

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HHS declined to release to AP its contracts with ventilator producers without a Freedom of Information Act request, a legal process that can often take months or even years.

But AP’s analysis of the limited contract data available online and figures taken from HHS media releases shows the agency will spend more than $2.9 billion for 198,890 ventilators by the end of 2020, an average per-unit cost of $14,618.

Whether that’s a good deal for U.S. taxpayers is difficult to determine because medical device makers generally don’t publish their prices. HHS is buying at least 13 different models of ventilators from 10 different companies, all with different capabilities, features and accessories.

When AP sought details from HHS about the per-unit cost of four models from manufacturer Hamilton Medical, the agency’s press office provided figures that did not add up to the totals announced in earlier media releases. An HHS spokesperson said the previously provided figures were wrong and would be corrected on the agency’s website.

AP found several instances where the U.S. government had purchased the same models of ventilators before the pandemic. For example, contracting data does show that in December the Department of Defense bought a single, portable ventilator from Zoll Medical for $12,260.

Under its current contract with Zoll, HHS is purchasing 18,900 of the same model for slightly more than $350 million. That works out to about $18,500 each, which would be a more than 50 percent increase from what the Pentagon paid less than five months ago.

A HHS spokeswoman said Friday the government was paying about $12,100 for each ventilator, and that the additional money was for hoses, face masks and other related supplies needed to treat COVID-19 patients. The ventilators also came with a wheeled plastic case with power port, which cost an additional $722 each, according to HHS.

The Defense Department did not respond to questions Friday about whether its 2019 ventilator deliveries also included accessories.

Zoll’s top executive said his company’s pricing had remained consistent.

“Zoll is supplying the U.S. government with its requested products at our usual and customary government pricing, absorbing the additional costs associated with Zoll’s rapid increase in production capacity,” Zoll CEO Jonathan Rennert said Friday. “We are focused on fulfilling the government’s order on time and meeting this urgent public need.”

Erik Gordon, a business professor at the University of Michigan who studies the medical device industry, said ventilator companies are probably incurring increased costs as they ramp up production to meet high demand. Manufacturers haven’t had time to bulk buy additional parts and probably had to add workers to make more of the machines, he said.

U.S. ventilator makers have raised production from a rate of about 700 per week in February to about 5,000 per week by early April, according to the Advanced Medical Technology Association, an industry trade group.

“If you don’t have time to change your manufacturing processes to get those economies of scale, you get there by brute force, extra labor,” said Gordon, who teaches a course in monetizing medical device ideas. “Your costs actually go up, not down.”

With the federal government buying most of the new ventilators being made in the U.S., state governments and hospital systems urgently seeking the machines have often been forced to go through middlemen or foreign suppliers.

Cuomo has compared the free-for-all bidding to going on eBay, and said during a March 31 briefing that New York had ordered 17,000 ventilators from China for $25,000 each.

“We are paying $25,000 per ventilator, and we are broke,” Cuomo said. “The last thing I want to do is buy a single ventilator I don’t need.”

More than a month later, only 2,500 of the Chinese machines have been delivered, according to Cuomo’s office. In a separate case, New York officials are trying to recover another $69.1 million paid to a Silicon Valley electrical engineer who promised 1,450 ventilators that never materialized.

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With nearly 200,000 new ventilators set for delivery to the federal stockpile by the end of the year, Trump is declaring victory. But it is now unclear whether the stockpile of new ventilators will be needed.

In the little more than a month since Trump announced the buying spree, a series of medical studies has spurred questions about whether ventilators are effective at saving the lives of critically ill COVID-19 patients.

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on March 30 found that only 1 of 7 patients older than 70 who were put on a ventilator survived. For patients younger than 70, just 36% lived.

In New York City, state officials say 80% or more of coronavirus patients placed on the machines died.

The studies have caused doctors to reevaluate the use of ventilators in favor of less intensive forms of respiratory support.

Trump administration officials say the new ventilators could still prove valuable if the virus outbreak were to intensify into a second wave after the warm summer months.

“It’s very important that we have a completely refreshed and a comprehensive stockpile going into the fall,” Dr. Deborah Birx, a medical adviser on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, said at a briefing on April 21. “I think that’s why we’ve continued to bring in those shipments and work on the ventilators so that those would be available not only for the United States but certainly if other partner countries have this level of tragedy.”

Trump said he intends to ship thousands of the breathing machines overseas, where the needs are greater.

On Tuesday, Mexico said it received a shipment of ventilators from the United States. Trump said last week Russia is also set to receive U.S. ventilators, along with other countries.

“People dying because they don’t have ventilators, and they’re not equipped to do what we did,” Trump said Friday. “So we’re giving thousands and thousands of these ventilators away to many countries that have suffered greatly: Italy, France, Spain, so many countries. And Nigeria called. Tremendous problems in Nigeria. Tremendous problems all over. And so they’re very happy.”

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Krisher reported from Detroit. Associated Press writer Marina Villeneuve in Albany, New York, contributed to this report.

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Follow AP Investigative Reporter Michael Biesecker at http://twitter.com/mbieseck and Krisher at http://twitter.com/tkrisher

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

Pandemic shows contrasts between US, European safety netsTHE USA DOES NOT HAVE ONE

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FILE - In this Monday, April 6, 2020 file photo, chairs and tables are piled in front of a bar in St. Mark's Square, in Venice during a lockdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The coronavirus outbreak is straining social safety nets across the globe - and underlining sharp differences in approach between wealthy societies such as the United States and Europe. In Europe, the collapse in business activity is triggering wage support programs that are keeping millions on the job, for now. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini, File)

The coronavirus pandemic is straining social safety nets across the globe — and underlining sharp differences in approach between wealthy societies such as the United States and Europe.

In Europe, the collapse in business activity is triggering wage support programs that are keeping millions on the job, for now. In contrast, in the United States more than 33.5 million people have applied for jobless benefits and the unemployment rate has soared to 14.7%. Congress has passed $2 trillion in emergency support, boosting jobless benefits and writing stimulus checks of up to $1,200 per taxpayer.


That is a pattern seen in earlier economic downturns, particularly the global financial crisis and the Great Recession. Europe depends on existing programs kicking in that pump money into people’s pockets. The U.S., on the other hand, relies on Congress taking action by passing emergency stimulus programs, as it did in 2009 under President Barack Obama, and the recent rescue package under President Donald Trump.

Economist Andre Sapir, a senior fellow at the Bruegel research institute in Brussels, said budget policy in the U.S. plays partly the role that Europe’s welfare system plays because the American welfare system is less generous and a recession can be much harsher on workers.

In downturns, U.S. employees can lose their health insurance if they lose their job and there’s also a greater risk of losing one’s home through foreclosure. On the other hand, Europeans typically pay higher taxes, meaning they earn less in the good times.

“In the U.S. you need to keep pumping money into the economy so that people continue to be employed, because it is through being employed that they are protected,” said Sapir. “Which is the better system? I’m not going into that discussion because that is really a huge issue.”

The U.S. tends to rank below average on measures of social support among the 37 countries of the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation, whose members are mostly developed democracies. The U.S. came last in people living in relative poverty, meaning living on half the median income or less, with 17.8%. Countries like Iceland, Denmark, the Czech Republic and Finland have less than 6%.

Here’s a look at how the social safety nets of the U.S. and Europe compare:


UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS

Americans on unemployment were collecting an average of about $372 weekly before the coronavirus struck. But that average could range from $215 in Mississippi to $543 in Hawaii. The rescue package gave jobless workers an additional $600 a week through July. It also extended benefits to those who lost work as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, which could include parents who needed to leave their jobs because schools were closed. Most states offer six months of unemployment but the emergency legislation adds 13 weeks.

By comparison, Germany’s jobless benefit pays 60% of previous salary for a year. France provides up to 75% of the previous average daily wage for up to two years. Unemployment benefits in France are on average 1,200 euros ($1,320) per month.

And there’s Europe’s short-hours programs, which pay most of worker salaries if companies put them on shorter hours through a temporary disruption. More than 10 million workers are being paid that way in Germany and about 12 million in France, helping hold eurozone unemployment to only a 0.1 percentage point increase in March over February, to 7.4%.

The U.S. emergency package included money for cheap loans to businesses that can be forgiven if the money is used mostly for payroll.

HEALTH INSURANCE

Nearly half of Americans receive health insurance through their employers, while another 34% get benefits through the government programs Medicare and Medicaid. Separately, 6% are insured individually and 9% in 2018 had no insurance at all.

In Europe, universal health coverage is the rule, generally funded by payroll or other taxes. One example is Britain’s National Health Service, which is funded by taxes and offers free care that costs the government 7% of GDP per year.

MATERNITY BENEFITS

U.S. workers are entitled to unpaid family leave, but no federal law requires private employers to provide paid family leave. In the private sector, 16% of workers had access to paid family leave as of March 2018. Some states offer paid family leave insurance for 4 to 10 weeks. The United States is the only country in the OECD to not offer paid leave to new mothers.

In France, by contrast, mothers are entitled to at least 16 weeks of leave for their first child and must take at least 8 weeks. From the third child onward, they are allowed 26 weeks. Workers get a daily maternity leave allowance of up to 89 euros ($94.50). But some professions have their own more favorable deals, up to the complete payment of salaries.

Denmark gives 52 weeks of parental leave after a birth or adoption, to be shared by the parents; whether at full salary or not depends on workplace agreements.

DISABILITY

Roughly 8.3 million Americans collect disability benefits earned through Social Security contributions. The payments average $15,100 annually — just above the poverty level for a one-person household of $12,760. Standards are strict and most applications are denied; people who don’t qualify may wind up on food stamps, a basic subsistence program. The U.S. ranks 30th among 36 OECD countries in spending on all forms of disability related to work or illness.

In France, the totally disabled are eligible for public health insurance payments of at least 292.80 euros ($311) a month and no more than 1,714 euros ($1,825). Those who are totally unable to work and also depend on help for daily tasks are eligible for 1,418 to 2,839 euros ($1,510 to $3,027) a month. The payments can be combined with other forms of income and be subjected to tax and social security contributions.

THE COSTS

Europe’s more generous social safety nets come at a cost, largely paid through taxes levied on workers and employers.

In the United States, Social Security contributions amounted to 6% of GDP in 2018, according to the OECD. In France it was almost three times higher, at 16% of annual GDP, while in Germany it was just over 14%.

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Sylvie Corbet and John Leicester in Paris, Josh Boak in Washington and Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen contributed to this report.

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

Shutdown of tribal casinos deals blow to Indian Country

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In this April 30, 2020 photo, a sign indicates that the new Emerald Queen Casino in Tacoma, Wash., which is owned by the Puyallup Tribe of Indians, is closed. Hundreds of tribal casinos across the country have voluntarily closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, in many cases taking away a tribe's primary source of revenue used to operate tribal government and social programs. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)


SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — When the Kalispel Tribe of Indians closed its casino as the coronavirus took hold in Washington state, it essentially shut down its economy.

That difficult choice has played out nationwide as some 500 Native American casinos have voluntarily closed during the pandemic, often taking away tribes’ main source of income in an effort to protect people’s health in communities with limited medical resources.

The U.S. government authorized $8 billion for tribes in a coronavirus relief package in March, when most casinos closed, but it’s been slow to distribute the money, deepening the woes on reservations.


“We can’t fund any programs without the casino” — no health care, education, law enforcement or fire protection, said Phil Haugen, chief operating officer of the Kalispel Tribal Economic Authority.

Its Northern Quest Casino near Spokane closed for nearly two months, costing the tribe millions of dollars. But with restrictions starting to loosen nationwide, the casino reopened Tuesday with limits on the number of customers, frequent cleaning, and fewer slot machines and chairs at table games to ensure social distancing.

While other Native American-owned casinos have reopened or plan to in coming weeks, most are still closed. That’s also forced layoffs and furloughs among the more than 1 million people working for tribes, many of them in casinos.

Furloughed workers had been getting by with unemployment benefits and health coverage that many casinos kept in place, said John DelMonte, president of UAW Local 2121, a union representing 1,200 card dealers at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut.

“We want to get back to work,″ said DelMonte, a casino employee.

On Sunday, Foxwoods released a statement saying the company was temporarily laying off a majority of its workforce without benefits beginning May 31.

While the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation says it’s losing millions of dollars a week, protecting workers is paramount. DelMonte said the tribe is listening to state officials as it decides when to reopen.

“Everybody is taking this pretty serious. That’s a good thing,″ he said. “To open and close again would be terrible. Better safe than sorry.″

It’s not clear when Foxwoods or the Mohegan Sun casino, also in Connecticut, will be back in business. The state plans to start easing coronavirus restrictions on May 20.

More than 5,000 employees at the casino complex owned by the Mohegan Tribe — nearly the entire workforce — have been furloughed but kept their health benefits, casino president Jeff Hamilton said.

He did not have a firm number on financial losses, “but we’re in an environment where there’s no revenue.”


“I don’t know that you ever make up lost revenue, and I think the concern is that ‘How is business impacted for the foreseeable future?’” Hamilton said. “Because you put an open sign up, doesn’t mean that everything is back to normal.”

In Oklahoma, many tribal governments that shut down casinos in mid-March kept paying employees. The Cherokee Nation said it’s costing the tribe $30 million to $40 million a month to pay salaries and expenses while casinos and other businesses are shuttered.

In New Mexico, Native American-owned casinos that provide $820 million in annual revenue to 14 tribes have been shut down.

“I know for a fact that brings into question the economic stability of those tribes that have gaming operations,” said Democratic state Rep. Derrick Lente, a tribal member from the Sandia Pueblo, which has shuttered its casino on the outskirts of Albuquerque.

While corporations or billionaires own casinos in places like Las Vegas, tribes are sovereign nations that operate them under the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988. The law was intended to help impoverished tribes build a sustainable economy.

It’s difficult to find accurate numbers for casino revenue and the programs it supports because tribes generally don’t give that information. Tribal gambling operations closed about two months ago, so the effects are just starting to be felt.

However, a team of Harvard researchers recently released preliminary results of a study on the pandemic’s impact on the 574 federally recognized tribes. The report said tribes initially closed all their casinos, spanning 29 states, and many non-gambling businesses.

“In the wake of these closures, tribes are facing massive layoffs ... dipping into hard‐earned assets and building up debt,″ the researchers wrote.

In Washington state, the Puyallup Tribe of Indians told members it only has enough money to fund benefits and services through the end of June. The Tacoma-based tribe runs two large casinos, where 85% of employees had been laid off or furloughed.

On the other side of the state, the tiny Kalispel Tribe struggled for decades to eke out a living on the small, isolated reservation near the Idaho border before building the casino to have “some sort of economy,″ Haugen said.

The business allowed the tribe to open a wellness center that’s dramatically improved the life expectancy of members, said Nick Pierre, general manager of the casino. It employs tribal members and others and funds language programs and a facility for elders.

“There’s not an entity on the Kalispel Tribe’s reservation that hasn’t been positively impacted by casino revenues since Northern Quest opened in 2000,” said Curt Holmes, a Tribal Council member.

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Associated Press reporters Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City, Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut, and Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque contributed.

Anna Jarvis Was Sorry She Ever Invented Mother’s Day

The woman who devoted herself to the creation of a national holiday to honor overworked, underappreciated mothers later devoted herself to fighting the commercial juggernaut it became. Was Anna Jarvis stubborn and crazy, as many came to believe, or misunderstood?

by Joel Oliphint
BuzzFeed Contributor
Big Stories·May 8, 2015

During the last 10 years of her life, Anna Jarvis, the founder of Mother’s Day, lived with her blind sister, Lillian, in a three-story redbrick house in North Philadelphia. In the late 1930s and early ’40s, a “Warning — Stay Away” sign greeted visitors, and Jarvis answered the door only if a visitor used a secret knock or a certain number of doorbell rings.

Heavy curtains hid a broken window and darkened a Victorian parlor filled with horsehair furniture and clutter from decades of Mother’s Day proclamations, letters, and news clippings. On the wall was a large portrait of her mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, surrounded by holly wreaths. In a Reader’s Digest story from 1960, a reporter recounts visiting her on one of the last Mother’s Days in her Philadelphia home: “She told me, with terrible bitterness, that she was sorry she ever started Mother’s Day.”

In her younger days, Jarvis was described as attractive and intelligent. When a doll was to be made in her likeness in 1933, the instructions given from her organization, Mother’s Day Inc., were for a visage that was “fair, with blue eyes and light brown hair.” She stood 5-foot-5 and preferred blue, size 40 costume gowns with an open neck, pearl necklaces, and blue hats atop her untamed hair. In photographs Jarvis conveys confidence, but even early on, there’s a weariness in her eyes.





(AP Photo/File)
Anna Jarvis in 1928


Later in life, the New York Times described Jarvis as “worn and fragile” and “a frail little spinster who resembles Whistler’s Mother.” Newsweek said she “seldom smiled.” In amateur historian Howard Wolfe’s 1962 book Behold Thy Mother, Jarvis’ mother was said to be “the most loving and lovable teacher, with the sweetest voice and pleasing smile we have ever known,” but that Jarvis herself “lacked much of the graciousness with which her mother was most abundantly blessed.”

In late 1943, Jarvis' friends and business associates became aware of her declining health and had her committed to a sanitarium in West Chester, Pennsylvania. (Lillian stayed behind in the house and was found dead a couple of months later.) Wolfe said Jarvis displayed a particular letter on her bedroom wall at the sanitarium. “I am 6 years old and I love my mother very much,” the note read. “I am sending this to you because you started Mother’s Day.” Sewn to the letter was a $1 bill.

Jarvis died in 1948 — blind, emaciated, broke, and surrounded by strangers. She never married and never became a mother herself. “Her last days were embittered almost beyond comprehension,” Wolfe wrote.

Jarvis’ crusade to create a holiday to honor mothers in the early 20th century was only the beginning. As the day grew in popularity, she committed the next 40 years of her life to protecting and defending it from anyone who tried to co-opt Mother’s Day for their own causes and financial gain. Yet her efforts led to her own financial and emotional ruin — and were often portrayed as excessive, gaining her a reputation as an eccentric. Still, Jarvis’ battles with the candy, floral, and greeting card industries anticipated the commercialism that’s now inseparable from modern-day Mother’s Day.


Chris Ritter / BuzzFeed News

On May 28, 1876, Ann Reeves Jarvis was teaching her Sunday school class, which included daughter Anna Jarvis, then 12, about notable mothers in the Bible. She closed the lesson with a prayer: “I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will found a memorial mother’s day commemorating her for the matchless service she renders to humanity in every field of life. She is entitled to it,” Reeves Jarvis prayed.

Anna paid particular attention to the prayer that day. Perhaps it was the first time she realized what a thankless, sacrificial endeavor motherhood could be. As she recalled years later, “This heartrending, agonizing prayer burned its way into my mind and heart so deeply, and it never ceased to burn.”


Courtesy of West Virginia and Regional History Collection
Ann Reeves Jarvis

Anna’s mother spent much of her life championing women’s causes through work clubs that helped improve health and sanitary conditions in West Virginia, including providing assistance to mothers with tuberculosis. After the Civil War, Reeves Jarvis also created a Mothers’ Friendship Day to ease tensions and promote peace among the war-torn republic. She died in 1905, but not before burying eight or nine of her own children (genealogies vary).

According to Anna Jarvis’ brother Claude, “My sister Lillian and myself were standing beside the open grave on the side. As the bishop said, ‘Dust to dust, ashes to ashes,’ Anna broke out in a heartbreaking cry and said, ‘Mother, that prayer made in our little church in Grafton calling for someone, somewhere, sometime to found a memorial to mother’s day — the time and place is here, and the someone is your daughter. And by the grace of God, you shall have your Mother’s Day.’”

Anna Jarvis claimed she went straight from the gravesite to her home in Philadelphia, where she had moved in the 1890s, to start planning for Mother’s Day. Her campaign didn’t begin in earnest until 1907, but over the next few years, Jarvis wrote thousands of letters to any prominent figure who could wield influence: President Teddy Roosevelt, of course, and 1908 presidential hopeful William Jennings Bryan, but also Mark Twain and former Postmaster General John Wanamaker. The campaign quickly gained steam, even though some — particularly women — ridiculed her idea, and the Senate initially rejected the Mother’s Day resolution in 1908. Wanamaker was one of the first to jump on board in support of her. “It seems possible if we give our hearts to this loving service, it will become one of the most beautiful days of our lives,” he wrote. Twain’s commendation was printed in newspapers in Philadelphia and New York, and Bryan said he was “heartily in sympathy with the movement.”

On May 10, 1908, the first official Mother’s Day services were held in Grafton at Andrews Church and in Philadelphia, where Jarvis spoke for 70 minutes at the Wanamaker Store Auditorium. The venue seated 5,000, but 15,000 tried to gain admission. Wolfe wrote that Russell Conwell, founder of Temple University, heaped praise on Jarvis after her address. “You are a convincing orator, a brilliant thinker,” he said. “You will be able to obtain what you want. Your Mother’s Day idea will honor you through ages to come.”

Most states held Mother’s Day celebrations over the next few years, and Jarvis, who proved an adept publicist, annually requested official Mother’s Day proclamations from state governors, who implored their citizens to observe the day and wear a white carnation. “Next to the name of God,” Kansas Gov. Walter Stubbs proclaimed, “the sweetest word in the English tongue is ‘mother.’” With virtually the entire United States celebrating Mother’s Day state by state, Woodrow Wilson signed legislation designating the second Sunday in May a national holiday in 1914.

Jarvis declared the white carnation the official flower of Mother’s Day, and she urged sons and daughters to visit their mothers or, at the very least, to write home on Mother’s Day. “Live this day as your mother would have you live it,” Jarvis instructed in her letters. Her vision for the day was domestic — focusing on a mother’s role within the home — and highly sentimental. It was to be celebrated “in honor of the best mother who ever lived — your own.”


Chris Ritter / BuzzFeed News

Founding Mother’s Day and fulfilling her mother’s wish was Jarvis’ crowning achievement, and continued to be her all-consuming, singular purpose in life well after the day was officially established in 1914. It wasn’t enough for her to be the originator of Mother’s Day. Jarvis wanted to own it, and she didn’t want any outside forces corrupting her vision of what the day should be. She incorporated herself as the Mother’s Day International Association, copyrighted her own photograph, and trademarked the Mother’s Day Seal with a drawing of a carnation and the words “Mother’s Day” (always singular possessive to distinguish from “Mothers’ Day” impostors), “Second Sunday in May,” and, of course, “Anna Jarvis Founder.”


Courtesy Lancaster Historical Society

Each year Jarvis put together an official Mother’s Day program that included a personal message and suggested music and readings to be used at services and celebrations. All of this required so much time that she quit her job with a life insurance company, where she had been the first female literary and advertising editor, to work on Mother’s Day full-time. She spent the rest of her life promoting her founding vision for the day while also fighting the floral, confectionary, and greeting card industries (“schemers” and “profiteers,” as she called them) who were making money off her holiday.

In 1923, for example, Jarvis crashed the convention of the Associated Retail Confectioners in Philadelphia, accusing them of “gouging the public.” “I want to tell you that you are using a beautiful idea as a means of profiteering,” she told the confectioners, according to a New York Times story. “As the founder of Mother’s Day, I demand that it cease … Mother’s Day was not intended to be a source of commercial profit.”

Nonprofits were also fair game: In 1925, Jarvis was charged with disorderly conduct at a convention of the American War Mothers, which sold carnations to raise funds for servicemen and their families. “It was alleged that Miss Jarvis appeared without invitation at the convention of War Mothers and protested against the adoption of the carnation as the emblem for that organization,” the Times reported.

She even turned on Wanamaker, her biggest champion early on. In one news clipping, a former assistant to Jarvis recounted a story in which Jarvis ordered a salad in the Wanamaker's tea room only to dump it on the floor because it was designated a “Mother’s Day Salad.” In a letter, she accused Wanamaker of trying to crush her movement.

At one time, Jarvis reportedly had 33 Mother’s Day–related lawsuits pending. No one was immune from her stranglehold on the holiday — not even the president’s wife. Eleanor Roosevelt was the honorary chair of the Golden Rule Foundation, which sponsored a fund for needy mothers and their children. Jarvis claimed the organization was trespassing on her cause and commercializing the day, and threatened to sue.

“I think she misunderstands us,” the first lady told the Times in March 1931. “She wanted Mothers’ Day observed. We want it observed, are working for its observance and are really aiding her.”

Early on, Jarvis endorsed boycotts of florists who raised the price of carnations every May. In 1908, she bought 500 carnations for half a penny each; by 1912, they were 15 cents apiece. Jarvis told her cousin in a letter that “the florists are the leaders in causing me so much trouble” — so much trouble that Jarvis eventually rescinded the carnation as the official emblem, replacing it with a Mother’s Day International Association button. “This will do away with profiteering tradesmen and carnation peddlers seeking their own profit through Mother’s Day,” she wrote.

But, of course, the button and lawsuits and protests and boycotts didn’t do away with any of that. Try as she might, Jarvis couldn’t stop Mother’s Day from becoming a cash cow. One stroll through the grocery store in the first two weeks of May proves as much. Last year the National Retail Federation estimated Americans would spend about $20 billion on Mother’s Day gifts; 80% will buy greeting cards, and 66% will buy flowers.


Chris Ritter / BuzzFeed News

One hundred and one years after Mother’s Day became a national holiday, how do we explain Jarvis’ life and legacy? Was she truly the delusional, “frail little spinster” news reports described? Defending a holiday against commercialization is one thing — but why fight, repeatedly, with beloved charities?

No one knows the story of Anna Jarvis better than Katharine Antolini, a professor of history and gender studies at West Virginia Wesleyan College. She lives about 45 minutes from Grafton, where the church Jarvis and her mother attended is now the International Mother’s Day Shrine: a historic but unassuming redbrick building with a white steeple that sits on Main Street and looks like countless other small-town churches of the era.

“They’re lovely people, but none of them are archivists or historians,” she says of the shrine’s volunteers. “All these great, nearly 100-year-old documents were sitting in a box on the floor in the kitchen. I spent the summer [of 2004] archiving the documents, and there was this one letter. It was seven pages long, typed. [Jarvis] wrote it to her cousin in 1933, and she’s ranting about all these people.”

That letter, along with other documents that had been hidden from historians in a box for decades, piqued Antolini’s interest. What began as an archival reorganization project eventually became Antolini’s dissertation and, later, a book. Antolini doesn’t shy away from Jarvis’ eccentricities, but she also sets out to explain her behavior.

“I think a lot of it was ego-driven — wanting to be ‘Anna Jarvis, founder of Mother’s Day,’” Antolini says. “She would constantly sign letters that way. It was such a big part of her identity and her adult life, so any kind of threat to take that away from her is what terrified her.”


Courtesy of International Mother's Day Shrine

But Jarvis was also an unmarried, childless, opinionated, economically independent woman living in the first half of the 20th century. “Sometimes calling her crazy was a way to dismiss a strong woman who had a vision and a movement and was determined to see it through her way,” Antolini says. “Those are the kind of qualities that you would have respected in a man in the early 20th century — not so much in a woman. To be willing to sue and to stand up to the elites of New York City and challenge Eleanor Roosevelt…in a lot of ways, she was fearless.”

Read through that lens, the media’s constant reference to Jarvis as a spinster becomes a way to frame her as damaged or undesirable and to undermine her accomplishments. Because of Jarvis' notoriety, generating copy about her — good, bad, embellished — was part of the publicity apparatus of the times.

“Everything you read in Time or Newsweek — how much of it really did happen, and how much of it was blown up to make a good story and to make this strong woman seem crazy?” Antolini says. Jarvis fought back against the media’s characterizations of her — in 1938, she sent out a press release saying the way she was depicted in a Time story was defamatory and libelous — yet her own, ongoing Mother’s Day publicity campaign ensured she’d stay in the news.

Even today, it’s difficult to separate mythology from fact. Take one of Jarvis’ best-known quotes, which is cited in nearly every online article about her: “A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world.” Neither Antolini nor I came across this quote in documents. It doesn’t sound unlike something Jarvis would say, but the source is unknown, if it exists at all.

By all accounts, Jarvis stayed true to her claim of never profiting financially from the holiday she founded. She was committed to protecting the purity of Mother’s Day, and she believed money sullied that purity. Antolini says Jarvis didn’t trust charities’ allocation of funds, but she especially hated the notion that charitable causes were transforming Mother’s Day into an occasion where mothers were to be pitied more than honored. “You honor them regardless of how rich or how poor or what color or creed,” Antolini says. “That, to me, makes sense. She has some valid complaints about how her day was being used.”

Still, not all of Jarvis’ eccentricities can be chalked up to gender biases of the day. Accusing any charity that borrowed Mother’s Day language of lining its own pockets seems ungracious at best and paranoid at worst. Antolini also wonders about the naïveté of Jarvis’ desire to establish a nationally recognized memorial for mothers while at the same time wanting to keep it pure and protected. “What did she honestly think was going to happen?” Antolini says.


Dave CC BY-NC/via Flickr: crazysanmanhistory

Only one of Jarvis’ siblings, Josiah, had children, and his granddaughter died childless in the 1980s. Howard Wolfe knew the granddaughter and received many of Anna Jarvis’ papers; he painstakingly transcribed nearly 300 pages' worth of correspondence on a typewriter. As Wolfe wrote in 1962, “Her interesting life, her 84 years of consecration and devotion to a cause … will endear the Jarvis name for all future generations.”

It didn’t quite happen that way. While Mother’s Day continues to be celebrated around the world on the second Sunday in May, Anna Jarvis, along with her particular vision of what she deemed a “holy day” rather than a holiday, are mostly forgotten.

“For the day to be popular, she no longer has to be connected to it,” Antolini says. “Now that the child has grown up, you no longer have to associate it with its mother.”



There was a reason Jarvis emphasized writing letters home rather than relying on greeting cards, which have a tendency to simplify a relationship dynamic that, for many, is complicated. Let’s say you’d like to tell your mother in a letter that she’s truly the best mother you could possibly imagine, just as Jarvis intended. Today, it would be difficult to do so without sounding like an overly sentimental Hallmark card. In other words, the commercial corruption of Mother’s Day has rendered cliché our ability to talk about how wonderful a mother is. A sentiment that at one time might have sounded heartfelt and sincere now sounds like a platitude, as your local Target and Walgreens and Walmart have aisles full of greeting cards for sale with that same sentiment, and millions of sons and daughters will purchase those cards — myself included. Just this week, standing in a checkout line with a handful of Mother’s Day cards (sorry, Ms. Jarvis), the cashier sighed. “I feel bad,” she said. “I’ve been scanning all these cards and I haven’t even bought one yet. They’re so expensive!”

Those sappy cards seem harmless, even helpful. But the trickle-down effect of their trite sayings and inflated prices is sneakier than one might imagine. Perhaps Jarvis knew this. It was a losing battle, but maybe she could see the future more clearly than her contemporaries. Maybe she could see that the Hallmarkification of Mother’s Day would actually make it harder, not easier, to communicate a true, deep, and loving appreciation of mothers.


Chris Ritter / BuzzFeed News

The author would like to thank West Virginia Wesleyan College’s Katharine Antolini for her assistance with this piece.

California county says Tesla may not reopen vehicle factory, stifling Musk's plans

Tina Bellon, Nathan Frandino


(Reuters) - Tesla Inc “must not reopen” its vehicle factory in the San Francisco Bay area as local lockdown measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus remain in effect, the local county health department said on Friday.


Tesla Inc?s only U.S. vehicle factory is seen in Fremont, California, U.S., during the global outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), May 8, 2020. REUTERS/Nathan Frandino

The comments came after Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk, told employees Thursday evening that limited production would restart at the factory in Fremont, Tesla’s only U.S. vehicle factory, on Friday afternoon.

California Governor Gavin Newsom on Thursday afternoon said that manufacturers in the state would be allowed to reopen. But Alameda County, where the factory is located, is scheduled to remain shut until the end of May.

A spokeswoman for the Alameda County Public Health Department in a statement referred to the county’s coronavirus lockdown order that only permits essential businesses to reopen.

“Tesla has been informed that they do not meet those criteria and must not reopen,” the spokeswoman said.

Earlier on Friday, Erica Pan, a health officer for the county, said the department has had many discussions with the company and recommended that Tesla wait at least another week to monitor infection rates and discuss safe ways to resume production.


Pan, speaking during a virtual townhall with the mayor of the city of Alameda, called Tesla a “very hot topic.”

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Vehicle manufacturing operations are not allowed to operate regularly, according to the Alameda County order.

Musk has been bluntly criticizing the lockdown and stay-at-home orders, calling them a “serious risk” to U.S. business and tagging them “unconstitutional,” saying they would not hold up before the U.S. Supreme Court if challenged.

Tesla, in an internal mail seen by Reuters, had said that starting Friday, limited operation would resume at the Fremont factory with 30% of normal headcount per shift.

“Our Gigafactories in Nevada and New York have also begun limited operations as approved by their respective states,” the mail said.


However, Musk said employees who feel uncomfortable coming back to work were not obligated to do so.

Tesla had sparred with officials in California in March Tesla over whether it had to halt production at the Fremont factory under lockdown orders that allowed only essential businesses to continue to operate. It ended the stand-off in mid-March and said it would suspend production.

The lockdown order was imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19, which has infected over 3.8 million people globally.


Reporting by Tina Bellon in New York and Nathan Frandino in San Francisco; additional reporting by Ayanti Bera in Bengaluru; Editing by Leslie Adler

 Eleven captured for failed maritime 'invasion' of Venezuela

Venezuelan Presidency/AFP/File / Marcelo GarciaA handout picture released by the Venezuelan Presidency shows on May 4, 2020, passports of US citizens arrested by security forces in relation to a failed maritime 'invasion'

Eleven alleged "terrorists" were arrested on Sunday in connection with the failed maritime "invasion" of Venezuela, authorities said, bringing the total captured to more than 40.

"Captured today #10May 2020, another three terrorist mercenaries in Colonia Tovar," about an hour from Caracas, tweeted armed forces chief Admiral Remigio Ceballos.

Hours later, state television reported that military personnel had captured an additional eight "terrorists" in the northern coastal state of Vargas.

The arrests came after another three alleged "mercenaries" were arrested Saturday, according to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

"We have been meticulously looking for all those involved and we are going to capture them all," Maduro announced during a television address.

The botched invasion attempt -- which Maduro has compared to the Bay of Pigs incident in 1961 -- saw men landing in early May at Macuto, less than an hour from Caracas. In total, 45 people have been arrested.

Eight attackers were reportedly killed in the incident.

Among the detainees are two former US soldiers, Luke Denman, 34, and Airan Berry, 41, who have been imprisoned and charged with "terrorism, conspiracy, illicit trafficking of weapons of war and (criminal) association." They could face between 25 to 30 years in prison.

The others implicated in the case are Venezuelans.

The left-wing Maduro government claims the plan was to remove him from power and allow opposition leader Juan Guaido -- recognized as the interim president by the United States and 50 other nations -- to take control.

Maduro has said he believes US President Donald Trump was involved in the operation, with Guaido as his accomplice.

Trump has strongly denied the accusations.

Despite Maduro's accusations against him, Guaido has not been charged with any alleged crimes.

U.S. offers bankrupt refiner $10 million cap on biofuel obligation: filing

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Trump administration has offered to place a $10 million cap on Philadelphia Energy Solutions’ biofuel blending obligations, effectively slashing the bankrupt refiner’s regulatory liability by more than 70%, according to a proposed settlement between the two parties dated earlier this week.

The deal is intended to free up more cash for the company to pay off its list of creditors, according to the filing.

It marks the second time the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Donald Trump has agreed to waive significant portions of PES’s obligations under the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard, a law that requires refiners to blend biofuels like ethanol into the fuel pool or buy credits from those that do.

Under the agreement, PES - which entered into bankruptcy after a catastrophic fire last summer - will have to hand over 161,830,963 biofuel blending credits, called RINs, or pay up to $10 million to meet its obligations, whichever comes first, the filing said. The cost of those credits had previously been estimated at $35 million, according to court documents.

The agreement “can reduce the $35 million RINs Retirement Obligation Reserve to $10 million on the Effective Date, which makes funds available to satisfy the creditors’ claims promptly,” the filing said.

RINs, or Renewable Identification Numbers, are used by oil refiners to show compliance with the RFS and are generated with every gallon of biofuel produced.

Trump’s EPA had previously waived some $350 million in biofuels compliance costs for PES after its initial bankruptcy in 2018. That deal allowed PES to briefly exit bankruptcy before the 2019 fire triggered its latest collapse.

PES blended little to no biofuels itself, which meant it was required to buy credits to comply with the RFS. Before its 2018 bankruptcy, however, the refiner took a large short position in the RIN market by opting to delay its purchases of those credits, and even sold some of the credits it had on hand, ballooning its exposure when it went bust.

The shut 335,000 barrel-per-day Philadelphia refinery site will be sold for $252 million and redeveloped under a plan approved in bankruptcy court earlier this year. The sale ended months of uncertainty over whether the idled plant would be restarted.

Reporting by Stephanie Kelly; additional reporting by Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Paul Simao

For cops who kill, special Supreme Court protection

The U.S. high court’s continual refinement of an obscure legal doctrine has made it harder to hold police accountable when accused of using excessive force.

A REUTERS SPECIAL INVESTIGATION
MULTIMEDIA PRESENTATION
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-police-immunity-scotus/

When cops kill, redress is rare - except in famous cases

By LAWRENCE HURLEY and ANDREA JANUTA Filed May 8, 2020

TWO SIDES OF THE STREET: Police and protesters squared off after an officer shot and killed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, fueling national debate about police tactics. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni

The 2014 shooting death of black teen Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, prompted angry protests and trained a national spotlight on a perceived lack of police accountability for violent encounters with the public.

Since then, the “Black Lives Matter” movement – sparked by the killing of black teen Trayvon Martin by civilian George Zimmerman in Florida in 2012 – has become closely associated with critiques of overly aggressive policing, particularly against black people. Heightened public awareness, enhanced by the increasing prevalence of cellphone video, has kept the issue front and center through a series of incidents that have made national headlines in recent years.

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These high-profile cases – unlike most excessive force lawsuits against police that Reuters reviewed – are outliers, resulting in generous settlement offers and sometimes even criminal charges before police had any recourse to claiming qualified immunity.

Killing of rare river dolphins sparks poaching fears in Bangladesh lockdown

The rare Ganges river dolphin is found in the river systems of Nepal, Bangladesh and India

The gutted carcass of a freshwater dolphin has been found in a river sanctuary in Bangladesh, officials said Sunday, sparking fears fishermen are taking advantage of the virus lockdown to poach the endangered creatures.

Locals in the southeastern town of Raojan found the remains of the 62-inch (157-centimetre) long Ganges river dolphin on the banks of the Halda River, fishery department official Abdullah al Mamun told AFP.

It had suffered a sharp and deep incision from its neck to tail and layers of its body fat—from which oil is extracted for use in traditional medicines—were missing, he said.

The dolphin is the second to be found dead in the same sanctuary since Bangladesh imposed its lockdown to tackle the coronavirus, said Manzoorul Kibria, coordinator of the Halda River Research Laboratory (HRRL).

Bangladesh prohibits the killing of Ganges dolphins, which are categorised as endangered under the International Union for Conservation of Nature's "Red List" of threatened species.

A local official, who asked to remain anonymous, said locals were starting to trawl the Halda river, as understaffed police who usually patrol the region were busy enforcing the lockdown in Raojan.

"They are trying to make a living by catching fish illegally," local forestry department head Yasin Nawaz said, adding that the same nets also often caught dolphins.

Once the creatures are trapped, they prove easy pickings for poachers who sell their fat and oil, Kibria said.

"Many local villagers believe dolphin fat can cure diseases. It fetches a good price."

Kibria added he feared the latest death could be the start of a "killing spree" of the rare creature.

The Ganges river dolphin is found in the river systems of Nepal, Bangladesh and India and has a population of between 1,200 to 1,800, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

They can weigh up to 100 kilograms (220 pounds) and grow to 2.6 meters (eight feet) long, are known for their long beaks which have 28 sharp teeth on both sides of their jaws.

The Halda river is home to around 170 dolphins, according to HRRL.Oil spill threatens rare Bangladesh dolphin breeding zone

© 2020 AFP