PRO-LIFE GOVERNMENT 

Mental fitness claim halts 2nd federal execution -- for now

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Protesters against the death penalty gather in Terre Haute, Ind., Wednesday, July 15, 2020. Wesley Ira Purkey, convicted of a gruesome 1998 kidnapping and killing, is scheduled to be executed Wednesday evening at the federal prison in Terre Haute. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)  A HANDFUL OF PRO LIFE ANTI DEATH PENALTY PROTESTERS, WHERE ARE THE BORN AGAIN PRO LIFE YOUTH AND OTHER ANTI ABORTION PROTESTERS

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) — A judge on Wednesday halted the execution of a man, said to be suffering from dementia, who was set to die by lethal injection in the federal government’s second execution this week after a 17-year hiatus.

Legal wrangling continued Wednesday night with execution still possible.

Wesley Ira Purkey, convicted of a gruesome 1998 kidnapping and killing, was scheduled to die at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, where Daniel Lewis Lee was put to death Tuesday after his eleventh-hour legal bids failed.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, D.C., imposed two injunctions prohibiting the federal Bureau of Prisons from moving forward with Purkey’s execution, but the Justice Department immediately appealed. Late Wednesday, an appeals court panel upheld one of the two injunctions, ruling Purkey should get the chance to pursue his claim that he should not be put to death because he doesn’t understand why he is being executed.

Appeals to the Supreme Court were still pending.

It all suggested a volley of litigation would continue into the evening, similar to what happened before the government executed Lee following a ruling from the Supreme Court. One of the injunctions imposed Wednesday would halt not only Purkey’s execution, but another that has been scheduled for Friday and one in August.

 Lawyers say federal death row prisoner has Alzheimer’s

Earlier Wednesday, the Supreme Court ended a separate stay by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago.

Lee, convicted of killing an Arkansas family in a 1990s plot to build a whites-only nation, was the first of four condemned men scheduled to die in July and August despite the coronavirus pandemic raging inside and outside prisons.

Purkey, 68, of Lansing, Kansas, would be the second.

“This competency issue is a very strong issue on paper,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. “The Supreme Court has halted executions on this issue in the past. At a minimum, the question of whether Purkey dies is going to go down to the last minute.”

Judge Chutkan didn’t rule on whether Purkey was competent but said the court needed to evaluate the claim. She said there was no question he’d suffer “irreparable harm” if he was put to death before his claim could be evaluated.

Lee’s execution had gone forward a day late. It was scheduled for Monday afternoon, but the Supreme Court only gave the green light in a 5-4 ruling early Tuesday.

Repeatedly on Wednesday, a federal judge also denied a request from Dustin Lee Honkin, an Iowa drug kingpin scheduled to be executed on Friday, to delay his execution. The judge said he would not delay Honken’s execution due to the coronavirus pandemic and said the Bureau of Prisons was in the best position to weigh the health risks.

FILE - In this Aug. 18, 2004 file photo, Dustin Honken is led by federal marshals to a waiting car after the second day of jury selection in federal court in Sioux City, Iowa. A federal judge has denied the Iowa drug kingpin's requests to delay his execution, which is scheduled for Friday, July 17, 2020. U.S. District Judge Leonard Strand wrote Tuesday, July 14 that he would not intervene to delay Honken's execution date due to the coronavirus pandemic. He said the Bureau of Prisons was in the best position to weigh the health risks against the benefits of carrying out the execution. (Tim Hynds/Sioux City Journal via AP, File)

The issue of Purkey’s mental health arose in the runup to his 2003 trial and when jurors had to decide whether he should be put to death in the killing of 16-year-old Jennifer Long in Kansas City, Missouri. Prosecutors said he raped and stabbed her, dismembered her with a chainsaw, burned the body and dumped her ashes in a pond in Kansas. Purkey was separately convicted and sentenced to life in the beating death of 80-year-old Mary Ruth Bales, of Kansas City, Kansas.

But the legal questions of whether he was mentally fit then are different from whether he’s fit now to be put to death. Purkey’s lawyers argue he clearly isn’t, saying in recent filings he suffers from advancing Alzheimer’s disease.

“He has long accepted responsibility for the crime that put him on death row,” one of his lawyers, Rebecca Woodman, said. “But as his dementia has progressed, he no longer has a rational understanding of why the government plans to execute him.”

Purkey believes his planned execution is part of a conspiracy involving his attorneys, Woodman said. In other filings, they describe delusions that people were spraying poison into his room and that drug dealers implanted a device in his chest meant to kill him.

While various legal issues in Purkey’s case have been hashed, rehashed and settled by courts over nearly two decades, “competency is something that is always in flux,” according to Dunham, who teaches law school courses on capital punishment.

In a landmark 1986 decision, the Supreme Court ruled the Constitution prohibits executing someone who lacks a reasonable understanding of why he’s being executed. It involved the case of Alvin Ford, who was convicted of murder but whose mental health deteriorated behind bars to the point, according to his lawyer, he believed he was pope.

“I could say I was Napoleon,” Dunham said. “But if I say I understand that Napoleon was sentenced to death for a crime and is being executed for it — that could allow the execution to go ahead.”

Purkey’s mental issues go beyond Alzheimer’s, his lawyers have said. They say he was subject to sexual and mental abuse as a child and, at 14, was diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression and psychosis.

Wesley Ira Purkey is seen in this May 2000 photo provided by the Kansas Department of Corrections. (Kansas Department of Corrections via AP)

Last week, three mental health organizations urged U.S. Attorney William Barr to commute Purkey’s sentence to life in prison without possibility of parole. The National Alliance on Mental Illness, Mental Health America and the Treatment Advocacy Center said executing mentally ailing people like Purkey “constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and does not comport with ‘evolving standards of decency.’”

Glenda Lamont, the mother of the slain teenager, told The Kansas City Star last year she planned to attend Purkey’s execution.

“I don’t want to say that I’m happy,” Lamont said. “At the same time, he is a crazy madman that doesn’t deserve, in my opinion, to be breathing anymore.”

President Donald Trump’s campaign touted the Lee execution in an email blast, saying the president “Ensured Total Justice for the Victims of an Evil Killer” and demanding his political opponent Joe Biden explain why he now opposes capital punishment.

There was an unofficial moratorium on federal executions after the Obama administration ordered a review in 2014 following a botched execution in Oklahoma.

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Associated Press writers Roxana Hegeman in Wichita, Kansas, and Mark Sherman and Colleen Long in Washington contributed to this report

More than 150 countries sign up for global vaccine plan


FILE - In this Wednesday, June 24, 2020 file photo, medical staff member prepares a syringe, at the Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital in Soweto, Johannesburg. Politicians and public health leaders have publicly committed to equitably sharing any coronavirus vaccine that works, but the top global initiative to make it happen may allow rich countries to reinforce their own stockpiles while making fewer doses available for poor ones. (AP Photo/Siphiwe Sibeko, File)

LONDON (AP) — More than 70 rich countries have signed up to a global coronavirus vaccine initiative intended to ensure that any effective shots are fairly distributed around the world - but which may also allow them to buy more vaccines to stockpile for their own citizens.

In a statement on Wednesday, the vaccines alliance Gavi reported that 75 countries have said they would join its new “Covax facility” along with another 90 low-income countries that hope to receive donated vaccines. The Associated Press reported this week that the Gavi initiative may allow rich countries to reinforce their own coronavirus vaccine supplies while leaving fewer doses available for more vulnerable populations.

When Gavi approached donor countries last month, it advertised the plan as an “insurance policy” for rich countries that have already struck deals with drugmakers for experimental COVID-19 vaccines.

Gavi told donor governments that when an effective inoculation is found within its pool of COVID-19 candidates, all countries will receive enough to cover 20% of their populations, including rich countries that may have their own stockpiles. It said countries would be encouraged, but not required, to give up any doses they might not need.

“For the vast majority of countries, whether they can afford to pay for their own doses or require assistance, it means receiving a guaranteed share of doses and avoiding being pushed to the back of the queue,” Gavi CEO Seth Berkley said in a statement.

Dozens of vaccines are being researched, and some countries — including Britain, France, Germany and the United States — already have ordered hundreds of millions of doses before the vaccines are even proven to work.

Critics say offering rich countries the chance to buy even more vaccines through Gavi essentially allows them to hoard limited COVID-19 vaccines without consequences.

Gavi CEO Berkley acknowledged there was no enforcement mechanism, but he said the alliance would be speaking with rich countries to propose possible solutions.

Gavi said the 165 countries that have expressed interest represent about 60% of the world’s population. The alliance is aiming to raise $2 billion to buy COVID-19 vaccines.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

87 protesters arrested at Kentucky attorney general’s home

In this image from video, a Louisville Metro Police Department office stands guard outside the home of Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron as protestors sit in his front yard in Louisville, Kentucky Tuesday, July 14, 2020. About two dozen protestors were arrested. Protesters were chanting Breonna Taylor's name as well as calling for justice after the 26-year-old emergency room technician was fatally shot by LMPD in her South End Apartment while police were serving a search warrant. Cameron said he still has no timeline for when his office will conclude its investigation of the case. (Mary Ann Gerth/Courier Journal via AP)
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Eighty-seven demonstrators who gathered at the home of Kentucky’s attorney general to demand justice for Breonna Taylor have been arrested and charged with a felony for trying to “intimidate” the prosecutor, police said.

Protesters with the social justice organization Until Freedom gathered for a sit-in on the front yard of a Louisville home owned by Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron on Tuesday afternoon, news outlets reported.

They were arrested after refusing to leave and — having been instructed beforehand by protest organizers not to resist — could be seen lining up to await their transfer to jail.

Among those arrested were NFL player Kenny Stills, a wide receiver for the Houston Texans, and Porsha Williams of “Real Housewives of Atlanta.” Several of the protesters were released from jail on Wednesday afternoon.

Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was fatally shot when police officers burst into her Louisville apartment using a no-knock warrant in the early morning hours of March 13 during a narcotics investigation. The warrant to search her home was in connection with a suspect who did not live there and no drugs were found inside.

The shooting set off weeks of protests, policy changes and a call for the officers who shot Taylor to be criminally charged. One officer has been fired, but no charges have been filed. Investigations into the shooting are continuing.



Stills posted on social media Wednesday afternoon that he was “arrested for peacefully protesting. While Breonna Taylor’s murderers are still out on the street.” None of the Louisville officers involved in delivering the warrant at Taylor’s home have been criminally charged.

Cameron, a Republican and Kentucky’s first African American state attorney general, said on Monday that he still has no timeline for when his office will conclude its investigation of the case.

“We are here to hold Daniel Cameron accountable and make sure that he does his job, because he is not doing his job,” said Until Freedom co-founder Linda Sarsour.

Protesters were charged with “intimidating a participant in a legal process,” a class D felony in Kentucky that is punishable from one to five years in prison upon conviction. That charge is related to Cameron’s role as prosecutor of the Taylor investigation.

The protesters were charged with a felony because officers heard them “chanting that if they didn’t get what they want, they would burn it down,” Louisville police said Wednesday afternoon in an emailed statement, referring to Cameron’s house. “That was deemed an attempt to intimidate, persuade or influence the attorney general’s decision,” the statement said.

The Jefferson County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office was not consulted about the filing of the felony charges, spokesman Jeff Cooke said Wednesday. Cooke said a judge at the county’s District Court level will decide if there is probable cause to move the felony charge to a grand jury. If the grand jury indicts on the charge, the commonwealth’s attorney will then assume responsibility for the prosecution, he said.

The protesters were also each charged with disorderly conduct and criminal trespassing, both misdemeanors, said Louisville Metro Police spokesman Lamont Washington.

Cameron said the protest won’t bring justice and “only serves to further division and tension within our community.”

“From the beginning, our office has set out to do its job, to fully investigate the events surrounding the death of Ms. Breonna Taylor,” the attorney general said. “We continue with a thorough and fair investigation, and today’s events will not alter our pursuit of the truth.”

Trump reins in major environmental law to speed big projects

TRUMP ANNOUNCES HIS UMPTEENTH INFRASTRUCTURE WEEK

President Donald Trump is rolling back a foundational Nixon-era environmental law that he says stifles infrastructure projects, but that is credited with ensuring decades of scrutiny of major projects and giving local communities a say.


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President Donald speaks during an event on American infrastructure at UPS Hapeville Airport Hub, Wednesday, July 15, 2020, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)


ATLANTA (AP) — President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he is rolling back a foundational Nixon-era environmental law that he says stifles infrastructure projects, but that is credited with keeping big construction projects from fouling up the environment and ensuring there is public input on major projects.

“Together we’re reclaiming America’s proud heritage as a nation of builders and a nation that can get things done,” Trump said.

Trump was in Atlanta to announce changes to National Environmental Policy Act regulations for how and when authorities must conduct environmental reviews, making it easier to build highways, pipelines, chemical and solar plants and other projects.

The 1970 law changed environmental oversight in the United States by requiring federal agencies to consider whether a project would harm the air, land, water or wildlife, and giving the public the right of review and input.

Critics called Trump’s move a cynical attempt to limit the public’s ability to examine and influence proposed projects under one of the country’s bedrock environmental protection laws.

“This may be the single biggest giveaway to polluters in the past 40 years,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group that works to save endangered species.


Trump has made slashing government regulation a hallmark of his presidency and held it out as a way to boost jobs. Environmental groups say the regulatory rollbacks threaten public health and make it harder to curb global warming. With Congress and the administration divided over how to increase infrastructure investment, the president is relying on his deregulation push to demonstrate progress.
Among the major changes in the new rule: limiting when federal environmental reviews of projects are mandated, and capping how long federal agencies and the public have to evaluate and comment on any environmental impact of a project.

“We won’t get certain projects through for environmental reasons. They have to be environmentally sound. But you know what? We’re going to know in a year. We’re going to know in a year and a half. We’re not going to know in 20 years,” Trump said.

NEPA requires all federal agencies to evaluate the potential environmental effects of proposed projects, but fewer than 1% percent of those reviews are the kind of complex and detailed review that Trump focused on — environmental impact statements.

Opponents say the changes the Trump administration made will have an inordinate impact on predominantly minority communities. More than 1 million African Americans live within a half-mile of natural gas facilities and face a cancer risk above the Environmental Protection Agency’s level of concern from toxins emitted by those facilities, according to a 2017 study by the Clean Air Task Force and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

“Donald Trump is taking away the last lines of defense for front-line communities, and continues to demonstrate a total disregard for our environment and for those demanding racial and environmental justice,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Mustafa Santiago Ali, a former associate administrator in the Obama administration’s EPA environmental justice office, said Black and other minority communities “will pay with their health and ultimately with their lives” for the rules changes.

Business groups generally supported the changes.

“Modernizing and clarifying NEPA could not come at a better time for our country, as we are recovering from COVID-19,” said Anne Bradbury, CEO of the American Exploration and Production Council, a trade group for oil and gas explorers.

For his announcement, Trump chose Georgia, a swing state in the general election. Trump won the Republican-leaning state by 5 percentage points in 2016, but some polls show him trailing former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee. This will be Trump’s ninth trip to Georgia and his sixth visit to Atlanta during his presidency.

The president’s trip also comes as the state has seen coronavirus cases surge and now has tallied more than 12,000 confirmed cases and more than 3,000 deaths.

The White House said the administration’s efforts will expedite the expansion of Interstate 75 near Atlanta, an important freight route where traffic can often slow to a crawl. The state will create two interstate lanes designed solely for commercial trucks. The state announced last fall, before the White House unveiled its proposed rule, that it was moving up the deadline for substantially completing the project to 2028.

Trump, who spoke at a UPS facility, said the project will save the company and its drivers an extraordinary number of hours a year. Much of the crowd wore a mask, but not all. Trump did not wear a mask.

VAN VOGT'S; VIOLENT MAN, WILHELM REICH'S LITTLE MAN


Republican lawmakers applauded the new rule, saying an update was long overdue.

“We can protect the environment and move our economy forward at the same time. This rule gets that done,” said Sen. John Barrasso, the chairman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works.

Trump’s trip to Georgia came one day after former Vice President Joe Biden announced an infrastructure plan that places a heavy emphasis on improving energy efficiency in buildings and housing as well as promoting conservation efforts in the agriculture industry. In the plan, Biden pledges to spend $2 trillion over four years to promote his energy proposals.

Matt Hill, a Biden campaign spokesman, said Trump’s regulatory efforts were an attempt to “destroy a bipartisan, cornerstone law to distract from the fact that ‘Infrastructure Week’ never happened and never will happen as long as he is president.”

NYPD chief, protesters roughed up in Brooklyn Bridge clash


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Black Lives Matter protesters scuffle with an NYPD officer on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York during a demonstration Wednesday, July 15, 2020. Several New York City police officers were attacked and injured during the protest, police said, and more than a dozen people were arrested. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)




NEW YORK (AP) — Several New York City police officers were attacked and injured Wednesday as pro-police and anti-police protesters clashed on the Brooklyn Bridge, police said. The confrontation happened hours before Mayor Bill de Blasio signed into law a series of police accountability measures inspired by the killings of George Floyd, Eric Garner and other Black people.

At least four officers were hurt, including Chief of Department Terence Monahan, and 37 people were arrested, police said. Information on charges was not immediately available.

It was not clear how many protesters were injured. An Associated Press photographer witnessed several people getting roughed up by police, including a woman who ended up on the pavement with an officer pulling on her hair.

Surveillance video posted on social media by the police department showed a man on the bridge’s pedestrian walkway rushing toward a group of officers and reaching over a fence to smack one of them in the head with a cane.

Police photos of the aftermath showed a lieutenant with a bloodied face, a detective holding a bandage to his head, and a bicycle officer helping a fellow officer dress a head wound.

Monahan, who last month knelt in a show of solidarity with protesters, sustained injuries to his hand.



He and the other injured officers were marching with a pro-police group led by local clergy when they were met on the bridge by activists, some of whom have been camping outside City Hall in recent weeks to demand severe cuts to police funding.





Some people in the pro-police group marched with a banner that said, “We Support the NYPD.” The leader of that group said they were calling for an end to a recent spate of violence, including the shooting death of a 1-year-old boy in Brooklyn.

De Blasio helped paint a Black Lives Matter mural on a Bronx street before signing the police reform measures. They include a ban on chokeholds and other restraints that could restrict a person’s breathing. The NYPD has long barred chokeholds, but that hasn’t stopped some officers from using them in recent years — most notably in Garner’s death on Staten Island just shy of six years ago.



Other reforms include requirements for officers to have their shield numbers visible — and not obscured by things like black mourning bands; for the NYPD to create and publish to its website a schedule of officer disciplinary violations and penalties, and for the department to disclose information about its secret surveillance technology.



Another makes clear that the public has a right to record police activity.

Wednesday’s demonstrations and mural painting were the latest in a wave of protest activity across the country since George Floyd was killed May 25 by Minneapolis police.

The first few nights of protests in New York City were marred by stealing, unrest and violence inflicted both by and on police officers. Since then, protests have largely been peaceful.

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Follow Michael Sisak on Twitter at twitter.com/mikesisak

Climate change makes freak Siberian heat 600 times likelier

FILE - This Sunday, June 21, 2020 photo provided by Olga Burtseva shows an outdoor thermometer indicating 30 Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) around 11 p.m in Verkhoyansk, Sakha Republic, about 4,660 kilometers (2,900 miles) northeast of Moscow, Russia. A record-breaking temperature of 38 degrees Celsius (100.4 degrees Fahrenheit) was registered in the Arctic town the previous day in a prolonged heatwave that has alarmed scientists around the world. (Olga Burtseva via AP)

Nearly impossible without man-made global warming, this year’s freak Siberian heat wave is producing climate change’s most flagrant footprint of extreme weather, a new flash study says.

International scientists released a study Wednesday that found the greenhouse effect multiplied the chance of the region’s prolonged heat by at least 600 times, and maybe tens of thousands of times. In the study, which has not yet gone through peer review, the team looked at Siberia from January to June, including a day that hit 100 degrees (38 degrees Celsius) for a new Arctic record.

Scientists from the United Kingdom, Russia, France, Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland used 70 climate models running thousands of complex simulations comparing current conditions to a world without man-made warming from the burning of coal, oil and gas. They found that without climate change the type of prolonged heat that hit Siberia would happen once in 80,000 years, “effectively impossible without human influence,” said study lead author Andrew Ciavarella, a scientist at the UK Met Office.

FILE - In this Sunday, June 21, 2020 photo provided by Olga Burtseva, children play in the Krugloe lake outside Verkhoyansk, Sakha Republic, about 4,660 kilometers (2,900 miles) northeast of Moscow, Russia. Russia's meteorological service said the thermometer hit 38 Celsius (100.4 F) the previous day in Verkhoyansk. A study by international scientists released Wednesday, July 15, 2020, says the 2020 freak Siberian heat wave is nearly impossible without man-made global warming (Olga Burtseva via AP)

This study, coordinated by World Weather Attribution, was done in two weeks and hasn’t yet been put through the microscope of peer review and published in a major scientific journal. But the researchers who specialize in these real-time studies to search for fingerprints of climate change in extreme events usually do get their work later published in a peer-reviewed journal and use methods that outside scientists say are standard and proven. World Weather Attribution’s past work has found some weather extremes were not triggered by climate change.

But 2020’s Siberian heat wave stood out among the many studied, said attribution team co-lead Friederike Otto, acting director of Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute.

“Definitely from everything we have done it’s the strongest signal that we have seen,” Otto said.

The team looked at both the average temperature in Siberia over the first six months of the year when temperatures averaged 9 degrees (5 degrees Celsius) above normal and the heat spike of 100 degrees occurred in the Russian town of Verkhoyansk in June. Both just really couldn’t happen in a world without the additional heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuel, Ciavarella said.

The scientists said the heat added to problems with widespread wildfires fires, pest outbreaks and the thawing of permafrost which led to a massive pipeline oil spill. Thawing permafrost also has the potential to release huge amounts of greenhouse gases trapped under the frozen ground, which could then worsen the warming, scientists said.

“This event is really worrying,” said study co-author Olga Zolina, a climate scientist at the P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology in Moscow.

At least 10 outside scientists contacted by The Associated Press said this study was scientifically sound, using established and proper techniques.

“They have, in an impressively short time, marshaled a lot of different datasets together which really give credence to their results,” said Danish Meteorological Institute climate scientist Ruth Mottram, who wasn’t part of the research.

These types of studies allow people and world leaders to “connect the dots” between extreme weather events and climate change and prepare for them, said French climate scientist Valerie Masson-Delmotte, who wasn’t part of the research.

“The climate of the future is very different as this paper shows,” said Pennsylvania State University meteorology professor David Titley, who wasn’t part of the research. “We can either adapt or suffer.”

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Follow AP’s climate coverage at https://www.apnews.com/Climate

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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears .

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

WHITE HOUSE DISRUPTS Coronavirus data is funneled away from CDC, sparking worries

SYCOPHANTIC SUCKHOLE

The CDC director said Wednesday that he’s fine with the change — even though some experts fear it will further sideline the agency.

FILE - In this May 27, 2020, file photo, a medical worker wearing personal protective equipment cleans gurneys in the emergency department intake area in New York. Hospital data related to the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. will now be collected by a private technology firm, rather than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — a move the Trump administration says will speed up reporting but one that concerns some public health leaders. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)


NEW YORK (AP) — Hospital data related to the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. will now be collected by a private technology firm, rather than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — a move the Trump administration says will speed up reporting but one that concerns some public health leaders.

The CDC director said Wednesday that he’s fine with the change — even though some experts fear it will further sideline the agency.

The CDC has agreed to step out of the government’s traditional data collection process “in order to streamline reporting,” Dr. Robert Redfield said during a call with reporters set up by the agency’s parent, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

HHS officials recently posted a document on the agency’s website that redirected hospitals’ daily reporting of a range of data meant to assess the impact of the coronavirus on them. TeleTracking Technologies, based in Pittsburgh, will now collect that information.

However, if hospitals are already directly reporting to state health departments, they can get a written release from the state to keep doing that.

The information includes bed occupancy, staffing levels, the severity level of coronavirus patients, ventilators on hand, and supplies of masks, gowns, and other personal protective equipment. The CDC will continue to collect other data, like information about cases and deaths, from state health departments.
Michael Caputo, an HHS spokesman, said the CDC has been seeing a lag of a week or more in data coming from hospitals and that only 85% of hospitals have been participating. The change is meant to result in faster and more complete reporting, he said.

It’s not clear how that will happen. HHS officials on Wednesday did not answer questions about whether there would be added government incentives or mandates to get more reporting from busy hospitals.

Some experts expressed suspicion and concern about the decision.

The data “are the foundation that guide our response to the pandemic,” Dr. Thomas File, Jr., president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, said in a statement.

Collecting and reporting public health data has always been a core function of the CDC, he added. “The administration should provide funding to support data collection and should strengthen the role of CDC to collect and report COVID-19 data,” he said.

Gregory Koblentz, a biodefense expert at George Mason University, said the change appears to be consistent with administration moves in recent months that has sidelined the CDC from the role it has played in other epidemics, as the public’s primary source of information.

“We know the administration has been trying to silence the CDC,” he said. “Now it looks like the administration might be trying to blind the CDC as well.”

The White House directed a request for comment to HHS.

Redfield, the CDC director, said the agency will retain access to all the data. He also said the change will enable it to focus on collecting other data, like information from nursing homes.

Still, his predecessor, Dr. Tom Frieden, expressed dismay at what was happening to a data system that “represents 20 years of work and progress.”

“Rather than strengthening the CDC public health data system to improve hospital reporting, the administration has handed data to an unproven, commercial entity,” said Frieden, who was the agency’s director during the Obama administration.

In April, the government awarded a $10.2 million contract to a TeleTracking Technologies, based in Pittsburgh. At the time, the company was hired to gather data on things that were already being reported to the CDC, such as available hospital beds.

TeleTracking has won 29 contracts for federal government work stretching back to 2004. None of its previous contracts paid more than $300,000. The prior contracts were for computer systems and programming at Veteran Affairs hospitals.

The company has also gotten approval to tap a government loans program designed to help small business keep employees on their payroll during the pandemic. The forgivable loan for between $5 million and $10 million from the Payroll Protection Program. TeleTracking indicated it planned to use the loan to help save the jobs of some of its 376 workers.

TeleTracking did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The CEO of Teletracking, Michael Zamagias, also runs a real estate investment firm with several properties in Pittsburgh. One of his companies, Michael G. Zamagias Interests LTD, was approved for a Payroll Protection Program loan for between $150,000 and $350,000.

US Mail could be delayed as new postal boss pushes cost-cutting

TRUMP & GOP'S HATCHET MAN

FILE - In this March 1, 2017, file photo, Elon Trustee Louis DeJoy is honored with Elon's Medal for Entrepreneurial Leadership in Elon. N.C. Mail deliveries could be delayed by a day or more under cost-cutting efforts being imposed by the new postmaster general, DeJoy. The plan eliminates overtime for hundreds of thousands of postal workers and says employees must adopt a ” different mindset” to ensure the Postal Service’s survival during the coronavius pandemic. (Kim Walker/Elon University via AP, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Mail deliveries could be delayed by a day or more under cost-cutting efforts being imposed by the new postmaster general. The plan eliminates overtime for hundreds of thousands of postal workers and says employees must adopt a “different mindset” to ensure the Postal Service’s survival during the coronavirus pandemic.

Late trips will no longer be authorized. If postal distribution centers are running late, “they will keep the mail for the next day,″ Postal Service leaders say in a document obtained by The Associated Press. “One aspect of these changes that may be difficult for employees is that — temporarily — we may see mail left behind or mail on the workroom floor or docks,″ another document says

The changes come a month after Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a major donor to President Donald Trump, took over the sprawling mail service. In a memo titled “PMG Expectations and Plan,″ the agency said the changes are aimed at “making the USPS fundamentally solvent which we are not at this time.″

The memo cites deep revenue losses from a decadelong decline in mail deliveries that has been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic and says an overdue “operational pivot” is needed to ensure the agency’s health and stability.

Postal Service officials, bracing for steep losses from the nationwide shutdown caused by the virus, have warned they will run out of money by the end of September without help from Congress. The service reported a $4.5 billion loss for the quarter ending in March, before the full effects of the shutdown sank in.

Single-piece, first-class mail volume fell 15 to 20% week to week in April and May, agency leaders told Congress. Losses will increase by more than $22 billion over the next 18 months, they said.

Bills approved by the Democratic-controlled House would set aside $25 billion to keep the mail flowing, but they remain stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate. Congress has approved a $10 billion line of credit for the Postal Service, but it remains unused amid restrictions imposed by the Trump administration.

A spokesperson said Wednesday that the agency is developing a business plan to ensure it will be financially stable and continue to provide reliable, affordable and secure delivery of mail and packages. While the plan “is not yet finalized, it will certainly include new and creative ways for us to fulfill our mission, and we will focus immediately on efficiency and items that we can control,″ said spokesperson Dave Partenheimer.

The memo cites U.S. Steel as an example that the Postal Service is far from “untouchable.″ In 1975, the steel giant was ”the largest company in the world,” the memo states. “They are gone.” In fact, U.S. Steel remains a leading steel producer, with more than 27,000 employees as of earlier this year.

The COVID-19 pandemic has put the Postal Service in a double crisis, said Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union, which represents more than 200,000 postal workers and retirees.

As many as 12,000 postal workers have fallen ill, with at least 64 fatalities, and the economic contraction has caused a dramatic drop in letter and other flat mail volumes. A spike in package deliveries that has buoyed the agency during the pandemic is likely to be temporary, Dimondstein said, adding that the outbreak has sharply increased expenses for personal protective equipment, deep cleaning of facilities and temporary workers to replace postal workers who get sick.

“Postal workers are tremendously dedicated to the mission of getting the mail out,″ Dimondstein said, but the new policies could cause delays that will further drive down revenues.

“It’s the customer who will suffer if the mail slows down,″ he said.

Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell of New Jersey denounced the proposal to delay mail delivery, saying it would be a “stunning act of sabotage against our postal service.”

“Trump and his cronies are openly seeking to destroy the post office during the worst public health crisis in a century,″ Pascrell said. With states increasingly relying on voting by mail to continue elections during the pandemic, destabilizing the Postal Service not only threatens the economy and the jobs of 600,000 workers, but is also “a direct attack on American democracy itself,″ Pascrell said.

For most Americans, mail deliveries to homes or post boxes are their only routine contact with the federal government. It’s a service they seem to appreciate: The agency consistently earns favorability marks that top 90%.

Part of a car caravan of postal employees has a sign on it asking Congress to approve emergency funding for the Postal Service, Tuesday, June 23, 2020, on Capitol Hill in Washington. The U.S. Postal Service’s famous motto — “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers” — is being tested like never before, by challenges that go well beyond the weather. Its finances have been devastated by the coronavirus. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Paul Falcon unloads a custom made "Priority Mail" box that organizers said contained two million signed petitions from postal customers asking Congress to approve emergency funding for the Postal Service, Tuesday, June 23, 2020, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Postal Service employees and supporters are urging Congress to to invest $25 billion to help the public Postal Service "weather the pandemic and the deep recession." (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Esther Haynes, of Philadelphia, said she and her family get clothes, jewelry, perfume, food and more delivered by mail. “If it’s a day late, two days late, I’ll be looking for it,” she said Wednesday. “I’d be concerned.”

Haynes, 53, shares a home with her sister, her son and a family friend. Haynes likes to shop — which means she’s been busy ordering things online during the pandemic. “Everybody wants their mail on time,” she said.

The memo outlining potential mail delays was first reported by The Washington Post.

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Associated Press writer Maryclaire Dale in Philadelphia

Satellite images show Ethiopia dam reservoir swelling

This combination image made from satellite images taken on Friday, June 26, 2020, above, and Sunday, July 12, 2020, below, shows the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile river in the Benishangul-Gumuz region of Ethiopia. New satellite imagery shows the reservoir behind Ethiopia's disputed hydroelectric dam beginning to fill, but an analyst says it's likely due to seasonal rains instead of government action. (Maxar Technologies via AP)
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — New satellite imagery shows the reservoir behind Ethiopia’s disputed hydroelectric dam beginning to fill, but an analyst says it’s likely due to seasonal rains instead of government action.

The images emerge as Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan say the latest talks on the contentious project ended Monday with no agreement. Ethiopia has said it would begin filling the reservoir of the $4.6 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam this month even without a deal, which would further escalate tensions.

But the swelling reservoir, captured in imagery on July 9 by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 satellite, is likely a “natural backing-up of water behind the dam” during this rainy season, International Crisis Group analyst William Davison told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

“So far, to my understanding, there has been no official announcement from Ethiopia that all of the pieces of construction that are needed to be completed to close off all of the outlets and to begin impoundment of water into the reservoir” have occurred, Davison said.

This combination image made from satellite images taken on Friday, June 26, 2020, above, and Sunday, July 12, 2020, below, shows the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile river in the Benishangul-Gumuz region of Ethiopia. New satellite imagery shows the reservoir behind Ethiopia's disputed hydroelectric dam beginning to fill, but an analyst says it's likely due to seasonal rains instead of government action. (Maxar Technologies via AP)
But Ethiopia is on schedule for impoundment to begin in mid-July, he added, when the rainy season floods the Blue Nile.

Ethiopian officials did not comment on the images.

The latest setback in the three-country talks shrinks hopes that an agreement will be reached before Ethiopia begins filling the reservoir.

Ethiopia says the colossal dam offers a critical opportunity to pull millions of its nearly 110 million citizens out of poverty and become a major power exporter. Downstream Egypt, which depends on the Nile to supply its farmers and booming population of 100 million with fresh water, asserts that the dam poses an existential threat.

Experts fear that filling the dam without a deal could push the countries to the brink of military conflict.

But Kevin Wheeler, a researcher at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, told The Associated Press that fears of any immediate water shortage “are not justified at this stage at all. If there were a drought over the next several years, that certainly could become a risk.”

This satellite image taken Friday, June 26, 2020, shows the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile river in the Benishangul-Gumuz region of Ethiopia. New satellite imagery shows the reservoir behind Ethiopia's disputed hydroelectric dam beginning to fill, but an analyst says it's likely due to seasonal rains instead of government action. (Maxar Technologies via AP)
He said the escalating rhetoric is more due to changing “power dynamics” in the region.

Years of talks with a variety of mediators, including the Trump administration, have failed to produce a solution. Last week’s round, mediated by the African Union and observed by U.S. and European officials, proved no different.

“Although there were progresses, no breakthrough deal is made,” Seleshi Bekele, Ethiopia’s minister of water, irrigation and energy, tweeted overnight.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukry in an interview with Egypt’s DMC TV channel warned Monday that Egypt may be compelled to appeal again to the U.N. Security Council to intervene in the dispute. Ethiopia rejects that, preferring regional bodies like the African Union to mediate.

Meanwhile the countries agreed they would send their reports to the AU and reconvene in a week to determine next steps.


This satellite image taken Sunday, July 12, 2020, shows the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile river in the Benishangul-Gumuz region of Ethiopia. New satellite imagery shows the reservoir behind Ethiopia's disputed hydroelectric dam beginning to fill, but an analyst says it's likely due to seasonal rains instead of government action. (Maxar Technologies via AP)

Between Egypt and Ethiopia lies Sudan, which stands to benefit from the dam through access to cheap electricity and reduced flooding. But it has also raised fears over the dam’s operation, which could endanger its own smaller dams depending on the amount of water discharged daily downstream.

Sudanese Irrigation Minister Yasser Abbas on Monday said the parties were “keen to find a solution” but technical and legal disagreements persist over its filling and operation.

Most important, he said, are the questions about how much water Ethiopia will release downstream if a multi-year drought occurs and how the countries will resolve any future disputes.

Hisham Kahin, a member of Sudan’s legal committee in the dam negotiations, said 70% to 80% of negotiations turned on the question of whether an agreement would be legally binding.

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Philadelphia protesters sue city over tear gas, use of force

FILE - In this May 31, 2020 file photo, police deploy tear gas to disperse a crowd during a protest in Philadelphia over the death of George Floyd. Floyd died May 25 after he was pinned at the neck by a Minneapolis police officer. Three class-action lawsuits filed in Philadelphia on Tuesday, July 14, accuse the city of using military-level force against peaceful demonstrators protesting racial inequality and police brutality. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Three civil rights lawsuits filed in Philadelphia on Tuesday accuse the city of using military-level force that injured protesters and bystanders alike during peaceful protests against racial inequality and police brutality.

One lawsuit accuses Philadelphia police of lobbing tear gas and firing rubber bullets at protesters indiscriminately as they marched peacefully on a city highway. Another accuses the police of using tanks, tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets in an African American business and residential district, at times injuring people in or near their own homes.
FILE—In this file photo from June 1, 2020, a protester walks in Philadelphia near smoke after tear gas was dispersed during a march calling for justice over the death of George Floyd who died after being restrained by Minneapolis police officers on May 25. Three class-action lawsuits filed in Philadelphia on Tuesday, July 14, accuse the city of using military-level force against peaceful demonstrators protesting racial inequality and police brutality. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

“They were just opening fire on anybody they saw, for hours and hours, regardless of any conduct or justification,” said Bret Grote, legal director of the Abolitionist Law Center, who called the police response to demonstrations that rocked the city in May and June reckless.

“They were shooting children. They were shooting old people. They were shooting residents on their own street. They were gassing the firefighters,” he said.

The lawsuits, involving more than 140 plaintiffs, were filed the same day the city announced the resignation of Philadelphia Managing Director Brian Abernathy. The suits were filed by the law center, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and civil rights lawyers in the city.

FILE—In this file photo from June 1, 2020, protesters march down Interstate 676 in Philadelphia, during a march calling for justice over the death of George Floyd. Three class-action lawsuits filed in Philadelphia on Tuesday, July 14, accuse the city of using military-level force against peaceful demonstrators protesting racial inequality and police brutality. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

Both the city and the police department declined to comment directly on the lawsuits. However, Mayor Jim Kenney, in a statement, said the city is conducting an independent review of both situations and will hold police accountable.

“I am highly concerned about what transpired on both I-676 and 52nd Street and I fully regret the use of tear gas and some other use of force in those incidents,” Kenney said.

Kenney and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw had previously apologized for using tear gas in the June 1 demonstration on the interstate, saying they relied on incorrect information. They also announced a temporary moratorium on its use in most cases. Abernathy on Tuesday said his decision to resign was not related to the city’s handling of the protests, but added that the city needs more diverse voices “at every level of government.”

Videos show Philadelphia police that day firing tear gas at dozens of protesters trapped on the roadway, forcing some to climb up a steep embankment and over a concrete wall and fence to escape.

The protests were among those that erupted nationwide after the death of George Floyd, who died after a Minneapolis police officer put his knee on his neck for several minutes to pin him to the ground.

“In response to protests and a national conversation about police accountability and an end to a long history of police brutality, the Philadelphia Police Department reacted with more brutality,” said lawyer Jonathan Feinberg, who was involved in the litigation and works for the civil rights firm Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing, Feinberg and Lin LLP.

“Our firm dates back to 1971. We cannot recall a single episode in which the Philadelphia police used munitions like this in a peaceful protest,” Feinberg said.

Shahidah Mubarak-Hadi, a plaintiff, said her 3- and 6-year old children were hurt after police fired tear gas at their home in West Philadelphia, where they were inside seeking refuge during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Officers violated the sanctity of our home, without forethought, senselessly firing tear gas around our residence while we were inside,” she said. “My children and I no longer feel safe in our own house.”

They live near the 52nd Street business corridor, the heart of a predominantly Black neighborhood rocked by clashes between police and protesters on May 31. The police response, lawyers said in a press release, violated their clients’ First Amendment right to free speech and assembly, Fourth Amendment ban on excessive force and 14th Amendment ban on racially discriminatory policing.

“In what many witnesses described as a war zone in an otherwise peaceful, residential community, police officers in tanks traveled away from West Philadelphia’s business corridor and down residential side streets for hours, chasing residents into their homes and indiscriminately firing canisters of tear gas at them,” they said.

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This story has been corrected to say the litigation involves civil rights lawsuits, not class-action lawsuits.