Oil Sands’ First Capital Spending Gain in Years Put In Doubt

Kevin Orland Bloomberg March 10, 2020


(Bloomberg) -- The first capital spending boost in Canada’s oil sands in half a decade is in doubt after the global oil-price plunge prompted one major explorer to slash its 2020 budget.

Cenovus Energy Inc. is cutting spending by 32% to a range of C$900 million ($653 million) to C$1 billion, suspending its crude-by-rail program and deferring investment decisions on major growth projects, according to a statement Tuesday. The company also is dialing back its production outlook to 432,000 to 486,000 barrels a day, down from 472,000 to 496,000.

MEG Energy Corp. followed suit later in the day, cutting its capital budget 20% to C$200 million. Production this year will be 93,000 to 95,000 barrels a day, down from an original forecast of as much as 94,000 to 97,000, the company said.

If other producers follow suit, the oil sands are at risk of posting their sixth straight year of declining investment, a trend that has weighed on Alberta’s oil-dependent economy.

Before international crude posted its worst decline since 1991 on Monday, capital spending in the world’s third-largest crude reserves was projected to rise 8.4% to C$11.6 billion this year, according to a January forecast from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

“Given recent oil market developments, investors were expecting Cenovus and its peers to announce spending austerity measures,” Michael Dunn, an analyst at Stifel FirstEnergy, said in a note. “Essentially, spending on growth projects has been put on the shelf.”

The investment slump has taken a toll on Alberta. After the last oil-market crash, unemployment in the province surged to 9.1% by late 2016.

Despite the oil-price recovery of the following years, explorers continued trimming jobs to reduce costs, and a shortage of pipeline capacity kept a brake on expansion plans. The province’s unemployment rate has remained above 6% since September 2015 and was at 7.2% last month.

Even before this week’s rout, some major oil-sands projects had been scrapped or postponed because of pipeline shortages and production limits imposed by provincial leaders.

Imperial Oil Ltd., Exxon Mobil Corp.’s Canadian unit, last year delayed its C$2.6 billion oil-sands project that was scheduled to start production in 2022. Last month, Teck Resources Ltd. withdrew its application for the C$20.6 billion Frontier oil-sands mine.

(Updates with MEG cutting budget in third paragraph)

--With assistance from Michael Bellusci.

To contact the reporter on this story: Kevin Orland in Calgary at korland@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Simon Casey at scasey4@bloomberg.net, ;Derek Decloet at ddecloet@bloomberg.net, Carlos Caminada

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Cenovus Energy To Suspend Crude-By-Rail Program In 2020

FreightWaves Benzinga March 13, 2020



Falling crude oil prices have prompted Canadian oil and natural gas producer Cenovus Energy (NYSE: CVE) to stop its crude-by-rail program temporarily.

Cenovus is "temporarily suspending its crude-by-rail program and deferring final investment decisions on major growth projects. These measures are being taken in response to the recent significant decline in world benchmark crude oil prices," the company said on March 9. Cenovus' operations include oil sands projects in northern Alberta and oil and gas production in Alberta and British Columbia.

Because Cenovus is suspending its crude-by-rail program, it will no longer be making use of the credits under Alberta's Special Production Allowance program. The program allowed crude producers to increase their crude oil production if producers agreed to ship it by rail. The Alberta government set production limits so that Alberta heavy crude would not be sold at steep discounts.

As a result of not increasing crude production and sending crude volumes via rail, Cenovus said it expects oil sands production to average 350,000-400,000 barrels a day, which is 6% lower than the 2020 guidance the company provided last December.

Crude oil prices in "this challenging commodity price environment" have fallen sharply in recent days as Saudi Arabia has sought to ramp up crude production in hopes of slashing prices, including those of competitors such as Russia.

Alberta crude producers look at the pricing spread between Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) as they assess their ability to ship via rail. Western Canada Select (WCS) crude, which is Alberta heavy crude, is typically priced against WTI.

WCS gets hauled to the U.S. East or Gulf coasts, and so producers consider rail costs. If the price of WCS, which is WTI minus the prevailing market differential, is competitive with Brent crude, then producers are more willing to bear the rail costs and ship WCS.

Cenovus to Curb Capital Spending in Weak Pricing Environment

Zacks Equity Research Zacks March 11, 2020

Cenovus Energy Inc. CVE recently announced plan to slash 2020 capital budget by around 32%. Moreover, the company will likely put its crude-by-rail program under temporary suspension, while postponing final investment decisions of some major growth projects. This move was triggered by the recent events in the OPEC+ meeting, which ended up creating a Saudi Arabia-Russia oil price war and pushing oil prices to historical lows.

Budget Cut

Oil prices have witnessed a massive tumble recently, highest since the 1991 Gulf War, which dealt a huge blow to the already struggling Canadian hydrocarbon industry. Reacting to the market situation, Cenovus decided to curb capital spending in a bid to maintain balance sheet strength. Per the revised budget, the company is expected to make capital spending of C$0.9-C$1 billion in 2020. Notably, as of Dec 31, 2019, the Canadian energy player had cash and cash equivalents of C$186 million, and total long-term debt of C$6,699 million. Its total debt-to-capitalization ratio was 25.9%, considerably lower than the energy sector’s more than 31%.

Lowered Production Guidance

The temporary suspension of the crude-by-rail program is expected to halt the usage of credits under Alberta’s Special Production Allowance program. This will likely take a toll on the company’s total production by 5%. Production is now expected within 432-486 thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day. Oil sands production is now expected in the range of 350-400 thousand barrels per day, reflecting 6% fall from the original guidance.

Major Projects to Suffer

The company’s Christina Lake and Foster Creek projects, which were earlier expected to reach sanction-ready status in 2020, are kept on hold. Capital spending in its Deep Basin and Marten Hills operations is also likely to be suspended. The company will avoid making new projects sanctions owing to low oil price environment.

Price Performance

The stock has plunged 63.8% in the past year compared with 44.2% decline of the industry it belongs to.


Zacks Rank & Stocks to Consider

Cenovus currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked players in the energy space are Apache Corporation APA, Matador Resources Company MTDR and Phillips 66 Partners LP PSXP, each having a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Apache beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate for earnings thrice in the last four quarters, with an average positive surprise of 119.7%.

Matador Resources’ 2020 earnings per share are expected to gain more than 5% year over year.

Phillips 66 Partners’ first-quarter 2020 earnings per share are expected to gain 10% year over year.

The Hottest Tech Mega-Trend of All

Last year, it generated $24 billion in global revenues. By 2020, it's predicted to blast through the roof to $77.6 billion. Famed investor Mark Cuban says it will produce "the world's first trillionaires," but that should still leave plenty of money for regular investors who make the right trades early.

COMPASSIONATE CAPITALISM, 
OR CAPITALISM WITH A CONSCIENCE 
ONE MORE STEP AND IT'S SOCIALISM

Former Best Buy CEO: Companies should 'pursue a noble purpose and good things'

The capitalistic system as it stands has been incredibly kind to perhaps one of the very best turnaround CEOs of the last decade, former Best Buy head honcho Hubert Joly. But even he acknowledges that changes to that system are long overdue.

“Milton Friedman is dead,” Joly told Yahoo Finance in an interview.

Continued Joly, “We need companies to pursue a noble purpose and good things for other stakeholders, the customers, the suppliers, the vendors, the communities the environments. Shareholder’s profit is an outcome and that’s a revolutionary approach.”

Joly is an interesting test case on a different kind of capitalism getting the job done. Now executive chairman of Best Buy (Joly will hand the position over to former Domino’s Pizza CEO and board member Patrick Doyle in June), the French-born Joly never seemed to be the typical CEO who sits in the ivory tower and bark orders to underlings and store associates. Joly ceded the CEO role to Corie Barry in June 2019 after a seven-year run. Instead, Joly always came across — based on my knowledge of covering Best Buy and in talking with various sources — as quite engaging, a champion of hourly store workers and a deep believer in that doing things right would lead to a stock price that heads up and to the right.

Now that Joly has a touch more time on his hands (he is on the boards of Polo Ralph Lauren and Johnson & Johnson, and is writing a book), he has tossed his hat into the ring of top executives calling out capitalism as in badly need of reform.

In August 2019, the influential Business Roundtable ignited a firestorm by doing away with its “shareholder comes first” mantra. The new mantra is that companies should put shareholders on par with other stakeholders like suppliers and average employees.

"We know that many Americans are struggling. Too often hard work is not rewarded, and not enough is being done for workers to adjust to the rapid pace of change in the economy. If companies fail to recognize that the success of our system is dependent on inclusive long-term growth, many will raise legitimate questions about the role of large employers in our society," a statement from the Business Roundtable stated.

Hubert Joly just got the job done at Best Buy. Bottom line. (Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for Samsung)

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, now former chairman of the Business Roundtable (Walmart CEO Doug McMillon has taken over), threw his weight behind the statement. "The American dream is alive, but fraying," Dimon said.

A host of other big-name leaders also threw their weight behind the view capitalism must reform in Yahoo Finance’s coverage of the 2020 World Economic Forum.

To say Joly’s refreshing approach to driving shareholder returns worked is a gross understatement. So as far as I am concerned, his views are dead on the mark. Something has to change in Corporate America.

Joly’s reign

Joly’s tenure atop of Best Buy was not just marked by saving a retailer under siege from Amazon and its own internal missteps, but re-imagining the business from end to end. Some of the highlights include significantly improving customer service (adding more staff to the stores, for example), pricing matching online rivals, reducing the likelihood of broken TVs upon delivery to the store from the warehouse, adding branded shops from Samsung and driving a successful launch of a buy online, ship from store.

Towards the end of his CEO reign, Joly pulled the trigger on a transformational $800 million acquisition in Great Call that brought Best Buy into senior living care. Heck, even Geek Squad is easier to use.

Billions of dollars in expenses were slashed despite a lack of rampant store closures. Joly boosted sales, boosted profits even more and perhaps boosted employee morale even more than both of those percentage changes on a financial statement. A lot could be said for all of those achievements in an often thankless retail sector being upended by digital shopping.

Total shareholder return under Joly’s watch: +263%.

Joly tells Yahoo Finance he has no plans on having one last CEO job. Nothing wrong with going out on top. In hindsight that may be a good thing — he should be doing paid speeches each week for the entire Fortune 500 on how an employee friendly approach to doing business works for all parties involved.

No electric device needed from Best Buy to figure out that is the right way to go when it comes to capitalism.


Fortune 500 companies can play a 'big' role in addressing poverty, says Robin Hood CEO


Max Zahn Reporter, Yahoo Finance•March 12, 2020

In the Democratic presidential primary, progressive Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has criticized large companies for exacerbating wealth inequality — but the head of a top anti-poverty nonprofit says top corporations can play a significant role in addressing it.

In a newly released interview, taped on March 3, Wes Moore — the chief executive of New York City-based philanthropic organization Robin Hood — said Fortune 500 companies can play a “big” role in alleviating issues of poverty and homelessness.

“The role of Fortune 500 companies is big, and broad, and vast,” says Moore, whose organization was founded by hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones and distributes between $150 million and $180 million each year to over 250 nonprofits.

“It's not just about making sure that we're both hiring people, and paying people fairly, and doing all that stuff, which is baseline,” he adds. “But there is also a role about how can they think creatively about their voice, how to think creatively about utilizing all the other assets that they have in place.”

In particular, Silicon Valley — home to prosperous tech giants Google (GOOG, GOOGL), Facebook (FB), and Apple (AAPL) — has drawn scrutiny for a worsening homelessness crisis. A survey last May by government officials in surrounding Santa Clara County found a spike of 31% in the homeless population over the preceding two years.

On the opposite coast, in New York City, where many large companies and banks are headquartered, the number of homeless single adults has risen 143% over the past 10 years, according to advocacy group Coalition for the Homeless.

Moore called on major corporations to use their platforms to raise issues like poverty and forward solutions for addressing them.

“Making sure that those things that you're speaking about are not just the things that are going to impact your quarterly earnings reports, but impact the community, impact your shareholders and the people who aren't yet shareholders,” says Moore, whose organization provides grant recipients with businesses expertise in addition to funds.

“Making sure that the ways you're using your voice and making sure the ways you're using your influence are going to have a larger societal impact that actually creates a level of fairness and parity and equity in our large society,” he adds. “That's how they can use their voice.”

Salesforce (CRM) CEO Marc Benioff, whose company is headquartered in San Francisco, donated $30 million last May to research the causes of homelessness. "The world needs a North Star for truth on homelessness," Benioff said at the time.


Moore made the remarks during a conversation that aired in an episode of Yahoo Finance’s “Influencers with Andy Serwer,” a weekly interview series with leaders in business, politics, and entertainment.

In 2017, Moore took over as CEO at Robin Hood. Before his current role, Moore worked on Wall Street, served as a captain in the army, and spent time under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the White House. From 2014 to 2017, he led BridgeEdU, an organization that seeks to make higher education accessible for low-income students.


Wes Moore, the CEO of New York City-based nonprofit Robin Hood, appears on Influencers with Andy Serwer.More

Moore said his organization welcomes support from many benefactors, including wealthy individuals.

“I don't have the luxury to say, who should and should not be involved in this conversation,” he says, adding that poverty is a problem for which all Americans share responsibility.

“I need to make sure that everybody is involved in this conversation because all of us have a level complicity for the fact that we have this problem,” he says. “So if that's the case, everybody needs to be [saying], ‘oh, I'm trying to find a solution to it.’”

Ruling protecting Cambodian refugees might benefit others, lawyers say

Agnes Constante, NBC News•March 13, 2020


A recent federal court ruling offering protections to some Cambodian refugees facing deportation could have a broader impact on other groups in similar situations, legal experts and immigrant advocates say.

A court in California last week issued what advocates call a “groundbreaking” decision that protects Cambodian refugees from final orders of removal in unannounced immigration raids.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has conducted arrests of individuals with old final orders of removal without warning, Jenny Zhao, a staff attorney at Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Asian Law Caucus, said. With the ruling, Chhoeun V. Marin, the U.S. government is now required to issue a 14-day written notice before detaining Cambodian nationals with final orders of removal.

Zhao said that the ruling applies only to Cambodians with deportation orders, but that other immigrants facing deportation for old removal orders could cite the decision if they find themselves in a similar lawsuit.

“I think a lot of the reasoning in the decision around why people who have an old deportation order and have been living peacefully in their communities shouldn’t be just plucked out of their lives one day without warning could apply to other communities as well,” she said.

Last week's decision, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, comes more than two years after the Asian Law Caucus, along with Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Los Angeles and Sidley Austin LLP, filed a class action lawsuit in 2017 challenging the detentions of Cambodian nationals.

ICE in October 2017 began carrying out unannounced raids and detaining Cambodian nationals with final orders of removal, many of which were based on decades-old convictions for offenses they committed as teenagers, according to court documents. Plaintiffs fled Cambodia as refugees in the 1970s to escape the Khmer Rouge, court documents noted.

The agency's practice of conducting immigration arrests without notice, along with the large-scale raids that have escalated in the Cambodian community over the past couple of years, became a source of stress and anxiety for many.

“The court has really acknowledged that the way ICE has been conducting arrests on Cambodian community members is unconstitutional and has caused enormous harm to that community over the years,” Zhao said.

In January 2019, the court issued a temporary restraining order requiring the government to provide written notice 14 days before detention. The order became permanent with the court ruling last week.

“What it really means is people no longer have to live in fear that every day could be the last day that they get to say goodbye to their families and they could just be arrested without notice and shipped off to some detention facility across the country,” Zhao said.

She added that the window of time also provides class members with the opportunity to find a lawyer and explore their legal options, and to get their affairs in order before detention.

According to court documents, the government argued that providing advance notice before detention interferes with the “prompt execution of removal orders,” creates a burden on ICE officers who have to gather information and prepare the notices, and results in high rates of disappearances. The government said that nearly half of class members did not show up for travel document interviews when they were given advanced notice of detention.

The court, however, said that none of the arguments were persuasive.

In the decision, the court said that the government had waited up to decades to execute removal orders and could afford 14 additional days to execute those orders, and that there is no evidence that written notices create a significant burden on the government. The court also said that the government has not provided reliable evidence to support the claim of high disappearances and that the burdens associated with disappearances are minimal.

ICE declined to comment on the case.

Nak Kim Chhoeun, a plaintiff named in the lawsuit who was detained without notice in October 2017, said the court's decision has provided him with a sense of security.

“I’d be afraid to walk outside my house right now and afraid that ICE could walk up to me and detain me prior to the ruling,” he said. “Now I can actually go out and say, 'You know what, if they were to detain me, they’re going to violate the judge’s order because they didn’t give me a two-week notice.'”

Zhao said that the court's ruling provides an important baseline protection, but that the fight is not over. She expects the government to appeal the decision and noted that Cambodians are still facing deportation. The government in January deported 25 Cambodian nationals in its first round of repatriations this year. And last month, the Asian Law Caucus issued an alert that ICE had begun arresting Cambodians for deportation.

In fiscal year 2020, as of Feb. 29, ICE has removed 30 Cambodian nationals, 25 of whom were convicted criminals, an ICE spokesperson said in an email.

As of Feb. 29, there were 1,769 Cambodian nationals with a final order of removal, 1,293 of whom are convicted criminals or have pending criminal charges, according to ICE.

“We feel that in the long term, ICE should stop detaining and deporting people altogether, especially from this community because these policies are causing so much harm to refugee families,” she said.

‘If you’re sick, they don’t care’: pandemic forces fast-food industry to review its policies

Lauren Aratani in New York, The Guardian•March 13, 2020

Photograph: Mike Groll/AP

In the middle of his shift last summer at Chipotle in New York City, Carlos Hernandez started to feel sick.

He told his manager that he was having diarrhea which, under the US Food and Drug Administration’s food code for restaurants and food services, meant he should have been excused from his shift.

Instead, Hernandez was told to stick around. He was to either go into the back of the store to wash dishes or work the register.

“Even if you’re sick, they really don’t care. If you can still stand up on your feet and move your hands, you’re considered workable,” Hernandez said.


Related: 'I suffer through it': how US workers cope without paid sick leave

This brushing off of illness is common in many places within the food service and restaurant industry and has been for many years. But with the recent coronavirus outbreak, being sick is no longer something people can shrug off given the illness’s ability to spread rapidly and efficiently.

The culture around sick leave in the food service industry is that it is nearly nonexistent. The CDC says that 15% of food workers have paid sick leave. That means a bulk of people in the industry are part of the 32 million American workers who are without paid sick leave.

Poor sick leave policies are an “industry standard” in food service, particularly fast food, said Judy Conti, government affairs director for the National Employment Law Center. The US does not have a federal sick leave policy, with 12 states and Washington DC having paid sick leave laws.

“Workers are getting low wage to begin with, so it’s really disadvantageous for them to take time off from work because they won’t get paid,” Conti said.

Maurilia Arellanes, who works at a McDonald’s in San Jose, California, said that she took a day off during the week to recover from the flu last year. When she came back to work, she found that she lost a chunk of the hours she was typically assigned to work.

“I went from working 35 hours a week to 27 hours a week. I had spent a month asking and begging my managers to get me back my normal shifts,” Arellanes said. “Workers like me are paid wages so low that we are dependent on every cent we earn on our shift.”

Arellanes is part of the Fight for $15, a workers’ rights campaign that has called on McDonald’s to give all workers in its corporate and franchise location paid sick leave if an employee or a close family member has tested positive for coronavirus and must be quarantined. They also demand that the company provide paid leave for parents who care for children of closed schools and cover the cost of testing and treatment of the virus.

“When I called in sick recently, I had to miss a payment on my electric bill and pleaded with the utility company for an extension,” said Fran Marion, a McDonald’s worker in Kansas City, Missouri, also part of Fight for $15. “If any of us had to be quarantined for two weeks … the effects would be devastating for our families.”

In response to the campaign, McDonald’s made an announcement that they will offer up to 14 days of paid sick leave to any employee of corporate-owned restaurants who is quarantined with coronavirus. A vast majority of McDonald’s restaurants, above 90%, are not corporate-owned but are owned by franchisees.

“As we proactively monitor the impact of the coronavirus, we are continuously evaluating our policies to provide flexibility and reasonable accommodations,” a McDonald’s spokesperson wrote in statement.

Even with paid sick leave, workplace culture in the food service industry encourages ill employees to make their shift rather than having someone rush to find a replacement.

Luis Torres, another Chipotle worker in New York City, says that managers at his location will often “guilt” employees into working while sick, saying that they are busy and do not have enough people working. “I’ve kind of normalized it, many people have normalized it,” Torres said.

Chipotle as a company offers three days of paid sick leave each year, but employees in New York City associated with the local 32BJ SEIU union, including Hernandez and Torres, went on strike last week in response to what they say is the company not following local sick leave laws. New York City requires five days paid sick leave accrued over the year.

Earlier this year, Chipotle settled with the city’s department of consumer and worker protection for firing an employee who took sick leave. The department is also conducting a deeper investigation of the chain’s workplace practices.

“We communicate to all employees how they can properly request sick time. Employees that are not feeling well are required to stay home and we’ll welcome them back when they are symptom free,” a Chipotle spokesperson wrote in a statement to the Guardian.

From a public health perspective, actively encouraging employees to take time off while sick is important for industries such as food service whose work requires employees to come in direct contact with people.

But the food industry has been particularly susceptible to high turnover because it typically produces high-pressure and fast-paced environments, putting pressure on managers to have all hands on deck even when employees are ill.

“Missing one person out of a system in a restaurant or a food [service] setting is really problematic” for efficiency and quality in a restaurant, said Ben Chapman, a professor and food safety extension specialist at North Carolina State University. “It’s a problem in public health that we haven’t really gotten our hands around.”

Chapman said while coronavirus is not at a stage where people should be avoiding restaurants, “people should be wary of being around people who are ill”.

---30---

Major companies are making big changes to their sick leave policies amid coronavirus spread
Tim O'Donnell, The Week•March 10, 2020

The spread of the novel coronavirus has prompted several major U.S. companies to re-think their sick policies.

Walmart, which had an employee in Kentucky test positive for the virus, will not penalize hourly workers who call in sick, and any employees who are diagnosed with COVID-19 or are placed in quarantine will receive two weeks of pay that won't come out of their normal paid leave. Uber is also providing two weeks worth of pay to any drivers or delivery workers who have tested positive or are isolated, while Lyft said it would compensate its drivers, as well, though the company did not elaborate.

Apple, meanwhile, is set to provide unlimited paid leave to any hourly employees who show cold or flu symptoms similar to COVID-19 even if they're not formally diagnosed, and, like Google, is encouraging its corporate employees to work from home for a while.

As for Darden Restaurants, the parent company of several chains including Olive Garden, the new coronavirus apparently sped up already-in-motion plans to reshape their benefits. Employees will now receive up to 40 hours of paid sick leave annually. Read more at The Washington Post and Business Insider.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez demands the government distribute a universal basic income and implement 'Medicare for all' to fight the coronavirus

Business Insider•March 12, 2020

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Jacquelyn Martin/AP Images

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is pushing for a significantly more robust federal-government response to the coronavirus pandemic as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi struggles to strike a deal with the GOP.

The House is preparing to vote on Thursday on a coronavirus-relief bill that would provide Americans with paid sick leave, food assistance, free coronavirus testing, and more substantial unemployment benefits.

"This is not the time for half measures," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on Thursday. "We need to take dramatic action now to stave off the worst public health & economic affects."

Democrats are attempting to bring Republicans on board with their legislation — which doesn't include Ocasio-Cortez's far-reaching proposals — but the White House and GOP lawmakers are resisting it.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive lawmakers are calling for a significantly more robust federal-government response to the coronavirus than has so far been proposed by both Democrats and Republicans.

The House is preparing to vote on Thursday on a coronavirus-relief bill that would provide Americans with paid sick leave, food assistance, free coronavirus testing, and more substantial unemployment benefits.

But Ocasio-Cortez pushed for a more sweeping response, including expanding Medicare or Medicaid to cover all Americans, a freeze on evictions, a universal basic income, ending work requirements for food-assistance programs, criminal-justice reform, and freezing student-debt collection.

"This is not the time for half measures," she tweeted on Thursday. "We need to take dramatic action now to stave off the worst public health & economic affects. That includes making moves on paid leave, debt relief, waiving work req's, guaranteeing healthcare, UBI, detention relief (pretrial, elderly, imm)."

Ocasio-Cortez said the expansion of unemployment benefits wouldn't help the many millions of Americans, including tipped and contracted workers, who are suffering economically as a result of the pandemic but aren't necessarily losing their jobs.
A fight over the coronavirus response

Democrats are attempting to bring Republicans on board with the legislation, but the White House and GOP lawmakers are resisting it.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy called the bill "completely partisan" and "unworkable." Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called the legislation "an ideological wish list that was not tailored closely to the circumstances."

But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has remained defiant.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on March 12. Associated Press

"We cannot slow the coronavirus outbreak when workers are stuck with the terrible choice between staying home to avoid spreading illness and the paycheck their family can't afford to lose," she said in a Wednesday statement.

On Thursday morning, Pelosi told reporters that Congress wouldn't leave Washington without passing legislation to address the pandemic and resulting economic crisis. (Congress is scheduled to go on recess next week).

"We're bringing this bill to the floor," she said.

Meanwhile, the president has proposed a massive fiscal stimulus centered on a temporary Social Security payroll-tax cut that would add about $1 trillion to the national debt — more costly than both the 2008 Wall Street bailout and the 2009 stimulus bill designed to combat the Great Recession.

There is widespread bipartisan skepticism about the cost and effectiveness of Trump's proposal, and it would face an uphill battle in the Democratic-controlled House. Critics say the payroll-tax cut wouldn't be targeted enough and would disproportionately help higher-income Americans.

After calling for unity during an address to the nation on Wednesday night, Trump attacked Pelosi on Thursday morning for refusing to back his plan.

"Nancy Pelosi all of a sudden doesn't like the payroll tax cut, but when Obama proposed it she thought it was a brilliant thing that all of the working families would benefit from because if you get a paycheck, you're going to take home more money," he tweeted, quoting a host of "Fox and Friends."

---30---

Coronavirus: Pelosi and Trump reach deal on testing and paid leave package
The Independent•March 13, 2020

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she has reached a deal with the White House to pass legislation that provides free testing for coronavirus testing, including uninsured people, as well as paid sick leave and family leave for up to three months.

In a statement, she said: "This legislation is about testing, testing, testing. To stop the spread of the virus, we have secured free coronavirus testing for everyone who needs a test, including the uninsured. We cannot fight coronavirus effectively unless everyone in our country who needs to be tested can get their test free of charge."

Speaker Pelosi said they also have "secured paid emergency leave with two weeks of paid sick leave and up to three months of paid family and medical leave" as well as unemployment insurance, a Medicaid expansion, and food security plans for poor families impacted by the outbreak.

'I don't take responsibility': Trump shakes hands and spreads blame over coronavirus

David Smith in Washington, The Guardian•March 13, 2020


'I don't take responsibility': Trump shakes hands and spreads blame over coronavirusMore

He fingered the microphone and put his lips up close. He shook hands with everyone he could. Donald Trump, who promised you’re going to win so much you’ll get sick of winning, might also just make you sick.

In the White House rose garden on Friday, the US president defied the advice of medical experts standing behind him and behaved like a one-man coronavirus cannon.

Trump declared a national emergency (“two very big words”, said the man known for his misspelled tweets) that would release up to $50bn to combat the pandemic, which this week topped 2,000 cases and had the lamps going out all over America.

Reporters wanted to know whether this 73-year-old man with a poor diet – his former doctor reportedly hid cauliflower in his mashed potatoes – is putting himself and others at risk. Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s press secretary tested positive for coronavirus days after taking part in meetings with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

Should Trump therefore self-isolate? “Well, I don’t know that I had exposure, but I don’t have any of the symptoms,” he replied. “And we do have a White House doctor and, I should say, many White House doctors, frankly. And I asked them that same question, and they said, ‘You don’t have any symptoms whatsoever.’ And we don’t want people without symptoms to go and do the test. The test is not insignificant.”

But later another reporter pushed him harder, noting that a person without symptoms might still be infected. Question: “Are you being selfish by not getting tested and potentially exposing – ”

Trump: “Well, I didn’t say I wasn’t going to be tested.”

Question: “Are you going to be?”

Trump: “Most likely, yeah. Most likely.”

Question: “When do you think that will happen?”

Trump: “Not for that reason, but because I think I will do it anyway. Fairly soon.”

Coronavirus is a crisis of a different magnitude from those faced by Trump before. It has upended daily life and left liberals cursing the cosmic dice: how come Tom Hanks is infected while Trump gets off scot-free?

When the celebrity businessman has his back to the wall, he calls for the cavalry of corporate America. At Friday’s press conference he rolled in business titans to save the day, treating them to plenty of handshakes and little social distancing.

“You’re going to be hearing from some of the largest companies and greatest retailers and medical companies in the world,” he said, presumably hoping to reassure the stock market. “They’re standing right behind me and to the side of me ... they’re celebrities in their own right.”

Trump announced that “drive-thru” testing centers would be set up in parking lots at CVS, Target, Walmart and Walgreens stores.

This, he hopes, will resolve a spectacularly awful time lag in testing kits being made available. America has been put to shame by South Korea.


Trump seems eager to wash his hands of the matter, if not actually wash his hands

The wartime president Harry Truman used to keep a sign on his desk that said: “The buck stops here.” Trump, however, seems eager to wash his hands of the matter, if not actually wash his hands. “Yeah, no, I don’t take responsibility at all, because we were given a set of circumstances and we were given rules, regulations, and specifications from a different time,” he said. “It wasn’t meant for this kind of an event with the kind of numbers that we’re talking about.”

Then Yamiche Alcindor of PBS asked why, in 2018, Trump had dissolved the White House’s National Security Council directorate for global health security and biodefense.

Like a schoolboy caught red-handed, he blustered: “Well, I just think it’s a nasty question because what we’ve done is – and Tony has said numerous times that we’ve saved thousands of lives because of the quick closing. And when you say ‘me’, I didn’t do it. We have a group of people I could – ”

Alcindor followed up. Trump rambled: “It’s the – it’s the administration. Perhaps they do that. You know, people let people go. You used to be with a different newspaper than you are now. You know, things like that happen.”

It is not the first time he has resorted to the word “nasty” when asked a tough question by a woman of colour.

The buck stops here.

'I don't take responsibility': Trump says he's not to blame for persistent delays in coronavirus testing



As the coronavirus outbreak spread worldwide, the United States was far slower to produce test kits than other countries. 

In the news conference, a reporter asked Trump if he took "responsibility" for the shortage, and when he could guarantee that there'd be enough tests for Americans.

"Yeah, I don't take responsibility at all because we were given a set of circumstances and we were given rules, regulations, and specifications from a different time," Trump replied.

I don't take responsibility at all' for lack of coronavirus tests, Trump says

President Donald Trump refused to accept any responsibility for the slow rate of coronavirus testing in the United States, saying on Friday that he was "given a set of circumstances" that wasn't meant for the high numbers of potential COVID-19 infections.

"No, I don't take responsibility at all. Because we were given a -- a set of circumstances, and we were given rules, regulations and specifications from a different time. It wasn't meant for this kind of -- an event with the kind of numbers that we're talking about," Trump responded. 

© Provided by CNBC President Donald Trump in the Rose Garden

 of the White House in Washington, DC, May 16, 2019.

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump refused to accept any responsibility for the slow rate of coronavirus testing in the United States, saying on Friday that he was "given a set of circumstances" that wasn't meant for the high numbers of potential COVID-19 infections.

"What we've done, and one of the reasons people are respecting what we've done, is we've gotten it done very early, and we've also kept a lot of people out," Trump said during a press conference in the Rose Garden, referring to early actions

During the briefing, NBC's Kristen Welker asked Trump whether he took responsibility for the testing lag, which one member of his own task force called "a failing."

"No, I don't take responsibility at all. Because we were given a -- a set of circumstances, and we were given rules, regulations and specifications from a different time. It wasn't meant for this kind of -- an event with the kind of numbers that we're talking about," Trump responded.

In reality, America's low rate of COVID-19 testing has drawn criticism from health experts around the world, who say the slow rate of testing obscures the actual rate of infection in the United States, which is likely far higher than tests have so far confirmed.


During the earliest stages of the outbreak, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention distributed faulty tests to state and local health departments. Once the flawed tests were discovered and discarded, bureaucratic red tape held up the process of granting exemptions to private labs to make their own tests.

As criticism of the Trump administration's coronavirus testing protocol has intensified, and testing in other countries like South Korea has outpaced the U.S. by orders of magnitude, Trump has sought to shift the blame onto his predecessor, Barack Obama.

On Friday, asked about testing rates, Trump brought up the example of the 2009 swine flu, or H1N1 epidemic, in order to criticize Obama and boast of his success.

"If you go back to the swine flu, it was nothing like this, they didn't do testing like this, and they lost approximately 14,000 people. They started thinking about testing when it was far too late," Trump said.

Former Obama administration official Ron Klain, who managed the 2014 Ebola outbreak, disputed Trump's assessment. "The Obama administration tested 1 million people for H1N1 in the first month after the first US diagnosed case," Klain tweeted on Thursday. "The first US coronavirus case was 50+ days ago. And we haven't event tested 10,000 people yet."

This is not the first time Trump has attacked Obama's outbreak response as inadequate, an argument that has political implications as Obama's vice president, Joe Biden, appears increasingly likely to be Trump's 2020 Democratic opponent.

"The Obama administration made a decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we're doing, and we undid that decision a few days ago so that the testing can take place in a much more accurate and rapid fashion," Trump said at a White House meeting with airline executives in early March.

"That was a decision we disagreed with. I don't think we would have made it, but for some reason it was made. But we've undone that decision."

Yet experts and laboratory trade organizations say there was no "decision," and they don't know what Trump is referring to.

"We aren't sure what rule is being referenced," Michelle Forman, a spokeswoman for the Association of Public Health Laboratories, told The Washington Post in early March.

"To our knowledge, there were some discussions about laboratory developed test rules but nothing was ever put into place. So we are not aware of anything that changed how LDTs are regulated."

Moreover, the rules that govern how testing labs respond to emergencies aren't Obama era rules at all --- they're George W. Bush era rules, part of his administration's post-9/11 counterterrorism policy.

In 2004, Bush signed into law the Project BioShield Act, which permitted the FDA to issue Emergency Use Authorizations to labs during public health crises. If a lab had a new treatment or test that seemed promising, the FDA would fast track its approval process.

But these details do not appear to have hampered Trump.

On Friday, as confirmed U.S. cases topped 1,700, the president again zeroed in on what he said was "a testing problem" that Obama had failed to fix.

"For decades the CDC looked at, and studied, its testing system, but did nothing about it," Trump tweeted early Friday morning. "It would always be inadequate and slow for a large scale pandemic, but a pandemic would never happen, they hoped. President Obama made changes that only complicated things further," Trump tweeted.

"Their response to H1N1 Swine Flu was a full scale disaster, with thousands dying, and nothing meaningful done to fix the testing problem, until now. The changes have been made and testing will soon happen on a very large scale basis. All Red Tape has been cut, ready to go!" Trump said.

Trump didn't specify what "changes" Obama made. According to experts, there weren't any

---30---

Trump Slams 'Nasty' Question As PBS Reporter Challenges Him On Shutdown Of Pandemic Unit


Mary Papenfuss, HuffPost•March 13, 2020

President Donald Trump lashed out at a PBS reporter on Friday when she challenged him about the shutdown of a pandemic response unit within the National Security Council in 2018.

After calling journalist Yamiche Alcindor’s question “nasty,” the president claimed he knew absolutely nothing about the topic — and cut her off. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) quickly attempted to jog Trump’s memory by posting a letter on Twitter he’d sent the president nearly two years ago complaining about the Trump administration move.

Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton dissolved the NSC’s Global Health Security team in a controversial decision widely covered by the media. The Obama administration had established the unit after the Ebola outbreak to coordinate the U.S. government’s response to a pandemic.

Alcindor, of “PBS NewsHour,” asked Trump to reconcile the elimination of the pandemic team with his insistence Friday that he takes no responsibility for a critical dearth of testing in the U.S. fight against coronavirus. She noted that officials who had worked in the unit said the White House “lost valuable time” without it.

“I just think it’s a nasty question,” Trump replied. “When you say ‘me,’ I didn’t do it ... You say we did that, I don’t know anything about it.” 

Alcindor pressed: “You don’t know about the reorganization that happened at the National Security Council?” Trump responded: “It’s the administration. Perhaps they do that ... let people go. You used to be with a different newspaper than you are now, you know things like that happen.”

Trump also praised himself, claiming that his top health expert Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has said “innumerous times we’ve saved thousands of lives because of the quick [border] closing.”

Fauci testified before a House subcommittee on Thursday that the ongoing shortfall of coronavirus testing in the U.S. was “a failing.” The “idea of anybody getting it [testing] easily the way people in other countries are doing it, we’re not set up for that. Do I think we should be? Yes.”

When another reporter asked Trump on Friday if he took responsibility for that “failing,” he responded: “Yeah, no, I don’t take any responsibility at all.” He claimed he was hamstrung by “circumstances” and “regulations” and aims to finally ramp up testing now.

In a tweet, Alcindor defended her question as “relevant, fair and truth-seeking.”

Video of my question to @realDonaldTrump today on his administration's disbanding of the White House team responsible for coordinating responses to pandemics.
He called my question nasty & said he knew nothing about it.
I call it a relevant, fair, and truth-seeking question. https://t.co/ncYwqZ0Xtp
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) March 13, 2020

Trump’s “nasty” insult is often directed at strong women. He has called former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), among a number of others, “nasty.”

The WHO has changed its position on coronavirus and pets

Youyou Zhou,Quartz•March 13, 2020
T

ake care, both humans and pets

Yesterday, the WHO’s coronavirus myth-buster page said there was no evidence that animals such as dogs or cats could be infected with virus. Today, that section is gone.

The WHO told Quartz in an email that, “currently, there is no evidence that pets such as dogs and cats have infected humans with Covid-19.”


A conspiracy theory linking the US army to the coronavirus now has official Chinese endorsement

The revised stance comes in the wake of an infected dog being found in Hong Kong. The dog tested positive after remaining with its owners who were sick with the virus. The dog wasn’t showing any clinical signs of the disease, according to a report from World Organisation for Animal Health. There’s no evidence that dogs can spread the disease or that the disease can cause an animal to fall ill, the organization says, though further studies may bring new findings.

The organization advises pet owners infected or susceptible of being infected with the coronavirus to avoid close contact with their pets and have another member of the household care for the animals. If they must look after their pet, they should maintain good hygiene practices and wear a face mask if possible. More information regarding pet health amid the epidemic can be found on their website.


Shelley Rankin, a microbiologist at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, Philadelphia, advises pet owners include animals in their family’s preparedness planning. She told Science, that some animals might be quarantined in a hospital, or at home.

Utah passes new abortion rules, could mean felony charges for doctors and women

MEN IN THE GOVERNMENT VOTED IN FAVOUR

THE WOMEN OF BOTH PARTIES WALKED OUT
The Associated Press,NBC News•March 13, 2020

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah lawmakers passed new regulations on abortion this year, including a measure approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature Thursday that would ban most abortions if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

It comes as abortion opponents around the country hope the Supreme Court will reconsider the landmark ruling with new conservative justices. If the Utah measure goes into effect, it could mean felony charges for a physician or a woman who ended her own pregnancy.

Also headed for GOP Gov. Gary Herbert’s desk is a requirement for abortion clinics to cremate or bury fetal remains. Several states are considering similar measures. Supporters say they allow for more dignity, but opponents argue they chip away at abortion rights.

A third proposal requiring a woman be shown an ultrasound before she could get an abortion was approved by the Utah Senate this week over a walkout protest by all six female lawmakers in the body, both Republicans and Democrats.

That action should be taken seriously, said Herbert, who generally opposes abortion.

“I think it was a loud message and one I think we, as men, ought to take hard look at. Are we listening? Are we getting all the information we need to?” he said. He didn't say whether he would sign or veto any of the bills.

Utah barred abortion after 18 weeks last year, becoming one of several states to adopt strict bans. Like the other measures it has been blocked amid litigation. Many conservatives hope one of those court cases could lead to the overturning of the 1973 case legalizing abortion.

If that happens, the new measure says Utah would ban all abortions except in cases like rape and serious threat to the health of the mother. Supporters say it would prepare the state to end elective abortions if the legal landscape changes.

“This bill is meant to discourage the taking of a human life,” said Republican Rep. Karianne Lisonbee.

Democratic Rep. Suzanne Harrison argued that it would only make it more difficult to get a safe abortion. “This extreme bill will hurt women,” she said. “To be clear, women will die.”

The measure regulating fetal remains, meanwhile, comes after the Supreme Court upheld a similar Indiana law signed by then-Gov. Mike Pence last year. The requirements also apply to miscarriages at medical facilities. Supporters say they create space if people need to grieve, but opponents say the measures stigmatize abortion and can make it harder to provide the proced