SLAUGHTERHOUSE COVID-19 

Germany: Over 600,000 re-enter 'soft lockdown' after Gütersloh meat plant outbreak

Two western German districts are spending their first full day back in lockdown following a fresh outbreak of COVID-19 at a meat-processing plant. Residents will return to measures first imposed in March.


Two districts in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) entered their first full day back in lockdown on Wednesday after a fresh outbreak of coronavirus resulted in new restrictions.

The new measures, dubbed "soft lockdown," saw around 640,000 people in the neighboring districts of Gütersloh and Warendorf once more unable to meet in groups larger than two outside each household.

Museums, cinemas, gyms, swimming pools and bars have all once more closed their doors. NRW State Premier Armin Laschet compared the measures to those in place when Germany first put restrictions in place in March. After some confusion, church services will be allowed to go ahead.

"It's a soft or light lockdown," said district commissioner Sven-Georg Adenauer. "It can be compared to what we had in March, but it is not extreme and will only be in place for one week."

The outbreak took place at a meat-packing plant where over 1,000 workers have tested positive for coronavirus. Some 7,000 employees have been asked to self-quarantine, most of whom live in the two districts.

'Don't stigmatize Gütersloh residents'

The new measures mark the first renewed local lockdown in Germany since restrictions across the country's 16 states began to be eased in May.

The new measures in NRW have led to calls across the country for similar local lockdowns or travel restrictions around hot spots. Austria has introduced a partial travel ban for people to and from NRW, while the northern German states of Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania have done the same for residents of the districts in question.

"One thing simply won't do, and that is the stigmatization of people from Gütersloh," said Laschet, stressing that the lockdown was largely a preventative measure.

To begin with the new lockdown will only last until June 30, but it has been suggested it may be extended. Negotiations are ongoing about the status of non-residents of the districts and holidaymakers, with hopes that, if they test negative, they can return home before the lockdown ends.

Coronavirus: UN report warns pandemic has created ‘captive audience’ for terrorist groups

By Stewart Bell Global News Posted June 25, 2020

The UN Security Council meets on the situation in Syria,

 Thursday, Oct. 24, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Mary Altaffer
The coronavirus pandemic has created a “captive audience” for terrorist groups seeking recruits, as more than a billion students are out of school and spending more time online, according to a United Nations Security Council report.

The increase in the number of young people engaging in unsupervised internet usage — particularly on gaming platforms — offers terrorist groups an opportunity to expose a greater number of people to their ideas,” the report warned.

The risk posed by violent extremist internet propaganda is one of several identified by the UN Security Council’s counter-terrorism committee in a new report on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on global terrorism.

Key among them is the exploitation of the crisis by terrorist groups, which have been using the virus and the government responses to it to feed the conspiracy theories and narratives they rely on to attract followers.

READ MORE: Searches for extremist content spiked after Canada’s coronavirus lockdown: report

At the same time, the focus on the pandemic has put pressure on counter-terrorism budgets and led to the withdrawal of troops from the fight against ISIS and al-Qaeda as well as over-reach in some countries, potentially fuelling radicalization, it said.

Researchers have reported a surge in extremism-related online traffic during the pandemic. Moonshot CVE said there had been a “significant increase” in searches for violent far-right content in Ottawa, Montreal, Calgary and Edmonton.

But that does not necessarily mean those conducting the internet searches are radicalized, will become radicalized or will take violent action, said Ottawa-based terrorism expert Jessica Davis.

“I think we need to be careful to differentiate between radicalization and curiosity,” said Davis, president of Insight Threat Intelligence and a former senior strategic analyst at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

“I do think it’s a tough time for everyone, and the increased isolation may increase some risk factors for radicalization,” she said. “But I’d also say a lot of other risk factors are static or, in some cases, may be decreasing.”

The counter-terrorism committee’s report noted that “COVID-19-related narratives” had already been linked to attempted attacks on hospital patients and a hospital ship in the United States. In Tunisia, a plot to infect security forces was disrupted.

Cellphone towers have also been vandalized and damaged, it said. Quebec police made two arrests in May after several cellphone towers were set on fire. Some regions are also reporting increases in hate crimes, the report said.

The report also noted the pandemic had created problems for terrorist groups. Restrictions on gathering “have resulted in far fewer crowded spaces, potentially reducing the effectiveness of common terrorist tactics,” it said.

The focus of attention on COVID-19 has also reduced media attention on terrorist attacks, giving them less impact. That could drive them to try “more attention-grabbing targets or techniques” such as last month’s attack on a Kabul maternity ward.

But the pandemic risks fuelling grievances terrorists feed upon. In some countries, governments have taken advantage of the crisis to consolidate their hold on power, arresting political opponents and curbing civil liberties, it said.

“The pandemic has also forced some states to close their parliaments and postpone or cancel elections, thereby limiting opportunities for oversight and scrutiny of those responses,” said the report, adding some countries have also invoked emergency powers and engaged in mass surveillance.

“Some states’ responses to COVID-19 risk further exacerbating conditions conducive to radicalization to terrorism.”

YEAR OF THE RAT 2020 IN CASE YOU FORGOT

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/06/rodent-pizza-chuck-e.html

#IMPEACHBARR
Attorney General Barr ordered antitrust probes of 10 cannabis mergers, because he dislikes the industry, prosecutor says

While these were nominally antitrust investigations, and used antitrust investigative authorities, they were not bona fide antitrust investigations,’ says John Elias

MARKETWATCH PHOTO ILLUSTRATION/GETTY IMAGES, ISTOCKPHOTO

A federal prosecutor told House lawmakers on Wednesday that Attorney General William Barr ordered antitrust staffers to investigate 10 proposed mergers in the cannabis sector because of his personal dislike of the industry.

John Elias, a member of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, told the House Judiciary Committee in prepared testimony that the investigations were carried out even after staffers had determined that the cannabis business is highly fragmented with many market participants in the states that have legalized cannabis. Read Elias’ statement.

Mergers are usually only subjected to antitrust investigations if they are likely to have an impact on competition or create a monopoly.

“While these were nominally antitrust investigations, and used antitrust investigative authorities, they were not bona fide antitrust investigations,” said Elias. “Nonetheless, they accounted for 29% of the Antitrust Division’s full-review merger investigations in Fiscal Year 2019.”
The testimony is part of the committee’s probe into whether the Justice Department under Barr has been improperly politicized. Elias and Aaron Zelinsky, a career Justice Department prosecutor, were subpoenaed by House Democrats to testify. Zelinsky worked on cases as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, including the case against Roger Stone, an ally of President Donald Trump.

See now:Career prosecutor set to tell Congress that Trump ally Roger Stone got special treatment from the Justice Department

Elias explained that the antitrust division’s manual instructs staffers to first look at market share as an indicator of whether a deal needs to get routine clearance or be subjected to the fullest review, by issuing what is called a “Second Request” subpoena. Typically, a company would need at least double-digit market share to merit that subpoena, which can lead to demands for hundreds of thousands or even millions of documents.

See also:Mueller said to have weighed possibility Trump lied in written responses to investigators

Merging companies must comply with a Second Request subpoena, as they cannot close a deal until they have complied.

The prosecutor said in the case of a review of a proposed merger between cannabis retailer MedMen Enterprises Inc. and PharmaCann LLC, staffers found the deal did not raise any significant competitive concerns. But on March 5, 2019, Barr called the antitrust division leadership to his office and ordered them to issue Second Request subpoenas. The division went ahead and did so and said the reason was that it had not “evaluated this industry before.”

“This rationale — standing alone, without reference to a competition problem — is not described in the Merger Guidelines as a basis for investigating a transaction,” said Elias.

The companies were then asked to provide 1.3 million documents from the files of 40 employees. The investigation then found that the markets were indeed “unconcentrated” and was closed without enforcement action. By then, however, the deal had collapsed with MedMen citing delays in obtaining regulatory approval. The company’s stock price had lost about a third of its value while the investigation was being conducted.

See also:U.S. pot retailer MedMen says it’s trying to use stock to pay its bills amid cannabis industry’s cash crunch

The antitrust division went on to investigate another nine deals, including one in which staffers determined the post-merger market share would be just 0.35%, said Elias.

When prosecutors brought their concerns to the head of the Antitrust Division, Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim, he responded by saying the investigations were motivated “by the fact that the cannabis industry is unpopular ‘on the fifth floor,’” a reference to Barr’s offices in the DOJ headquarters building.
“Personal dislike of the industry is not a proper basis upon which to ground an antitrust investigation,” said Elias.

Barr said in April of 2019 that he would “favor one uniform federal rule against marijuana but, if there is not sufficient consensus to obtain that, then I think the way to go is to permit a more federal approach so states can make their own decisions within the framework of the federal law and so we’re not just ignoring the enforcement of federal law,” he said.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

MedMen shares MMNFF, -5.83% were last trading at 23 cents, and have lost 56.5% in 2020 to date.

The Cannabis ETF THCX, -1.60% was down 4% Wednesday, and has lost 22.5% in the year to date, while the S&P 500 SPX, 0.14% has fallen 5.7%.

Trump’s July 4 trip to Mount Rushmore draws sharp criticism from Native Americans

Many Native Americans activists say the Rushmore memorial is as reprehensible as the many Confederate monuments being toppled around the nation

Published: June 25, 2020  By Associated Press

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — President Donald Trump’s plans to kick off Independence Day with a showy display at Mount Rushmore are drawing sharp criticism from Native Americans who view the monument as a desecration of land violently stolen from them and used to pay homage to leaders hostile to native people.

Several groups led by Native American activists are planning protests for Trump’s July 3 visit, part of Trump’s “comeback” campaign for a nation reeling from sickness, unemployment and, recently, social unrest. The event is slated to include fighter jets thundering over the 79-year-old stone monument in South Dakota’s Black Hills and the first fireworks display at the site since 2009.

But it comes amid a national reckoning over racism and a reconsideration of the symbolism of monuments around the globe. Many Native American activists say the Rushmore memorial is as reprehensible as the many Confederate monuments being toppled around the nation.

“Mount Rushmore is a symbol of white supremacy, of structural racism that’s still alive and well in society today,” said Nick Tilsen, a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe and the president of a local activist organization called NDN Collective. “It’s an injustice to actively steal Indigenous people’s land then carve the white faces of the conquerors who committed genocide.”
While some activists, like Tilsen, want to see the monument removed altogether and the Black Hills returned to the Lakota, others have called for a share in the economic benefits from the region and the tourists it attracts.

Trump has long shown a fascination with Mount Rushmore. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said in 2018 that he had once told her straight-faced it was his dream to have his face carved into the monument. He later joked at a campaign rally about getting enshrined alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. And while it was Noem, a Republican, who pushed for a return of the fireworks on the eve of Independence Day, Trump joined the effort and committed to visiting South Dakota for the celebration.

The four faces, carved into the mountain with dynamite and drills, are known as the “shrine to democracy.” The presidents were chosen by sculptor Gutzon Borglum for their leadership during four phases of American development: Washington led the birth of the nation; Jefferson sparked its westward expansion; Lincoln preserved the union and emancipated slaves; Roosevelt championed industrial innovation.

And yet, for many Native American people, including the Lakota, Cheyenne, Omaha, Arapaho, Kiowa and Kiowa-Apache, the monument is a desecration to the Black Hills, which they consider sacred. Lakota people know the area as Paha Sapa — “the heart of everything that is.”

As monuments to Confederate and colonial leaders have been removed across U.S. cities, conservatives have expressed concern that Mount Rushmore could be next. Commentator Ben Shapiro this week suggested that the “woke historical revisionist priesthood” wanted to blow up the monument. Noem responded by tweeting, “Not on my watch.”

Tim Giago, a journalist who is a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, said he doesn’t see four great American leaders when he looks at the monument, but instead four white men who either made racist remarks or initiated actions that removed Native Americans from their land. Washington and Jefferson both held slaves. Lincoln, though he led the abolition of slavery, also approved the hanging of 38 Dakota men in Minnesota after a violent conflict with white settlers there. Roosevelt is reported to have said, “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten are..”
The monument has long been a “Rorschach test,” said John Taliaferro, author of “Great White Fathers,” a history of the monument. “All sorts of people can go there and see it in different ways.”

The monument often starts conversations on the paradox of American democracy — that a republic that promoted the ideals of freedom, determination and innovation also enslaved people and drove others from their land, he said.

“If we’re having this discussion today about what American democracy is, Mount Rushmore is really serving its purpose because that conversation goes on there,” he said. “Is it fragile? Is it permanent? Is it cracking somewhat?”

The monument was conceived in the 1920s as a tourist draw for the new fad in vacationing called the road trip. South Dakota historian Doane Robinson recruited Borglum, one of the preeminent sculptors at the time, to abandon his work creating the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial in Georgia, which was to feature Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson.

Borglum was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, according to Mount Rushmore historian and writer Tom Griffith. Borglum joined the Klan to raise money for the Confederate memorial, and Griffith argues his allegiance was more practical than ideological. He left that project and instead spent years in South Dakota completing Mount Rushmore.

Native American activists have long staged protests at the site to raise awareness among the history of the Black Hills, which were taken from them despite treaties with the United States protecting the land. Fifty years ago this summer a group of activists associated with an organization called United Native Americans climbed to the top of the monument and occupied it.

Quanah Brightman, who now runs United Native Americans, said the activism in the 1970s grew out of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. He hopes a similar movement for Native Americans comes from the Black Lives Matter movement.

“What people find here is the story of America — it’s multidimensional, it’s complex,” Griffith said. “It’s important to understand it was people just trying to do right as best they knew it then.”

The White House had no immediate comment on criticism of the president’s planned visit.

RODENT PIZZA

Chuck E. Cheese parent CEC Entertainment files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy

WORST PIZZA EVER NO GREAT LOSS

Published: June 25, 2020  Ciara Linnane

CEC Entertainment Inc., the parent of Chuck E. Cheese and Peter Piper Pizza, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy late Wednesday, weighed down by restaurant closures during the coronavirus pandemic. The company said it will use the time to continue talks with its financial stakeholders, including landlords, to "achieve a comprehensive balance sheet restructuring that supports its re-opening and longer-term strategic plans." As of June 24, 266 company-operated restaurant and arcade venues had reopened for business. The company is expecting to keep these venues open through Chapter 11 and to offer dine-in, delivery and take-out services. The company's non-U.S. franchise partners and corporate entities are not included in the process.

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/06/rat-horoscope-2020-free-astrology.html

Infectious-disease expert says we’re thinking too much about a second wave of COVID-19 when it’s really more like a forest fire

Published: June 23, 2020  By Tim Rostan

‘I think that wherever there is wood to burn, this fire is going to burn’: Dr. Michael Osterho

Print iconn much the way onlookers can get overly invested in describing the specific status of a market cycle or an economic recession or recovery as if it were an inning of a baseball game — generally leaving aside the fact that extra innings are always a possibility — we’ve gotten too caught up in the wave metaphor as representative of a country’s or region’s pandemic experience, says one noted infectious-disease expert.

‘I think this is more like a forest fire. I don’t think this is going to slow down. ... I think that wherever there is wood to burn, this fire is going to burn, and right now we have a lot of susceptible people.’— Dr. Michael Osterholm, Center of Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota

The wave language, said Osterholm, is drawn from the pattern of influenza outbreaks, in which an initial case load is traditionally followed by a lull and then a secondary and perhaps tertiary outbreak, whereas in this coronavirus pandemic the U.S. is still seeing daily case tallies trend upward in dozens of states on a regular basis, some 104 days after the World Health Organization formally made its pandemic call. “I’m not sure the influenza analogy applies anymore,” he said. “I don’t think we’re going to see one, two and three waves — I think we’re just going to see one very, very difficult forest fire of cases.”


Dr. Michael Osterholm leads the Center of Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. CIDRAP/UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

Don’t miss:Yes, America needs to brace itself for a secnd wave of coronavirus

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After years of talk, tech companies appear to be getting serious about diversity efforts

Published: June 25, 2020 By Jon Swartz

Tech companies large and small offer targets for hiring black workers and devote large sums to the effort, but black tech workers say ‘We’ve heard it before’

MARKETWATCH PHOTO ILLUSTRATION/ISTOCKPHOTO

Six years ago today, Facebook Inc. released statistics on the makeup of its global workforce that did not reflect the demographics of its users: Just 3% of its workers were black.

The company, citing the creation of a diversity team a year before, vowed to make more hires with lower attrition for under-represented groups. It formed partnerships with key groups to find more women and people of color. And it began offering training to employees in unconscious bias.

“We have a long way to go, but we’re absolutely committed to achieving greater diversity at Facebook and across the industry,” Maxine Williams, Facebook’s then-global head of diversity, said at the time.

Fast forward to 2020, and Facebook’s FB, 1.07% black workforce has increased to just 3.8%.

In a blog post last week, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg announced a new effort with more specific goals and support: The company committed to a 30% increase in the number of people of color in leadership positions over the next five years, and will devote $200 million to support black-owned businesses and organizations — part of a $1.1 billion investment in black and diverse suppliers and communities in the U.S.

The move from nebulous efforts that proved to be mostly lip service to concrete plans and financial commitments, including specific hiring goals and amounts of money dedicated to the effort, go beyond Facebook. A raft of large and small tech companies have made proclamations in recent days, including Google parent Alphabet Inc. GOOGL, 0.06% , GOOG, 0.19% , Microsoft Corp. MSFT, 0.37% , SAP SE SAP, 0.69% , Apple Inc. AAPL, 0.78% , Mozilla Corp., Pinterest Inc. PINS, -1.25% , Reddit and a number of startups. Undoubtedly, more are to come. Cisco Systems Inc. CSCO, 0.16% , for example, is expected to share plans soon, according to a person familiar with the company’s strategy.

See also: Here are tech companies’ plans for increasing diversity amid protests over racial inequality

Whether the statements lead to action after years of empty slogans, broken promises and countless panels and working groups on the topic is far from certain, black tech workers and diversity advocates told MarketWatch.

“We’ve agreed [inclusion] was a problem since at least 2013, but everyone was waiting for everyone else to do something,” Larry Whiteside Jr., president of International Consortium of Minority Cybersecurity Professionals, which is pushing the cybersecurity industry to hire and recruit more minorities, said in a phone interview. “Social protests have forced the hands of companies, large and small, to take action. It is time.”

Companies have been prompted, in large part, by two once-in-a-generation events — a pandemic not seen in the U.S. for a century, coupled with a social protest movement unlike any since 1968 — to finally move the needle on the hiring of minorities at tech companies, employment experts told MarketWatch.

“There is a sense of urgency; recent events accelerated our plans,” Judith Williams, SAP’s global head of people sustainability and chief diversity and inclusion officer, told MarketWatch. “We have to change the dynamic of our industry, and better reflect society.”

Vows of improved representation aren’t new. For years, tech’s largest players have undertaken efforts to broaden the diversity of their workforces — albeit with minimal progress, as evidenced by the percentage of black tech workers. Black people accounted for 9% of workers in core information-technology occupations in the U.S. last year, compared with 8% in 2015 and 7% in 2010, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Blacks represent 13.4% of the U.S. population, according to the most recent government estimates.

“My worry at the beginning of COVID was that companies would see that as an opportunity to take a pass on hiring black women and Latinas, as they did during the 2008 financial crisis,” said Bertina Ceccarelli, chief executive of nonprofit NPower, a leader in tech training programs. “But with the recent protests and acute visibility of systemic racism, this encourages companies to expand recruiting and training plans.”

Any progress would be an improvement, she said, citing a two-year study conducted by NPower that shows only 4% of the nation’s tech workforce are black women.

See also: Black tech workers hope nationwide protests will force industry to be more inclusive

“We’ve heard it before. Some of this stuff is optics. I don’t know if I want to laugh at it or shake my head,” Lisa Love, co-founder and chief marketing officer at Tanoshi, a Silicon Valley startup that provides lower-income households and school districts with educational, affordable devices to close the digital divide, told MarketWatch. “You have to start from Day One on diversity. Your company has to reflect the nation.”

The four-year-old company, which is raising $2 million in a seed round, is hopeful that social awareness and empathy with the black community enhances its ability to finally secure venture-capital funding, said Love, who is black.

The reticence of Love, Whiteside, and others is real. Six years after their first diversity reports, Alphabet, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter Inc. TWTR, -1.46% have increased their black representation by low single-digit percentages, according to a CNBC analysis. Apple’s workforce is 9% black, yet black executives account for only 3% of leadership.

Some tech companies have made advances, but their numbers may be skewed by gains outside of technical operations. Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, 0.29% has reported a healthy increase in black employees, to 26.5%, but those numbers are thought to largely rely on warehouse and delivery workers instead of the tech-focused workforce. The same could be said for Apple’s retail workers.

Concrete goals and money to fund the efforts could make a difference, though. While others in tech were organizing panels to discuss the issue, Intel Corp. INTC, -2.44% in early 2015 pledged $300 million toward diversity efforts and set 2020 as a deadlines to reach “full representation” in hiring. The company said that it actually achieved that goal in 2018, and is continuing the effort: In a May Corporate Responsibility Report, the company released diversity goals of increasing the number of women in technical roles to 40% and doubling the number of women and underrepresented minorities in senior roles by 2030.

After years of fitful starts and unfulfilled promises, the flurry of announcements and pronouncements give hope to people like Jill Barnard, chief financial officer of Televerde, a sales and marketing technology company based in Phoenix.

“Most companies just stay in the lane of what is legally required,” Barnard, who is white, told MarketWatch. “We can all do better.”

Monkeys escape lab with COVID-19 samples in ‘Planet of the Apes’ raid

By Josh K. Elliott Global News Updated June 1, 2020

In this file photo, a monkey crosses telephone wires on a street in New Delhi, India, Thursday, Sept. 27, 2012. AP Photo/Kevin Frayer
India is grappling with an incident straight out of a movie after several monkeys raided a laboratory and escaped with COVID-19-tainted blood samples in hand.

The incident happened at a medical college in Meerut, a city in the Uttar Pradesh area of northern India on Tuesday, according to officials.

“Monkeys grabbed and fled with the blood samples of four COVID-19 patients who are undergoing treatment,” Dr. S. K. Garg, a top official at the college, told Reuters. He added that it’s unclear whether the tubes of blood had been spilled.

Garg also urged calm amid fears that the monkeys might spread the coronavirus around Meerut.

“No evidence has been found that monkeys can contract the infection,” he said.

Thailand’s ‘Monkey City’ overrun by gangs of hungry, horny macaques

I CAN'T REMEMBER WHEN THE MAINSTREAM PRESS USED HORNY 
IN A HEADLINE 

Josh K. Elliott

© MLADEN ANTONOV/AFP via Getty Images Longtail macaques pull the tail of a cat in an abandoned building in the town of Lopburi, some 155km north of Bangkok, on June 21, 2020.

It's been three months since Lopburi, Thailand, closed itself off to tourists due to the novel coronavirus — and three months since the city's wild macaques last had a good banana.

The so-called "Monkey City" has gone bananas ever since, with locals forced into a double lockdown against the invisible threat of COVID-19, and against the loud, stinky, aggressive and highly visible threat of thousands of rampaging monkeys.

Read more: Monkeys break into lab, steal COVID-19 samples in 'Planet of the Apes' raid

Lopburi locals have barricaded themselves inside against the macaques, and the city has designated several no-go zones that have been entirely taken over by warring factions of monkeys.

"We live in a cage but the monkeys live outside," Lopburi resident Kuljira Taechawattanawanna told the AFP. She says she was forced to cover her terrace with netting to keep the hungry animals from raiding her home for food.



"Their excrement is everywhere (and) the smell is unbearable, especially when it rains," she added.

Humans in the city had found a delicate balance with the thousands of macaques who lived there in pre-coronavirus times. The macaques attracted tourists to the city, and those tourists would buy bananas so they could feed the animals and take photos with them.




However, that delicate balance collapsed under the threat of the coronavirus, when lockdowns cut off the supply of tourists and left the hungry monkeys looking for a new food source. The world caught a glimpse of that struggle last March when video of a fight between rival monkey gangs went viral.

Read more: Starving monkey ‘gangs’ brawl in Thailand as coronavirus keeps tourists away

Things have only gotten worse since then, locals say. They've tried to keep the animals at bay by throwing them scraps and junk food, but that only made the monkeys more violent, officials say.



“The more they eat, the more energy they have ... so they breed more,” Pramot Ketampai, a manager of several shrines in the city, told AFP.

“They’re so used to having tourists feed them and the city provides no space for them to fend for themselves,” Supakarn Kaewchot, a government veterinarian, told Reuters.

"With the tourists gone, they’ve been more aggressive, fighting humans for food to survive," she added. "They're invading buildings and forcing locals to flee their homes."

The city monkeys have more energy for things like fighting and sex because they don't have to hunt for food, Supakarn says. That's why officials are now taking steps to get their numbers under control.



Thailand's Department of National Parks has launched a program to sterilize some 500 monkeys, in hopes of curbing the population in the city. The monkeys are being captured, sedated, castrated and released with reference numbers tattooed on their bodies.

The initiative is meant to slow their reproduction rate, and is not aimed at hurting the existing population, Supakarn said.

"We're not doing this in the wild, only in the city areas," she said.

The city's wildlife department hopes to find a more long-term solution for the problem by building a new monkey sanctuary. However, that might not be an easy sell for locals who would rather see the monkeys disappear altogether.

"We need to do a survey of the people living in the area first," wildlife official Narongporn Dauduem told the AFP. "It's like dumping garbage in front of their houses and asking them if they're happy or not."

Shop owner Taweesak Srisaguan told the AFP that monkeys living in a nearby cinema routinely stop by to steal spray cans from his store, but he admits he'd miss their monkey business if they were permanently relocated.

"I'm used to seeing them walking around, playing on the street," he said. "If they're all gone, I'd definitely be lonely."

In other words, he likes that Lopburi is known as the Monkey City — he just doesn't want it to become known as the Monkeys' City.



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