STATEHOOD OR INDEPENDENCE
Puerto Rico halts primary voting in centers lacking ballots

An official turns away two voters at a voting center lacking ballots in Carolina, Puerto Rico, Sunday, Aug. 9, 2020. Puerto Rico's primaries were marred on Sunday by a lack of ballots in a majority of centers across the U.S. territory, forcing frustrated voters who braved a spike in COVID-19 cases to turn around and go back home. (AP Photo/Danica Coto)

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Puerto Rico on Sunday was forced to partially suspend voting for primaries marred by a lack of ballots as officials called on the president of the U.S. territory’s elections commission to resign.

The primaries for voting centers that had not received ballots by early afternoon are expected to be rescheduled, while voting would continue elsewhere, the commission said.

“I have never seen on American soil something like what has just been done here in Puerto Rico. It’s an embarrassment to our government and our people,” said Pedro Pierluisi, who is running against Gov. Wanda Vázquez, to become the nominee for the pro-statehood New

Meanwhile, Vázquez called the situation “a disaster” and demanded the resignation of the president of the elections commission.

“They made the people of Puerto Rico, not the candidates, believe that they were prepared,” she said. “Today the opposite was evident. They lied.”

A federal control board that oversees Puerto Rico’s finances issued a statement saying the “dysfunctional” voting process was unacceptable and blamed it on what it said was inefficiency by the elections commission.

The unprecedented situation comes as voters ventured out amid a spike in COVID-19 cases across Puerto Rico, an island of 3.2 million people that has reported more than 12,800 probable cases, more than 8,500 confirmed cases and at least 274 deaths.

Gireliz Zambrana, a 31-year-old federal employee, worried about the number of people gathered at a voting center in Río Grande as they huddled together while waiting for it to open.

“They were trying to get away from the sun,” he said, adding that he never got to cast his vote.

The president of the governor’s party, Thomas Rivera Schatz, along with the president of the main opposition Popular Democratic Party, held an unusual joint press conference and said they agreed the remaining primaries should be held on Aug. 16, a move that Vázquez said she supported. The two parties are both holding their primary elections with the winning nominees among six gubernatorial candidates in November’s general election.


FILES - This combo of two file photos shows Pedro Pierluisi, left and Wanda Vazquez in San Juan, Puerto Rico. At left, Secretary of State Pedro Pierluisi attends his confirmation hearing at the House of Representatives on Aug. 2, 2019, and at right, Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vazquez gives an interview at La Fortaleza governor residence on Aug. 16, 2019. Both served as replacement governors in the wake of a Puerto Rican political crisis and are competing against each other for a chance to win the job in their own right as the disaster-struck U.S. territory holds primary elections on Sunday, Aug. 9, 2020. (AP Photo/Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo, Files)


Other politicians argued that the entire primary be scrapped and held at another date.

An incredulous Schatz noted that there were still trucks with ballots inside parked at the commission’s headquarters as they spoke there on Sunday afternoon.

“The question is, why haven’t they left?” he said.

It was not immediately clear how many voters were turned away or how many centers received delayed ballots. A commission spokeswoman said the president was not granting interviews.

To further complicate things, Edgardo Román, president of the Bar Association of Puerto Rico, told The Associated Press that it’s unclear what alternatives are legally viable because the island’s electoral law is not clear.

“It doesn’t contemplate this scenario,” he said.


Electoral officials inform arriving voters that the ballots haven't arrived at a voting center in Carolina, Puerto Rico, Sunday, Aug. 9, 2020. Puerto Rico's primaries were marred on Sunday by a lack of ballots in a majority of centers across the U.S. territory, forcing frustrated voters who braved a spike in COVID-19 cases to turn around and go back home. (AP Photo/Danica Coto)

An electoral official, right, tells a voter that the ballots haven't arrived at a voting center in Carolina, Puerto Rico, Sunday, Aug. 9, 2020. Puerto Rico's primaries were marred on Sunday by a lack of ballots in a majority of centers across the U.S. territory, forcing frustrated voters who braved a spike in COVID-19 cases to turn around and go back home. (AP Photo/Danica Coto)

Electoral officials wait for ballots to arrive at a voting center in Carolina, Puerto Rico, Sunday, Aug. 9, 2020. Puerto Rico's primaries were marred by a lack of ballots in a majority of centers across the U.S. territory, forcing frustrated voters who braved a spike in COVID-19 cases to turn around and go back home. (AP Photo/Danica Coto)

At least one voter filed a lawsuit against the commission and the electoral officials of the two main parties late Sunday via the American Civil Liberties Union.

The situation infuriated voters and politicians of all stripes as they blamed Puerto Rico’s elections commission and demanded an explanation for ballots reaching only a handful of voting centers by the afternoon.

“This is indignant, abusive and an attempt against the democracy of our country,” said Marcos Cruz, mayor of the northern town of Vega Baja that was still awaiting ballots.

Meanwhile, officials from the island’s two main parties scrambled to find solutions as they urged voters to still show up at centers that remained open late into the night.

Yadira Pizarro, a 44-year-old teacher, ran out of patience at a shuttered voting center in Carolina where she had waited more than four hours under a blistering sun.

“I cannot believe this. This is some serious negligence,” she said.

One of the most closely watched races on Sunday is that of the pro-statehood Progressive New Party, which pits two candidates who served as replacement governors following last year’s political turmoil. Vázquez faces Pierluisi, who represented Puerto Rico in Congress from 2009 to 2017.

Pierluisi briefly served as governor after Gov. Ricardo Rosselló resigned in August 2019 following widespread street protests over a profanity-laced chat that was leaked and government corruption. But Puerto Rico’s Supreme Court ruled that Vázquez, then the justice secretary, was constitutionally next in line because there was no secretary of state.

Meanwhile, the main opposition Popular Democratic Party, which supports Puerto Rico’s current political status as a U.S. territory, is holding a primary for the first time in its 82-year history. Three people are vying to become governor — San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, known for her public spats with U.S. President Donald Trump following the devastation of Hurricane Maria; Puerto Rico Sen. Eduardo Bhatia; and Carlos Delgado, mayor of the northwest coastal town of Isabela.

UPDATE
Beirut explosion bares pitfalls of sending aid to Lebanon


Words are written by Lebanese citizens in front of the scene of Tuesday's explosion that hit the seaport of Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Aug. 9, 2020. Public fury over the massive explosion in Beirut took a new turn Saturday night as protesters stormed government institutions and clashed for hours with security forces, who responded with heavy volleys of tear gas and rubber bullets. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

BEIRUT (AP) — Hospitals and schools, then shattered and bent water pipes, then the crater that once was Lebanon’s port.

The rebuilding needs of Lebanon are immense, but so is the question of how to ensure the millions of dollars promised in international aid is not diverted in a country notorious for missing money, invisible infrastructure projects and its refusal to open the books.

And the port — the epicenter of the explosion that shattered Beirut, the center of Lebanon’s import-based economy, and a source of graft so lucrative that Lebanon’s political factions were willing to divide its control so everyone could get a piece — sits at the heart of the fears.

Sunday’s international donor teleconference raised a total of 252.7 million euro ($298 million) in emergency aid, organizers said.

The conference was hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron, who was mobbed last week by tearful victims of the Beirut ammonium nitrate explosion begging him to ensure the corruption they blame for the blast that devastated the capital does not profit from its destruction. The French presidency said France contributed 30 million euros ($35 million).

The head of the International Monetary Fund, which wants an audit of the national bank before handing over any money, was clear: No money without changes to ensure ordinary Lebanese aren’t crushed by debt whose benefits they never see.

“Current and future generations of Lebanese must not be saddled with more debts than they can ever repay,” IMF head Kristalina Georgieva said during the conference. “Commitment to these reforms will unlock billions of dollars for the benefit of the Lebanese people.”

International leaders, government officials and international organization participated Sunday in the teleconference co-organized by France and the United Nations to bring emergency aid to Lebanon, including President Donald Trump.

International diplomacy usually calls for careful language. Rigged votes are “irregular.” The response to furious protests should be “measured.” Disappearing funds require “transparency.”

But Macron’s response to the crowd in Beirut and in a later speech there was unusually blunt: The aid “will not fall into corrupt hands” and Lebanon’s discredited government must change.

In the short-term, the aid streaming into Lebanon is purely for humanitarian emergencies and relatively easy to monitor. The U.S., France, Britain, Canada and Australia, among others, have been clear that it is going directly to trusted local aid groups like the Lebanese Red Cross or U.N. agencies.

“Our aid is absolutely not going to the government. Our aid is going to the people of Lebanon,” said John Barsa of USAID.

But actual rebuilding requires massive imports of supplies and equipment. The contracts and subcontracts have given Lebanon’s ruling elite its wealth and power, while leaving the country with crumbling roads, regular electricity cuts, trash that piles on the streets and intermittent water supplies.

“The level of infrastructure in Lebanon is directly linked today to the level of corruption,” said Neemat Frem, a prominent Lebanese businessman and independent member of parliament. “We badly need more dollars but I understand that the Lebanese state and its agencies are not competent.”








Lebanon has an accumulated debt of about $100 billion, for a population of just under 7 million people — 5 million Lebanese and 2 million Syrians and Palestinians, most of them refugees. Its electricity company, controlled like the port by multiple factions, posts losses of $1.5 billion a year, although Frem said most factories pay for their own generators because power is off more than it’s on.

“There’s grand theft Lebanon and there’s petty theft Lebanon. Petty theft Lebanon exists but that’s not what got the country in the hole we’re in,” said Nadim Houry, executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative.
Prior aid, Houry said, ended up as a tool in the hands of the political leaders, who kept their slice and doled out jobs and money to supporters.

Protesters, tired of the small indignities they endure to get through a day — 37% of people report needing to pay bribes, compared with 4% in neighboring Jordan, according to Transparency International — and the larger issue of a collapsing state, are going after both.

“The public is going to be incredibly distrustful of the way this is done, and I think rightly so,” said Frank Vogl, a co-founder of Transparency International and chairman for the Partnership for transparency Fund.

On Saturday, they seized offices of the Economy Ministry, hauling away files they said would show corruption around the sale and distribution of wheat. Lebanon’s wheat stockpile, stored next to the warehouse filled with ammonium nitrate, was destroyed in the explosion.

“We restored the economy ministry to the Lebanese people,” one man called out as they rifled through the desks.

Julien Courson, head of the Lebanon Transparency Association, said the country’s non-profits are forming a coalition to monitor how relief and aid money is spent. He estimated Lebanon loses $2 billion to corruption each year.

“The decision-makers and the public servants who are in charge of these files are still in their positions. Until now, we didn’t see any solution to the problem,” he said.

A first step would be an online clearinghouse for every contract linked to reconstruction, Courson said. And the first project has to be highly visible and spread the benefits widely, said Christiaan Poortman, board chairman of Infrastructure Transparency Initiative.

“That will help keeping some of the political stuff at a distance,” Poortman said. “Donors will have to be on top of this. The issue of procurement is always where lots of corruption takes place ... it needs to be done quickly, and there is always the temptation to not follow the rules and go ahead and do something where a lot of people are going to make a lot of money.”

Speaking at a news conference in which he conspicuously did not appear alongside Lebanese President Michel Aoun, Macron said he was approaching Lebanon with “the requirements of a friend who rushes to help, when times are hard, but not to give a blank check to systems that no longer have the trust of their people.”

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Hinnant reported from Paris. AP writers Sarah El-Deeb in Beirut and Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed.

ETHIOPIA
Extreme poverty rises; a generation sees a future slip away


Mother of two Amsale Hailemariam, a domestic worker who lost work because of the coronavirus, stands in her small tent in the capital Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on Friday, June 26, 2020. Decades of progress in one of modern history's greatest achievements, the fight against extreme poverty, are now in danger of slipping away due to the coronavirus and the world could see the first global increase in extreme poverty in 22 years, further sharpening inequality. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene)


ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — As a domestic worker, Amsale Hailemariam knew from the inside out the luxury villas that had grown up around her simple shelter of raw metal and plastic sheeting. And in them, she saw how her country, Ethiopia, had transformed.

The single mother told herself, “Oh God, a day will come when my life will be changed, too.” The key lay in her daughter, just months from a career in public health, who studied how to battle the illnesses of want and hunger.

Then a virus mentioned in none of her textbooks arrived, and dreams faded for families, and entire countries, like theirs. Decades of progress in one of modern history’s greatest achievements, the fight against extreme poverty, are in danger of slipping away because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The world could see its first increase in extreme poverty in 22 years, further sharpening social inequities.

“We are living in a state where we are above the dead and below the living,” Amsale said, near tears. “This is not life.”

With the virus and its restrictions, up to 100 million more people globally could fall into the bitter existence of living on just $1.90 a day, according to the World Bank. That’s “well below any reasonable conception of a life with dignity,” the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty wrote this year. And it comes on top of the 736 million people already there, half of them in just five countries: Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Congo and Bangladesh.

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This story was produced with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

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India is struggling with one of the world’s largest virus caseloads and the effects of a lockdown so abrupt and punishing that Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked the poor to forgive him. Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, has surpassed India with the most people in extreme poverty — roughly half its citizens. And Congo remains one of the world’s most crisis-ridden countries, with outbreaks of Ebola and measles smoldering.

Even China, Indonesia and South Africa are expected to have more than 1 million people each fall into extreme poverty, the World Bank says.

“It’s a huge, huge setback for the entire world,” Gayle Smith, president of the ONE Campaign to end extreme poverty, told The Associated Press. Smith, a former administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development, called the global response to the crisis “stunningly meager.”

Most of the millions newly at risk are in sub-Saharan Africa, a region that against countless odds had some of the world’s fastest growing economies in recent years. The World Bank shared with the AP the earliest data out of Ethiopia as it takes a global measure of the pandemic’s direct effects over several months, showing that the pain is already widespread. Similar efforts are under way in more than 100 countries.

Back in 1991, when Ethiopia began its transformation, the country was exhausted by war. A new leader, Meles Zenawi, was shaking off years of Marxist dictatorship and terrifying drought whose images of withered children left the world aghast. The former rebel had a vision that became his legacy, one of bringing millions of countrymen out of grinding poverty.

Amsale was newly arrived in the capital, Addis Ababa, from what is now neighboring Eritrea, her baby daughter in her arms. For her the child, Bethlehem Jafar, became a tiny symbol of the city’s rise.

Bethlehem benefited from the welfare of the state and the charity of those who saw in her a better future. Her mother scraped by through manual labor, vowing her girl would never do the same.

Fellow Ethiopians were moving up in the world, as the government looked to emulate China’s astonishing lifting of more than 800 million people from poverty. Some embraced new manufacturing jobs. Others left subsistence farms for the growing sectors of hospitality, services and aviation that catered to the changing times, hoping to join Africa’s expanding middle class.

The number of people in extreme poverty dropped dramatically, from nearly half of Ethiopia’s population in the mid-1990s to 23% two decades later. “Impressive,” the World Bank said.

The high-altitude city of Addis Ababa, Africa’s diplomatic capital, became an aviation hub, and a magnet for millions of citizens seeking better lives. Some grasped the first rung of upward mobility in the hustle of the untaxed informal sector, dodging the growing number of cars in the streets that signaled the middle class.

Under the country’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, the capital in the past two years has seen a wave of new construction, including malls and luxury apartments. And a source of national pride is a massive dam near completion on the Nile, funded completely by Ethiopia and its citizens in a bid to pull millions more from poverty.

Now Ethiopians of all kinds are hurting in the pandemic. The country, along with Congo, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa, is expected to see half of sub-Saharan Africa’s new extreme poor.

As the huge economic toll ahead became clearer, Ethiopia’s prime minister took the global lead in appealing to rich countries to cancel the debt of poorer ones, saying his own country spends twice as much on paying off external debt as it does on health.

In trying to grasp the impact of a global slide into extreme poverty, even some experts feel at a loss. From his home in Addis Ababa, Fitsum Dagmawi has heard his countrymen’s fear. As part of the World Bank survey, he is calling people across the country and asking how their lives have changed since the virus arrived.

“We might interview five to 10 people a day, and this pandemic is affecting everyone,” he said. “We are feeling this stress every day.”

Some people begin weeping, recounting family member’s deaths, asking bewildered questions: What will we do now?

Jobs are gone. Families wonder how to feed their children. The gatherings that played a stabilizing role — church services, weddings, funerals — have been limited or lost.

“I will have to struggle,” one head of a household said.

The first round of calls to 3,200 households in Ethiopia found a 61% drop in employment, with many job losses in sectors closely tied to the country’s growth: construction, hospitality, restaurants, big hotels.

The second round of calls saw some rebound, but employment could mean anything in a country where most work remains informal. Now some people with degrees find themselves seeking manual labor.

“Small shocks in income can have devastating effects,” World Bank senior economist Christina Wieser said.

It shows. In Ethiopia, 55% of households blamed a drop in regular income for the inability to buy items like medicine or staple foods. Nearly 40% had lost all earnings from remittances from the large diaspora, a crucial way to stay afloat.

For many Ethiopians, there is still little cushion between getting by and destitution. Just over 20% of households were relying on savings, and 19% were already eating less. A quarter had run out of food in the last 30 days, and just over 5% of households received support of any kind.

“I have not paid my rent for two months, and I’m not sure my landlord will give me more time,” a 32-year-old father of two told the AP. “Just imagine, out of work and living with COVID. It’s very stressful.”

He was fired in May from a Chinese-owned company in one of the industrial parks that have sprung up in recent years as a government-backed engine of development.

“We were told business is slow due to the virus,” the man said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he hoped to be rehired.

So much depends on how long the pandemic lasts. The African Development Bank once assumed that COVID-19 would subside by June, country director Abdul Kamara said. Now, he said, “decades of poverty reduction in Ethiopia could be lost.”

Before the pandemic, the bank estimated the country’s economy would grow by more than 7% this year. The current worst-case scenario shows just 2.6%.

Ethiopia’s revenue losses are estimated at $1.2 billion, at a time when the government needs more money to expand social safety nets, Kamara said. And some 2.5 million jobs are threatened, roughly the same number of Ethiopians who enter the workforce every year.

For a young woman like Bethlehem, the way forward seems in shambles. She was forced home from her studies as school closed and now shelters with her mother.

Their home is just steps away from a public toilet that overflows with the rainy season. “Even if we protect ourselves from infection, the area we are living in makes us vulnerable,” Amsale said. “And that worries us to death.”

The better-off neighbors who once welcomed her into their homes to cook and clean now turn her away, fearing the virus.

“They told me we should avoid contact,” she said. “There was no help I received from them since.”

She and her daughter make do with the equivalent of $34 a month that Amsale receives from local authorities for helping with projects like beautifying public spaces and sweeping the streets. But she doesn’t like to go out, fearing infection.

Bethlehem did not want to be photographed, anxious that images of her in the humble surroundings could further challenge her suddenly difficult future. She sat in their home, going over her books and lingering over a former teacher’s scribbled message of hope: “Bethi, we love you so much & wish you success in your education.”

Her knowledge of public health makes her keenly aware how poverty compounds the risks of a deadly pandemic.

“I think Ethiopia’s peak (virus) season is yet to come, and I really hope some vaccines will be available soon,” Bethlehem said. “For now, we are waiting for a miracle that can change our lives.”

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Anna reported from Johannesburg.

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Follow AP pandemic coverage at

http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak 

https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

Pandemic wrecks global Class of 2020′s hopes for first job

Fashion school graduate Phoebe St. Leger poses for a photo in Florence, Italy, Jan. 25, 2018. Around the world, young people armed with new degrees, diplomas and professional qualifications are struggling to enter the workforce as the pandemic pushes the global economy into recession. British fashion school graduate Phoebe St. Leger’s dream of landing a job at a design label is on hold. The coronavirus forced the cancellation of her university graduating class's final-year fashion show, which removing the chance to show her knitwear collection to people in the industry, some of whom might have liked her work enough to offer her a job. (Shannon Davidson via AP)


LONDON (AP) — British fashion school graduate Phoebe St. Leger’s dream of landing a job at a design label is on hold. Like many others in the global Class of 2020, the pandemic is clouding her career ambitions.

The coronavirus forced the cancellation of her university graduating class’s final-year fashion show, removing the chance to show her knitwear collection to people in the industry, some of whom might have liked her work enough to offer her a job.

Instead, St. Leger, 22, returned to her family home in Winchester, southern England, and submitted her classwork online. She has applied for about 40 jobs and received only rejections.

Emmanuel Reyai walks on the streets of Harare while looking for a job, Wednesday, Aug, 5, 2020. Around the world, young people armed with new degrees, diplomas and professional qualifications are struggling to enter the workforce as the pandemic pushes the global economy into recession. Two years after graduating with from Zimbabwe’s Midlands State University, 24-year old Emmanuel Reyai is no closer to his goal of getting a job related to his degree in local governance. His search is stymied by both the African country’s economic collapse and the coronavirus outbreak. (AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi)

“All the jobs have all dried up - everywhere,” she said. She knows graduates from previous years who have been fired or furloughed and is prepared to get a job at a bar. “It’s still hard to be hopeful when you’re not seeing anyone doing well at the moment.”

Around the world, young people armed with new degrees, diplomas and professional qualifications are struggling to enter the workforce as the pandemic pushes the global economy into recession. COVID-19 has thwarted hopes of landing first jobs - important for jumpstarting careers - as employers cut back graduate recruiting plans or even revoke job offers.

The latest U.S. job numbers Friday underscored the murky outlook: 1.8 million jobs were added in July, a sharp slowdown in employment growth from the month before. It means the world’s biggest economy has regained just 42% of jobs lost to the coronavirus.

U.S. careers website Glassdoor says the number of jobs advertised as “entry level” or “new grad” was down 68% in May from a year ago. In Britain, companies plan to cut student recruitment by 23% this year, according to a survey of 179 businesses by the Institute of Student Employers.

The wave of delayed employment will ripple out through the economy, says Brian Kropp, chief of HR research at consultancy Gartner.

Many grads will have student loan debts they won’t be able to start paying off until they find a job, he said.

“If you can’t get an entry level job today, that means that you don’t move out of your parent’s house, you don’t develop real work experience, you don’t buy your first home until later, and you don’t get married until later.”

Michael Welch, 22, has been scouring LinkedIn, Monster and Indeed for postings and connections after earning a University of Connecticut engineering degree. He hadn’t planned to start his job search until after graduation.

Dr. Maria Jose Casco adjusts her hair as she walks near her home in Quito, Ecuador, Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020. Around the world, young people armed with new degrees, diplomas and professional qualifications are struggling to enter the workforce as the pandemic pushes the global economy into recession. Maria Jose Casco, a newly qualified doctor, hasn’t found work after graduating in Ecuador in April. Casco, 24, said she’s been searching for health-related jobs as well as work in other industries. (AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa)


“That plan was disrupted because I was planning to go into a good job market,” he said. “Suddenly I was in one of the worst job markets in recent history.”

Welch, who moved back home with his parents, worries about online interviews and starting a job remotely.

“Remote jobs are great for someone who doesn’t have to commute and already has a job,” he said. But “for someone entering the job market it is a scary prospect. It’s difficult to learn technical skills when you’re in a remote setting.”

Noah Isaak, a 2019 grad and newly certified teacher, has been applying for jobs in the Chicago public school system and has done a few interviews but they didn’t lead anywhere. Most of the people he knows from his program are having trouble, too.

Now he’s considering applying for minimum wage jobs at Target, Costco, coffee shops and Amazon.

“I’m stressed,” said Isaak, 23. “Nothing is really going how we expected it to go. It’s comforting that it’s not a personal flaw and other people are going through the same struggle. But it is difficult not knowing.”

One important long-term effect for young graduates who take longer to find good first jobs is lower pay over the course of their careers, experts said.

Someone who takes a year or more to find their first job lags behind their peers when it comes to promotions and also competes with younger people who come on to the job market later.

The problem, like the pandemic, is global.

Graduate job vacancies for July are down from the previous year in 10 countries, according to Adzuna, a job postings search engine. Britain, India and the Netherlands have seen the biggest declines, with postings down by more than half from a year ago, but other countries including Austria, Australia, Brazil, and France are also seeing double digit percentage drops.

Clara Karina poses for a photo as she waits to cross a road after a job interview at the main business district in Jakarta, Indonesia, Thursday, Aug. 6, 2020. Around the world, young people armed with new degrees, diplomas and professional qualifications are struggling to enter the workforce as the pandemic pushes the global economy into recession. In Indonesia, Clara Karina, 25, graduated in January with an accounting degree from a well-known business and finance school in Jakarta. She wanted to work as a civil servant but applied for jobs at private firms as the government froze recruitment. It's been far from the easy process she imagined. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara)

Graduate jobs are expected to shrink in 21 countries, with most unlikely to recover next year, according to a separate report by Britain’s ISE.

Maria Jose Casco, a newly qualified doctor, hasn’t found work after graduating in Ecuador in April. Casco, 24, said she’s been searching for health-related jobs as well as work in other industries.

Even though the pandemic means more need for health services, she found employers aren’t hiring for full time jobs.

“They’re looking for temporary staff they can easily fire,” Casco said. She and her husband are living off savings and his $480 monthly salary and, like others, are considering emigrating. “Because there is no future, many of my colleagues are looking at the possibility of leaving Ecuador.”

The pandemic is compounding problems for young people in countries plagued by chronic economic instability.

Two years after graduating with from Zimbabwe’s Midlands State University, 24-year old Emmanuel Reyai is no closer to his goal of getting a job related to his degree in local governance. His search is stymied by both the African country’s economic collapse and the coronavirus outbreak.

“I have applied more than 40 times - nothing,” he said, clutching a plastic folder containing his academic certificates.

More than two thirds of Zimbabwe’s population, including university grads, get by on informal trade such as street hawking. Reyai initially resold cooking gas from a shack in his poor Harare neighborhood but the local council razed it after the outbreak. Now he makes and sells peanut butter around the city.

“There are no hopes of getting a job,” said Reyai. “I have tried all I can to apply for jobs but the situation is not getting any better. It is actually getting worse.”

In Indonesia, Clara Karina, 25, graduated in January with an accounting degree from a well-known business and finance school in Jakarta.

She wanted to work as a civil servant but applied for jobs at private firms as the government froze recruitment. Only three of 20 companies replied to her applications. Two turned her down and the third is in progress.

“Companies aren’t recruiting new employees, they’re reducing employees now,” Karina said. “I need to be more patient.”

For some, there are happy endings.

In China, 23-year-old Li Xin graduated this summer with a statistics degree but had started looking for a job in January - just as the pandemic forced many companies to suspend operations. She encountered apparent scams from companies hiring for finance and IT jobs that wanted hefty “training fees.”

Some classmates found banking jobs thanks to their connections. Others without ties ended up in industries unrelated to their degrees. Several are doing tutoring jobs, and Li found one herself but lasted just a week.

She felt hopeless but also realized everyone has it hard.

“I’d sit in the subway, seeing the people come and go around me, and I’d suddenly feel that it wasn’t easy for anyone,” Li said.

Eventually, Li landed a data analysis job in her hometown near Beijing that started this month. More than half her class, though, have yet to find jobs.

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Gonzalo Solano in Quito, Ecuador, Mae Anderson in New York, Edna Tarigan in Jakarta, Indonesia and Farai Mutsaka in Harare, Zimbabwe contributed to this story.

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Follow Kelvin Chan at t witter.com/chanman

USA
Amid pandemic, future of many Catholic schools is in doubt

THEY ARE CONSIDERED PRIVATE SCHOOLS

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St. Francis Xavier School students and their families walk together in Newark, on Thursday, Aug. 6, 2020, after discussing the Catholic school's permanent closure announced the previous week by the Archdiocese of Newark. Nationwide, more than 140 Catholic schools will not reopen in the fall. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

NEW YORK (AP) — As the new academic year arrives, school systems across the United States are struggling to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. Roman Catholic educators have an extra challenge — trying to forestall a relentless wave of closures of their schools that has no end in sight.

Already this year, financial and enrollment problems aggravated by the pandemic have forced the permanent closure of more than 140 Catholic schools nationwide, according to officials who oversee Catholic education in the country.

Three of the nation’s highest-ranking Catholic leaders, in a recent joint appeal, said Catholic schools “are presently facing their greatest financial crisis” and warned that hundreds more closures are likely without federal support.



“Because of economic loss and uncertainty, many families are confronting the wrenching decision to pull their children out of Catholic schools,” said New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley and Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

They urged Congress to include funding in the next pandemic relief bill for scholarship assistance for economically disadvantaged families to use at Catholic or other private schools.

Many Catholic schools already have received substantial federal aid from the U.S. Department of Education and from the Paycheck Protection Program, which was designed to pay wages at businesses or nonprofits impacted by the pandemic.



Facilities manager (AKA HEAD CUSTODIAN, HEAD CARETAKER, JANITOR)
 Charles Fabian stands in an empty classroom at Queen of the Rosary Catholic Academy in Brooklyn borough of New York, Thursday, Aug. 6, 2020. In July the Archdiocese of Brooklyn and Queens announced that six Catholic schools in the two boroughs will close permanently at the end of August due to debt and low enrollment aggravated by the coronavirus pandemic. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

Desks are stacked in an empty classroom after the permanent closure of Queen of the Rosary Catholic Academy in Brooklyn borough of New York, Thursday, Aug. 6, 2020. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)




A sign made by parents and students of Queen of the Rosary Catholic Academy hangs on the fence outside the school in Brooklyn borough of New York, Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2020. Queen of the Rosary is one of six Catholic schools in Brooklyn and Queens that will permanently close at the end of August. Nationwide, more than 140 Catholic schools will not reopen in the fall. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

The pace of closures has been relentless since March. Within the past month, Catholic leaders have announced the shuttering of five schools in Newark, New Jersey, and 26 in the New York City area. Among the schools closed earlier was the Institute of Notre Dame in Baltimore, a 173-year-old girl’s high school that’s the alma mater of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Several of the closures have promoted protests and petition campaigns by angry parents, and Catholic officials have been scrambling to help affected families.

The Diocese of Brooklyn’s school superintendent, Thomas Chadzutko, said the closures were unavoidable due to the pandemic’s “devastating effects” on enrollment and finances.

Parents were offered a $500 grant if their children enrolled in other Catholic schools, but many were bitter that the closures were announced with little time to make alternative school plans.

“It is a complete travesty how the Brooklyn Diocese can shut down schools within a pandemic and with less than two months’ notice,” parent Javier Cortes wrote in an online post about the closure of Queen of the Rosary Catholic Academy. “Treating children like this is NOT the Catholic thing to do!”

Also ordered closed was Nativity of Our Blessed Lady, an elementary school in the Bronx.

“I was part of the first graduating class and now I walked out of there hysterical in tears,” said Hope Wilson, who attended the school as a child and later taught there for 30 years.

In Newark, Shante McGlone Burgess was devastated by the news that St. Francis Xavier School was closing. All three of her children attended the elementary school last year, though the family is not Catholic.

St. Francis Xavier students sit together for the first time in five months after their school was closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, Thursday, Aug. 6, 2020, in Newark. The students and their concerned families gathered at the school to discuss its permanent closure, announced by the Archdiocese of Newark the previous week. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

Dozens of students and their family members gather outside St. Francis Xavier School in Newark on Thursday, Aug. 6, 2020, a week after the Archdiocese of Newark announced its permanent closure. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

The Burgess family, from left, Jonathan Jr., 15, Jonathan Sr., Shante, Ava, 6, and Evan, 10, stand outside St. Francis Xavier in Newark, New Jersey, on Thursday, Aug. 6, 2020, as they meet with other parents to discuss the school's closure. "Closing an inner-city school during a pandemic is not the most godly thing to do," Shante Burgess said. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)



Malik Bey, 11, left, stands with his sisters in front of St. Francis Xavier School in Newark, on Thursday, Aug. 6, 2020, as parents meet to fight the school's permanent closure. "Give them a shot," said Bey's father, Malik Bey Sr. "My son has been coming here since kindergarten and he's in sixth grade now. This is what he knows, and the kids are who he knows. Let's leave them together." (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

“They were very welcoming there,” McGlone Burgess said. “At a public school, I don’t think my children would have gotten the same camaraderie, as well as the structure.”

St. Francis Xavier is one of many schools being closed that serve predominantly Black and Hispanic communities. Three bishops who oversee matters related to education and racial issues recently sent an appeal to U.S. Rep. Karen Bass, chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, seeking support for families of color with students in Catholic schools.

“A Black or Latino child is 42% more likely to graduate from high school, and two-and-a-half times more likely to graduate from college if he or she attends a Catholic school,” wrote Bishops Michael Barber of Oakland, California, Joseph Perry of Chicago and Shelton Fabre of the Houma-Thibodaux Diocese in Louisiana.

At the National Catholic Educational Association, there’s acute concern about the closures’ consequences.

“Catholic schools have a very profound impact on young people of low-income backgrounds, students of color, kids from single-parent homes,” said the NCEA’s chief innovation officer, Kevin Baxter “That makes it all the more tragic if we lose the Catholic schools that serve those populations.”

One consequence of the turmoil: increased interest in Catholic-oriented homeschooling.

Chris Sebastian, a spokesman for the Mother of Divine Grace School, said it is preparing to serve about 6,000 students in the new school year, compared with 4,800 last year.

The school, based in California but serving families across the U.S. and overseas, offers a structured Catholic curriculum and assigns an educational consultant to work with each family that signs up.

“COVID is the primary motivator for people enrolling,” Sebastian said. “People are afraid of the pandemic and not wanting the stress of required masks.”

The Rev. Thomas Vassalotti, pastor of Queen of the Rosary Catholic Academy’s parish in New York, said numerous parents affected by that closure — and wary of switching to public schools — are expressing interest in homeschooling, perhaps in a cooperative with assistance from the parish.

For Catholic schools that are reopening, there is no national directive as to how they should handle the question of in-person classes. Decisions are being made diocese by diocese, often influenced by local and state rules.

In Los Angeles, archdiocese officials had hoped to open the new year with in-person classes. They now will have to start out with distance learning, due to an order from Gov. Gavin Newsom barring public and private schools from reopening campuses if their counties are on a monitoring list for high rates of new coronavirus cases.

The situation is different in Dallas, where the diocese plans to open schools Sept. 2, six days before the earliest date when secular schools can start in-person classes. The diocese chose that option after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said religious schools were exempt from local orders delaying in-person instruction.

And in Evansville, Indiana, Catholic schools reopened Aug. 5 with a full program of in-person instruction. Schools were told to spread out desks, place students in small groups and require face coverings.

Mary Pat Donoghue, who heads the education office of the national bishops’ conference, said she expects a wide variety of reopening plans, with a common aim of getting students back in the classroom as quickly as health conditions allow.

___

Associated Press video journalist Jessie Wardarski, in New York, and Justin Pritchard, in Los Angeles, contributed to his report.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through the Religion News Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

IN CANADA PUBLIC EDUCATION IS A PROVINCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

IN ALBERTA AND ONTARIO CATHOLIC SCHOOLS ARE CONSIDERED PART OF THE PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM

IN NEWFOUNDLAND THEY HAVE ONE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM FOR PROTESTANTS AND CATHOLICS 

IN MANY CASES OUTSIDE OF QUEBEC, AND NEW BRUNSWICK (FRANCO CANADIANS) THE CATHOLIC BOARDS EXIST NOT FOR RELIGIOUS REASONS BUT RATHER AS IS THE CASE WITH THE MANITOBA ACT FRENCH LANGUAGE RIGHTS ARE THE REASON FOR THESE 'SEPARATE' SCHOOLS SYSTEMS AS THEY ARE CALLED.

Native mascots still a sticking point in high school sports

NOT JUST IN THE USA, CANADA TOO

Lemiley Lane, a Bountiful junior who grew up in the Navajo Nation in Arizona, poses for a photograph at Bountiful High School, July 21, 2020, in Bountiful, Utah. While advocates have made strides in getting Native American symbols and names changed in sports, they say there's still work to do mainly at the high school level, where mascots like Braves, Indians, Warriors, Chiefs and Redskins persist. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Lemiley Lane, a Bountiful junior who grew up in the Navajo Nation in Arizona, walks along the campus near a a mural of an Indigenous man meant to represent the Braves mascot at Bountiful High School, July 21, 2020, in Bountiful, Utah.

BOUNTIFUL, Utah (AP) — At a mostly white high school near Salt Lake City, the steps leading to the football field are covered in red handprints, arrows and drawings of Native American men in headdresses meant to represent the mascot, the Braves. “Welcome to the Dark Side” and “Fight like a Brave” are scrawled next to images of teepees, a tomahawk and a dream catcher.

While advocates have made strides in getting Native American symbols and names changed in sports, they say there’s still work to do mainly at the high school level, where mascots like Braves, Indians, Warriors, Chiefs and Redskins persist. Momentum is building during a nationwide push for racial justice following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the NFL team in Washington dropping the Redskins name.

At Bountiful High School, there’s nostalgia for the Braves name that’s been used for nearly 70 years and comes with an informal mascot — a student dressed up in feathers. Fans point to tradition when rhythmically extending their forearms for the tomahawk chop, wearing face paint and chanting at football games.

It’s an honor, they say, but not to many Native Americans who see the portrayals throughout high school, collegiate and professional sports. The depictions can affect the psyches of younger Native Americans and create the image of a monolith that doesn’t exist, advocates say.

“There is no tribe that can make a claim to it,” said James Singer, co-founder of the Utah League of Native American Voters. “Nevertheless, many tribal governments, using their tribal sovereignty, have issued statements saying they don’t want these kinds of mascots for school teams.”

It’s not clear how many high schools have built their sports team imagery around Native Americans, but advocates say it’s in the hundreds — down significantly from decades ago.

Schools in Ohio, Michigan, Idaho, New York, Massachusetts and California are changing names, often at the urging of Native Americans. Schools in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Red Mesa on the Navajo Nation are discussing their Redskins mascots.
Native American advocate Carl Moore sits near the phrase "We Bleed These Colors" along a walkway which leads from the Bountiful High School parking lot up to the football field Tuesday, July 28, 2020, in Bountiful, Utah.

“I understand the issue, and then at the same time, you just have to listen to the students who take pride in this but give them the information about why the other side is concerned, too,” said Timothy Benally, who’s on the Red Mesa Unified School District board in Arizona and is Navajo.

On a practical level, getting rid of a mascot means new uniforms, signs on fields and imagery on merchandise.

Dr. Jason Black, a communication studies professor at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, who co-wrote “Mascot Nation,” said the changes aren’t too costly but finding replacements can take time.

“You’re getting what you pay for, and what you get is respect of human beings and ... rebirth of a community that truly understands how to be responsible with its members,” said Black, who is not Native American. “It is an investment in people, and that’s who matters.”

Only three states have laws either prohibiting or limiting these symbols at public institutions. Maine lawmakers last year banned Native American mascots in public schools. In Oregon, public schools and universities cannot use names, symbols or images that depict Native Americans unless they have an agreement with a local federally recognized tribe. California forbids “Redskins” as a team name or mascot.

Attempts in other states to govern the use of Native American mascots have failed in recent years. At least three — Illinois, Massachusetts and Minnesota — are considering legislation this year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

At the college level, Native American mascots seen as “hostile and abusive” have been banned in championship play since 2005. Some schools, including the University of Utah and Florida State University, have agreements with local tribes to use their names and imagery.

Luke Duncan, a Ute tribal official, recently rebuked calls for the University of Utah to stop using the tribe’s name, calling the agreement a “source of pride” for tribal members.


Native American advocate Carl Moore sits next to red handprint painted along a walkway which leads from the Bountiful High School parking lot up to the football field Tuesday, July 28, 2020, in Bountiful, Utah. 


A red handprint is painted along a walkway which leads from the Bountiful High School parking lot up to the football field Tuesday, July 28, 2020, in Bountiful, Utah.


Native American advocate Carl Moore walks along a walkway which leads from the Bountiful High School parking lot up to the football field Tuesday, July 28, 2020, in Bountiful, Utah.
 

Native American imagery is painted along a walkway which leads from the Bountiful High School parking lot up to the football field Tuesday, July 28, 2020, in Bountiful, Utah. 

Native American advocate Carl Moore sits next to Native American imagery painted along a walkway which leads from the Bountiful High School parking lot up to the football field Tuesday, July 28, 2020, in Bountiful, Utah.

Professional sports teams that have Native American-themed names and mascots increasingly are facing backlash, including baseball’s Atlanta Braves and the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs. The Cleveland Indians baseball team recently said it would talk with Native Americans as it considers a name change.

Last week, the Chicago Blackhawks said hockey fans would be banned from wearing headdresses when home games resume but would keep its name in honor of Black Hawk, a Sac and Fox Nation leader.

At Bountiful High School in Utah, many alumni support the Braves name. Kurt Gentry, who graduated in 1976, said the mascot was treated with “tremendous respect and honor and power” when he was a student.

“There’s a lot of misinformation and oversensitivity that is frankly being propagated by those who have zero understanding of the culture,” said Gentry, noting he had a Navajo foster daughter.

Lemiley Lane, who’s Navajo, transferred to Bountiful last year as a sophomore and said she was the only Native American student at the school. She was excited for the first assembly but left when she saw the “Brave Man” — a white student wearing a headdress. After that, she skipped school assemblies and sports games.

“I couldn’t stay there because I felt uncomfortable; I felt unwelcome,” Lane said. “I wanted to go home.”

The mascot is no longer allowed at school events, Davis County School District spokesman Chris Williams said. Bountiful’s logo was changed in recent years from a Native American man to the letter “B” with a feather or arrow on it, he said.

The fate of the Braves name and logo won’t be known before the first football game this month, Williams said.

Carl Moore of Peaceful Advocates for Native Dialogue and Organizing Support said real change won’t come without the school educating students about Native American history.

“They change the logo, but it doesn’t change the culture,” Moore said. “The culture is still racist when you walk up those steps.”

___

Fonseca reported from Flagstaff, Arizona. Eppolito is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.



IN EDMONTON WE HAVE VICTORIA SCHOOL OF THE PERFORMING ARTS, ONE OF MY ALUMNI HIGH SCHOOLS WHOSE SPORTS TEAMS ARE CALLED THE REDMEN 

For pandemic jobless, the only real certainty is uncertainty


James Jackson poses for a photograph outside his home during the coronavirus pandemic, Thursday, July 30, 2020, in West Park, Fla. Jackson is among the tens of thousands hospitality workers fighting for survival in the age of the pandemic. Jackson's employer, the Diplomat Beach Resort, in Hollywood, Fla., was forced to close in March because of the outbreak. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)


CHICAGO (AP) — For three decades, Kelly Flint flourished as a corporate travel agent, sending everyone from business titans to oil riggers around the planet. Then came the worst pandemic in a century, leaving her jobless and marooned in an uncertain economy.

Furloughed since March, Flint has dipped into her retirement account to pay her bills, frustrated that her $600 weekly emergency federal aid payments have expired. She yearns, too, for an end to the twin disasters that now dominate her life: recession and pandemic.

“I don’t deal well with the unknowns,” she says. “I never have.”

Across America are legions of Kelly Flints, women and men who don’t know when they’ll receive another paycheck — or if.

The coronavirus outbreak and resulting economic upheaval have thrown millions of lives into disarray. Industries have collapsed, businesses closed, jobs disappeared. Compounding the misery is a question no one can answer: When will this all be over?

(Kelly Flint via AP)

In recent congressional testimony, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell repeated his earlier warning: The strength of any recovery will rely on the nation’s ability to contain the virus. The outlook for the U.S. economy, he said, is “extraordinarily uncertain.”

Uncertain. If 2020 had to be condensed into a single word — and there are many, many words to describe it — uncertainty would hover at the top of the list. Uncertainty about health. About the future. About the country itself. And uncertainty about livelihoods and jobs and economic security in a historical moment where each day seems to bring a fresh wave of unwanted developments.

America has faced economic calamity before, most recently during the recession of 2008, when the jobless rate soared to 10%. That pales in comparison to the two crises that have cost more than 160,000 American lives and ushered in spiraling unemployment — 30 million job losses, of which 17.5 million people remain unemployed.

“It’s not just the scope of the losses,” says Martha Gimbel, an economist at Schmidt Futures. “Until we have solved the public health crisis or have a timeline ... none of us is going to know what’s going on.”

Uncertainty, painted onto the landscape by the numbers. And behind each one, a human being.

___

LISA VINES

When she lost her job, she wrestled with a flood of emotions: shock, panic, then determination.

“I went into survival mode,” Vines says. “My faith kicked in like a ninja.”

Her first task was to research every possible government benefit. But even with that, she turned to food banks to provide for herself and her 8-year-old granddaughter, who shares her home in Memphis, Tennessee.

Vines was stunned when she was laid off in March from her sales job at a promotional product company. She’d worked there 20 years. “You think you’re going to be taken care of,” she says.

Lisa Vines of Memphis, Tennessee. (AP Photo/Adrian Sainz)

A calm set in as Vines inventoried her life, knowing she had a small savings and a home she could sell. “I looked at my granddaughter and said, ‘OK, we’re to get through it,’” she says.

She doesn’t know what the future holds. One possibility: working for the same company, but on a commission basis. But at 56, she has a philosophy: “You learn what to worry about and what to pray about.”

She’s confident a way forward will emerge. “I’ll either be here or I’ll build my peace elsewhere,” Vines says. “I can’t get wrapped up in the unknowns when I have blessings in front of me.”

___

JARED SAIGH

He had a road map for his future. A new job in his hometown in rural Michigan. A chance to use his marketing skills. The comfort of living with his parents.

Saigh was eager to start over after being laid off in 2019 from a Detroit-area marketing company. After a half-year of searching for work, Saigh decided it would be cheaper to continue his quest from home. He moved in with his parents in Iron River, in Michigan’ s Upper Peninsula.

A few months later, Saigh was hired to lead a nonprofit attached to his local hospital. He’d be working 5 miles from home, reuniting with friends in Iron River, population 3,000 — and doing something positive for his community.

“It was just perfect,” he says. “It was like, “Wow! Everything is falling in place.”

Then the pandemic swooped in. Hospitals faced new financial pressures. The offer was rescinded. Saigh went from dream job to no job.

It was back to sending out resumes, checking LinkedIn, canvassing for interviews during one of the most brutal job markets in decades. “It can be overwhelming at times just to go through this again,” he says.

(Jared Saigh via AP)

He considers himself lucky, avoiding rent and other expenses living with his parents. He recently turned down a job offer to head a local economic organization; it didn’t seem like the right fit, and he feared there might not be money for the position beyond the end of the year.

Now, Saigh plans to do some photo and video freelance work as he tries to land another job. He’s adjusted to an economy where so much remains unknown.

“I’ve learned that you can’t possibly plan for everything and, though it’s a cliche, you’ve just got to roll with the punches,” he says. “And I’ve learned to go where the next thing leads me. Hopefully, that will be soon.”

___

JAMES JACKSON

Every day, he confronts the realities of too many bills, not enough money, a job that’s on hold — and no timetable for when any of it will change.

Jackson is among tens of thousands of hospitality workers who’ve been sidelined in an industry devastated by the pandemic. His employer, the Diplomat Beach resort in Hollywood, Florida, closed in March because of the outbreak. That left Jackson, an assistant to the bartender and server at a hotel restaurant, and his wife, an elementary school teacher, scrambling to provide for their three asthmatic children.

They’ve tried to shield them from money troubles. “It’s not their job to go out and make things happen,” Jackson says. “As a parent, you don’t want to give kids the perception that the ground is crumbling under your feet.”

Complicating the situation is Florida’s unemployment system, which has been marred by computer glitches and lengthy delays. Despite countless calls over the months, Jackson, 51, says he has yet to receive a single $275 weekly state unemployment check — even though his last day of work was March 21. That cap is among the stingiest in the nation.

ames Jackson. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

The stress has frayed his nerves. His doctor, who waived copayments for visits, prescribed medicine for his high blood pressure, but he can’t afford it. His hair is thinning. He gets migraines.

Jackson and his wife have traditionally depended on help from her teaching salary, but she’s been off during the summer. With $3,200 in monthly bills, the two regularly face tough choices. “If you do have money,” he says, “do you spend it on gas or do you get food?”

Jackson is hoping to find a warehouse job for now. He worries about having enough food for his kids — 8 to 18 — and being able to afford school supplies, clothes and everything else they’ll need in coming months.

He refuses to look too far ahead. “This is a day-to-day process,” he says, “and I can’t worry about the things I cannot change.”

___

BRETT LIPSHUTZ

He can’t help but think he was a victim of bad timing.

Last year, after tiring of being an educator, he gave up a job teaching French in a private school in suburban Milwaukee. He was recruited to become a bilingual software trainer, traveling to Canada three weeks a month. In the spring, he rushed back to the U.S. as the border was about to close.

Then suddenly, at 46, Lipshutz was out of work — something entirely new for him. He filed for unemployment and joined a support group of jobless workers in Wisconsin. He began figuring out how much to dip into savings that had taken years to amass.

“Not having enough money can paralyze you,” he says. It’s a lesson he learned at a young age.

“I grew up with a single mom on welfare in the ’80s,” Lipshutz says. “And I know what it’s like to collect government cheese and free lunch and to live paycheck to paycheck and feel that stress of financial instability. .... It brings back trauma from that time of, ‘Oh, my God, am I going to have to live like that again?’”

(Brett Lipshutz via AP)

Lipshutz’s second software project was canceled because of budget cuts. He’s now starting a tofu business with friends. He also expects to be back in the classroom this fall, teaching French to Milwaukee public high school students.

Lipshutz has become more comfortable, too, accepting the limitations of this chaotic environment.

“There are certain things you can’t control, and you have to let it go,” he says. “I can’t control the pandemic. I can’t control the job market.”

“In the back of my mind,” he adds, “there’s still a tiny drawer of anxiety and worry. ... But I’m starting to tell myself, ‘Listen, you’re going to be fine.’”

___

MORGAN GITHMARK

For her, the pandemic has been a health risk and a job destroyer.

Last March, she had to quit her job at a marketing company in North Carolina because face-to-face encounters with customers at big-box stores were potentially dangerous. A diabetic, Githmark, 24, has an increased chance of becoming seriously ill if she contracts the coronavirus.

“I feel like I don’t have very much of a purpose now,” she says. She feels as if she’s “floating around in life” as she searches for work, with her father helping retool her resume. She knows her job possibilities are limited because she can’t be exposed to large groups of people.

Githmark plans to enroll in grad school, though she hasn’t chosen a field of study. She taught in a charter school in Durham, North Carolina, before moving into marketing. She may return to education.

Meanwhile, gardening and writing help relieve the tension. “It’s just been a very stressful time,” she says, and sighs.

___

MICAH ANDERSON

When the Portland, Oregon, club where he tended bar was forced to close in the pandemic’s early days, he had no time to plan how he’d pay his bills. But he knew some routine expenses would have to wait.

At the top of the list were $250 monthly payments he’d been making for more than a decade to whittle down $45,000 in student loans. There was no way he could shoulder that. His immediate worries were food and shelter, and he was pleasantly surprised when he was given some leeway in paying rent and utilities.

For the past six months, Anderson, 37, has relied on state unemployment and $600-a-week pandemic-related federal benefits that just expired. In Washington, Democrats and Republicans are clashing over how much of that aid should continue and for how long.

Anderson has been cautious about spending. He walks almost everywhere. He has reduced his food budget to essentials. He doesn’t go out with friends. He’s become politically active, calling the offices of federal lawmakers, urging them to back a bill creating a $120 billion fund to help rescue restaurants and bars.

And as stressful days give way to sleepless nights, he and his friends commiserate over their shared predicament.

“You’ve got kind of overwhelming sense of dread,” he says, echoing the sentiments of a friend who said being caught in the pandemic is “like standing on the shore and you’re looking at this huge tsunami wave coming in. and you know it’s going to hit. But there’s not a whole lot I can really do about it.”

___

DEANNA KOUSKOULAS

She isn’t one to point fingers. She knows many others who’ve looked at the staggering numbers of unemployed and don’t feel the same way.

“I see a lot of people blaming companies, saying, ‘How dare they lay off their employees!’” she says. “But those decisions have to be made.”

Kouskoulas, 30, was laid off in April, about six months after being hired for a copywriting-marketing job at a suburban Detroit construction company.

She’s now interviewing for jobs, preparing for the post-pandemic era. She spends part of every morning sharpening and expanding her skills, studying graphic design on YouTube, among other things, “so I can come out strong when things do go back to normal.” And she speaks regularly with a CEO she once worked for who acts as her mentor.

Shortly after Kouskoulas lost her job, she thought she had a lucky break: She was hired to do marketing at a software firm. She worked 60-hour weeks, she says, but was repeatedly rebuffed when she asked for a paycheck. After four weeks, she’d had enough.

In recent weeks, Kouskoulas says she senses the “quietness in the economy” that existed a few month ago has lifted and there are more opportunities. But she also worries some employers will be consolidating roles, producing fewer jobs with more responsibilities.

She’s prepared, too, for what she expects will be “a long haul.”

“At the end of the day,” she says, “the only person who’s going to get me out of this is me.”

___

Uncertainty ripples outward. There are so many things that, because of it, simply can’t be done.

It spreads to those who’ve permanently lost jobs as well as furloughed workers wondering if they’ll be called back. “People may tell you to retrain,” says Gimbel, the economist. “What are you supposed to retrain for? You don’t know what the economy is going to look like. Everyone is frozen because it’s so unclear how the situation is going to evolve.”

And long-term planning? Even murkier — impossible, really, says Adam Ozimek, chief economist at Upwork.

“We don’t know whether at the end of the year there are going to be 15 million people without a job or 5 million people,” he says. “From top to bottom, every single person in the economy is affected by this uncertainty in one way or another.”

Job uncertainty is new for Flint, 53, the travel agent. She’s never been unemployed, and it’s “doubly scary,” she says, because she’s single. Her furlough is up at the end of October, but there’s no guarantee she won’t be laid off before then. Every week, she sends out fresh resumes from her home in Galveston, Texas. And every day, she fends off scam artists who call with bogus job offers as they try to ferret out her private information.

“I’ve had anxiety that I’ve never had before. I’ve even had panic attacks. I’ve had crazy dreams of zombies,” she says. “It has worn on me.”

For Micah Anderson, the uncertainty has been the hardest part — “having zero idea of what next week is going to even look like.”

“I’m the type of person who, if I if I have an idea of what I’m facing, I can try to make a plan that makes sense,” Anderson says. “But you don’t really know what it is you need to do.”

“You just have no clue. You make decisions the best you can. And you hope that they turn out OK.”

___

Contributing to this report were Desiree Mathurin and Haleluya Hadero in Atlanta. Sharon Cohen, a Chicago-based national writer for The Associated Press, can be reached at scohen@ap.org or on Twitter at http://twitter.com/SCohenAP

Postal Service emerges as flash point heading into election

FILE - In this July 31, 2020, file photo, letter carriers load mail trucks for deliveries at a U.S. Postal Service facility in McLean, Va. The success of the 2020 presidential election could come down to a most unlikely government agency: the U.S. Postal Service. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Mail piling up. Constant attacks from the president. Cuts to overtime as record numbers of ballots are expected to pass through post offices this fall.

The success of the 2020 presidential election could hinge on a most unlikely government agency: the U.S. Postal Service. Current signs are not promising.

The Postal Service already was facing questions over how it would handle the expected spike of mail-in ballots due to the coronavirus pandemic, but several operational changes imposed by its new leader have led to mail backlogs across the United States as rumors of additional cutbacks swirl, fueling worries about the November vote.

“It seems like they’re just trying to turn customers away from the post office,” said Jim Sizemore, president of the American Postal Workers Union chapter in the Cincinnati region. He said his offices are behind on deliveries because of new rules specifying when mail can go out.

The pandemic has forced states to expand voting by mail as a safe alternative to in-person polling places. Some states are opting to send ballots to voters or allowing people to use fear of the virus as a reason to cast an absentee ballot. That’s led to predictions of an an unprecedented amount of mail voting in the presidential election.

Trailing in the polls, President Donald Trump has been sowing public distrust in the Postal Service’s ability to adequately deliver ballots and has, without evidence, said allowing more people to vote by mail will result in rampant corruption.

The agency’s new leader, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a former supply-chain CEO and a major donor to Trump and other Republicans, has pushed cost-cutting measures to eliminate overtime pay and hold mail until the next day if postal distribution centers are running late.

DeJoy, 63, of North Carolina, was tapped to head the service by a Trump-appointed board of governors and started in June. He is the first postmaster general in nearly two decades who is not a career postal employee.

DeJoy has said repeatedly that the Postal Service is in a financially untenable position and needs to rein in expenses. This past week, it reported $2.2 billion in losses during the three months that ended in June.

Postal leaders want at least a $10 billion infusion from Congress as well as regulatory changes that would end a costly mandate that they fund in advance billions of dollars in retiree health benefits.

“Without dramatic change, there is no end in sight, and we face an impending liquidity crisis,” DeJoy told the Postal Service’s governing board Friday.

Memos from post office leadership, obtained by The Associated Press, detailed an elimination of overtime and a halting of late delivery trips that are sometimes needed to make sure deliveries arrive on time. One document said if distribution centers are running behind, “they will keep the mail for the next day.” Another said: “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.”

Additional records obtained by AP outline upcoming reductions of hours at post offices, including closures during lunch and on Saturdays. Rumors have also circulated about the potential for entire offices to shutter, after the Postal Service told Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., that regional managers there have identified 12 offices for “feasibility studies.” Postal employees have been recently instructed not to talk to news media while on duty, according to another memo obtained by AP.

The changes have taken their toll on the Postal Service’s 630,000 employees.

“As they risk their health each day along with other front-line essential workers, letter carriers have become angry, frustrated and embarrassed by various USPS management initiatives that are now resulting in delayed mail and undelivered routes in many areas of the country,” said Fredric Rolando, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, which represents nearly 300,000 carriers nationwide.

The new policies have angered lawmakers from both parties and drawn criticism from former President Barack Obama, who said the current administration is “undermining the Postal Service in an election that’s going to be dependent on mail-in ballots.”

DeJoy has been the target of multiple letters from members of Congress who have called on the postmaster general to rescind his measures and have complained about a lack of transparency from the agency. Eighty-four House members, including four Republicans, signed a letter that said it is “vital that the Postal Service does not reduce mail delivery hours, which could harm rural communities, seniors, small businesses and millions of Americans who rely on the mail for critical letters and packages.″

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., had a closed-door meeting with DeJoy this past week to discuss the agency’s worsening performance and need for emergency funding. Schumer later described it as “a heated discussion.″

Pelosi and Schumer followed up with a letter to DeJoy that said the operational changes “threaten the timely delivery of mail — including medicines for seniors, paychecks for workers, and absentee ballots for voters — that is essential to millions of Americans.”

During a meeting Friday with the Postal Service governing board, DeJoy said the agency is not slowing down election mail and remains committed to fulfilling its role in elections.

“Although there will likely be an unprecedented increase in election mail volume due to the pandemic, the Postal Service has ample capacity to deliver all election mail securely and on-time in accordance with our delivery standards, and we will do so,” he said. “However, as discussed, we cannot correct the errors of the Election Boards if they fail to deploy processes that take our normal processing and delivery standards into account.”

In West Virginia, Sini Melvin, president of an American Postal Workers Union chapter in a northern part of the state, said she has serious concerns about the post office’s ability to deliver ballots on time this fall if current policies hold.

“It’s like they’re setting us up for failure,” she said,

___

Izaguirre reported from Charleston, West Virginia. The Associated Press produced this coverage with support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Nine People Have Tested Positive For COVID-19 At The Georgia School That Went Viral For Crowded Hallway Photos

The school suspended in-person classes for two days after six students and three staff members tested positive for the virus.

Stephanie K. Baer BuzzFeed News Reporter
Last updated on August 9, 2020,

Hannah Watters

Six students and three staff members tested positive for the coronavirus at North Paulding High School after photos of crowded hallways with maskless students at the Georgia school went viral.

Principal Gabe Carmona confirmed the positive COVID-19 cases in a letter sent to parents Saturday that was first reported on by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and ABC News.

The students and staff who tested positive were in school "for at least some time last week" when the photos of crowded hallways went viral, Saturday's letter stated. Carmona said the affected students and staff reported their test results to school officials.

On Sunday, Paulding County School District Superintendent Brian Otott announced that there will be no in-person instruction at the school on Monday and Tuesday owing to the nine cases "along with the possibility that that number could increase," according to a letter posted to Twitter by Hannah Watters, one of the students who were initially suspended for sharing the photos.

Ottot said that the school will be "thoroughly cleansed and disinfected" on Monday and Tuesday and that parents and students would be notified on Tuesday if in-person classes would resume or not.

"This is not what I have been stressing," Watters, 15, tweeted. "Shutting down has never been what I wanted. This letter could have easily said that they made masks mandatory, but no."

hannah@ihateiceman

This is not what I have been stressing. Shutting down has never been what I wanted. This letter could have easily said that they made masks mandatory, but no. Paulding hasn’t made masks mandatory due to Gov. Kemp. If we had opened safely, with masks, we could still go to school.09:20 PM - 09 Aug 2020
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The school district has chosen not to enforce mask-wearing, calling it a "personal choice," even though the CDC now recommends their use. The letter did not mention any changes to that policy or guidance on wearing face coverings.

"I apologize for any convenience this schedule change may cause, but hopefully we all can agree that the health and safety of our students and staff takes precedence over any other considerations at this time," Ottot wrote in the letter.

In Saturday's letter, Carmona wrote that the school was "continuing to adjust and improve our protocols for in-person instruction to make our school the safest possible learning environment."

"In each case we are following DPH recommendations for reporting. Our custodial staff continues to thoroughly clean and disinfect the school building daily, and especially affected areas," Carmona wrote.

The letter did not include additional information about the cases. Students and staff who have tested positive, as well as "any identified close contacts, must quarantine for at least 14 days and cannot return to school until they have completed all the requirements of the DPH's guidance for persons infected with COVID-19," the letter said.

Carmona and representatives for the school district did not immediately respond to BuzzFeed News' request for comment Sunday.

The district initially suspended Watters and a second student for posting the images that went viral but reversed the suspensions on Friday following backlash.


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Two Students Say They Were Suspended From Their Georgia High School For Posting Photos Of Crowded Hallways

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The Truth Behind A Viral Picture Of A Reopening School Is Worse Than It Looked

Molly Hensley-Clancy · Aug. 5, 2020

Stephanie Baer is a reporter with BuzzFeed News and is based in Los Angeles.