UK

Labour MP cleared of fraud says case ‘driven by malicious intent’ leading to ‘Islamophobic abuse’

“As a survivor of domestic abuse facing these vexatious charges, the last 18 months of false accusations, online sexist, racist, and Islamophobic abuse, and threats to my safety, have been exceedingly difficult."

 by Joe Mellor
31 July 2021 09:07

LONDON ECONOMIC EYE
in Politics

Credit;PA

A Labour MP said she has been “vindicated” after being cleared of charges of housing fraud she claimed were “driven by malicious intent”.

Apsana Begum, 31, was on trial at Snaresbrook Crown Court in London for three counts of dishonestly failing to disclose information relating to her council housing application during three periods between January 2013 and March 2016.

Tower Hamlets Council, which brought the prosecution, alleged the cost to the local authority was £63,928, because someone else on the housing list had to be given accommodation elsewhere.

Jurors found the Poplar and Limehouse MP not guilty of all charges on Friday afternoon.

Ms Begum collapsed and wept in the dock as the verdicts were delivered, saying afterwards the trial had caused her “great distress and damage to my reputation”.

She added: “I would like to say a sincere thank you to all my legal team and all those who have shown me solidarity, support and kindness.

Abuse

“As a survivor of domestic abuse facing these vexatious charges, the last 18 months of false accusations, online sexist, racist, and Islamophobic abuse, and threats to my safety, have been exceedingly difficult.

“I also thank the jury for vindicating me and the judge for presiding over this trial.

“I will be consulting and considering how to follow up so that something like this doesn’t happen again to anyone else.”

Supporters in the court’s public gallery burst into applause after the verdicts, before being quickly reprimanded by the judge Mrs Justice Whipple.

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn tweeted his congratulations to Ms Begum, writing: “Always knew you to be a woman of amazing strength and fortitude and yet again that has been proven.”

A spokesperson for Tower Hamlets said the council accepted the jury’s verdict.

A Tower Hamlets spokesperson said: “We have a duty to investigate any allegations of housing fraud in order to ensure public money is spent correctly and that those waiting on our housing register are treated fairly.

“After reviewing the evidence with the benefit of independent legal advice, it was found it to be strong enough to bring the matter to court where it was agreed there was a case to answer.

“We fully accept the verdict, that justice has run its course and that the matter is now closed.”

During the trial the court heard Ms Begum had applied to go on the council’s social housing register on July 22 2011.

She was placed on the priority housing list after claiming to be living in an “overcrowded” three-bedroom house in Poplar with five members of her family and without her own room.

However, the prosecution said the property in Woodstock Terrace had four bedrooms, according to both a housing application made by Ms Begum’s aunt in 2009 and a council tax form submitted by her mother in 2013.

Prosecutor James Marsland said Ms Begum had deliberately lied about the number of bedrooms in order to move higher up the housing register and also failed to tell the council that by January 2013 there were only four people living at the address after her father died and her aunt moved out.

Ms Begum maintained there had only ever been three bedrooms in the house and that she had never had her own bedroom while living there, and could not explain why her family members had said there were four bedrooms.

She also said it was a period of turmoil during which she was struggling to come to terms with her father’s death and her Bangladeshi-heritage family’s disapproval of her relationship with her then-partner, Tower Hamlets councillor Ehtasham Haque.

Ms Begum’s defence lawyer Helen Law also claimed the complaint which triggered the investigation, made in 2019 by Sayed Nahid Uddin – Mr Haque’s brother-in-law – was “false”.

Hostility

The court heard she left the property in May 2013 due to her family’s growing hostility towards her desire to marry Mr Haque, who was seven years her senior and twice divorced.

Giving evidence during the trial, an emotional Ms Begum said she had visited a police station to make a report about her brother following her to work and said she feared becoming the victim of honour-based violence.

She told the court she returned home on the same day and was locked in the living room by her brother, who said he thought she should visit an imam because he believed she was “possessed”.

Ms Begum said she managed to call 999 and fled the house with only her handbag. Days later she was told to pick up her belongings, which had been put in black bin bags outside the house.

Ms Begum and Mr Haque then were married in an Islamic ceremony before she moved in with him.

Mr Marsland had argued Ms Begum had been fully aware of the housing register policies and the fact she was no longer eligible for social housing due to her experience working in the town mayor’s office and then as a housing adviser for Tower Hamlets Homes.

But Ms Law said her client had only worked at a low level in both jobs, mainly as a call handler, and had no special knowledge of the housing register.

House Democrat slams lawmakers 'on vacations' as eviction moratorium set to end


By Veronica Stracqualursi, CNN
Updated 9:57 PM ET, Sat July 31, 2021

(CNN)Rep. Cori Bush slammed her House colleagues for adjourning for August recess without passing an extension of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's eviction moratorium for renters, which is set to expire Saturday night.

"The House is at recess. People are on vacations. How are we on vacation when we have millions of people who could start to be evicted tonight?" Bush, a Missouri Democrat, told CNN's Jessica Dean on "Newsroom" Saturday afternoon. "There are people already receiving and have received pay or vacate notices that will have them out on tomorrow. People are already in a position where they need help, our most vulnerable, our most marginalized, those who are in need."

"How can we go vacation? No, we need to come back here," said Bush, speaking from the steps of the US Capitol where she had slept overnight in an effort to appeal to her colleagues to extend the moratorium.

With just hours remaining until the eviction moratorium deadline, Bush and a growing number of her supporters remained on the Capitol steps.

They are not allowed to lay down on the steps, Bush said, so they are perched in chairs and wrapped in blankets.

All day Friday, Democratic leaders scrambled to find enough votes to extend the moratorium beyond the July 31 deadline to no avail, even attempting to pass a bill to extend the eviction moratorium by unanimous consent.

Bush, who had been unhoused and evicted before she joined Congress, urged House leadership to reconvene and pass the legislation that would allow Americans to stay in their homes through the end of the year.

The congresswoman said she's been in communication with House leadership, but has not "heard any assurances right now that that can happen. But we're holding out hope."

Eviction moratorium to expire Saturday as House leaves town without passing extension

Bush called on the Senate to extend the moratorium before the chamber is slated to start its recess at the end of next week. She also called on the CDC and White House to extend the moratorium, but the White House has cited a Supreme Court opinion last month that said congressional action would be needed to extend it past July 31.

On Friday, Bush invited members of her party to join her on the Capitol Plaza, and was joined by her progressive colleagues Reps. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota during the night, and visited by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, as well as Rep. Jim McGovern on Saturday.

McGovern, chairman of the House Rules Committee, told CNN's Suzanne Malveaux that if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has the votes to call back the House and reconvene on an eviction moratorium extension, he's ready to support her.

Pelosi made clear Saturday night in a letter to her House Democratic colleagues that even if the House passed legislation to extend the eviction moratorium, "it was obvious that the Senate would not be able to do so" as well.

Pelosi wrote that "some in our Caucus have now chosen to focus instead on how we could get the money allocated in the December Omnibus and the Biden American Rescue Plan in the hands of the renters and landlords."

"Overwhelmingly, our Members support extending the moratorium," the Speaker continued. "Universally, our Members demand that the $46.5 billion provided by Congress be distributed expeditiously to renters and landlords."

The Senate is still in town but is working on passing the bipartisan infrastructure bill. House members left for the August recess after failing to garner enough support to pass the moratorium on the House side.

On the Capitol steps Saturday, Pressley told CNN that the looming expiration is a "nightmare scenario" for desperate families. The lawmaker referred to her overnight stay outside the Capitol as the "next step" of her ongoing "activism to fight for the poor."

However, Pressley did not commit to sleeping on the steps again Saturday night, citing previously arranged ongoing commitments that she and other lawmakers have in their home states.

"It was a moral imperative to act to disrupt and prevent this crisis, and it is a moral failing that we did not act," Pressley told CNN's Ryan Nobles Saturday.

"Eviction is already violent, but to evict people in the midst of a pandemic is cruel, inhumane, unacceptable and 100% preventable," she said.

Pressley also called out her own party's handling of the impending deadline.
"We absolutely should have received word from the White House much earlier than we did. We simply ran out of time," Pressley said.

Yet, she added, "There is still time, though, to right this wrong."

"I do believe that the White House and the CDC can act, should act, unilaterally," she continued. "And if we are challenged by the courts, that will still buy these families time, and that is what we need."



Bush wrote in a letter to her colleagues Friday that she "cannot in good conscience leave Washington tonight while a Democratic-controlled government allows millions of people to go unhoused as the Delta variant is ravaging our communities."

She vowed to keep fighting for the millions of Americans who will be affected by the moratorium's expiration.

"I plan to be here until something happens," she told CNN on Saturday. "Hopefully something happens today. I don't have an end moment or time. I didn't know this time yesterday I would be here tonight. We're just taking it one step at a time."

Bush told CNN's Daniella Diaz earlier Saturday that she knows "what it's like to wonder if I'm going to get that eviction notice."

"The hope that when you show up at that door, just hoping that when you get a glimpse of that door, that there's no piece of paper from the sheriff," she said. "Your whole life turns upside down."

This story has been updated with additional reporting.

CNN's Daniella Diaz, Annie Grayer, Phil Mattingly, Kristin Wilson, Melanie Zanona, Suzanne Malveaux, Rachel Janfaza, Ryan Nobles and Vanessa Price contributed to this report.

WE ELECTED YOU, WHY?!

Frustration as Biden, Congress allow eviction ban to expire

By LISA MASCARO, JOSH BOAK and KEVIN FREKING

1 of 9

People from a coalition of housing justice groups hold signs protesting evictions during a news conference outside the Statehouse, Friday, July 30, 2021, in Boston. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Anger and frustration mounted in Congress as a nationwide eviction moratorium expired at midnight Saturday — one Democratic lawmaker even camping outside the Capitol in protest as millions of Americans faced being forced from their homes.

Lawmakers said they were blindsided by President Joe Biden’s inaction as the deadline neared, some furious that he called on Congress to provide a last-minute solution to protect renters. The rare division between the president and his party carried potential lasting political ramifications.

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., the chair of the Financial Services Committee, said Saturday on CNN: “We thought that the White House was in charge.”

Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., camped outside the Capitol, said: “I don’t plan to leave before some type of change happens.”

“We are only hours away from a fully preventable housing crisis,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., during a floor speech in a rare Saturday session as senators labored over an infrastructure package.



“We have the tools and we have the funding,” Warren said. “What we need is the time.”

More than 3.6 million Americans are at risk of eviction, some in a matter of days. The moratorium was put in place by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as part of the COVID-19 crisis when jobs shifted and many workers lost income.

The eviction ban was intended to prevent further virus spread by people put out on the streets and into shelters. Congress approved nearly $47 billion in federal housing aid to the states during the pandemic, but it has been slow to make it into the hands of renters and landlords owed payments.

The day before the ban was set to expire, Biden called on local governments to “take all possible steps” to immediately disburse the funds.

“There can be no excuse for any state or locality not accelerating funds to landlords and tenants that have been hurt during this pandemic,” he said in a statement late Friday.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pointed Democratic House members in the same direction, urging them in a letter Saturday night to check into how the money already allocated has been distributed so far in their own states and localities. She said the Treasury Department, which transferred the funds earlier in the year, offered to brief lawmakers next week.

Biden set off the scramble by announcing Thursday he would allow the eviction ban to expire instead of challenging a recent Supreme Court ruling signaling this would be the last deadline.

The White House has been clear that Biden would have liked to extend the federal eviction moratorium because of the spread of the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus. But there were also concerns that challenging the court could lead to a ruling restricting the administration’s ability to respond to future public health crises.



People from a coalition of housing justice groups hold signs protesting evictions during a news conference outside the Statehouse, Friday, July 30, 2021, in Boston. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)


On a 5-4 vote in late June, the Supreme Court allowed the broad eviction ban to continue through the end of July. One of those in the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, made clear he would block any additional extensions unless there was “clear and specific congressional authorization.”

Biden, heeding the court’s warning, called on Congress on Thursday to swiftly pass legislation to extend the date.

Racing to respond, Democrats strained to draft a bill and rally the votes. Pelosi implored colleagues to pass legislation extending the deadline, calling it a “moral imperative,” to protect renters and also the landlords who are owed compensation.

Waters quickly produced a draft of a bill that would require the CDC to continue the ban through Dec. 31. At a hastily arranged hearing Friday morning to consider the bill she urged her colleagues to act.

But Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, the top Republican on another panel handling the issue, said the Democrats’ bill was rushed.

“This is not the way to legislate,” she said.

Landlords, who have opposed the moratorium and challenged it repeatedly in court, are against any extension. They, too, are arguing for speeding up the distribution of rental assistance.

The National Apartment Association and several others this week filed a federal lawsuit asking for $26 billion in damages because of the impact of the moratorium.

Despite behind-the-scenes wrangling throughout the day, Democratic lawmakers had questions and concerns and could not muster support to extend the ban.

Revising the emergency legislation to shorten the eviction deadline to Oct. 18, in line with federal COVID-19 guidelines, drew a few more lawmakers in support — but still not enough for passage.

House Democrats, leaders tried to simply approve an extension by consent, without a formal vote, but House Republicans objected.

Democratic lawmakers were livid at the prospect of evictions in the middle of a surging pandemic.

Bush, who experienced homelessness as a young mother of two in her 20s, said that, at the time, she was working in a low-wage job.

“I don’t want anyone else to have to go through what I went through, ever,” said Bush, now 45, wiping away tears during an interview at the Capitol, where dozens had joined her protest. “I don’t care what the circumstances are and so I’m going to fight now that I’m in a position to be able to do something about it.”

Waters said House leaders should have forced a vote and Biden should not have let the warnings form one justice on the Supreme Court prevent him from taking executive action to prevent evictions.

“The president should have moved on it,” Waters said. She vowed to try to pass the bill again when lawmakers return from a recess.

By the end of March, 6.4 million American households were behind on their rent, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. As of July 5, roughly 3.6 million people in the U.S. said they faced eviction in the next two months, according to the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.

Some places are likely to see spikes in evictions starting Monday, while other jurisdictions will see an increase in court filings that will lead to evictions over several months.

The administration is trying to keep renters in place through other means. It released more than $1.5 billion in rental assistance in June, which helped nearly 300,000 households. The departments of Housing and Urban Development, Agriculture and Veterans Affairs extended their foreclosure-related eviction moratoriums through the end of September on households living in federally insured, single-family homes late Friday, after Biden had asked them to do so.

Aides to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, the chair of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, said the two were working on legislation to extend the moratorium and were asking Republicans not to block it.

___

Associated Press writers Alexandra Jaffe, Mark Sherman and Alan Fram contributed to this report.

 

Tenants prepare for unknown as eviction moratorium ends

By MICHAEL CASEY
AP

1 of 7
Roxanne Schaefer holds a photograph in the living room of her apartment, in West Warwick, R.I., Tuesday, July 27, 2021. Schaefer, who is months behind on rent, is bracing for the end to a CDC federal moratorium Saturday, July 31, 2021, a move that could result in millions of people being evicted just as the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus is rapidly spreading. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

BOSTON (AP) — Tenants saddled with months of back rent are facing the end of the federal eviction moratorium Saturday, a move that could lead to millions being forced from their homes just as the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus is rapidly spreading.

The Biden administration announced Thursday it would allow the nationwide ban to expire, saying it wanted to extend it due to rising infections but its hands were tied after the U.S. Supreme Court signaled in June that it wouldn’t be extended beyond the end of July without congressional action.

House lawmakers on Friday attempted, but failed, to pass a bill to extend the moratorium even for a few months. Some Democratic lawmakers had wanted it extended until the end of the year.

“August is going to be a rough month because a lot of people will be displaced from their homes,” said Jeffrey Hearne, director of litigation Legal Services of Greater Miami, Inc. “It will be at numbers we haven’t seen before. There are a lot of people who are protected by the ... moratorium.”

The moratorium, put in place by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in September to try to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, is credited with keeping 2 million people in their homes over the past year as the pandemic battered the economy, according to the Princeton University’s Eviction Lab. Eviction moratoriums will remain in place in New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois, California and Washington, D.C., until they expire later this year.

Elsewhere, the end of the federal moratorium means evictions could begin Monday, leading to a years’ worth of evictions over several weeks and ushering in the worst housing crisis since the Great Recession.

Roxanne Schaefer, already suffering from myriad health issues, including respiratory problems and a bone disorder, is one of the millions fearing homelessness.

In a rundown, sparsely furnished Rhode Island apartment she shares with her girlfriend, brother, a dog and a kitten, the 38-year-old is $3,000 behind on her $995 monthly rent after her girlfriend lost her dishwasher job during the pandemic. Boxes filled with their possessions were behind a couch in the apartment, which Schaeffer says is infested with mice and cockroaches, and even has squirrels in her bedroom.

The landlord, who first tried to evict her in January, has refused to take federal rental assistance, so the only thing preventing him from changing the locks and evicting her is the CDC moratorium. Her $800 monthly disability check won’t pay for a new apartment. She only has $1,000 in savings.

“I got anxiety. I’m nervous. I can’t sleep,” said Schaefer, of West Warwick, Rhode Island, over fears of being thrown out on the street. “If he does, you know, I lose everything, and I’ll have nothing. I’ll be homeless.”

More than 15 million people live in households that owe as much as $20 billion to their landlords, according to the Aspen Institute. As of July 5, roughly 3.6 million people in the U.S. said they faced eviction in the next two months, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.

 

Parts of the South and other regions with weaker tenant protections will likely see the largest spikes, and communities of color, where vaccination rates are sometimes lower, will be hit hardest. But advocates say this crisis is likely to have a wider impact than pre-pandemic evictions, reaching suburban and rural areas and working families who lost their jobs and never before experienced an eviction.

“I know personally many of the people evicted are people who worked before, who never had issues,” said Kristen Randall, a constable in Pima County, Arizona, who will be responsible for carrying out evictions starting Monday.

“These are people who already tried to find new housing, a new apartment or move in with families,” she said. “I know quite a few of them plan on staying in their cars or are looking at trying to make reservations at local shelters. But because of the pandemic, our shelter space has been more limited.”

“We are going to see a higher proportion of people go to the streets than we normally see. That is unfortunate.”

The crisis will only get worse in September when the first foreclosure proceedings are expected to begin. An estimated 1.75 million homeowners — roughly 3.5% of all homes — are in some sort of forbearance plan with their banks, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. By comparison, about 10 million homeowners lost their homes to foreclosure after the housing bubble burst in 2008.

The Biden administration had hoped that historic amounts of rental assistance allocated by Congress in December and March would help avert an eviction crisis.

But so far, only about $3 billion of the first tranche of $25 billion had been distributed through June by states and localities. Another $21.5 billion will go to the states. The speed of disbursement picked up in June, but some states like New York have distributed almost nothing. Several others have only approved a few million dollars.

“We are on the brink of catastrophic levels of housing displacement across the country that will only increase the immediate threat to public health,” said Emily Benfer, a law professor at Wake Forest University and the chair of the American Bar Association’s Task Force on Eviction, Housing Stability and Equity.

Some places will see a spike in people being evicted in the coming days, while other jurisdictions will see an increase in court filings that will lead to evictions over several months.

“It’s almost unfathomable. We are on the precipice of a nationwide eviction crisis that is entirely preventable with more time to distribute rental assistance,” Benfer said.

“The eviction moratorium is the only thing standing between millions of tenants and eviction while rental assistance applications are pending. When that essential public health tool ends on Saturday, just as the delta variant surges, the situation will become dire.”

Many beleaguered tenants will be forced out into a red-hot housing market where prices are rising and vacancy rates have plummeted.

They will be stuck with eviction records and back rent that will make it almost impossible to find new apartments, leaving many to shack up with families, turn to already strained homeless shelters or find unsafe dwellings in low-income neighborhoods that lack good schools, good jobs and access to transportation. Many will also be debt-ridden.

Evictions will also prove costly to the communities they reside in. Studies have shown evicted families face a laundry list of health problems, from higher infant mortality rates to high blood pressure to suicide. And taxpayers often foot the bill, from providing social services, health care and homeless services. One study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition and Innovation for Justice Program at the University of Arizona found costs could reach $129 billion from pandemic-related evictions.

In Rhode Island, Schaefer has struggled to grasp why her landlord wouldn’t take federal rental assistance. Landlords, many of whom have successfully challenged the moratorium in court, argue the economy is improving and coronavirus cases are down in most places. Those who don’t take rental assistance refuse for a variety of reasons, including a desire to get the tenant out.

“It’s not that I wanna live here for free,” Schaefer said. “I know wherever you go and live, you gotta pay. But I’m just asking to be reasonable.”

“Why can’t you take the rent relief? You know, they pay,” she added. “In the paperwork it says they’re gonna pay, like, two months in advance. At least by then, two months, I can save up quite a bit of money and get to put a down payment on somewhere else to move, and you’ll have your money that we owe you and will be moving out.”

___

Associated Press reporter Rodrique Ngowi in West Warwick, Rhode Island, contributed to this report.

Charlotte Worthington produces new move to win Olympic gold in BMX freestyle

Worthington fell in her first run but landed a front flip and a huge backflip on her way to a first-place finish.

Great Britain’s Charlotte Worthington during the Women’s

 Cycling BMX Freestyle (Marijan Murat via DPA) / PA Media

By Alexander Britton
1 hour ago

Former cook Charlotte Worthington served up a gold medal for Team GB in the BMX freestyle as British success in Tokyo continued on Sunday.

Worthington, from Manchester, landed the first-ever 360 backflip to be performed in women’s competition, having worked in a Mexican restaurant as she trained for this year’s Games.

The 25-year-old’s gold was followed by a bronze for Declan Brooks in the men’s freestyle, while a British quartet snared a silver in the last swimming event in the pool, the 4×100 men’s medley.

Worthington fell in her first run but landed a front flip and a huge backflip on her way to a first-place finish, with Britain’s most successful female Olympic track cyclist Laura Kenny saying: “I think that’s one of my favourite ever Olympic golds!”

Speaking afterwards, she said: “In 2018, I was working in a restaurant.

“At that time it was the Racconto Lounge in Bury, but I started working in restaurants in the Beagle in Manchester.

“In 2018, I went to a couple of events and contests and got speaking to people and found out about BMX being in the Olympics and British cycling were putting together a team.

“At the time, I was just taking a lot of really cool opportunities that I enjoyed doing and it just kind of snowballed from there.”

Her victory came after Bethany Shriever secured the Olympic title in the BMX racing, while Kye Whyte finished second in the men’s event.

Brooks’ bronze means Team GB finished on the podium in all four BMX competitions in Tokyo.

Stephen Park, British Cycling’s performance director, said people should remember her name.

He tweeted: “The route hasn’t been smooth but to nail @Tokyo2020 this after the 1st run fail is huge testimony to her belief & resilience.

“@chazworther A Top @TeamGB @BritishCycling athlete. Remember her name.”

Adrenaline Alley in Corby, where both Worthington and Brooks train, posted of their pride at the BMX performances on social media, saying: “This is unbelievable!! 2 medals are coming home! We are so proud @chazworther @declanbrooks.”

Olympics-Cycling-Britain’s Worthington, Australian Martin win memorable BMX freestyle golds
By Martyn Herman
Posted on August 1, 2021

BMX Freestyle - Women's Park - Final

TOKYO (Reuters) -Former chef Charlotte Worthington served up the ride of her life as the Briton became the first-ever Olympic champion in BMX freestyle at the Ariake Urban Sports Park on Sunday.

The 25-year-old recovered from a crash landing in the first of her two runs in the final on a baking hot BMX park but produced a sensational range of tricks in her second to shoot to the top of the leaderboard with a score of 97.50.

American favourite Hannah Roberts, who scored 96.10 in a superb opening run and looked set for gold, could not improve in her second and had to make do with silver.

Swiss Nikita Ducarroz took the bronze.

Men’s favourite Logan Martin won the men’s event later, beating Venezuelan veteran Daniel Dhers to the top of the podium with Britain’s Declan Brooks in third place.

Martin soared off the ramps to score 93.30 in his first run and that proved sufficient for gold.

“I have no words. This is crazy. It’s been such a long journey to get here,” the 27-year-old world champion, who built a BMX park in his back garden on the Gold Coast, told reporters.

While Martin’s victory was expected, Worthington was not considered the gold medal favourite, having only taken up BMX seriously in 2017 while she was working in the kitchen of a Mexican restaurant in her native Manchester.

But she had a special ingredient to throw into the mix — a backward flip with a 360 degree rotation, a trick no woman had ever successfully pulled off in competition.

She stacked her first attempt to sit in seventh place in the leaderboard, but with each of the nine riders allowed to scratch their worst run, she still had a shot at gold.

And at the second time of asking, with no margin for error if she were to displace Roberts, she executed the head-spinning trick that she said had left her giddy earlier.

With a daring forward flip thrown in near the end it wowed the judges and she shot to the top of the leaderboard. That piled pressure on Roberts who had celebrated her first ride with the statement that it was “one of the best I’ve ever done”, and then tossing away her bike as if to say ‘job done’.

Roberts, limping from a crash in training this week, was faced with finding something extra, but baled early in her second run, sparking wild celebrations in the British camp where Worthington was hugged by coach Jamie Bestwick, a BMX great, and team mate Brooks who was preparing for his rides.

“I’m over the moon. I’m still sitting here waiting to wake up,” Worthington said. “It feels like a dream.”

Asked how she had managed to compose herself after crashing on her first attempt at the 360 backflip, a stunt she had pulled off for the first time on wooden boards this week, she said there was no way she would not try it again.

“All I wanted to do was just give myself the best chance of landing it,” she said. “It was a huge relief to do it and after that I feel like I probably zoned out the rest of the ride.”

World champion Roberts was magnanimous in defeat.

“Charlie did some crazy things,” she said. “I’m super stoked for her. She absolutely killed it.”

Worthington’s win and Brooks’ bronze shortly afterwards continued an incredible few days for Britain at the BMX park after Bethany Shriever won racing gold and Kye Whyte silver.

BMX freestye was making its debut at the Olympics after being voted onto the programme in 2017.

(Reporting by Martyn Herman; Editing by Himani Sarkar & Shri Navaratnam)

BMX Freestyle – Women’s Park – Final

BMX Freestyle – Women’s Park – Final

BMX Freestyle – Women’s Park – Final

North Korea's economy contracts most in 23 years, bank figures show


The coronavirus pandemic, climate change and economic sanctions had an impact on North Korean economic growth in 2020, Seoul’s Bank of Korea said in a report Friday.

 File Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo

July 30 (UPI) -- North Korea's economy shrank 4.5% in 2020, registering the greatest contraction in 23 years, according to South Korea's central bank.

Bank of Korea said Friday that the negative growth in North Korea's gross domestic product could be attributed to Pyongyang's decision to close its borders last year amid the global coronavirus pandemic and international sanctions, Newsis reported.

North Korea is estimated to have witnessed the greatest decrease in economic activity and output in 1997, during the Great Famine. The South's central bank has said the North's economy that year shrank 6.5% as hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions of people, died amid a food shortage.

The regime's economy was exhibiting signs of negative growth before the pandemic, the Bank of Korea said.

North Korea's economic growth rate was -0.5% in 2010, and then grew about 1% annually for four years starting in 2011.

The economy shrank by 1.1% in 2015m but posted a 3.9% gain in 2016. It then declined for two consecutive years before recording a positive 0.4% growth rate in 2019.

The Bank of Korea's numbers generally correspond to estimates from Seoul's National Statistical Office, which compiles its own numbers. North Korea's economy registered negative growth in 2017 and 2018 before recovering in 2019, the statistical office said last year.

Choi Jung-tae, head of the National Income Statistics Team of the Bank's Economic Statistics Desk, said the North's economy contracted in 2017 and 2018 because of "strong international sanctions," Kyunghyang Shinmun reported Friday.

Choi also said that COVID-19, flooding and typhoons have had an impact on North Korean economic growth.

North Korea's gross national income per capita in 2020 was $1,197.50, or 3.7% of South Korea's, the Bank said.

The Bank of Korea has estimated North Korea's GDP growth since 1991 and uses South Korean relative prices to estimate real GDP, according to reports.

Orca stranded on rocks during Alaska's low tide, returns to sea


A 13-year-old killer whale was stranded along the Alaskan coast for 6 hours before floating back into the ocean at high tide. File photo by qingqing/Shutterstock


July 31 (UPI) -- A 20-foot orca that was stranded on a rocky southeast Alaskan beach floated back to sea later the same day during high tide, local officials said.

The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration said a ship off Prince of Wales Island called in the marine mammal -- also known as a killer whale -- to the U.S. Coast Guard on Thursday morning.


They authorized the crew to keep pumping seawater on the animal to keep it wet and keep birds away from it. People gathered on the shore, taking pictures and dumping water on the whale.

A NOAA officer reached the beach early Thursday afternoon, asking people to stay away from the whale.

"This animal is in a situation where it is exceedingly stressed," NOAA spokeswoman Julie Speegle said, according to Anchorage Daily News. "The more humans nearby, the more it will be stressed."

Speegle said the whale was making clicks, whistles and pulsing calls. More killer whales were seen near the area offshore. A high tide came in around 2 p.m. and the whale floated away.

Bay Cetology marine biologists identified the whale as a 13-year-old part of a transient population last seen off the Haida Gwaii archipelago on July 3.


Altogether, five whales have been recorded as stranded on the West Coast in the past two decades, according to The New York Times.

Without genetic variation, asexual invasive species find other ways to adapt


Some species of white fringed beetles, a common invasive weevil, reproduce asexually. 

Photo by Analia Lanteri/Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo de La Plata, Argentina

July 30 (UPI) -- Invasive all-female weevils pass along epigenetic changes to their offspring, helping them adapt to new environs, according to a new study.

Across most of the animal kingdom, an organism's ability to adapt and evolve is largely dependent on genetic variation.

Sufficient genetic diversity makes it more likely that favorable traits will emerge and proliferate as the fittest specimens populate subsequent generations.

Some species, however, reproduce asexually, which means their genetic reservoir is limited. So how do they adapt to new environs?

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To find out, researchers collected specimens of two asexually reproducing, invasive weevil species, Naupactus cervinus and N. leucoloma, from Florida, California and Argentina.

Despite sharing the exact same DNA, researchers found the weevil populations in each place produced different proteins to help them digest local plants.

Gene expression analysis -- detailed Friday in the journal Plos ONE -- showed some plants elicited a more pronounced epigenetic response than others

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"We found that some host plant groups, such as legumes, appear to be more taxing for weevils and elicit a complex gene expression response," study co-author Andrea Sequeira, professor of biological sciences at Wellesley College, said in a press release.

"However, the weevil response to taxing host plants shares many differentially expressed genes with other stressful situations, such as organic cultivation conditions and transition to novel hosts, suggesting that there is an evolutionarily favorable shared gene expression regime for responding to different types of stressful situations," Sequeira said.

Researchers also found weevil mothers, which practice clonal reproduction, are able to "prime" their offspring with these epigenetic changes.

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"Originally, we thought that these changes would only be seen in a single generation," said lead study author Ava Mackay-Smith, a 2020 graduate of Wellesley College.

"When we studied larvae, who do not yet have mouths or eat plants, we found evidence of the same proteins and adaptations from their mothers," Mackay-Smith said.

The findings undermine previous assumptions that epigenetic instructions are lost between generations.

Researchers hope that by studying the mechanics of epigenetic inheritance, researchers can develop better strategies for protecting ecosystems from invasive, asexual species.

"Knowing what is in this insect's repertoire, you could imagine that since we've now identified the proteins that are regulated differently, you could target a specific protein and design a targeted pesticide that removes only that species of weevil, without harming other native insects or fauna," Sequeira said.

Study: Understanding negative vaccine view of skeptics could get more people vaccinated


Understanding the concerns of vaccine-hesitant people could help to convince more of them 

 Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

July 30 (UPI) -- Survey data collected at an anti-vaccine conference in Poland suggests most vaccine skeptics and antagonists are motivated by a generalized negative attitude to vaccines, not direct experience.

Previous studies suggests those opposed to vaccines are unlikely to be persuaded otherwise, at least in the short term, but the latest findings -- published Friday in the journal Social Psychological Bulletin -- may help public health officials get through to those who are "vaccine hesitant."

For the study, scientists surveyed attendees of a conference where speakers presented anti-vaccine arguments.

Researchers found most survey participants reported their antagonism was based on their own or observed negative experiences with vaccines. However, the same participants were vague when citing those experiences and the sources of their information.

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Most critics of vaccines cited concerns about autism, allergies or children getting sick from vaccines, though were unable to cite evidence of correlation.

Psychological research suggests it is common for negative reports to stand out in people's minds. As well, when negative misinformation spreads, people who receive said misinformation from multiple sources are likely to forget where it came from.

Instead, people misattribute their negative beliefs about vaccines to direct experience or the experiences of close friends and relatives.

"Confirmation bias consists of an individual actively seeking information consistent with their pre-existing hypothesis, and avoiding information indicative of alternative explanations," researchers wrote in their paper.

"Therefore, a pre-existing negative attitude toward vaccines may cause individuals to interpret negative symptoms as consequences of vaccines, further reinforcing the negative attitude," the researchers wrote.

In addition to harboring fears about negative side effects, vaccine opponents claim vaccines are insufficiently tested and fail to protect society against infectious diseases. They also believe anti-vaccine leaders are more devoted to protecting the public than physicians who advocate for vaccines.

Those who identified as vaccine hesitant were more confident about efficacy of vaccines, as well as the reliability of research and testing, but these skeptics were still sympathetic to claims made by the anti-vaccine proponents about side effects and the "Big Pharma conspiracy."

Surprisingly, opponents of vaccines were more confident than those who were vaccine hesitant about the ability of modern medicine to handle the pandemic.

The findings suggest public health officials may be able to get through to those that are hesitant about vaccines by addressing their specific concerns about side effects, the researchers said.

The authors of the new study also suggest vaccine outreach should feature positive, prosocial arguments, such as the reasons medical professionals recommend vaccines.

Ban on ‘Soul Cap’ spotlights lack of diversity in swimming

By JENNA FRYER

AP


Simone Manuel, of United States, leaves the pool after a women's 50-meter freestyle semifinal at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Saturday, July 31, 2021, in Tokyo, Japan. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

TOKYO (AP) — Alice Dearing has an afro, a voluminous puff nearly impossible to protect in most swimming caps. Her hair shrinks if it gets wet. And the chlorine? The chemicals in a pool can cause severe damage that requires substantial time and money to treat.

The first Black female swimmer on Britain’s Olympic team uses the the Soul Cap, an extra-large silicone covering designed specifically to protect dreadlocks, weaves, hair extensions, braids, and thick and curly hair. But Dearing has been forbidden from using the cap in her Olympic debut next week in the women’s 10k marathon swim.

FINA, which oversees international competitions in swimming, rejected the application from the British makers of the Soul Cap for use in the Tokyo Games, citing no previous instance in which swimmers needed “caps of such size and configuration.” It also wondered if the cap could create an advantage by disrupting the flow of water.

On social media and in Black swimming circles, the outcry was swift and the conversation went on for days. A Change.org petition was launched and Dearing, an ambassador for the cap and co-founder of the Black Swimming Association, openly expressed disappointment.

For people of color, this was so much more than a ban on a swimming cap. Dismissing it represented yet another injustice.

Donata Katai is seen during a swimming practice session in Harare, Zimba. (AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi)

THE BACKLASH

It’s been five years since the Rio Games, when American Simone Manuel became the first Black female swimmer to win Olympic gold. Since then, there has been little uptick in swimmers of color at the elite level.

Like Dearing, Donta Katai of Zimbabwe is the first Black swimmer to represent her country. And at almost any meet at the international level, swimmers of color are extremely rare. The U.S. team has only two black females, Manuel and Natalie Hinds.

Those familiar with the situation say the reasons for that shortage — and the racism behind them — run deep in history.

Neither Manuel nor Hinds understands the dismissal of the Soul Cap. Both Americans have sponsorship from other companies that make caps to protect their hair, but they were disappointed that a cap made by a Black-owned business specifically to aid swimmers of color was outlawed.

“It doesn’t do the best for inclusivity in the sport,” Manuel said.

The tenuous relationship between Black people and water goes back a long way. In the era of segregation in the United States, Black swimmers were barred from pools; those that did permit swimmers of color were often unsafe and neglected.

“The predominance of white athletes in swimming is a key example of a racial disparity in sport that can be linked to histories of institutional racism,” said Claire Sisco King, an associate professor of communication studies at Vanderbilt University and editor of the Women’s Studies in Communication international journal.

Simone Manuel, of United States, leaves the pool after a women's 50-meter freestyle semifinal at the 2020 Summer Olympics. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Accessibility to public pools is another barrier, King notes, and wealth inequality makes an often expensive sport like swimming inaccessible. She said the banning of the Soul Cap “risks perpetuating the racist assumption that Black athletes don’t belong in the sport of swimming.”

According to the USA Swimming Foundation, 64% of Black children do not know how to swim compared to 40% of white American children. Additionally, 79% of children in American families that earn less than $50,000 a year do not know how to swim.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that between 1999 and 2010, the fatal unintentional drowning rate for Blacks was significantly higher than white swimmers; for every white child between 5 and 18 years old who drowned, 5.5 Black children drowned.

Danielle Obe co-founded, with Dearing, the Black Swimming Association not long after the 2019 Christmas Eve drowning of a father and two children while on holiday in Spain.

“We just thought, we’ve got to do something for our community,” Obe said. After conversations with Swimming World magazine, she found that 95% of Black adults in London do not swim and 80% of Black children leave primary school not yet able to swim.

Said Obe: “We thought the only way to get more Alice Dearings in the pool, with Alice being Black and among the 5% in the water, we had to reduce the 95% not in the water.”

Simone Manuel, top, of the United States, swims alongside Emma Mckeon, of Australia at the 2020 Olympics. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

ROOTS OF THE SOUL CAP

Dearing is among the Black swimmers who balance love of the water with the difficulties of protecting hair.

Obe suspects Dearing will have her afro braided into cornrows in order to use an approved cap in the marathon swim, but Dearing had been using the Soul Cap. It was created by schoolmates Toks Ahmed and Michael Chapman, who both did not learn how to swim until their late 20s.

“The perception has always been that swimming isn’t for Black people; my mom doesn’t swim, Michael’s mom doesn’t swim, none of our friends swim,” Ahmed said, “and it was like, ‘This is nuts, — we need to learn how to swim.’”

A woman in the class struggled to keep her bathing cap on her head, which sparked the Soul Cap idea.

“We both wondered why there wasn’t swim caps made to accommodate that more voluminous hair and afro textures and bigger hair,” Ahmed said. “We spoke to our moms and our sisters and they both all said, to be fair, a big barrier to swimming is the fact our hair gets soaked, we haven’t got a swimming cap that works.”

What they thought would be a niche product received such favorable feedback that the duo realized “we were filling a gap, providing something that removed a barrier to women and children who did not want to swim.”

In 2017 they self-funded 150 black extra-large caps, another 60 in burgundy, and are now taking orders for about 25,000 caps. The caps started with the two understated colors; then they were contacted by open-water swimmers who needed brighter hues. Then came queries from swimmers who didn’t have full afros and wanted the caps in smaller sizes.

The attention created by the federation’s rejection has been effective, though Dearing wasn’t available to talk about it. Her team wouldn’t make her available for comment until after her Aug. 4 competition.

Simone Manuel of the United States, left, reacts with teammate Katie McLaughlin, right, at the pool during a swimming training session at the 2020 Summer Olympics. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

SUCCESS CAUSING CHANGE

Manuel and Hinds were part of the bronze medal-winning 4x100 meter freestyle relay and Manuel, a four-time medalist, made history when she won gold in the 100-meter free at Rio.

Black swimmers’ success can be a change agent, but there must also be specific steps toward creating more interest and opportunity, said Shontel Cargill, a former competitive swimmer who is Black. She is now a therapist and assistant clinic director at Thriveworks in Cumming, Georgia.

“Due to the discriminatory and segregated past of swimming, Black families have been taught to fear swimming instead of embrace it,” Cargill said.

FINA is now in talks with Soul Cap and said in a statement it will review the application again later this year. The governing body said it is “understanding of the importance of inclusivity and representation,” and the review of the Soul Cap and similar products “are part of wider initiatives aimed at ensuring there are no barriers to participation in swimming, which is both a sport and a vital life skill.”

The federation’s swimwear approval committee chairman “is fully aware of the cultural issues that Soul Cap has raised, and we are reviewing the process,” Brent Nowicki, an American named executive director of FINA in June, said Saturday.

Ahmed feels encouraged after conversations with Nowicki, who he said was “quite apologetic for the way the application was handled.”

“I think it’s testament that if there was more representation at that level, and more representation at the approval process, someone might have said ‘Hey, let’s consider this because there are people out there who want to swim competitively, but don’t want to cut their hair down short and maybe don’t want to compromise,’” Ahmed said. “It’s just about giving people an option.”

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More AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2020-tokyo-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

TRUMP SCREWS UP CENSUS

Census: 1 in 5 dorms, prisons had no data at end of US count

By MIKE SCHNEIDER

FILE - College students begin moving in for the fall semester at N.C. State University in Raleigh, N.C., Friday, July 31, 2020. By the end of the U.S. head count last year, the Census Bureau lacked data for almost a fifth of the nation's occupied college dorms, nursing homes and prisons, requiring the statistical agency to make eleventh-hour calls to facilities in an effort to collect resident information or use a last-resort statistical technique to fill in the gaps. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome, file)

By the end of the U.S. head count last year, the Census Bureau had no data for almost a fifth of the nation’s occupied college dorms, nursing homes and prisons, requiring the statistical agency to make eleventh-hour calls to facilities in an effort to collect information or use a last-resort statistical method to fill in gaps.

Residents of 43,000 of the 227,000 occupied dorms, prisons, military barracks, homeless shelters, group homes and nursing homes remained uncounted as late as December, according to new documents and slide presentations released recently by the Census Bureau in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by a Republican redistricting advocacy group.

The documents hint at the scope of the challenges the bureau faced in conducting the massive count in the midst of a global pandemic, an effort made more difficult by wildfires, hurricanes and attempts by the Trump administration to interfere with the census.

The facilities — known collectively to the bureau as group quarters — were among the most difficult places to count people during the 2020 census because the pandemic forced colleges to shutter dorms and send students home, and nursing homes and other facilities restricted access in an effort to protect vulnerable residents from the virus.

Bureau officials are confident that they have since filled in the gaps using a statistical method they consider reliable, though they acknowledge that the challenge was formidable.

Census Bureau official Barbara LoPresti said recently that data collected from group quarters accounted for a large share of irregularities the statistical agency encountered but the data processing “has not shown any critical errors in data collection that we could not fix.”

“Anomalies in processing aren’t errors, but they can turn into errors if we don’t evaluate them and fix them,” LoPresti told a virtual meeting of outside experts who are evaluating the quality of the 2020 census data. “Our quality (check) process was therefore working.”

Fixing irregularities, though, forced the Census Bureau to delay the release of numbers used for divvying up congressional seats among states in a process known as apportionment. It also pushed back by five months the release of redistricting data used for redrawing congressional and legislative districts.

Though people living in group quarters account for a small share of the overall population — under 3% of the 331 million people living in the U.S. — any inaccurate information can have a big impact on college towns or areas with a large prison population or a military base. That in turn can diminish representation in Congress and the amount of federal funding they are eligible to receive.

“Individual group quarters can be huge in some areas,” Connie Citro, a senior scholar at the Committee on National Statistics, said during the virtual meeting of outside experts.

The Republican advocacy group, Fair Lines America Foundation, sued the Census Bureau for information about how the group quarters count was conducted, saying it’s concerned about its accuracy and wants to make sure anomalies didn’t affect the state population figures used for apportionment. The apportionment numbers were released by the Census Bureau in April, and the redistricting numbers used for drawing congressional and legislative districts are being made public next month.

The group quarters count is under added scrutiny this census because the Census Bureau, for the first time, decided in the middle of crunching numbers to use a last-resort statistical technique called imputation to fill in the data gaps for the dorms, nursing homes and prisons. The method has been used for some time to fill in missing information on individual households.

“If the Census Bureau is permitted to conduct these sorts of methodology changes and implementations behind closed doors ... electoral chaos may result from the states’ reliance on potentially defective numbers in conducting redistricting,” Fair Lines said in court papers.

In addition to the 43,000 group quarter addresses that lacked data last December, another 3,500 addresses had counts that were implausible because they were listed as having zero people or were way too high, suggesting there were duplicates. Statisticians removed duplicates, such as college students who were counted at both their dorms and parents’ homes, the documents said.

If they didn’t have any information about residents in a dorm, nursing home or prison, Census Bureau statisticians applied information they already knew about the facility, either from previous surveys, earlier contacts or administrative records, to arrive at the count.

After imputation and duplicate removal, the revised numbers appeared to artificially inflate the count for group quarters by 444,000 people. Instead of an expected 8.1 million residents living in group quarters, there were almost 8.6 million people. The group quarters count in the revised data was noticeably higher for California, New York, Florida and Washington state, the documents and slide presentations showed.

The Census Bureau said in a statement that the numbers in the documents weren’t the final figures and that the 444,000-person difference was addressed in later numbers-crunching. The statistical agency didn’t say what the final figures were or provide details about how the difference was handled.

“The Census Bureau made several improvements to its methodology after the date these slides were created,” the statement said.

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