Europe’s central bank backs larger-than-expected rate hike

By DAVID McHUGH

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Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank smiles during a press conference following a meeting of the governing council in Frankfurt, Germany, Thursday, July 21, 2022. 

(AP Photo/Michael Probst)


FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — The European Central Bank raised interest rates Thursday for the first time in 11 years by a larger-than-expected amount, joining steps already taken by the U.S. Federal Reserve and other major central banks to target stubbornly high inflation.

The move raises new questions about whether the rush to make credit more expensive will plunge major economies into recession at the cost of easing prices for people spending more on food, fuel and everything in between.

The ECB’s surprise hike of half a percentage point for the 19 countries using the euro currency is expected to be followed by another increase in September, possibly of another half-point. Bank President Christine Lagarde had indicated a quarter-point hike last month, when inflation hit a record 8.6%.

She said the bigger hike was unanimous as “inflation continues to be undesirably high and is expected to remain above our target for some time.” As the bank leaves an era of negative interest rates, Lagarde said economic forecasts don’t point to a recession this year or next but she acknowledged the uncertainty ahead.

“Economic activity is slowing. Russia’s unjustified aggression towards Ukraine is an ongoing drag on growth,” the ECB chief said at a news conference. Higher inflation, supply constraints and uncertainty “are significantly clouding the outlook for the second half of 2022 and beyond.”

The ECB is coming late to its rate liftoff — a token of inflation that turned out to be higher and more stubborn than first expected and of the shakier state of an economy heavily exposed to the war in Ukraine and a dependence on Russian oil and natural gas. Recession predictions have increased for later this year and next year as soaring bills for electricity, fuel and gas deal a blow to businesses and people’s spending power.

The ECB made the bigger-than-expected increase to underline its determination to get inflation under control after its late start, said Carsten Brzeski, chief eurozone economist at ING bank. The move aims “to restore the ECB’s damaged reputation and credibility as an inflation fighter.”

“Today’s decision shows that the ECB is more concerned about this credibility than about being predictable,” Brzeski said.

Recession concerns have helped push the euro to a 20-year low against the dollar, which adds to the ECB’s task by worsening energy prices that are driving inflation. That is because oil is priced in dollars.

Raising rates is seen as the standard cure for excessive inflation. The ECB’s benchmarks affect how much it costs banks to borrow — and so help determine what they charge to lend.

But by making credit harder to get, rate increases can slow economic growth, a major conundrum for the ECB as well as for the Federal Reserve. The Fed raised rates by an outsized three-quarters of a point in June and could do so again at its next meeting. The Bank of England started the march higher in December, and even Switzerland’s central bank surprised with its first increase in nearly 15 years last month.

The goal for all central banks is to get inflation back down to acceptable levels — for the ECB, it’s 2% annually — without tipping the economy into recession. It’s difficult to get right as central banks reverse what has been a decade of very low rates and inflation.

“The most precious good that we can deliver and that we have to deliver is price stability. So we have to bring inflation down to 2% in the medium term. That is the imperative,” Lagarde said. “And it’s time to deliver.”

Yet the European economy has the added worry of a potential cutoff of Russian natural gas, which is used to generate electricity, heat homes and fuel energy-intensive industries such as steel, glassmaking and agriculture. Even without a total cutoff, Russia has steadily dialed back gas flows, with EU leaders accusing the Kremlin of using gas to pressure countries over sanctions and support for Ukraine.

Rising interest rates follow the end of the bank’s 1.7 trillion-euro (dollar) stimulus program that helped keep longer-term borrowing costs low for governments and companies as they weathered the pandemic recession.

Those bond-market borrowing rates are now rising again, especially for more indebted eurozone countries such as Italy, where Premier Mario Draghi’s resignation has brought back bad memories of Europe’s debt crisis a decade ago. Markets fear the exit of the former ECB president, who has pushed policies meant to keep debt manageable and boost growth in Europe’s third-largest economy, could raise the risk of another eurozone crisis.

The bank approved a new financial backstop that is part of its arsenal to prevent that from happening again. The ECB would step into markets to buy the bonds of countries facing excessive and unjustified borrowing rates. But it wouldn’t offer protection if the ECB determines higher borrowing costs resulted from poor government decisions.

Buying bonds drives their price up and their yield down, because price and yield move in opposite directions, thus capping interest costs. Spiraling bond-market rates threatened to break up the euro in 2010-2012 and led Greece and countries to turn to other members and the International Monetary Fund for bailouts.

This problem is unique to the ECB because it oversees 19 countries that are in different financial shape. The backstop aims to “safeguard the smooth transmission of our monetary policy stance throughout the euro area,” Lagarde said.

The ECB’s lowest rate, the deposit rate on money left overnight by banks, was raised from minus 0.5% to zero.

Beloved monarch butterflies now listed as endangered

By CHRISTINA LARSON

Monarch butterflies land on branches at Monarch Grove Sanctuary in Pacific Grove, Calif., Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2021. On Thursday, July 21, 2022, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature said migrating monarch butterflies have moved closer to extinction in the past decade – prompting scientists to officially designate them as “endangered." (AP Photo/Nic Coury, File)


WASHINGTON (AP) — The monarch butterfly fluttered a step closer to extinction Thursday, as scientists put the iconic orange-and-black insect on the endangered list because of its fast dwindling numbers.

“It’s just a devastating decline,” said Stuart Pimm, an ecologist at Duke University who was not involved in the new listing. “This is one of the most recognizable butterflies in the world.”

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature added the migrating monarch butterfly for the first time to its “red list” of threatened species and categorized it as “endangered” — two steps from extinct.

The group estimates that the population of monarch butterflies in North America has declined between 22% and 72% over 10 years, depending on the measurement method.

“What we’re worried about is the rate of decline,” said Nick Haddad, a conservation biologist at Michigan State University. “It’s very easy to imagine how very quickly this butterfly could become even more imperiled.”

Haddad, who was not directly involved in the listing, estimates that the population of monarch butterflies he studies in the eastern United States has declined between 85% and 95% since the 1990s.

In North America, millions of monarch butterflies undertake the longest migration of any insect species known to science.

After wintering in the mountains of central Mexico, the butterflies migrate to the north, breeding multiple generations along the way for thousands of miles. The offspring that reach southern Canada then begin the trip back to Mexico at the end of summer.

“It’s a true spectacle and incites such awe,” said Anna Walker, a conservation biologist at New Mexico BioPark Society, who was involved in determining the new listing.

A smaller group spends winters in coastal California, then disperses in spring and summer across several states west of the Rocky Mountains. This population has seen an even more precipitous decline than the eastern monarchs, although there was a small bounce back last winter.

Emma Pelton of the nonprofit Xerces Society, which monitors the western butterflies, said the butterflies are imperiled by loss of habitat and increased use of herbicides and pesticides for agriculture, as well as climate change.

“There are things people can do to help,” she said, including planting milkweed, a plant that the caterpillars depend upon.

Nonmigratory monarch butterflies in Central and South America were not designated as endangered.

The United States has not listed monarch butterflies under the Endangered Species Act, but several environmental groups believe it should be listed.

The international union also announced new estimates for the global population of tigers, which are 40% higher than the most recent estimates from 2015.

The new figures, of between 3,726 and 5,578 wild tigers worldwide, reflect better methods for counting tigers and, potentially, an increase in their overall numbers, said Dale Miquelle, coordinator for the nonprofit Wildlife Conservation Society’s tiger program.

In the past decade, tiger populations have increased in Nepal, northern China and perhaps in India, while tigers have disappeared entirely from Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, said Miquelle. They remain designated as endangered.

___

Follow Christina Larson on Twitter: @larsonchristina

___

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

Ethnic minority woman wins India’s presidential election

By SHEIKH SAALIQ

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Workers put up a giant hoarding of Droupadi Murmu for her felicitation, before she was announced as the country's new President, in New Delhi, India, Thursday, July 21, 2022. Murmu, who hails from a minority ethnic community, was chosen Thursday as India’s new president, a largely ceremonial position. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)


NEW DELHI (AP) — A woman who hails from a minority ethnic community was chosen Thursday as India’s new president, a largely ceremonial position.

Droupadi Murmu, a leader from India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, was elected by the Indian Parliament and state legislatures in voting held Monday, making her the first president from one of the country’s tribes and the second-ever woman to hold the position.

She will be formally sworn in as the president on Monday.

Murmu, 64, who hails from the eastern state of Odisha and was governor of Jharkhand state from 2015-2021, is a member of the Santal ethnic minority, one of India’s largest tribal groups. She started out as a school teacher before entering politics and has been a two-time lawmaker from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party.

Murmu’s father and her grandfather were village headmen in Baidaposi in Mayurbhanj district in Odisha.

Modi congratulated Murmu by visiting her at her residence in New Delhi, and in a tweet wrote he was “certain she will be an outstanding President who will lead from the front and strengthen India’s development journey.”

“Her record victory augurs well for our democracy,” Modi tweeted.

Murmu’s supporters and Modi’s BJP party see her win as a triumph of tribal people and a breakthrough moment for her community, which generally lacks health care and education facilities in remote villages. Opposition parties, however, are doubtful whether she would be able to help empower and bring any change to the marginalized community.

The president’s role in India is largely ceremonial, but the position can be important during times of political uncertainty such as a hung parliament, when the office assumes greater power. She is bound by the advice of the Cabinet led by the prime minister, who is the chief executive.

She will replace Ram Nath Kovind, a Hindu nationalist leader from the Dalit community, which is at the lowest end of Hinduism’s complex caste hierarchy. Kovind has been president since 2017.

Murmu won against her opponent, Yashwant Sinha, a former BJP rebel who quit the party following differences with Modi on economic issues in 2018. Since then, Sinha has been a vocal critic of Modi and his government.

Indian lawmakers will vote for the country’s new vice president in August.

Does setting your thermostat at 78 degrees really help? We asked an electrical engineer.


(Getty Images)

Dalia Faheid
Wed, July 20, 2022 

Last week, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas asked Texans twice to set their thermostats to 78 degrees and avoid using large appliances during peak hours.

Predictably, the public was not happy about it, questioning why the grid operator wasn’t prepared for the summer heat and hasn’t employed other measures to manage the grid. What I set my thermostat at is none of ERCOT’s business, Texans responded with memes, tweets and comments.

With many Texans saying they would not set their thermostats to warmer temperatures, have the conservation appeals actually resulted in any energy reduction? And can conservation appeals help in the long-term to keep the grid reliable and prevent blackouts?

The Star-Telegram spoke with UT Arlington electrical engineering professor Wei-Jen Lee to get some insight into those questions.

What to know about conservation appeals

If the margin between available electric supply and customer use is too tight, ERCOT will ask customers to conserve — hoping to reduce demand and increase operating reserves.

ERCOT has issued more than 50 conservation requests between 2008 and July 2022. Those requests help reduce the amount of electricity being consumed on the grid only when needed, according to the grid operator. It’s used when projected reserves may fall below 2300 MW for 30 minutes or more.

“Conservation is an effective way to help balance generation supply and customer demand,” ERCOT said.

According to ERCOT it is managing the power grid more conservatively, issuing conservation requests sooner, to ensure that there is enough power.

“Our goal is to prevent potential emergency conditions from occurring on the grid,” ERCOT said. “Conservation does not automatically mean there will be an energy emergency — it is a tool used by ERCOT to keep the grid reliable for customers.”

The length of the conservation requests depends on how tight grid conditions are. They can range from hours on a single day to multiple days. The conservation appeal on July 11 was between 2 to 8 p.m. and the next on July 13 was 2 to 9 p.m. Just two months earlier, on May 13, six power plants went offline and ERCOT asked Texans to conserve between 3 and 8 p.m. through that weekend. Last June, a conservation request lasted for five days, from 3 to 7 p.m. each day. The longest request was issued during the 2011 heat wave, lasting eight days between Aug. 1 and 28.

Some cases require localized conservation to balance available supply and customer demand. In 2016, there was a localized request for conservation in the Rio Grande Valley.

To issue a conservation request, ERCOT works with the Public Utility Commission of Texas and state leadership. ERCOT also sends alerts to electricity market participants for conservation.

Do conservation appeals actually work?

Between 1:56 to 2 p.m. last Monday, after the conservation appeal was issued, almost 500 MW of load dropped off, an ERCOT spokesperson told the Star-Telegram. One MW can power about 150 to 200 homes, according to Lee. Each household’s load is about five to ten kW.

Aside from individual households and businesses, ERCOT also calls on large electric customers to lower their electricity use through demand response programs, which control thermostats of households that agree to it. If their load is 10 MW and they cut down 20%, or two megawatts, that represents 300 to 400 homes, which makes a big impact in reducing demand.

While conservation requests do result in substantial amounts of energy-reduction, Lee said, it’s not a tool that can be used too often to help manage the grid. The impact will get smaller and smaller, because people will not respond to the requests as much. That makes conservation an ineffective long-term solution, he said.

“If they appeal to the customer too often, the impact will kind of diminish,” Lee said. “That immediate impact will not be there, or it will be reduced.”

He likens the requests to time of use rates, which aim to get customers to use more energy while demand is low to reduce strain on the grid. Researching the rate’s effect on customers, Lee found that their response diminishes over time.

The few customers who opt for real-time pricing are motivated to cut down on unnecessary load to save money, while most customers, who have fixed-rate electricity plans, are not.

“The reason why ERCOT has to use this kind of appeal is because most of our residential customers, the price of electricity, it’s fixed,” Lee said. “So it basically doesn’t have the incentive for them to reduce the consumption. It’s always a kind of judgment call from the customer.”

ERCOT needs to incentivize those customers in some way to get them to continue participating in conservation events, he said, especially when they anticipate that there will be higher demand because of the weather. They’d have to figure out a way to track when customers cut down their electricity and compensate them, Lee added. Right now, ERCOT does not track how many people participate in a conservation event, a spokesperson said.

“It’s a lot of infrastructure that we have to modify,” Lee said. “We have to upgrade and then get the customer directly involved.”

One sustainable solution could be using smart meters for dynamic pricing, Lee says. If you use a certain amount of power, then the price will be fixed, but if you go beyond a certain threshold, then you have to pay the market price.

Currently, customers can save $2 to $3 by turning up their thermostats, but that may not be enough to endure uncomfortable weather.

“If you consider 15 cents per kilowatt hour as an example. You are using probably three kilowatt hours. So in one hour, you are going to spend 45 cents. If you consider six hours in the afternoon, you can save a little bit less than $3,” Lee said. “Are you willing to do that? That’s the question.”

By contrast, changing the time you do your laundry or wash the dishes may not be as much of an inconvenience.

Lawyer: Former president of North Carolina NAACP found dead


The Rev. T. Anthony Spearman, then-president of the North Carolina NAACP, crumples up a mailer which tells voters that IDs are needed in the upcoming 2020 election during a news conference outside the Legislative Building in Raleigh, N.C., on Dec. 27, 2019. Spearman, a civil rights advocate and former president of the N.C., branch of the NAACP who also served as president of the N.C. Council of Churches, has been found dead, his attorney said Wednesday, July 20, 2022.

 (Ethan Hyman/The News & Observer via AP)

Wed, July 20, 2022 

The Rev. T. Anthony Spearman, a civil rights advocate and former president of the North Carolina branch of the NAACP who also served as president of the N.C. Council of Churches, has been found dead, authorities said Wednesday.

Spearman, 71, was found in his home on Tuesday, the Guilford County Sheriff's Office said in a news release. The release indicated that either family or friends found him, but did not provide any further details.

The death was confirmed earlier in the day by Mark Cummings, a Greensboro attorney who said he was representing Spearman. Cummings declined to provide additional details about the death and did not say what he was representing Spearman for.

“In the mold of Dr. King, he truly was a drum major for justice,” Cummings said. “He saw the good in everybody in every situation, even those of his detractors, even those who would criticize him. He always found a way to see the best in them.”

Cummings said he would call on state officials to assist local law enforcement in an investigation.

Spearman's family issued a statement calling him “a man of strong conviction who loved his family with every ounce of his being.” A family member didn't respond on Wednesday to a request for additional comment.

Spearman was elected as North Carolina NAACP president in 2017 and served one four-year term.

Bishop William J. Barber, who preceded Spearman as the North Carolina NAACP president and who is now president of the national, not-for-profit organization Repairers of the Breach, said in a statement, “I have lost a true brother in the struggle.”

“We have lost a scholar, a preacher, a voting rights defender, an advocate for prison reform and for the wrongfully accused and a stalwart soldier in the cause of love and justice for all humankind,” Barber said. “This great man’s efforts and commitment should be cherished.”

Spearman was suspended from the NAACP by the organization's national leadership about five months ago, The News & Observer reported, quoting NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson as saying that Spearman repeatedly refused to turn over N.C. NAACP property — which included meeting minutes and financial records — after he lost his bid for reelection in 2021.

Spearman filed a lawsuit in June against several state and national NAACP officials, accusing them of defamation and conspiracy to remove him from the presidency, WRAL reported. He alleged that his support of a woman who said she was sexually harassed by a member of the state conference led to the effort to have him ousted and made him a target of retribution, the story said.

The man who was accused, the Rev. Curtis Gatewood, has in the past denied any kind of sexual assault or intentional sexual harassment, although he told The Associated Press in a 2019 statement that he didn't “deny the feelings of my accusers.”

In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Gatewood added, “I have no other comments regarding the specifics of the matter at the time and believe enough has been said, documented, and presented for God to allow even a blind man to ‘see’ if seeing is truly desired."

Gatewood said in a separate post on Tuesday that while he and Spearman disagreed on issues involving the state NAACP, “I loved the brother.”

“I wanted the news of his demise to be untrue,” Gatewood wrote. “I forgave him.”

U.S. House report: Trump administration added census citizenship question for political gain



A new report from the House oversight committee says the Trump administration's efforts to add a citizenship question to the decennial census in 2020 was to help Republicans win elections.

 File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo

July 20 (UPI) -- New documents, released by the House oversight committee Wednesday, show former President Donald Trump's administration hid its true intent for adding a citizenship question to the decennial census that determines how the U.S. House of Representatives' 435 seats are divided among states.

The documents reveal the Trump administration's public reason to add the citizenship question in 2020, to protect people's voting rights, was false, according to members of the committee.

The internal memos and emails show the administration's actual intention was to help Republicans win elections, the House committee report concluded.

The documents' release Wednesday follows a two-year legal battle that began after Trump officials refused to turn them over for a congressional investigation. The Biden administration, which assumed the lawsuit, agreed to allow the committee to conduct a review.

RELATED Census data reveals growth in racial, ethnic diversity in U.S.

"For years, the Trump administration delayed and obstructed the oversight committee's investigation into the true reason for adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census, even after the Supreme Court ruled the administration's efforts were illegal," Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., who chairs the committee, said in a press release.

Former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in congressional testimony that the administration wanted to add the questions because it needed more accurate data on citizenship to enforce the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The question -- "Is this person a citizen of the United States?" -- did not end up on the 2020 census forms, after the Supreme Court ruled the administration's use of the Voting Rights Act as justification "seems to have been contrived," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.

RELATED Trump orders ban on counting undocumented immigrants for House apportionment

The U.S. Constitution says House seats shall be apportioned based on "the whole Number of free Persons." Excluding non-citizens from the census count could have cost California, Texas and Florida congressional seats, the report notes.

Included in the documents is a 2017 email from James Uthmeier, a commerce department attorney, who tried to push the Justice Department to add the question.

"Ultimately, everyone is in agreement with our approach to move slowly, carefully and deliberately so as to not expose us to litigation risk," Uthmeier wrote in the email, according to the report.

RELATED House panel sues for Trump records on census citizenship question

A revised memo said "there are bases for legal arguments that the Founding Fathers intended for the apportionment count to be based on legal inhabitants."

Kris Kobach, Kansas' former secretary of state, also advocated for adding a citizenship question.

"There are about 710,000 people in each congressional district. But, if half of the district is made up of illegal aliens, then there are only 355,000 citizens in the district. The value of each citizen's vote in such a district is twice as high. That is unfair," Kobach wrote in a 2018 op-ed in Breitbart News.

Maloney is calling for new legislative reforms to prevent future "unconstitutional efforts to interfere with the census."

"Today's committee memo pulls back the curtain on this shameful conduct and shows clearly how the Trump administration secretly tried to manipulate the census for political gain while lying to the public and Congress about their goals," she said.

Secret memo links citizenship question to apportionment
By MIKE SCHNEIDER

yesterday

This Sunday, April 5, 2020, file photo, shows an envelope containing a 2020 census letter mailed to a U.S. resident in Detroit. A U.S. Census Bureau director couldn't be fired without cause and new questions to the census form would have to be vetted by Congress under proposed legislation which attempts to prevent in the future the type of political interference into the nation's head count that took place during the Trump administration. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)


Trump officials tried to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census in a move experts said would benefit Republicans despite initial doubts among some in the administration that it was legal, according to an investigative report released Wednesday by a congressional oversight committee.

The report offers a smoking gun of sorts — a secret memo the committee obtained after a two-year legal battle — showing that a top Trump appointee in the Commerce Department explored apportionment as a reason to include the question.

“The Committee’s investigation has exposed how a group of political appointees sought to use the census to advance an ideological agenda and potentially exclude non-citizens from the apportionment count,” the report released by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform said.

It has long been speculated that the Trump administration wanted the citizenship question in order to exclude people in the country illegally from apportionment numbers.

The report includes several drafts showing how the memo evolved from recognizing that doing so would likely be unconstitutional to coming up with other justifications for adding the citizenship question.

The apportionment process uses state population counts gathered during the once-a-decade census to divide up the number of congressional seats each state gets.

Experts feared a citizenship question would scare off Hispanics and immigrants from participating in the 2020 census, whether they were in the country legally or not. The citizenship question was blocked by the Supreme Court in 2019. In the high court’s decision, Chief Justice John Roberts said the reason the Commerce Department had given for the citizenship question — it was needed for the Justice Department’s enforcement of the Voting Rights Act — appeared to be contrived.

The Commerce Department oversees the Census Bureau, which conducts the count used to determine political power and the distribution of $1.5 trillion in federal funding each year. Then-Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross testified before the oversight committee that apportionment wasn’t the reason for the citizenship question, even though the Commerce Department memo suggests otherwise, the House report said.

“I have never intentionally misled Congress or intentionally said anything incorrect under oath,” Ross said during a 2019 hearing before the oversight committee.

According to the House committee report, during planning for the citizenship question, an adviser to the Commerce Department reached out to a Republican redistricting expert who had written that using citizen voting-age population instead of the total population for the purpose of redrawing of congressional and legislative districts could be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.

The August 2017 memo prepared by senior political appointee James Uthmeier went to the heart of interactions by the Commerce and Justice departments to come up with a contrived reason for the citizenship question, the House report said.

An initial draft of the memo raised doubts that a citizenship question would be legal since it can only be added to the once-a-decade census if the Commerce Secretary concludes that gathering that information in survey sampling is not feasible. But a later draft removed that concern and added that the Commerce Secretary had the discretion to add a citizenship question for reasons other than apportionment.

An even later draft removed apportionment as an exception to the Commerce Secretary’s discretion and added “there is nothing illegal or unconstitutional about adding a citizenship question.”

An early draft of the memo also noted that using a citizenship data for apportionment was likely unconstitutional and went against 200 years of precedent, but that language also was removed in later drafts.

The Founding Fathers’ “conscious choice” not to exclude people in the U.S. illegally from the count “suggests the Founders did not intend to distinguish between citizens and non-citizens” for apportionment,” Uthmeier wrote in the early draft.

The House report says Uthmeier researched using Voting Rights Act enforcement as a reason for the citizenship question three months before the Justice Department requested it, and hand-delivered his memo with that suggestion to the Justice Department in order to avoid a digital fingerprint.

Uthmeier, who now is chief of staff to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, didn’t immediately respond to an email inquiry Wednesday.

In an effort to prevent future attempts at politicizing the census, members of the oversight committee on Wednesday debated a bill introduced by U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., that would require new questions for the head count to be vetted by Congress, prohibit a Census Bureau director from being fired without cause and limit the number of political appointees at the Census Bureau to three.

Even though many of the Trump administration’s political efforts ultimately failed, some advocates believe they did have an impact, resulting in significantly larger undercounts of most racial and ethnic minorities in the 2020 census compared to the 2010 census.

Republican lawmakers said the bill would make the Census Bureau director unaccountable and limit the ability to add important questions to the census form. They offered an amendment that would add a citizenship question to the next census and exclude people in the U.S. illegally from the apportionment count, claiming their inclusion dilutes the political power of citizens. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that all people in each U.S. state be counted for apportionment.

Committee members voted down the amendment and passed the bill Wednesday afternoon.

“What this bill does, it more completely delegates Census Bureau activity to the bureaucracy,” said U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz. “When you delegate to the bureaucracy, you are taking away the power of the American people.”

___

Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MikeSchneiderAP

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

US Justice Department charges 36 in $1.2 billion healthcare fraud schemes

July 20 (UPI) -- The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday charged three dozen people for allegedly orchestrating healthcare fraud schemes that involved ordering unnecessary or fraudulent medical tests and equipment.

The schemes spanned 13 federal districts that defrauded $1.2 billion in orders of unnecessary telemedicine, cardiovascular and cancer genetic testing as well as durable medical equipment, the Justice Department said in a statement.

In addition to the 36 individuals charged, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced it took adverse administrative actions against 52 healthcare providers involved in similar schemes and seized $8 million in cash, luxury vehicles and other fraud proceeds.

"The Department of Justice is committed to prosecuting people who abuse our health care system and exploit telemedicine technologies in fraud and bribery schemes," Assistant Attorney Kenneth A. Polite Jr., of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, said. "This enforcement action demonstrates that the department will do everything in its power to protect the healthcare systems our communities rely on from people looking to defraud them for their own personal gain."

Those charged by the Justice Department allegedly used telemedicine to obtain orders for fraudulent or unneeded medical tests that were billed to Medicare and other insurance companies without any interaction with patients in many cases.

The fraudulent tests also provided little or no valuable information to the patients or their primary care doctors.

Owners and operators of medical laboratories charged in the cases also allegedly paid illegal kickbacks and bribes to telemedicine companies, medical professionals and medical equipment companies in exchange for patient referrals seeking to bolster their business.

In one such case, Jamie McNamara, the owner of multiple clinical labs in Missouri, allegedly executed a scheme in which marketing companies paid telemedicine centers to call patients and offer them no-cost, Medicare-approved cardiovascular and genetic testing. A medical professional was then paid to clear the tests regardless of whether they were necessary for the patients.

McNamara and other co-defendants are also accused of using "shell laboratories" to submit false or unnecessary claims to Medicare for the fraudulent tests and equipment worth more than $174 million which was laundered through a "complex network" of bank accounts and assets such as luxury vehicles, real estate and a yacht.

The Justice Department said that telemedicine schemes account for more than $1 billion of the total alleged losses associated with the charges.

"Fraudsters and scammers take advantage of telemedicine and use it as a platform to orchestrate their criminal schemes," said Luis Quesada, assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Investigative Division. "This collaborative law enforcement action shows our dedication to investigating and bringing justice to those who look to exploit our U.S. healthcare system at the expense of patients."

International Chess Day marks International Chess Federation's 1924 birthday




July 20 (UPI) -- International Chess Day, celebrated annually on July 20, was started by UNESCO to mark the anniversary of the day the International Chess Federation was founded in 1924.

The holiday was first proposed in 1966 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization to celebrate the game of chess on the anniversary of the founding of the International Chess Federation, commonly known by its French acronym FIDE, in Paris in 1924.

FIDE, now based in Lausanne, currently has affiliate National Chess Federations in 199 countries. The organization was recognized by the International Olympic Committee as a Global Sporting Organization in 1999.

The group called on chess aficionados to take advantage of International Chess Day 2022 by teaching others to play the game.

Other holidays and observances for July 20, 2022, include Fortune Cookie Day, International Cake Day, Moon Day, Nap Day, National Hot Dog Day, National Ice Cream Soda Day, National Lollipop Day, National Ugly Truck Contest Day, Space Exploration Day, Take Your Poet to Work Day and World Jump Day.

Google Doodle celebrates German composer, physicist Oskar Sala



Monday's Google Doodle marks the 112th birthday of German composer and physicist Oskar Sala. Image courtesy of Google


July 18 (UPI) -- Monday's Google Doodle celebrates what would have been the 112th birthday of German physicist and electronic music composer Oskar Sala.

The son of a singer mother and ophthalmologist father was fascinated by music, particularly the violin, piano and the trautonium, from the time he was a boy and he grew up to become a pioneer in the electronic musical field of subharmonics.

Sala studied physics and composition at school and developed a new instrument called the mixture-trautonium, which he used to produce music and sound effects like bird cries, hammering and door and window slams that were heard in television, radio and film projects such as Rosemary and The Birds.

He donated his original mixture-trautonium to the German Museum for Contemporary Technology in 1995.

Sala died in 2002 at the age of 92.

Trautonium - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trautonium

The Trautonium is an electronic synthesizer invented in 1930 by Friedrich Trautwein in Berlin at the Musikhochschule's music and radio lab, the Rundfunkversuchstelle. Soon afterwards Oskar Sala joined him, continuing development until Sala's death in 2002. 

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Rare species of moth spotted in Scotland for first time

The Scottish Wildlife Trust said a sallow-shoot piercer moth was spotted in the Cathkin Marsh Wildlife Reserve, marking the first time the species has been documented in the country. Photo courtesy of Patrick Clement/Scottish Wildlife Trust

July 20 (UPI) -- The Scottish Wildlife Trust said a visitor to a wildlife reserve spotted a sallow-shoot piercer moth -- the first of its species documented in the country.

The wildlife trust said Bill Higgins was walking in the Cathkin Marsh Wildlife Reserve, which is operated by the trust and situated near Glasgow, when he identified the unusual visitor.

"The moth is one of thousands of species in the family of tortrix moths," the trust said in a news release. "It relies on willow trees as its food plant. Eggs are laid on buds and the larvae burrow into twigs for the winter before emerging in spring as adults."

The trust said there have been only 29 reported sightings of sallow-shoot piercer moths on Britain's National Biodiversity Network Atlas, and none had ever before been seen north of Birmingham, England.

Higgins said he initially did not know the species of the moth, so he reached out to expert Mark Young via an online forum.

"Mark said he had a good idea of what the moth was and suggested I refer to a publication about the tortrix moth family and come back with an identification. I then told him what I thought it was, bearing in mind that it had never been recorded in Scotland before," Higgins told the Scottish Wildlife Trust.

"I was delighted when Mark agreed with my identification and confirmed that I had the privilege of being the first to record the moth on this side of the border," he said.

Billy Gray, the Scottish Wildlife Trust's West Central Reserves manager, described the discovery as "exciting."

"Bill's exciting discovery shows there is lots we don't know about Scotland's wildlife. It's likely that this species of moth has been in Scotland for some time and has simply gone unseen or unnoticed," he said.