MICHIGAN FLOOD UPDATES

‘Unlike anything we’ve seen’: Gov Whitmer declares emergency

 as Michigan dam breach sends thousands scrambling for shelter

PRIVATELY OWNED DAMS  

NOT REPAIRED OR MAINTAINED AS ORDERED AND REQUIRED

ANOTHER OF THOSE PIECES OF RED TAPE 

WE CALL REGULATIONS

WHICH FAILS BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT ENFORCED. 

NATIONALISE ALL DAMS IN THE USA UNDER DPA 

PUT THEM UNDER THE ARMY CORP OF ENGINEERS TO MAINTAIN AND FUND THEM

Thousands evacuated as river dams break in central Michigan

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Mark Musselman brings a chair to the front of his house from the back yard, wading through floodwater, Tuesday, May 19, 2020 in Edenville, Mich. People living along two mid-Michigan lakes and parts of a river have been evacuated following several days of heavy rain that produced flooding and put pressure on dams in the area. (Katy Kildee/Midland Daily News via AP)

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EDENVILLE, Mich. (AP) — Rapidly rising water overtook dams and forced the evacuation of about 10,000 people in central Michigan, where the governor said one downtown could be “under approximately 9 feet of water” by Wednesday.

For the second time in less than 24 hours, families living along the Tittabawassee River and connected lakes in Midland County were ordered to leave home.

The National Weather Service on Tuesday evening urged anyone near the river to seek higher ground following “castastrophic dam failures” at the Edenville Dam, about 140 miles (225.31 kilometers) north of Detroit, and the Sanford Dam, about seven miles (11.26 kilometers) downriver.


Michigan Gov. Gretchen said downtown Midland, a city of 42,000 about 8 miles (12.87 kilometers) downstream from the Sanford Dam, faced an especially serious flooding threat. Dow Chemical Co.’s main plant sits on the city’s riverbank.

“In the next 12 to 15 hours, downtown Midland could be under approximately 9 feet of water,” the governor said. “We are anticipating an historic high water level.”

Whitmer declared a state of emergency for Midland County and urged residents threatened by the flooding to find a place to stay with friends or relatives or to seek out one of several shelters that opened across the county. She encouraged people to do their best to take precautions to prevent the spread of coronavirus, such as wearing a face covering and observing social distancing “to the best of your ability.”

“This is unlike anything we’ve seen in Midland County,” she said. ”If you have a family member or loved one who lives in another part of the state, go there now.”

Emergency responders went door-to-door early Tuesday morning warning residents living near the Edenville Dam of the rising water. Some residents were able to return home, only to be told to leave again following the dam’s breach several hours later. The evacuations include the towns of Edenville, Sanford and parts of Midland, according to Selina Tisdale, spokeswoman for Midland County.



“We were back at home and starting to feel comfortable that things were calming down,” said Catherine Sias, who lives about 1 mile (1.61 kilometers) from the Edenville Dam and first left home early Tuesday morning. “All of a sudden we heard the fire truck sirens going north toward the dam.”

Sias, 45, said emergency alerts then began coming on her cellphone and people started calling to make sure she was safe.

“While packing, there were tons of police and fire trucks going up and down the roads,” she added. “As far as I know, all of our neighbors got out.”

While driving along a jammed M-30, the state highway that’s the main road through Edenville and that crosses the river north of town, Sias saw the rushing Tittabawassee River. “It was very dramatic, very fast and full of debris,” she said.




THE PROBLEM IS PRIVATIZED DAMS NOT BEING MAINTAINED

Dow Chemical has activated its emergency operations center and will be adjusting operations as a result of current flood stage conditions, spokeswoman Rachelle Schikorra said in an email.

“Dow Michigan Operations is working with its tenants and Midland County officials and will continue to closely monitor the water levels on the Tittabawassee River,” Schikorra said.

In 2018, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission revoked the license of the company that operated the Edenville Dam due to non-compliance issues that included spillway capacity and the inability to pass the most severe flood reasonably possible in the area.

The Edenville Dam, which was built in 1924, was rated in unsatisfactory condition in 2018 by the state. The Sanford Dam, which was built in 1925, received a fair condition rating.

Both dams are in the process of being sold.

There were 19 high hazard dams in unsatisfactory or poor condition in Michigan in 2018, ranking 20th among the 45 states and Puerto Rico for which The Associated Press obtained condition assessments.

Flood warnings in Michigan were issued following widespread rainfall of 4 to 7 inches (10.2 to 17.8 centimeters) since Sunday, according to the National Weather Service. Heavy runoff pushed rivers higher.

The Tittabawassee River was at 30.5 feet (9.3 meters) and rising Tuesday night - flood stage is 24 feet (7.3 meters). It was expected to crest Wednesday morning at a record of about 38 feet (11.6 meters).

The heavy rains early in the week also caused flooding elsewhere in the region. In Chicago, water that flooded some areas downtown was receding Tuesday, but Larry Langford, a fire department spokesman, said that he did not expect power to be restored at the iconic Willis Tower for days because the rains caused the building’s subbasements to fill with as much as 25 feet (7.6 meters) of water. The building was closed to tenants and visitors.


Michigan river rises to highest level ever after dam break

Flooding is seen in Midland, Mich., after a dam failed on Tuesday and forced thousands to evacuate. Photo courtesy City of Midland/Facebook

 MAY 20, 2020 / 10:34 AM

May 20 (UPI) -- A dam breach in central Michigan that forced thousands to evacuate has swelled the Tittabawasse River to its highest level in history, forecasters said Wednesday.

The earthen Edenville Dam held back the river, which reached the record high of 34 feet in Midland, the National Weather Service said. Forecasters expect the water level to rise further before it crests at about 38 feet Wednesday night.

The Edenville Dam ruptured Tuesday after swelling with several inches of rain, and was followed by the failure of Sanford Dam in Midland County. The failures forced thousands to evacuate Midland and surrounding areas and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer declared a state of emergency.

"This is unlike anything we've seen in Midland County," Whitmer said at a news conference Tuesday. "If you have a family member or loved one who lives in another part of the state, go there now."

Downtown Midland, the site of a major Dow Chemical plant, is projected to be under as many as 9 feet of water by late Wednesday, Whitmer said.

According to records, the company that owns the dam had a federal license revoked in 2018.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission revoked the license for Boyce Hydro Power to generate power at the Edenville Dam, citing the company's failure over a years-long span to correct safety problems, including its ability to withstand a major flood.

FERC regulators said they were revoking the license because of the company's "longstanding failure to increase the project's spillway capacity to safely pass flood flows, as well as its failure to comply with its license" and commission regulations.

Midland County and neighboring Gladwin Country agreed to buy the dams from Boyce Hydro in January.

Michigan town could be under 9 feet of water 
by Wednesday, governor says

2020/5/19 ©Detroit Free Press

DETROIT — Urging residents to evacuate and saying downtown Midland could be under nine feet of water by Wednesday afternoon, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer late Tuesday declared a state of emergency for Midland County after the Edenville and Sanford dams breached.

Speaking during a press conference late Tuesday, Whitmer said parts of the city of Midland, the village of Sanford and Edenville and Dow Chemical had been evacuated.

“This is unlike anything we’ve seen before … but this is truly a historic event that’s playing out in the midst of another historic event,” Whitmer said, referring to the coronavirus pandemic which has led to stay-at-home orders throughout the state.

She said that despite those orders generally telling people to stay home, it was important that anyone living in the affected areas evacuate as quickly as possible to safer areas, or go to the homes of relatives and friends. She also said shelters have opened at area schools.

The dams were breached earlier Tuesday following several days of rainfall, forcing the evacuation of thousands of people in mid-Michigan.

Emergency responders were going door-to-door early Tuesday morning warning residents living near the Edenville Dam of the rising water, the Associated Press reported. Some residents were able to return home, only to be told to leave again following the dam’s breach.

The Sanford Dam was breached later in the day Tuesday.

Whitmer said she had activated the National Guard and Guardsmen were on the scene already. Helicopters were being used to try to find the best way to evacuate people as well. She also said she would turn to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for help as quickly as she could.

For now, however, she said it was urgent that people get out of harm’s way.

“Please do not hesitate. Go to stay with a friend or relative or go to one of these shelters now,” she said, adding that even at a shelter, people should try to do the best they can to practice social distancing and wear a face covering to protect themselves and others from coronavirus.

Thousands evacuated following Michigan dam failures

By UPI Staff & Chaffin Mitchell Accuweather.com

MAY 19, 2020 / 8:15 PM / UPDATED AT 2:40 AM

VIDEO AT THE END

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued an emergency declaration after two dams failed in Midland County, forcing thousands of residents to immediately evacuate their homes on Tuesday.

Downtown Midland could be under 9 feet of water by Wednesday morning, Gov. Whitmer said during a Livestream on Tuesday night following the two collapses. A flash flood emergency is in effect for the areas downstream, which includes Midland City and Freeland.

Whitmer told residents if they haven't evacuated the area yet, do so now.

"This is unlike anything we've seen in Midland County," she said. "If you have a family member or loved one who lives in another part of the state, go there now. If you don't, go to one of the shelters that have opened across the county."

Midland County emergency management told people in Midland City who are located west of Eastman and south of US 10, to evacuate immediately on Tuesday afternoon, NBC25 reported.

A slow-moving storm doused Michigan with heavy rains over the period of several days, triggering fear of imminent dam failure and flood warnings across the state.

At least two rivers in mid-Michigan, the Tittabawassee River in Midland and the Rifle River near Sterling, reached their major flood stage on Tuesday afternoon, sending dams past their limits.

Flooding from Pine River in Arenac County. Photo courtesy of the Arenac County Sheriff's Department.

Areas around Midland reported 3 inches to 4 inches of rain since Sunday, which produced a "tremendous" amount of runoff and is causing significant rises on the river system, the National Weather Service said.

The Tittabawassee Fire and Rescue rescued the driver of a pickup truck after the vehicle was swept away while trying to drive on a flooded roadway on Tuesday, WNEM reported.

"A very slowly moving storm system and cold front pushing through the Midwest has produced anywhere from 100 to 200 mm [3 inches to 8 inches] of rainfall in just the past week from the western Great Lakes through northern Indiana and into southern Missouri," AccuWeather senior meteorologist Jack Boston said.

Edenville Township residents along Sanford and Wixom lakes northwest of Midland were urged to evacuate their homes and advised to make arrangements to stay elsewhere through Wednesday. Shelters have been set up at schools in the area.

Officials in Arenac and Gladwin counties also urged residents to evacuate due to the possible dam breach from flash flooding along the Tittabawassee and Cedar rivers.

As floodwaters continued rising, threatening to cut off road access, emergency personnel warned citizens about the potential dangers of flooding and to find alternative routes if met with road closures. If drivers are caught going around a barricade, it can result in a traffic violation with a substantial fine, according to road commission official

Officials with Bay County Road Commission said the county is experiencing water over roads in some areas and water issues with draining. The commission is in the process of working on a map of roads closed and water over the road, according to the commission's Facebook post.

"With all the rain we are getting, the river is rising and roads may be underwater. If you see water over the road, please do not attempt to drive thru it. Find an alternate route. Also, We are also aware there are water issues with draining. We just received a very large amount of rain and it has no where to go. Please be patient over the next couple days," the post reads, MLive reports.

Around 1 a.m. Tuesday, the Saginaw County Emergency Management Team reported that an Edenville Dam failure in Midland could impact residents along the Tittabawassee River in Tittabawassee and Saginaw townships.

Midland County Emergency Management stated that the Edenville and Sanford dams are "structurally sound but spilling floodwaters" as of around 3 a.m. Tuesday, according to MLive.

Later on Tuesday, Midland County Emergency Management said that the Edenville and Sanford dams "are structurally sound but can no longer control or contain the amount of water flowing through the spill gates." The county is working with the hydroelectric power plant Boyce Hydro to assess the dams.

"At this point, the water is still rising from all of the rainfall we received over the last couple of days and it will continue to do so throughout the day," the Midland County Central Dispatch Authority said Tuesday.

The Tittabawassee River in Midland entered major flood stage Tuesday morning when the river was observed at 28.46 feet, according to a Midland County news release. The flood stage is 24 feet, and the river is expected to crest at 30.6 feet early Wednesday before levels start to subside over the next couple of days.

A flood warning remains in effect for the Tittabawassee, from Midland downstream to Saginaw, and the forecast does not show relief for Midland.

Severe thunderstorms are possible tomorrow afternoon and evening for the highlighted areas. Hazards include damaging winds, large hail and frequent lightning, the National Weather Service said on Tuesday late afternoon.

Severe thunderstorms are possible tomorrow afternoon and evening for the highlighted areas. Hazards include damaging winds, large hail, and frequent lightning. Check back for updates! #txwx #nmwx pic.twitter.com/ZkfJgzgr9x— NWS Midland (@NWSMidland) May 19, 2020

The heavy rain that stretched from Michigan to the Ohio River Valley will shift to the southern Appalachians, Carolinas and western Virginia on Tuesday and Wednesday, the National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Center said. The threat of flash flooding is likely, especially in the western Carolinas and Virginia.

BUSTED: Pompeo held dozens of secret dinners for CEOs and right-wing media — on taxpayer’s dime

THE RAW STORY Published May 19, 2020


NBC News released a blockbuster new report on how the State Department on Tuesday evening.

“As federal workers file out of the State Department at the end of a Washington workday, an elite group is often just arriving in the marbled, flag-lined lobby: Billionaire CEOs, Supreme Court justices, political heavyweights and ambassadors arrive in evening attire as they’re escorted by private elevator to dinner with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo,” explained Josh Lederman, Laura Strickler and Dan De Luce.

“Until the coronavirus shut them down in March, the gatherings were known as ‘Madison Dinners’ — elaborate, unpublicized affairs that Pompeo and his wife, Susan Pompeo, began in 2018 and held regularly in the historic Diplomatic Reception Rooms on the government’s dime,” NBC reported.

“State Department officials involved in the dinners said they had raised concerns internally that the events were essentially using federal resources to cultivate a donor and supporter base for Pompeo’s political ambitions — complete with extensive contact information that gets sent back to Susan Pompeo’s personal email address. The officials and others who attended discussed the dinners on condition of anonymity,” NBC reported.

Pompeo held about two dozen of the dinners before coronavirus lockdowns.

“NBC News obtained a master guest list for every dinner through the end of 2019, as well as internal State Department calendars from before the pandemic emerged, showing that future dinners were on the books through at least October. The master list includes the names of nearly 500 invitees and specifies who accepted, although it’s that possible some individuals RSVP’d but did not show up in Foggy Bottom for dinner,” NBC reported. “The records show that about 29 percent of the invitees came from the corporate world, while about a quarter of them hailed from the media or entertainment industries, with conservative media members heavily represented. About 30 percent work in politics or government, and just 14 percent were diplomats or foreign officials. Every single member of the House or the Senate who has been invited is a Republican.”

State Department officials said they raised concerns internally that the events were essentially using federal resources to cultivate a donor & supporter base for Pompeo's political ambitions — with extensive contact information sent back to Susan Pompeo's personal email address
— Josh Lederman (@JoshNBCNews) May 20, 2020

Trump’s food aid program is paying $100+ million to ‘brand builders,’ wedding planners and other unlicensed contractorsPublished May 19, 2020 By Pro Publica



A food relief program championed by President Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka is relying on some contractors who lack food distribution experience and aren’t licensed to deal in fresh fruits and vegetables.

The contractors on Friday began delivering boxes containing fresh produce to food banks and other nonprofits. Forty-nine out of the 159 contractors picked by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to deliver boxes containing produce don’t have a requisite license from the same agency, according to a search of the USDA’s database using the information released about the contractors.

Some of the contractors are established companies, and many food banks told ProPublica they’re successfully and gratefully receiving shipments. But other contractors have eclectic backgrounds with little track record in food distribution, such as a wedding planner, a caterer and a “brand builder.”

As a result, some food banks are left scrambling for shipments or even callbacks.

“We thought this would work very well, and we really needed the food due to rising unemployment and business closings,” said Pamela Irvine, CEO of Feeding America Southwest Virginia, which serves the poorest and most rural counties in that state. The USDA, she said, “had money and wanted to respond quickly, which they should have because you saw all this produce grounded and milk being dumped. However, they didn’t think about how that product should end up on a table somewhere and didn’t communicate and didn’t have a process in place for bidders to understand.”

The awards to firms for which no licenses could be found amount to $105.3 million, about 15% of the total for produce boxes. The USDA also hired contractors for boxes containing meat and dairy, at a total cost of $1.2 billion for six weeks, with the possibility of extending.

The licenses under the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act, or PACA, are required for wholesalers, processors, truckers, food-service firms and anyone else who buys or sells more than 2,000 pounds of fresh or frozen fruits and vegetables a day, according to the USDA’s website.

“Much like you need a driver’s license to operate a vehicle, the law requires that you have a PACA license to operate a produce business,” the agency’s website says. “A PACA license is proof to your customers and suppliers that you are a serious business person who can be trusted to honor the terms of your contracts.”

The licenses give vendors a way to resolve payment disputes, and many producers won’t sell to someone who isn’t licensed.

“We don’t do business with people without a PACA license,” said Noah Murguia, the CEO of Murguia Fruit, an orange wholesaler in California. Murguia said he is selling oranges to licensed contractors in the program but doesn’t understand why anyone without a license would be allowed to participate. “To me, it’s a big joke,” he said.

The USDA’s official solicitation and application form don’t mention PACA licenses. An agency spokesman said contractors that don’t already have one will need to get one.

“All proposals were carefully reviewed by a team of contracting and technical experts and contracts made accordingly,” the USDA said in a statement. Companies will have to submit documentation showing deliveries that meet the contract requirements in order to be paid, the agency said.

Trump heralded the program in a tweet on May 9, saying it was implemented at his personal direction.

Ivanka Trump also claimed credit for the initiative, telling USA Today, “I’m not shy about asking people to step up to the plate. The whole country needs to be galvanized in the effort, both to combat this deadly virus, but also to rebuild … to rebuild our economy as we emerge.”

Speaking at a kick-off event in Maryland last week, Ivanka Trump addressed the awards to small operators, saying, “We want to encourage and support a robust ecosystem of distributors across the nation.”

The White House referred questions to the USDA.

The USDA has a long-established program that buys and distributes food to schools, food banks and households, totaling 3.3 billion pounds and $3.5 billion in 2019. Vendors have to be preapproved and meet precise specifications.

With millions more Americans struggling to buy food as the coronavirus pandemic shutters businesses, USDA officials decided they needed to be more flexible about vendors, products and quantities. “The development of the Farmers to Families Food Box Program represents a completely different way of doing business for us,” Chris Purdy, associate deputy administrator of the USDA’s commodity procurement program, said in an online seminar for applicants. “But these times call for activities outside of our comfort zone.”

When the program was announced, the nonprofit organization Feeding America surveyed its nationwide network of 200 food banks about their needs and worked with seven national distributors on how to implement the program. But none of those distributors received contracts.

Irvine’s organization, in southwest Virginia, committed to taking 3.3 million pounds of produce, 2 million pounds of meat and 2.5 million pounds of dairy over six months. So far, her team has only secured 480,000 pounds of produce, 25,000 pounds of meat and no dairy after five days of cold-calling distributors who won contracts. Out of nine distributors contacted, three never responded and two didn’t know what the program was, Irvine said.

“This is just going to blow your mind, it makes no sense,” Irvine said: The only distributor who would ship them produce is sending it cross-country from Washington state.

“We actually think he called us by mistake,” Bob Frampton, Feeding America Southwest Virginia’s chief operations officer, said. “But he’s been great to work with, and we took what we could get because we’re not crazy.”

It’s not clear why some offbeat bids were successful. Federal contracts are heavily regulated, but the labyrinthine rules and procedures sometimes lead to curious outcomes. Businesses owned by minorities or veterans routinely have a leg up. The USDA spokesman said the agency looked for contractors who would “support local and regional farmers.”

The contracts also moved much faster than normal. Companies had only a week to submit bids, and the USDA announced winners just a week later.

Rejected applicants received a form letter saying “some of the most common factors” for losing were missing signatures, according to a copy of the letter obtained by ProPublica.

On a conference call a few days after the contracts were awarded, the USDA told winning bidders that they would need to apply for a PACA license if they didn’t already have one, according to Stephen Martin of Blueprint Foods (identified on the USDA’s announcement as SMH2 Manufacturing, receiving $1 million). “We never knew about a PACA license until they brought it up on a conference call,” Martin, whose company typically delivers prepared foods to grocery stores, said in an interview. “What they’re asking us to do is a fairly simple thing, like what we do anyway, except usually we cook things, so it’s actually easier.”

Still, there are challenges for companies like Martin’s that are working on their first government contract. “We still have to go over how to invoice,” Martin said. “The notion that they built the plane in the air is accurate.”

Some “upstanding companies” that have experience with government contracts were denied “on mistaken grounds,” while winning bidders who don’t have their own warehouses, staff and distributions channels are now looking for subcontractors, according to Tom Stenzel, CEO of the United Fresh Produce Association. “This is not ‘sour grapes’ from those that may not have been awarded; this is a genuine effort to ensure integrity and confidence in the program and that fresh produce actually gets to those in need in an efficient and cost-effective way,” Stenzel said in a letter to USDA leaders.

Three companies that received a total of $6 million in contracts are licensed but are involved in business disputes that were reported to the USDA, according to the agency’s public data. Doug Peterson, the CEO of Aggrigator, which received a contract for $2.6 million, said the company is trying to resolve its five disputes and the complaints never came up in the bidding process. Peterson said the company is producing 4,000 boxes a day and started deliveries on Saturday.

A California avocado grower named Ben Holtz received a contract for $40 million, more than any other company without a PACA license. Holtz posted on Facebook, “Looking to buy Truckloads of: USDA Carrots, USA Cucumber, USA Apples, USA Sweet Potatoes, USA Onions, USA Green Bell Peppers, USA Pears, USA Tomatoes. If your Farm or Shed or Packing Operation wants orders, PM me.”

One commenter asked Holtz if his company is in the Produce Blue Book, an industry-standard business directory that rates the creditworthiness of produce suppliers. Without that assurance, the commenter wanted to know if Holtz would be paying cash upfront.

Holtz replied, “Huh?”

Holtz has since made a website and said he has more than 10,000 orders. In a phone interview, he said he’s already delivered more than 2,200 boxes and has thousands more on the way.

“This isn’t foreign to me,” Holtz said in a phone interview. “I have lots of experience running jobs, this is just a job. I’m a fourth-generation avocado grower, I can talk produce. I know how things get to where they need to be. I know how to run jobs with manpower and people with limits and constraints and financing. It’s going to take everything and everybody I’ve ever known to pull this off, and we’re doing it. We’re off to the races.”

Holtz was surprised to win a contract at the top of the range he applied for, for up to 1 million boxes. “Getting up to seven digits was just kind of cool-looking,” he said. “I put it down and they said all right.”

Holtz doesn’t have a PACA license but said he has applied for one and asked the USDA to expedite it. Holtz’s lack of a license and absence from the Produce Blue Book have made some vendors wary of him, Holtz said, but he said he relies on industry contacts or pays cash. “If you want to know anything about me and my reputation, call up anyone in the California avocado world and they will know my name,” he said.

The USDA awarded a $39.1 million contract, including $6.25 million for produce, to CRE8AD8 LLC (pronounced “Create a Date”), a wedding and event planner in San Antonio. “We had no idea we’d be asked to help on this level,” CEO Gregorio Palomino said in a Facebook post. He does not have a PACA license and said he applied last week.

Palomino told the San Antonio Express-News that the job isn’t that different from his usual work. “We knew that we easily could do this because instead of putting tchotchkes in a bag that is going to go to a conference attendee, this is the same exact thing except it’s just food going into a box,” he told the newspaper.

In a statement, Palomino said he’s in an “initial planning phase,” and his next steps will be hiring up to 100 people and assigning roles and tasks. “This is the largest contract we have won to date,” he said in a statement. “This award will help us all rebound from our losses due to Covid-19.”

A $12.2 million contract went to Travel Well Holdings, a California company with no website. According to the LinkedIn profile of founder Desiree Rodriguez, the company “provides a curated line of travel essentials to surprise and delight travelers with unexpected yet much needed items to improve their personal journey.”

Rodriguez, whose profile describes her as a “Business Development Strategist, Entrepreneur, Brand Builder,” declined to comment.

Beena Raghavendran contributed reporting.

• China says boy picked by Dalai Lama now a college graduate

FILE - In this Sept. 19, 2015, file photo, tourists take photos of the Potala Palace beneath a security camera in Lhasa, capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. China said Tuesday, May 19, 2020, that a boy who disappeared 25 years ago after being picked by the Dalai Lama as Tibetan Buddhism's second-highest figure is now a college graduate with a stable job. (AP Photo/Aritz Parra, File)
BEIJING (AP) — China said Tuesday that a boy who disappeared 25 years ago after being picked by the Dalai Lama as Tibetan Buddhism’s second-highest figure is now a college graduate with a stable job.

Very little information has been given about Gedhun Choekyi Nyima or his family since he went missing at age 6 shortly after being named the 11th Panchen Lama.

China, which claims that Tibet is part of its territory, named another boy to the position, Gyaltsen Norbu, who is rarely seen and is believed to spend most of his time in Beijing. He is generally viewed as a political figure under Beijing’s control and shares none of the Dalai Lama’s global fame.

Foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said Gedhun Choekyi Nyima “received free compulsory education when he was a child, passed the college entrance examination and now has a job.” Zhao said neither the now-31-year-old man or his family wishes to be disturbed in their “current normal lives.” No other details were given.

The tussle between Beijing and the Dalai Lama, who fled into exile in 1959, concerns who will determine the future of Tibetan Buddhism, which still commands heavy sway over the people of the Himalayan region that China says has been its territory for centuries but which many Tibetans believe was largely independent.

Tibet’s self-declared government-in-exile in India marked the 25th anniversary of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima’s disappearance by calling on Beijing on Sunday to account for his whereabouts.

“China’s abduction of the Panchen Lama and forcible denial of his religious identity and right to practice in his monastery is not only a violation of religious freedom but also a gross violation of human rights,” the Tibetan parliament in northern India, known as the Kashag, said in a statement.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also issued a statement on Monday calling on China to “immediately make public the Panchen Lama’s whereabouts and to uphold its own constitution and international commitments to promote religious freedom for all persons.”

The Dalai Lama named the original Panchen Lama with the help of Tibetan lamas trained in reading portents and signs. China claims the reincarnate can only be chosen by pulling lots from a golden urn, a method it used to pick its own candidate under the control of the officially atheistic ruling Communist Party.

Traditionally, the Panchen Lama has served as teacher and aide to the Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhism’s highest leader who is now 84 and is accused by Beijing of seeking independence for Tibet. The Dalai Lama denies that and says he advocates greater autonomy for the region

AT&T quits Venezuela as US sanctions force it to defy Maduro

In this Jan. 9, 2020 file photo, a DirectTV dish stands on home in the Catia neighborhood of Caracas, Venezuela. AT&T, one of the last major American companies still operating in Venezuela, said Tuesday, May 19, 2020 it will immediately abandon Venezuela’s pay TV market, as U.S. sanctions prohibit its DirecTV platform from broadcasting channels that it is required to carry by the Venezuelan government, making it impossible to comply with the legal requirements of both countries. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)


MIAMI (AP) — AT&T said Tuesday it will immediately ditch Venezuela’s pay TV market as U.S. sanctions prohibit its DirecTV platform from broadcasting channels that it is required to carry by the socialist administration of Nicolás Maduro.

The Dallas-based company’s closing of its Venezuela unit is effective immediately.

It follows a decision by the Trump administration not to renew a license it had granted AT&T to continue carrying Globovision, a private network, sanctioned by the U.S., owned by a businessman close to Maduro who is wanted on U.S. money laundering charges, three people familiar with the situation told the AP. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss U.S. government licensing activity.

AT&T joins a number of other U.S. companies — General Motors, Kellogg Co. and Kimberly-Clark — that have abandoned Venezuela due to shrinking sales, government threats and the risk of U.S. sanctions. Around 700 Venezuelans depended on the unit for employment.

“Because it is impossible for AT&T’s DIRECTV unit to comply with the legal requirements of both countries, AT&T was forced to close its pay TV operations in Venezuela, a decision that was made by the company’s U.S. leadership team without any involvement or prior knowledge of the DIRECTV Venezuela team,” the company said in a statement.


At nighttime Tuesday, residents in Caracas started banging on pots and pans for nearly a half hour to spontaneously protest a decline in public services. Some yelled “I want my DirecTV” amid chants against Maduro.

AT&T has a 44% share of the pay TV market and its departure is likely to hit hard working-class barrios of larger cities and the interior that depend on DirecTV for access to information and entertainment.

An Associated Press investigation from January found that AT&T had been under increasing pressure from the Trump administration to stand up to Maduro’s censors, who since 2017 have ordered the removal of some 10 channels, including CNN en Español, that had broadcast anti-government protests.

Local regulators accuse the channels of violating the Law on Social Responsibility on Radio and Television, which seeks to guarantee socially responsible programming but that press freedom groups consider it a tool to muzzle critical coverage due to its ambiguous language and heavy penalties. DirecTV is also a major platform for the broadcast of state-run TV outlets criticized by the opposition as propaganda.

A never-implemented plan promoted by the State Department would have forced AT&T to pull the plug on Globovision and the state-run channels while restoring some of the banned international news channels, according to five people familiar with the discussions cited in the earlier AP investigation.

AT&T hasn’t made money from its Venezuelan operations for years due to strict government controls that keep the price of its packages artificially low — a few pennies per month. The situation has become so dire that DirecTV in 2012 stopped importing set-top boxes, choking its growth. In 2015, it wrote down its assets in the country by $1.1 billion.

But the company was reluctant to close down its operations in Venezuela because of its market share — the largest it has anywhere in the world — and its commitment to a satellite broadcast center from which DirecTV beams about a third of its programming to several parts of South America.

An AT&T executive said that while its broadcast signal in Venezuela will stop working Tuesday, the company has enhanced other facilities in the region to ensure that service continues uninterrupted throughout South America. The executive spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal procedures.

AT&T’s departure deprives many Venezuelans of what had been a cheap form of entertainment in a nation ravaged by 2 million percent hyperinflation. Among them is Maduro himself, who at a recent press conference boasted that he’s a fan of CNN’s English language channel, even rattling off the channel — 706 — where it appears on DirecTV’s platform.

Socialist party boss Diosdado Cabello on Twitter said “no blockade will censure us” and invited his followers to watch his weekly TV program that is broadcast on state TV on a streaming platform.

There was no immediate comment from the Trump administration.

With AT&T’s announcement Tuesday, however, some DirecTV subscribers reported that their service immediately went dark, displaying the message: “Channel not available.”

Pedro Zambrano, a taxi driver waiting on a client at a Caracas supermarket, said he has subscribed to DirecTV for years to watch his favorite series and tuned in nightly to the German government’s Deutsche Welle channel, which broadcast international news in Spanish.

The 54-year-old said the loss of DirecTV amid the coronavirus pandemic, where he and others are forced to spend long stretches at home, is only likely to further erode a quality of life that has worsened in recent years by frequent power outages and shortages of water and gasoline for his car, which provides his living.

“I don’t know how a person can live with dignity in a country like this,” Zambrano said. “Well, what can I tell you? We’re sunk.”

—

Smith reported from Caracas. AP Writer Fabiola Sanchez contributed to this report from Caracas, Venezuela

Ukraine’s overburdened doctors in desperate virus fight

AP SPECIAL ESSAY AND PHOTO FEATURE 

https://apnews.com/5e7c49c2623adbf213cb8eeb4648f0b9

By MSTYSLAV CHERNOV and YURAS KARMANAU 

May 18, 2020

Tech-assisted COVID-19 tracking is having some issues

THE COVID-19 SECURITY STATE


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FILE - In this April 5, 2020, file photo, a man checks his mobile phone along the Yangtze River in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province. As governments around the world consider how to monitor new coronavirus outbreaks while reopening their societies, many are starting to bet on smartphone apps to help stanch the pandemic. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)


PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Harnessing today’s technology to fight the coronavirus pandemic is turning out to be more complicated than it first appeared.

The first U.S. states that rolled out smartphone apps for tracing the contacts of COVID-19 patients are dealing with technical glitches and a general lack of interest by their residents. A second wave of tech-assisted pandemic surveillance tools is on its way, this time with the imprimatur of tech giants Apple and Google. But those face their own issues, among them potential accuracy problems and the fact that they won’t share any information with governments that could help track the spread of the illness.


Contact tracing is a pillar of infection control. It’s traditionally conducted by trained public health workers who interview those who may have been exposed, then urge them to get tested and isolate themselves. Some estimates call for as many as 300,000 U.S. workers to do the work effectively, but so far those efforts have lagged.

Other tech companies like Salesforce have offered database tools to assist manual tracing efforts, although those also raise privacy concerns because of the need to collect and store detailed information about people’s social connections, health status and whereabouts.

Privacy advocates warn that the danger of creating new government surveillance powers for the pandemic could lead to much bigger problems in the future. In a new policy paper shared with The Associated Press, the American Civil Liberties Union is warning state governments to tread more carefully and establish stricter privacy procedures before deploying technology meant to detect and curb new coronavirus outbreaks.

Even the most privacy-minded tools, such as those to be released soon by Apple and Google, require constraints so that they don’t become instruments of surveillance or oppression. “The risks of getting it wrong are enormous,” said Neema Singh Guliani, a senior legislative counsel with the ACLU.

ACLU’s report says the worst location-tracking technology should be rejected outright, such as apps that track individual movements via satellite-based GPS technology and feed sensitive personal data into centralized government databases. “Good designs don’t require you to gather people’s location information and store that,” Singh Guliani said.
She urged governments to set rules addressing both privacy and efficacy so that surveillance tools don’t interfere with more conventional public health methods.

Utah, North Dakota and South Dakota were the first U.S. states to launch voluntary phone apps that enable public health departments to track the location and connections of people who test positive for the coronavirus. But governors haven’t had much luck getting the widespread participation needed for them to work effectively.

Nearly a month after Utah launched its Healthy Together app to augment the state’s contact-tracing efforts by tracking phone locations, state officials confirmed Monday that they haven’t done any contact tracing out of the app yet. Instead, people who download the app have been able to “assess their symptoms and get testing if appropriate,” Utah’s state epidemiologist, Angela Dunn, said last week.

The state with the highest known rate of participation so far is North Dakota, where last week about 4% of residents had downloaded the Care19 app and were using its location services. The same app is getting even less support in South Dakota.

“This is a red state,” said Crystal Wolfrum, a paralegal in Minot, North Dakota, who says she’s one of the only people among her neighbors and friends to download the app. “They don’t want to wear masks. They don’t want to be told what to do. A lot of people I talk to are, like, ‘Nope, you’re not going to track me.’”

Wolfrum said she’s doubtful that the app will be useful, both because of people’s wariness and its poor performance. She gave it a bad review on Google’s app store after it failed to notice lengthy shopping trips she made one weekend to Walmart and Target stores.

North Dakota is now looking at starting a second app based on the Apple-Google technology. The existing app “was rushed to market, because of the urgent need, Vern Dosch, the state’s contact tracing facilitator, told KFYR-TV in Bismarck. “We knew that it wouldn’t be perfect.”

The ACLU is taking a more measured approach to the Apple and Google method, which will use Bluetooth wireless technology to automatically notify people about potential COVID-19 exposure without revealing anyone’s identity to the government.

But even if the app is described as voluntary and personal health information never leaves the phone, the ACLU says it’s important for governments to set additional safeguards to ensure that businesses and public agencies don’t make showing the app a condition of access to jobs, public transit, grocery stores and other services.

Among the governments experimenting with the Apple-Google approach are the state of Washington and several European countries.

Swiss epidemiologist Marcel Salathé said all COVID-19 apps so far are “fundamentally broken” because they collect too much irrelevant information and don’t work well with Android and iPhone operating software. Salathé authored a paper favoring the privacy-protecting approach that the tech giants have since adopted, and he considers it the best hope for a tool that could actually help isolate infected people before they show symptoms and spread the disease.

“You will remember your work colleagues but you will not remember the random person next to you on a train or really close to you at the bar,” he said.

Other U.S. governors are looking at technology designed to supplement manual contact-tracing efforts. As early as this week, Rhode Island has said it is set to launch a “one-stop” pandemic response phone app. It will pair with a new contact-tracing database system built by software giant Salesforce, which has said it is also working with Massachusetts, California, Louisiana and New York City on a similar approach.

Salesforce says it can use data-management software to help trained crews trace “relationships across people, places and events” and identify virus clusters down to the level of a neighborhood hardware store. It relies on manual input of information gathered through conversations by phone, text or email.

“It’s only as good as a lot of us using it,” Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo said of the soon-to-be-launched mobile app at a news conference last week. “If 10% of Rhode Island’s population opts in, this won’t be effective.” The state hasn’t yet outlined what people are expected to opt into.

The ACLU hasn’t weighed in on the Salesforce model, but has urged contact-tracing public health departments to protect people from unnecessary disclosure of personal information and to not criminalize the requirement for self-isolation.

——

This story was first published on May 18, 2020. It was updated on May 19, 2020, to correct information about the usage of COVID-19 contact-tracking apps. North Dakota has the highest participation rate at about 4% of its population, not South Dakota at about 2%. AP reporter Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this story from Salt Lake City, Utah.

Concerns erupt over integrity of Florida’s COVID-19 website

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a news conference Monday, May 18, 2020, in Orlando, Fla. The governor announced that the I-4 and State Road 408 interchange has opened and because of less traffic due to the coronavirus pandemic, workers were able to expedite the workflow on the I-4 Ultimate Project. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — The chief architect of Florida’s coronavirus website was fired this week after a dispute over what information should be made public, underscoring how entwined public health data and politics have become as elected officials move to reopen their communities amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has said his decision to begin reopening his state has been driven by science, and federal epidemiologists have praised his administration’s daily release of COVID-19 related data as especially granular and user-friendly.


But questions about the integrity of the state’s public health data were raised anew when Rebekah Jones, an information systems manager with the Florida Department of Health, announced in an email to researchers Friday that she was reassigned from her duties overseeing an online dashboard that provides daily snapshots of Florida’s COVID-19 infections, testing and deaths.

In preparation for reopening the state, DeSantis has lashed out against early prognostications of gloom and doom, saying in recent weeks that many of the state’s hospital beds are lying empty and some testing sites were closed because there was not much demand.

He’s used data from the dashboard — including the relatively low rate of people testing positive for the coronavirus — to build support for reopening the state. Still, he said, reopening will happen in phases. This week, restaurants and retail businesses were allowed to open at 50% capacity.

But the firing has provided new fodder against the Republican governor as he defends his handling of the coronavirus outbreak. DeSantis has also come under fire for his handling of the state’s unemployment system, which broke down after being inundated by hundreds of thousands of Floridians who suddenly lost their jobs because of the economic downturn caused by the outbreak.

“We were told the reopening Florida was built on studying the data. If that data was wrong or manipulated, that puts countless Floridians at risk for exposure to COVID-19,” said state Rep. Tracie Davis, a Democrat from Jacksonville and a member of the House Health Committee.

“We do know our state is being reopened and we now have a question mark about the data,” she said.

The timing of her reassignment came a day after the state’s May 4 rollout of the first phase of the governor’s reopening plan. It was unclear if Jones was being asked to make Florida appear more solidly in compliance with the White House’s criteria for reopening. At the time, Florida was showing a downward trajectory in new infections and rates of positive tests — as well as meeting the rest of the federal criteria.

During a Tuesday press conference, DeSantis dismissed the matter as “a nonissue” and praised the dashboard as a national model.

Afterward, the governor’s spokeswoman, Helen Ferre, said in an email that Jones had “exhibited a repeated course of insubordination,” asserting that Jones had made “unilateral decisions to modify the Department’s COVID-19 dashboard without input or approval from the epidemiological team or her supervisors.”

Jones, whose dismissal Monday was first reported by Florida Today, could not be reached for comment.

In an email she sent Friday to researchers and others, Jones said that as of May 5 she was no longer in charge of the dashboard and said she would not expect “the same level of accessibility and transparency” in the data presented on the dashboard, adding that her “commitment to both is largely (arguably entirely) the reason I am no longer managing it.”

Jones was more pointed in an email to a West Palm Beach television station, CBS12 News, when she said she was removed from her role because she would not “manually change data to drum up support for the plan to reopen.” It was unclear what data she was asked to change.

“Regardless of what you think about the reopening in Florida, you’d like to know how it’s going,” said professor Ben D. Sawyer, who runs the University of Central Florida’s LabX. “The data is our ability to see, and I want to believe the state is here to help keep everyone safe and healthy and give us the ability to see how things are going.”

Part of the data-driven research being conducted by his team focuses on looking at how the virus is hitting different age groups.

Sawyer said he and other researches will have to scrutinize the data more deeply as they consider whether information scraped from the site is being manipulated for political reasons.

“Even if the data is transparent, now that we’ve basically run into an issue where somebody said it might not be transparent and where they fired somebody for refusing to do something they didn’t feel comfortable doing, that makes us believe the data might not be accurate,” said Jennifer Larsen, a LabX research assistant.

“If you don’t trust something that you’re hearing, how can you know to make good decisions with it?”

During an April 20 news conference, Dr. Deborah Birx, the coronavirus response coordinator for the White House, singled out Florida’s dashboard for praise.

“This is how we have to inform the American public, and this is where the American public will develop confidence in each of their counties and local governments,” Birx said then.

The dashboard debuted on March 16, providing a detailed glimpse of where coronavirus has hit, how many Floridians have tested positive for the infection, how many have been hospitalized and how many people have died. Over the weeks, new information was added, including the number of infections by ZIP codes.

After some prodding by the news media, the state also began releasing data on nursing homes and prisons, although it has declined to disclose some information that is now part of public records lawsuits filed by several news media companies.

In the early weeks of the outbreak, health officials cited privacy issues in declining to identify where infections were occurring only to reverse themselves when public concern over the outbreak grew and quickly became a political issue.

___

Google says it won’t build AI tools for oil and gas drillers

In this April 21, 2020 file photo, a pumpjack is pictured as the sun sets in Oklahoma City. Google says it won’t build custom artificial intelligence tools for speeding up oil and gas extraction, taking an environmental stance that distinguishes it from cloud computing rivals Microsoft and Amazon. The announcement followed a Greenpeace report on Tuesday, May 19, that documents how the three tech giants are using AI and computing power to help oil companies find and access oil and gas deposits in the U.S. and around the world. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki File)

Google says it will no longer build custom artificial intelligence tools for speeding up oil and gas extraction, separating itself from cloud computing rivals Microsoft and Amazon.

A statement from the company Tuesday followed a Greenpeace report that documents how the three tech giants are using AI and computing power to help oil companies find and access oil and gas deposits in the U.S. and around the world.

The environmentalist group says Amazon, Microsoft and Google have been undermining their own climate change pledges by partnering with major oil companies including Shell, BP, Chevron and ExxonMobil that have looked for new technology to get more oil and gas out of the ground.

But the group applauded Google on Tuesday for taking a step away from those deals.
“While Google still has a few legacy contracts with oil and gas firms, we welcome this indication from Google that it will no longer build custom solutions for upstream oil and gas extraction,” said Elizabeth Jardim, senior corporate campaigner for Greenpeace USA.

Google said it will honor all existing contracts with its customers, but didn’t specify what companies. A Google cloud executive had earlier in May revealed the new policy during a video interview.

Greenpeace’s report says Microsoft appears to be leading the way with the most oil and contracts, “offering AI capabilities in all phases of oil production.” Amazon’s contracts are more focused on pipelines, shipping and fuel storage, according to the report. Their tools have been deployed to speed up shale extraction, especially from the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico.

Some of the contracts have led to internal protests by employees who are pushing their companies to do more to combat climate change.
Full Coverage: Technology

Amazon declined to comment on the Greenpeace report, but pointed to wording on its website that said “the energy industry should have access to the same technologies as other industries.”

Microsoft published a blog statement Tuesday that didn’t address Greenpeace’s claims but emphasized the company’s commitment to remove from the air all the carbon it has ever emitted by 2050.

Quest for `super-duper missile’ pits US against key rivals

In this Jan. 31, 2019, image provided by the U.S. Air Force Academy, Cadet 2nd Class Eric Hembling uses a Ludwieg Tube to measure the pressures, temperatures, and flow field of various basic geometric and hypersonic research vehicles at Mach 6 in The United States Air Force Academy's Department of Aeronautics, in Colorado Springs, Colo. Little on the Pentagon’s drawing board illustrates more clearly the Trump administration’s worry about China and Russia than its work on hypersonic weapons. These missiles and aerial vehicles fly at speeds of a mile a second or faster and maneuver in ways that make them extra difficult to detect and destroy in flight. (Joshua Armstrong/U.S. Air Force Academy via AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — They fly at speeds of a mile a second or faster and maneuver in ways that make them extra hard to detect and destroy in flight.

President Donald Trump calls them a “super-duper missile,” though they’re better known as hypersonic weapons. And they are at the heart of Trump administration worries about China and Russia.

For decades the United States has searched for ways to get ultra-fast flight right. But it has done so in fits and starts. Now, with China and Russia arguably ahead in this chase, the Trump administration is pouring billions of dollars a year into hypersonic offense and defense.


The Pentagon makes no bones about their purpose.

“Our ultimate goal is, simply, we want to dominate future battlefields,” Mark Lewis, the Pentagon’s director of defense research and engineering for modernization, told reporters in March.

Critics argue that hypersonic weapons would add little to the United States’ ability to deter war. Some think they could ignite a new, destabilizing arms race.

A look at hypersonic weapons:

WHAT’S SPECIAL ABOUT HYPERSONIC?

Two things make these weapons special: speed and maneuverability. Speed brings surprise, and maneuverability creates elusiveness. Together, those qualities could mean trouble for missile defenses.

By generally agreed definition, a hypersonic weapon is one that flies at speeds in excess of Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound. Most American missiles, such as those launched from aircraft to hit other aircraft or ground targets, travel between Mach 1 and Mach 5.

Trump occasionally mentions his interest in hypersonic weapons, sometimes without using the term. In February he told governors visiting the White House: “We have the super-fast missiles — tremendous number of the super-fast. We call them ‘super-fast,’ where they’re four, five, six, and even seven times faster than an ordinary missile. We need that because, again, Russia has some.”

And last Friday, Trump told reporters, “We have no choice, we have to do it, with the adversaries we have out there,” mentioning China and Russia. He added, “I call it the super-duper missile.” He said he “heard” it travels 17 times faster than any other U.S. missile. “It just got the go-ahead,” he added, although the Pentagon would not comment on that.

HOW THEY WORK

The Pentagon is pursuing two main types of hypersonic weapons. One, called a hypersonic glide vehicle, is launched from a rocket. It then glides to a target, maneuvering at high speed to evade interception. The other is sometimes referred to as a hypersonic cruise missile. Capable of being launched from a fighter jet or bomber, it would be powered by a supersonic combustion ramjet, or scramjet, enabling the missile to fly and maneuver at lower altitudes.

In this photo taken from undated footage distributed by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service, an intercontinental ballistic missile lifts off from a truck-mounted launcher somewhere in Russia. The Russian military said the Avangard hypersonic weapon entered combat duty. Little on the Pentagon’s drawing board illustrates more clearly the Trump administration’s worry about China and Russia than its work on hypersonic weapons. These missiles and aerial vehicles fly at speeds of a mile a second or faster and maneuver in ways that make them extra difficult to detect and destroy in flight. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)


On March 19, the Pentagon flight-tested a hypersonic glide vehicle at its Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kauai, Hawaii. It deemed the test a success and “a major milestone towards the department’s goal of fielding hypersonic warfighting capabilities in the early- to mid-2020s.”

Unlike Russia, the United States says it is not developing hypersonic weapons for use with a nuclear warhead. As a result, a U.S. hypersonic weapon will need to be more accurate, posing additional technical challenges.

As recently as 2017, the Pentagon was spending about $800 million on hypersonic weapon programs. That nearly doubled the following year, then rose to $2.4 billion a year later and hit $3.4 billion this year. The administration’s 2021 budget request, which has yet to be approved by Congress, requests $3.6 billion.

Although this is a priority for Pentagon spending, it could become limited by the budgetary pressures that are expected as a result of multitrillion-dollar federal spending to counter the coronavirus pandemic.

WHY THEY MATTER

Top Pentagon officials say it’s about Russia, and even more so, China.

“By almost any metric that I can construct, China is certainly moving out ahead of us,” Lewis, the Pentagon research and engineering official, said Tuesday. “In large measure, that’s because we did their homework for them.” Basic research in this field was published by the U.S. years ago, “and then we kind of took our foot off the gas,” although the Pentagon is now on a path to catch up and surpass China, he added.

China is pushing for hypersonic weapon breakthroughs. It has conducted a number of successful tests of the DF-17, a medium-range ballistic missile designed to launch hypersonic glide vehicles. According to a Congressional Research Service report in March, U.S. intelligence analysts assess that the DF-17 missile has a range of approximately 1,000 to 1,500 miles and could be deployed this year.

Russia last December said its first hypersonic missile unit had become operational. It is the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, which Moscow says can fly at Mach 27, or 27 times faster than the speed of sound, and could make sharp maneuvers to bypass missile defenses. It has been fitted to existing Soviet-built intercontinental ballistic missiles, and in the future could be fitted to the more powerful Sarmat ICBM, which is still in development.

BUT ARE THEY NECESSARY?

As with other strategic arms, like nuclear weapons and naval fleets, for example, hypersonic weapons are seen by the Trump administration as a must-have if peer competitors have them.

But critics see hypersonic weapons as overkill and potentially an extension of the arms race that led to an excessive nuclear buildup by the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

There also is worry about these technologies spreading beyond the U.S., Russia and China.

“Their proliferation beyond these three nations could result in lesser powers setting their strategic forces on hair-trigger states of readiness and more credibly being able to threaten attacks on major powers,” the RAND Corp., a federally funded research organization, said in a 2017 report.

Author urges gardeners to form one big `national park’

This undated photo provided by Timber Press shows monarch butterflies in the University of Delaware Botanical Garden in Newark, Del., and is featured in the Douglas Tallamy book "Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard." Tallamy, a professor at the University of Delaware, is urging everyone _ homeowners and renters, in cities, suburbs and rural areas _ to pitch in. The wildlife ecologist and author doesn't just want you to embrace native plants in your yard or on your patio, he wants everyone to see their patches of land as part of a giant quilt. A "Homegrown National Park.'' Tallamy says a massive project like that can go a long way toward nurturing and protecting birds and pollinators. (Douglas Tallamy/Timber Press via AP)h

Imagine if all the back and front yards — and even patio container plants — across the country were seen as one magnificent patchwork quilt, a ``Homegrown National Park.” Home gardeners would join forces to bring back a variety of native plants to protect and nurture struggling birds, bees and other pollinators.

That’s wildlife ecologist and entomologist Doug Tallamy’s vision, as laid out in his most recent book, “Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard” (Timber Press).

Tallamy, a professor at the University of Delaware, is urging everyone — in cities, suburbs and rural areas — to pitch in.




This undated photo provided by Timber Press of a Downy woodpecker was taken in Oxford, Pa., and is featured in the Douglas Tallamy book "Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard." Tallamy, a professor at the University of Delaware, is urging everyone _ homeowners and renters, in cities, suburbs and rural areas _ to pitch in. The wildlife ecologist and author doesn't just want you to embrace native plants in your yard or on your patio, he wants everyone to see their patches of land as part of a giant quilt. A "Homegrown National Park.'' Tallamy says a massive project like that can go a long way toward nurturing and protecting birds and pollinators. (Douglas Tallamy/Timber Press via AP)

“This enormous new national park can absolutely make a difference,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press, especially east of the Mississippi River, where the vast majority of land in the U.S. is privately owned.

While one home garden can have a welcome effect, he says, it would be a game changer if lots of people pitched in on different, connected parcels of land, replacing traditional lawns, imported ornamentals and invasive species that fail to provide habitat for native birds, butterflies and other pollinators with ecologically crucial trees like oaks and other native species, he says.

And even a single person acting boldly with this goal in mind could be a crucial source of inspiration for others around them.

Despite climate change, or perhaps partly because of it, Tallamy optimistically envisions the coming decades as “The Age of Ecological Enlightenment.”

“I am an ecologist who makes this claim with confidence, because it is the only option left for Homo sapiens if we want to remain viable in the future,” he writes in his book.

The pivot, he says, must start at home. You can make changes slowly on your own or hire a landscaper to make changes all at once, but embracing native plants and reducing lawn is the direction gardening must take to help the environment, he says.

Todd Forrest, vice president for horticulture and living collections at The New York Botanical Garden, agrees it’s urgent that home gardeners focus on enhancing native biodiversity.

“Over the past few decades, advances in gardening equipment and techniques, increased access to a diversity of nursery-grown native plants, and rising environmental awareness among gardeners have made it more possible than ever before to harness all the joys of gardening to benefit the health of the planet,” Forrest says.

Tallamy says it’s easy to make a meaningful transition toward conservation-minded gardening.

“You can do it for free, bit by bit, as a hobby. And if you don’t own property, you can help the process in local parks, in roof gardens or community gardens, and you can plant native species in containers on balconies or patios,” he says.




This undated photo provided by Timber Press shows a big oak tree on route 896 in Newark, Del., and is featured in the Douglas Tallamy book "Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard." Tallamy, a professor at the University of Delaware, is urging everyone _ homeowners and renters, in cities, suburbs and rural areas _ to pitch in. The wildlife ecologist and author doesn't just want you to embrace native plants in your yard or on your patio, he wants everyone to see their patches of land as part of a giant quilt. A "Homegrown National Park.'' Tallamy says a massive project like that can go a long way toward nurturing and protecting birds and pollinators. (Douglas Tallamy/Timber Press via AP

His advice:

First, reduce the amount of lawn on your property. Tallamy suggests cutting the size of your lawn by half, retaining, for example, a narrow stretch in the front and just enough in the backyard to create a pathway. “You don’t have to get rid of it, just reduce it,” he says.

Second, plant an oak or hickory tree, both of which provide habitat for a huge diversity of native species. “You don’t have to buy a tree, just plant an acorn. That’s free,” he says.

Third, put in plants that support a diverse community of pollinators, like native milkweed, pie weed or other native plants.

Fourth, get rid of invasive species. The worst are burning bush, barberry, Bradford pears, autumn olive, porcelain berries, bush honeysuckle and Kudzu, Tallamy says.

Fifth, add a bubbling water feature. “Any sort of bubbler where the water is kept clean is great for birds. It’s just a magnet for them,” he says.

Sixth, coordinate with your neighbors. “You don’t have to do all these things on a single property, particularly if your property is small. Maybe your neighbor can plant an oak and you can put lots of native species in containers and install some kind of water feature,” Tallamy explains.

As a whole, the Homegrown National Park should feature all these things on a loosely connected patchwork of land, he says.

“Admission to Homegrown National Park is free and there are no restricted seasons,” he writes in his book.

“As you become familiar with the natural cycles that occur in your yard, you will start to anticipate them, subconsciously at first, but then as something you eagerly await.”


This undated photo provided by Timber Press shows a lawn beauty strip at Mt. Cuba Center in Hockessin, Del, and is featured in the Douglas Tallamy book "Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard." Tallamy, a professor at the University of Delaware, is urging everyone _ homeowners and renters, in cities, suburbs and rural areas _ to pitch in. The wildlife ecologist and author doesn't just want you to embrace native plants in your yard or on your patio, he wants everyone to see their patches of land as part of a giant quilt. A "Homegrown National Park.'' Tallamy says a massive project like that can go a long way toward nurturing and protecting birds and pollinators. (Douglas Tallamy/Timber Press via AP)


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Dutch government asks prosecutors to probe tax office

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The Dutch government reported its own taxation office to public prosecutors on Tuesday, seeking an investigation into possible discrimination in a long-running scandal centered on civil servants trying to track down parents fraudulently claiming child care benefits.

The case involves thousands of parents who had their child care benefit payments stopped or were ordered to repay money amid fraud investigations. In some cases, parents were plunged into financial problems after being wrongly accused of falsely claiming benefits.

The investigation into possible discrimination between 2013 and 2017 comes amid reports of possible profiling by tax authorities as they sought to identify fraudsters. Dutch media have reported that one of the criterion used to select parents for investigation was having dual nationality.


The finance ministry said in a statement that an independent expert who looked into the case based his suspicion of discrimination on “questions in Tax Service systems based on origin.”

Government officials have apologized for the scandal and in March earmarked 500 million euros ($550 million) to compensate more than 20,000 parents.

Prosecutors also have been asked to look into whether civil servants deliberately demanded wrongful payments.

The Dutch minister that oversees the tax office, Alexandra van Huffelen, said it’s important for prosecutors to investigate. It will be up to prosecutors to decide whether to press charges.

“Hopefully, this far-reaching step will contribute to closing in a just manner this painful chapter for so many people,” Van Huffelen said.

Tokyo Olympics protest parody of logo that depicts COVID-19

IN SAVING FACE ONE SHOWS ONESELF AN ASS 
The cover design of Number 1 Shimbun is seen in Tokyo, Tuesday, May 19, 2020. Tokyo Olympics officials are incensed that their games emblem has been used in the cover design of the local magazine that combines the logo with the novel coronavirus. The “look-alike”emblem, which had “COVID-19” written underneath, was published on the cover the the April issue of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan's magazine. It also appeared in an online edition. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)


TOKYO (AP) — Tokyo Olympic officials are incensed that the games emblem has been used in the cover design of a local magazine that combines the logo with the coronavirus.

Tokyo spokesman Masa Takaya said in an online news conference on Tuesday that organizers had requested the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan “take down” the image.

Takaya did not answer a direct question if the organizing committee was planning a legal challenge. He said negotiations were going on “in a private manner” with the Tokyo foreign journalists’ club.

“It is very disappointing to see the games emblem being distorted and associated with the novel coronavirus, which affects human life, people’s lives, the economy, and our society,” Takaya said. “The design is clearly using the design of the Olympic emblem. We therefore consider it an infringement on our legally secured copyright to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic emblem.”


The cover design of Number 1 Shimbun is seen in Tokyo, Tuesday, May 19, 2020. Tokyo Olympics officials are incensed that their games emblem has been used in the cover design of the local magazine that combines the logo with the novel coronavirus. The “look-alike”emblem, which had “COVID-19” written underneath, was published on the cover the the April issue of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan's magazine. It also appeared in an online edition. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)


He said the organizing committee had not yet received a formal reply to its request.

The “look-alike” emblem, which had “COVID-19” written underneath, was published on the cover the the April issue of the club’s magazine. It also appeared in an online edition.

The FCCJ did not respond immediately to a request for comment from The Associated Press.

In an article about the logo published several days ago by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, it named the artist as Andrew Pothecary. It identified him as a British designer based in Japan who serves as the magazine’s art director.

The artist said he viewed the design as a parody, though other designers interviewed by the newspaper suggest parody was difficult with a topic such as the virus and pandemic.

“It is insensitive to many people being affected,” Takaya said.

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German court nixes law allowing foreign telecom monitoring
Stephan Harbarth, Chairman of the Senate at the Federal Constitutional Court and President of the Court, holds a document as he announces the ruling on the BND's powers of surveillance abroad at the court in Karlsruhe, Germany, Tuesday, May 19, 2020. Germany's highest court has ruled that regulations allowing Germany’s foreign intelligence service to monitor the communications of reporters working abroad and others violate the country’s constitution and must be changed. (Uli Deck/dpa via AP)

BERLIN (AP) — Regulations allowing Germany’s foreign intelligence service to monitor the communications of reporters working abroad and others violate the country’s constitution and must be changed, Germany’s highest court ruled Tuesday, deciding in favor of journalists’ rights group Reporters Without Borders and others.
The complaint against the foreign intelligence service, the BND, came after a law was changed allowing the agency, starting in 2017, to collect and evaluate communications from foreigners abroad without having to provide legal justification.
In the complaint, Reporters Without Borders, Germany’s GFF civil rights association, as well as several journalists and others argued that blanket telecommunications surveillance meant that German reporters, and others, working with colleagues in other countries could also be spied upon, in violation of the constitution.

The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe agreed, ruling that the law must be redrawn by the end of 2021 at the latest, saying it was a violation both of Germany’s telecommunication privacy regulations and its protections of the freedom of the press.
“The protection of fundamental rights against German state authority is not limited to German territory,” the court said in a press release after the ruling.
The regulations were initially passed after Germany’s involvement in surveillance abroad was revealed in leaks from former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowdon.
But Christian Mihr, the director of Germany’s chapter of Reporters Without Borders, said “instead of setting clear barriers to international intelligence, the federal government simply wanted to legalize the general overseas surveillance.”
He called the court ruling a “great success.”
“The Federal Constitutional Court has, once again, underlined the importance of the freedom of the press,” he said in a statement.
Snowden, who remains in exile in Russia, called the German court’s ruling “an important step into the right direction.”
In a statement issued via the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, Snowden said he hoped the decision would set an example to other states and lead to the development of international standards banning systems of mass surveillance.

Analysis: Trump flouts the experts, even in own government

WASHINGTON (AP) — When the nation’s top infectious disease doctor warned it could be risky for schools to open this fall, President Donald Trump said that was unacceptable.

When experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention produced a roadmap for how Americans could slowly get back to work and other activities, Trump’s top advisers rejected it.

And when the Food and Drug Administration warned against taking a malaria drug to combat COVID-19 except in rare circumstances, Trump asked his doctor for it anyway.

The coronavirus pandemic has thrown into stark relief the extent of Trump’s disregard for scientific and medical expertise, even when the safety of millions of Americans or his own personal health is on the line. In public briefings and private meetings, he’s challenged the very experts his administration has pulled together to address the crisis, often preferring to follow his own instincts or the advice of allies in the business world or conservative media.

In doing so, Trump appears to be disregarding what has long been considered the special responsibility of the American president to set an example for the nation, unconcerned that taking a personal risk could lead millions of others looking to the White House for guidance to do the same.

“He forgets that he’s president and that what he does and says, people listen to and model themselves on that,” said Lawrence Gostin, a public health expert at Georgetown University.

Health professionals’ concerns became particularly acute this week following Trump’s surprise revelation that he was taking hydroxychloroquine, a drug he and several of his allies have been pushing despite warnings from experts. The FDA cautioned earlier this year that the drug should only be taken for COVID-19 in a hospital or research setting because of potentially fatal side effects.

The president is not in a hospital. He is not participating in a clinical trial. And he doesn’t have the coronavirus. Instead, he told reporters he was taking the drug as a “line of defense” after a pair of White House staffers contracted the virus.

Addressing the criticism of his decision on Tuesday, the president appeared undeterred. He said he was making an “individual decision” and suggested one of the studies raising concerns about the drug was a personal attack.

“It was a Trump enemy statement,” he said.

David Axelrod, who served as a senior adviser to President Barack Obama, said Trump often appears to relish the opportunity to challenge the guidance of the government without recognizing that he is the head of that same government.


“He’s acting as the leader of a populist movement that resents the things government is asking people to do,” Axelrod said.

It’s not new. Trump has a history of flouting scientific and medical expertise, both as a private citizen and as president.

He’s questioned whether childhood vaccines cause autism, despite ample evidence to the contrary. He’s played down dire warnings about the impact of climate change on the environment and public health, pulling the U.S. out of a global accord aimed at reduced emissions and rolling back regulations that would do the same. When he stepped out onto a White House balcony in 2017 to view a solar eclipse, he ignored a well-known warning from scientists and looked directly at the sun without protective glasses.

Ross Baker, a Rutgers University political scientist, said Trump’s dismissive view of scientific expertise echoes the suspicion many of the president’s supporters have of “elites” in politics and other fields.

“His attitude has been ‘I know more than the generals. I know more than the economists.’ Now, it’s ‘I know more than the scientists,’” said Baker, who served as an adviser to former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel and Democrat Sen. Patrick Leahy.

While some of Trump’s scientific skepticism may well be political strategy, the COVID-19 pandemic has raised the stakes. The virus spread swiftly across the world, leaving many Americans uncertain about how to protect themselves and looking to their leaders for best practices on everything from testing to treatment, and now for guidance on how to begin resuming daily activities.

But the messages from the White House have often been muddled. Trump has repeatedly pushed for a more aggressive economic opening than many of his public health advisers and has used his presidential megaphone to amplify unproven, and sometimes dangerous, methods for combating the virus.

At times, that approach has rattled his own advisers, most notably after he mused during a televised briefing that ingesting disinfectant might fight off the virus. That statement prompted an extraordinary outcry, with the manufacturers of household cleaners issuing statements warning against following Trump’s suggestions.

The president’s disclosure that he is taking hydroxychloroquine set off a similar scramble. White House officials urged Americans to follow the recommendations of their doctors, while many doctors said taking the drug could carry significant risk.

“I would not recommend taking this drug unless you are hospitalized and your doctor thinks it makes sense or you’re in a clinical trial,” said Dr. Radha Rajasingham, the principal investigator of a hydroxychloroquine prophylaxis study underway at the University of Minnesota. She added, “It is not helpful to the American people to use it in this context and that worries me.”

One potential bright spot for those concerned the public will follow Trump’s lead: Recent polling suggests most Americans don’t view the president as a reliable source of information on the pandemic.

Just 23% of Americans said they have a high level of trust in what the president is telling the public about the virus, according to an April survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Even some Republicans took a dim view of the president’s reliability: 22% said they had little or no trust in what the president says about the COVID-19 outbreak.

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Madhani reported from Chicago.

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EDITOR’S NOTE — Julie Pace has covered the White House and politics for the AP since 2007. Aamer Madhani has covered the White House for AP since 2019