Sweden didn’t impose a lockdown, but its economy is just as bad as its neighbors

Published: June 25, 2020 By Steve Goldstein

Shoppers walk past an H&M fashion store in central Stockholm, Sweden, on April 2, 2020. GETTY IMAGE

It is a common refrain from critics of the lockdown. Don’t let the cure — locking down the economy — be worse than the disease it is preventing.

If that is the case, then, Sweden should be a case study in how to manage the disease.


It famously didn’t lock down. Bars and restaurants remained open, as did hairdressers and gyms. The University of Oxford’s government response tracker puts into numbers the light-touch effort, showing Sweden was one of the least restrictive countries in the world.


The University of Oxford’s government response tracker, taken from late March when most countries started locking down.

On the health front, Sweden has paid a heavy price. According to Johns Hopkins University data, Sweden has suffered 50.7 deaths per 100,000 people. That isn’t the worst in the world — Belgium and the U.K. are higher, for example — but far above the 10.4 deaths per 100,000 in Denmark, the 5.9 deaths in Finland and 4.7 deaths in Norway.


But there is also an economic question. Did Sweden benefit economically from avoiding the lockdown?

The economic data doesn’t suggest that. Dhaval Joshi, chief European investment strategist at BCA Research, pitted Sweden against Denmark, noting they speak near-identical languages and share a broadly similar culture and demographic, yet Denmark imposed one of the most aggressive lockdowns globally.




In both countries, the unemployment rate rose 2 percentage points (though Sweden has one extra month of data) and the consumer confidence numbers plunged in both, he said.

Sweden’s consumer troubles can be seen in other data, too.

Passenger car registrations in Sweden fell 37% year-over-year in April and 49% in May. In Denmark, they fell 37% in April and 40% in May.

Sweden’s services industry confidence index in May of -46.9 was actually worse than the EU-wide -43.3 reading, and Denmark’s -41.9.

Why didn’t Sweden benefit economically?

“The simple answer is that in a pandemic, most people will change their behavior to avoid catching the virus. The cautious behavior is voluntary, irrespective of whether there is no lockdown, as in Sweden, or there is a lockdown, as in Denmark,” Joshi said.

“People will shun public transport, shopping, and other crowded places, and even think twice about letting their children go to school.”

Opinion: The coronavirus-led economic recession may be over, but the depression has barely begun

Working people, small businesses and local governments need more income now, or other dominoes will fall

Small-business revenue is down 19% from pre-COVID days, and is flat over the past month despite the heralded re-opening of the economy. Something is seriously wrong. OPPORTUNITY INSIGHTS/TRACKTHERECOVERY.ORG

Published: June 26, 2020 By Rex Nutting

Now that businesses are reopening and calling back furloughed workers, the COVID-19 recession may already be over. The depression has barely begun.

The economy is growing again, but, with 2 million people filing for unemployment checks last week and about 30 million workers already on the dole, it’s still struggling mightily.


There’s no official definition of a depression. Still, today’s economy seems to be a close fit: Millions of workers are losing their jobs permanently. Thousands of small businesses are closed permanently or operating at only a fraction of profitable levels. Debts are mounting, and incomes are not growing fast enough. State and local governments are slashing jobs and services. And only massive, but temporary, federal support prevents millions of families from falling into poverty.

It’s no time to declare Mission Accomplished.


Also read: ‘Make no mistake…the pandemic morphed into a Depression-like crisis,’ says UCLA economist, who predicts U.S. economy won’t recover from coronavirus until 2023
No quick recovery

It’s not just that the coronavirus pandemic is reaching new heights after a bungled reopening. That was to be expected. States experiencing rapidly growing case numbers are already seeing softer growth and even economic contraction in some cases, says Aneta Markowska, chief economist at Jefferies.


Growth at small businesses has lost momentum nationally, she said.

Some policy makers agree that the reinvigorated pandemic will hurt the economy for the rest of this year.

“We’ll be in a situation where the economy is growing more slowly than we might have hoped a few months ago,” Boston Federal Reserve President Eric Rosengren said in an interview with Yahoo Finance this week. He expects the unemployment rate to remain above 10% for the rest of the year.

Some economic forecasters are beginning to agree with Rosengren and other more pessimistic voices, and are dialing back their expectations for a V-shaped recovery that would return the economy to its pre-COVID level within a year.


“Many factors point to what is more likely to be a quarter-to-quarter ‘V’ that does not have staying power, including that COVID is not vanquished, trade remains in contraction, business investment is collapsing, financial conditions are not loose, and equity markets are disconnected from the real economy, potentially contributing to uncertainty enhancing financial turbulence,” says a team of economists at Citi Research led by Catherine Mann.



A longer-term worry is that vital parts of the economy — workers, businesses, lenders, creditors, and state and local governments — won’t get the support they need to survive financially until the virus is beaten.

Bizarrely given the election calendar, there is little urgency in Washington for another round of stimulus payments, especially among Republicans. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin wants the government to send out another check to everyone before Election Day (and Donald Trump apparently agrees), but anonymous White House aides and Republican senators have quashed that idea. Democrats in the House have passed a bill, but that proposal too is dead on arrival in the Senate.

In the end, something will be done, but the fiscal response will be timid and underwhelming, as always.
The pandemic is getting its fuel; the economy is not

Here’s the thing: Both the coronavirus pandemic and the economy need fuel in order to grow, but right now, only the pandemic is getting enough.

Both the pandemic and the economy rely on the most basic human behaviors to thrive: our sociability. The pandemic is getting all the fuel it needs to race out of control from the reckless way unmasked and unrepentant Americans are getting back together to work, play, shop and pray.

These are also the behaviors that would literally sustain the American people (if done in a way that promotes public health).

Consumer spending, which has traditionally been the bedrock of the economy, can’t save us this time because the economy is being starved of its starter fuel: income.

In macroeconomics, it all starts with income. If you have income, you can spend, which then becomes income to the shopkeeper and her employees. And their spending then becomes someone else’s income, and so on and so forth.
Starved of income growth

But in America today, incomes are not growing fast enough, especially for working families, small businesses, and state and local governments.

No income, no spending; no spending, no growth. In fact, incomes may be falling as one-time government payments, expanded unemployment benefits and support for small businesses expire or are scaled back.

There’s another reason why consumer spending can’t spark a strong recovery: The upper-middle class and the rich aren’t spending the way they normally do, according to credit-card data analyzed by Raj Chetty’s Opportunity Insights. They aren’t going out to the theater, or dining out or taking expensive vacations because it’s too dangerous. Furthermore, why engage in conspicuous consumption if no one can see you do it?

If the only people whose incomes haven’t plunged are unwilling to spend until the virus has been beaten, how can the businesses that cater to the carriage trade avoid layoffs and bankruptcy?

If Washington won’t provide more support to working-class families now, there won’t be enough consumer spending to keep struggling Main Street businesses alive much longer. And if those businesses fail, other dominoes will fall. That’s what’s bothering the equity markets.

Read:Consumer sentiment slips in late June as confidence in U.S. economic policies slumps to Trump-era low
State and local governments on the ropes

The most immediate concern is the huge decline in state and local governments’ tax receipts, especially sales and hotel taxes. Current estimates suggest state government’s receipts for the upcoming fiscal year may be down by 10% to 20%, or about $500 billion, with local governments down an equal amount.

The fiscal year for most states starts next week, and without massive support from Congress, most will be cutting services and employment severely. Already, 1.57 million state and local government workers have lost their jobs.

Read:A warning to muni bond investors: Coronavirus recession will decimate state finances

Also:State sales-tax receipts plunge as much as 41% in April amid coronavirus shutdowns — and May could be worse

“It can really weigh on the economy if the states are in tight financial straits,” said Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, at a congressional hearing last week. Already, states and local governments are cutting back on their infrastructure spending and other services.

State and local government spending collapsed after the Great Recession of 2008-2009 as well, which was a major factor in the slow recovery.

The Democrats’ $3 trillion Heroes Act, languishing in the Senate, would provide significant grants to state and local governments to help them avoid spending and employment cuts, but Senate Leader Mitch McConnell has said bankruptcy is a better option.

America seems to be exceptionally bad at public health, but it isn’t much better at economic policy.

Rex Nutting is a MarketWatch columnist.

Exclusive: Obscure Indian cyber firm spied on politicians, investors worldwide

Jack Stubbs, Raphael Satter, Christopher Bing

Fahmi Quadir, founder of Safkhet Capital, poses in New York City, New York, U.S., June 9, 2020. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

By Jack Stubbs, Raphael Satter and Christopher Bing

LONDON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A little-known Indian IT firm offered its hacking services to help clients spy on more than 10,000 email accounts over a period of seven years.

New Delhi-based BellTroX InfoTech Services targeted government officials in Europe, gambling tycoons in the Bahamas, and well-known investors in the United States including private equity giant KKR and short seller Muddy Waters, according to three former employees, outside researchers, and a trail of online evidence.

Aspects of BellTroX’s hacking spree aimed at American targets are currently under investigation by U.S. law enforcement, five people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment.

Reuters does not know the identity of BellTroX’s clients. In a telephone interview, the company’s owner, Sumit Gupta, declined to disclose who had hired him and denied any wrongdoing.

Muddy Waters founder Carson Block said he was “disappointed, but not surprised, to learn that we were likely targeted for hacking by a client of BellTroX.” KKR declined to comment.

Researchers at internet watchdog group Citizen Lab, who spent more than two years mapping out the infrastructure used by the hackers, released a report here on Tuesday saying they had "high confidence" that BellTroX employees were behind the espionage campaign.

“This is one of the largest spy-for-hire operations ever exposed,” said Citizen Lab researcher John Scott-Railton.

Although they receive a fraction of the attention devoted to state-sponsored espionage groups or headline-grabbing heists, “cyber mercenary” services are widely used, he said. “Our investigation found that no sector is immune.”

A cache of data reviewed by Reuters provides insight into the operation, detailing tens of thousands of malicious messages designed to trick victims into giving up their passwords that were sent by BellTroX between 2013 and 2020. The data was supplied on condition of anonymity by online service providers used by the hackers after Reuters alerted the firms to unusual patterns of activity on their platforms.

The data is effectively a digital hit list showing who was targeted and when. Reuters validated the data by checking it against emails received by the targets.


On the list: judges in South Africa, politicians in Mexico, lawyers in France and environmental groups in the United States. These dozens of people, among the thousands targeted by BellTroX, did not respond to messages or declined comment.

Reuters was not able to establish how many of the hacking attempts were successful.

BellTroX’s Gupta was charged in a 2015 hacking case in which two U.S. private investigators admitted to paying him to hack the accounts of marketing executives. Gupta was declared a fugitive in 2017, although the U.S. Justice Department declined to comment on the current status of the case or whether an extradition request had been issued.

Speaking by phone from his home in New Delhi, Gupta denied hacking and said he had never been contacted by law enforcement. He said he had only ever helped private investigators download messages from email inboxes after they provided him with login details.

“I didn’t help them access anything, I just helped them with downloading the mails and they provided me all the details,” he told Reuters. “I am not aware how they got these details but I was just helping them with the technical support.”

Reuters could not determine why the private investigators might need Gupta to download emails. Gupta did not return follow-up messages. Spokesmen for Delhi police and India’s foreign ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

HOROSCOPES AND PORNOGRAPHY

Operating from a small room above a shuttered tea stall in a west-Delhi retail complex, BellTroX bombarded its targets with tens of thousands of malicious emails, according to the data reviewed by Reuters. Some messages would imitate colleagues or relatives; others posed as Facebook login requests or graphic notifications to unsubscribe from pornography websites.

Fahmi Quadir’s New York-based short selling firm Safkhet Capital was among 17 investment companies targeted by BellTroX between 2017 and 2019. She said she noticed a surge in suspicious emails in early 2018, shortly after she launched her fund.

Initially “it didn’t seem necessarily malicious,” Quadir said. “It was just horoscopes; then it escalated to pornography.”

Eventually the hackers upped their game, sending her credible-sounding messages that looked like they came from her coworkers, other short sellers or members of her family. “They were even trying to emulate my sister,” Quadir said, adding that she believes the attacks were unsuccessful.

U.S. advocacy groups were also repeatedly targeted. Among them were digital rights organizations Free Press and Fight for the Future, both of whom have lobbied for net neutrality. The groups said a small number of employee accounts were compromised, but the wider organizations' networks were untouched. The spying on those groups was detailed in a report here by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2017, but has not been publicly tied to BellTroX until now.

Timothy Karr, a director at Free Press, said his organization “sees an uptick in breach attempts whenever we’re engaged in heated and high-profile public policy debates.” Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future, said: “When corporations and politicians can hire digital mercenaries to target civil society advocates, it undermines our democratic process.”

While Reuters was not able to establish who hired BellTroX to carry out the hacking, two former employees said the company and others like it were usually contracted by private investigators on behalf of business rivals or political opponents.

Bart Santos of San Diego-based Bulldog Investigations was one of a dozen private detectives in the United States and Europe who told Reuters they had received unsolicited advertisements for hacking services out of India - including one from a person who described himself as a former BellTroX employee. The pitch offered to carry out “data penetration” and “email penetration.”

Santos said he ignored those overtures, but could understand why some people didn’t. “The Indian guys have a reputation for customer service,” he said.

Additional reporting by Alasdair Pal in NEW DELHI and Ryan McNeill in LONDON; Editing by Jonathan Weber, Chris Sanders and Edward Tobin

U.S. fireworks purveyor sees 'perfect storm' of forces behind explosive demand

EVERYBODY IS GUY FAWKES THESE DAYS

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The piercing boom of illegal fireworks in New York is music to the ears of Joe VanOudenhove, who runs a legal fireworks business in Pennsylvania.

Shoppers look through fireworks for sale at Sky King Fireworks in Morrisville, Pennsylvania, U.S., June 24, 2020. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

VanOudenhove is by no means the only source of the nighttime explosions that have drawn a raft of complaints in New York, but his stores are enjoying an unprecedented pyrotechnics craze in a country constrained by the coronavirus.

“It’s a banner year for the fireworks industry,” he said. “The uptick in demand and sales of fireworks is coast to coast.”

VanOudenhove, the managing partner of Sky King Fireworks whose 20 stores in four states make it one of the largest purveyors of fireworks on the East Coast, estimates that recent sales are up from 50% to 200% from last year, more than anything he has seen in 25 years.

A “perfect storm” of forces is behind the burst of demand for the sky rockets, roman candles and other glittering and exploding consumer grade fireworks Sky King sells, VanOudenhove said.

But much of it has to do with families being starved for entertainment in a locked-down world without concerts or sporting events, he said.

“A few weeks ago, we had a family drive to Erie, Pennsylvania, from either New Jersey or New York somewhere and spend $150 on fireworks because they just wanted to get out of the house,” he said.

The fireworks rage has shattered the evening quiet of many a U.S. neighborhood, prompting a flood of complaints, especially in New York where calls to police about fireworks in the first half of June jumped one-hundredfold from last year.

VanOudenhove said on Friday he has not seen any out-of-state police around his stores since New York officials launched a fireworks crackdown on Tuesday.

Customers are asked to sign forms saying that they understand the rules of the fireworks’ final destination, he said.


And they keep coming.

“I don’t think we’ll see this again,” he said. “I think is a one-time deal.”


So seriously, what’s up with the fireworks everywhere these days?

Published: June 24, 2020 By Associated Press

Fireworks explode during Juneteenth celebrations above the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn on June 19. ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK — They are a symbol of celebration, loudly lighting up the night sky and best known in the U.S. as the explosive exclamation point to Fourth of July festivities.

This year, fireworks aren’t being saved for Independence Day.

They’ve become a nightly nuisance ringing out from Connecticut to California, angering sleep-deprived residents and alarming elected officials.


All of them want to know: Why the fascination with fireworks, and where is everybody getting the goods?


“I had that same question,” said Julie L. Heckman, executive director of the American Pyrotechnics Association.

Theories range from coordinated efforts to blame those protesting police brutality to bored people blowing off steam following coronavirus lockdowns. Most states allow at least some types of consumer fireworks, making them difficult to contain in cities like New York where they’re banned because people can drive a couple of hours away to buy them legally.


New York Mayor Bill de Blasio set up a multiagency task force in hopes of getting answers, after blasts from Brooklyn to the Bronx have people in the city that never sleeps desperate to actually get some.

Made up of police, firefighters and the Sheriff’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation, the task force will conduct sting operations to try to stop the sales of explosives that are proving dangerous. A 3-year-old boy was injured Wednesday while watching fireworks from her apartment window.

“This is a real problem. It is not just a quality-of-life problem and a noise problem,” de Blasio said.

Many Fourth of July celebrations will be smaller or eliminated entirely because of coronavirus restrictions. Yet the business of fireworks is booming, with some retailers reporting 200% increases from the same time last year, Heckman said.


Her industry had high hopes for 2020, with July 4 falling on a Saturday. Then came the pandemic and its closures and cancellations, leaving fireworks retailers worried they wouldn’t be able to scratch out much of a sales season.

Those fears have gone up in smoke.

“Sales are off the hook right now. We’re seeing this anomaly in use,” Heckman said. “What’s concerning to us is this usage in cities where consumer fireworks are not legal to use.”

Officials have the same concern.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said there are too many reports of fireworks being set off across the state, where they are mostly illegal.

“This is no way to blow off steam,” he told reporters Tuesday in Trenton, the capital.

New Jersey outlaws pyrotechnics except for sparklers and snakes, which produce smoke but don’t explode, though residents have easy access to fireworks at shops in Pennsylvania.

In Morrisville, Pa., Trenton’s neighbor, a big shop sits at the foot of the bridge leading to New Jersey. On Tuesday, the parking lot was nearly full, with cars primarily from New Jersey and Pennsylvania, but others from New York, North Carolina and even Texas.

Officials in Oakland, Calif., say they have received more complaints of illegal fireworks and reports of celebratory gunfire this year than is typical before the Fourth of July. At least five fires have been linked to fireworks since late May, officials said.

In Denver, authorities seized up to 3,000 pounds of illegal fireworks discovered during a traffic stop this week.

Theories abound for why fireworks have gotten so popular.

Some speculate on social media that police are either setting them off themselves or giving them to local teens in hopes people blame those protesting racist policing. Another claim says police are just harassing communities of color.

“My neighbors and I believe that this is part of a coordinated attack on Black and Brown communities by government forces,” tweeted the writer Robert Jones Jr., whose recent posts on fireworks have been retweeted thousands of times.

A video captured in New York appears to show fire department staff setting off the explosives outside their station.

Pyrotechnics expert Mike Tockstein, who has directed hundreds of professional fireworks shows, thinks there’s an easier explanation: the upcoming holiday and a nation filled with young people fed up with quarantines.

“I’ve heard a lot of conspiracy theories, and none of them are based in logic or data or facts,” said Tockstein, owner of Pyrotechnic Innovations, a California-based company that trains fireworks professionals.

“Fireworks are used across the entire country for a full month leading up to the Fourth of July,” he said. “There is a slight uptick, but I don’t think it’s anything more than people are stuck at home and hey, look, fireworks are available.”

One theory that can probably be blown up: organizers of canceled Fourth of July events passing surplus products to recreational users.

“Nothing could be further from the truth in that regard,” Heckman said, “because that would be a felony.”

Those who sell professional fireworks, which are much more dangerous for amateurs to fire, need licenses from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and goods are housed in secure facilities, often guarded.

“It’s like the Fort Knox of fireworks,” said Larry Farnsworth, a spokesman for the National Fireworks Association.

Retail use falls under the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

The fireworks Heckman is seeing aren’t professional. Retail aerial fireworks are capped at under 2 inches in diameter and burst at just under 200 feet. Professional fireworks are wider and can explode hundreds of feet higher.

Still, they can be a bother at any height for young children, pets and veterans and others with post-traumatic stress disorder.

In Hartford, Conn., police say they have been responding to up to 200 complaints a day. Connecticut allows only fireworks that don’t explode or launch into the air, but they’re legal a drive away in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.

Philadelphia has some restrictions on fireworks and warned of their dangers this week after a number of complaints.

“We understand the absence of in-person festivals may cause some to crave the excitement of an enormous fireworks display over the river. But the simple fact is that these are extremely dangerous products, and the risks far outweigh the momentary excitement of the explosions,” city Managing Director Brian Abernathy said.

The light shows could last a while longer. Many pop-up seasonal stores only opened this week. Tockstein predicts more people will buy fireworks in the coming weeks as they realize traditional July 4 displays won’t happen.

“I think with all these public events being canceled, more families will bring the celebration home for the Fourth of July,” Heckman said.

DERELICTION OF DUTY

White House does not commit to temperature checks in meeting with U.S. airlines

WASHINGTON/CHICAGO (Reuters) - Top U.S. airline executives met on Friday with Vice President Mike Pence and other senior administration officials but did not come away with any commitments from the White House on mandating temperature checks for airline passengers.

Pence met with the chief executives of United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, JetBlue Airways and the president of Southwest Airlines at the White House alongside Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) director Mark Redfield, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and other officials.

Airlines want the U.S. government to administer temperature checks to all passengers in a bid to reassure the public.


The Trump administration is open to the idea of having the Transportation Security Administration conduct the tests, but there are still many unanswered questions, including what would happen to passengers who had high fevers and were denied boarding and how to pay for the screening.

Major airlines on Thursday said they would refund air fares to passengers denied boarding if the government conducted tests.

The CDC does not want to be responsible for travelers with high fevers, two people briefed on the meeting said.

The aviation industry, suffering an unprecedented downturn in travel, has urged the government to mandate measures that could help reassure passengers on the safety of travel. Airline executives told government officials that the public views temperature checks and face coverings as two key factors to boost confidence in air travel. Government officials plan to keep studying the idea, officials said.

Trade group Airlines for America said it looked “forward to working with the administration to identify and implement initiatives that help relaunch the U.S. airline industry.”

Representative Bennie Thompson, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, said last week the Trump administration should not mandate temperature checks without adopting formal regulations.

CME Group fines Andersons Inc $2 million for wheat trading violations

CRIMINAL CAPITALISM BUSINESS AS USUAL

CHICAGO (Reuters) - CME Group (CME.O), parent of the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), has ordered The Andersons Inc (ANDE.O), an Ohio-based grain business, to pay a $2 million fine for violating futures trading rules in late 2017, the exchange said in a statement on Friday.

The Andersons confirmed the settlement in a statement to Reuters and said it cooperated with the CME’s investigation.

“We do not believe we engaged in any wrongdoing,” it said in the statement.

The 6th-largest U.S. commercial grain handler by capacity operates several Ohio grain warehouses that also serve as delivery points for CBOT wheat futures.

According to CME, The Andersons registered 2,000 contracts of wheat certificates for delivery against CBOT December 2017 wheat futures on Nov. 29, 2017 - a day before the first notice day for deliveries – in an effort to manipulate the spread, or price difference, between futures contracts.

At the time, the wheat registrations surprised traders, and CBOT December futures fell sharply the next day, widening the price spread between the December and back-month contracts. The exchange said The Andersons placed bids in futures spreads in anticipation of the market impact of its delivery registrations.

A large number of CBOT delivery registrations can signal that end-users such as flour mills are amply supplied and that there is plenty of wheat to go around. That information, in turn, can depress futures prices.

“The Andersons registered the certificates with the belief that the wheat spread would widen and trade into its resting bids. The Andersons then re-purchased certificates at reduced prices,” the CME Group statement said. In the month leading up to the first notice day, the Andersons sold wheat to flour mills in the Toledo, Ohio, area in order to limit demand for the grain, the CME statement said. Such a move could further support the perception of weak cash-market demand, one trader said.

Attorney General Barr forms panel on 'anti-government extremism'

Simon Lewis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Attorney General William Barr on Friday ordered the establishment of a task force to counter what he called “anti-government extremists” committing violence as protests against police brutality convulse the United States.

In a memo to law enforcement and prosecutors released by the Department of Justice, Barr said alleged extremists had “engaged in indefensible acts of violence designed to undermine public order,” including attacking police officers, damaging property and threatening innocent people.

Protests have spread nationwide over George Floyd’s death in police custody last month and the deaths of other African Americans at the hands of police.

FALSE EQUIVALENCIES 

Although largely peaceful, some demonstrators have turned violent, which President Donald Trump and his allies have blamed on left-wing extremists among the protesters.

Barr said the extremists “profess a variety of ideologies.”

“Some pretend to profess a message of freedom and progress, but they are in fact forces of anarchy, destruction, and coercion,” Barr said.

Barr named the militant anti-government movement known as the “boogaloo,” as well as the left-wing Antifa as among those posing “continuing threats of lawlessness”.

Antifa is an amorphous movement whose adherents use confrontational tactics to oppose people or groups they consider authoritarian or racist.

ANTIFASCISTS DEFEND PEACEFUL PROTESTERS FROM ASSAULTS BY FASCISTS

“Boogaloo” members believe the United States will enter into a second civil war, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups. While the ideology itself is not white supremacist, some white supremacist groups have embraced it, the Anti-Defamation League has found.

Federal prosecutors filed charges early this month against three alleged members of the movement accused of plotting to cause violence and destruction at a Las Vegas protest.


The new task force would be headed by two U.S. attorneys, from Texas and New Jersey, Barr said.

It would include members from different law enforcement agencies, but would “particularly draw on the capabilities of the FBI,” he said.

Facebook will label newsworthy posts that break rules as ad boycott widens

Elizabeth Culliford, Sheila Dang

(Reuters) - Facebook Inc said on Friday it will start labeling newsworthy content that violates the social media company’s policies, and label all posts and ads about voting with links to authoritative information, including those from politicians.

A Facebook spokeswoman confirmed its new policy would have meant attaching a link on voting information to U.S. President Donald Trump’s post last month about mail-in ballots. Rival Twitter had affixed a fact-checking label to that post.

Facebook has drawn heat from employees and lawmakers in recent weeks over its decisions not to act on inflammatory posts by the president.

“There are no exceptions for politicians in any of the policies I’m announcing here today,” Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post.

Zuckerberg also said Facebook would ban ads that claim people from groups based on race, religion, sexual orientation or immigration status are a threat to physical safety or health.

The policy changes come during a growing ad boycott campaign, called “Stop Hate for Profit,” that was started by several U.S. civil rights groups after the death of George Floyd, to pressure the company to act on hate speech and misinformation.

Zuckerberg’s address fell short, said Rashad Robinson, president of civil rights group Color Of Change, which is one of the groups behind the boycott campaign.

“What we’ve seen in today’s address from Mark Zuckerberg is a failure to wrestle with the harms FB has caused on our democracy & civil rights,” Robinson tweeted. “If this is the response he’s giving to major advertisers withdrawing millions of dollars from the company, we can’t trust his leadership.”

Shares of Facebook closed down more than 8% and Twitter ended 7% lower on Friday after Unilever PLC said it would stop its U.S. ads on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for the rest of the year, citing “divisiveness and hate speech during this polarized election period in the U.S.”

More than 90 advertisers including Japanese carmaker Honda Motor Co Ltd’s U.S. subsidiary, Unilever’s Ben & Jerry’s, Verizon Communications Inc and The North Face, a unit of VF Corp, have joined the campaign, according to a list by ad activism group Sleeping Giants

Hours after Facebook's announcement, Coca-Cola Co said starting from July 1, it would pause paid advertising on all social media platforms globally for at least 30 days. bit.ly/3geAHpF
One of Facebook’s top spenders, consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble Co, on Wednesday pledged to conduct a review of ad platforms and stop spending where it found hateful content. P&G declined to say if it had reached a decision on Facebook.

The campaign specifically asks businesses not to advertise on Facebook’s platforms in July, though Twitter has also long been urged to clean up alleged abuses and misinformation on its platform.

“We have developed policies and platform capabilities designed to protect and serve the public conversation, and as always, are committed to amplifying voices from under-represented communities and marginalized groups,” said Sarah Personette, vice president for Twitter’s Global Client Solutions.
]

“We are respectful of our partners’ decisions and will continue to work and communicate closely with them during this time.”

In a statement, a Facebook spokeswoman pointed to its civil rights audit and investments in Artificial Intelligence that allow it to find and take action on hate speech.

“We know we have more work to do,” she said, noting that Facebook will continue working with civil rights groups, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, and other experts to develop more tools, technology and policies to “continue this fight.”


Reporting by Sheila Dang and Elizabeth Culliford; Additional reporting by Katie Paul and Rama Venkat, Editing by Dan Grebler, Jonathan Oatis and Richard Chang

Trump's spending for border wall rejected by U.S. appeals court
Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) - A federal appeals court on Friday said U.S. President Donald Trump was wrong to divert $2.5 billion meant for the Pentagon to build part of his long-sought wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.


FILE PHOTO - U.S. President Donald Trump tours a section of recently constructed U.S.-Mexico border wall in San Luis, Arizona, U.S., June 23, 2020. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

In a pair of 2-1 decisions, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the White House lacked constitutional authority for the transfer, noting that Congress had denied the funding and finding no “unforeseen military requirement” to justify it.

The court also said California and New Mexico, which share a border with Mexico and were among 20 states suing the government, had legal standing to sue.

Chief Judge Sidney Thomas said “the Executive Branch’s failure to show, in concrete terms, that the public interest favors a border wall is particularly significant given that Congress determined fencing to be a lower budgetary priority and the Department of Justice’s own data points to a contrary conclusion.”

Trump had declared a national emergency at the border in February 2019 to access the funds.


A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra praised the San Francisco-based court for halting Trump’s “unlawful money grab,” saying taxpayers deserve to know their money goes where Congress intends.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the decisions “a great victory for the rule of law,” saying Trump undermined military readiness to fulfill his “outrageous campaign promise” to build a wall.

The appeals court also ruled that the Sierra Club and Southern Border Communities Coalition could sue over the diversion and deserved an injunction.

That ruling may be symbolic because the U.S. Supreme Court said last July the nonprofits likely had no legal right to sue.


The Supreme Court also let the $2.5 billion be spent while litigation continued, blunting the likely impact of Friday’s decisions.

President Bill Clinton appointed both judges in Friday’s majority. Trump appointed the dissenting judge. Friday’s decisions totaled 184 pages and upheld lower court rulings.

The cases are California et al v Trump et al, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 19-16299 and 19-16336; and Sierra Club et al v Trump et al in the same court, Nos. 19-16102 and 19-16300.


Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Sonya Hepinstall

SPANISH FLU 2.0

Coronavirus traces found in March 2019 sewage sample, Spanish study shows

Nathan Allen, Inti Landauro

MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish virologists have found traces of the novel coronavirus in a sample of Barcelona waste water collected in March 2019, nine months before the COVID-19 disease was identified in China, the University of Barcelona said on Friday.


FILE PHOTO: The ultrastructural morphology exhibited by the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV), which was identified as the cause of an outbreak of respiratory illness first detected in Wuhan, China, is seen in an illustration released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. January 29, 2020. Alissa Eckert, MS; Dan Higgins, MAM/CDC/Handout via REUTERS.

The discovery of virus genome presence so early in Spain, if confirmed, would imply the disease may have appeared much earlier than the scientific community thought.

The University of Barcelona team, who had been testing waste water since mid-April this year to identify potential new outbreaks, decided to also run tests on older samples.

They first found the virus was present in Barcelona on Jan. 15, 2020, 41 days before the first case was officially reported there.

Then they ran tests on samples taken between January 2018 and December 2019 and found the presence of the virus genome in one of them, collected on March 12, 2019.

“The levels of SARS-CoV-2 were low but were positive,” research leader Albert Bosch was quoted as saying by the university.


The research has been submitted for a peer review.

Dr Joan Ramon Villalbi of the Spanish Society for Public Health and Sanitary Administration told Reuters it was still early to draw definitive conclusions.

“When it’s just one result, you always want more data, more studies, more samples to confirm it and rule out a laboratory error or a methodological problem,” he said.

There was the potential for a false positive due to the virus’ similarities with other respiratory infections.

“But it’s definitely interesting, it’s suggestive,” Villalbi said.

Bosch, who is president of the Spanish Society of Virologists, said that an early detection even in January could have improved the response to the pandemic. Instead, patients were probably misdiagnosed with common flu, contributing to community transmission before measures were taken.


Prof. Gertjan Medema of the KWR Water Research Institute in the Netherlands, whose team began using a coronavirus test on waste water in February, suggested the Barcelona group needs to repeat the tests to confirm it is really the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Spain has recorded more than 28,000 confirmed deaths and nearly 250,000 cases of the virus so far.


Reporting by Emma Pinedo, Nathan Allen and Inti Landauro, writing by Inti Landauro and Andrei Khalip, Editing by Angus MacSwan