White House coronavirus adviser Atlas apologizes for Russian TV interview

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House coronavirus adviser Scott Atlas apologized on Sunday for giving an interview to Russia’s Kremlin-backed television station RT, saying he was unaware the outlet was a registered foreign agent in the United States.



Atlas, a neuroradiologist and member of the White House coronavirus task force, appeared on the channel on Saturday and criticized coronavirus lockdowns measures, calling them an “epic failure” at stopping the virus’ spread.

“I recently did an interview with RT and was unaware they are a registered foreign agent,” Atlas wrote on Twitter. “I regret doing the interview and apologize for allowing myself to be taken advantage of.

“I especially apologize to the national security community who is working hard to defend us,” Atlas said.

RT registered as a foreign agent three years ago. A January 2017 report from U.S. intelligence agencies said the television station, which broadcasts on cable in the United States, is “Russia’s state-run propaganda machine” and that it contributed to the Kremlin’s campaign to interfere with the 2016 presidential election in favor of the winning candidate, Republican President Donald Trump.

After that report, the U.S. Department of Justice insisted that RT America comply with requirements under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA).

“The lockdowns ... will go down as an epic failure of public policy by people who refused to accept they were wrong,” Atlas told RT in the Saturday interview.


Public health experts in the United States have previously raised concerns that Atlas, who has no background in infectious diseases, is providing misleading or incorrect information on the pandemic to Trump.

Anthony Fauci, the leading U.S. infectious disease expert, said on Saturday that Atlas is the only pandemic adviser who Trump regularly sees.

“I have real problems with that guy,” Fauci told the Washington Post. “He’s a smart guy who’s talking about things that I believe he doesn’t have any real insight or knowledge or experience in.”

Twitter removes false coronavirus tweet by Trump's favourite health adviser
Scott Atlas tweeted: ‘Masks work? NO!’

Twitter bans ‘false or misleading content’ with potential to harm
Ed Pilkington in New York
Mon 19 Oct 2020 
 

The White House pandemic adviser Scott Atlas has no training in virology or epidemiology. Photograph: Carlos Barría/Reuters

Twitter has removed a tweet by Scott Atlas, a controversial scientist who has Donald Trump’s ear, in which he wrongly stated that masks fail to protect against coronavirus.



The Washington Post, meanwhile, reported that Atlas has scattered discord inside the White House, so infuriating Deborah Birx, the coronavirus response coordinator, that she complained to Vice-President Mike Pence, calling for Atlas to be removed.

The Post reported that at one meeting in the Oval Office, Atlas placed himself behind the Resolute Desk after Trump had left the room. The scientist, a senior fellow from Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institution, denied the account.

On Sunday, Twitter took down the tweet in which Atlas said: “Masks work? NO.” The company said the post violated its policy on Covid-19 misinformation that prohibits “sharing false or misleading content which could lead to harm”.

In a stream of posts, Atlas falsely claimed that several US states and other countries had taken up widespread use of masks without evidence of any positive effect. He also incorrectly said that there were “many harms” to the practice.

Twitter’s move to block Atlas’s public comments is the latest controversy to hit since he joined the White House as a pandemic adviser in August.

A neuroradiologist, Atlas has no training in virology or epidemiology yet is understood to have become the key scientific influence on the president, eclipsing respected experts such as Anthony Fauci, the country’s top specialist in infectious diseases.

Atlas’s views on how to deal with the virus have raised alarm in scientific circles. He has repeatedly cast doubt on masks and social distancing, and suggested people could gain natural self-defenses against the disease even without a vaccine through “herd immunity”.

Shortly after his appointment to the White House, 78 of his former colleagues at Stanford medical school wrote an open letter in which they lamented that many of Atlas’s opinions “run counter to established science”. Robert Redfield, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was recently overheard discussing Atlas on a phone call. “Everything he says is false,” Redfield said.

Coronavirus is back on the ascendant, across the US. Data compiled by Johns Hopkins records more than 8m confirmed cases, with almost 220,000 deaths.

Friday saw the daily number of confirmed cases exceed 70,000 for the first time since July, with almost 900 deaths. In a leaked report, the White House put 26 states in the “red zone” – indicating a dangerous level of new infections – including almost all states in the midwest.

The surge in cases spells political peril for Trump as he finalizes his push for re-election in two weeks’ time. His rival, former vice-president Joe Biden, has put criticism of Trump’s handling of the pandemic at the center of his campaign.

Despite the rising numbers, and despite his own recent illness from the disease, Trump has stuck to his line that the threat of the virus is overplayed. At a rally in Nevada on Sunday he repeated his false claim that the US was “rounding the turn”.

In North Carolina on Sunday, Biden said: “As my grandfather would say, ‘This guy’s gone around the bend if he thinks we’ve turned the corner.’ Things are getting worse, and he continues to lie to us about circumstances.”

Trump and Atlas have regularly been seen in public without wearing masks. Their behavior goes against the official advice of the administration’s own public health agency, the CDC, which recommends mask-wearing in public settings.

Masks are particularly important for preventing the spread of the virus from people who show no symptoms and may not know they are contagious. Face coverings are primarily useful in protecting other people, rather than the individuals wearing them.

The Latest: Mexico mourns doctors on Day of the Dead
By The Associated Press

A portrait of Jose Valencia, a male nurse who died from symptoms related to COVID-19, placed on a Day of the Dead altar made by his daughter at their home in Mexico City, Sunday, Nov. 1, 2020. The weekend holiday isn't the same in a year so marked by death in a country where more than 90,000 people have died of COVID-19, many cremated rather than buried and with cemeteries forced to close. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

MEXICO CITY —- Diminutive figures skeletons in facemasks and medical caps are all too common on Mexico’s Day of the Dead altars this year.

More than 1,700 Mexican health workers are officially known to have died of COVID-19 and they’re being honored with three days of national mourning on these Days of the Dead.

One is Dr. Jose Luis Linares, who attended to patients at a private clinic in a poor neighborhood in Mexico City, usually charging about 30 pesos (roughly $1.50) a consultation.

“I told him, ‘Luis, don’t go to work.’ But he told me, ‘then who is going to see those poor people,’” said his widow, Dr. María del Rosario Martínez. She said he had taken precautions against the disease because of lungs damaged by an earlier illness.

Her Day of the Dead altar this year inlcudes — in addition to the usual marigolds and paper cutouts — little skeleton figures shown doing consultations or surgeries in honor of colleagues who have died.

Amnesty International said last month that Mexico had lost more medical professionals to the coronavirus than any other nation.

Supreme Court changes fuel moves to protect abortion access
By DAVID CRARY

This Oct. 23, 2020, photo provided by Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas shows the new Planned Parenthood health center in Lubbock, Texas. (Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas via The AP)


A vast swath of West Texas has been without an abortion clinic for more than six years. Planned Parenthood plans to change that with a health center it opened recently in Lubbock.

It’s a vivid example of how abortion-rights groups are striving to preserve nationwide access to the procedure even as a reconfigured Supreme Court — with the addition of conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett — may be open to new restrictions.

Planned Parenthood has made recent moves to serve more women in Missouri and Kentucky, and other groups are preparing to help women in other Republican-controlled states access abortion if bans are imposed.


“Abortion access in these states now faces its gravest ever threat,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood’s president. She said the new health center in Lubbock “is an example of our commitment to our patients to meet them where they are.”

The clinic opened on Oct. 23 in a one-story building that had been a medical office and was renovated after Planned Parenthood purchased it. To avoid protests and boycotts that have beset some previous expansion efforts, Planned Parenthood kept details, including the clinic’s location, secret until the opening was announced.

Planned Parenthood says the health center will start providing abortions — via surgery and medication — sometime next year. Meanwhile, it is offering other services, including cancer screenings, birth control and testing for sexually transmitted infections.

Planned Parenthood closed its previous clinic in Lubbock, a city of 255,000 people, in 2013 after the Texas Legislature slashed funding for family planning services and imposed tough restrictions on abortion clinics.

That law led to the closure of more than half the state’s 41 abortion clinics before the Supreme Court struck down key provisions in 2016. There were no clinics left providing abortion in a region of more than 1 million people stretching from Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle south to Lubbock and the oil patch cities of Odessa and Midland.

Women in Lubbock faced a 310-mile (500-kilometer) drive to the nearest abortion clinic in Fort Worth.

Anti-abortion activists have been mobilizing to prevent the return of abortion services to Lubbock — and are not giving up even with the new clinic’s opening.

“Lubbock must not surrender to the abortion industry,” said Kimberlyn Schwartz, a West Texas native who attended Texas Tech University in Lubbock and is now communications director for Texas Right to Life.

Her organization has backed a petition drive trying to persuade the City Council to pass an ordinance declaring Lubbock a “sanctuary city for the unborn.” Abortion opponents hope that designation would lead to either enforcement efforts or lawsuits seeking to block abortion services.

Thus far, the City Council has declined to adopt the ordinance, but activists say they have enough signatures to place it on the ballot in a local referendum.

Texas is one of several red states where Planned Parenthood has sought to expand abortion access. Earlier this year, its health center in Louisville, Kentucky, began providing abortions after obtaining a license from the newly installed administration of Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear.

For the previous four years, anti-abortion Republican Gov. Matt Bevin’s administration refused to issue a license. The change doubled the number of abortion providers in Kentucky from one to two.

Dr. Kara Cadwallader, Planned Parenthood’s chief medical officer for Kentucky and Indiana, said the resumption of abortion services in Louisville had gone smoothly. Anti-abortion protesters routinely appear outside the building, she said, but they were a steady presence even when the center did not provide abortions.

She and her colleagues are bracing for a new wave of anti-abortion legislation from Kentucky’s Legislature, where the GOP holds enough seats to override possible vetoes from Beshear.

“We’ll once again be under siege,” Cadwallader said.

In October 2019, Planned Parenthood’s affiliate in St. Louis opened a large new health center in Fairview Heights, Illinois — about 17 miles (27 kilometers) from its St. Louis clinic. Illinois, where Democrats hold power, has not sought to curtail abortion, and the clinic was intended to provide an extra option for women from Missouri and other nearby Republican-governed states with multiple restrictions.

Missouri, for example, bars the use of telemedicine for abortion services, a policy that has sharply limited the number of medication abortions. Dr. Colleen McNicholas, Planned Parenthood’s chief medical officer for reproductive health services in the St. Louis region, has made clear that medication abortion by telemedicine is available in Illinois.

The Rev. Katherine Ragsdale, who represents many independent abortion providers as president of the National Abortion Federation, said one priority for her members is to make medication abortion more widely available. She also anticipates that it will become more difficult for women to obtain late-term abortions, increasing the need for funding programs that can help pay for travel to clinics that offer those procedures.

Laurie Bertram Roberts is executive director of one such program, the Alabama-based Yellowhammer Fund. She anticipates an increase in the number of low- and middle-income women who will need significant financial help — sometimes topping $10,000 — to travel to distant clinics if access is curtailed in Alabama.

Bertram Roberts also expects more women to resort to do-it-yourself abortions, now that it’s increasingly possible to receive abortion pill drugs by mail.

“We’re talking about a huge amount of people who can possibly do stuff at home safely,” she said. “We’re not going back to the days of back-alley abortions.”

US vote to shape how world warms as climate pact exit looms
By SETH BORENSTEIN

FILE - In this April 4, 2013, file photo, a mechanized shovel loads a haul truck with coal at the Spring Creek coal mine near Decker, Mont. The United States is out of the Paris climate agreement on the day after the 2020 presidential election. Experts say the outcome will determine to some degree just how hot and nasty the world will get in the future. The two presidential candidates have stark differences on fighting human-caused climate change. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown, File)

What happens on election day will to some degree determine how much more hot and nasty the world’s climate will likely get, experts say.

The day after the presidential election, the United States formally leaves the 2015 Paris agreement to fight climate change. A year ago, President Donald Trump’s administration notified the United Nations that America is exiting the climate agreement. And because of technicalities in the international pact, Nov. 4 is the earliest a country can withdraw.

The U.S., the world’s second biggest carbon polluter, will be the first country to quit the 189-nation agreement, which has countries make voluntary, ever-tighter goals to curb emissions of heat-trapping gases. The only mandatory parts of the agreement cover tracking and reporting of carbon pollution, say U.S. officials who were part of the Paris negotiations.

Former Vice President Joe Biden has pledged to put the country immediately back in the Paris agreement, which doesn’t require congressional approval. Experts say three months — from November to the January inauguration — with the U.S. out of the climate pact will not change the world, but four years will.

If America pulls back from Paris and stronger carbon cutting efforts, some nations are less likely to cut back too, so the withdrawal’s impact will be magnified, said scientists and climate negotiators.

Because the world is so close to feared climate tipping points and on a trajectory to pass a temperature limit goal, climate scientists said the U.S. pullout will have noticeable effects.

“Losing most of the world’s coral reefs is something that would be hard to avoid if the U.S. remains out of the Paris process,” said climate scientist Zeke Hausfather of the Breakthrough Institute in Oakland, California. “At the margins, we would see a world of more extreme heat waves.”

If the U.S. remains out of the climate pact, today’s children are “going to see big changes that you and I don’t see for ice, coral and weather disasters,” said Stanford University’s Rob Jackson.

Because the two presidential candidates have starkly different positions on climate change policy, the election could have profound repercussions for the world’s approach to the problem, according to more than a dozen experts.

“That election could be a make or break point for international climate policy,” said Niklas Hohne, a climate scientist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

In pulling out of the agreement, Trump has questioned climate science and has rolled back environmental initiatives that he called too restrictive in cutting future carbon pollution from power plants and cars.

American carbon emissions dropped by less than one percent a year from 2016 to 2019, until plunging probably temporarily during the pandemic slowdown, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. More than 60 countries cut emissions by higher percentages than the U.S. in that time period, according to international data.

“Other countries around the world are obsessed with the Paris Climate Accord, which shackles economies and has done nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in an email. “President Trump understands economic growth and environmental protection do not need to conflict.”

“We’ve also done our fair share” to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday in the Maldives, a climate-vulnerable country. “We stand amongst industrialized nations as a beacon, and we did it not through state-driven, forced rulesets, but rather through creativity and innovation and good governance.”

In the last debate and on his website, Biden pledged to set a goal of zero net carbon emissions from the U.S. by 2050, meaning the country would not put more greenhouse gases into the air than it takes out through trees and other natural and technological sources. Dozens of nations, including top polluting China, have already made similar pledges.

Eleven years ago, the world was on pace to add about another 5 degrees (2.8 degrees Celsius) of warming. But with emission cut pledges from Paris and afterward, the world is facing only about another 2.2 degrees (1.2 degrees Celsius) of warming if countries do what they promise, said Wageningen University’s Hohne.

“If Biden wins, the whole world is going to start reorienting toward stepping up its action,” said climate scientist Jonathan Overpeck, dean of the University of Michigan’s environment program.

If the U.S. remains out of Paris, countries trying to cut emissions drastically at potentially high costs to local industry may put “border adjustment” fees on climate laggards like America to even the playing field, said Nigel Purvis, a climate negotiator in the Clinton and second Bush administrations. The European Union is already talking about such fees, Purvis said.

Trevor Houser, a climate modeler for the independent Rhodium Group, and the computer simulation research group Climate Action Tracker ran calculations comparing a continuation of the Trump administration’s current emission trends to what would happen if Biden worked toward net zero emissions. Houser, who worked briefly in the Obama State Department, found that in the next 10 years a Trump scenario, which includes a moderate economic bounce-back from the pandemic, would emit 6 billion tons (5.4 billion metric tons) more greenhouse gases than the Biden scenario — an 11% difference.

Climate Action Tracker calculated that from reduced U.S. emissions alone in a Biden scenario, the world would be two-tenths of a degree (one-tenth of a degree Celsius) cooler.

“Every tenth of a degree counts,” said Hohne, a Climate Action Tracker team member. “We are running into a catastrophe if we don’t do anything.”

Other nations will do more to limit carbon pollution if the U.S. is doing so and less if America isn’t, said Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald. “In terms of leadership, it will make an immense difference,” she said.

In Paris, the U.S. was crucial in getting the agreement finished. The rest of the world ended up pledging to reduce roughly five tons of carbon pollution for every ton the U.S. promised to cut, according to Houser and Breakthrough’s Hausfather.

Nations also adopted a goal to limit future warming to just a few more tenths of a degree from now. A UN panel of scientists in 2018 said there was only a slim chance of reaching the goal, but said it would likely make a huge difference in helping avert more loss of corals, extreme weather and extinctions.

A second Trump win “could remove whatever vanishingly small chance we have of” not shooting past that stringent temperature goal, Hausfather said.

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This story has been corrected to fix the location of Wageningen University. The university is in the Netherlands, not Germany.

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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears.

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

Experts: Police brutality, racism pushing Black anxiety
By COREY WILLIAMStoday


1 of 3

FILE - Eddie Hall Jr. and his wife Candace stand in front of the broken front window of their Warren, Mich., home, on Thursday, Sept. 10, 2020. Some experts say political and social unrest as well as the coronavirus pandemic has taken a disproportionate physical and financial tolls on Black people, resulting in increased anxiety levels among African Americans. (David Guralnick/Detroit News via AP, File)

WARREN, Mich. (AP) — The events of 2020 already had Eddie Hall on edge.

Then, the troubles of a nation in turmoil landed on Hall’s doorstep in suburban Detroit in September when racist graffiti was scrawled on his pickup truck and shots were fired into his home after his family placed a Black Lives Matter sign in their front window.

“I’m in combat mode. I’m protecting my family,” Hall, a 52-year-old Black man from Warren, told The Associated Press.

Some experts say police brutality, the coronavirus pandemic that has taken disproportionate physical and financial tolls on Black people, and other issues around race have increased anxiety levels among African Americans, like Hall.

The attacks on Hall’s home were investigated as a hate crime and 24-year-old white neighbor, Michael Frederick Jr., eventually was arrested and charged with ethnic intimidation and other crimes.

“We, as Black people, have all of the normal human stressors — work, family, finances — and then we’re inundated with racial pressure at all levels,” said Jessica Graham-Lopresti, assistant professor of psychology at Suffolk University and co-founder of Massachusetts-based BARE — Black Advocacy Resilience Empowerment.

“This idea that, for Black people, we don’t feel — currently in this country — that we have the ability to control our environment and protect ourselves and our families,” she said. “We could still be gunned down in the street. That creates anxiety. That creates stress.”

In May, mostly white men and women protesting Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s orders that closed many businesses and services to stem the spread of COVID-19 openly carried rifles and handguns into the state Capitol.

As many activists take to the streets to maintain public political pressure for change, concern about person

“Especially in the aftermath of Kyle Rittenhouse walking untouched in full view with an assault rifle AFTER shooting another civilian dead,” Gooding added.



Rittenhouse, a white 17-year-old from northern Illinois, is accused of fatally shooting two white protesters and wounding a third in August in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during demonstrations following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man. Rittenhouse was among a number of armed white men who converged on the city, claiming they were protecting property from arson and theft.

After the gunfire, with his AR-15-style rifle over his shoulder and his hands in the air, Rittenhouse walked toward police vehicles that kept going past him, even as a witness shouted, “He just shot them!” Police Chief Daniel Miskinis has explained the response as officers dealing with a chaotic scene.

Sharon Bethune, 56, of Fredericksburg, Virginia, said the events in Kenosha angered her and other Black people.

“This is mind-boggling,” said Bethune, a retiree who managed government accounts for the Environmental Protection Agency. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

For Black professionals and those in the middle class, the anxiety appears to be more pronounced, said Alford Young Jr., a sociology professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

They wonder “how we got to this moment of national leadership after the civil rights movement,” Young said. “There is just extreme anxiety and frustration that people would not have imagined that the kinds of issues surfacing now would have followed an Obama presidency.”

Many working class Black people see the current political landscape with less dread and more “the way it’s always been,” he added.

Candace Hall, Eddie Hall’s wife, said Republican President Donald Trump shoulders part of the blame for how many African Americans are feeling.

Trump, who claims to have done more for Black people than his predecessors, has been accused of using race to stoke division. He has encouraged police to use a heavy-handed approach on people protesting against racism and police brutality. During his first debate with Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, Trump refused to condemn white supremacy.

“He’s opened up Pandora’s box with racism and anger and telling police to beat people up,” said Candace Hall, 55, also an Army veteran.

Ciaran O’Connor, spokesman for New York-based Braver Angels, which seeks to depolarize American politics, said people need to talk to each other, not retreat from tough conversations, as they fight for what they believe in.

“We believe in the power of conversation if you are trying to persuade people in a way to humanize people,” O’Connor said. “If we’re gonna bring positive change, we’re going to have to find ways to have these conversations.”

Powerful typhoon lashes Philippines, 

killing at least 10

By JIM GOMEZ and JOEAL CALUPITAN

1 of 19

An All-Terrain Vehicle is toppled by strong winds and floods from Typhoon Goni as it hits Daraga, Albay province, central Philippines, Sunday, Nov. 1, 2020. The super typhoon slammed into the eastern Philippines with ferocious winds early Sunday and about a million people have been evacuated in its projected path, including in the capital where the main international airport was ordered closed. (AP Photo)

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A super typhoon blew into the eastern Philippines with disastrous force Sunday, killing at least 10 people and triggering volcanic mudflows that engulfed about 150 houses before weakening as it blew away from the country, officials said.

Typhoon Goni blasted into the eastern island province of Catanduanes at dawn from the Pacific with sustained winds of 225 kilometers (140 miles) per hour and gusts of 280 kph (174 mph), threatening some provinces still recovering from a deadly typhoon that hit a week ago.

Goni barreled through densely populated regions and threatened to sideswipe Manila, which shut down its main airport, but shifted southward Sunday night and spared the capital, the government weather agency said.

At least nine people were killed in the hard-hit province of Albay, including a father and son. Villagers fled to safety as the typhoon approached, but the two apparently stayed put in the community in Guinobatan town where about 150 houses were inundated by volcanic mudflow.

“The child was found 15 kilometers (9 miles) away,” Albay Gov. Al Francis Bichara told DZMM radio, adding that the boy was swept away by mudflows and found in the next town.

He did not say whether there were any other residents trapped by the rampaging mudflows in the community and added that downed communications made it hard for people to communicate. The Office of Civil Defense reported that three Guinobatan residents were missing, but it was not immediately clear if they were from the mudflow-hit community.

The other deaths in Albay included a villager who was pinned by a fallen tree. One person was killed in Catanduanes province.



Ricardo Jalad, who heads the government’s disaster-response agency, had feared that the typhoon could wreak major damage due to its enormous force. The Philippine weather agency reinforced those concerns, saying that within 12 hours after the typhoon’s landfall, people could face “catastrophic, violent winds and intense to torrential rainfall.”

Residents were warned of possible landslides, massive flooding, storm surges of up to 5 meters (16 feet) and powerful winds that can blow away shanties. But after hitting a mountain range and repeatedly slamming into coastal provinces, the typhoon gradually weakened, although it remained potentially deadly as it blew out into the South China Sea, forecasters said.

One of the most powerful typhoons in the world this year, Goni evoked memories of Typhoon Haiyan, which left more than 7,300 people dead or missing, flattened entire villages, swept ships inland and displaced more than 5 million in the central Philippines in November 2013.

Manila’s main airport was ordered shut down for 24 hours from Sunday to Monday, and airlines canceled dozens of international and domestic flights. Commuter train services were also suspended and a no-sail policy restriction was imposed by the coast guard due to initial fear over the typhoon’s threatening power. The military and national police, along with the coast guard, were put on full alert.

Jalad said nearly a million people were preemptively moved into emergency shelters.

In a Manila gymnasium that was turned into an emergency shelter, COVID-19 outbreaks were an added worry of displaced residents. The Philippines has had more than 383,000 cases of the virus, the second-most in Southeast Asia behind Indonesia.

“We are scared — our fears are doubled,” said Jaqueline Almocera, a 44-year-old street vendor who took cover at the shelter.

The Philippines is lashed by about 20 typhoons and storms each year. It’s also located on the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire,” where earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are common, making it one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries.

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Associated Press photojournalist Aaron Favila contributed to this report.

#LEGALIZEDRUGS

Oregon could become 1st US state to decriminalize hard drugs
By ANDREW SELSKY AP

This photo from video provided by the Yes on Measure 110 Campaign shows volunteers delivering boxes containing signed petitions in favor of the measure to the Oregon Secretary of State's office in Salem on June 26, 2020. In what would be a first in the U.S., possession of small amounts of heroin, cocaine, LSD and other hard drugs could be decriminalized in Oregon under a ballot measure that voters are deciding on in Tuesday's election. Oregon's Measure 110 is one of the most watched referendums in the state because it would drastically change how the justice system treats people with amounts of the drugs for their personal use. Instead of going to trial and facing possible jail time, people caught with the drugs would have the option of paying $100 fines or attending new "addiction recovery centers." (Yes on Measure 110 Campaign via AP)

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — In what would be a first in the U.S., possession of small amounts of heroin, cocaine, LSD and other hard drugs could be decriminalized in Oregon under a ballot measure that voters are deciding on in Tuesday’s election.

Measure 110 is one of the most watched initiatives in Oregon because it would drastically change how the state’s justice system treats people caught with amounts for their personal use.

Instead of being arrested, going to trial and facing possible jail time, the users would have the option of paying $100 fines or attending new, free addiction recovery centers.


The centers would be funded by tax revenue from retail marijuana sales in the state that was the country’s first to decriminalize marijuana possession.

It may sound like a radical concept even in one of the most progressive U.S. states — but countries including Portugal, the Netherlands and Switzerland have already decriminalized possession of small amounts of hard drugs, according to the United Nations.

Portugal’s 2000 decriminalization brought no surge in drug use. Drug deaths fell while the number of people treated for drug addiction in the country rose 20% from 2001 to 2008 and then stabilized, Portuguese officials have said.

The U.N. Chief Executives Board for Coordination, chaired by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, is also advocating a different approach.

In a 2019 report, the board announced its commitment to “promote alternatives to conviction and punishment in appropriate cases, including the decriminalization of drug possession for personal use.”

Doing so would also “address prison overcrowding and overincarceration by people accused of drug crimes,” said the board, which is made up of the leaders of all U.N. agencies, funds and other bodies.

Oregon’s measure is backed by the Oregon Nurses Association, the Oregon chapter of the American College of Physicians and the Oregon Academy of Family Physicians.

“Punishing people for drug use and addiction is costly and hasn’t worked. More drug treatment, not punishment, is a better approach,” the groups said in a statement.

Opponents include two dozen district attorneys who urged a no vote, saying the measure “recklessly decriminalizes possession of the most dangerous types of drugs (and) will lead to an increase in acceptability of dangerous drugs.”

Three other district attorneys back the measure, including the top prosecutor in Oregon’s most populous county, which includes Portland, the state’s largest city.

“Misguided drug laws have created deep disparities in the justice system,” said Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt. “Arresting people with addictions is a cruel punishment because it slaps them with a lifelong criminal record that can ruin lives.”

Jimmy Jones, executive director of Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action, a group that helps homeless people, said arresting people who are using but not dealing hard drugs makes life extremely difficult for them.

“Every time that this happens, not only does that individual enter the criminal justice system but it makes it very difficult for us, on the back end, to house any of these folks because a lot of landlords won’t touch people with recent criminal history,” Jones said. “They won’t touch people with possession charges.”

The measure would decriminalize possession of less than one gram of heroin or methamphetamine; two grams of cocaine; 12 grams of psilocybin mushrooms; 40 doses of LSD, oxycodone or methadone; and one gram or five pills of MDMA.

The new addiction recovery centers that would be launched in the state would be funded by tax revenues from Oregon’s legal, regulated marijuana industry.

Marijuana tax revenues collected by the state in excess of $45 million annually would fund the centers. Doing so would reduce the amount given to schools, the state police, mental health programs and local governments, according to the ballot measure’s financial impact statement published by the Oregon secretary of state.

The Oregon revenue department said it received about $133 million in marijuana taxes during the most recent fiscal year that started in July 2019 and ended last June.

Opponents have seized on the funding reductions in an attempt to sway voters to vote against the measure and have also said that decriminalizing hard drugs would make young people more likely to start using them.

The state’s voters in 2014 legalized recreational use and sale of marijuana. But it passed by fewer than 200,000 votes of the 1.5 million counted.

Given that margin, the more controversial hard drugs decriminalization measure is unlikely to pass, said Catherine Bolzendahl, director of Oregon State University’s School of Public Policy.

But Christopher McKnight Nichols, associate professor of history at Oregon State University, said it’s hard to gauge the outcome because voter participation seems headed for a historic high, with many first-time voters.

“We don’t know as much about their preferences,” Nichols said.

If Oregon’s voters reject Measure 110, “it may well pass next time, which has been the model for marijuana legalization, for instance, across the country,” Nichols said.

The measure’s political action committee, More Treatment for a Better Oregon: Yes on 110, received a $500,000 donation from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Dr. Priscilla Chan via the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which supports science and education work and promotes criminal justice reform.

“If the measure passes, Oregon will shift to a health-based approach to drugs and addiction,” the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s website says.

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Associated Press writer Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal, contributed to this story.

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Follow Andrew Selsky on Twitter at https://twitter.com/andrewselsky

Many Cubans hope US election will lead to renewed ties
By ANDREA RODRIGUEZ October 29, 2020

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A framed image of Argentine-born Cuban Revolutionary hero Ernesto "Che" Guevara hangs on a wall next to a bust of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln in Gregory Biniowsky's house, a Canadian lawyer and consultant who has lived and worked in Cuba for more than 20 years, in Havana, Cuba, Monday, Oct. 19, 2020. Biniowsky said that Trump’s hardline policy toward Cuba prompts a defensive, knee-jerk reaction among officials here wary of changes to the largely state-run economy. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

HAVANA, Cuba (AP) — Not so long ago the tables at Woow!!! restaurant in Havana were filled with tourists ordering mojitos and plates of grilled octopus.

But as President Donald Trump rolled back Obama-era measures opening Cuba relations, the restaurant grew increasingly empty.

Now entrepreneurs like Orlando Alain Rodríguez are keeping a close eye on the upcoming U.S. presidential election in hope that a win by Democratic challenger Joe Biden might lead to a renewal of a relationship cut short.

“The Trump era has been like a virus to tourism in Cuba,” said Rodríguez, the owner of Woow!!! and another restaurant feeling the pinch.

Few countries in Latin America have seen as dramatic a change in U.S. relations during the Trump administration or have as much at stake in who wins the election. Former President Barack Obama restored diplomatic relations, loosened restrictions on travel and remittances and became the first U.S. chief of state to set foot in the island in 88 years. The result was a boom in tourism and business growth on the island.

Pedestrians wearing face masks amid the new coronavirus pandemic walk past a rooster named "Espartaco," or Spartacus, sitting in the middle of a street in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2020.


“What the United States was doing was not working,” Obama said from the opulent Gran Teatro in Havana during his 2016 visit. “We have to have the courage to acknowledge that truth. A policy of isolation designed for the Cold War made little sense in the 21st century.”

Trump has steadily reversed that opening, tapping into the frustrations of a wide segment of the Cuban American community that does not support opening relations while a communist government remains in power. He put into effect part of a previously suspended U.S. law that permits American citizens to sue companies that have benefited from private properties confiscated by the Cuban government, put a new cap on remittances, reduced commercial flights and banned cruises. The president has also forbidden Americans from buying cigars, rum or staying in government-run hotels.

Wearing a face mask amid the new coronavirus pandemic, Cristobal Marquez, owner of "Cristobal's," the restaurant where Michelle and Barak Obama had lunch during their visit to Cuba in 2016, shows the book made by White House photographer Pete Souza, in Havana, Cuba, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2020. Obama restored diplomatic relations, loosened restrictions on travel and remittances and became the first U.S. chief of state to set foot in the island in 88 years. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)


Most U.S. Embassy staff were removed following a series of still unexplained incidents in which diplomats and their families experienced hearing loss, concussions and other ailments.

A Trump reelection would likely spell another four years of tightened U.S. sanctions while many expect a Biden administration to carry out at least some opening.

Cubans on the island, caught in between the six-decade debacle, said they know little about Biden but want to see Trump out of the White House.

“Please, please, not Trump,” said Daysi López, 50, an employee at a medical office in Havana on a recent afternoon. “He’s put up too many barriers.”

The U.S. election comes at a critical time for the island 90 miles from U.S. shores. Though Cuba has managed to keep virus cases and deaths in check, a halt on international tourism has starved it of an important cash line. The government estimates it lost nearly $5.6 billion between April 2019 and March 2020 as a result of U.S. sanctions, up from $4.3 billion the previous year. Long lines have become common outside grocery stores where basic goods like chicken and toothpaste grow harder to find.

Wearing a face mask amid the new coronavirus pandemic, a child watches trumpeter Carlos Sanchez practices in preparation for tourist arrivals in Old Havana, Cuba, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2020. A Trump reelection would likely spell another four years of tightened U.S. sanctions while many expect a Biden administration to carry out at least some opening. Cubans on island, caught in between the six-decade debacle, said they know little about Biden but want to see Trump out of the White House. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

Wearing a face mask amid the new coronavirus pandemic, a child runs near a dog fight in Old Havana, Cuba, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2020. Few countries in Latin America have seen as dramatic a change in U.S. relations during the Trump administration or have as much at stake in who wins the election. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)


Nidialys Acosta and Julio Álvarez, the owners of Nostalgicar, a family business that takes tourists for rides along the Malecon boardwalk in restored 50s-era Fords and Chevrolets, said they’ve been pummeled by the downturn in recent years. The pair met with influential Republican Cuban American lawmakers during a 2017 trip to Washington in which they advocated for U.S.-Cuba relations to continue.

“Everything we recommended fell on deaf ears,” Acosta said.

Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, said Biden would have “a lot of latitude” to roll back Trump’s Cuba policy, given that broad changes to travel and remittances can be made by executive order. But a Biden administration will also have to reckon with the political ramifications of returning to an opening widely perceived as having done little to spark economic reform or improve civil liberties.

“It doesn’t want to appear that it is weak and capitulating to the Cuban regime,” he said. “On the other hand, it doesn’t want to punish the Cuban people.”



Biden might demand more concessions from the Cuban government in exchange as a result; it is unclear to what extent officials might negotiate. Authorities have long asserted that they will not bend to the demands of the U.S. or any other foreign government.

“Frankly, they lost an opportunity under Obama,” Shifter said. “It is very hard to know what the internal dynamic and deliberations are within the Cuban government.”

Gregory Biniowsky, a Canadian consultant and former business owner on the island, said that if anything Trump’s hardline policy prompts a defensive, knee-jerk reaction among Cuban officials wary of changes to the largely state-run economy.

“We know the Cuban leadership realizes change has to happen,” he said. “But it’s hard to do when you have a besieged fortress-type mentality.”

Small business owners in Cuba said they are surviving almost entirely on their savings while also trying to come up with creative ways to generate income. Woow!!! started doing deliveries, while one of the owners of Nostalgicar has used a shiny classic to provide messenger and transportation services in Havana.

“After 60 years, I’m no longer afraid of what might happen,” Álvarez said. “Cubans find a way.”

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Andrea Rodríguez on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ARodriguezAP

Under Trump, citizenship and visa agency focuses on fraud

By ELLIOT SPAGAT and SOPHIA TAREEN

FILE - In this June 26, 2020, file photo, Aisha Kazman Kammawie, of Ankeny, Iowa, takes the oath of allegiance during a drive-thru naturalization ceremony at Principal Park in Des Moines, Iowa. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has transformed under President Donald Trump to emphasize fraud detection, enforcement and vetting, which has delayed processing and contributed to severe fiscal problems. Its revamp came as the administration sought to cut legal immigration by making it more dependent on employment skills and wealth tests. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The head of the agency handling citizenship and visa applications was surprised when he faced blowback for cutting a reference to the U.S. being a “nation of immigrants” in its mission statement. The son of a Peruvian immigrant added language about “protecting Americans” instead.

L. Francis Cissna argued that America is indisputably a nation of immigrants but that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ mission statement wasn’t the place to say so. Joseph Edlow, who now oversees the agency, said he hasn’t thought about the 2018 kerfuffle, but it crystallized for many how the Trump administration has changed the government’s approach to legal immigration.

USCIS, established with the Department of Homeland Security in 2003, is emphasizing fraud detection, enforcement and vetting those seeking to work, live or become U.S. citizens. Applicants, attorneys and employees call it overkill, while immigration critics say it’s overdue. New Trump administration rules range from making asylum protections more difficult to get to disqualifying more low-income applicants from green cards.

Processing times are longer, and the agency’s backlog of cases stands at 5 million. Making it tougher to get permission to live and work in America has had consequences for USCIS itself: its roughly $5 billion annual budget is funded almost entirely by application fees, which have dwindled with the stricter rules. Financial pressures mounted this summer as USCIS narrowly averted furloughs for 70% of its roughly 20,000 employees.

Curbing legal immigration has been a priority for President Donald Trump as he’s reshaped the immigration system, arguably more than any predecessor. He’s thrilled supporters with an “America first” message and infuriated critics who call his signature domestic issue insular, xenophobic and even racist.

Before the election, The Associated Press is examining several Trump immigration policies, including r estrictions on international students, a retreat from America’s humanitarian role, a virtual shutdown of asylum and now curbing legal immigration.

Trump failed to get Congress to support cuts to the system of immigrants bringing over relatives, but Stephen Miller, a top Trump adviser, said moving to a more “merit based” system, based on skills, would be a priority if the president is reelected.

Democrat Joe Biden offers a sharp contrast: preserve family-based immigration and “streamline” naturalization for green-card holders. He wants a path to citizenship for about 11 million people in the U.S. illegally, which would require congressional support.

Miller told the AP that USCIS was plagued by a “huge amount of fraud” and its workforce “came to see itself as a representative of the benefit-seeker rather than the representative of the American people.”

“This administration has undertaken a thorough revamping of the agency to restore its congressional mission of ensuring that benefits are only awarded to those who are genuinely eligible under law and that, ensuring in admitting them, no harm is done to our economic or national security interests,” he said.

Some critics say USCIS hasn’t provided enough evidence of widespread fraud. Even Louis D. Crocetti Jr., first director of USCIS’ anti-fraud unit who supports Trump’s policies and calls fraud common, says the agency should release more findings.

“If you don’t do that, how can you really justify getting the millions of dollars and continuing your operation?” said Crocetti, who retired in 2011.

The changes are evident in USCIS offices. Workers who decide on citizenship and permanent residency applications in the San Diego office saw their workload grow about 20% when officials ordered all applicants for employment-based green cards be interviewed.

Edlow said the blanket interview requirement has been scrapped and whether such applicants are called in depends on the case.

The agency is bringing back Trump’s rule that dramatically expands criteria for denying green cards to those receiving taxpayer-funded benefits. The U.S. Supreme Court decided in a 5-4 vote in January that the policy could take effect, but enforcement was briefly halted by a federal judge due to the coronavirus.

Processing times for employment-based green cards jumped to 14.5 months in an 11-month period ending Aug. 31, up from 6.8 months in the 2016 fiscal year. For citizenship, it rose to 9.1 months from 5.6 months.

An analysis of all visa categories by the American Immigration Lawyers Association found long waits doubled to 10 months in the 2019 fiscal year from five years earlier.

Natividad Rodriguez, 85, has been waiting since July 2019 for a citizenship interview, the final step before the oath. The Chicago woman and Mexican native had hoped to vote this year.

“We have been waiting a long time,” said daughter Ana Maria Fuentes, who helped her mother apply. “It’s too much time.”

In their defense, administration officials note they approved more than 800,000 citizenship applications in fiscal 2019, the highest since 2008.

But the administration also is trying to reduce applications. For example, USCIS last year started requiring that no spaces on forms be left blank, even if a question doesn’t apply, like a middle name. Agency officials say employees were taking too much time filling in incomplete applications.

Blank spaces have led to rejections, attorneys say. An American Immigration Lawyers Association survey this year found nearly 200 examples nationwide. Applications also were rejected for writing “none” or “not applicable” instead of “N/A,” which most instructions said to use.

The administration checks up on those who clear the hurdles. On a recent afternoon, all cubicles in the anti-fraud wing of the USCIS San Diego office were empty because its nine investigators were knocking on visa-holders’ doors, including one who raised flags because the spouse was living in Georgia.

Nationwide, anti-fraud unit staffing has roughly doubled to about 2,000 under Trump, from less than 1,000. The unit projects 249,335 requests to investigate fraud in fiscal 2021, up from 119,424 in 2016. Edlow says checking if people are “actually married when they say they are” or are working at the job they listed is “an investment in the safety and security of this country.”

As costs from anti-fraud work rose, agency revenue took a hit after Trump ended the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which shields young people from deportation, and Temporary Protected Status, given to 400,000 people escaping natural disasters and civil strife.

Fiscal challenges came to a head in May when USCIS threatened furloughs to tackle a projected $1.2 billion shortfall. The agency didn’t need the money, Edlow said, because application fees rebounded more than expected as offices reopened in June from coronavirus shutdowns and contracts were reviewed for cost savings.

USCIS has been without a Senate-confirmed director since Cissna left in May 2019 in a purge of Homeland Security leaders. Attorneys have challenged the legitimacy of acting Homeland Security leaders in a bid to block new USCIS rules, with mixed results.

A judge in September halted a 20% average increase in visa and citizenship fees, saying in part that two top Homeland Security officials were appointed illegally. Edlow, USCIS deputy director of policy, has been running operations since February.

While some agency employees support the focus on increased vetting, others say some changes are unnecessary and may discourage people from seeking legal status.

“Our job is to keep the doors open but safely secured. The way that it is being administered now, it doesn’t seem like the doors are open,” said Gary Thurman, an employee in Missouri speaking as vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3928 South.

Edlow said he’s focused on better training and technology, including a transition to electronic files.

“Is it going to happen overnight? No, it’s not,” Edlow said. “I do want to get back to a point where we’re flush with money.”

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Tareen reported from Chicago.

GOOD PAYING UNION JOBS

Town built on guns ponders future after Remington plant sale

By MICHAEL HILL

Jacquie Sweeney stands outside the Remington firearms factory in Ilion, N.Y., Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2020. Jacquie Sweeney and her husband were among almost 600 workers fired by the company this week, a few months after Remington Outdoor Co. sought bankruptcy protection for the second time in two years. Successful bidders for the idled plant in bankruptcy proceedings have said they plan to restart at least some production, though details remain scarce.. (AP Photo/Michael Hill)

ILION, N.Y. (AP) — Workers at the sprawling Remington factory in this upstate New York village took pride in a local gunmaking tradition stretching back to the days of flintlock rifles. Now they’re looking ahead with uncertainty.

Jacquie Sweeney and her husband were among almost 600 workers fired by the company this week, a few months after Remington Outdoor Co. sought bankruptcy protection for the second time in two years.

Successful bidders for the idled plant in bankruptcy proceedings have said they plan to restart at least some production, though details remain scarce.

There are high hopes for a successful reload of the plant that dominates the local economy. But these hopes are tempered by questions about how many workers will come back, and when.

“My husband, he’s looking for work, just like everybody else. And I plan on going back to college unless I find a job before I start that up,” said Sweeney, recording secretary for the local unit of the United Mine Workers of America. “That’s all we can really do. We can’t sit around and wait for forever.”

It’s common for people here to say that Ilion is Remington and Remington is Ilion. Company founder Eliphalet Remington started making flintlock rifles on his father’s forge near here in 1816, and the Ilion factory site dates to 1828. Though the company moved its headquarters to Madison, North Carolina, the old factory dominates — literally and figuratively — a village that has long depended on workers making rifles and shotguns to power the economy.

Union signs reading “United We Stand with Remington Workers” are in the windows of local businesses that sell everything from pizza slices to steel-toed boots. At Beer Belly Bob’s beverage center across the street from the plant, Bob McDowell recalled the sales bump on Thursdays and Fridays after shifts ended at 3 p.m.

“I used to call it the beer train,” McDowell said with a smile. “It was busy, and it is gone.”

Remington’s recent history has been a roller coaster ride with a lot of drops. Layoffs have been common. The plant, which employed around 1,200 people eight years ago, was down recently to about 600 union workers plus an estimated 100 or so salaried workers. The company began moving two production lines to a new plant in Huntsville, Alabama, in 2014.

Remington dealt not only with the volatile gun market, but also legal action, after the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre. The gunman who killed 20 children and six educators at the Connecticut school used a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle, which once was made here.

Most workers were furloughed at the end of September as the company went through bankruptcy proceedings. Locals wondered whether it would ever restart.

The company was divvied up by multiple buyers. The bankruptcy court approved Sturm, Ruger & Co.’s $30 million bid for Marlin Firearms, which were made here, and Anoka, Minnesota-based Vista Outdoor’s $81.4 million bid for Remington’s ammunition and accessories businesses.

Roundhill Group’s $13 million bid included the Ilion firearms plant and a handgun barrel factory in Lenoir City, Tennessee.

Roundhill partner Richmond Italia, a paintball industry veteran, said he was approached by Remington CEO Ken D’Arcy about the opportunity, according to documents filed in the bankruptcy case.

“I believe I was approached by Mr. D’Arcy due to my manufacturing business in the paintball gun market and apparently Mr. D’Arcy believed that there may be some synergy,” Italia said in court papers.

Roundhill pledged in court documents to bring back at least 200 workers. They could eventually add hundreds more, but details are not clear.

Roundhill partners did not respond to calls and emails asking about their plans. But Italia told WUTR-TV last week they plan to bring back as many workers as possible within “a couple of months.”

Local officials believe a number of pieces need to be in place before production starts, from a collective bargaining agreement with the union to a new federal firearms license.

One likely product would be Remington’s Model 870 shotguns, said Jamie Rudwall, a district representative for the union. He said the new owners can rely on a trained workforce to produce shotguns for a hot market.

The FBI reports that it has processed more background checks to purchase or possess a firearm in the first nine months of 2020 than any previous year.

“We certainly have that capability of putting every single person back to work at 870s making literally between 1,200 and 1,800 every day. And every one of them will be sold,” said Rudwall, who once worked at the plant.

The UMW said it has held “productive discussions” with Roundhill. Meanwhile, it also has excoriated the outgoing owners for terminating 585 workers this week along with their health care and other contractual benefits. The union said the company is refusing to pay severance and accrued vacation benefits, sparking pickets in Ilion this week.

Local officials say the new owners have also expressed concerns about the efficiency of the old four-story factory, preferring a modern one-floor plant. Vincent Bono, chairman of the Herkimer County Legislature, met with them Thursday and said he believes something can be worked out to keep keep the long local tradition of gun production alive.

“We’re optimistic that Remington’s going to have a home here,” Bono said. “To what degree, we really don’t know.”