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Searchers find 59 bodies in Mexico mass graves, dig for more

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-30/searchers-find-59-bodies-in-mexico-mass-graves-dig-for-more

Search teams dug for more remains Thursday at a site in central Mexico where 59 bodies have already been found in clandestine graves over the past week in an area known as a cartel battleground. It was the largest such burial site found to date in Guanajuato, the state with the largest number of homicides in Mexico, though bigger clandestine burial sites have been excavated in other parts of the country. Especially striking about this discovery, but also a testament to the prevailing level of fear, is that the site is in the town of Salvatierra, not a desolate area out in the countryside. The head of the official National Search Commission, Karla Quintana, said in an interview with W Radio that people had to have known that bodies were being disposed of there. “This place is in a neighborhood,” Quintana said. “To get there you have to pass homes, you have to pass streets ... the people know.” The site is a vacant lot just under a half-mile from the city’s main plaza. It is located next to the Lerma River, on the other side of which is a park. Nearby stands a slaughterhouse. Quintana said the tip came about two weeks ago from relatives looking for missing loved ones. She said searchers have found indications that more bodies may be buried there, so the search continues. The goal is to recover the bodies, identify them and return the remains to their families, she said. Quintana said many victims seemed young and there were a significant number of women. Quintana announced the find late Wednesday, calling it “a sad and terrible discovery.” The bodies were extracted over the last week from 52 pits at a property in Salvatierra. The scene was considered dangerous enough that the army and national guard provided security for the excavations. The area is near the border with Michoacan state and there is known to be a significant organized-crime presence. On Thursday, the site of the burial pits was cordoned off by police. Leticia Valencia, the mother of a missing man, waited outside the police perimeter, hoping she might be allowed to enter to look for any signs her son might have been among the bodies buried there. “What I want to do is to be allowed to go inside, to see if I can recognize any of the clothing they have excavated,” Valencia. Valencia’s son, José Manuel Fabián Valencia, disappeared along with a friend in 2018, and has not been heard from since. It’s a tale of desperation heard all too frequently in Guanajuato. But when photos began circulating on social media this week of the excavations at the vacant lot, among the items pulled from the graves was a boot that Valencia thought might be her son’s. That glimmer of hope — of at least finding her son’s remains, and be able to finally say farewell to him — led her to the excavation site. “He could be here,” she said. Guanajuato has been the scene of bloody turf battles between the Jalisco cartel and local gangs backed by the Sinaloa cartel. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Thursday the situation in Guanajuato is “very difficult.” He said the deployment of the national guard in the state was at least allowing authorities to reach areas that were previously inaccessible due to the sway of organized crime.

'Our heart breaks': South digs out from Zeta's wrath

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-30/our-heart-breaks-south-digs-out-from-zetas-wrath

Trees on top of buses and cars. Roofs ripped off homes. Boats pushed onto the highway by surging seawater. Hundreds of thousands of people left in the dark. The remnants of Hurricane Zeta were far from land over the Atlantic on Friday, but people across the South were still digging out from the powerful storm that killed six people. The wind effects of Zeta, which came ashore in Cocodrie, La., and barreled northeast, were felt all the way from the Gulf Coast to southern New Jersey. At the height of the outages, as many as 2.6 million people were without power across seven states from Louisiana to Virginia. Utility crews were out assessing the damage and fixing it. In Louisiana, one of the hardest hit areas was Grand Isle, a barrier island community south of New Orleans. Gov. John Bel Edwards called the damage there “catastrophic” and ordered the Louisiana National Guard to fly in soldiers to assist with search-and-rescue efforts. Dodie Vegas, who with her husband owns Bridge Side Marina on Grand Isle, said damage was minimal at their waterside complex of cabins, campgrounds and docking facilities, but the rest of the island wasn’t so lucky. “As far as you can see, going down the island, the power lines are cracked in half,” she said by phone Thursday after riding out the storm with family. She described torn-off roofs and scattered debris: “The middle of the island looks like a bomb was dropped.” A man was electrocuted in New Orleans, and four people died in Alabama and Georgia when trees fell on homes, authorities said, including two people who were pinned to their bed. In Biloxi, Miss., a man drowned when he was trapped in rising seawater. Officials repeatedly stressed that the risks were not over — pointing out that fatalities often come after a storm has passed, from things like breathing toxic generator fumes or being electrocuted by downed power lines. Zeta was the 27th named storm of a historically busy year, with more than a month left in the Atlantic hurricane season. It set a new record as the 11th named storm to make landfall in the continental U.S. in a single season, well beyond the nine that hit in 1916. And the COVID-19 pandemic has only made things more difficult for evacuees. “Our heart breaks because this has been a tough, tough year,” said Gov. Edwards, whose state has taken the brunt of the hurricanes. Every storm is different, and with Zeta the biggest threat was its wind. The hurricane intensified quickly and was just shy of a major, Category 3 storm when it hit the Louisiana coast. The howling gale toppled trees and knocked limbs off stately oaks in New Orleans, and in Mississippi the storm surge whipped up by the winds tossed a shrimping boat into a front yard. Mayor Sheldon Day of Thomasville, Ala., said hundreds of trees fell in roads and on homes, while some gas station canopies blew over. “At one point, every major thoroughfare was blocked by trees,” Day said. Many people were still assessing the damage. Keith Forrest of Bridge City, La., was launching a boat with his nephew in Lafitteon Thursday to try to get to his fishing camp. “I got a phone call because the roof blew off one camp,” Forrest said. With just a few days until the Nov. 3 election, there were concerns about whether the storm would hamper voters’ ability to get to the polls. Far fewer early voters showed up after the storm in Pascagoula, Miss., a court clerk said, and power failures in two Georgia counties disrupted voting. In Louisiana, getting power back to polling centers was a priority as was letting voters know quickly if there were any changes to locations come Tuesday. In Georgia, a group of civil rights organizations asked the governor to extend early voting hours Friday. In the remote area of Plaquemines Parish, La., commercial fisherman Acy Cooper said his boats survived the storm. But without electricity, he feared operations could be shut down as long as two weeks. “Without no lights, none of the docks can work,” he said. “Everything’s automated now — the scales and the conveyors.” The heightened storm activity has focused attention on climate change, which scientists say is causing wetter, stronger and more destructive storms. And as bad as the 2020 hurricane season has been, it isn’t over. Forecasters said disturbed air off the northern coast of South America could become a tropical depression and head toward Nicaragua by early next week — a forecast not lost on Louisiana’s governor. “Let’s not pray it on anybody else,” Edwards said. “Let’s just pray it away from us.”

Azerbaijani forces close in on key town in Nagorno-Karabakh

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-29/azerbaijani-forces-close-in-on-key-town-in-nagorno-karabakh

The Azerbaijani army closed in Thursday on a key town in Nagorno-Karabakh after more than a month of intense fighting, while top diplomats from Azerbaijan and Armenia prepared for more talks to try to end their long conflict over the separatist territory. Nagorno-Karabakh’s separatist leader, Arayik Harutyunyan, said Azerbaijani troops had advanced to within about three miles of the strategically located town of Shushi. He urged residents to mobilize all their resources to fend off the attack. “The one who controls Shushi controls Nagorno-Karabakh,” Harutyunyan said in a video address from the town’s cathedral, which was severely damaged by Azerbaijani shelling this month. “We must realize that and take part in defending Shushi. We must reverse the situation.” Shushi is located about four miles south of Nagorno-Karabakh’s regional capital, Stepanakert. Nagorno-Karabakh lies within Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a war there ended in 1994. The latest fighting began Sept. 27 and has involved heavy artillery, rockets and drones, in the largest escalation of hostilities over the separatist region in the quarter of a century since the war ended. Hundreds, and possibly thousands, of people have been killed in a little more than a month. Separatist authorities of Nagorno-Karabakh accused Azerbaijani forces Thursday of shelling Stepanakert, Shushi and Martakert with Smerch multiple rocket systems, a devastating Soviet-designed weapon intended to ravage wide areas with explosives and cluster munitions. Martakert was also raided by Azerbaijani aircraft, officials said. Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry denied using aircraft and accused Armenian forces of shelling the Terter, Goranboy and Barda regions of Azerbaijan. One civilian was killed in the Goranboy region, according to Hikmet Hajiyev, a foreign policy advisor to Azerbaijan’s president. The ministry also reported downing two Armenian Su-25 warplanes, a claim Armenian officials rejected as “disinformation.” According to Nagorno-Karabakh officials, 1,166 of their troops and 39 civilians have been killed in the clashes so far. Azerbaijani authorities haven’t disclosed their military losses, but say the fighting has killed at least 90 civilians and wounded 392. Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week that, according to Moscow’s information, the death toll from the fighting was nearing 5,000, a significantly higher number than officially reported. The hostilities have raged for a fifth week despite international calls for peace and three attempts at establishing a cease-fire. The latest U.S.-brokered truce frayed immediately after it took effect Monday, just like two previous cease-fires negotiated by Russia. The warring sides have repeatedly blamed each other for violations. Russia, the United States and France have co-chaired the so-called Minsk Group set up by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to mediate in the conflict, but they have failed to achieve any progress. The Minsk Group’s co-chairs were set to meet with the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia in Geneva on Thursday, but the negotiations were pushed back until Friday and the prospects for a breakthrough appeared dim. Armenian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Anna Naghdalyan said the change of date was “linked to the evolving situation and logistical issues,” adding that negotiating a lasting and verifiable cease-fire is a priority for Armenia. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has repeatedly criticized the Minsk Group for failing to achieve any results in three decades and insisted that Azerbaijan has the right to reclaim its territory by force since international mediation has failed. Speaking Thursday at an investor conference in Moscow, Putin said that negotiating a settlement for the decades-long conflict is extremely challenging. “It’s a tight knot, and there are no simple solutions,” Putin said. “Each side has its own truth.” Russia, which has a military base in Armenia and a security agreement to protect its ally, has been engaged in a delicate diplomatic act while trying to also maintain good ties with Azerbaijan and to avert a showdown with Turkey. Before the latest escalation of hostilities, Russia proposed a peace plan that would see Azerbaijan reclaim control of several of its regions outside Nagorno-Karabakh that Armenian forces captured during the war that ended in 1994. In exchange, Nagorno-Karabakh would be given security guarantees and a crippling blockade of Armenia by Turkey and Azerbaijan would be lifted. Armenia has resisted the plan. Residents of Nagorno-Karabakh, whose homes have been damaged by shelling, also appeared to have little faith in the international peace efforts. “Neither France nor Russia are doing anything. We are left alone,” said Vovik Zakharian, a resident of Shushi, a town that came under repeated shelling. Zakharian, 72, inspected his apartment Thursday after it was damaged in morning strikes. “We will fight till the end,” he said. “We have to try our best.”

Falwell sues Liberty University, saying school damaged his reputation

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-29/falwell-sues-liberty-saying-school-damaged-his-reputation

Jerry Falwell Jr. has sued Liberty University, alleging the evangelical school founded by his late pastor father damaged his reputation in a series of public statements that followed his resignation as president and chancellor in August amid a series of scandals. The lawsuit filed in Lynchburg Circuit Court on Wednesday includes claims of defamation and breach of contract. It alleges that Liberty officials accepted what Falwell says are false claims about his involvement in an extramarital affair between his wife and a business partner of the couple’s and “moved quickly” to destroy his reputation. “When Mr. Falwell and his family became the targets of a malicious smear campaign incited by anti-evangelical forces, Liberty University not only accepted the salacious and baseless accusations against the Falwells at face value, but directly participated in the defamation. This action seeks redress for the damage Liberty has caused to the reputation of Mr. Falwell and his family,” the lawsuit says. K. Todd Swisher, circuit court clerk for the city of Lynchburg, provided the Associated Press with a copy of the complaint, which contains a limited number of redactions in sections pertaining to Falwell’s employment agreement. Swisher said there would be a hearing within a week for a judge to consider whether an unredacted version of the complaint should remain sealed. Liberty spokesman Scott Lamb said the school, which had not yet been served with the lawsuit, would have a formal statement in response later Thursday. The school’s board of trustees has been meeting this week. An attorney for Falwell did not respond immediately to a telephone message left Thursday, and Falwell did not respond to a voicemail and text seeking comment. Falwell left Liberty in August after Giancarlo Granda, a younger business partner of the Falwell family, said he had a yearslong sexual relationship with Falwell’s wife, Becki Falwell, and that Jerry Falwell participated in some of the liaisons as a voyeur. Although the Falwells have acknowledged that Granda and Becki Falwell had an affair, Jerry Falwell has denied any participation. The couple allege that Granda sought to extort them by threatening to reveal the relationship unless he was paid substantial amounts of money. Before his resignation, Falwell had already been on an indefinite leave of absence after an uproar over a photo he posted on social media of him and his wife’s pregnant assistant, both with their pants unzipped. Falwell said it was taken in good fun at a costume party during a vacation, but critics saw it as evidence of hypocrisy by the head of an institution that holds students to a strict moral code of conduct. Shortly after Falwell’s departure, Liberty announced it was opening an independent investigation into his tenure as president, a wide-ranging inquiry that would include financial, real estate and legal matters. Earlier this month, the school identified Baker Tilly US as the firm handling the investigation and announced the launch of a website to “facilitate the reporting of potential misconduct to the investigative team.” Falwell has declined to answer questions from the AP about the size of the exit package he received from the university but has discussed the issue with other news organizations, which reported that he was set to receive $10.5 million. However, Liberty said in a statement last month that it paid Falwell two years of base salary and disputed “media reports regarding the size and terms” of Falwell’s contract. In an August interview with the AP, Falwell said that the school’s board had been “very generous to me,” but raised concerns that they were “being influenced by people who really shouldn’t have a say” about the future direction of Liberty. In the lawsuit, Falwell claimed that Liberty “turned on” him after Granda went public with his allegations, forcing his resignation. The lawsuit also says Liberty rejected Falwell’s attempts “to reach an amicable resolution,” forcing Falwell to turn to court to “restore his reputation.” The lawsuit says Liberty’s statements have harmed not only Falwell’s reputation, but also his future employment prospects and business opportunities. Falwell now has a “drastically reduced ability” to attach his name to business and charity organizations, and he has stopped receiving previously frequent invitations to appear on TV to discuss Liberty, evangelicalism and politics, the lawsuit says. The lawsuit further alleges that “Liberty’s actions are antithetical to the teachings of Christ.” Falwell’s attorneys charge the university with hurting its own standing and that of the broader evangelical community “by playing right into the hands of sinister operatives with ulterior motives.” Falwell’s acrimonious departure from Liberty came four years after his endorsement helped burnish the reputation of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump among conservative evangelical Protestants. That group has since become a critical part of the president’s political base. The public Falwell-Trump alliance that marked 2016 is not visible in this year’s election, as the president looks to other prominent evangelical surrogates. Named in the lawsuit as amplifying Granda’s claims is the Lincoln Project, a group founded by prominent GOP critics of Trump. A Lincoln Project advisor had provided public relations help to Granda after he went public with his allegations about a sexual relationship with Becki Falwell, although the group said Thursday that it “has had nothing to do with the public finally learning about the true character of the Falwell family.” “The Lincoln Project didn’t make Mr. Falwell unbutton his pants on a super yacht and post a picture on social media,” and it “didn’t make Mr. Falwell stand with Donald Trump, though that now makes sense; they are kindred spirits,” the group said in a statement.

Asteroid samples tucked into capsule for return to Earth

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-29/asteroid-samples-tucked-into-capsule-for-return-to-earth

A NASA spacecraft more than 200 million miles away has tucked asteroid samples into a capsule for return to Earth after losing some of its precious loot, scientists said Thursday. Flight controllers moved up the timetable for the crucial operation after some of the collected rubble spilled into space last week. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft gathered pebbles and other pieces of the asteroid Bennu on Oct. 20, briefly touching the surface with its robot arm and sucking up whatever was there. So much was collected — an estimated hundreds of grams’ worth — that rocks got wedged in the rim of the container and jammed it open, allowing some material to escape. Whatever is left won’t depart Bennu’s neighborhood until March, when the asteroid and Earth are properly aligned. It will be 2023 — seven years after OSIRIS-REx rocketed from Cape Canaveral — before the samples arrive here. Science & Medicine NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft crushed rocks and sent rubble flying as it briefly touched an asteroid, a strong indication that it had succeeded in collecting samples. Oct. 21, 2020 This is the first U.S. mission to go after asteroid samples. Japan has done it twice at other space rocks and expects its latest batch to arrive in December. Rich in carbon, the solar-orbiting Bennu is believed to hold the preserved building blocks of the solar system. Scientists said the remnants can help explain how our solar system’s planets formed billions of years ago and how life on Earth came to be. The samples also can help improve our odds of survival, they said, if a doomsday rock heads our way. Bennu — a black, roundish rock bigger than New York’s Empire State Building — could come dangerously close to Earth late in the next decade. The odds of a strike are one in 2,700. And even if there is a collision, while packing a punch, it won’t wipe out our home planet.

Judge grants 9-month delay to trial in Meghan Markle privacy lawsuit

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-10-29/judge-grants-delay-meghan-markle-lawsuit-newspaper

A British judge Thursday granted a request by Meghan Markle to postpone the trial of her privacy lawsuit against the publisher of a tabloid that ran portions of a letter she wrote to her father. During a hearing in London, Judge Mark Warby granted the duchess of Sussex’s application to delay the trial for about nine months, from a scheduled Jan. 11 start date to next fall. The exact date will be set later. The decision followed a hearing held in private, and Warby said the reason for the delay request is confidential. Markle, 39, is suing Associated Newspapers over five articles that appeared in February 2019 in the Mail on Sunday and on the MailOnline website. The articles published portions of a handwritten letter she wrote to her estranged father, Thomas Markle, after her marriage to Britain’s Prince Harry (who also holds the title of the duke of Sussex) in 2018. Associated Newspapers is contesting the claim at the High Court in London. Early this year, the duke and duchess announced that they were quitting royal duties and moving to North America, citing what they called unbearable intrusions by and racist attitudes of the British media. They recently bought a house in Santa Barbara.

Florida man charged with changing governor's voting address

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-28/florida-man-charged-with-changing-governors-voting-address

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis couldn’t initially cast his ballot this week because someone changed his address online, a snafu that resulted in a suspect’s arrest on felony charges and raised questions about the security of the state’s online registration system. DeSantis went to an early voting site in Tallahassee on Monday to cast his ballot, but was told his address had been changed from the governor’s mansion to 2185 Pretty Lane, a small apartment complex in West Palm Beach, 420 miles away. He contacted the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which determined the record had been changed online from a house in Naples, Fla. The FDLE says in court records filed in Collier County that agents went to the house Tuesday, where Anthony Guevara, 20, admitted changing DeSantis’ address through the elections website in Leon County, where Tallahassee is located. He told agents he gained access by using the governor’s birth date, which he got from Wikipedia. Court records do not say when that happened. However, the system also requires knowing the person’s driver’s license number, the date it was issued and the last four digits of his or her Social Security number. Court records do not indicate how Guevara obtained that information or whether he was able to access the system without it. Neither the FDLE nor Leon County elections officials immediately responded to emails and phone calls seeking comment. Florida Secretary of State Laurel Lee, who oversees voting in the state and whose office runs the online registration system, issued a statement saying the computer systems “are secure” and voters should have ”confidence in the integrity.” Politics As the presidential election nears, Democrats and Republicans are targeting Florida’s other Latino voters, not just Cuban Americans and Puerto Ricans. Oct. 27, 2020 “This incident was perpetrated using publicly accessible voter data, and there is no evidence to suggest that this change was made through the Florida Department of State,” Lee said. “We commend the Florida Department of Law Enforcement on their swift action to bringing this malicious actor to justice. The situation was corrected immediately and the voter was able to cast a ballot.” Her office did not immediately respond to an emailed list of questions about accessing the voting system. The governor’s office also did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. Guevara also told agents he accessed voter information on U.S. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and basketball stars LeBron James and Michael Jordan, but said he didn’t change anyone else’s records. He is charged with accessing a computer without authorization and illegally altering voting records, third-degree felonies punishable by up to five years in prison. Guevara was jailed Wednesday pending an afternoon court hearing. Court records do not indicate if he has an attorney who could comment on the charges. Politics Biden holds a narrow lead in the nation’s perennial swing state, where early voting has started. Winning it would all but seal victory over Trump. Oct. 19, 2020

Judge stops election day gun ban near Michigan polling sites

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-27/judge-stops-election-day-gun-ban-near-michigan-polling-sites

A judge on Tuesday blocked a ban on the open display of guns near Michigan polling places on election day, agreeing with critics who said a Democratic secretary of state failed to follow state law with her recent order. Gun rights groups accused Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson of exceeding her authority in banning people from openly carrying guns within 100 feet of voting sites. She acted after authorities recently busted up an alleged plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. But Benson failed to go through a formal rule-making process required under state law, Michigan Court of Claims Judge Christopher Murray said. Compliance “is no mere procedural nicety,” Murray said. “Instead, our appellate courts have repeatedly emphasized the importance of the democratic principles embodied in the [law], which requires notice and an opportunity to be heard on the subject under consideration.” Earlier in the day, state Assistant Atty. Gen. Heather Meingast said lawmakers have given secretaries of state discretion to set certain election rules, including safety. Separately, armed critics upset with the governor’s orders about controlling the coronavirus have rallied at the Capitol. “There are dozens — we’ve had numerous complaints,” Meingast told the judge. “There are voters who are afraid. There are election workers who are afraid to go to work on election day.” Murray said voter intimidation already is illegal. State Atty. Gen. Dana Nessel pledged to appeal Murray’s decision with just days left until election day. Benson’s policy caused blowback from some county sheriffs who had said they wouldn’t enforce it. The Michigan Assn. of Chiefs of Police also had panned it. “To be clear: This case is not about the fragile state of mind of 21 voters, and what [Benson] envisions is the appropriate level of wokeness by voters,” Dean Greenblatt, attorney for the group Michigan Open Carry, told the judge. “It’s the question of raw abuse and assumption of power not authorized by law.” Some states and groups are preparing for tension at polling places. In Ohio, the League of Women Voters has been recruiting “peacekeeper teams” of clergy and social workers to ease stress at the polls. At least 125 people have signed up. Murray hears lawsuits against the state of Michigan as a judge on the Court of Claims. He also is chief judge on the state appeals court and is running for reelection to that court.

Conservative operatives are charged in hoax voter robocalls

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-10-28/ohio-robocalls-conservative-operatives

Two conservative operatives facing criminal charges in Michigan were indicted in Cleveland on Tuesday for organizing tens of thousands of hoax robocalls — made to predominantly Black Midwestern cities — that falsely warned people information gleaned from their mail-in ballots could lead to their arrest or forced vaccinations. Arrest warrants were issued Tuesday for Jacob Wohl, 22, of Los Angeles, and Jack Burkman, 54, of Arlington, Va. They face multiple counts of bribery and voter intimidation after being indicted by a Cuyahoga County grand jury. Online court records don’t indicate whether the men have attorneys. They were charged in Detroit on Oct. 1 with conspiring to intimidate voters and using a computer to commit crimes. A judge entered not guilty pleas on their behalf. Their first court appearance in Cleveland is scheduled for Nov. 13. The men are accused of using a voice broadcast service to make tens of thousands of hoax calls to voters in Ohio, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois. The calls warned people that information from their mailed ballots could be used by law enforcement agencies to enforce arrest warrants, to collect outstanding debts and would be tracked by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for mandatory vaccines. Cuyahoga County prosecutor Michael O’Malley said Tuesday’s charges resulted from an investigation by the Ohio attorney general’s office. “The right to vote is the most fundamental component of our nation’s democracy,” O’Malley said in a statement. “These individuals clearly infringed upon that right in a blatant attempt to suppress votes and undermine the integrity of this election.” Wohl and Burkman have a history of staging hoaxes and spreading false smears against Democrats and public officials. The Associated Press reported in May 2019 that a 21-year-old college student from Michigan said the men recruited him to falsely claim he was raped by Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, then published the smear without his permission. Wohl denied the student’s accusation, saying the student had reached out to him. Burkman said on Twitter he believed the student’s initial account of the assault was “accurate and true.”

From Spain, top dissident vows to fight for a free Venezuela

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-27/from-spain-top-dissident-vows-to-fight-for-free-venezuela

Leopoldo López, the Venezuelan politician who for years has led the biggest challenge to the government of Nicolás Maduro, has pledged from his self-imposed exile in Spain to continue fighting to “free” his homeland. López, who spent over six years in prison, confined at home or in the Spanish embassy in Caracas, addressed reporters Tuesday for the first time since reuniting with his relatives in the Spanish capital two days earlier. “It is our responsibility and also the one of nations that believe in democracy, to do everything in their power to liberate Venezuela,” said López, adding that change shouldn’t happen because of external influence but due to the Venezuelan people’s will “in coordination with the free world.” “I have faith and conviction,” he said. López was received by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez at the headquarters of Sánchez’s Socialist party in Madrid — a choice of location interpreted as an attempt by the Spanish leader to distance his left-wing coalition from the Venezuelan politician. Sánchez’s partner in the government, the far-left United We Can party, has in the past had connections with Chavismo. A close aide with knowledge of the meeting said it lasted more than an hour and a half and that both leaders showed “much empathy.” Presenting himself as a “commissioner” of the government of Juan Guaidó, who has been recognized by more than 50 countries as Venezuela’s interim leader because Maduro’s 2018 reelection was considered illegitimate, López pledged to promote a “free, fair and verifiable” new presidential election in Venezuela. Maduro’s government also is preparing to retake control of the National Assembly, the last major domestic institution in opposition hands, in December legislative elections that Guaidó has vowed to boycott. López fled Saturday from the Spanish ambassador’s residence in Caracas, where he had found shelter since he led a failed U.S.-backed military revolt against Maduro in April 2019, and landed in Madrid on Sunday.

Amy Coney Barrett sworn in; one of her first votes could be on Trump's tax returns

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-27/barrett-sworn-in-at-court-as-issues-important-to-trump-await

Amy Coney Barrett was formally sworn in Tuesday as the Supreme Court’s ninth justice, her oath administered by Chief Justice John Roberts. Her first votes on the court could include two big topics affecting the man who appointed her. The court is weighing a plea from President Trump to prevent the Manhattan district attorney from acquiring his tax returns. It is also considering appeals from the Trump campaign and Republicans to shorten the deadline for receiving and counting absentee ballots in the battleground states of North Carolina and Pennsylvania. It’s not certain Barrett will take part in any of these issues, but she will make that call. Barrett was confirmed Monday by the Senate in a 52-48 virtual party line vote. She is expected to begin work as a justice on Tuesday after taking the second of two oaths required of judges by federal law. No justice has assumed office so close to a presidential election or immediately confronted issues so directly tied to the incumbent president’s political and personal fortunes. At 48, she’s the youngest justice since Clarence Thomas joined the court in 1991 at age 43. Other election-related issues are pending at the high court, which next week also will hear a clash of LGBTQ rights and religious freedoms. The fate of the Affordable Care Act is on the agenda on Nov. 10, and Trump himself last week reiterated his opposition to the Obama-era law. “I hope they end it,” he said in an interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes.” On Friday, Barrett, the most open opponent of abortion rights to join the court in decades, also could be called upon to weigh in on Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban. The state is appealing lower court rulings invalidating the ban. Abortion opponents in Pittsburgh also are challenging a so-called bubble zone that prevents protesters from getting too close to abortion clinics. The court put off acting on both cases before Barrett joined the court, without offering any explanation in the Mississippi case. It ordered Pittsburgh to file a response to the appeal filed by the protesters, who call themselves sidewalk counselors. It’s not clear that the public will know how Barrett voted in the two abortion cases because the court typically doesn’t make the vote counts public when it is considering whether to grant full review to cases. Barrett declined to commit to Democratic demands that she step aside from any cases on controversial topics, including a potential post-election dispute over the presidential results. Barrett is joining the court at an unusual moment. The justices are meeting remotely by telephone because of the coronavirus pandemic, both for their private conferences and public argument sessions, at least through the end of 2020. The public can listen to the arguments as they take place, a change also resulting from the court’s response to the pandemic. After her first private conference with her new colleagues on Friday, two weeks of arguments begin on Monday. In an institution that pays strict attention to seniority, Barrett will go last in the private and public sessions. As she settles into her new office at the court, Barrett will be joined by four law clerks, usually recent law school graduates who have experience working for federal judges. When the court reopens to the public and the justices return to the courtroom, Barrett is expected to assume several duties reserved for the court’s junior justice. She will be a member of the committee that oversees the court’s public cafeteria, and the person who takes notes and answers the door when someone knocks during the justices’ private conferences.

California restaurants demand more than $100 million in liquor, health permit refunds

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-10-27/restaurants-seek-liquor-health-permit-refunds-coronavirus

California’s financially battered restaurants filed government claims Monday to recover more than $100 million in fees for liquor and health permits and tourism charges that they say were assessed even though their businesses were shuttered or only partially operating under long-running coronavirus restrictions. Few businesses have been hit as hard during the COVID-19 pandemic as restaurants, which in California were ordered closed, reopened, closed for a second time and then allowed to welcome customers again, though with restrictions, such as takeout only. Thousands of eateries have closed permanently. Owners say one thing has remained constant amid the turmoil: State and county governments have continued to charge fees for liquor licenses, health permits and tourism assessments — even though the restaurants were closed down by government order or permitted to operate with limited capacity and dining. The owners contend that they are being unjustly punished for following the law and are being charged for permits they can’t use. “The irony is they did what they were told and the very entity that told them to close is keeping these fees,” said attorney Brian Kabateck, who is representing restaurants that filed claims against the state and against Los Angeles, Orange, Sacramento, San Diego and Monterey counties,. Additional claims will be filed in coming days for restaurants in San Francisco and in Fresno and Placer counties. The move is supported by the California Restaurant Assn. Food As the U.S. struggles to rebound from a now-resurgent coronavirus, restaurants seem much less likely to deliver an economic boost. July 22, 2020 “Somebody has to tell them this is wrong and to return the money,” Kabateck said. Kabateck estimated the fees could exceed $100 million statewide. A government claim, filed for individual restaurants and on behalf of other businesses in the sector, is a required initial step before filing a class-action lawsuit against government agencies in California. Officials have 45 days to respond. Walter Schild, who owns the gastropub 33 Taps in Hollywood, said he pays about $7,000 annually in government fees beside property taxes, including for his liquor license and operating a valet service. Business Economic pressure from the coronavirus outbreak is hitting some of the country’s top-tier restaurants, forcing some to close for good. June 6, 2020 He said he has been unable to get the fees reduced or delayed and is now being charged with late fees of up to 50% for failing to pay, even though the restaurant has been closed for all but about a month since mid-March. With the restaurant closed, Schild has no income. He was recently forced to shutter another restaurant in Orange County because of the financial strain, and laid off 30 employees. His Hollywood restaurant lost money when he attempted takeout and delivery, and the lack of tourists gutted what would be the eatery’s usual customer base. “We have been pleading with our legislators for fee relief,” Schild said. “It’s been tough.” The restaurant association previously urged Gov. Gavin Newsom to hold a special legislative session to work on an aid package for their businesses. Under state rules, counties with the highest infection rates are limited to outdoor dining only, along with takeout and delivery. If those rates improve, restaurants can operate with 25% capacity indoors or 100 patrons, whichever is fewer. Even under the least restrictive rules, indoor capacity can only reach 50%. Restaurant industry executives have said the rules will doom many more restaurants. California has nearly 60,000 restaurants that employ approximately 1.5 million workers. “Even when the restrictions are lifted, the devastating impact on the restaurant industry will extend for years,” Jot Condie, who heads the restaurant association, said in a statement. “Easing fees would help enable establishments to stay open and keep vulnerable workers employed.”

Strikers in Belarus press for authoritarian leader's ouster

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-26/strikers-in-belarus-press-for-authoritarian-leaders-ouster

Factory workers, students and business owners in Belarus on Monday began a strike to demand that authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko resign after more than two months of continuing mass protests following a disputed election. Most state-run enterprises continued to operate despite the strike, which was called by opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. But analysts said it helped mobilize opposition supporters for a new round of confrontation with authorities, which poses a significant challenge for Lukashenko, who has run the country for 26 years and until recently has been able to successfully stifle dissent. Students in some universities refused to attend lectures and marched in Minsk in protest. Hundreds of small private companies declared Monday a nonworking day, and shops and cafes closed, with their owners and employees forming human chains all over the capital. Several divisions of large plants in Minsk said they were halting work, and employees of two plants in the western city of Grodno gathered in front of buildings there. The authorities responded by detaining protesters in the streets and outside factories, threatening workers with jail or being fired if they went on strike, said Alexander Yaroshuk, leader of the Belarusian Congress of Democratic Unions, an association of independent labor unions. Thousands of retirees also marched in Minsk in their regular Monday protest to demand Lukashenko’s ouster. They chanted for him to “Go away!” “We don’t see, hear or run well, but we understand perfectly well that Lukashenko lost,” read one of the banners carried by the pensioners. The unrest was triggered by the results of the Aug. 9 election, which officials reported gave Lukashenko a landslide victory over Tsikhanouskaya. She and her supporters refused to recognize the results, and mass protests have rocked the former Soviet nation of 9.5 million almost daily ever since. The authorities tried to quell the turmoil by detaining thousands and violently dispersing the crowds, but the protests have continued. Tsikhanouskaya, who fled to Lithuania for fear of her safety, urged the strike if Lukashenko did not resign, release political prisoners and stop the police crackdown by Monday. She gave the go-ahead for the strike to begin in a statement Sunday night after police in Minsk and other cities once again dispersed demonstrators with stun grenades and tear gas. Sunday’s rally in Minsk was one of the largest in weeks and drew nearly 200,000 people. Smaller protests also took place in other cities, and the Interior Ministry said it detained over 500 people across Belarus. “A strike is the next step towards freedom for Belarusians, towards the end of violence and new elections,” Tsikhanousksaya said in a statement Monday. “The main goal is to show that no one will work for the regime.” Government officials said that all state-run plants, factories and enterprises continued to operate as usual. In August, the government stemmed a strike at dozens of plants and factories in several cities. Lukashenko, who at one point was booed by workers when he visited a plant, is trying to avoid a repeat through repressions against plant workers, Yaroshuk said. “People have things to lose, so the majority remains intimidated and continues to work under pressure,” the activist added. Still, the opposition managed to mobilize its active supporters, said Minsk-based political analyst Valery Karbalevich. “Even the threat of a strike makes Lukashenko nervous, and growing mass rallies show that the protest is not dying down, and the pressure on the authorities and officials within the country will continue to mount,” he said.

Babish expands as pandemic boosts YouTube cooking shows

https://www.latimes.com/food/story/2020-10-26/babish-sohla-el-waylly-youtube-cooking-shows

Mac and cheese, 18th century style. A seven-course meal using only ingredients from a convenience store. A meal that is literally on fire. Four episodes into her new YouTube show, “Stump Sohla,” part of the expanding Babish Culinary Universe channel, Sohla El-Waylly has yet to be stumped by a food challenge. El-Waylly became a familiar face on YouTube as a standout on Bon Appetit’s test kitchen channel. But during the nationwide racial reckoning following the police killing of George Floyd, she was among members of the test kitchen who accused the channel’s owner, Condé Nast, of discriminatory compensation and other practices. A Condé Nast representative said race wasn’t a factor in setting pay. El-Waylly departed Bon Appetit in August after failed negotiations. Her new show is her own, pushing her to deploy her talent, charm and encyclopedic culinary chops to solve challenges. “My creativity comes from being put in difficult situations,” El-Waylly said during a break in shooting an upcoming episode. The series riffs on a game show, with a spinning wheel that determines which challenge El-Waylly will take on. In the second episode, in which she relies only on items purchased at a bodega to create a tasting menu, El-Waylly pours hot water over potato chips to rinse off the fat and make a mashed potato-esque purée. She expects it to “be gross.” But as she tastes it, a look of sheer satisfaction comes over her face. Leaving Bon Appetit for an independent YouTube channel could be considered risky, but the payoffs were noticeable almost immediately. The three months it took to create the whole “Stump Sohla” series was about how long it would take to produce one Bon Appetit video, El-Waylly said, given the hurdles of working at a large company with corporate red tape. Now, she says, “you can just have an idea and go with it while you’re still excited.” Her show is the first addition into the expanding Babish Culinary Universe, a rebrand of Andrew Rea’s popular Binging With Babish channel. Just weeks after it started, “Stump Sohla” is driving an average of 2.3 million views per post and added 30,000 new subscribers to the channel in one day, according to YouTube figures. Binging With Babish started in February 2006 as a cooking program that re-creates meals from pop culture and TV shows (the name pays homage to a “West Wing” character). Over 14 years, Rea had a slew of viral hits. The Moist Maker, a Thanksgiving leftover sandwich from “Friends,” put him on the map, Rea said. The simple Italian pasta dish featured in “Chef,” more than 8.6 million views. And the titular dish from “Ratatouille” is his most-viewed video, with more than 24.4 million watches. “We’re doing everything we can to not let the pandemic interrupt our growth,” Rea said. “Because I think now more than ever, not only are people turning to YouTube for entertainment, but also just for escapism.” Since the pandemic stopped life in its tracks in mid-March, the average daily views of videos with “cook with me” in the title have increased by over 100%, according to data provided by YouTube. Earnest Pettie, who leads YouTube’s global trends research, said that food trends at the beginning of the pandemic included sourdough bread, then Dalgona coffee, Basque burnt cheesecake and, now, “island” cakes. The recipe for a successful YouTube channel, he said, is including people in a social conversation that teaches them something new or helps them feel better about themselves. But the most important ingredient is authenticity — an “it” factor that can’t be manufactured, Rea said. It’s the difference, he said, between YouTube content and a television cooking show where all you see is “this beautiful, perfect person making beautiful, perfect food on their first try.” And that was what Rea said drove him to direct message El-Waylly on Instagram in June and ultimately decide she was the perfect person to help him expand his digital food network. “We’ve been waiting for the opportunity to find somebody new for the channel that was a great fit for our culture and philosophy of being goofballs and having fun while being entertaining and informative, and she embodies that and so much more,” Rea said. After leaving Bon Appetit, El-Waylly initially announced she would still create digital and magazine content for the brand. But last week she said on Instagram that she ended her “relationship” with the brand. Several of her fellow test kitchen colleagues have also left. The highly publicized internal turmoil at Bon Appetit sent the brand into a tailspin that included a four-month absence from its YouTube channel, which it started adding new content to this month. When asked if El-Waylly’s exit from Bon Appetit and the void left by its hiatus was an impetus for Rea’s expansion of his channel, he said no, adding “that’s not really how YouTube works.” “People decide what they want to watch and who they want to lift up,” he said. Food Bon Appétit’s recent firings point to systemic issues in food media. June 13, 2020 Rea has long had a devoted following on his channel, which YouTube data shows is among the top food programs on the platform, with more than 8 million subscribers and over 1.5 billion channel views. He has been building out the channel’s offerings for years, adding a beginner-friendly show called “Basics With Babish” in 2017 and expanding into lifestyle content two years later with “Being With Babish.” It features Rea traveling across the country connecting with fans. That evolution, and frequent crossover episodes with other YouTube personalities and celebrities, gave way to Babish Culinary Universe — a name Rea says was suggested by fans as a nod to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A crossover El-Waylly wants to make happen? A collaboration with Sean Evans’ popular “Hot Ones” series, where guests eat increasingly spicy chicken wings while being interviewed — but she wants to make all the hot sauces herself. Food A new Los Angeles Times Food series devoted to the best fried chicken in Los Angeles, hosted by senior food writer Jenn Harris. Oct. 20, 2020 One of the lessons Rea says he has learned over his YouTube career is to always film every time you cook. He noted that the audience really responds to his process — namely, his mistakes. “I want people to see it’s OK to make mistakes because they’re learning opportunities,” he said. “Everything that I am and everything that I have been able to do is the product of me being able to learn from and grow from my mistakes.” That is what he hopes will be part of his legacy — and something he wants to focus on in a memoir he’s thinking about writing. When asked what he’d call it, he stopped, thought for a minute and said, “I Done F— Up.”

The Weeknd and Roddy Ricch lead AMA nominations with 8 each

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/awards/story/2020-10-26/the-weeknd-and-roddy-ricch-lead-ama-nominations-with-8-each

The Weeknd and Roddy Ricch are the leading nominees for this year’s American Music Awards with eight apiece. Both will compete for artist of the year against Justin Bieber, Post Malone and Taylor Swift, it was announced Monday. Megan Thee Stallion is the next leading nominee with five, including for new artist of the year. Other contenders include Ricch, Lewis Capaldi, Doja Cat, DaBaby and Lil Baby. This year’s ceremony will feature several new categories, including new rap and hip-hop honors and several new awards for Latin music. This year’s ceremony will be held at Los Angeles’ Microsoft Theater and air live on ABC on Nov. 22. Most music awards shows have foregone live audiences or moved performances outdoors as a precaution against the coronavirus. Many, like the BET Awards, Country Music Awards and MTV Video Music Awards, have opted for a mix of live and pre-taped performances. Several nominees were announced by Dua Lipa on “Good Morning America.” Swift has the chance to extend her lead as the most awarded artist in AMA history — she already has 29 wins. Swift, Bieber, Lady Gaga, Bad Bunny, DaBaby and Doja Cat all have four nominations apiece. Billie Eilish, an awards favorite since her sweeping wins at the Grammy Awards, scored two nominations, for favorite alternative rock artist and favorite social artist. Kanye West earned a nomination for favorite contemporary inspirational artist. If he wins, it would be his first AMA win in a dozen years. Dan + Shay earned three nominations, including for favorite country duo or group, where they’re up against Florida Georgia Line and Old Dominion. Harry Styles could pick up his first solo award at the ceremony for his album “Fine Lines.” Juice WRLD, who died in December, received a posthumous nomination for favorite male rap/hip-hop artist.

Show goes on for Olivier Awards, even with UK theaters shut

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/awards/story/2020-10-25/show-goes-on-for-olivier-awards-even-with-uk-theaters-shut

Andrew Scott and Ian McKellen were among acting winners as Britain’s Laurence Olivier Awards celebrated the best of the London stage in bittersweet fashion Sunday night — most U.K. theaters remain closed because of the coronavirus pandemic. Stage curtains came down when Britain went into lockdown in March, and the virus also scuttled the planned springtime ceremony for Britain’s leading awards for theater, opera and dance. Instead the trophies were bestowed during a pre-recorded event streamed online and shown on British TV. “Fleabag” star Scott was named best actor in a play for his turn as a narcissistic actor in Noel Coward’s “Present Laughter.” Sharon D. Clarke won the best actress prize for her performance as an American matriarch in Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman.” Marianne Elliott and Miranda Cromwell won directing award for the same production, which featured Black actors in the central roles of the struggling Loman family. McKellen won a special Olivier — his seventh — for his one-man 80th birthday tour of the U.K., staged before the pandemic as a fundraiser for regional theaters. Choreographer Matthew Bourne won a record ninth Olivier, alongside collaborator Stephen Mears, for his fleet-footed work on “Mary Poppins.” Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt,” which addresses history and the Holocaust through the story of a Viennese Jewish family, was named best new play. The best musical trophy went to “Dear Evan Hansen.” Director Jamie Lloyd’s production of “Cyrano de Bergerac,” starring James McAvoy, was named best revival of a play, while a Trevor Nunn-directed production of “Fiddler on the Roof” took the prize for best musical revival. Britain lifted its full lockdown in June but remains under strict limits on social mixing as it tries to curb a new wave of coronavirus infections. A handful of theaters have reopened to reduced, socially distanced audiences, but many are still shut and relying on emergency funding from the government to stay afloat. Olivier organizers say the next awards ceremony will likely not be until 2022, because so little work has been staged this year. Prince Charles’ wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, presented lyricist Don Black with a special Olivier Award for a six-decade career that includes lyrics for Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals such as “Sunset Boulevard” and “Starlight Express” and James Bond themes including “Thunderball” and “Diamonds Are Forever.” Camilla, who recorded her contribution at London’s Palladium theater Tuesday, said Black’s “wonderful lyrics have become part of the fabric of our lives.” The duchess urged those working in theater to “please remain resilient -- we need you and we have missed you.”

Senate votes to advance Barrett; confirmation expected Monday

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-25/senate-votes-to-advance-barrett-confirmation-expected-mon

Senate Republicans voted overwhelmingly Sunday to advance Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett toward final confirmation despite Democratic objections, just over a week before the presidential election. The vote was 51-48. Barrett’s confirmation on Monday was hardly in doubt, with majority Republicans mostly united in support behind President Trump’s pick. But Democrats were poised to keep the Senate in session into the night in attempts to stall, arguing that the winner of the Nov. 3 election should choose the nominee to fill the vacancy left by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Republicans are excited by the chance to install a third Trump justice on the court, locking in a conservative majority for years to come. Barrett’s ascent opens up a potential new era of rulings on abortion, gay marriage and the Affordable Care Act. A case against the Obama-era health law is scheduled to be heard Nov. 10. Vice President Mike Pence would typically preside over the coming votes, but after a close aide tested positive for COVID-19, it was unclear whether he would fulfill his role for the landmark vote. The conservative judge picked up the crucial backing Saturday from Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, one of the last GOP holdouts against filling the seat in the midst of a White House election and with more than 50 million people already having voted. Murkowski said she disliked the rush toward confirmation but supported Trump’s choice of Barrett for the high court. “While I oppose the process that has led us to this point, I do not hold it against her,” Murkowski said. Politics Barrett fends off Democrats and insists she has “no agenda” on abortion and religion. Oct. 14, 2020 Now the only Republican expected to vote against Barrett is Sen. Susan Collins, who faces a tight reelection in Maine. She has said she won’t vote for the nominee so close to the election. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) noted the political rancor but defended his handling of the process. “Our recent debates have been heated, but curiously talk of Judge Barrett’s actual credentials or qualifications are hardly featured,” McConnell said. He said she was one of the most “impressive” nominees for public office “in a generation.” Calling it a “sham,” Democratic leader Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York warned Republicans the only way to remove the “stain” of their action would be to “withdraw the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett until after the election.” Barrett, 48, presented herself in public testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee as a neutral arbiter and at one point suggested, “It’s not the law of Amy.” But Barrett’s past writings against abortion and a ruling on “Obamacare” show a deeply conservative thinker. “She’s a conservative woman who embraces her faith, she’s unabashedly pro-life but she’s not going to apply ‘the law of Amy’ to all of us,” the committee chairman, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), said late Saturday on Fox. Opinion Polarized Christians and the end of Protestant hegemony have ushered Catholics onto the Supreme Court. Oct. 23, 2020 At the start of Trump’s presidency, McConnell engineered a Senate rules change to allow confirmation by a majority of the 100 senators, rather than the 60-vote threshold traditionally needed to advance high court nominees over objections. With a 53-47 GOP majority, Barrett’s confirmation is almost certain. By pushing for Barrett’s ascension so close to the election, Trump and his Republican allies are counting on a campaign boost, in much the way they believe McConnell’s refusal to allow the Senate to consider President Obama’s nominee in February 2016 created excitement for Trump among conservatives and evangelical Christians who were eager for a Republican president to make that nomination after Justice Antonin Scalia’s death. Barrett was a professor at Notre Dame Law School when she was tapped by Trump in 2017 for an appeals court opening. Two Democrats joined at that time to confirm her, but none is expected to vote for her in the days ahead.

Pence, a close contact to COVID-infected aides, will keep up his travel schedule

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-25/pence-to-keep-up-travel-despite-contact-with-infected-aides

Vice President Mike Pence plans to maintain an aggressive campaign schedule this week, the White House says, despite an apparent outbreak of the coronavirus among his senior aides. Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, and “a couple of key staff surrounding the vice president” have tested positive for the virus, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said Sunday. The vice president, who along with his wife, Karen, tested negative on Sunday, according to his office, is considered a “close contact” of the aides under Centers for Disease Control and Prevention criteria but will not quarantine, his spokesman said. Devin O’Malley said Pence decided to maintain his travel schedule “in consultation with the White House Medical Unit” and “in accordance with the CDC guidelines for essential personnel.” Those guidelines require that essential workers exposed to someone with the coronavirus closely monitor for symptoms of COVID-19 and wear a mask whenever around other people. O’Malley said Pence and his wife both tested negative on Saturday “and remain in good health.” President Trump commented on Short early Sunday after his plane landed at Joint Base Andrews, outside Washington. “I did hear about it just now,” he said. “And I think he’s quarantining. Yeah. I did hear about it. He’s going to be fine. But he’s quarantining.” Politics President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden hit the nation’s battleground states Saturday, offering a clear contrast to undecided voters. Oct. 24, 2020 Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease expert at George Mason University, called Pence’s decision to travel “grossly negligent” regardless of the stated justification that Pence was an essential worker. “It’s just an insult to everybody who has been working in public health and public health response,” she said. “I also find it really harmful and disrespectful to the people going to the rally” and the people on Pence’s own staff who will accompany him. “He needs to be staying home 14 days,” she added. “Campaign events are not essential.” After a day of campaigning in Florida on Saturday, Pence was seen wearing a mask as he returned to Washington aboard Air Force Two shortly after the news of Short’s diagnosis was made public. He is scheduled to hold a rally on Sunday afternoon in Kinston, N.C. Pence, who has headed the White House coronavirus task force since late February, has repeatedly found himself in an uncomfortable position balancing political concerns with the administration’s handling the pandemic that has killed more than 220,000 Americans. The vice president has advocated mask-wearing and social distancing, but often does not wear one himself and holds large political events where many people do not wear face coverings. By virtue of his position as vice president, Pence is considered an essential worker. The White House did not address how Pence’s political activities amounted to essential work. Short’s diagnosis came just weeks after the coronavirus spread through the White House, infecting Trump, the first lady, and two dozen other aides, staffers and allies. Politics Since Sen. Kamala Harris launched a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, the problems of the country she wants to help lead have inched closer to her Brentwood doorstep. Oct. 25, 2020 Short, Pence’s top aide and one of his closest confidants, did not travel with the vice president on Saturday. Top Pence political advisor Marty Obst tested positive for COVID-19 earlier this week, a person familiar with the matter said. Pence’s handling of his exposure to a confirmed positive case stands in contrast to how Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris responded when a close aide and a member of her campaign plane’s charter crew tested positive for the virus earlier this month. She took several days off the campaign trail citing her desire to act out of an abundance of caution.

Lee Kun-hee, who grew Samsung into a world-leading titan, dies after years-long hospitalization

https://www.latimes.com/obituaries/story/2020-10-24/samsung-electronics-chairman-lee-kun-hee-dies

Samsung says Lee Kun-hee, the ailing chairman of Samsung Electronics, has died. A Samsung statement says Lee died Sunday with his family members, including his son and de facto company chief Lee Jae-yong, by his side. Lee Kun-hee had been hospitalized for years, and the younger Lee has been in charge of company affairs. “All of us at Samsung will cherish his memory and are grateful for the journey we shared with him,” the statement said. Lee Kun-hee had transformed Samsung from a local business in South Korea into a world-leading innovator and industrial powerhouse.

Polish President Andrzej Duda tests positive for the coronavirus

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-24/polands-president-duda-tests-positive-for-coronavirus

Poland’s President Andrzej Duda has tested positive for the coronavirus, his spokesman said on Saturday. The spokesman, Blazej Spychalski, said on Twitter that the 48-year-old conservative leader was tested Friday and his result was positive. He said the president feels well and is in isolation. Duda’s diagnosis comes amid a huge surge in the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 and deaths in Poland, a nation that saw only very low numbers in the spring. The spiking infection rates are pushing the country’s strained health system to the breaking point. Doctors say patients are now dying not only from COVID-19, but from other illnesses that overwhelmed hospitals are not able to treat now. The government is preparing to open field hospitals but it is not sure where it will find the doctors and nurses to staff them. World & Nation France has recorded over 1 million confirmed coronavirus cases since the pandemic’s start, the second country in Western Europe to reach that number. Duda on Friday visited the National Stadium in Warsaw, which is being transformed into one of the field hospitals. He also met Friday with Iga Swiatek, the 19-year-old Polish tennis player who won the French Open earlier this month. The Polish government imposed new restrictions on Saturday that are just short of a lockdown in hopes of bringing the country’s outbreak under control. Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki appealed Friday to Poles to strictly observe these “serious restrictions” in order to protect lives. The appeal came as the nation of 38 million hit another daily record of new infections, over 13,600, with 153 new deaths. Overall, Poland has recorded 4,172 virus-related deaths in the pandemic. Duda’s key constitutional roles include guiding foreign policy and signing legislation. But most of the day-to-day governance is the responsibility of Morawiecki and his Cabinet.

Washington state discovers first 'murder hornet' nest in U.S.

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-23/washington-state-discovers-first-murder-hornet-nest-in-us

Scientists in Washington state have discovered the first nest of so-called murder hornets in the United States and plan to wipe it out Saturday to protect native honeybees, officials said. Workers with the state Agriculture Department spent weeks searching, trapping and using dental floss to tie tracking devices to Asian giant hornets, which can deliver painful stings to people and spit venom, but are the biggest threat to honeybees that farmers depend on to pollinate crops. “Ladies and gentlemen, we did it,” agency spokeswoman Karla Salp said at a virtual briefing. Bad weather delayed plans Friday to destroy the nest found in Blaine, a city north of Seattle. The nest is about the size of a basketball and contains an estimated 100 to 200 hornets, according to scientists, who suspected it was in the area ever since the invasive insects began appearing late last year. Officials have said it’s not known how they arrived in North America. Despite their nickname and the hype that has stirred fears in an already bleak year, the world’s largest hornets kill at most a few dozen people a year in Asian countries, and experts say it is probably far fewer. Meanwhile, hornets, wasps and bees typically found in the United States kill an average of 62 people a year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said. The real threat from Asian giant hornets — which are 2 inches long — is their devastating attacks on honeybees, which are already under siege from problems like mites, diseases, pesticides and loss of food. A small group of the hornets can kill an entire honeybee hive in hours, and they have already destroyed six or seven hives in Washington state, officials said. The nest was found after an Agriculture Department worker trapped two of the hornets Wednesday. Two more were captured Thursday, the agency said. Using dental floss, “entomologists were able to attach radio trackers to three hornets, the second of which led them to the discovery of the nest” Thursday, agriculture officials said. It was about 300 yards from the traps in the cavity of a tree on private property, officials said. Dozens of the hornets were seen buzzing in and out of the tree about 7 or 8 feet above the ground. The owner is letting the state eradicate the nest and remove the tree. The plan Saturday is to fill the cavity with foam and cover it with plastic wrap to prevent the hornets from escaping, said Sven-Erik Spichiger, an entomologist for the Agriculture Department. Then a tube will be inserted to vacuum up the hornets trapped inside and deposit them in a collection chamber, he said. Workers will wear thick protective suits that can prevent the quarter-inch stingers of the hornets from hurting workers, Spichiger said. They also will wear face shields because the trapped hornets can spit a painful venom into their eyes. “We extract them alive,” he said. “We will kill them.” The tree will then be cut down to extract newborn hornets and learn if any queens have left the hive already, he said. Officials suspect more nests may be in the area and will keep searching. “It’s still a very small population, and we are actively hunting them,” Spichiger said. Scientists for the department have been searching for nests since the first Asian giant hornets were caught earlier this year. The first confirmed detection of the hornet in the U.S. was in December 2019 near Blaine, and the first live hornet was trapped in July. Just over 20 have been caught so far, all in Whatcom County. The invasive insect is normally found in China, Japan, Thailand, South Korea, Vietnam and other Asian countries. Washington state and the Canadian province of British Columbia are the only places the hornets have been found in North America.

Asteroid samples escaping from jammed NASA spacecraft

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-23/asteroid-samples-escaping-from-jammed-nasa-spacecraft

A NASA spacecraft is stuffed with so much asteroid rubble from this week’s grab that it’s jammed open and precious particles are drifting away in space, scientists said Friday. Scientists announced the news three days after the spacecraft named Osiris-Rex briefly touched asteroid Bennu, NASA’s first attempt at such a mission. The mission’s lead scientist, Dante Lauretta, said Tuesday’s operation 200 million miles away collected far more material than expected for return to Earth — in the hundreds of grams. The sample container on the end of the robot arm penetrated so deeply into the asteroid and with such force, however, that rocks got sucked in and became wedged around the rim of the lid. Scientists estimate the sampler pressed as much as 19 inches into the rough, crumbly, black terrain. “We’re almost a victim of our own success here,” Lauretta said at a hastily arranged news conference. Lauretta said there is nothing flight controllers can do to clear the obstructions and prevent more bits of Bennu from escaping, other than to get the samples into their return capsule as soon as possible. So, the flight team was scrambling to put the sample container into the capsule as early as Tuesday — much sooner than originally planned — for the long trip home. “Time is of the essence,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, chief of NASA’s science missions. This is NASA’s first asteroid sample-return mission. Bennu was chosen because its carbon-rich material is believed to hold the preserved building blocks of our solar system. Getting pieces from this cosmic time capsule could help scientists better understand how the planets formed billions of years ago and how life originated on Earth. Scientists were stunned — and then dismayed — on Thursday when they saw the pictures coming from Osiris-Rex following its wildly successful touch-and-go at Bennu two days earlier. A cloud of asteroid particles could be seen swirling around the spacecraft as it backed away from Bennu. The situation appeared to stabilize, according to Lauretta, once the robot arm was locked into place. But it was impossible to know exactly how much had already been lost. The requirement for the $800-million-plus mission was to bring back at least 2 ounces. Regardless of what’s on board, Osiris-Rex will still leave the vicinity of the asteroid in March — that’s the earliest possible departure given the relative locations of Earth and Bennu. The samples won’t make it back until 2023, seven years after the spacecraft rocketed away from Cape Canaveral. Osiris-Rex will keep drifting away from Bennu and will not orbit it again, as it waits for its scheduled departure. Because of the sudden turn of events, scientists won’t know how much the sample capsule holds until it’s back on Earth. They initially planned to spin the spacecraft to measure the contents, but that maneuver was canceled since it could spill even more debris. “I think we’re going to have to wait until we get home to know precisely how much we have,” Lauretta told reporters. “As you can imagine, that’s hard. ... But the good news is we see a lot of material.” Japan, meanwhile, is awaiting its second batch of samples taken from a different asteroid, due back in December.

Texas man said to be affiliated with 'Boogaloo Bois' accused of shooting at Minneapolis police station

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-23/texas-man-accused-of-shooting-at-minneapolis-police-station

A Texas man who says he is affiliated with the “Boogaloo Bois” anti-government movement and is suspected of opening fire on a Minneapolis police station during a protest in May is facing riot charges, a federal prosecutor announced Friday. Video shot on the night of May 28 shows a person later identified as Ivan Harrison Hunter firing 13 rounds from a semiautomatic assault-style rifle on the Third Precinct police station while people believed to be vandalizing the property were inside. U.S. Atty. Erica MacDonald said Friday that she has charged the 26-year-old Hunter, of Boerne, Texas, with traveling across state lines to participate in a riot. According to a criminal complaint, Hunter traveled from Texas to Minneapolis in late May to join in protests over George Floyd’s death. Floyd, who was Black, was killed on Memorial Day when a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on his neck for nearly eight minutes. The incident sparked protests against police racism and brutality across the country. According to the complaint, Hunter claims to be a member of the Boogaloo Bois, a loosely connected anti-government group, and he made statements on social media describing what he did in Minneapolis. Police in Austin, Texas, on June 3 stopped a pickup truck in which Hunter was a passenger for multiple traffic violations. Hunter had six loaded magazines for a semiautomatic rifle in a tactical vest he was wearing. Officers also found multiple firearms in the truck. Several days after the stop, according to the complaint, agents learned of Hunter’s online affiliation with Boogaloo Bois member Steven Carrillo. Federal prosecutors have charged Carrillo in the death of a federal protective officer in Oakland, during a protest over Floyd’s death on the same night Hunter allegedly opened fire in Minneapolis. MacDonald said Hunter made his initial court appearance Thursday in San Antonio. It’s unclear whether he has an attorney. His case isn’t listed in online federal court records from both Minnesota and Texas.

Deputies seize 780 pounds of marijuana during traffic stop in Lake Los Angeles

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-10-23/sheriffs-seize-780-pounds-of-marijuana-during-traffic-stop-in-lake-los-angeles

Calling it the “WOW arrest of the month,” the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department announced the seizure of more than 780 pounds of marijuana during a routine traffic stop in Lake Los Angeles, authorities said Friday. A deputy was patrolling the area near 240th Street East and Avenue J-8 on Thursday when he stopped a Ford F-150 towing a trailer that had a “very strong odor of marijuana coming from it,” the Sheriff’s Department said in a statement. An image posted on the department’s Twitter feed appeared to show the marijuana piled high inside the two-wheeled trailer. WOW arrest of the month: over 780 pounds of marijuana confiscated during routine traffic stop in Lake LA! https://t.co/ORDBeuNjVX#LASD #AV411 pic.twitter.com/vEJAui5Iix Two people inside the truck were arrested on suspicion of transporting marijuana, officials said. Possession of small amounts of marijuana is legal in California, Ali Villalobos, a spokeswoman for the sheriff’s Lancaster station, said. But the transportation of the amount seized Thursday far exceeds the amount allowed for personal use. “This was an unheard of amount for someone to be transporting and have in their private collection,” she said, noting that it “may very well be” a record amount of marijuana seized by the department. Marijuana seizures in unincorporated areas are often accompanied by other crimes like trespassing and water theft, Villalobos said. Detectives are still investigating the source of the marijuana, which will be turned over to the department’s narcotics division to be photographed and documented before being destroyed. “We don’t dispute whether marijuana is safe or unsafe, or should be legal or illegal,” Villalobos said. “We just follow the law.”

Ballots can't be tossed for mismatched signatures, Pennsylvania Supreme Court says

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-23/ballots-cant-be-tossed-out-over-voter-signature-court-says

Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court ruled unanimously Friday on a key concern surrounding an avalanche of mail-in ballots in the presidential battleground state, prohibiting counties from rejecting ballots because the voter’s signature on it may not resemble their signature on their registration form. Two Republican justices joined five Democratic justices in the decision. The verdict was a victory for the state’s top elections official, Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat who had asked the court to back her up in a legal dispute with President Trump’s campaign and Republican lawmakers. “County boards of elections are prohibited from rejecting absentee or mail-in ballots based on signature comparison conducted by county election officials or employees, or as the result of third-party challenges based on signature analysis and comparisons,” the justices wrote. Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden are locked in a battle to win Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes. In her court filing, Boockvar had said that any such rejections pose “a grave risk of disenfranchisement on an arbitrary and wholly subjective basis,” and without any opportunity for a voter to verify their signature before their ballot is disqualified. The decision comes amid a surge in mail-in voting and rising concerns that tens of thousands of mail-in ballots will be discarded in the presidential election over a variety of technicalities.

400 years after it arrived in America, Mayflower's legacy includes pride, prejudice

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-11-28/400-years-on-mayflowers-legacy-includes-pride-prejudice

Four centuries after white Europeans stepped off the Mayflower and onto America’s shores, some descendants of the colonists are wrestling with the complicated legacy of their ancestors amid a global racial reckoning. There is immense pride among those who can trace their families back to the passengers who boarded the ship in Plymouth, England, in 1620 to flee religious persecution and realize a better life. Yet for some, the devastating impact that the Pilgrims’ landing in New England had on Native Americans weighs heavily in this moment of unrest over systemic racism. In interviews with the Associated Press, Americans and Britons who can trace their ancestry either to the Pilgrims or the Indigenous people who helped them survive talked openly about the need in 2020 to fairly tell the history. “Considering my ancestors helped incite the racial hierarchies that caused the need for these movements now, I do feel ashamed that that had to be part of history,” said Olivia Musoke, 19, whose ancestor on her mother’s side arrived in America on the Mayflower. Musoke, whose father is Black, said the pride she feels in coming from people who helped settle this country “gets diminished by the role they played in kind of manipulating and terrorizing people of color, which trickled down to the structures we have today.” Politics Washington’s Wilton Gregory, now the only Black cardinal in the U.S., has grown increasingly outspoken over race matters. Nov. 28, 2020 For some, it’s a difficult issue to reconcile. “The Pilgrims came out of religious persecution in England. And I’m very proud of the fact that they set off to create their own independent culture,” said Seth Howland Handy, 53, another descendant of a Mayflower passenger. “But they came to a place where there was existing culture. And, you know, the history is not friendly and that is troublesome,” he said. Handy said it’s more important than ever now to “recognize everyone’s role in our history and the great diversity of this country.” The U.S. was embroiled in civil unrest this summer, with protesters demanding justice for George Floyd and other Black Americans killed or injured by police. Ginny Mucciacco, a descendant of Mayflower passenger Degory Priest, said the Pilgrims’ work ethic was admirable. “To have this tie to our early history is really, I won’t say it’s a privilege, an honor. But it’s just something to be proud of because so many of them worked so hard, for so many years to help establish this country. And it’s just very important to me,” said Mucciacco, 90, of Dedham, Mass. The soul-searching extends across the Atlantic to England, where Mayflower descendants say they, too, are trying to reconcile pride and prejudice. Vicky Cosstick, a Briton whose ancestors John Alden and Priscilla Mullins were passengers, said she’s troubled by the suffering the Indigenous people endured — but she doesn’t feel guilt. “I’m of course horrified and appalled to know what happened as a result of British colonialism in America and what happened to their Native American tribes and the Wampanoags,” Cosstick said. “It’s not as if they went to America in order to steal land from an Indigenous population,” she said. “Much of it was clearly wrong, but there are many stories that need to be told. And I think the anniversary gives a chance for all of those stories to be told.” As the racial reckoning has brought new scrutiny to how African American history is taught in American schools, Native Americans have long pushed for the unvarnished stories of their ancestors to be heard. When the Pilgrims arrived at what we now know as Plymouth, Mass., the Wampanoag tribe helped the exhausted settlers survive their first winter. But Native Americans also endured racism, oppression and new diseases brought by the European settlers. “We were exposed to disease. We were exposed to slavery. I mean, what happened here was people who came not just for religion — that might have been their purpose of leaving their homeland — but they came here and wanted to wipe out the existence of a whole culture,” said Hazel Harding Currence, 78, of the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe of Cape Cod. Organizers of events planned this year to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower’s arrival pledged to amplify the voices of the Wampanoag, which have been marginalized in past years. Fifty years ago, state officials disinvited a leader of the Wampanoag Nation to the commemoration after learning his speech would bemoan the tribe’s suffering. This year, many anniversary events were canceled or postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. “We should have never been treated the way that we were, our ancestors,” Currence said. “I think that if they were here now, if they were looking down on us, I think they’d be very proud at the movement that’s going forward now.” Even though the virus has put a damper on the commemoration, some members of the Wampanoag tribe say they’re hopeful that the attention on the problem of systemic racism this year will help their voices and stories be heard in a way they haven’t been before. “It’s opening up everyone else’s eyes to how unbalanced the world is and unequal,” said Troy Currence, Hazel Harding Currence’s son and a medicine man from the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe. “The world is spinning out of control. So I think more people are going to be aware and more sensitive and open to receiving a message like that,” he said.

Judge urges U.S. to help find parents deported without kids

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-10-22/judge-urges-u-s-to-help-find-parents-deported-without-kids

A federal judge on Thursday urged the Trump administration to do more to help court-appointed researchers find hundreds of parents who were separated from their children after they crossed the U.S.-Mexico border beginning in 2017. A court filing revealed this week that researchers have been unable to track down the parents of 545 children — a number much larger than previously known and that drew outcry. Most of the parents were deported to their Central American homelands, and their children were placed with sponsors in the U.S., often relatives. U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw refrained from issuing an order during a hearing in San Diego and instead asked Justice Department attorneys to explore ways the administration can make it easier to find the parents. Attempts to find families separated from their children have been underway since Sabraw ordered the government in 2018 to end the much-criticized practice under its “zero tolerance” policy for people who cross the border illegally. Sabraw initially ordered the government to reunite more than 2,700 children with their families, believing that to be the total number who were separated. But it was later discovered an additional 1,556 children were taken from their parents going back to summer 2017, including the 545 kids who are still separated. Attorney Lee Gelernt of the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued over the practice, said the government could provide funding for the search, which now is being conducted by a handful of human rights defenders in Central America. California Court-appointed lawyers say they can’t find parents of 545 children who were separated at the U.S.-Mexico border early in the Trump administration. Oct. 21, 2020 When the issue was originally brought to their attention, U.S. officials were not interested in looking for the parents, he said, but that changed when outcry spread about the number of parents deported without their children. “In light of the backlash, the government is now claiming it wants to assist us in finding these families,” Gelernt said. The administration’s foot-dragging has made it even tougher to find the parents because of how much time has passed, he said. Coronavirus restrictions prevented researchers from going into many areas from March until August, but as those measures ease up, researchers hope to make more progress in coming weeks. U.S. authorities have provided telephone numbers for 1,030 children to a court-appointed steering committee, which tracked down the parents of 485 of those children. The committee has advertised toll-free phone numbers in Spanish on billboards and other places in Central America to reach families. Politics Even after Trump stops hitting his favorite punching bag, California will feel the impact of his immigration restrictions. Oct. 18, 2020 Volunteers have searched for their parents by going door to door in Guatemala and Honduras and combing public records, the ACLU said in a court filing. The judge called for an update on Dec. 2 and set another hearing for Dec. 4 to discuss the progress. “This, of course, is the most significant piece remaining” in terms of the family separations, Sabraw said. U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said the government needs to allow parents deported without their children to come back to the U.S. and give them a chance to become legal permanent residents and eventually citizens. Just nine parents separated from their children were allowed back in January. Castro also called for a special committee, perhaps in the form of a human rights commission, to investigate the harm done through the mass separation of families in 2017 and 2018. “This was coordinated cruelty, coordinated abuse, at the highest and the lowest levels of the American government,” Castro said.

Poland's top court rules out abortions due to fetal defects

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-22/polands-top-court-rules-out-abortions-due-to-fetal-defects

Poland’s top court ruled Thursday that a law allowing abortion of fetuses with congenital defects is unconstitutional, closing a major loophole in the predominantly Catholic country’s abortion laws that are among the strictest in Europe. Two judges in the 13-member constitutional court did not back the majority ruling. Activists deplored the decision, and the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner wrote on Twitter that it was a “sad day for women’s rights.” Hours later, hundreds of mostly young protesters defied a pandemic-related ban on gatherings and staged a protest before the court with signs saying “You Have Blood on Your Gowns” and “Shame.” They then walked to the offices of the main ruling conservative party, Law and Justice, and to the house of the party leader and deputy prime minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who is the driving force behind the government’s policies. Police, in heavy presence, cordoned the house off from the noisy protesters, who were calling for the government to step down. The ruling party will soon propose new legislation to better support women and their children who will be born as a result of the court’s decision, the party’s spokeswoman said. The court’s ruling came in response to a motion from right-wing lawmakers who argued that terminating a pregnancy because of fetal defects — the most common reason cited for legal abortions in Poland — violates a constitutional provision that calls for protecting the life of every individual. The court argued that terminating pregnancy because of defects of the fetus amounted to eugenics — a 19th century notion of genetic selection that was later applied by the Nazis in their pseudo-scientific experiments. It agreed with the plaintiffs that it was a form of banned discrimination when the decision about an unborn child’s life was conditioned on its health. The challenged law was introduced by Poland’s young post-communist democracy in 1993 as a hard-won compromise between the influential Catholic Church and the state authorities. It allows abortions when a pregnancy endangers a woman’s health or life, or results from rape or other illegal acts, and also in case of congenital defects. Only the last provision was challenged. Even before Thursday’s ruling, many Polish women have sought abortions abroad. Health Ministry figures show that 1,110 legal abortions were performed in Poland in 2019, mostly because of fetal defects. In justifying its decision, the court said “there can be no protection of the dignity of an individual without the protection of life.” The verdict was announced by the court’s president, Julia Przylebska, a loyalist of the right-wing government that is focused on family and Catholic values. Przylebska’s appointment to the court in 2015 was one of the government’s first steps toward taking control of the judiciary. These steps have drawn condemnation from the European Union, which says they violate the democratic principle of the rule of law. Archbishop Marek Jedraszewski, known for his strong conservative views, hailed the verdict and expressed “great appreciation for the courage” of the judges in the defense of human life “from the moment of conception to the [moment of] natural death.” But opposition lawmakers lashed out. The head of the Civic Coalition, Borys Budka, said on Twitter that the government used a “false” court of its own appointees to do something “simply inhuman.” Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic deplored the decision. “Removing the basis for almost all legal abortions in #Poland amounts to a ban & violates #HumanRights,” she tweeted. “Today’s ruling of the Constitutional Court means underground/abroad abortions for those who can afford & even greater ordeal for all others. A sad day for #WomensRights.” Donald Tusk, former European Council president and former Polish prime minister, criticized the timing of such a key ruling during the difficult time of the pandemic. Police guarded the court’s building as groups of abortion rights and antiabortion activists gathered outside as the verdict was announced. The groups were small, because COVID-19 regulations ban gatherings of more than 10 people. One of the judges who did not back the ruling, Leon Kieres, argued he was mindful of the situation and condition of women when deprived of the right to decide about a pregnancy with defects. Polish lawmakers considered legislation this year that would have imposed a near-total ban on abortion by outlawing the procedure in cases of fetal abnormalities, even when a fetus has no chance of survival. They ended up postponing a final vote on the proposal brought by a Catholic group. Similar efforts also were mothballed previously after mass nationwide protests.

FDA approves first COVID-19 drug: antiviral remdesivir

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-22/fda-approves-first-covid-19-drug-antiviral-remdesivir

U.S. regulators on Thursday approved the first drug to treat COVID-19: remdesivir, an antiviral medicine given to hospitalized patients through an IV. The drug, which California-based Gilead Sciences Inc. is calling Veklury, cut the time to recovery by five days — from 15 days to 10, on average — in a large study led by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. It had been authorized for use on an emergency basis since spring, and now becomes the first drug to win full Food and Drug Administration approval for treating COVID-19. President Trump received it when he was sickened this month. Veklury is approved for people at least 12 years old and weighing at least 88 pounds who are hospitalized for a coronavirus infection. For patients younger than 12, the FDA will still allow the drug’s use in certain cases under its previous emergency authorization. The drug works by inhibiting a substance the virus uses to make copies of itself. Certain kidney and liver tests are required before starting patients on it to ensure it’s safe for them and to monitor for any possible side effects. And the label warns against using it with the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, because that can curb its effectiveness. “We now have enough knowledge and a growing set of tools to help fight COVID-19,” Gilead’s chief medical officer, Dr. Merdad Parsey, said in a statement. The drug is either approved or has temporary authorization in about 50 countries, he noted. Its price has been controversial, given that no studies have found it improves survival. Last week, a large study led by the World Health Organization found that the drug did not help hospitalized COVID-19 patients, but that study did not include a placebo group and was less rigorous than previous ones that found a benefit. The FDA’s approval statement noted that, besides the NIH-led one, two other studies found the drug beneficial. Gilead charges $2,340 for a typical treatment course for people covered by government health programs in the United States and other developed countries, and $3,120 for patients with private insurance. The amount that patients pay out of pocket depends on insurance, income and other factors. So far, only steroids such as dexamethasone have been shown to cut the risk of dying of COVID-19. The FDA also has given emergency authorization to using the blood of survivors, and two companies are currently seeking similar authorization for experimental antibody drugs.

Lawsuit of Michael Jackson sexual abuse accuser dismissed

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-22/lawsuit-of-michael-jackson-sexual-abuse-accuser-dismissed

A judge has dismissed the lawsuit of one of two men who alleged in the HBO documentary “Leaving Neverland” that Michael Jackson abused them as boys. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mark A. Young on Tuesday found that James Safechuck, 42, could not sue the two corporations Jackson owned that are named as defendants in the lawsuit, MJJ Productions Inc. and MJJ Ventures Inc. Young said Safechuck’s lawsuit had not demonstrated that he had a relationship with the corporations that would have required them to protect him from Jackson. Email messages seeking comment from both sides were not immediately returned. Music A California appeals court on Friday restored the sex-abuse lawsuits brought against two of Michael Jackson’s companies after a new law went into effect. Jan. 3, 2020 It’s the second time Safechuck’s case, filed in 2013, has been thrown out. A judge dismissed it in 2017 but an appeals court revived it early this year after California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a new law giving those who allege childhood sexual abuse longer to file lawsuits. The similar lawsuit of Safechuck’s fellow accuser and “Leaving Neverland” subject Wade Robson, which also was revived by the appeals court, remains alive. The Jackson estate has adamantly and repeatedly denied that he abused either of the boys, and it is suing HBO over “Leaving Neverland.” The Associated Press does not typically name victims of sexual abuse. But Robson and Safechuck have repeatedly come forward and approved of the use of their names and faces.

Judge dismisses lesser murder charge against Derek Chauvin in George Floyd's death

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-22/judge-drops-3rd-degree-murder-charge-against-ex-minneapolis-cop-in-george-floyds-death-2nd-degree-charge-remains

A Minnesota judge has dismissed a third-degree murder charge filed against the former Minneapolis police officer who pressed his knee against George Floyd’s neck, but the more serious second-degree murder charge remains. Hennepin County District Court Judge Peter Cahill’s ruling was made public Thursday. Chauvin now faces two counts going forward: second-degree murder and manslaughter. Cahill also denied defense requests to dismiss the aiding and abetting counts against three other former officers, Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao. “In this court’s view, with one exception, the State has met its burden of showing probable cause that warrants proceeding to trial against each of these Defendants on each of the criminal charges the State has filed against them,” Cahill wrote. He said it will be up to a jury to decide whether the officers are guilty. Floyd, a Black man who was in handcuffs, died May 25 after Chauvin, who is white, pressed his knee against Floyd’s neck as Floyd said he couldn’t breathe and became motionless. His death sparked protests in Minneapolis and beyond, and led to a nationwide reckoning on race. Prosecutors argued there was probable cause for the officers to go to trial on all of the charges, saying Chauvin intentionally assaulted Floyd, which is an element of the second-degree murder charge, and that the other officers assisted. During the entire time that Floyd was pinned to the ground, “the officers remained in the same position: Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck, Kueng and Lane remained atop Floyd’s back and legs, and Thao continued to prevent the crowd of concerned citizens from interceding,” prosecutors said. The officers ignored Floyd’s pleas to stop, cries from the concerned crowd, and their own training, prosecutors said. Defense attorneys argued that there was not enough probable cause to charge the former officers. Chauvin’s attorney said his client had no intent to assault or kill Floyd, while attorneys for the other officers argued that their clients did not intend or conspire to help Chauvin. Defense attorneys said Floyd’s drug use was a factor in his death, with Chauvin’s attorney, Eric Nelson, saying Floyd most likely died of “fentanyl or a combination of fentanyl and methamphetamine in concert with his underlying health conditions.” The county medical examiner classified Floyd’s death as a homicide, with his heart stopping while he was restrained by police and his neck compressed. A summary report listed fentanyl intoxication and recent methamphetamine use under “other significant conditions” but not under “cause of death.” According to prosecutors’ notes, Hennepin County Medical Examiner Andrew Baker told prosecutors that absent other apparent causes of death, it “could be acceptable” to rule the death an overdose, based on the level of fentanyl in Floyd’s system. A separate autopsy commissioned for Floyd’s family concluded he died of asphyxiation due to neck and back compression.

Remains found in search for victims of 1921 Tulsa race massacre

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-21/remains-found-in-search-for-1921-tulsa-race-massacre-victims

At least 10 bodies were found Wednesday in an unmarked mass grave at a Tulsa cemetery where investigators are searching for the remains of victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, Oklahoma’s state archaeologist said. “What we were finding was an indication that we were inside a large area ... a large hole that had been excavated and into which several individuals had been placed and buried in that location. This constitutes a mass grave,” state archaeologist Kary Stackelbeck said. Investigators found 10 wooden coffins containing what was initially presumed to be one person in each, Stackelbeck said. She said further examination of the coffins and remains, which have not been removed, was needed. “Those skeletal remains are not in great condition,” Stackelbeck said. “They’re not the worst condition we have seen ... but they’re not the best.” Combined with one set of remains found nearby Tuesday, at least 11 bodies have now been discovered, according to Stackelbeck. University of Florida forensic anthropologist Phoebe Stubblefield, a descendent of a massacre survivor who is assisting in the search, said patience is needed before anyone can expect to know the identities of the remains or the cause of deaths. “We will need considerable time to investigate them because the preservation, teeth have been showing up OK, but nondental structures” have deteriorated, Stubblefield said. Stackelbeck said it was too early to say that the remains are massacre victims, even though they were found near an area known as the Original 18, where funeral home records indicate massacre victims were buried. There are two headstones in the Original 18 marking the graves of two massacre victims, but the area where the remains were found Wednesday is unmarked. “We have not yet made our assessment to say that these do actually represent the massacre victims,” Stackelbeck said. “Whether they are associated with the same event or the same time period of burial is something that we are still in the process of assessing.” Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum, who in 2018 proposed looking for victims of the violence and later budgeted $100,000 to fund it after previous searches failed, called the discovery significant in the city’s history. “What we do know as of today is that there is a mass grave in Oaklawn Cemetery where we have no record of anyone being buried,” Bynum said. The latest search at Oaklawn began Monday. An earlier excavation of another part of the cemetery ended in July with no significant discoveries. The violence took place on May 31 and June 1, 1921, when a white mob attacked Tulsa’s Black Wall Street, killing an estimated 300 mostly Black people and wounding 800 more, while robbing and burning businesses, homes and churches. The massacre happened two years after what is known as the Red Summer, when hundreds of African Americans died at the hands of white mobs in violence around the U.S. that has been depicted in the HBO TV shows “Watchmen” and “Lovecraft County.” It also received renewed attention after President Trump selected Tulsa as the location for a June rally amid a national reckoning over police brutality and racial violence. Trump moved the date to avoid coinciding with a Juneteenth celebration in the Greenwood District commemorating the end of slavery.

Supreme Court puts curbside voting on hold in Alabama

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-10-21/supreme-court-puts-curbside-voting-on-hold-in-alabama

The Supreme Court on Wednesday put on hold a lower court order that would have permitted curbside voting in Alabama in the Nov. 3 election. The justices’ vote was 5-3, with the court’s three liberals dissenting. As is typical when the Supreme Court acts on an emergency basis, the justices in the majority did not explain their decision. It was not clear how many counties might have offered curbside voting, allowing people to vote from their car by handing their ballot to a poll worker. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissent joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan, described the lower court’s order allowing curbside voting in November as “modest,” and she said she would not have put it on hold. “It does not require all counties to adopt curbside voting; it simply gives prepared counties the option to do so. This remedy respects both the right of voters with disabilities to vote safely and the State’s interest in orderly elections,” she said, noting that 28 states permit curbside voting.

U.S. urges countries to withdraw from U.N. treaty banning nuclear weapons

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-21/us-urges-countries-to-withdraw-from-un-nuke-ban-treaty

The United States is urging countries that have ratified a U.N. treaty to ban nuclear weapons to withdraw their support as the pact nears the 50 ratifications needed to trigger its entry into force, which supporters say could happen this week. The U.S. letter to signatories, obtained by the Associated Press, says the five original nuclear powers — the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France — and the United States’ NATO allies “stand unified in our opposition to the potential repercussions” of the treaty. It says the treaty “turns back the clock on verification and disarmament and is dangerous” to the half-century-old Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, considered the cornerstone of global nonproliferation efforts. “Although we recognize your sovereign right to ratify or accede to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), we believe that you have made a strategic error and should withdraw your instrument of ratification or accession,” the letter says. The treaty requires that all ratifying countries “never under any circumstances … develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.” It also bans any transfer or use of nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive devices — and the threat to use such weapons — and requires parties to promote the treaty to other countries. Beatrice Fihn, executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize-winning coalition whose work helped spearhead the nuclear ban treaty, told the Associated Press on Tuesday that several diplomatic sources confirmed they and other states that ratified the TPNW had been sent letters by the U.S. requesting their withdrawal. She said the “increasing nervousness, and maybe straightforward panic, with some of the nuclear-armed states and particularly the Trump administration” shows that they “really seem to understand that this is a reality: Nuclear weapons are going to be banned under international law soon.” Fihn dismissed the nuclear powers’ claims that the treaty interferes with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as “straightforward lies, to be frank.” “They have no actual argument to back that up,” she said. “The Nonproliferation Treaty is about preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and eliminating nuclear weapons, and this treaty implements that. There’s no way you can undermine the Nonproliferation Treaty by banning nuclear weapons. It’s the end goal of the Nonproliferation Treaty.” The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty sought to prevent the spread of nuclear arms beyond the five original weapons powers. It requires nonnuclear signatory nations to not pursue atomic weapons in exchange for a commitment by the five powers to move toward nuclear disarmament and to guarantee nonnuclear states’ access to peaceful nuclear technology for producing energy. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called the nuclear weapons ban treaty “a very welcome initiative.” “It is clear for me that we will only be entirely safe in relation to nuclear weapons the day where nuclear weapons no longer exist,” he said in an interview Wednesday with the AP. “We know that it’s not easy. We know that there are many obstacles.” He expressed hope that a number of important initiatives, including U.S.-Russia talks on renewing the New START Treaty limiting deployed nuclear warheads, missiles and bombers and next year’s review conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, “will all converge in the same direction, and the final objective must be to have a world with no nuclear weapons.” “That the Trump administration is pressuring countries to withdraw from a United Nations-backed disarmament treaty is an unprecedented action in international relations,” Fihn said. “That the U.S. goes so far as insisting countries violate their treaty obligations by not promoting the TPNW to other states shows how fearful they are of the treaty’s impact and growing support.” The treaty was approved by the 193-member U.N. General Assembly on July 7, 2017, by a vote of 122 in favor, the Netherlands opposed and Singapore abstaining. Among countries voting in favor was Iran. The five nuclear powers and four other countries known or believed to possess nuclear weapons — India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel — boycotted negotiations and the vote on the treaty, along with many of their allies. The treaty has 47 ratifications and needs 50 to trigger its entry into force in 90 days. Fihn said about 10 countries are trying very hard to ratify to get to 50, “and we know that there are a few governments that are working towards Friday as the date…. We’re not 100% it will happen, but hopefully it will.” Friday has been an unofficial target because it is the eve of United Nations Day on Oct. 24, which marks the anniversary of the entry into force in 1945 of the U.N. Charter. The day has been observed since 1948. Fihn stressed that the entry into force of the treaty would be “a really big deal” because it would become part of international law and would be raised in discussions on disarmament, war crimes and weapons. “And I think that over time pressure will grow on the nuclear-armed states to join the treaty,” she said.

Penn State basketball coach Pat Chambers resigns after investigation

https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2020-10-22/penn-state-coach-pat-chambers-resigns-after-investigation

Pat Chambers resigned as Penn State’s basketball coach Wednesday following an internal investigation by the school into allegations of inappropriate conduct. Chambers, 49, had been at Penn State for nine years and was coming off the team’s best season under his direction. Penn State athletic director Sandy Barbour said during a news conference later Wednesday that she would not disclose details of the school’s investigation, but did say it did not involve NCAA matters. The investigation followed a July article by ESPN’s the Undefeated that quoted a former Penn State player saying that Chambers made an insensitive remark to him referencing a noose during the 2018-19 season. “As difficult as this news may be, both President [Eric] Barron and I believe this is the right outcome,” Barbour said at the news conference. Assistant coach Jim Ferry was elevated to interim coach for the coming season. The start of basketball season is slated for Nov. 25. Ferry has previously been head coach at Long Island University Brooklyn and Duquesne. Sports Penn State coach Patrick Chambers apologized following Thursday night’s loss at Michigan after he appeared to shove one of his players during a timeout. Jan. 4, 2019 Chambers was in the middle of a four-year contract with Penn State that runs through the 2021-22 season. He was 148-150 with Penn State, including an NIT championship in 2018. In a statement to the online sports network Stadium, Chambers said: “This has been an incredibly difficult year for me and my family, and we are in need of a break to re-set and chart our path forward.” Penn State finished 21-10 last season and was likely to earn an NCAA tournament berth for the first time since 2011 before the postseason was canceled because of the pandemic. “Coach Chambers has made many contributions to the program and to this university for which we are grateful,” Barbour said. “The team has been on a positive trajectory.” Barbour said Penn State’s players were “very disappointed” to find out about Chambers’ departure when he delivered the news. “Our current players, many of them have good relationships with him,” Barbour said. Earlier this year, former Penn State player Rasir Bolton, now at Iowa State, made allegations of inappropriate conduct by Chambers to the Undefeated. Bolton said that during a particularly difficult stretch for the team in January 2019, Chambers told him: “I want to loosen the noose that’s around your neck.” Chambers apologized to Bolton for the comment. Barbour said new allegations surfaced shortly after the story and a review was conducted jointly by Penn State’s affirmative action and athletics integrity offices. She said the final report on the investigation was received within the last two weeks.

Brief encounters with COVID-19 patients now considered 'close contact,' CDC says

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-21/cdc-redefines-covid-19-close-contact-adds-brief-encounters

U.S. health officials have redefined what counts as “close contact” with someone with a coronavirus infection to include briefer but repeated encounters. For months, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said close contact meant spending a solid 15 minutes within 6 feet of someone who tested positive for the virus. On Wednesday, the CDC changed it to include shorter but repeated contacts that add up to 15 minutes over a 24-hour period. The CDC advises anyone who has been in close contact with a COVID-19 patient to quarantine for two weeks. California While most people only experience mild or no symptoms at all from coronavirus infection, it can take roughly a week or so before severe illness strikes for those who do end up experiencing life-threatening symptoms. Oct. 3, 2020 The change may prompt health departments to do contact tracing in cases where an exposure might previously have been considered too brief, said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious diseases expert at Vanderbilt University. It also serves notice that the coronavirus can spread more easily than many people realize, he added. The definition change was triggered by the case of a 20-year-old Vermont correctional officer who was diagnosed with a coronavirus infection in August. The guard, who wore a mask and goggles, had multiple brief encounters with six transferred prisoners before test results showed they were positive. At times, the prisoners wore masks, but there were encounters in cell doorways or in a recreational room where prisoners did not have them on, according to a report on the case published Wednesday in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. An investigation that reviewed video recordings concluded the guard’s brief interactions totaled 17 minutes during an eight-hour shift. The report didn’t identify the prison, but Vermont officials have said that in late July, six inmates tested positive when they arrived at the Marble Valley Regional Correctional Facility in Rutland. In a statement, CDC officials said that the case underscores the importance of wearing masks to prevent coronavirus transmission, and that the agency’s guidance can change as new information comes in. World & Nation Acknowledging that tiny particles that linger in the air can spread the coronavirus, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned the public to avoid crowded, poorly ventilated rooms. Oct. 5, 2020 “As we get more data and understand this COVID we’re going to continue to incorporate that in our recommendations,” Dr. Robert Redfield, the CDC’s director, said at a news conference in Atlanta. The CDC also says close contact can include hugging and kissing, sharing eating or drinking utensils with an infected person, and providing home care to someone who is sick. Being sneezed or coughed on also counts. The risk of spread is considered to be lower outdoors, but the CDC guidance update “makes scientific sense,” said Dr. Michael Saag, an infectious disease researcher at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Nigerian forces kill 12 people peacefully protesting police brutality, rights group says

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-21/nigerian-forces-killed-12-peaceful-protests-against-sars-amnesty-says

Amnesty International said in a report Wednesday that Nigeria’s security forces fired on two large gatherings of peaceful protesters Tuesday night, killing 12 people calling for an end to police brutality. At least 56 people have died during two weeks of widespread demonstrations against police violence, including 38 on Tuesday, the group said. The Nigerian government did not immediately comment about Amnesty International’s allegations. The #EndSARS protests began amid calls for Nigeria’s government to close the police Special Anti-Robbery Squad, known as SARS, but have turned into a much wider demand for better governance in Nigeria. Despite the growing violence, the Nigerian protesters defied a curfew and faced off with security forces Wednesday as gunfire rang out and fires burned in Lagos, a day after shots were fired into a crowd of demonstrators singing the national anthem. The security forces opened fire without warning on the protesters Tuesday night at the Lekki toll plaza, Amnesty said in its report, citing eyewitnesses, video images and hospital reports. “Opening fire on peaceful protesters is a blatant violation of people’s rights to life, dignity, freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. Soldiers clearly had one intention — to kill without consequences,” said Osai Ojigho, country director of Amnesty International Nigeria. Amnesty said it had received reports that, shortly before the shootings, CCTV security cameras at the Lekki toll gates, where protesters had been camped for two weeks, were removed by government officials and electricity was cut to prevent evidence emerging of the violence. Some of those killed and injured at the toll plaza and in Alausa, another Lagos neighborhood, were taken away by the military, Amnesty alleged in the report. “These shootings clearly amount to extrajudicial executions,” said Ojigho. “There must be an immediate investigation and suspected perpetrators must be held accountable through fair trials.” Amnesty’s report backs up posts and images on social media that have shown widespread violence against protesters. Amid global outrage, Nigeria’s military denied responsibility for the Lekki shootings, posting a tweet that labeled several reports as fake news. More gunfire rang out across Lagos on Wednesday and into the night, including at the Lekki toll plaza, where young demonstrators rallied again despite an order for everyone to stay off the streets. At the sound of the shots, some protesters were seen on a live broadcast by the Associated Press running away, though it was unclear whether the crowd was fired upon. Police also fired tear gas at bands of demonstrators, and smoke was seen billowing from several areas in the city’s center. Two private TV stations were forced off the air at least temporarily when their offices were burned by unidentified attackers. “People are aggrieved over the deaths. They are aggrieved by police violence, and they are going out on the streets to show their anger,” said Lagos resident Michael Oladapo Abiodun, who said he had supported protesters on social media. Demonstrations and gunfire were also reported in several other Nigerian cities, including the capital city, Abuja. In response to the #EndSARS movement, the government announced it would disband the unit, which Amnesty International says has been responsible for many cases of torture and killings. But that has failed to satisfy demonstrators, who are now demanding more widespread reforms to end human rights abuses committed by security forces of all stripes and pervasive government corruption. Despite the country’s massive oil wealth and an economy that is one of Africa’s largest — many of Nigeria’s more than 200 million people face high levels of poverty and lack basic services because of rampant graft, according to rights groups. The protests drew increased international attention after videos were posted on social media in which gunfire could be heard echoing over protesters as they sang the national anthem at the Lekki toll plaza in the darkness Tuesday night. It’s not clear in the videos who was firing, but many agree with the Amnesty report that Nigeria’s military is responsible. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said, “There is little doubt that this was a case of excessive use of force, resulting in unlawful killings with live ammunition, by Nigerian armed forces.” Lagos Gov. Babajide Sanwo-Olu has ordered an investigation into the military’s actions at Lekki plaza. He said that 25 people were injured and one person had died from blunt trauma to the head. President Muhammadu Buhari — who has said little about the protests engulfing his country — did not mention the Lekki shootings in a statement Wednesday but issued a call for calm and vowed police reforms. Buhari’s statement said the dissolution of the SARS unit was “the first step in a set of reform policies that will deliver a police system accountable to the Nigerian people.” Nigeria’s spiraling crisis has drawn international attention, and denunciations of the violence by foreign dignitaries and celebrities, including U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden and Beyoncé. Anti-riot police are being deployed across Nigeria, and security has been strengthened around correctional facilities, the inspector-general of police announced. On Tuesday, authorities said nearly 2,000 inmates had broken out of jail after crowds attacked two correctional facilities a day earlier.

Parents of 545 children separated at the U.S.-Mexico border can't be found

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-21/parents-of-545-children-separated-at-border-cant-be-found

Court-appointed lawyers said Tuesday that they have been unable to find parents of 545 children who were separated at the U.S. border with Mexico early in the Trump administration. The children were separated between July 1, 2017, and June 26, 2018, when a federal judge in San Diego ordered that children in government custody be reunited with their parents. Children from that period are difficult to find because the government had inadequate tracking systems. Volunteers have searched for them and their parents by going door-to-door in Guatemala and Honduras. More than 2,700 children had been separated from their parents in June 2018 when U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw ordered an end to the practice, which was part of a Trump administration “zero-tolerance” policy to criminally prosecute every adult who entered the country illegally from Mexico. The administration sparked an international outcry when parents couldn’t find their children. While those families were reunited under court order, authorities later discovered that up to 1,556 children were separated under the policy going back to the summer of 2017, including hundreds in El Paso from July to November 2017, which was not publicly disclosed at the time. The American Civil Liberties Union, which sued over the practice, said a court-appointed steering committee had located the parents of 485 children, up 47 from August. That leaves 545 still unaccounted for among the 1,030 children for whom the steering committee had telephone numbers from U.S. authorities. Politics Even after Trump stops hitting his favorite punching bag, California will feel the impact of his immigration restrictions. Oct. 18, 2020 The parents of about two-thirds of those 545 children are believed to be in their home countries, the ACLU said. Volunteers have “engaged in time-consuming and arduous on-the-ground searches for parents in their respective countries of origin,” the ACLU said in a court filing. Those searches were suspended after the coronavirus outbreak but have resumed in a limited way. The steering committee has also promoted toll-free phone numbers in Spanish to reach families. The judge has scheduled a hearing on Thursday to discuss the status of reunification efforts. California A Times investigation found that since 2017, at least 265 calls have reported violence and abuse inside California’s four privately run immigrant detention centers. Half of them alleged sex crimes against detainees. Oct. 18, 2020

Maryland man accused of threatening to kill Biden, Harris in note to neighbor

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-10-21/man-accused-of-threatening-to-kill-biden-harris

A Maryland man was charged Wednesday with making death threats against Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and running mate Sen. Kamala Harris in a letter left on the doorstep of a neighbor who had yard signs supporting the candidates. James Dale Reed, 42, of Frederick, told investigators that he was “upset at the political situation” when he wrote the threatening letter, a U.S. Secret Service agent said in an affidavit. Reed was in state custody when a criminal complaint was filed against him in federal court in Baltimore, U.S. Atty. Robert Hur’s office said in a news release. A door camera captured video of a person resembling Reed leaving the letter on his neighbor’s doorstep early on the morning of Oct. 4, authorities said. The neighbor said he didn’t know Reed but had several yard signs supporting the Democratic candidates for president and vice president. “We take these types of threats extremely seriously,” Hur said in a statement. “Such threats to commit violence are illegal and have no place in our democracy, and we will hold accountable those who make them.” The letter threatened violence against Democrats and said that “Grandpa Biden” and Harris would both be attacked and executed, the Secret Service agent’s affidavit says. An anonymous tip to police led to investigators to question Reed at his home last Tuesday, prosecutors said. He initially denied leaving the letter but was arrested two days later after he admitted writing and delivering it to his neighbor, according to Hur’s office. “He then explained his involvement to the agents by saying that ‘This will happen’ (referring to individuals making threatening comments) due to the political climate,” the Secret Service agent wrote. The agent noted that Reed was “known to” the Secret Service for making a threatening statement against an unidentified person under the agency’s protection in 2014. Online court records don’t list an attorney representing Reed in the federal case. A docket entry in the state case against Reed indicates he waived his right to have a lawyer represent him during his initial appearance in Frederick District Court last week. The federal charge that he faces carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma to plead guilty to 3 criminal charges

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-21/oxycontin-maker-purdue-pharma-to-plead-to-3-criminal-charges

Drugmaker Purdue Pharma, the company behind the powerful prescription painkiller OxyContin, which experts say helped touch off an opioid epidemic, will plead guilty to federal criminal charges as part of a settlement of more than $8 billion, the Justice Department announced Wednesday. The deal does not release any of the company’s executives or owners — members of the wealthy Sackler family — from criminal liability, and a criminal investigation is ongoing. Family members said they acted “ethically and lawfully,” but some state attorneys general said the agreement fails to hold the Sacklers accountable. The company will plead guilty to three counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States and violating federal anti-kickback laws, the officials said, and the agreement will be detailed in a bankruptcy court filing in federal court. The Sacklers will lose all control over their company, a move already in the works, and Purdue will become a public benefit company, meaning it will be governed by a trust that has to balance the trust’s interests against those of the American people and public health, officials said. The settlement is the highest-profile display yet of the federal government seeking to hold a major drugmaker responsible for an opioid addiction and overdose crisis linked to more than 470,000 deaths in the country since 2000. It comes less than two weeks before a presidential election in which the opioid epidemic has taken a political back seat to the COVID-19 pandemic and other issues, and gives President Trump’s administration an example of action on the addiction crisis, which he promised early on in his term. Ed Bisch, who lost his 18-year-old son to an overdose nearly 20 years ago, said he wants to see people associated with Purdue prosecuted and was glad the Sackler family wasn’t granted immunity. He blames the company and the Sacklers for thousands of deaths. “If it was sold for severe pain only from the beginning, none of this would have happened,” said Bisch, who lives in Westampton, N.J. “But they got greedy.” Brooke Feldman, a 39-year-old Philadelphia resident who is in recovery from opioid use disorder and is a social worker, said she is glad to see Purdue admit wrongdoing. She said the company had acted for years as “a drug cartel.” Democratic attorneys general criticized the agreement as a “mere mirage” of justice for victims. “The federal government had the power here to put the Sacklers in jail, and they didn’t,” Connecticut Atty. Gen. William Tong said in a statement. “Instead, they took fines and penalties that Purdue likely will never fully pay.” But members of the Sackler family, once listed as one of the nation’s wealthiest by Forbes magazine, said they had acted “ethically and lawfully” and that company documents required to be made public under the settlement will show that. “Purdue deeply regrets and accepts responsibility for the misconduct detailed by the Department of Justice in the agreed statement of facts,” Steve Miller, who became chairman of the company’s board in 2018, said in a statement. No members of the Sackler family remain on that board, though they still own the company. Family members, in a statement, expressed “deep compassion for people who suffer from opioid addiction and abuse and hope the proposal will be implemented as swiftly as possible to help address their critical needs.” As part of the resolution, Purdue is admitting that it impeded the Drug Enforcement Administration by falsely representing that it had maintained an effective program to avoid drug diversion and by reporting misleading information to the agency to boost the company’s manufacturing quotas, the officials said. Purdue is also admitting to violating federal anti-kickback laws by paying doctors, through a speaking program, to induce them to write more prescriptions for the company’s opioids and using electronic health records software to influence the prescription of pain medication, according to the officials. Purdue will make a direct payment to the government of $225 million, which is part of a larger $2-billion criminal forfeiture. In addition to that forfeiture, Purdue also faces a $3.54-billion criminal fine, though that money probably will not be fully collected because it will be taken through a bankruptcy, which includes a large number of other creditors, including thousands of state and local governments. Purdue will also agree to $2.8 billion in damages to resolve its civil liability. Part of the money from the settlement would go to aid in medication-assisted treatment and other drug programs to combat the opioid epidemic. That part of the arrangement echoes the plan that the company is pushing in bankruptcy court and that about half the states oppose. As part of the plea deal, the company admits it violated federal law and “knowingly and intentionally conspired and agreed with others to aid and abet” the dispensing of medication from doctors “without a legitimate medical purpose and outside the usual course of professional practice,” according to the plea agreement. Although some state attorneys general opposed the prospect of Purdue becoming a public benefit company, the lead lawyers representing 2,800 local governments in lawsuits against Purdue and other drugmakers, distributors and pharmacies put out a statement supporting the principle but saying more work needs to be done. The Sackler family has already pledged to hand over the company plus at least $3 billion to resolve thousands of suits against the Stamford, Conn.-based drugmaker. The company declared bankruptcy as a way to work out that plan, which could be worth $10 billion to $12 billion over time. In their statement, family members said that is “more than double all Purdue profits the Sackler family retained since the introduction of OxyContin.” “Both the company and the shareholders are paying a very steep price for what occurred here,” Deputy U.S. Atty. Gen. Jeffrey Rosen said Wednesday. Although there are conflicting views of whether it’s enough, it’s clear the Sacklers’ reputation has taken a hit. Until recently, the Sackler name was on museum galleries and educational programs around the world because of gifts from family members. But under pressure from activists, institutions such as the Louvre in Paris and Tufts University in Massachusetts have dissociated themselves from the family in the last few years.

Grand juror speaks after judge's ruling in Breonna Taylor case

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-20/grand-juror-speaks-after-judge-ruling-in-breonna-taylor-case

A grand juror who won a court fight to speak publicly about the Breonna Taylor investigation took issue Tuesday with statements by Kentucky’s attorney general and said the jury was not given the option to consider charges connected to Taylor’s shooting death by police. The anonymous grand juror had filed suit to speak publicly after Kentucky Atty. Gen. Daniel Cameron announced last month that no officers would be directly charged in the March shooting death of Taylor during a narcotics raid. The grand jury charged one officer with endangering her neighbors. In a written statement after winning a judge’s permission to break silence in the case, the grand juror, who was not identified, said that only wanton endangerment charges were offered to jurors to consider against one officer. The grand jury asked questions about bringing other charges against the officers, “and the grand jury was told there would be none because the prosecutors didn’t feel they could make them stick,” the grand juror said. Cameron had opposed in court allowing grand jurors to speak about the proceedings. He said Tuesday that he would not appeal the judge’s ruling. Grand juries are typically secret meetings, though earlier this month the audio recordings of the proceedings in the Taylor case were released publicly. Cameron announced the results of the grand jury investigation in a widely viewed news conference on Sept. 23. At that announcement, he said prosecutors “walked the grand jury through every homicide offense.” He also said “the grand jury agreed” that the officers who shot Taylor were justified in returning fire after they were shot at by Kenneth Walker, Taylor’s boyfriend. Walker’s lone gunshot struck one of the officers in the leg. The anonymous grand juror challenged Cameron’s comments, saying the panel “didn’t agree that certain actions were justified,” and grand jurors “did not have homicide charges explained to them.” The grand juror’s attorney, Kevin Glowgower, said his client’s chief complaint was the way in which the results were “portrayed to the public as to who made what decisions and who agreed with what decisions.” The grand juror had no further plans to speak about the proceedings beyond Tuesday’s statement, Glowgower said. Ben Crump, an attorney for Taylor’s family, said Cameron “took the decision out of the grand jury’s hands” and said the grand juror’s statement was “confirmation of Cameron’s dereliction of duties.” Cameron has acknowledged his prosecutors did not introduce any homicide charges against two officers who shot Taylor, and said it was because they were justified in returning fire after Walker shot at them. Cameron said Tuesday that it was his decision “to ask for an indictment that could be proven under Kentucky law.” “Indictments obtained in the absence of sufficient proof under the law do not stand up and are not fundamentally fair to any one,” Cameron said in a statement released Tuesday night. In the ruling allowing the grand jurors to speak, Jefferson Circuit Judge Annie O’Connell wrote that it “is a rare and extraordinary example of a case where, at the time this motion is made, the historical reasons for preserving grand jury secrecy are null.” Taylor, a Black emergency medical technician, was shot multiple times after Walker fired once at white officers executing a narcotics warrant. Walker said he didn’t know it was police and believed it was a home invasion. The warrant was approved as part of a narcotics investigation. No drugs were found at her home. The case has fueled nationwide protests against police brutality and systemic racism.

How Google evolved from 'cuddly' start-up to antitrust target

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-20/how-google-evolved-from-cuddly-startup-to-antitrust-target

In Google’s infancy, co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin reviled Microsoft Corp. as a technological bully that ruthlessly abused its dominance of the personal computer software market to choke off competition that could spawn better products. Their disdain for Microsoft spurred Google to adopt “don’t be evil” as a corporate motto that remained its moral compass during its transition from a freewheeling start-up to a publicly traded company suddenly accountable to shareholders. That pledge is now a distant memory as Google confronts an existential threat similar to what Microsoft once faced. Like Microsoft was 22 years ago, Google is in the crosshairs of a U.S. Justice Department lawsuit accusing it of wielding the immense power of its internet search engine as a weapon that has bludgeoned competition and thwarted innovation to the detriment of the billions of people using a stable of market-leading services that includes Gmail, Chrome browser, Android-powered smartphones, YouTube videos and digital maps. “They are definitely not a cuddly company any longer,” said Maelle Gavet, author of the book “Trampled by Unicorns: Big Tech’s Empathy Problem and How to Fix It.” Business Suing Google for monopolistic behavior has bipartisan support, but Trump’s involvement could ruin the government’s case. Oct. 20, 2020 How Alphabet Inc.-owned Google grew from its idealistic roots into the cutthroat behemoth depicted by antitrust regulators is a story shaped by unbridled ambition, savvy decision-making, technology’s networking effects, lax regulatory oversight and the unrelenting pressure all publicly held companies face to perpetually pump up their profits. Google behaved “like a teenager for a very long time, but now they are all grown up. They became a corporation,” said Ken Auletta, author of “Googled: The End of the World as We Know It.” While acknowledging the increased clout it has gained from the popularity of its mostly free services, Google says it remains true to its founding principles to organize the world’s information. The Mountain View, Calif., company also denies any wrongdoing and intends to fight the suit filed Tuesday by the Justice Department, just as Microsoft did. Like other seminal Silicon Valley companies such as Apple Inc. and Hewlett-Packard, Google started in a garage — one that Page and Brin rented from Susan Wojcicki, who now runs YouTube for the company. They focused on creating a database of everything on the internet through a search engine that almost instantaneously listed a pecking order of websites most likely to have what anyone wanted. Unlike other major search engines offered by Yahoo, AltaVista and others, Google initially displayed only 10 blue links on each page of results, with no effort to get visitors to stay on its own website. “We want you to come to Google and quickly find what you want. Then we’re happy to send you to the other sites. In fact, that’s the point,” Page told Playboy magazine just before the company’s initial public offering of stock in 2004. Google was so proficient at this that its name soon became synonymous with searching. But once Google figured out it could sell ads tied to search results, it began to make more money than Page and Brin had envisioned. Seeing an opportunity to mine new opportunities and push technology to new frontiers, they decided to spend billions of dollars on research and acquisitions. The expansion started around the same time Google went public, with digital maps that made it simpler and quicker to get directions and with Gmail, which offered a then-astounding 1 gigabyte of free storage when others were offering only four to 25 megabytes. Later came the Chrome web browser that Google touted as a sleeker alternative to the Explorer browser that Microsoft once bundled with its Windows operating system — a practice targeted in the Justice Department’s lawsuit against the software marker. Google went on a shopping spree that involved more than 260 acquisitions. Besides the vision of Page and Brin, many of the deals were driven by insights into trends gleaned from a search engine that constantly crawled the internet and processed billions of requests each day. Three of the deals became pillars in Google’s empire: a little-noticed 2005 purchase of a mobile operating system called Android for $50 million, the 2006 acquisition of YouTube for $1.76 billion and the 2008 takeover of ad-placement service DoubleClick for $3.2 billion. Regulators quickly approved the Android and YouTube deals while waiting a year before signing off on the DoubleClick purchase. None of them might have been allowed to happen, Gavet said, if regulators had a better grasp of how technology works. “These technology companies were allowed to operate in a vacuum because the regulators didn’t fully understand why they were adding other businesses,” she said. As it began to build its suite of services, Google took a page from the Microsoft playbook that its then-Chief Executive Eric Schmidt had studied in the 1990s as a rival executive at Sun Microsystems and Novell. The company used its online search dominance to promote and bundle other products, just as Microsoft used its Windows operating system to extend the reach of its Office suite of software and Explorer web browser. Google’s promotion of Chrome on its search engine helped the browser supplant Explorer as the market leader. Chrome also got a boost from Google’s requirement that the browser be included on billions of smartphones relying on its free Android software. Other Google-owned apps, such as Maps and YouTube, also were bundled with the distribution of Android. Once Chrome became the world’s most-used browser, it drove even more traffic to Google’s search engine and other products while also collecting valuable insights into what sites people were visiting to help sell even more advertising. Google also has leveraged the money pouring in from an advertising network that relies heavily on the tools acquired from DoubleClick to negotiate lucrative deals to become the default search engine on the iPhone and another popular browser, Firefox. Besides bundling, Google’s approach to search began gradually changing more than a decade ago as it faced potential threats from other sites focusing on lucrative niches in e-commerce, travel, food and entertainment. Google increasingly began to feature its own services at the top of its search results — a prized position that diverted traffic from other sites that believed they offered better information and products. In some cases, Google even scraped reviews from sites such as Yelp and highlighted them on its own results page instead of sending people to the source, as Page once promised. Google stopped featuring Yelp content after repeated complaints, but Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman and others have been complaining for the last decade that Google’s search engine long ago was transformed from an online turnstile into a walled garden built to maximize profits. Although Page and Brin pledged to never focus on short-term profit, Google hired a respected Wall Street veteran, Ruth Porat, as its chief financial officer in 2015. Google began reining in its spending and created a holding company, Alphabet, to oversee some of its unprofitable projects, such as internet-beaming balloons and self-driving cars. “You hire someone like Ruth because you want someone who can talk to Wall Street,” Gavet said. “Whether you like it or not, once you become a publicly traded company, your stock price has an influence.” Before the pandemic, Google had never suffered a year-over-year decline in quarterly revenue — an extraordinary performance that has helped propel a stock that serves as key component in the compensation for Alphabet’s more than 127,000 employees. Google’s moneymaking machine has boosted its annual revenue from $1.5 billion in 2003 to $161 billion last year while increasing its market value from $25 billion to more than $1 trillion. “When you become a public company, growth is one of the ways you judge success,” Auletta said. The daunting question that must now be answered by the U.S. judicial system is whether Google became too successful for the greater good of technology and a free market. Liedtke writes for the Associated Press.

Americans' trust in COVID-19 information is waning, poll finds

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-20/ap-norc-usafacts-poll-us-trust-in-covid-19-information-down

Americans have lost trust across the board in the people and institutions informing them about the coronavirus and COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and USAFacts. The poll finds that the percentage of people saying they trust COVID-19 information from their state or local governments, the news media, social media and their friends and family has dropped significantly compared to similar questions in April. A large chunk of Americans say they find it hard to know if coronavirus information is accurate. Just 16% say they trust coronavirus information from President Trump a great deal or quite a bit, down from 23% in April. And 64% now say they trust Trump only a little or not at all on COVID-19. Only social media, at 72%, is less trusted. Paula Randolph said that even though she opposes the Republican president, she trusted the White House on coronavirus information when the pandemic started. “Because of the history of the presidency of the United States, it was ‘no matter what, they’ll tell us the facts,’” said Randolph, a 49-year-old disabled woman in Dixon, Mo. “It became a circus, and I no longer trust it.” She even remembers the day she lost trust in the White House on the coronavirus: April 30. Trump, who by that point had been promoting an anti-malaria drug unproven to help patients with COVID-19, held a news conference in which he called his response to the virus “really spectacular.” Science & Medicine The Trump administration seems to be going to great lengths to get a COVID-19 vaccine produced by election day. How much can they get away with? Oct. 9, 2020 The family doctor ranks highest when it comes to whom Americans trust for information about the coronavirus, with 53% saying they trust their health provider a great deal or quite a bit. After their doctors, 36% said they have high trust in federal health officials at agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, 26% in state or local governments, 18% in news media, 17% in family and friends, 16% in Trump, 12% in search engines and just 6% in social media. Experts in health, science and political communication said they see three reasons for the drop in trust: fear, politics and the public watching science messily forming in real time. “The fact that trust dropped in all categories, including healthcare providers and family and friends, speaks to a really worried society that doesn’t feel safe,” said David Ropeik, a retired Harvard instructor on risk communication. The World Health Organization calls the flood of both good and bad information on the coronavirus an “infodemic.” Thirty percent of Americans said it is difficult finding factual information about COVID-19. While 48% said they can tell the difference between coronavirus fact and opinion, only 35% say it’s easy to know whether that information is true. About as many, 36%, find that difficult, with the remainder saying it’s neither easy nor difficult. Joycelyn Mire, a 71-year-old retired medical financial manager in Louisiana, said she doesn’t trust doctors and definitely not the news media for coronavirus information. But she does trust Trump because “I tend to agree with his opinions.” Most of all, she said, she trusts her own research. Even as Colorado State University student Jack Hermanson’s trust in Trump and federal agencies like the CDC went down, he said he had to trust someone. So he relies on what leaders at school and work tell him. “The root of a lot of this is fear,” said Lisa Gualtieri, an expert on health communication at Tufts University Medical School. The root of a lot of this is fear. — Lisa Gualtieri, health communication expert at Tufts University America is watching in real time as the science emerges, like seeing sausage being made, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a communications expert at the University of Pennsylvania. She said that Trump added to the confusion by hyping the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to treat the virus, even as reputable scientists, mainstream media and studies call it unproven. “The public now has multiple cues that say, ‘Gee, the science seems to be really confusing at this end. I’m not sure who to trust here,’” Jamieson said. Because of what she perceives as political pressure, she changed from trusting agencies like the CDC to trusting individual scientists, such as top federal infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci. Science & Medicine About 110,000 Californians have purchased a firearm since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, including about 47,000 first-time gun owners, a survey finds. Oct. 17, 2020 While Democrats worry that pressure on science agencies makes them less trustworthy, Republicans distrust them, saying they’re trying to make Trump look bad, said Jennifer Mercieca, a Texas A&M communications professor whose research focuses on political discourse. Mitch Spencer, a 59-year-old from Iowa who is retired from the post office and the military, said over the past several months he had “less trust in the government and more trust in just regular news.” A political independent and self-described moderate, Spencer said he watched Fauci say one thing and Trump’s team say something else. He trusts Fauci, not Trump, saying the president lies frequently. The poll found that 37% of Republicans and 87% of Democrats say they trust the president only a little or not at all on the pandemic. Spencer said it’s harder to find information on whether his grandchild should return to school or if a vaccine is safe than whether to wear masks. Overall, just 35% of Americans said it was very or somewhat easy to find the information they need on vaccine safety and 39% on safety of reopening school, the poll showed.

How Trump plowed through $1 billion, losing his campaign's cash advantage

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-20/how-trump-plowed-through-1-billion-losing-cash-advantage

President Trump’s sprawling political operation has raised well over $1 billion since he took the White House in 2017 — and set a lot of it on fire. Trump bought a $10-million Super Bowl ad when he didn’t yet have a challenger. He tapped his political organization to cover exorbitant legal fees related to his impeachment. Aides made flashy displays of their newfound wealth — including a fleet of luxury vehicles purchased by Brad Parscale, his former campaign manager. Meanwhile, a web of limited liability companies hid more than $310 million in spending from disclosure, records show. Now, just two weeks out from the election, some campaign aides privately acknowledge they are facing difficult spending decisions at a time when Democratic nominee Joe Biden has flooded the airwaves with advertising. That has put Trump in the position of needing to do more of his signature rallies as a substitute during the COVID-19 pandemic while relying on an unproven theory that he can turn out supporters who are infrequent voters at historic levels. “They spent their money on unnecessary overhead, lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous activity by the campaign staff and vanity ads way too early,” said Mike Murphy, a veteran Republican consultant who advised John McCain and Jeb Bush and is an outspoken Trump critic. “You could literally have 10 monkeys with flamethrowers go after the money, and they wouldn’t have burned through it as stupidly.” For Trump, it’s a familiar, if not welcome, position. In 2016, he was vastly outraised by Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton but still pulled off a come-from-behind win. This time around, though, he was betting on a massive cash advantage to negatively define Biden and to defend his own record. Politics Trump stops TV and radio ads in Ohio, Iowa and New Hampshire as Biden expands into Texas and Georgia. Oct. 10, 2020 Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien insisted money was no issue. “We have more than sufficient air cover, almost three times as much as 2016,” he told reporters Monday. Biden, Stepien added, was “putting it all on TV,” as his campaign eschewed most door-knocking to follow public health guidelines during the pandemic, while Trump has roughly 2,000 field staffers across the country knocking on doors and making calls for his campaign. The campaign and the Republican National Committee will offer a glimpse of their financial situation Tuesday when they file mandatory monthly campaign finance reports. Advertising spending figures, however, offer a bleak picture. While half a dozen pro-Trump outside groups are coming to the president’s aid, Biden and his Democratic allies are on pace to dump $142 million into ads in the closing days of the campaign, outspending Republicans by more than 2 to 1, according to data from the ad tracking firm CMAG/Kantar. A review of expenditures by Trump’s campaign, as well as the Republican National Committee, lays bare some of the profligate spending. Since 2017, more than $39 million has been paid to firms controlled by Parscale, who was ousted as campaign manager over the summer. An additional $273.2 million was paid to American Made Media Consultants, a Delaware limited liability company, whose owners are not publicly disclosed. Campaigns typically reveal in mandatory disclosures who their primary vendors are. But by routing money to Parscale’s firms, as well as American Made Media Consultants, Trump satisfied the basic disclosure requirements without detailing the ultimate recipients. Other questionable expenditures by Trump and the RNC that are included in campaign finance disclosures: — Nearly $100,000 spent on copies of Donald Trump Jr.’s book “Triggered,” which helped propel it to the top of the New York Times bestsellers list. — Over $7.4 million spent at Trump-branded properties since 2017. — At least $35.2 million spent on Trump merchandise. — $38.7 million in legal and “compliance” fees. In addition to tapping the RNC and his campaign to pay legal costs during his impeachment proceedings, Trump has also relied on his political operation to cover legal costs for some aides. Politics The House has impeached President Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Dec. 18, 2019 — At least $14.1 million spent on the Republican National Convention. The event was supposed to have been held in Charlotte, N.C., but Trump relocated it to Jacksonville, Fla., after a dispute with North Carolina’s Democratic governor over coronavirus safety measures. The Florida event was ultimately canceled as well, with a mostly online convention taking its place. — $912,000 spent on ads that ran on the personal Facebook pages of Parscale and Trump spokesperson Katrina Pierson. — A $250,000 ad run during Game 7 of the 2019 World Series, which came after Trump was booed by spectators when he attended Game 5. — At least $218,000 for Trump surrogates to travel aboard private jets provided by campaign donors. — $1.6 million on TV ads in the Washington, D.C., media market, an overwhelmingly Democratic area where Trump has little chance of winning but where he is a regular TV watcher. Politics With a growing likelihood of Joe Biden winning, Republican candidates have begun to step away from Trump, urging voters to elect them as a check on the Democrat. Oct. 9, 2020 Instead of giving more to Trump, some supporters are exploring their options. Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, recently donated $75 million to Preserve America, a new pro-Trump super political action committee that is not controlled by Trump world political operatives. One of the reasons the group was founded in August is because there is deep distrust among some GOP donors that the existing pro-Trump organizations would spend the money wisely, according to a Republican strategist with direct knowledge of the matter. The strategist spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive discussions with donors. Dan Eberhart, who has given over $190,000 to Trump’s election efforts, said many Republican donors are now focused on keeping control of the Senate in GOP hands — not Trump’s chances of winning. “The Senate majority is the most important objective right now,” he said.

Paramount Pictures worker sought in child sex assault stabbed self during standoff, police say

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-10-19/paramount-pictures-suspect-child-sex-assault-standoff-police

A Paramount Pictures worker wanted in connection with the sexual assault of a minor in Orange County stabbed himself during a standoff Sunday night at the studio lot in Los Angeles after an attempt to arrest him led to a police shooting, authorities said. Bryan Gudiel Barrios, 36, remained hospitalized Monday morning with what police said were self-inflicted knife wounds. The Fullerton resident will be arrested on suspicion of sexual assault of a minor in that city, Fullerton Police Cpl. Billy Phu said. Fullerton investigators had Barrios under surveillance about 10 p.m. and tried to take him into custody at Plymouth Boulevard and Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles when he produced a knife, Phu said. Authorities said an effort to use a stun gun to disarm Barrios failed. Fullerton police then called for backup from the LAPD, and when officers arrived, they fired a 40mm “less-lethal” round at Barrios, according to LAPD Det. Megan Aguilar. Barrios, who works as an employee or contractor at Paramount Studios, then ran onto the studio lot at Melrose Avenue and Windsor Boulevard while carrying the knife, Aguilar said. One or more LAPD officers fired at him, Aguilar said, but Barrios was not struck by any of the gunfire. Once on the studio lot, Barrios barricaded himself inside a building, and an LAPD negotiator worked to get him to surrender, authorities said. Shortly after midnight, officers made a tactical entry and arrested Barrios, who “was bleeding from wounds he sustained during the incident.” He was taken to a hospital, police said. No Fullerton or LAPD officers were injured during the standoff. The shooting is being investigated by the LAPD’s Force Investigation Division. Times staff writers Maya Lau and Henry Chu contributed to this report.

Millions more rapid tests for virus, but are results reported?

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-18/millions-more-rapid-tests-for-virus-but-are-results-reported

After struggling to ramp up coronavirus testing, the U.S. can now screen several million people daily, thanks to a growing supply of rapid tests. But the boom comes with a new challenge: keeping track of the results. All U.S. testing sites are legally required to report their results, positive and negative, to public health agencies. But state health officials say many rapid tests are going unreported, which means some new COVID-19 infections may not be counted. And the situation could get worse, experts say. The federal government is shipping more than 100 million of the newest rapid tests to states for use in public schools, assisted living centers and other new testing sites. “Schools certainly don’t have the capacity to report these tests,” said Dr. Jeffrey Engel of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists. “If it’s done at all, it’s likely going to be paper-based, very slow and incomplete.” World & Nation With cases surging in more than 20 states, there is no clear divide between states that reopened early and those that took more time. June 12, 2020 Early in the outbreak, nearly all U.S. testing relied on genetic tests that could only be developed at high-tech laboratories. Even under the best circumstances, people had to wait about two to three days to get results. Experts pushed for more “point-of-care” rapid testing that could be done in doctors’ offices, clinics and other sites to quickly find people who were infected, get them into quarantine and stop the spread. Beginning in the summer, cheaper 15-minute tests — which detect viral proteins called antigens on a nasal swab — became available. The first versions still needed to be processed using portable readers. The millions of new tests from Abbott Laboratories now going out to states are even easier to use: They’re about the size of a credit card and can be developed with a few drops of chemical solution. Federal health officials say about half of the nation’s daily testing capacity now consists of rapid tests. Large hospitals and laboratories electronically feed their results to state health departments, but there is no standardized way to report the rapid tests that are often done elsewhere. And state officials have often been unable to track where these tests are being shipped and whether results are being reported. In Minnesota, officials created a special team to try to get more testing data from nursing homes, schools and other newer testing sites, only to be deluged by faxes and paper files. “It’s definitely a challenge because now we have to do many more things manually than we were with electronic reporting,” said Kristen Ehresmann, of the Minnesota Department of Health. Even before Abbott’s newest rapid tests hit the market last month, undercounting was a concern. Competitors Quidel and Becton Dickinson have together shipped well over 35 million of their own quick tests since June. But that massive influx of tests hasn’t shown up in national testing numbers, which have mostly ranged from 750,000 to 950,000 daily tests for months. Besides tallying new cases, COVID-19 testing numbers are used to calculate a key metric on the outbreak: percentage of tests positive for COVID-19. The World Health Organization recommends countries test enough people to drive their percent of positives below 5%. And the U.S. has mostly been hovering around or below that rate since mid-September, a point that President Trump and his top aides have touted to argue that the nation has turned the corner on the outbreak. The figure is down from a peak of 22% in April. But some disease-tracking specialists are skeptical. Engel says his group’s members think they aren’t getting all the results. “So it may be a false conclusion,” he said. One of the challenges to an accurate count: States have wildly different approaches. Some states lump all types of tests together in one report, some don’t tabulate the quick antigen tests at all, and others don’t publicize their system. Because antigen tests are more prone to false negatives and sometimes require retesting, most health experts say they should be recorded and analyzed separately. Currently only 10 states do that and post the results online, according to the COVID Tracking Project. The federal government is allocating the tests to states based on their population, rather than helping them develop a strategy based on the size and severity of their outbreaks. “That’s just lazy,” said Dr. Michael Mina of Harvard University. “Most states won’t have the expertise to figure out how to use these most appropriately.” Instead, Mina said the federal government should direct the limited supplies to key hot spots around the country, driving down infections in the hardest-hit communities. Keeping tighter control would also ensure test results are quickly reported. Johns Hopkins University researcher Gigi Gronvall agrees health officials need to carefully consider where and when to deploy the tests. Eventually, methods for tracking the tests will catch up, she said. “I think having the tools to determine if someone is infectious is a higher priority,” she said.

Michigan governor pushes back against Trump rally chants

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-18/michigan-governor-pushes-back-against-trump-rally-chants

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said Sunday that President Trump was inciting “domestic terrorism” following “lock her up” chants at his rally in the state the night before. Whitmer told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the rhetoric was “incredibly disturbing” a little more than a week after authorities announced they had thwarted an alleged plot to kidnap the Democratic governor. “The president is at it again and inspiring and incentivizing and inciting this kind of domestic terrorism,” Whitmer said. “It is wrong. It’s got to end. It is dangerous, not just for me and my family, but for public servants everywhere who are doing their jobs and trying to protect their fellow Americans. People of goodwill on both sides of the aisle need to step up and call this out and bring the heat down.” At a rally in Muskegon on Saturday evening, Trump urged supporters to push Whitmer to reopen the state following COVID-19 restrictions. When the crowd starting chanting “lock her up” Trump added, “Lock ’em all up.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” said Trump’s statements were “irresponsible” and accused him of injecting fear tactics. Several Republican and Trump campaign officials appeared on Sunday news shows to defend the president. Politics President Trump’s supporters chant ‘Lock her up!’ about Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, just over a week after the FBI said it foiled a plot to kidnap her. Oct. 17, 2020 “He wasn’t doing anything, I don’t think, to provoke people to threaten this woman at all. He was having fun at a Trump rally, and quite frankly there are bigger issues than this right now for everyday Americans,” Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law and a senior campaign advisor, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Democrats have sought to tie Trump to the alleged plot against Whitmer, pointing to the president’s tweet earlier this year to “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” after Whitmer restricted personal movement and the economy in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Michigan — particularly the Detroit area — was hit hard early in the pandemic. Many of the limits have since been lifted. Authorities allege members of two anti-government paramilitary groups took part in plotting Whitmer’s kidnapping, although some were charged under federal law and others under state law. Six men, led by Adam Fox of the Michigan III%ers, are charged in federal court with conspiring to kidnap her. Eight others who are believed to be members or associates of a group called the Wolverine Watchmen are charged in state court with counts including providing material support for terrorist acts. Some of the Wolverine Watchmen are accused of planning other violent crimes, such as storming the Michigan Capitol building and attacking law enforcement officers. Politics The U.S. is entering the ‘most difficult phase’ of the pandemic, as President Trump spars with Democrats over health and economic measures to counter it. Oct. 18, 2020

Plan to retrieve Titanic radio spurs debate on whether wreck still contains human remains

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-18/plan-retrieve-titanic-radio-spurs-debate-on-human-remains

People have been diving to the Titanic‘s wreck for 35 years. No one has found human remains, according to the company that owns the salvage rights. But the company’s plan to retrieve the ship’s iconic radio equipment has sparked a debate: Could the world’s most famous shipwreck still hold remains of passengers and crew who died a century ago? Lawyers for the U.S. government have raised that question in an ongoing court battle to block the planned expedition. They cite archaeologists who say remains could still be there. And they say the company fails to consider the prospect in its dive plan. “Fifteen hundred people died in that wreck,” said Paul Johnston, curator of maritime history at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. “You can’t possibly tell me that some human remains aren’t buried deep somewhere where there are no currents.” The company, RMS Titanic Inc., wants to exhibit the ship’s Marconi wireless telegraph machine. It broadcast the sinking ocean liner’s distress calls and helped save about 700 people in lifeboats. Politics A cash-strapped President Trump stopped in California to raise money 16 days before election day, appearing at a high-dollar Newport Beach fundraiser. Oct. 19, 2020 Retrieving the equipment would require an unmanned submersible to slip through a skylight or cut into a heavily corroded roof on the ship’s deck. A suction dredge would remove loose silt, while manipulator arms could cut electrical cords. RMS Titanic Inc. says human remains probably would’ve been noticed after roughly 200 dives. “It’s not like taking a shovel to Gettysburg,” said David Gallo, an oceanographer and company advisor. “And there’s an unwritten rule that, should we see human remains, we turn off the cameras and decide what to do next.” The dispute stems from a larger debate over how the Titanic’s victims should be honored, and whether an expedition should be allowed to enter its hull. In May, a federal judge in Norfolk, Va., approved the expedition. U.S. District Judge Rebecca Beach Smith wrote that recovering the radio would “contribute to the legacy left by the indelible loss of the Titanic, those who survived, and those who gave their lives.” But the U.S. government filed a legal challenge in June, claiming the undertaking would violate federal law and a pact with Britain recognizing the wreck as a memorial site. U.S. attorneys argue the agreement regulates entry into the wreck to ensure its hull, artifacts and “any human remains” are undisturbed. The case is pending before the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond. The Titanic was traveling from England to New York in 1912 when it struck an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic. The wreck was discovered in 1985. Over the years, explorers have sent remotely operated vehicles into parts of the ship. During his 2001 expedition, film director James Cameron surveyed the area in a deckhouse that holds the telegraph equipment, according to court documents filed by the company. People on both sides of the human-remains debate claim the issue is being played down — or up — to support an argument. RMS Titanic Inc. President Bretton Hunchak told the Associated Press the government’s position was based on emotion rather than science. “Issues like this are used simply to raise public support,” Hunchak said. “It creates a visceral reaction for everybody.” The firm is the court-recognized steward of Titanic artifacts, overseeing thousands of items including silverware, china and gold coins. “This company has always treated the wreck as both an archaeological site and a grave site with reverence and respect,” Hunchak said. “And that doesn’t change whether in fact human remains could possibly exist.” Gallo said remnants of those who died probably disappeared decades ago. Sea creatures would’ve eaten away flesh because protein is scarce in the deep ocean, and bones dissolve at great ocean depths because of seawater’s chemistry, Gallo said. The Titanic sits about 2.4 miles below the surface. Yet whale bones have been discovered at similar depths, as were human remains on a 2009 Air France plane that crashed into the Atlantic. “But generally that doesn’t happen,” said Gallo, who previously worked at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and has been involved in several Titanic expeditions. Archaeologists who filed court statements supporting the government’s case said there must be human remains, and questioned the motives of those casting doubts. Johnston wrote to the court that remains could be “within the confines of the wreck or outside in the debris field” in areas lacking oxygen. In an interview, Johnston said the company didn’t want “anyone to be thinking about human remains. They want people to think, ‘Oh cool. I have new artifacts to show the public.’” David Conlin, chief of the National Park Service’s Submerged Resources Center, also filed a statement against the expedition. Conlin told the Associated Press “it would be scientifically astounding if there were not human remains still on board that ship.” He said wrecks older than the Titanic had contained remnants of crew or passengers. Eight sailors’ remains were discovered on the H.L. Hunley, a Confederate submarine that sank in 1864. And human bones were found at a first-century B.C. freighter wreck near the Greek island of Antikythera. “Very deep, cold, low-oxygen water is an incredible preservative,” Conlin said. “The human remains that we would expect to find are going to be in the interior spaces that are more difficult to access, where the preservation will be both tragic and spectacular.”

Touch, go: NASA prepares for spacecraft's 10-second grab from asteroid

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-19/touch-and-go-us-spacecraft-sampling-asteroid-for-return

After almost two years circling an ancient asteroid hundreds of millions of miles away, a NASA spacecraft is ready to attempt a descent to the treacherous, boulder-packed surface so it can snatch a handful of rubble. The drama is scheduled to unfold Tuesday as the U.S. takes its first crack at collecting asteroid samples for return to Earth, a feat accomplished so far only by Japan. Brimming with names inspired by Egyptian mythology, the OSIRIS-REx mission is looking to bring back at least 2 ounces of the asteroid Bennu, the biggest otherworldly haul from beyond the moon. The van-sized spacecraft is aiming for the relatively flat middle of a tennis-court-sized crater named Nightingale — a spot comparable to a few parking spaces here on Earth. Boulders as big as buildings loom over the targeted touchdown zone. “The next time you park your car in front of your house or in front of a coffee shop and walk inside, think about the challenge of navigating OSIRIS-REx into one of these spots from 200 million miles away,” said Mike Moreau, NASA’s deputy project manager based at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Once the spacecraft drops out of its half-mile-high orbit around Bennu, it will take a deliberate four hours to descend to just above the surface. Then OSIRIS-REx’s 11-foot arm will reach out and touch Bennu. Contact should last for five to 10 seconds — just long enough to shoot out pressurized nitrogen gas and suck up the churned dirt and gravel. Programmed in advance, the spacecraft will operate autonomously during the unprecedented touch-and-go maneuver. Since it takes 18 minutes for radio communications to travel between Earth and OSIRIS-REx, ground controllers for spacecraft builder Lockheed Martin near Denver won’t be able to intervene. If the first attempt doesn’t work, OSIRIS-REx can try again. Any collected samples won’t reach Earth until 2023. Although NASA has brought back comet dust and solar wind particles, it’s never attempted to sample one of the nearly 1 million known asteroids lurking in our solar system until now. Japan expects to get samples from asteroid Ryugu in December — in the milligrams at most — 10 years after bringing back specks from asteroid Itokawa. Science & Medicine A Japanese spacecraft touched down on a distant asteroid Friday on a mission to collect material that could provide clues to the origin of the solar system and life on Earth. Feb. 22, 2019 Bennu is an asteroid picker’s paradise. The big, black, roundish, carbon-rich space rock — taller than New York’s Empire State Building — was around when our solar system was forming 4.5 billion years ago. Scientists consider it a time capsule full of pristine building blocks that could help explain how life formed on Earth, and possibly elsewhere. “This is all about understanding our origins,” said Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, the mission’s principal scientist. There also are selfish reasons for getting to know Bennu better. The solar-orbiting asteroid, which swings by Earth every six years, could take aim at us late in the next century. NASA puts the odds of an impact at 1-in-2,700. The more scientists know about potentially menacing asteroids like Bennu, the safer Earth will be. When OSIRIS-REx blasted off in 2016 for its more-than-$800-million mission, scientists envisioned sandy stretches at Bennu. So the spacecraft was designed to ingest small pebbles less than an inch across. Scientists were stunned to find massive rocks and chunky gravel all over the place when the spacecraft arrived in 2018. Pebbles were occasionally seen shooting off the asteroid, falling back and sometimes ricocheting off again in a cosmic game of pingpong. With so much rough terrain, engineers scrambled to aim for a tighter spot than originally anticipated. Nightingale Crater, the prime target, appears to have the biggest abundance of fine grains, but boulders still abound, including one dubbed Mount Doom. Then COVID-19 struck. The team fell behind and bumped the second and final touch-and-go dress rehearsal for the spacecraft to August. That pushed the sample grab to October. “Returning a sample is hard,” said NASA’s science mission chief, Thomas Zurbuchen. “COVID made it even harder.” Science & Medicine What looks like an asteroid may just be an old NASA rocket from a failed moon-landing mission more than 50 years ago. Oct. 12, 2020 OSIRIS-REx has three bottles of nitrogen gas, which means it can touch down three times — no more. If it encounters unexpected hazards such as big rocks that could cause it to tip over, it will back away automatically. There’s also a chance it will touch down safely but fail to collect enough rubble. In either case, the spacecraft would return to orbit around Bennu and try again in January at another location. With the first try finally here, Lauretta is worried, nervous, excited “and confident we have done everything possible to ensure a safe sampling.”

U.N. arms embargoes on Iran expire despite U.S. objections

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-18/un-arms-embargoes-on-iran-expire-despite-us-objections

A decade-long United Nations arms embargo on Iran that barred it from purchasing foreign weapons like tanks and fighter jets expired Sunday as planned under its nuclear deal with world powers, despite objections from the United States. While insisting it planned no “buying spree,” Iran in theory can purchase weapons to upgrade military armament dating back to before its 1979 Islamic Revolution and sell its own locally produced gear abroad. In practice, however, Iran’s economy remains crippled by broad-reaching U.S. sanctions, and other nations may avoid arms deals with Tehran for fear of American financial retaliation. The Islamic Republic heralded the end of the arms embargo as “a momentous day for the international community... in defiance of the U.S. regime’s effort.” The Trump administration, meanwhile, has insisted it has reinvoked all U.N. sanctions on Iran via a clause in the nuclear deal it withdrew from in 2018, a claim ignored by the rest of the world. “Today’s normalization of Iran’s defense cooperation with the world is a win for the cause of multilateralism and peace and security in our region,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote on Twitter. The United Nations banned Iran from buying major foreign weapon systems in 2010 amid tensions over its nuclear program. An earlier embargo targeted Iranian arms exports. World & Nation An American humanitarian worker and U.S. businessman held captive by Iranian-backed militants have been released in Yemen. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency predicted in 2019 that if the embargo ended, Iran likely would try to purchase Russian Su-30 fighter jets, Yak-130 trainer aircraft and T-90 tanks. Tehran also may try to buy Russia’s S-400 anti-aircraft missile system and its Bastian coastal defense missile system, the DIA said. China also could sell Iran arms. Iran long has been outmatched by U.S.-backed Gulf nations like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which have purchased billions of dollars of advanced American weaponry. In response, Tehran turned toward developing locally made ballistic missiles. Iran has blasted Gulf Arab purchases of U.S.-made defense equipment as “regrettably lucrative weapon deals” with some of those arms used in the ongoing war in Yemen. That conflict pits a Saudi-led coalition backing the country’s internationally recognized government against rebel forces backed by Iran. The U.N. arms embargoes, however, did not stop Iran from sending weapons that included assault rifles and ballistic missiles to Yemen’s Houthi rebels. While Tehran denies arming the Houthis, Western governments and weapons experts repeatedly have linked Iranian arms to the rebels. Six Gulf Arab nations that backed the extension of the arms embargoes noted arms shipments to Yemen in their objection to the resumption of any weapon sales to Iran. They also mentioned in a letter to the U.N. Security Council that Iran mistakenly shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane in January and its navy accidentally killed 19 sailors in a missile strike during an exercise. The U.N. also linked Iran to a 2019 attack on Saudi Arabia’s main crude oil refinery, though Tehran denies any links and Yemen’s rebel Houthis claimed responsibility. Sunday also marked the end of U.N. travel bans on a number of Iranian military and paramilitary Revolutionary Guard members. Tensions between Iran and the U.S. reached fever pitch at the start of the year, when an American drone killed a top Iranian general in Baghdad. Tehran retaliated with a ballistic missile attack on U.S. forces in Iraq that injured dozens. Meanwhile, Iran has steadily broken limits of the nuclear deal in an attempt to pressure Europe on salvaging the accord. In recent months, provocations on both sides have slowed as President Trump faces a reelection campaign against former Vice President Joe Biden. Biden has said he’s willing to offer Iran “a credible path back to diplomacy” if Tehran returns to “strict compliance” with the deal.

Suspect in French teacher's beheading was 18-year-old Chechen

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-17/suspect-in-teachers-beheading-in-france-was-chechen-teen

A suspect shot dead by police after the gruesome beheading of a history teacher in an attack near Paris on Friday was an 18-year-old Chechen, police said. France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office said that authorities investigating the horrific killing of the man in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine have also arrested nine suspects, including the grandparents, parents and 17-year-old brother of the attacker. The teacher had discussed caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad with his class, authorities said. Chechnya is a predominantly Muslim Russian republic in the North Caucasus. Two wars in the 1990s triggered a wave of emigration, with many Chechens heading for Western Europe. France has seen occasional violence involving its Chechen community in recent months, believed linked to local criminal activity and score-settling. A police official said the suspect in Friday’s attack was shot dead about 600 yards from where the teacher was killed. He was armed with a knife and an airsoft gun — which fires plastic pellets — and police opened fire after he failed to respond to orders to put down his arms, and acted in a threatening manner. French President Emmanuel Macron arrived quickly at the school Friday night to denounce what he called an “Islamist terrorist attack.” He urged the nation to stand united against extremism. “One of our compatriots was murdered today because he taught ... the freedom of expression, the freedom to believe or not believe,” Macron said. The French anti-terrorism prosecutor opened an investigation for murder with a suspected terrorist motive, the prosecutor’s office said. It is the second time in three weeks that terror has struck France linked to caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. Last month, a young man from Pakistan was arrested after stabbing two people with a meat cleaver outside the former offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. The weekly was the target of a deadly newsroom attack in 2015, and it republished caricatures of the prophet this month to underscore the right to freedom of information as a trial opened linked to that attack. Friday’s terror attack came as Macron’s government works on a bill to address Islamic radicals, who authorities claim are creating a parallel society outside the values of the French Republic. France has the largest Muslim population in Western Europe with up to 5 million members, and Islam is the country’s No. 2 religion. The teacher had received threats after opening a discussion “for a debate” about the caricatures about 10 days ago, a police official told the Associated Press. The parent of a student had filed a complaint against the teacher, another police official said.

Feds to execute woman who killed victim, cut baby from womb

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-17/feds-to-execute-woman-who-killed-victim-cut-baby-from-womb

A woman convicted of strangling a pregnant woman, cutting her body open and kidnapping her baby is scheduled to be the first female inmate put to death by the U.S. government in more than six decades, the Justice Department said Friday. Lisa Montgomery is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection Dec. 8 at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Ind. She would be the ninth federal inmate to be put to death since the Justice Department resumed executions in July after a nearly 20-year hiatus. Montgomery was convicted of killing 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett in the northwest Missouri town of Skidmore in December 2004. Montgomery drove from her Kansas home to Stinnett’s house in Skidmore under the guise of adopting a rat terrier puppy, prosecutors said. When she arrived at the home, Montgomery used a rope to strangle Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant, but Stinnett was conscious and trying to defend herself as Montgomery used a kitchen knife to cut the baby girl from the womb, authorities said. Prosecutors said Montgomery removed the baby from Stinnett’s body, took the child with her and attempted to pass the girl off as her own. Montgomery’s lawyers argued that she had been suffering from delusions when she killed Stinnett, but a jury rejected her defense. Her lawyers had also argued that she was suffering from pseudocyesis, which causes a woman to falsely believe she is pregnant and exhibit outward signs of pregnancy. The Justice Department on Friday also scheduled the execution of a man convicted in the 1999 killing of two youth ministers in Texas. Brandon Bernard, 40, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection Dec. 10. Bernard and his co-defendant, Christopher Vialva, were convicted in the kidnapping and killing of Todd and Stacie Bagley, an Iowa couple who had stopped to use a pay phone in Killeen, Texas. The couple agreed to give Vialva and two others a ride, authorities said. Vialva pulled out a gun, forced the couple into the trunk and drove around for several hours, stopping at ATMs to withdraw cash and attempting to pawn the woman’s wedding ring, according to prosecutors. Both of the victims were shot in the head and placed in the trunk of their car, which then was set on fire. Vialva was executed last month at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute. The resumption of federal executions started July 14, with the execution of former white supremacist Daniel Lewis Lee. Since then, six others have been put to death, and another man, Orlando Hall, is scheduled to be executed next month. Anti-death-penalty groups say President Trump is pushing for executions during the campaign season in a bid to burnish a reputation as a law-and-order leader. Before the resumptions of executions this summer, federal authorities had executed just three prisoners in the previous 56 years.

Michigan court blocks two-week absentee ballot extension

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-16/michigan-court-stops-2-week-absentee-ballot-extension

Absentee ballots must arrive by election day to be counted, the Michigan Court of Appeals said Friday, blocking a 14-day extension that had been ordered by a lower court and embraced by key Democratic officials in the presidential battleground state. Any changes must rest with the Legislature, not the judiciary, the Republican-appointed appeals court judges said in a 3-0 opinion. Absentee ballot extensions in Wisconsin and Indiana have also been overturned by higher courts. Michigan’s ability to handle a flood of ballots will be closely watched in a state that was narrowly won by Donald Trump in 2016. Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said last week that 2.7 million people had requested absentee ballots, the result of a change in law that makes them available to any voter. Michigan law says absentee ballots must be turned in by 8 p.m. on election day to be valid. But Court of Claims Judge Cynthia Stephens had ordered that any ballots postmarked by Nov. 2 could be counted if they arrived within two weeks after the Nov. 3 election. Stephens said there was “unrefuted evidence” of mail delivery problems because of the COVID-19 pandemic. She said more than 6,400 ballots arrived too late to be counted in the August primary. Politics These states will probably decide if Joe Biden or President Trump wins the election. And their absentee ballot laws could determine when we find out. Oct. 28, 2020 The appeals court, however, said the pandemic and any delivery woes “are not attributable to the state.” “Although those factors may complicate plaintiffs’ voting process, they do not automatically amount to a loss of the right to vote absentee,” the court said, noting that hundreds of special boxes have been set up across Michigan. The court also reversed another portion of Stephens’ decision, which would have allowed a non-family member to deliver a completed ballot in the final days before the election if a voter consented. Republicans and the Trump campaign have filed numerous lawsuits aiming to stop expansion of voting access during the pandemic, which has killed more than 218,000 people in the U.S. Trump has stated that expanded voting by mail could hurt Republicans’ election chances. Michigan Atty. Gen. Dana Nessel and Benson, both Democrats, had declined to appeal Stephens’ rulings, leaving it to the Republican-controlled Legislature to intervene. Politics Michigan to ban people from openly carrying firearms at polling places, clerks offices or locations where absentee ballots are counted, under new directive. Oct. 16, 2020 “Happy to see this unanimous ruling to uphold the integrity of our elections process and reject judicial overreach,” Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey tweeted. The Michigan Democratic Party said, “Voters should not be punished for delays in the U.S. Postal Service or for unexpected emergencies that could make it a challenge for them to get to the polls on election day.” The case was heard by appeals court judges Michael Gadola, Mark Boonstra and Thomas Cameron. All were appointed by then-Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, and then subsequently elected to their appointed seats. The lawsuit was filed by a group called the Michigan Alliance for Retired Americans. California Slow mail service from Los Angeles was one finding of an L.A. Times survey of Postal Service reliability amid deep cuts imposed by the Trump administration. Sept. 14, 2020

Watchdog group says Trump's 2016 campaign illegally coordinated with a super PAC

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-16/watchdog-org-trump-16-campaign-pac-illegally-coordinated

New documents from a former Cambridge Analytica insider reveal what an election watchdog group claims was illegal coordination between Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and a billionaire-funded pro-Trump super PAC. A legal complaint filed by the watchdog group touches some of the same people involved in today’s hotly contested presidential race and provides a detailed account alleging that Trump’s last campaign worked around election rules to coordinate behind the scenes with the political action committee. The now-defunct British data analysis firm violated election law by ignoring its own written firewall policy, blurring the lines between work created for Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Make America Number 1 super PAC, according to an update of the complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission by the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center on Friday. The complaint alleges that Cambridge Analytica — which improperly acquired and used 87 million Facebook users’ profiles to predict their behavior — had a shared project calendar for both entities, among other evidence. “The idea that this spending was at all independent is farcical and these emails underscore that,” said Brendan Fischer, an attorney for the government oversight group, whose new filing supplements a lawsuit filed four years ago. “Cambridge Analytica not only misused people’s personal data, but it was a conduit for the wealthy family that owned it to unlawfully support the Trump campaign in 2016.” The super PAC, which created a plethora of “crooked Hillary” memes that circulated widely on social media in 2016, was financed largely by conservative billionaire Robert Mercer, who also founded, owned and managed Cambridge Analytica. Kellyanne Conway led an earlier incarnation of the PAC when it supported Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz before she resigned to advise Trump’s 2016 campaign. Under federal law, a super PAC may raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, including from corporations and unions, to support candidates for federal office — but it’s illegal for them to coordinate their activities with political campaigns. The complaint alleges that Cambridge Analytica used information it gained from working with Trump’s campaign to develop and target ads for the super PAC supporting his candidacy, “constituting unreported in-kind contributions to Donald J. Trump for President Inc. in the form of coordinated communications.” One September 2016 email it cites is from a Cambridge senior vice president, announcing some of the PAC’s ads against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton that the Cambridge official says were produced by “our production partner” Glittering Steel, in which Trump’s campaign chief executive at the time, Steve Bannon, had a financial stake. The White House referred questions to the campaign. Tim Murtaugh, the communications director for Trump’s reelection campaign, did not respond to repeated email and text messages seeking comment. Kory Langhofer, an attorney for former Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix, said Nix had no knowledge of what is laid out in the complaint. “While he was one of the executives there, he claims to be unaware of any coordination,” Langhofer said. The cache of previously unreleased emails, presentations and slide decks was provided exclusively to the Associated Press by Cambridge Analytica’s first business development director, Brittany Kaiser. Last year, Kaiser published a book and starred in a film advocating for data security and regulation of social media. The documents offer a rare window into how Cambridge collected vast troves of data about likely voters. “Cambridge Analytica’s strategy with every new client they had was that the database grew smarter, because it would have more data from the campaigns they ran,” Kaiser said. “They would erase the data, but they would keep all the learning they derived off the back of it to target people more precisely.” Since resigning from the data-mining firm and taking her computer with her, Kaiser has met with former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s office and an associate of Julian Assange. Kaiser has also founded a nonprofit group for children’s digital education and is managing the presidential campaign of independent candidate Brock Pierce, a former child actor and cryptocurrency entrepreneur. Some officials, like Conway and Bannon, a former Cambridge vice president, went on to play senior roles in the administration. Other people whose names appear in the emails have worked for organizations supporting Trump’s reelection bid. They include Matt Oczkowski, Cambridge’s ex-head of product whose company HuMn Behavior has been paid at least $180,000 by the Trump 2020 campaign, and Brad Parscale, the 2016 campaign’s digital director who until July managed Trump’s reelection campaign. Conway told the AP she was not aware of any alleged coordination, and said the people at the “tippy top” of Cambridge were “crooks and thieves and liars.” “You are looking at a bunch of ... emails where they are pretending that they are somehow responsible for something positive, and that has nothing to do with me,” she said. “It’s men behaving badly.” A spokeswoman for Bannon did not offer comment. Oczkowski did not respond to a message sent to his company or LinkedIn account. Cambridge dissolved after facing investigations for playing a key role in the 2014 breach of Facebook users’ personal data. The company denied it used the data in Trump’s 2016 campaign, though ex-employees have disputed the assertion, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said the data could have been used in Russian propaganda efforts. Mercer has largely stepped back from Trump’s campaign this year, although in February he donated $355,200 to a Trump fundraising committee. In 2016, the family poured millions into pro-Trump groups. Mercer first supported a Conway-led super PAC backing Cruz for president. When Cruz dropped out of the race, the Mercers threw their support to Trump and the political action committee became Make America Number 1. Oczkowski, whom Kaiser said she trained, joined Cambridge’s parent company in late 2015, according to the documents. In one email, Oczkowski briefed colleagues on his efforts to win business from the National Rifle Assn. to work on its Trigger the Vote campaign with the Washington-based PR firm Herald Group. Documents show that by early 2017, projects related to Trigger the Vote apparently brought Cambridge work valued at $855,000. There are few details about the work, but Kaiser, who was involved in the negotiations, said Cambridge ingested data from the NRA and the National Shooting Sports Foundation into its system to build models that helped Republican candidates predict what messages would succeed with gun owners. “Each year, they run a large campaign aimed at ‘voter education,’” Oczkowski wrote about the foundation in February 2016. “They call it voter education to avoid the corporate proxy tax by directly endorsing any candidates.” The foundation and PR firm did not respond to requests for comment. NRA spokeswoman Amy Hunter confirmed that the PR firm worked on Trigger the Vote, but said “the NRA had limited interaction with the organizations” and declined to specify how the data was used. In all, Cambridge ran over 4,000 ad campaigns for the Trump campaign that generated more than “1.4 billion impressions,” with “persuasion ads” leading to a 3% increase in “average favorability” and get-out-the-vote ads yielding a 2% increase in people voting absentee, according to a post-election presentation. The same presentation identified some voters as ripe for “deterrence.” Last week, however, the United Kingdom’s information commissioner called Cambridge’s predictive analytics exaggerated and ineffective. In another document, Make America Number 1 took credit for Trump’s surprise win in Michigan. “We did work other groups and individuals were unwilling to do in defeating Hillary Clinton,” the presentation reads. “Looking forward to the 2018 and 2020 elections, MAN1 still serves a purpose by collecting and refining data for use advancing policy and directly advocating for or against candidates.” While Cambridge assured Facebook that the data it held was deleted, Kaiser wonders who controls the models they built, and how they are being used today. “The idea was that all that data would help any of the Republican candidates they were campaigning for,” she said. “Now the question is, what happened to that data?”

Atlanta police make arrest in shooting death of actor Thomas Jefferson Byrd

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-16/atlanta-police-make-arrest-in-actors-shooting-death

Atlanta police announced Friday that they have made an arrest in the shooting death of actor Thomas Jefferson Byrd. Homicide detectives on Wednesday obtained a warrant for the arrest of 30-year-old Antonio Demetrice Rhynes on a felony murder charge based on evidence and tips from the public. Officers arrested him early Friday morning, Officer Steve Avery said in an email. Rhynes will be taken to the Fulton County jail once he’s processed, Avery said. It wasn’t immediately clear whether he had an attorney who could comment on his arrest. Entertainment & Arts Police in Atlanta say actor Thomas Jefferson Byrd, who appeared in films by director Spike Lee, was killed in a shooting. Oct. 5, 2020 Best known for his roles in Spike Lee films, Byrd was found dead around 1:45 a.m. on Oct. 3 near his home in southwest Atlanta. He had been shot multiple times in the back. A $10,000 reward had been offered for information leading to an arrest. Byrd acted in films including “Clockers,” “Chi-Raq,” “Bamboozled,” “He Got Game” and “Da Sweet Blood of Jesus.” Also a stage actor, Byrd was nominated in 2003 for a Tony Award for his performance in the Broadway revival of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” costarring Whoopi Goldberg and Charles S. Dutton.

Christie says he was wrong not to wear mask in White House

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-16/christie-says-he-was-wrong-not-to-wear-mask-in-white-house

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Thursday that he was wrong not to wear a mask at the White House, after he and President Trump both came down with the coronavirus. Christie, in a statement, said he has recovered from COVID-19 after a weeklong stay in a hospital’s intensive care unit. He called on all political leaders to advocate for face coverings, with the practice becoming increasingly politicized even as the pandemic has killed more than 217,000 Americans. “I believed that when I entered the White House grounds, that I had entered a safe zone, due to the testing that and I and many others underwent every day,” Christie said. “I was wrong.” Christie, who was at the White House for the announcement of Judge Amy Coney Barrett as the president’s nominee to the Supreme Court and to a participate in several rounds of Trump’s debate prep, seemingly chided the president’s attitude toward the disease. “No one should be happy to get the virus and no one should be cavalier about being infected or infecting others,” Christie said. Science & Medicine Eli Lilly & Co. said enrollment of participants in a clinical trial of its monoclonal antibody treatment is on hold. Trump has since called his illness “a blessing from God,” arguing it exposed him to promising therapeutics. He has also been an inconsistent advocate for mask wearing, holding large rallies of thousands of people where many of his supporters do not follow public health guidance to cover their faces. At a town hall in Miami on Tuesday night, Trump said of Christie’s statement, “He has to say that.” The president insisted he supports masks and called Christie “a friend of mine.” Christie said, “Every public official, regardless of party or position, should advocate for every American to wear a mask in public, appropriately socially distance and to wash your hands frequently every day.”

GOP Sen. Ben Sasse rips Trump over COVID-19, foreign policy

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-15/nebraska-sen-sasse-rips-trump-over-covid-19-foreign-policy

Republican Sen. Ben Sasse told Nebraska constituents in a telephone town hall meeting that President Trump has “flirted with white supremacists,” mocks Christian evangelicals in private and “kisses dictators’ butts.” Sasse, who is running for a second term representing the reliably red state, made the comments in response to a question about why he has been willing to publicly criticize a president of his own party. He also criticized Trump’s handling of the coronavirus crisis and said Trump’s family has treated the presidency “like a business opportunity.” The comments were first reported by the Washington Examiner after it obtained an audio recording of the senator’s comments, which has been posted on YouTube. Sasse spokesman James Wegmann said the call occurred Wednesday. Other Nebraska Republicans, including U.S. Rep. Dan Bacon and state GOP executive director Ryan Hamilton, told the Omaha World-Herald that they disagree with Sasse’s characterizations of the president. “Sen. Sasse is entitled to his own opinion,” U.S. Rep. Adrian Smith, another Nebraska Republican, said in a statement. “I appreciate what President Trump has accomplished for our country and will continue to work with him on efforts which help Nebraska.” Music N.W.A. rapper Ice Cube insisted he hasn’t “endorsed anybody” after drawing sharp criticism for working with Trump on his “promise to Black America.” Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh declined to comment on Sasse’s remarks, the World-Herald said. Sasse has positioned himself as a conservative willing to criticize Trump at times, and he is seen as a potential presidential candidate for 2024. His comments Wednesday were in response to a caller who asked about his relationship with the president, adding, “Why do you have to criticize him so much?” Trump carried Nebraska by 25 percentage points in 2016. The senator said he has worked hard to have a good relationship with Trump and prays for the president regularly “at the breakfast table in our house.” He praised Trump’s judicial appointments. But he said he’s had disagreements with Trump that do not involve “mere policy issues,” adding, “I’m not at all apologetic for having fought for my values against his in places where I think his are deficient, not just for a Republican, but for an American.” Sasse began his list with, “The way he kisses dictators’ butts,” and said Trump “hasn’t lifted a finger” on behalf of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. “I mean, he and I have a very different foreign policy,” Sasse said. “It isn’t just that he fails to lead our allies. It’s that we, the United States, regularly sells out our allies under his leadership.” Sasse said he criticizes Trump for how he treats women and because Trump “spends like a drunken sailor,” saying he criticized Democratic President Obama over spending. “He mocks evangelicals behind closed doors,” Sasse said. “At the beginning of the COVID crisis, he refused to treat it seriously. For months, he treated it like a news-cycle-by-news-cycle PR crisis rather than a multiyear public health challenge, which is what it is.”

Legislation talks on mail ballots, other election issues are stalled in Pennsylvania

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-15/talks-on-critical-election-legislation-in-pennsylvania-stall

Closed-door talks over election security and mail ballots — legislation key to avoiding a dragged-out vote count — in the presidential battleground state of Pennsylvania appeared stuck Thursday between the Democratic governor and the Legislature’s House Republican majority. In a statement to the Associated Press, Gov. Tom Wolf’s office said an offer extended in recent days to House Republican leaders has been effectively rejected, now less than three weeks before election day. “At the time, that deal was not sufficient for House Republicans, and since then, the administration has not heard back,” spokesperson Lyndsay Kensinger said in a statement. House Republicans did not dispute that. A spokesperson for House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff said Thursday that the caucus is still pushing for separate provisions in any election legislation; Wolf has threatened to veto the provisions, which include banning drop boxes. Senate Republican majority leaders have remained silent. The 11th-hour fight is happening in the shadow of President Trump’s baseless claims at a recent rally near Harrisburg that the only way he can lose Pennsylvania to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is if Democrats cheat, a claim he also made in the 2016 election. Wolf’s offer involved a matter of prime importance to county election officials: giving them at least a few days before Nov. 3 to process what could be 3 million or more mail-in ballots to get them ready to tabulate as soon as polls close. Politics The counting of mail ballots will be slow in Pennsylvania, a state that could decide the presidential race. Election experts are alarmed by the threat of civic unrest as Trump tries to undercut public faith in the result. Oct. 14, 2020 Such a provision would speed up the vote count, ensuring that the vast majority of ballots are tabulated within hours after polls close, and give it more public credibility, county officials say. Doing nothing risks a dragged-out vote count, possibly leaving the election result in doubt for days after polls close, drawing lawsuits and claims of election fraud in the high-stakes presidential election. The governor’s offer also added security requirements for the drop boxes that many counties — particularly heavily populated and Democratic-leaning counties — are using to help collect mail-in ballots from voters. House Republican legislation passed last month included a three-day head start for counties on processing ballots. But it also carried measures that Wolf opposes and that align with litigation pressed by Trump‘s campaign in state and federal courts. Those include lifting the county residency restriction on party or campaign representatives who observe inside polling places and effectively banning drop boxes. House Republicans also oppose a court-ordered three-day post-election window for counties to accept and count mailed-in ballots. Politics These states will probably decide if Joe Biden or President Trump wins the election. And their absentee ballot laws could determine when we find out. Oct. 28, 2020

U.S. layoffs remain high, impeding economic recovery

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-10-15/us-layoffs-remain-elevated-as-898-000-seek-jobless-aid

The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits rose last week to 898,000, a historically high number and evidence that layoffs remain a hindrance to the economy’s recovery from the pandemic recession that erupted seven months ago. Thursday’s report from the Labor Department shows that the job market remans fragile, and it coincides with other recent data that have signaled a slowdown in hiring. The economy is still roughly 10.7 million jobs short of recovering all the 22 million jobs that were lost when the pandemic struck in early spring. The job search website Indeed said its job postings were unchanged last week, remaining about 17% below last year’s levels. Many employers still aren’t confident enough in their businesses or in their view of the economy to ramp up hiring. Job postings had rebounded steadily over the summer, but the gains have slowed in the past two months. The recession has disproportionately hurt in-person service industries, especially restaurants, hotels, travel companies and entertainment venues. The damage to those industries has left millions of people unemployed, likely for an extended period until they are either finally recalled to their previous jobs or switch to new careers. The government’s report Thursday said the number of people who are continuing to receive unemployment benefits dropped 1.2 million to 10 million. The decline signals that many of the unemployed are being recalled to their old jobs. But it also reflects the fact that potentially even more people have used up their regular state benefits — which usually expire after six months — and have transitioned to extended benefit programs that last an additional three months. The extended aid programs were established by the financial aid package that Congress enacted in the spring. Business Many industries have taken a severe hit, but the state’s housing market should enjoy a quick recovery, a UCLA forecast predicts. Sept. 30, 2020 Indeed, the number of people receiving extended benefits in late September, the latest data available, jumped 800,000, to 2.8 million. The government also said 373,000 people applied for jobless aid under a separate program that made the self-employed, contractors and gig workers eligible for unemployment benefits for the first time. That figure was 90,000 lower than in the previous week. These figures aren’t adjusted for seasonal trends, so the government reports them separately from the traditional jobless claims. Many jobless benefit recipients are now receiving only regular state unemployment payments because a federal weekly supplement of $300 has ended in nearly all states. A $600-a-week federal benefit expired over the summer. Economists have warned that without further aid, families across the country will struggle in coming months to pay bills, make rent, afford food and avoid eviction. But Congress has hit a stalemate in negotiations to provide further rescue aid to jobless individuals and struggling businesses, states and localities. Negotiations, led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are continuing, although prospects appear dim. The end of federal aid for the unemployed will likely force many of the jobless to sharply cut their spending, thereby weakening the economy. The full impact may have been delayed, though, by the fact that most of the federal aid was saved or was used to pare debt, according to research by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. According to the New York Fed, at the end of June nearly one-quarter of jobless aid payments had been saved. Nearly half were used to pay down debt. Just 28% of the money was spent. And more than one-third of the $1,200 stimulus checks that went to most adults was saved, with an additional one-third of that money used to pay off debt. Overall, Americans’ saving rate remains sharply higher than pre-pandemic levels, suggesting that some people will be able to continue paying some bills out of their savings, at least for now. The end of the federal payments has also underscored the dramatically uneven nature of unemployment benefits across states. In Arizona, for example, the maximum weekly payment is only $240, while in neighboring California it’s $450. In Florida and Tennessee, the maximum is just $275. In New Jersey, the top weekly benefit is $713. And about a dozen states lowered or froze their maximum weekly payment after the 2008-2009 recession, according to a report from the Century Foundation. In North Carolina and Wisconsin, for example, the maximum payments are no longer set as a proportion of average weekly wages in the state, which typically rise each year. Instead, they are set according to formulas related to a recipient’s previous earnings. Most states had to borrow billions of dollars to fund unemployment benefits during and after the Great Recession. To cut costs, many responded by cutting the amount or length of weekly payments. Only a few have since reversed their cuts. Nationwide, on average, unemployment benefits replace about 33% of what recipients earned at their previous job. That is down from 36% in 2009. “It is a steady downward trend,” said Andrew Stettner, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation. “The formulas have gradually gotten more stingy.” Some of the lowest benefits are provided in states where Black Americans make up the largest proportion of jobless aid recipients. In Mississippi, for instance, 54% of unemployment aid recipients in August were Black, according the Century Foundation. The maximum benefit in that state is $235 a week. In South Carolina, more than one-third of people receiving unemployment aid are Black. The maximum benefit is $326.

Figures from 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' to hit the auction block

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-15/rudolph-and-his-nose-so-bright-into-auction-will-take-flight

Rudolph and his still-shiny nose are getting a new home, and it’s bound to be a lot nicer than the Island of Misfit Toys. The soaring reindeer and Santa Claus figures that starred in “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” the perennially beloved stop-motion animation Christmas special, are going up for auction. Auction house Profiles in History in Calabasas announced Thursday that a 6-inch-tall Rudolph and 11-inch-tall Santa used to animate the 1964 TV special are being sold together in the auction that starts Nov. 13 and are expected to fetch between $150,000 and $250,000. Collector Peter Lutrario of Staten Island, N.Y., thought they might be the only items he would never sell, but when he recently turned 65 he thought about having something to leave for his children and grandchildren. “I always said I would die with the dolls,” he told the Associated Press. “I’m just putting the family first.” The figures were made by Japanese puppet maker Ichiro Komuro and used for the filming of the show at Tadaito Mochinaga’s MOM Productions in Tokyo. They’re made of wood, wire, cloth and leather. Rudolph’s nose, after some minimal maintenance through the years, still lights up. The bristles of Santa’s beard are made from yak hair. Lutrario, who bought them about 15 years ago after seeing them appraised on “Antiques Roadshow” on PBS, says that even after well over five decades you can manipulate them as the original animators did. “They’re still malleable,” he said, “and it’s very detailed. Not only can you move the arms, the legs, the head, you can move the fingers, the thumbs.” The show, produced by the company that would become Rankin/Bass Animated Entertainment, first aired Dec. 6, 1964, on NBC in the United States. It’s been a TV staple ever since with its tale, based on the 1939 song, of a year when Christmas was almost canceled, the misfit reindeer who saved it, an elf with dreams of being a dentist, and an island full of castaway toys. The figures would make their to the New York offices of Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass. Rankin later gave them to his secretary, who gave them to her nephew, who owned them until Lutrario bought them in 2005. The figures, among several used to make the special, are the first encountered by the auctioneers at Profiles in History, which specializes in selling rare and coveted Hollywood memorabilia. The company said in a statement that the “rarity of these puppets cannot be overstated.”

Lemur is missing after break-in at San Francisco Zoo

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-14/lemur-missing-after-break-in-at-san-francisco-zoo

Someone broke into the San Francisco Zoo overnight and stole a ring-tailed lemur, police said Wednesday. The 21-year-old male lemur named Maki was discovered missing shortly before the zoo opened to visitors. Investigators found evidence of a forced entry to the lemur enclosure and processed the scene for evidence. They’re seeking tips from the public, explaining that Maki is an endangered animal that requires specialized care. A photo of a ring-tailed lemur was being circulated. The outdoor lemur habitat, considered the largest of its kind in the country, houses seven different lemur species native to Madagascar, according to the zoo’s website. “Guests can see the lemurs from several vantage points: from across a surrounding pond, looking eye to eye at lemurs in the trees or gazing down below from an elevated boardwalk,” the website says. Last year, a lemur was stolen from the Santa Ana Zoo.

As coronavirus surges once more, Milan hospitals under pressure again

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-14/as-virus-surges-anew-milan-hospitals-under-pressure-again

Coronavirus infections are surging again in the region of northern Italy where the pandemic first took hold in Europe, renewing pressure on hospitals and healthcare workers. At Milan’s San Paolo Hospital, a ward dedicated to COVID-19 patients and outfitted with breathing machines reopened over the weekend, a sign that the city and the surrounding Lombardy region is entering another emergency phase of the pandemic. The region was the hardest hit area of Italy in the spring, when Italy spent weeks with the world’s highest reported virus-related death toll before being overtaken by the United States. For the medical personnel in Lombardy who fought the virus the first time around, the long-predicted rebound came too soon. “On a psychological level, I have to say I still have not recovered,’’ said nurse Cristina Settembrese, referring to the period in March and April when the region accounted for one-third of Italy’s confirmed coronavirus cases and nearly half of Italy’s COVID-19 deaths. “In the last five days, I am seeing many people who are hospitalized who need breathing support,” Settembrese said. “I am reliving the nightmare, with the difference that the virus is less lethal.” Months after Italy eased one of the globe’s strictest lockdowns, the country on Wednesday posted its highest daily number of new cases with 7,332 — surpassing the previous high of 6,557 that was recorded during the virus’ most deadly phase in March. Lombardy is again leading the nation in case numbers, an echo of the traumatic spring months when ambulance sirens pierced the silence of stilled cities. The Italian government is eager to avoid another nationwide lockdown to protect the country’s economy but has not ruled out closing cities or provinces. Increased testing is partially responsible for the latest round of high case numbers, and many of the individuals who have tested positive are asymptomatic. So far, Italy’s daily COVID-19 mortality figures remain significantly below the spring heights, hovering around 40 in recent days. That compares with the high of 969 dead reported on one day in late March. In response to the current outbreak, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s government tightened nationwide restrictions twice in one week. Starting Thursday, Italians are prohibited from playing casual pickup sports, bars and restaurants face a midnight curfew, and private celebrations in public venues are banned. Masks are mandatory outdoors as of last week. But there is also growing concern among doctors that Italy squandered the gains it made during its 10-week lockdown and didn’t move quickly enough to reimpose restrictions. Concerns persist that the rising stress on hospitals will force scheduled surgeries and screenings to be postponed — creating a parallel health emergency, as happened in the spring. Italy is not the only European country seeing a resurgence in confirmed virus cases. French President Emmanuel Macron announced Wednesday that 18 million people living in nine regions of France, including in Paris, will have a curfew starting Saturday through Dec. 1 in an effort to curb new infections. Macron also reinstated a nationwide state of health emergency that had ended three months ago. France has a total of 798,000 confirmed cases and nearly 33,000 deaths, while COVID-19 patients occupy a third of intensive care unit beds nationwide. “We won’t go to restaurants after 9 p.m., we won’t see friends, we won’t party, because that’s how to pass on the virus,” Macron said during a during a televised interview. Italy so far is faring better than its neighbors this time around. Italy’s cases per 100,000 residents have doubled in the last two weeks to nearly 87 — a rate well below countries like Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Spain and Britain, which are seeing roughly 300 to 500 per 100,000. Those countries have also started to impose new restrictions. This time, Milan is bearing the brunt, accounting for half of Lombardy’s daily cases, which spiked past 1,800 on Wednesday. Bergamo — which was hardest hit last time and has been seared into collective memory by images of army trucks transporting the dead to crematoria — had just 46. The resurgence as the weather cools has so far been most strongly linked to vacations, both at home and abroad, as Italians flocked to beaches and crowded islands during a remarkably relaxed summer. “The lockdown is a treasure that we scraped together with great effort and great sacrifice. We risk losing the results from a summer that in some ways was rather reckless,” Massimo Galli, the director of the infection disease ward at Milan’s Sacco Hospital, told the Associated Press. “The whole country acted as if the infections never existed, and was no longer among us.’’ His hospital is on the front lines of the pandemic, but he declined to say how many beds were occupied with coronavirus patients. Dr. Anna Carla Pozzi, a family physician in a Milan suburb, said she feared that fatigue is weakening the public’s response to the virus’ resurgence. That’s creating a situation similar to the one in January and February, when the virus was circulating undetected in Italy, and nothing was being done, she said. Pozzi sees her own patients acting surprisingly casually: Some disregard instructions to only come to her office with an appointment. A high school student called the doctor Tuesday seeking a medical certificate to go back to school, saying she had spent a week at home recovering from flu-like symptoms. “Great that you’re feeling better,” Pozzi told the student, adding that the girl still needed to get tested for the virus before she could return to class. The doctor was pleasantly surprised to find she could book the patient in for testing the next day — something unheard of during the winter and spring. Testing is helping Italy stay on top of the curve. On Wednesday, at least 100 cars were lined up for on-demand drive-through testing at the San Paolo hospital where Settembrese works. Dr. Guido Marinoni, the head of the association of general practitioners in Bergamo, where 6,000 people died in one month, said people in the province were sufficiently frightened by what happened in the spring to continue to follow the rules. But that may not be so in other parts of Lombardy or the country. “Six thousand in one month. Do you know how many dead there were in five years that Milan was bombed during World War II, and it was targeted a lot: 2,000,’’ Dr. Marinoni said. “What is worrying to see in other areas is the nightlife, people who are gathering in bars and partying. This is very dangerous.”

Pennsylvania high court to settle voter signatures fight

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-14/pennsylvania-high-court-to-settle-voter-signatures-fight

Pennsylvania’s highest court granted a request Wednesday from the state’s top elections official to take up the question of whether counties should count mail-in ballots when a voter’s signature doesn’t necessarily match the one on their registration. In its brief order, the state Supreme Court said it will decide the matter after a filings deadline in the case on Friday. In guidance last month to counties, Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat, told them that state law does not require or permit them to reject a mail-in ballot solely over a perceived signature inconsistency. After President Trump’s campaign contested that guidance in a federal court case, Boockvar asked the court to back up her guidance. Rejection of ballots over signatures poses “a grave risk of disenfranchisement on an arbitrary and wholly subjective basis,” Boockvar’s court filing said. Trump’s campaign asked a federal judge to declare that Boockvar’s guidance is unconstitutional and to block counties from following that guidance. The judge dismissed the case on Saturday. However, state Republican lawmakers oppose Boockvar’s guidance to counties, saying it would “rewrite existing law,” while disrupting Pennsylvania’s “clear and unambiguously crafted procedures for determining and challenging the validity” of a mail-in or absentee ballot. Boockvar’s guidance to counties comes amid a surge in mail-in voting and rising concerns that tens of thousands of mail-in ballots will be discarded in the presidential election over a variety of technicalities. The fight over signatures is one of many partisan battles being fought in the state Legislature and the courts over mail-in voting in Pennsylvania, amid warnings that a presidential election result will hang in limbo for days on a drawn-out vote count in Pennsylvania. County election officials say people’s signatures change over time, with age or medical conditions. They also say questions about whether a voter’s signature is valid have historically been extremely rare and, because of that, there has never before been a debate about it.

Florida-LSU is the second SEC game postponed in last three days because of COVID-19

https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2020-10-14/virus-wreaking-havoc-on-sec-due-to-positive-covid-19-tests

The Southeastern Conference has had to postpone two games in the last three days because of positive COVID-19 tests. No. 10 Florida’s game against defending national champion LSU was postponed Wednesday to tentatively Dec. 12 after the SEC postponed Missouri-Vanderbilt on Monday. More positive tests could derail other games after the league waited until the end of September to kick off the season due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Gators started testing daily Sunday and paused activities Tuesday after 19 positives with about a dozen more quarantined through contract tracing. Athletic director Scott Stricklin said they had 18 positives among scholarship players plus three walk-ons for a total of 21. That left the Gators with less than 50 scholarship players available. Stricklin said that COVID-19 can sneak up on a team in a hurry and that the key is hitting the brakes. “The SEC schedule was set up with something with an event like this in mind,” Stricklin said. “As much as we want to give our kids the opportunity to compete, we understand this isn’t a normal year and we’re going to have to have the ability to adapt to unusual circumstances such as this.” Vanderbilt coach Derek Mason is going through a similar situation. He said his Commodores (0-3) are a “shell” after he had an estimated group of players in the “high 40s” available for practice Wednesday with a couple of coaches involved in this outbreak. Vanderbilt has an open date Oct. 24 and won’t play again until hosting Mississippi on Oct. 31. Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin said his Rebels are dealing with their first COVID-19 issue of the season. He called it a “big challenge” for a team already banged up after a very physical game in a 63-48 loss to No. 2 Alabama. His Rebels (1-2) are scheduled to visit Arkansas (1-2) on Saturday. Kiffin wouldn’t be more specific. “Just like injuries, we’re not going to get into details on that,” Kiffin said. “We’re just trying to manage it the best we can. Tennessee coach Jeremy Pruitt said Monday that he had his entire team together for just the third straight week after testing and that tracing had left players sidelined in isolation or quarantine. Georgia coach Kirby Smart said he knows his team is one exposure away from having an issue. “We’ve been very fortunate so far, but we don’t have our test results back even from this week,” Smart said Tuesday.

Federal judge extends Virginia voter registration deadline

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-10-14/federal-judge-extends-virginia-voter-registration-deadline

A federal judge has extended the deadline for registering to vote in Virginia by 48 hours after the state’s online voter registration system went down because of an accidentally severed cable. Wednesday’s order by U.S. District Judge John A. Gibney Jr. in Richmond is an effort to make up for several hours of lost time on Tuesday, which had been the last day to register before the November general election. The shutdown of the state’s website caused “a tremendous harm” to the people who want to register to vote, Gibney said. Both the voting rights advocates seeking the extension and the Virginia state officials they sued agreed that more time should be granted. The deadline to register to vote is now 11:59 p.m. on Thursday. It includes both online and in-person registration. Americans are “21 days away from the most important election of our lifetimes, and I want to make sure that every Virginian who wants to vote has the opportunity to do so,” Virginia Atty. Gen. Mark Herring said in a statement Tuesday night. The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law had sought the extension, and said Virginia should make “a significant effort” to tell the public about the change. “Absent relief, voters who attempted to register to vote through the online portal on October 13, 2020, but were unable through no fault of their own, will be absolutely disenfranchised in the upcoming elections,” the group’s lawsuit said. Voting advocates said the accident couldn’t have come at a worse time, and lambasted state officials for the failure. Many people wait until the the day of the deadline to register, particularly after being reminded on social media and in the news. State officials said a 10-gigabit optical fiber circuit was inadvertently cut during a Chesterfield County roadside utilities project. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said the state lacked a backup plan for this particular cable, and the episode shows the need for the state to continue its efforts at creating a secure network. Secretary of Administration Keyanna Conner said the circuit was installed this spring to help the state handle increased web demand during the coronavirus pandemic. She said backup circuits aren’t as large as the main circuit, but plans are in place to upgrade them. Northam, a Democrat, supported the extension, and said it appeared that only the courts could change the state’s voter registration deadline. This isn’t the first time technical problems affected Virginians’ ability to register to vote under a looming deadline. In 2016, an unknown number of people were not able to register because of computer glitches amid unprecedented demand spurred by social media reminders. A voter advocacy group, the New Virginia Majority Education Fund, sued for an extension, and a federal judge granted a brief one.

California panel recommends limits to police crowd control

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-10-13/california-panel-recommends-limits-to-police-crowd-control

Days after police and members of an unruly crowd were injured following the Los Angeles Lakers’ latest basketball championship, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday released a report urging better communication and restraint by officers and warning that the use of tactical weapons for crowd control can escalate the sort of violence they are intended to deter. Newsom sought the more than three dozen recommendations after months of nationwide demonstrations followed the death of George Floyd in the custody of Minneapolis police. But California’s largest police unions called them unrealistic, and a legislator from the governor’s own Democratic Party criticized several of his recent police reform vetoes. He in turn ordered California’s police training panel to update its standards to prioritize protecting free speech rights and focus on selectively identifying and detaining instigators and hate groups who officials say can turn an otherwise peaceful crowd violent. Local agencies should require their officers to activate their body cameras during protests, Newsom’s advisors said. They should protect journalists and legal observers, several of whom were injured by police in recent demonstrations. And they urged police to minimize a “militaristic presence” of armored vehicles or military-style helmets or weapons that “can be counterproductive ... and may incite or escalate conflict.” Rubber bullets and chemical irritants not only can injure and kill, they said, but can “rapidly escalate conflict and ... should be used as a last resort to protect life and repel assaults when other means have been exhausted.” Brian Marvel, president of the rank-and-file Peace Officers Research Assn. of California, called the recommendations “a step in the right direction.” But police unions in Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Jose said the report and Newsom’s announcement fail to address keeping officers safe and paying for the new training. The report “pretends that violence and looting are brought on by police presence,” the unions said in a joint statement. ”We would welcome the authors of this research report to come stand the line with us during the next riot and show us how respecting ‘spatial boundaries’ and reducing the use of less than lethal crowd control devices will quell the looting, violence and injuries to officers we experienced during many of the so called peaceful protests.” Newsom released the report days after eight police officers were treated for injuries and three demonstrators were taken to hospitals after they were hit by so-called less-lethal munitions. Los Angeles police said about 1,000 Lakers fans initially celebrated peacefully until “unruly individuals” began throwing glass, bottles, rocks and other projectiles at officers and damaged more than 30 buildings. He said the recommendations will “reinforce the values of community partnership, de-escalation, and restraint.” Although most departments have behaved professionally during months of civil unrest, “there also have been disturbing and well-documented instances of unnecessary and counterproductive aggression, instigation, and over-reaction,” wrote former East Palo Alto Police Chief Ron Davis and Bay Area Rapid Transit President Lateefah Simon. They worked with Goldman School of Public Policy and Administration professor Jack Glaser on the report. Their report is dated Sept. 28, two days before Newsom vetoed a bill that his advisors seem to support. “Time and again, we heard stakeholders express a strong interest in shifting some funding away from traditional law enforcement responses to investments in communities and other types of first responders such as mental health providers and trained conflict resolution experts,” they wrote, saying they “wholeheartedly agree.” Newsom last month said he supported the concept even as he vetoed a bipartisan bill intended to do just that, saying he disagreed with how the proposed grant program would have been administered. “It’s unfortunate that when California had an opportunity to lead, we decided to step back,” said Democratic Assemblywoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles). “Everyone seems to be in agreement, so I look forward to him signing the bill next year.” She said the recommendations often appear to be “a regurgitation of many of the bills that went through the legislative process last year,” including measures limiting the use of rubber bullets, protecting journalists and discouraging the use of militaristic weaponry, some of which failed to advance or were vetoed. Dennis Cuevas-Romero, legislative advocate at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Center for Advocacy and Policy, was similarly critical of lost reform opportunities, adding that “police should not need costly additional training to understand that the 1st Amendment protects protesters and journalists from the widespread abuses we’ve seen.”

More masks, less play: Europe tightens rules as virus surges

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-13/more-masks-less-play-europe-tightens-rules-as-virus-surges

Governments across Europe are ratcheting up restrictions to try to beat back a resurgence of the coronavirus that has sent new confirmed infections on the continent to their highest weekly level since the start of the pandemic. The World Health Organization said Tuesday that more than 700,000 new COVID-19 cases were reported in Europe last week, up 34% from the previous week. Britain, France, Russia and Spain accounted for more than half of the new infections. The increasing caseload is partly the result of more testing, but the United Nations health agency noted that deaths were also up 16% last week from the week before. Doctors are warning that although many of the new cases are in younger people, who tend to have milder symptoms, the virus could again start spreading widely among older people, resulting in more serious illnesses. Italy and France are restricting parties and putting limits on restaurants and bars. The Netherlands went further and ordered the closing of all bars and restaurants. And to discourage partying at home, it banned the sale of alcohol after 8 p.m. The Czech Republic is closing all schools until Nov. 2, while Latvia is ordering teenagers to switch to distance learning for a week. And Britain unveiled a three-tiered system for deciding what restrictions to impose, based on how severe the outbreak is in certain areas. Those moves reflect a new approach to containing the virus among governments wary of hurting already fragile economies. Officials are eager to avoid the total lockdowns they imposed in the spring that resulted in heavy job losses. Instead, they are relying on a patchwork of regional or targeted restrictions that have sometimes caused confusion and frustration for those affected. The U.N. health agency appeared to support the new approach, with WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic saying lockdowns should be a “last resort.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a European Union advisory body Tuesday that she is watching the rising infection figures “with great concern.” “We must not squander now what we achieved through restrictions in recent months,” Merkel said in a video address. “None of us found it easy to impose those restrictions,” she added. “Many people lost their lives, and so it is all the more important that we ensure now that a further lockdown won’t be necessary, that our health system isn’t overstrained again.” Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte ordered bars and restaurants to close at midnight and banned pickup sports games among friends and parties in enclosed spaces. Private gatherings at homes with more than six people who don’t live together are also discouraged. “Our objective is clear: We must prevent our country from plunging back into a generalized lockdown,” Conte said. Italy reported that more than 5,900 people tested positive over the last day and 41 people died, bringing the country’s official COVID-19 fatality tally to more than 36,200, the second-highest in Europe after Britain. The outbreak has spread to the annual Giro d’Italia, which was thrown into chaos after several top riders withdrew from the cycling race following positive tests for the coronavirus. Italy made masks mandatory outdoors last week, a requirement already in place in Spain, Turkey, India and a few other Asian countries. Elsewhere in Europe, such mandates are in effect in many places in Poland and hot-spot cities such as Paris and Brussels, and are being introduced in several German cities. In France, which has seen a rapid increase in infections, Paris, Marseille and seven other large cities have been placed under maximum alert, resulting in the closing of bars, gyms and swimming pools. Public parties are banned, and restaurants have to maintain at least 3 feet between tables, with groups of diners limited to six people. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki urged fellow citizens to observe social distancing and wear masks as he went into quarantine after contact with someone who later tested positive for COVID-19. He said in a video message that his government was working as usual and that he had no symptoms. Poland, a nation of about 38 million, has seen a sharp spike in newly recorded infections, with close to 5,100 cases and 63 deaths reported Tuesday. Over the summer, new daily cases were around 600. Some doctors are warning that Poland’s chronically underfunded healthcare system may collapse if the current rate of new cases continues. In Britain, which has suffered the deadliest outbreak in Europe, with more than 43,000 fatalities, officials defended their new system as striking the right balance. Under the plan unveiled this week, Liverpool is in the highest-risk category, and its pubs, gyms and betting shops have been shut. “The prime minister has to balance protecting people’s lives and the [National Health Service] from the virus while also prioritizing things that matter to us as a society, like education and keeping as many people in employment as possible,” Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick told the BBC. Britain’s number of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases has more than tripled in the last three weeks, with infection rates rising across all age groups and regions. In an effort to keep people and goods moving throughout the European Union, member countries approved a color-coded system Tuesday. The countries agreed to not restrict people traveling between green areas — where infection numbers are low — but EU governments will continue to set their own restrictions, such as quarantines or mandatory testing upon arrival, for people coming from orange or red zones.

Bloomberg gives $500,000 to spur Democratic turnout in Miami-Dade County

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-13/bloomberg-gives-500-000-to-spur-dem-turnout-in-miami-dade

Former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg is donating $500,000 to spur Democratic turnout in Miami-Dade County, a place where the party must bank a massive number of votes if it hopes to win the presidential election in the pivotal battleground state of Florida. The billionaire’s donation, the largest ever made to the Miami-Dade County Democratic Party, could lift former Vice President Joe Biden’s chances of winning the state, which would all but eliminate President Trump’s path to a second term. The effort to increase turnout also could improve the fortunes of Daniella Levine Cava, the Democratic candidate for mayor of the county, whose victory could have statewide and national implications that transcend the local nature of the office. Though Miami-Dade County is a Democratic stronghold, Republicans have controlled the mayoral office for 16 years, which has allowed them to exert considerable sway over the way local elections are conducted. And in a state that is typically decided on razor-thin margins, changes that make it easier for Democrats to turn out their voters could have a ripple effect on future statewide races, as well as on the presidential election in 2024. “Having a strong mayor who is a registered Democrat for the first time in 16 years with Florida as a continuing political landscape is a big deal,” said Christian Ulvert, a Democratic consultant who is advising both Levine Cava and Biden’s Florida campaign. This year, under the leadership of Carlos Gimenez, the county’s term-limited mayor who is now running as a pro-Trump Republican for Congress, Miami-Dade limited the number of ballot drop box locations, denied a plan by the Miami Heat basketball team to turn its arena into an early voting site and sent out mail-in ballots later than was allowed under state law. Democrats contend those efforts have suppressed turnout in the deep blue county. “It is unquantifiably important to be investing in these state and local races because Republicans have for 30 or 40 years and have done so because they understand that these offices control the levers of power,” said Amanda Litman, a Democratic strategist who leads Run for Something, which supports down-ballot candidates. “Republicans understand this really, really well and have spent hundreds of millions of dollars winning them.” Bloomberg spent about a billion dollars on his own short-lived presidential campaign, which he ended in March after a poor showing in the Super Tuesday primary contests. He quickly endorsed Biden and vowed to put significant funds toward helping the former vice president beat Trump. “As one of the most diverse counties in Florida, Miami-Dade County is a particularly important county for a Democratic victory in Florida,” Bloomberg said in a statement. “I’m glad to support the Miami-Dade Democratic Executive Committee’s work to directly reach voters and urge them to cast their ballots.” Politics COVID-19’s spread in Florida jeopardizes Trump’s reelection prospects in the crucial battleground state. Sept. 25, 2020

Message of unity replaces torched Biden-Harris haystack display

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-14/message-of-unity-replaces-torched-biden-harris-farm-display

A stack of hay bales on a Massachusetts farm that were decorated in support of the Democratic presidential ticket but that were burned down has been replaced with a similar display but a different message. The original display at Holiday Brook Farm in Dalton featured 19 wrapped hay bales painted with the words “USA” and “Vote” along with the names of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris. A local man is accused of burning it down Friday evening. No one was hurt. The new, nearly identical stack of hay bales now says “Love, Unity, Respect” and features a U.S. flag, a globe and the word “Vote.” Farm owner Dicken Crane told the Boston Globe that he decided on the new message after seeing the widespread attention drawn by his first display. “We really didn’t want to increase the divisiveness around the election,” Crane said Monday. “It’s a message that we really hope this country is about. If we respect unity and love, it makes the names on the political message less important.” Unparalleled coverage of an unprecedented election. Get our Essential Politics newsletter for exclusive reporting from our journalists from Washington to the campaign trail. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. The suspect, Lonnie Durfee, 49, of Dalton, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to burning personal property. He was held without bail pending a hearing Friday to determine whether he is a danger to society, the Berkshire Eagle reported. Prosecutors requested the hearing based on Durfee’s arrest in 2014 on suspicion of assault and battery. A voicemail was left Tuesday with Durfee’s attorney. Durfee used motor oil and gasoline to set the display alight because he “disagreed with the political stance it represented,” according to the police report. He apologized and offered to pay for the damages, estimated at about $2,000, the report said.

Wisconsin absentee ballot case may be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-13/wisconsin-absentee-case-may-be-headed-to-us-supreme-court

Democrats and their allies said Tuesday they will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether absentee ballots in battleground Wisconsin that are received up to six days after the election can be counted — a move being fought by Republicans who have opposed other attempts across the country to expand voting. Democrats argue that the flood of absentee ballots and other challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic make it necessary to extend the period in which ballots can be counted. Wisconsin is one of the nation’s hot spots for COVID-19, with hospitalizations treating a record high number of patients with the disease. Republicans oppose the extension, saying voters have plenty of opportunities to cast their ballot by the close of polls on election day and that the rules should not be changed so close to the election. President Trump has repeatedly attacked mail-in voting and said that expansions would hurt GOP chances, yet he has encouraged his supporters to utilize it. A federal judge in September sided with Democrats and said ballots postmarked by Nov. 3 could be counted if they’re received by Nov. 9. The judge also ruled that poll workers could include people from outside the county, a change Democrats wanted in order to make it easier to fill vacancies. The judge’s ruling also extended the state’s deadline for registering by mail or electronically by seven days, from Wednesday until Oct. 21. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling, but last week put the lower court’s decision on hold pending further appeals. Politics These states will probably decide if Joe Biden or President Trump wins the election. And their absentee ballot laws could determine when we find out. Oct. 28, 2020 “We hope that the Supreme Court will do the right thing and allow election officials to count all valid ballots cast by election day, even if ballots are delayed in the mail and arrive a few days later,” said Farbod Faraji, an attorney at Protect Democracy, a Washington, D.C.-based group assisting Democrats with the lawsuit. “But voters should not count on that. Everyone voting absentee should submit their ballot as early as possible, so that their municipal clerk receives it no later than 8 p.m. on Nov. 3rd.” The planned request for the Supreme Court to take the case comes amid confirmation hearings for conservative Judge Amy Coney Barrett, whom Trump selected to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal icon. While Barrett’s nomination is pending, the Supreme Court has a 5-3 conservative majority. There are numerous similar fights over absentee ballots happening in other battleground states. In neighboring Minnesota on Monday, a federal judge upheld a state court agreement that allows the counting of absentee ballots received up to seven days after election day. In Michigan, Republicans are appealing a ruling that extended the deadline to receive mail ballots postmarked before election day to Nov. 17. And in Pennsylvania, Republicans asked the U.S. Supreme Court to put a hold on a ruling that extends the deadline for counting and receiving mail-in ballots. In North Carolina, several Republican lawsuits challenge a settlement in which the state elections board agreed to change the way defective mail ballots can be fixed by voters. There is also a federal lawsuit in North Carolina related to witness signature requirements for absentee ballots. Politics A record number of Americans are expected to vote by mail in the November election — and a record number may have their ballots rejected over signatures. Oct. 13, 2020 In Wisconsin, absentee ballots typically must be received by 8 p.m. on election day. But this year, as many as two-thirds of all ballots, or roughly 2 million, are projected to be cast absentee, which Democrats fear will overwhelm local election officials. Absentee ballots can’t be counted in Wisconsin until 7 a.m. on election day. A group of Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday called for Republicans who control the Legislature to convene a special session to change the law before election day. Republicans have rejected earlier calls to change the law. Democrats cite problems in Wisconsin’s April presidential primary election, including long lines at the polls and thousands of ballots mailed after the election, as reasons to grant an extension. They also argue that potential delays in mail delivery could cause the late arrival of ballots. As of Tuesday, 717,000 of more than 1.3 million requested absentee ballots had been returned. To date, the returned absentee ballots account for nearly 24% of the total vote of more than 3 million ballots in 2016. Trump won Wisconsin by less than 1 percentage point — fewer than 23,000 votes — in 2016. Polls show Democratic challenger former Vice President Joe Biden with a slight lead in the state, but both sides expect another close race. Three of the last five presidential elections in Wisconsin were decided by less than a percentage point. Those suing to receive the extension are the Democratic National Committee; the Wisconsin Democratic Party; the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin; Disability Rights Wisconsin; and Black Leaders Organizing for Communities, a Milwaukee-based advocacy group working to defeat Trump. The Republican National Committee, the Wisconsin Republican Party and state Republican lawmakers are fighting the lawsuit.

World Trade Organization: EU can sanction up to $4 billion in U.S. goods over illegal Boeing support

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-13/world-trade-organization-arbitrators-say-eu-can-sanction-up-to-4-billion-in-us-goods-over-illegal-support-for-boeing

World Trade Organization arbitrators said Tuesday that the European Union can sanction up to $4 billion in U.S. goods over Washington’s illegal support for plane maker Boeing. The ruling, which could inflame Trump administration criticism of the Geneva-based trade body, amounts to one of the largest penalties handed down by the WTO. It comes a year after another ruling authorized billions in penalties against the European Union over support for Boeing rival Airbus. The decision, which is final and cannot be appealed, dates back to 2006 and is part of a string of long-running disputes between the two plane-making giants at the Geneva trade body. The arbitrators were tasked with setting a dollar value in sanctions such as tariffs that the EU could impose a year after the WTO’s appellate body found that Boeing had received at least $5 billion in subsidies that were prohibited under international trade rules. The United States had argued that the illegal support merited no more than $412 million in penalties, while the EU had countered that it deserved some $8 billion. The award in essence was 10 times more than what the U.S. had claimed, and half what the EU wanted.

New angst for caregivers in time of COVID-19, poll finds

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-13/ap-norc-poll-new-angst-for-caregivers-in-time-of-covid-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has thrust many Americans into the role of caring for an older or disabled loved one for the first time, a new poll finds. And caregivers on the whole say they’re encountering unexpected risks and demands as a result of the virus, requiring greater time and effort. Still, they’re more worried about the relatives and friends they are helping than about themselves. The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll finds that 17% of Americans say they are providing ongoing caregiving, part of an informal volunteer corps. About 1 in 10 caregivers has begun since the virus outbreak, and about half of those say they are providing care specifically because of the pandemic. For Chad Reese, of Canton, Ohio, caregiving has coincided with the pandemic. His mother-in-law moved in with his family shortly before the outbreak as she was being treated for advanced breast cancer. “It was a natural thing for us to do,” said Reese, technology director for a museum. What didn’t feel quite right is that they couldn’t accompany his mother-in-law to cancer treatments because of coronavirus protocols. “A lot of things were lost in translation,” said Reese. “One of us has to stay in the car. That’s still going on to this day.” Science & Medicine A diagnosis of breast cancer is always accompanied by angst and uncertainty. It’s even more fraught when it comes in the midst of the coronavirus crisis. April 12, 2020 Among those who already were providing care, 36% say their responsibilities have increased. Added responsibilities are more keenly felt by caregivers who’ve lost jobs or income in the pandemic. And 42% of those under financial strain said their caregiving responsibilities increased, compared with 25% of those who are holding their own economically. The poll finds that 1 in 20 caregivers has provided care to someone infected with COVID-19. When unpacked, that number reveals some social disparities. While 11% of nonwhite caregivers say they’ve cared for someone who was infected, just 2% of white caregivers have. The fear of unwittingly passing on the virus has become a major preoccupation for caregivers. In the poll, 44% were extremely or very concerned about risks to the person they care for, versus 28% who said the same about their own risks. “I stay awake at night and toss and turn,” said Seth Peters, a university associate professor in Utah. He’s a one-man logistics operation for his 78-year-old widowed mother, who lives alone in her own home, more cloistered than ever because of the virus. In the rest of his life, Peters has interaction with college students, and his two young kids are themselves in school. When he goes to see his mother, “she is even afraid to let me pet the dog,” said Peters. Nora Voytko, who lives near Austin, Texas, helps care for her adult son-in-law, who is disabled due to muscular dystrophy, a genetic disease that causes progressive weakness and loss of muscle. The disease has also compromised his breathing. After the outbreak began, the family suspended in-home physical therapy treatments. The poll found that 28% of current caregivers had previously employed someone to provide in-home care but had canceled it as a result of the outbreak. Voytko’s daughter has taken on the role of therapist. “Once COVID hit, then the dangers to him were too great for any of us to be exposed to the general public,” said Voytko. Science & Medicine Changes wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic have upended the lives of millions of dementia patients and their caregivers, who rely on long-standing routines. Aug. 18, 2020 The poll found that caregivers, like others, are increasingly using telehealth as well as ordering supplies and food. But Aaron Pettry, of Marmet, W.Va., makes occasional runs to the store. He and his wife care for his mother-in-law in their home, and Pettry said he follows a procedure when he returns home: street clothes in the washing machine. His mother-in-law is in her 80s, and “we know if she gets it, it could be really bad on her,” he said. The mail gets sprayed with Lysol disinfectant. William Arnone, chief executive of the nonprofit National Academy of Social Insurance, said the poll highlights both increasing stress on caregivers and the lack of a support system for those in the middle class. “It’s an amazing set of pressures, both physical and emotional,” he said. “The pandemic has exacerbated it, but the aging of the population alone is going to be making things worse.” The poll found that a growing number of Americans say the government or health insurance should pay for the costs of long-term care. Since 2018, the share saying Medicare should have a large responsibility increased from 45% to 56%, and the share saying the same about health insurance companies increased from 50% to 59%. One major alternative to in-home care is nursing homes, but their reputation has taken a blow. Nursing homes and long-term care facilities represent roughly 1% of the U.S. population, but they account for about 40% of COVID-19 deaths. World & Nation A report says COVID-19 cases in U.S. nursing homes jumped nearly 80% earlier this summer, driven by spread across the South and much of the West. Aug. 18, 2020 In the poll, 41% said they now have a less favorable opinion of nursing homes than before the virus. Just 10% have a more favorable view. “I would be very nervous about a communal living situation,” said Paul Frese, who watches over his parents, living on their own in their 80s. “I would much rather that they agree to a caregiver who can come over every day and make sure everything is safe in the house.” Frese is a retired communications technology specialist from Chicago, and most of his caregiving these days is by remote devices. He has installed a camera system outside his parents’ home to make sure they’re protected against intruders. It also lets him check that they are masked if they leave the house. But the physical distancing gnaws on him. “I can’t hug them,” said Frese. “I can’t have any of the normal family interactions ... and there is only so much time left in all of our lives.” The survey, part of an ongoing series, was funded by the SCAN Foundation, a nonprofit focused on quality-of-life issues for the elderly.

Bipartisan Christian group forms anti-Trump super PAC

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-13/bipartisan-christian-group-forms-super-pac-to-oppose-trump

A group of prominent Christians from both sides of the aisle, including a past faith advisor to President Obama, is forming a political action committee designed to chip away at Christian support for President Trump in the final weeks of the 2020 campaign. The new super PAC, dubbed Not Our Faith, plans to roll out TV and digital ads focused on Christian voters — particularly the evangelical and Roman Catholic voters who helped Trump secure victory in 2016. Its first digital ad, set to run in the battleground states of Michigan and Pennsylvania, takes sharp aim at Trump’s claim to a foothold with Christians. The ad, shared with the Associated Press in advance of its release, says Trump “has used Christianity for his own purposes,” invoking imagery of the Republican president’s photo op outside a historic Washington church amid this summer’s racial justice demonstrations. Urging Christians to break from Trump, the ad states that they “don’t need Trump to save them. The truth is that Trump needs Christians to save his flailing campaign.” That sharp critique of Trump’s standing with Christian voters comes as the president looks to evangelicals in particular to help him muscle to reelection over Democratic nominee Joe Biden. While Biden’s campaign is mounting a well-organized faith outreach effort, that work largely focuses on an affirmative case for the former vice president rather than the overtly anti-Trump case that the new PAC is making. Among the PAC’s advisory council members are Michael Wear, a former faith advisor in Obama’s administration and reelection campaign, and Autumn Vandehei, a former aide to onetime Republican Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas. Wear said in an interview that Trump has “in a predatory way attached himself to Christians,” asserting that the faith would be “better off” without the president. “Trump eked out 2016 with unprecedented support from white evangelicals and, important to note, a really strong showing among Catholics. We’re going after all of it,” Wear said. “We think Christian support is on the table in this election.” Politics A look at where President Trump and Joe Biden stand on key issues in the 2020 election, including healthcare, immigration, police reform and climate. Sept. 14, 2020 Trump and his reelection campaign continue to lean heavily on pitches to Christian voters, with the president asserting the baseless claim that Biden and Democrats are hostile to religion. Republicans are also appealing to voters of faith by claiming that Democrats have unfairly criticized Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett for her Catholicism, although no Democratic senator has yet raised the issue during Barrett’s confirmation hearings. Biden himself is Catholic. Trump’s faith advisor and personal pastor, Paula White, is set to appear Tuesday in the battleground state of Ohio at an event for the campaign’s evangelical outreach project. Whether Biden backers can succeed in peeling away evangelical support from Trump remains to be seen. A survey from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center taken after Trump’s contentious church photo op found that 72% of white evangelicals approved of his handling of the job, a level that has remained largely consistent over his presidency. But the new PAC sees room for a wide-ranging connection with Christian voters beyond Trump’s white evangelical base. Wear said the project hopes “to reach and appeal to a diverse coalition of Christians … just as we anticipate a diverse coalition of Christians will oppose Donald Trump’s reelection.” The PAC’s advisory council also includes Carolyn Y. Woo, the retired president and CEO of the humanitarian group Catholic Relief Services, and the Rev. Alvin Love, pastor of Lilydale First Baptist Church in Chicago and chair of faith-based initiatives at the National Baptist Convention.

Second COVID-19 vaccine trial paused over unexplained illness

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-12/2nd-covid-19-vaccine-trial-paused-over-unexplained-illness

A late-stage study of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate has been paused while the company investigates whether a study participant’s “unexplained illness” is related to the shot. The company said in a statement Monday evening that illnesses, accidents and other so-called adverse events “are an expected part of any clinical study, especially large studies,” but that its physicians and a safety monitoring panel would try to determine what might have caused the illness. The pause is at least the second such hold to occur among several vaccines that have reached large-scale final tests in the U.S. The company declined to reveal any more details about the illness, citing the participant’s privacy. Science & Medicine The Trump administration seems to be going to great lengths to get a COVID-19 vaccine produced by election day. How much can they get away with? Oct. 9, 2020 Temporary stoppages of large medical studies are relatively common. Few are made public in typical drug trials, but the work to make a coronavirus vaccine has raised the stakes on these kinds of complications. Companies are required to investigate any serious or unexpected reaction that occurs during drug testing. Given that such tests are done on tens of thousands of people, some medical problems are a coincidence. In fact, one of the first steps the company said it will take is to determine whether the person received the vaccine or a placebo. The halt was first reported by the health news site STAT. Final-stage testing of a vaccine made by AstraZeneca and Oxford University remains on hold in the U.S. as officials examine whether an illness in its trial poses a safety risk. That trial was stopped when a woman developed severe neurological symptoms consistent with transverse myelitis, a rare inflammation of the spinal cord, the company has said. That company’s testing has restarted elsewhere. Johnson & Johnson was aiming to enroll 60,000 volunteers to prove if its single-dose approach is safe and protects against the coronavirus. Other vaccine candidates in the U.S. require two shots. Science & Medicine If you were counting on a coronavirus infection to keep you safe from COVID-19 without having to get a vaccine, scientists have some bad news: It won’t work. Oct. 12, 2020

Trump tests negative for COVID-19, White House doctor says

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-12/the-latest-doctor-says-trump-tested-negative-for-covid-19

President Trump’s White House doctor said Monday that Trump has tested negative for COVID-19 “on consecutive days” using a newer rapid test from Abbott Laboratories. The assessment from Navy Cmdr. Sean Conley came as Trump was traveling to Sanford, Fla., to headline his first campaign rally since becoming infected with the coronavirus. Conley had said in a written memo released over the weekend that Trump was no longer at risk of spreading the virus to others. Politics Trump addresses an airport rally in Florida, resuming the campaign travel schedule that was scrubbed after he was infected with COVID-19. Oct. 12, 2020 Conley said in an update released Monday that Trump tested negative for COVID-19 on consecutive days using a newer 15-minute test. He did not say when Trump was tested. Trump announced Oct. 2 that he had tested positive for the coronavirus. He was admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center that night and released on Oct. 5. His Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, also announced Monday that he had tested negative for the coronavirus. It’s the latest in a series of negative tests for Biden since he was onstage Sept. 29 for a debate against Trump, who later tested positive for the virus.

Security guard jailed in connection with deadly shooting at Denver protests

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-11/security-guard-jailed-shooting-denver-protests

A private security guard working for a local TV station was jailed on suspicion of first-degree murder in the deadly shooting of another man during dueling right- and left-wing protests in downtown Denver, police said Sunday. Matthew Dolloff, 30, was taken into custody in connection with the shooting Saturday afternoon in Civic Center Park. A man participating in what was billed as a Patriot Rally slapped and sprayed Mace at a man who appeared to be Dolloff, the Denver Post reported, based on its photographs from the scene. The man drew a gun from his waistband and shot the other person, according to the Denver Post journalist who witnessed the incident. World & Nation Armed right-wing groups are registering as poll watchers and planning to monitor voting places during the presidential election. Oct. 10, 2020 The shooting victim was not named by authorities and died at a nearby hospital. But his son identified the man Sunday to the Denver Post as Lee Keltner, a 49-year-old U.S. Navy veteran who operated a hat-making business in the Denver area. “He wasn’t a part of any group,” Johnathon Keltner told the newspaper. “He was there to rally for the Police Department, and he’d been down there before rallying for the Police Department.” A woman who said she was the victim’s mother, Carol Keltner, wrote in a social media post that her son was killed when he was shot in the head. A decision on any charges will be up to the Denver district attorney’s office, police said. A representative for Dist. Atty. Beth McCann said Sunday that the arrest affidavit in the case remained sealed and referred further questions to the police. It was not immediately clear whether Dolloff had an attorney. Division Chief Joe Montoya of the Denver Police Department said two guns were found at the scene, as well as a Mace can. The shooting occurred beneath a city surveillance camera, and police said they have footage of the incident, KUSA-TV Channel 9 in Denver reported. KUSA said it had hired the guard through the Pinkerton security firm. “It has been the practice of 9NEWS for a number of months to hire private security to accompany staff at protests,” the station said. The right-wing Patriot Rally was one of two demonstrations happening about the same time that drew hundreds of people to the park. Protesters at what was called a BLM-Antifa Soup Drive nearby held up flags and signs railing against Nazis and white supremacists. Security guards in Denver are supposed to be licensed, with additional endorsements needed to carry a firearm or operate in plainclothes, according to rules for the industry adopted by the city in 2018. In photos from Saturday’s shooting, Dolloff did not appear to be in uniform. His name does not show up on a city-run database that lists several thousand licensed security guards. Representatives of Pinkerton did not immediately return email and telephone messages for comment.

Trump insists he's free of coronavirus and ready for the campaign trail

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-11/trump-insists-hes-free-of-virus-ready-for-campaign-trail

President Trump on Sunday declared he was healthy enough to return to the campaign trail, a day after the White House doctor said he was no longer at risk of transmitting the coronavirus but did not say explicitly whether Trump had tested negative for COVID-19. Trump, who was poised Monday to host his first rally after his diagnosis, declared he was now “immune” from the virus, a claim that was impossible to prove and came amid a series of outstanding questions about the president’s health. “I’m immune,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News. “The president is in very good shape to fight the battles.” In a memo released Saturday night by the White House, Navy Cmdr. Dr. Sean Conley said Trump met the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention criteria for safely discontinuing isolation and that by “currently recognized standards” he was no longer considered a transmission risk. The memo did not declare Trump had tested negative for the virus. But sensitive lab tests — like the PCR test cited in the doctor’s statements — detect virus in swab samples taken from the nose and throat. Some medical experts had been skeptical that Trump could be declared free of the risk of transmitting the virus so early in the course of his illness. Just 10 days after an initial diagnosis of infection, there was no way to know for certain that someone was no longer contagious, they said. The memo followed Trump’s first public appearance since returning to the White House after being treated for COVID-19 at a military hospital. Hundreds of people gathered Saturday afternoon on the South Lawn for a Trump address, from a White House balcony, on his support for law enforcement. Politics President Trump made his first public appearance since his hospitalization for the coronavirus with an event on the South Lawn of the White House. Oct. 10, 2020 Trump took off a mask moments after he emerged on the balcony to address the crowd on the lawn below, his first step back onto the public stage with just more than three weeks to go until election day. He flouted, once more, the safety recommendations of his own government days after acknowledging that he was on the brink of “bad things” from the virus and claiming that his bout with the illness brought him a better understanding of it. His return was a brief one. With bandages visible on his hands, likely from an intravenous injection, Trump spoke for 18 minutes, far less than his normal hour-plus rallies. He appeared healthy, if perhaps a little hoarse, as he delivered what was, for all intents and purposes, a short version of his campaign speech despite the executive mansion setting. “I’m feeling great,” Trump told the crowd, adding that he was thankful for their good wishes and prayers as he recovered. He then declared that the pandemic, which has killed more than 210,000 Americans, was “disappearing,” even though he is still recovering from the virus. In either an act of defiance or simply tempting fate, officials organized the event just steps from the Rose Garden, where exactly two weeks ago the president held another large gathering to formally announce his nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. That gathering is now being eyed as a possible COVID-19 superspreader event, as more than two dozen people in attendance have contracted the virus. His return to full-fledged rallies will be in Florida on Monday, a comeback that comes with the president facing stubborn deficits in the polls. The Trump campaign and White House have not indicated that any additional safety measures will be taken to prevent the transmission of the virus among those traveling on Air Force One or at the rally site. Politics The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends contact tracing for all coronavirus outbreaks. The White House hasn’t asked for its help. Oct. 7, 2020 As Trump returned to the public stage, Dr. Albert Ko, an infectious disease specialist and department chairman at the Yale School of Public Health, said that the White House appeared to be following CDC guidelines for when it was appropriate to end isolation after mild to moderate cases of COVID-19. But Ko cautioned that those who had had severe cases of the diseases should isolate for 20 days. He noted that Trump was treated with the steroid dexamethasone, which is normally reserved for patients with severe COVID. Ko added that the White House had issued “convoluted” statements about Trump’s health that left many questions unanswered, including whether the president ever had pneumonia. The memo stated that Trump had reached Day 10 from the onset of symptoms, had been free of fever for well over 24 hours, and that all symptoms had improved. People who have had COVID-19 can continue to test positive for weeks or longer after they are no longer infectious. Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist at George Mason University, said the tight time frame laid out by the White House made it appear that “they’re really just pushing to get him out of isolation” and back to campaigning. Trump will follow the Florida rally with trips to Pennsylvania and Iowa on subsequent days. The White House has steadfastly refused to release detailed information about lung scans taken while Trump was hospitalized or to say when his last negative test was before his Oct. 2 diagnosis, raising questions as to how frequently the president was tested and if he potentially was carrying the virus for days before it was detected. Politics Trump pronounces himself fit, as his press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, and other members of his team announce they’ve tested positive for the coronavirus. Oct. 5, 2020 Democrat Joe Biden’s campaign said the nominee again tested negative on Saturday for COVID-19. Biden was potentially exposed to the coronavirus during his Sept. 29 debate with Trump, who announced his positive diagnosis barely 48 hours after the debate. The president had not been seen in public — other than in White House-produced videos — since his return last Monday from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where he received experimental treatments for the coronavirus. District of Columbia virus restrictions prohibit outdoor gatherings larger than 50 people, although that rule has not been strictly enforced. Masks are mandatory outdoors for most people, but the regulations don’t apply on federal land, and the Trump White House has openly flouted them for months. Although reports of reinfection in COVID-19 victims are rare, the CDC recommends that even people who recover from the disease continue to wear masks, stay distanced and follow other precautions. It was unclear if Trump, who has refused mask wearing in most settings, would abide by that guidance.

Iran records its highest daily death toll from coronavirus

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-11/iran-records-its-highest-daily-death-toll-from-coronavirus

Iran announced on Sunday its highest single-day death toll from the coronavirus, with 251 confirmed dead, the same day that two senior officials were confirmed infected and the nation’s currency hit a record low. Health Ministry spokesperson Sima Sadat Lari said the total confirmed death toll now stood at 28,544, making it the hardest-hit country in the region. Iran had previously recorded its highest daily death toll four days earlier, with 239 new fatalities. A further 3,822 new cases were confirmed over the last 24-hour period, raising recorded nationwide cases to 500,075. Nearly 4,500 patients are in critical condition. Among those recently infected is the head of the country’s atomic energy organization, the latest senior official to test positive for the virus. The semiofficial Tasnim news agency said Ali Akbar Salehi, who is also a vice president of Iran, tested positive for the virus last week and had been isolating at home since. The news agency reported that his health condition was currently good. Meanwhile, a separate report by Tasnim news agency said the country’s vice president in charge of budget and planning, Mohammad Bagher Nobakht, had also tested positive for the coronavirus. World & Nation Volunteer body washers have been called on to uphold a sacred Islamic custom amid the health crisis in Iran. One such person is 33-year-old Tahereh Adibi. Iran has struggled to contain the spread of the virus across this nation of 80 million people, initially beating it back only to see a spike in cases again, beginning in June. The government has largely resisted imposing wide-scale lockdowns as the economy teeters from continued U.S. economic sanctions that effectively bar Iran from selling its oil internationally. Money exchange shops in Tehran sold the U.S. dollar at 315,000 rials on Sunday, compared with what was 32,000 rials to the dollar at the time of Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. Salehi is known internationally as one of the key Iranian negotiators who took part in those nuclear talks. The deal curbed Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief, but President Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the agreement in 2018 and reimposed crushing economic sanctions. World & Nation Brazil’s count of COVID-19 deaths has surpassed 150,000, despite signs the pandemic is slowly retreating in Latin America’s largest nation. The currency plummeted further on Sunday days after the Trump administration’s decision to blacklist 18 Iranian banks that had so far escaped the bulk of reimposed sanctions. The move subjects non-Iranian financial institutions to penalties for doing business with them, effectively cutting the banks off from the international financial system. Iran has seen several top officials contract the virus over past months, including senior Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri and Vice President Massoumeh Ebtekar. A number of Cabinet ministers have also tested positive, including Tourism Minister Ali Asghar Mounesan and former Industry Minister Reza Rahmani. The head of an Iranian government task force on the coronavirus who had urged the public not to overreact about its spread was among the first senior officials to contract the virus in late February. The virus first appeared in Iran at the same time the government was trying to shore up support for the country’s parliamentary elections, which saw the lowest voter turnout since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that brought its clerical leadership to power.

COVID-19 deaths surpass 150,000 in Brazil, second only to U.S.

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-10/brazil-reaches-150-000-deaths-from-covid-19-milestone

Brazil’s count of COVID-19 deaths surpassed 150,000 on Saturday night, despite signs the pandemic is slowly retreating in Latin America’s largest nation. The Brazilian Health Ministry reported that the death toll now stands at 150,198. The figure is the world’s second highest behind the United States, according to the tally maintained by Johns Hopkins University. The milestone has rekindled the pain of Naiane Moura, a sales consultant who lost her father, Elivaldo, to COVID-19 in April. The 58-year-old postman had no prior illness and battled COVID-19 for seven days in a public hospital in Manaus, Brazil’s largest city in the Amazon. “When I see 150,000, I see my father alongside many other faceless bodies,” Moura said by phone. “I didn’t imagine that we would reach that number. I don’t believe that we will ever be able to totally overcome this.” Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro played down the severity of the virus while deaths mounted rapidly in Brazil. The 65-year-old president flouted social distancing at lively demonstrations and encouraged crowds during outings from the presidential residence. California Dr. Anthony Fauci warns the U.S. could be in for a hard winter if coronavirus infections don’t come down, during a talk at the Berkeley Forum. Bolsonaro rejected governors’ and mayors’ lockdowns and other tough measures to contain the virus’ spread, even after he contracted it himself in July, and insisted that shutting down Brazil’s economy would pitch the nation into chaos. “Life goes on. Brazil needs to produce,” he said July 7 in Brasilia when he announced he was infected. Moura’s hometown of Manaus became a horror show early on in the pandemic. Between April and May, the health system collapsed in the city as patients were turned away from full hospitals and overwhelmed cemeteries were forced to dig mass graves. The capital of Amazonas state has had 122 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, far above the national average of 71 per 100,000. The nation of 210 million people surpassed 5 million confirmed infections Wednesday, according to official data. There have been recent signs of relief in Brazil. Over the last month and a half, the viral curve has dropped. The average number of deaths sat at 598 over the last seven days, the lowest level since the beginning of May. The mayors of large cities such as Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro continue to reopen activities like cinemas and schools, even as public health experts warn of possible new outbreaks. Manaus, where restrictions were relaxed, registered an increase in COVID-19 cases in recent weeks that led to speculation of a possible second wave. Local authorities reinstituted restrictions on commerce and activity, and shut down the riverside beach. Moura said she holds federal authorities responsible for the massive death toll. “A lot of lives could have been saved if our leaders had taken rigorous measures in the beginning,” she said. Science & Medicine The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said people who are merely overweight, not just the obese, may be at high risk of a serious case of COVID-19. Bolsonaro has faced fierce criticism of his handling of the health crisis, and changed health ministers twice in the midst of the pandemic. Yet his popularity is at its highest since he took office in January 2019, which political analysts attribute to his distribution of emergency cash to help tens of millions of poorer Brazilians withstand the economic downturn. Some 40% of Brazilians surveyed by pollster Ibope rate their government as good or excellent, according to a poll published Sept. 24 that has a margin for error of 2 percentage points. “Bolsonaro helped the population to open their eyes. Health has to go hand in hand with the economy, ”said Paulo Gomes, 54, a taxi driver who supports Bolsonaro. In Sao Paulo, Ricardo Vieira, a doctor working in one of the city’s largest working-class neighborhoods known as favelas, said the government’s COVID-19 cash transfer program wasn’t enough to shield the poor, who often have scarce access to healthcare. To remedy the lack of support in the Paraisopolis favela, a nongovernmental organization called G10 hired three private ambulances and eight health professionals, among them Vieira, who has been there since March. “We are dealing with lives, and when we came to a poor community we saw that the government cannot reach these people.” Vieira told the Associated Press. Despite the difficulties and the lack of resources, Vieira continues to fight to contain the pandemic’s devastation. “I do what I can, I do my best,” Vieira said, as tears welled up, then rolled down his cheek. “And I don’t know what else I could do.”

Hay display for Biden-Harris ticket goes up in flames on Massachusetts farm

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-10/farms-display-supporting-biden-harris-goes-up-in-flames

A stack of hay bales on a western Massachusetts farm that were painted to show support for the Democratic presidential ticket went up in flames, and one man has been arrested in connection with the blaze, authorities said. The unusual political display at Holiday Brook Farm in Dalton featured 19 hay bales that were wrapped and painted with the words “USA” and “VOTE” along with the names of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and running mate Kamala Harris. Dicken Crane, owner of the farm, told the Berkshire Eagle that he was working Friday evening when he turned around and saw the display was on fire. No one was injured. Authorities said Saturday that Lonnie Durfee, 49, has been charged with burning personal property. He’s expected to be arraigned in court on Tuesday, and it was not immediately clear on Saturday whether he has an attorney to comment on his behalf. Crane said they expected the display to be vandalized, but never imagined it would be set on fire. “We’re not afraid,” Crane told the Boston Globe.

Man dies after being shot during dueling protests in Denver

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-10/guard-in-custody-after-man-dies-in-shooting-at-protests

A private security guard working for a TV station was in custody Saturday after a person died from a shooting that took place during dueling protests in downtown Denver, the Denver Post reported. The shooting took place shortly before 3:50 p.m. in Civic Center Park after a man participating in what was billed a “Patriot Rally” sprayed mace at another man, the Post reported. That man then shot the other individual with a handgun near the courtyard outside the Denver Art Museum, according to a Denver Post journalist who witnessed the incident. The man who was shot was taken to a nearby hospital, where he died an hour later, the KUSA TV station said. The KUSA TV station said on its website that it had contracted the private security guard who was arrested in connection with the shooting. “It has been the practice of 9NEWS for a number of months to hire private security to accompany staff at protests,” the station said. Denver Police Department Division Chief Joe Montoya told the Post that police could not confirm the shooter’s or the victim’s affiliations, but he said the incident started as a verbal altercation. Two guns were found at the scene, Montoya said, as well as a can of mace. The Patriot Rally was one of two rallies taking place about the same time in the park. A counter-protest called “BLM-Antifa Soup Drive” took place nearby.

North Korea unveils new weapons at military parade

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-10/north-korea-unveils-new-weapons-at-military-parade

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un warned Saturday that his country would “fully mobilize” its nuclear force if threatened as he took center stage at a military parade in which the country unveiled what appeared to be a new intercontinental ballistic missile and other additions to its growing weapons arsenal. The missiles highlighted how the North has continued to expand its military capabilities amid a stalemate in nuclear negotiations with the Trump administration. Kim, however, avoided direct criticism of Washington during the event, which celebrated the 75th anniversary of the country’s ruling party and took place less than four weeks before the U.S. presidential election. Instead, he focused on a domestic message urging his people to remain firm in the face of “tremendous challenges” posed by the coronavirus pandemic and crippling U.S.-led sanctions over his nuclear program. Kim described the North’s continuing efforts to develop its nuclear deterrent as necessary for its defense and said it wasn’t targeting any specific country with its military force. But “if any force harms the safety of our nation, we will fully mobilize the strongest offensive might in a preemptive manner to punish them,” he said. Kim’s speech was punctuated by thousands of goose-stepping troops, tanks, armored vehicles, rocket launchers and a broad range of ballistic missiles rolled out in Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung Square. The weapons included what was possibly the North’s biggest-yet intercontinental ballistic missile, which was mounted on an 11-axle launch vehicle that was also seen for the first time. The North also displayed a variety of solid-fuel weapon systems, including what could be an advanced version of its Pukguksong family of missiles designed to be fired from submarines or land mobile launchers. Kim had previously expressed frustration over the slow diplomacy with the White House, pledging in December that he would continue to bolster his nuclear arsenal in the face of U.S. pressure and soon unveil a “new strategic weapon to the world.” He then said the North was no longer obligated to maintain a self-imposed suspension on nuclear weapon and ICBM tests, which President Trump touted as a major foreign policy achievement. The probable ICBM paraded Saturday was clearly the new strategic weapon Kim had promised to show, said Melissa Hanham, deputy director of the Austria-based Open Nuclear Network. North Korea had already demonstrated a potential ability to reach deep into the U.S. mainland with a flight test of its Hwasong-15 ICBM in 2017. Hanham said that developing a larger missile possibly means the country is trying to arm its long-range weapons with more warheads. “North Korea is pushing ahead with its nuclear strategy regardless of the tough year that it has had with regard to diplomatic talks, flooding from typhoons and COVID-19,” Hanham said in a telephone interview. “I also think that this is a message to the United States — he has already declared he no longer holds himself to the moratorium and he has something new as well he may wish to test.” The celebratory event, which began late Friday, was not broadcast by North Korean state television until Saturday evening, when it aired a taped broadcast. Goose-stepping troops were seen marching in the streets in front of a brightly illuminated Kim Il Sung Square, as a military band performed while moving in formation, shaping “10.10,” “1945,” and “2020” in honor of the party anniversary. The performers and tens of thousands of spectators roared as Kim, dressed in a gray suit and tie, appeared from a building as the clock struck midnight. Kim, flanked with senior officials and smiling widely, waved to the crowd and kissed children who presented him with flowers before taking his spot on a balcony. During his speech, Kim seemed to tear up at one point as he repeatedly thanked his “great people” and military for overcoming “unexpected” burdens and carrying out anti-virus measures imposed by the government to keep the country COVID-19-free, although that claim that has been widely questioned by outside observers. He also extended an olive branch to rival South Korea, expressing hope that the countries can repair bilateral ties once the threat of the pandemic is over. The North had suspended virtually all cooperation with the South amid the stalemate in larger nuclear negotiations with the United States. After the speech, Kim waved and watched with binoculars as the military hardware was rolled out in the square. He saluted as fighter jets flew in formation overhead, using fireworks to form the Workers’ Party’s symbol — a hammer, brush and sickle — and the number 75 in the sky. Earlier Saturday, masked citizens lined up at Pyongyang’s Mansu Hill to lay flowers at the statues of Kim Il Sung, founder of North Korea, and Kim Jong Il, the grandfather and father, respectively, of the current ruler. A huge street poster read, “Best glory to our great party.” The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said residents in Kaesong and other regions who had lost their homes to recent natural disasters marked the party anniversary by moving into newly built houses and that they praised Kim Jong Un for looking after them as “their father.” This year’s anniversary comes amid deadlocked nuclear negotiations with the Trump administration and deepening economic woes that analysts say are shaping up as one of the biggest tests of Kim’s leadership since he took power in 2011. But many analysts believe North Korea will avoid serious negotiations or provocations before the U.S. presidential election because of the chance that Trump will lose. Authoritarian North Korea is keen about anniversaries, and this week’s festivities were earmarked for years in advance as a major event to glorify Kim’s achievements as leader. But there hasn’t been much to celebrate lately as Kim struggles to keep afloat an economy crippled by years of stringent U.S.-led sanctions over his nuclear program and ravaged further this year by border closures amid the COVID-19 pandemic and devastating summer floods and typhoons that will likely worsen chronic food shortages. The problems, combined with North Korea’s depleting foreign currency reserves, are possibly setting conditions for a “perfect storm” that shocks food prices and exchange rates and triggers economic panic in the coming months, said Lim Soo-ho, an analyst at Seoul’s Institute for National Security Strategy. Kim and Trump have met three times since embarking on high-stakes nuclear diplomacy in 2018. But subsequent negotiations have faltered over disagreements on disarmament steps and the removal of sanctions imposed on North Korea.

Mexico's president asks Pope Francis for conquest apology

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-10/mexicos-president-asks-pope-francis-for-conquest-apology

Mexico’s president published an open letter to Pope Francis on Saturday calling on the Roman Catholic Church to apologize for abuses of Indigenous peoples during the conquest of Mexico in the 1500s. In the letter, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador also asks the pope to lend Mexico ancient pre-Hispanic Mexican or colonial-era documents. “The Catholic Church, the Spanish monarchy and the Mexican government should make a public apology for the offensive atrocities that Indigenous people suffered,” the letter states. López Obrador asked the pope to make a statement in favor of Miguel Hidalgo, Mexico’s 19th century independence leader who was once believed to have been excommunicated by the church for his involvement in the uprising. However, researchers later said it appeared that Hidalgo had confessed his sins before he was executed and thus was not excommunicated. López Obrador said: “I think it would be an act of humility and at the same time greatness” for the church to reconcile posthumously with Hidalgo. The letter comes as Mexico struggles with how to mark the 500th anniversary of the 1519-21 conquest, which resulted in the death of a large part of the country’s pre-Hispanic population. In 2019, López Obrador asked Spain for an apology for the conquest, in which millions of Indigenous people died from violence and disease. Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell said at the time that Spain “will not issue these apologies that have been requested.”

Chris Christie says he's out of the hospital after treatment for coronavirus

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-10/ex-nj-governor-chris-christie-says-hes-out-of-the-hospital

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Saturday he has been discharged from a hospital where he spent a week following his announcement that he had contracted the coronavirus. “I am happy to let you know that this morning I was released from Morristown Medical Center,” Christie said in a Saturday morning post on Twitter. “I want to thank the extraordinary doctors & nurses who cared for me for the last week. Thanks to my family & friends for their prayers. I will have more to say about all of this next week.” Christie announced Oct. 3 that he had tested positive and said hours later that he had checked himself into the hospital after deciding with his doctors that doing so would be “an important precautionary measure,” given his history of asthma. Christie was part of a string of virus cases connected to President Trump’s inner circle. In addition to Trump and First Lady Melania Trump, multiple people who had traveled with the president or attended events with him recently contracted the virus. Trump’s former 2016 rival told the Associated Press on Oct. 2 that the last time he was with the president was Sept. 29 in Cleveland during preparations for his debate with former Vice President Joe Biden. He tweeted the morning of Oct. 2 that he had last tested negative ahead of that first presidential debate and was not having any symptoms then. In 2013, during Christie’s first term as New Jersey governor, he underwent lap-band surgery and lost a significant amount of weight. Two years before that, he was hospitalized for difficulty breathing. The 58-year-old, who uses an inhaler, once called himself “the healthiest fat guy you’ve ever seen.”

Police detain protesters in Russian city of Khabarovsk

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-10/police-detain-protesters-in-russian-city-of-khabarovsk

Police in the far eastern Russian city of Khabarovsk detained several dozen protesters on Saturday, the first such crackdown since rallies against the arrest of the provincial governor started three months ago. Khabarovsk Gov. Sergei Furgal was arrested on July 9 on suspicion of involvement in murders and taken to jail in Moscow. Furgal, a former businessman, has denied the charges, which his supporters say are the result of a vendetta by his rivals. Since his arrest, thousands of demonstrators have regularly rallied in Khabarovsk, a city of 600,000 near the border with China, with their numbers peaking on weekends. They have protested Furgal’s jailing and demanded that his trial be held in the city, not Moscow. The protests are a strong challenge to the Russian government, which usually doesn’t hesitate to disperse unsanctioned demonstrations. The authorities’ reluctance to use force appeared to reflect concerns of provoking even wider discontent as well as hopes that the demonstrations will eventually fizzle. But the regular demonstrations in Khabarovsk have continued, and their participants have increasingly adopted a broader agenda challenging President Vladimir Putin’s rule. On Saturday, police didn’t intervene while thousands of protesters marched across the city, but later detained about 30 demonstrators when they set up tents on Khabarovsk’s central square. For the Russian authorities, any such encampments are a reminder of massive protests that toppled Ukraine’s former Moscow-friendly leader in 2014. The Kremlin responded by annexing Ukraine’s Crimea and supporting a separatist uprising in eastern Ukraine, triggering Western sanctions. As evening fell Saturday, several hundred protesters again gathered on Khabarovsk’s central square. Police warned them that the demonstration wasn’t authorized and they could be dispersed but didn’t immediately move to break up the rally.

Fans cheer return of NBA broadcasts in China

https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2020-10-10/fans-cheer-return-of-nba-broadcasts-in-china

Basketball fans in Beijing cheered national broadcaster CCTV’s decision to resume broadcasts of NBA games Saturday after a yearlong absence brought on by a dispute over politics in Hong Kong. CCTV aired Game 5 of the NBA Finals between the Lakers and Miami Heat — the first time the league appeared on the network since the rift that started when Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted support for anti-government protesters in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory. Eighteen-year-old high school student Li Xinyu said he considered the timing meaningful following the death of Lakers great Kobe Bryant earlier this year and his former team’s subsequent playoff run. “Yes, I am really surprised,” Li said. “It is really shocking and significant for us that we can watch the NBA final again on CCTV’s sports channel.” Yang Haoyu, also 18, said basketball was bigger than anything one person had said or done. Lakers The Lakers squandered a prime opportunity to put away the Miami Heat and secure the NBA title in Game 5. Is an NBA Finals nightmare brewing for Lakers? “The NBA is an organization for all basketball fans and individual behaviors should not have big impact(s) on the sport and make the majority of the fans to suffer,” Yang said. And like most fans, 22-year-old migrant worker Deng Jinqi was just tired of watching games on his phone. “Now we can watch the game on a large TV screen and you can even lie on the sofa comfortably to enjoy,” he said. CCTV quickly halted its relationship with the NBA after Morey’s tweet, even though the post was quickly deleted. China’s Communist leaders are extremely sensitive to anything they view as outside interference in domestic political affairs, including in Hong Kong, a former British colony where protests broke out last year over deteriorating civil liberties. NBA games have been available to Chinese fans on the streaming service Tencent, another of the league’s broadcast partners. CCTV’s operator said it had taken note of good wishes extended to Chinese fans during the recently passed Chinese National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival, as well as “the goodwill continuously expressed by the NBA for some time,” including more than $1 million in medical supplies sent to China by the league to assist coronavirus relief efforts there. The Heat held off the Los Angeles 111-108 to cut the Lakers’ lead in the series to 3-2.

A warning sign for Trump: Florida seniors in a pro-Biden golf cart caravan

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-09/a-senior-warning-sign-for-trump-go-biden-cry-at-villages

Sara Branscome’s golf cart whizzed down the smooth asphalt path that winds through The Villages, the nation’s largest retirement community, an expanse of beautiful homes, shops and entertainment venues that bills itself as “Florida’s Friendliest Hometown.” Branscome jabbed her left foot on the horn pedal, then gave a thumbs-up to a passing cart. “This gets you rejuvenated and ready for the next month or so, so we can do this and win. It gives you hope,” the 60-year-old retiree said. Then she let out a whoop and two surprising words: “Go Biden!” It’s not a cry that might be expected to resound in The Villages, and it’s certainly not one that is encouraging to President Trump. Older voters helped propel him to the White House — the Pew Research Center estimates Trump won voters 65 and older by 9 percentage points in 2016 — and his campaign hoped they would be a bulwark to cement a second term. Pew estimates that nationwide, nearly 1 in 4 eligible voters will be 65 and older. It’s the highest level on record, going back to 1970. Politics COVID-19’s spread in Florida jeopardizes Trump’s reelection prospects in the crucial battleground state. Sept. 25, 2020 But there have been warnings that older voters are in play. Trump’s campaign has seen a drop in support among seniors in its internal research, according to campaign aides, and some public polls suggest Democrat Joe Biden is running ahead or just even with Trump among older voters. Mostly, it seems, older voters have been put off by Trump’s handling of the coronavirus, which affects them more acutely than other voters. The president has tried to shore up his popularity with older voters. He has emphasized themes of “law and order,” and has warned that Democrats would preside over a sundering of the suburbs. He has promoted his prescription drug policy. And he has kept up steady visits to Florida — after Maine, the state with the oldest population — and advertised heavily there. This should motivate everyone @JoeBiden Villagers in Florida to #GOTV and #RidenWithBiden2020 pic.twitter.com/NpGZFdhH1e On Thursday, the president released a video of himself standing on the White House lawn in which he called older adults “my favorite people.” Noting that they are vulnerable to the virus, he asserted with no basis in fact that a medicine he said he was given in the hospital would be free to older people. But whatever improvement he saw is now in jeopardy. The president’s own COVID-19 infection has refocused attention on the virus and his handling of it. If the 74-year-old Trump can’t safeguard his own health, some wonder, how can he be trusted to protect other older people who are far more vulnerable? On Wednesday, the scene in The Villages underscored that belief. An armada of as many as 500 golf carts gathered at the Sea Breeze Recreation Center to caravan to the nearby elections office to drop off ballots for Biden. If the slow moving, four-wheel show of force is an indication of growing allegiance to the Democrat among the retiree set, it would represent a substantial shift. Susan MacManus, a University of South Florida distinguished professor of government and international affairs, said The Villages and its powerful voting demographic have become less Republican over the years because of an influx of more liberal people from the Northeast. She’s seen research that shows a softening in Trump’s older base, both nationally and in Florida — especially with women. Politics With a growing likelihood of Joe Biden winning, Republican candidates have begun to step away from Trump, urging voters to elect them as a check on the Democrat. “That’s the group that’s leaving Trump,” she said. “And it’s because of his demeanor, more than his policies. For older women, especially. They went through the battles. They frankly do not appreciate the demeaning of women. More than that, they’re thinking of their children and their grandchildren.” Indeed, at The Villages, many of the people riding in golf carts are women like Branscome. Florida has been slammed by the cornavirus, and no other demographic has been affected more than older people. About 93% of Florida’s more than 15,000 deaths from the virus have been people 55 and older, and many are scared — and enraged. “The whole virus thing has hit really hard here,” said Branscom, who pointed out that almost everyone in The Villages moved there from somewhere else. “We can’t go see our families because of COVID. I’m not seeing an end to it. There is no plan. Biden has a plan. He wears a mask. It gives us hope.” To be sure, Trump still enjoys strong support among older adults. Judy Wise, a 75-year-old retiree in Plant City, a town east of Tampa on the Interstate 4 corridor, said her niece hasn’t spoken to her in years, since a fight over Trump. Wise is a stalwart supporter, and her niece is not. “It’s not so much about the man, but the ideology,” Wise explained. She’s convinced that Biden and the Democrats have a “plan to unseat capitalism” and that he will be a “puppet” of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, progressive Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Biden’s running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris. Wise believes in small government and lower taxes, and she’s worried about the summer’s recent nationwide protests, a few of which have turned violent. She recognizes that Trump can be abrasive, but it doesn’t bother her. Politics The president spent three days in the hospital. More than 213,000 Americans are dead. Tens of millions are out of work. America has never faced an election like this. Oct. 9, 2020 Pamela Allen, 72, supported Trump from the time he came down the escalator in Trump Tower in 2015 to announce his candidacy. Every few weeks, she waves Trump flags on the roadside of her Tampa suburb of Holiday with a group of other Republicans. “I love him. I think he’s doing a great job. He’s addressing the situations of everyday people’s normal everyday concerns,” she said. “He’s keeping his promises, with little to no help from the media or the Democrats. There is no positivity on anything he does.” As for the pandemic, she does think it’s serious for older adults, but “it may be blown out of proportion.” “I don’t believe the numbers they’re posting about deaths. I wash my hands. I wear my mask. I avoid getting very close to people I don’t know,” she said. MacManus of the University of South Florida cautions that while some older voters have gravitated toward Biden, there are many others like Allen and Wise who are firmly in Trump’s corner. “They’re still probably leaning more towards Trump. But in Florida, you look at margins,” she said. “He won the senior vote in Florida by double digits in 2016. And now we’re showing single digits in polls. ... Any bleeding of any cohort is a red flag for that candidate.” And in this week’s golf cart caravan, the Biden flags were blue.

Judge blocks order limiting Texas ballot drop-off locations

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-10/judge-blocks-order-limiting-texas-ballot-drop-off-locations

A federal judge in Texas halted Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s order that shuttered dozens of mail ballot drop-off sites weeks before November’s election, authorizing only one for every county no matter the size. Abbott’s order dramatically reduced the number of places in Texas where voters could drop off mail ballots during early voting and most heavily affected the state’s largest cities, which are also Democratic strongholds. He issued the order Oct. 1 as voters had already begun returning ballots for the Nov. 3 election. The move brought swift accusations of voter suppression from Democrats and voting rights groups, including the League of United Latin American Citizens, which filed a lawsuit over the order early this month. In a 46-page opinion issued Friday, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman of Austin said “the public interest is not served by Texas’ continued enforcement of a proclamation plaintiffs have shown likely violates their fundamental right to vote. This factor therefore weighs in favor of a preliminary injunction.” Gilberto Hinojosa, Texas Democratic Party chairman, said in a statement that Pitman’s decision stopped the governor from “making up” voting rules after the election had started. “This important ruling stands up not just for voters but for the rule of law,” he said. “This isn’t the first time Abbott and Texas Republicans have tried to suppress the vote, and it won’t be the last.” Republicans say the reduction in drop-off sites is necessary to ensure election security. Abbott’s order also emphasized that poll watchers can observe ballot deliveries, which comes as President Trump urges his supporters to go to polling places and “watch very carefully,” raising concerns about possible voter intimidation. Texas is one of just five states not allowing widespread mail-in voting this year. Polls show unusually tight races in America’s biggest red state, and Democrats could take over the state House of Representatives for the first time in 20 years. Courts have sided with GOP leaders who say fear of catching COVID-19 doesn’t qualify voters to receive mail-in ballots. To qualify for a mail-in ballot in Texas, voters generally must be 65 years or older, out of the county on election day or disabled. Nowhere in Texas lost more drop-off sites from Abbott’s decision than Harris County, which includes Houston and is home to 5 million people. The county — a key battleground in Texas — was forced to close 11 drop-off locations. On Wednesday, the Texas Supreme Court also ruled that Houston elections officials could not send unsolicited mail ballot applications to 2 million registered voters. The U.S. Postal Service informed Texas in July that, given the state’s current mail ballot request deadline, some ballots may not be delivered to voters by election day, and that even if all ballots reached voters on time, there was a “significant risk” that completed ballots postmarked on or near election day would not be received by the state’s Nov. 4 deadline.

White House ups coronavirus aid offer despite McConnell's post-election outlook

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-09/white-house-ups-offer-in-virus-aid-before-talks-with-pelosi

The White House is boosting its offer in up-and-down COVID-19 aid talks Friday in hopes of an agreement before election day, even as President Trump’s most powerful GOP ally in the Senate said Congress is unlikely to deliver relief by then. Trump on Friday took to Twitter to declare, “Covid Relief Negotiations are moving along. Go Big!” A top economic advisor said the Trump team is upping its offer in advance of a Friday conversation between Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. A GOP aide familiar with the new offer said it is about $1.8 trillion, with a key state and local fiscal relief component moving from $250 billion to at least $300 billion. The White House says its most recent offer was about $1.6 trillion. The aide requested anonymity because the negotiations are private. Pelosi’s most recent public offer was about $2.2 trillion, though that included a business tax increase that Republicans won’t go for. But GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told an audience in Kentucky that he doesn’t see a deal coming together soon out of a “murky” situation in which the participants in the negotiations are elbowing for political advantage. “I’d like to see us rise above that like we did in March and April but I think it’s unlikely in the next three weeks,” McConnell said. He spoke after Trump apparently performed an about-face, empowering Mnuchin to resume negotiations with Pelosi (D-Calif.) on a larger, comprehensive coronavirus relief package despite calling off the talks just days before. White House economic advisor Lawrence Kudlow told reporters Friday that “developments are positive” and that “the bid and the offer have narrowed” in advance of a telephone conversation later Friday between Pelosi and Mnuchin. McConnell remains a skeptic that a deal can come together — and he has issued private warnings that many Senate Republicans will oppose a deal in the range that Pelosi is seeking. “We do need another rescue package,” McConnell said. “But the proximity to the election and the differences about what is needed at this particular juncture are pretty vast.” Later Friday, during an appearance in Tompkinsville, Ky., McConnell said: “I don’t know whether we’ll get another [virus-relief] package or not.” McConnell added that “the first item of priority of the Senate is the Supreme Court. We’ve got a stunningly outstanding nominee.” He later said: “We intend to put her on the Supreme Court in the next few weeks.” McConnell’s remarks capped a tumultuous week in which Trump and sent conflicting signals and made unworkable demands. On Tuesday he ordered an end to the weeks-long talks after being told that few Republicans in Congress would end up voting for a possible Pelosi-Mnuchin deal. After taking blowback for that decision, Trump sought to revive the negotiations on Thursday. Yet even as Mnuchin was reengaging with Pelosi, staffers in the White House — working under Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, a key negotiator — were issuing demands for a smaller package stuffed with Trump’s priorities. All of this comes as Trump is sliding in the polls and is sidelined by his COVID-19 infection. The White House is short-staffed and dealing with infections among its staff. And the president and Pelosi are attacking each other’s mental health. That the talks were headed nowhere was an open secret among close observers in Washington, but both sides had been reluctant to declare them dead until Trump did so on Tuesday, making himself a magnet for blame. The talks are still unlikely to produce results in the near term because even if there was a breakthrough, it could take weeks to process. McConnell says he is open to resuming the negotiations in a post-election lame-duck session, but that prospect is murky as well, depending on the results. On Friday, Pelosi issued a downbeat assessment in a letter to her colleagues but expressed some optimism in an appearance on MSNBC. “I do hope that we’ll have an agreement soon,” Pelosi said.

Stocks climb, closing out biggest weekly gain in 3 months

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-09/stocks-climb-closing-out-biggest-weekly-gain-in-3-months

Wall Street closed out its best week in three months Friday as investors drew encouragement from ongoing negotiations on Capitol Hill aimed at delivering more aid to the ailing U.S. economy. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 0.9%, its third straight gain. The benchmark index ended the week with a 3.8% gain, its strongest rally since early July. Much of this week’s focus has been on Washington, where President Trump sent markets on a sudden skid Tuesday after he halted negotiations on a support package for the economy until after the election. He appeared to change his mind a few hours later, however. On Friday, Trump was cheerleading the prospect of a deal, declaring on Twitter that talks on a new aid package are “moving along. Go Big!” “The fact that Trump reversed course, I think, has given people optimism again,” said Randy Frederick, vice president of trading and derivatives at Charles Schwab. The market’s solid finish follows a weeks-long run of mostly shaky trading over worries that Congress and the White House won’t deliver more support for the economy as it reels from the impact of the pandemic and concerns that stock prices simply got too high during the summer. On Friday, the S&P 500 rose 30.31 points to 3,477.14. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 161.39 points, or 0.6%, to 28,586.90. The gain nudged the Dow into positive territory for the year. The Nasdaq composite climbed 158.96 points, or 1.4%, to 11,579.94. Small-company stocks added to their solid gains this week. The Russell 2000 index picked up 9 points, or 0.6%, to 1,637.55. The index jumped 6.4% this week. Investors have been clamoring for more federal aid since the expiration of extra benefits for laid-off workers and other stimulus for the economy that Congress approved earlier this year. Economists say the outlook is grim without such support, and the chair of the Federal Reserve has said repeatedly it will probably be necessary. Still, the prospects for a new deal on more aid have been shaky, especially this week. When he called off the talks Tuesday, Trump said that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) was negotiating in bad faith. But within a couple of hours, he appeared to backtrack. He said that he would back more limited programs that would send $1,200 payments to Americans and support the airline industry and small businesses, specifically. On Friday, the White House increased its offer to $1.8 trillion, up from $1.6 trillion, according to a Republican aide familiar with the plan. Pelosi’s most recent public proposal was about $2.2 trillion, though that included a business tax increase that Republicans won’t go for. Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin spoke on the phone for 30 minutes Friday, but nothing concrete appeared to immediately emerge from the discussion. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he doubts a deal will get done before the election. Frederick said the uncertainty over another stimulus package remains a “substantial risk” to the market. This week’s roller coaster — in which the S&P 500 swung at least 1.4% for three straight days — is just the latest bout of volatility for a market that has been notably rocky for weeks. “When the world’s financial markets are at the mercy of the randomness emanating from the White House, it is hardly surprising that investors elsewhere would prefer to wait on the sidelines,” Jeffrey Halley of Oanda said in a report. “Unfortunately, things are unlikely to settle down over the next few weeks.” Regardless of whether Washington can strike a deal before the election, some investors are getting more optimistic about the chances for a big support package in 2021. If the Democrats sweep the White House, Senate and House of Representatives, the thinking is that they’ll probably approve a stimulus package for the economy. That could help offset the higher tax rates and tighter regulations on businesses that investors also expect from a Democratic-controlled Washington. Wall Street is seeing a Democratic sweep as more likely than before. Still, other challenges remain for the market. Chief among them is the still-spreading pandemic, highlighted by Trump’s own COVID-19 diagnosis. Some areas of the economy are slowing following the expiration of Congress’ last round of aid, stocks still look too expensive in the eyes of some critics, and tensions continue to simmer between the United States and China. Technology stocks and companies that rely on consumer spending drove much of Friday’s rally. Utilities, real estate and energy stocks fell. Despite the market’s gains, trading underneath the surface continued to be unsettled. Airline stocks climbed at the start of trading, only to drop quickly and then rise again. United Airlines ended the day with a gain of 0.3%, as did American Airlines, and Delta Air Lines rose 0.4%. The yield on the 10-year Treasury held steady at 0.78%.

Why won't White House say when Trump last tested negative?

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-09/why-wont-white-house-say-when-trump-last-tested-negative

It is a basic, crucial question and one the White House refuses to answer: When was President Trump’s last negative test for the coronavirus before he tested positive last week? “Yeah, I’m not going to give you a detailed readout with time stamps every time the president’s tested,” White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters last weekend. “I can’t reveal that at this time,” echoed Alyssa Farah, the White House director of strategic communications. “Doctors would like to keep it private.” “I don’t want to go backwards,” said Dr. Sean Conley, the president’s physician. The answer could help fill in vital details about the course of the president’s illness as well as when he may have been contagious and whom else he may have exposed. And the White House refusal to answer makes it hard not to wonder what they’re hiding, given other details they’ve shared. Politics President Trump will spend the next several days at Walter Reed National Medical Center for treatment of COVID-19. Oct. 2, 2020 “At this point it’s just so strange that they’re unwilling to give us the information,” said Dr. Michael Joseph Mina, a physician and professor of epidemiology at Harvard’s school of public health. “It makes people start thinking things like, ‘Was the president the super-spreader?’ … If there was no nefarious activity going on, then they should have no problem answering this question.” The information is also key to tracking who else may have been exposed to the virus so their contacts can be traced to prevent new clusters of infection. “Then you can get an idea, potentially, of when he was infected, how long his incubation period was, and also then evaluate who may have been exposed to him over that time frame,” said Dr. Benjamin Pinsky, medical director of the clinical virology laboratory at Stanford Health Care. Though considerable variability exists among coronavirus cases, he said, Trump was most likely infectious several days before he tested positive — a period during which he traveled and had close contact with dozens of people. Senior White House staffers and those who are in direct contact with the president are tested for the virus daily. The White House originally gave the impression that Trump, too, was tested every day, with McEnany claiming in July that Trump was “the most tested man in America” and tested “multiple times a day.” But Trump contradicted her, saying, “I do probably on average a test every two days, three days.” The current White House line is that Trump is tested “regularly.” Politics Trump is back at the White House after staging a dramatic return from the hospital. He has been receiving an unprecedented level of care for COVID-19. Oct. 6, 2020 Here’s what is known: On Wednesday, Sept. 30, during a trip to Minnesota for a fundraiser and rally, one of the president’s closest aides, Hope Hicks, began feeling ill. She isolated herself aboard Air Force One during the trip home, but the White House appears to have taken no further action. The next morning, Hicks was again tested for the virus. This time, the results came back positive, just as the president was about to leave for a fundraiser at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. A frantic effort was made to swap out staffers who had been in close contact with Hicks, including McEnany. But Trump, who had also been with Hicks, nonetheless boarded Marine One, along with other White House staffers still in the dark about Hicks’ diagnosis. After returning home from Bedminster, Trump was administered a rapid test, followed by a more accurate confirming test, which takes several hours to process. Both came back positive. “Safe to say, his first positive test was upon return or at least after Bedminster,” McEnany said. But had Trump been tested before he made that trip to court donors in New Jersey after Hicks fell ill? Had he been tested before he traveled to Minnesota? Politics President Trump has alarmed Jewish leaders by appearing to endorse ‘racehorse theory’ — used by eugenicists and Nazis last century. Oct. 5, 2020 What about the previous day, before his first debate against Democrat Joe Biden in Cleveland? The Cleveland Clinic, which co-hosted the event, required that all attendees be tested in advance. Campaigns had to “certify” that their candidates and traveling staff had tested negative within 72 hours of the debate. “Each campaign complied with this requirement,” the clinic said in a statement. White House spokesman Brian Morgenstern, however, refused Friday to confirm that that was the case in an appearance on MSNBC. “The president’s doesn’t check all of his HIPAA rights at the door just when he becomes president,” Morgenstern said, referring to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which was written to prevent doctors and others who bill for insurance coverage from disclosing a person’s medical information without their consent. Was Trump tested Monday, Sept. 28, before he held a photo op with a truck on the South Lawn and a Rose Garden news conference to trumpet coronavirus testing efforts? What about before a debate prep session with his campaign manager, Bill Stepien, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who have both since tested positive? What about Sept. 27, when he visited his golf course in Sterling, Va., held a late-afternoon news conference in the White House briefing room and hosted an evening reception for Gold Star families on the White House state floor? Adm. Charles W. Ray, the vice commandant of the Coast Guard, who was in attendance, has since tested positive, forcing the nation’s top military leaders, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, into self-quarantine. What about Sept. 26, before he held a Rose Garden ceremony announcing his next pick for the Supreme Court, complete with closed-door receptions where few wore masks? Numerous attendees have since tested positive following the suspected super-spreader event. Could Trump have been contagious that day? Could he have been the spreader? Dr. Albert Ko, an infectious-disease specialist and department chairman at the Yale School of Public Health, noted that a small proportion of people infected contribute to the majority of infection, with about 20% of people responsible for 80% of transmission, studies show. While it’s unclear if Trump did indeed spread it, Ko said, “trying to identify people and when they could be infectious is important, especially when they are in contact with a lot of other people.” Added Saskia Popescu, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at George Mason University, “There is concern that he continued to engage in public activities after his initial positive test, which is deeply worrisome and frankly unethical.”

Connecticut city OKs renaming sewage plant for John Oliver

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-09/connecticut-city-oks-renaming-sewage-plant-for-john-oliver

It’s official. Every time residents of Danbury, Conn., flush, they will be sending their special deliveries to the John Oliver Memorial Sewer Plant. The City Council voted 18-1 Thursday night to rename the sewage plant after the comedian, who began a tongue-in-cheek battle with Danbury when he went on an expletive-filled rant against the city on HBO’s “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” in August. Mayor Mark Boughton didn’t waste any time responding on social media. He posted a video of himself at the sewage plant saying the city was going to name it after Oliver. “Why?” the Republican mayor asked. “Because it’s full of crap just like you, John.” That drew a delighted response from Oliver, but he went off against the city again because Boughton later said he was just joking. Oliver upped the stakes on his Aug. 30 show by offering to donate $55,000 to local charities if Danbury actually followed through with renaming the plant. “I didn’t know that I wanted my name on your (expletive) factory but now that you floated it as an option, it is all that I want,” Oliver said. Boughton said Friday that the feud has been a good distraction from the coronavirus and other troubles of the times. He also said Oliver’s promised donations have helped spur local fundraising efforts for area food banks that could end up collecting a few hundred thousand dollars to feed needy families. The mayor added he will be offering tours of the sewer plant for $500 donations to local food pantries. “I think it’s been a home run. It’s been a lot of fun,” Boughton said of the spat. “If I can put food on people’s table for Thanksgiving by naming a sewer plant after a very popular comedian, we’ll do it all day long.” Television “Republicans seem to be handing this outbreak the way they’ve handled the whole pandemic,” said John Oliver on “Last Week Tonight.” Oct. 5, 2020 Oliver has offered to provide the new sign for the plant that includes his name, and to attend the ribbon-cutting, Boughton said. A timeline has not been finalized. Representatives for Oliver and HBO had no immediate comment Friday. It’s still not clear why Oliver initially singled out Danbury for a tongue-lashing. He first brought up the city during an August segment on racial disparities in the jury selection process, citing problems in a few Connecticut towns from decades ago. He noted Danbury’s “charming railway museum” and its “historic Hearthstone Castle.” “I know exactly three things about Danbury,” he said. “USA Today ranked it the second-best city to live in in 2015, it was once the center of the American hat industry and if you’re from there, you have a standing invite to come get a thrashing from John Oliver — children included — (expletive) you.”

All Jets test negative for COVID-19, game against Arizona is on

https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2020-10-09/ap-source-jets-have-presumptive-positive-covid-19-test

All New York Jets players and coaches have tested negative for COVID-19, and Sunday’s game against Arizona will be played on time. The Jets posted a statement on social media Friday night, hours after their training facility was closed because of presumptive positive coronavirus test for one player. “This evening, we received negative PCR COVID-19 test results for all players, coaches and personnel,” the team said. “Following a presumptive positive COVID-19 test and out of an abundance of caution to ensure everyone’s health and safety, we sent all players and personnel home this morning. We also initiated all NFL mandated protocols including player isolation, subsequent testing, and contact tracing. “As we have thus far, we will continue to follow required health and safety protocols in the best interests of our coaches, players, staff and community. We look forward to our game this Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals.” During the summer, Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford had a similar false positive. The league has had 60 cases since testing began in which one player or staff member tested positive and there wasn’t further transmission among the team. By sending everyone home from the facility Friday morning, the Jets took the appropriate steps under the NFL/NFLPA COVID-19 protocols. And then the 100% negative tests were announced in the evening. Sports Here are the answers to how the NFL plans to reschedule games that are being postponed because of the coronavirus. Oct. 9, 2020 The Tennessee Titans got some good news Friday with no positive test results hours after the NFL rescheduled their game with Buffalo to Tuesday night, a person familiar with that situation told the Associated Press. The Titans’ outbreak increased to 23 on Thursday with 21 positive results returned since Sept. 29. Now the Titans have gone three of the past five days without a positive test after the latest results, according to the person who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because neither the NFL nor the Titans announced the latest results. The NFL announced Thursday night that the Titans (3-0) will host Buffalo (4-0) on Tuesday. The league already rescheduled the Titans’ game with Pittsburgh from Oct. 4 to Oct. 25 during the outbreak. The Bills had been preparing and practicing all week for a Sunday game in Nashville. With the NFL rescheduling their game with Tennessee, the Bills announced they will not practice or have any availability Friday. Sports Sam Farmer makes his picks and predictions for the remaining slate of games in Week 5 of the 2020 NFL season. Oct. 9, 2020 The league also rescheduled New England’s game with Denver from Sunday to Monday. “These scheduling decisions were made to ensure the health and safety of players, coaches and game day personnel and in consultation with medical experts,” the NFL said in a statement Thursday night. Five games now have been rescheduled because of the pandemic: Pittsburgh at Tennessee in Week 3 was moved to Oct. 25 with Pittsburgh-Baltimore also switched from Oct. 25 to Nov. 1. The Patriots now will play on Monday night for a second straight week after their game in Kansas City was postponed a day. If the Titans’ testing allows Tennessee to host Buffalo on Tuesday, the Bills’ prime-time game against Kansas City in Buffalo will be moved from Thursday to the weekend. That would be the sixth NFL game to be rescheduled — all this month.

Trump still contagious? Experts say it's impossible to know

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-08/trump-still-contagious-experts-say-its-impossible-to-know

President Trump said Thursday he doesn’t think he’s contagious anymore, but medical experts say that’s impossible to know a week after his diagnosis with COVID-19. Most people with COVID-19 can stop isolating and be around others about 10 days after they first showed symptoms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s provided their symptoms have improved, they have not had a fever for 24 hours and are no longer on any medication to reduce a high temperature. But there’s no way to know for certain that someone is no longer contagious so soon after falling ill, experts say. “At this point, there’s no diagnostic test that tells you whether a person that’s infected remains infectious,” said Dr. Benjamin Pinsky, who leads Stanford University’s virology labs. “There is absolutely a chain of unknowns.” According to Trump’s latest medical update, he completed his COVID-19 treatment on Thursday and had responded “extremely well.” Earlier in the day, Trump said he was still taking dexamethasone, a steroid that can reduce fevers. In Thursday’s update Dr. Sean Conley said Saturday was Day 10 after Trump’s Oct. 1 diagnosis and that he anticipated the president’s safe return to public events “at that time.” Trump’s aides were weighing travel options for the president, including trips for small events next week. During a telephone interview with Fox Business, Trump said Thursday: “I think I’m better to the point where I’d love to do a rally tonight.” He also said, “I don’t think I’m contagious at all.” Politics With the election less than a month away, the impasse could cost Trump a crucial last chance to close the gap with Biden. Since his return to the White House Monday evening, only a few staffers — and no reporters — have laid eyes on the president, who has announced updates to his condition via Twitter and a few online videos. His doctors haven’t held a news conference since Trump left the hospital, only releasing statements with limited information. “We who are watching from the outside only have intimations, I’d even call them hints,” about Trump’s health and when he might not be contagious, said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Earlier this week, the president’s doctors suggested they would work closely with military medical research facilities and other laboratories on “advanced diagnostic testing” to determine when the president was no longer contagious, but did not elaborate. They have not released any details about his test results, including when Trump last had a negative virus test before he got sick. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, said two negative PCR lab tests 24 hours apart are a key factor in determining whether someone is still contagious. “So, if the president goes 10 days without symptoms, and they do the tests that we were talking about, then you could make the assumption, based on good science, that he is not infected,” Fauci said Thursday on MSNBC. Sensitive lab tests — like the PCR test — detect virus in swab samples taken from the nose and throat. Using these, the president’s medical team could hypothetically measure and track the amount of virus in samples over time, said Dr. William Morice, who oversees laboratories at the Mayo Clinic. “If they did daily testing, you could watch it go down,” Morice said. “If his viral load is low, the chance he can spread the virus is low as well.” Politics Trump campaign operatives have claimed victory over the coronavirus for months. Now that the president has COVID-19, how do they reboot? Another potential strategy: Take the president’s samples and try to get the virus to replicate in a cell culture, which would indicate it’s still active. This approach would be less sensitive than molecular tests and sometimes doesn’t work. And it wouldn’t be scalable, or safe, to use it more widely for other COVID-19 patients. “It would take much longer, cost much more and we don’t have that many laboratories that can do it,” Schaffner said. There is a third possibility: Novel tests available at some research labs that look for minute molecular evidence that the virus is still replicating in cells. But the technology is still too new to be used to rule out if someone is infectious, Pinsky said. “You’re not going to get perfection with any of these tests,” said Gigi Gronvall, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “That’s why you need to think about other mechanisms of public health control” like wearing masks, washing hands and keeping socially distant to stop the spread of coronavirus.

Despite bout with coronavirus, Trump says he's ready for rallies; doctor says therapy is done

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-10-08/despite-bout-with-coronavirus-trump-says-hes-ready-for-rallies-doctor-says-therapy-done

President Trump insisted Thursday that he is ready to resume campaign rallies and feels “perfect” one week after his diagnosis with the coronavirus that has killed more than 210,000 Americans. His doctor said the president had ”completed his course of therapy” for the disease. The president has not been seen in public — other than in White House-produced videos — since his Monday return from the military hospital where he received experimental treatments for the virus. On Thursday, his physician, Navy Cmdr. Sean Conley, said in a memo that Trump would be able to safely “return to public engagements” on Saturday, as the president tries to shift his focus to the election that’s less than four weeks away, with millions of Americans already casting ballots. While Trump said he believes he’s no longer contagious, concerns about infection appeared to scuttle plans for next week’s presidential debate. “I’m feeling good. Really good. I think perfect,” Trump said during a telephone interview with Fox Business, his first since he was released from a three-day hospital stay Monday. “I think I’m better to the point where I’d love to do a rally tonight,” Trump said. He added, “I don’t think I’m contagious at all.” In a Fox News interview Thursday night, Trump said he wanted to hold a rally in Florida on Saturday “if we have enough time to put it together.” He said he might also hold a rally the following night in Pennsylvania. “I feel so good,” he told Fox’s Sean Hannity. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says individuals can discontinue isolation 10 days after the onset of symptoms, which for Trump was Oct. 1, according to his doctors. Conley said that meant Trump, who has been surrounded by minimal staffing as he works out of the White House residence and the Oval Office, could return to holding events on Saturday. Politics With the election less than a month away, the impasse could cost Trump a crucial last chance to close the gap with Biden. Oct. 8, 2020 He added that Trump was showing no evidence of his illness progressing or adverse reactions to the aggressive course of therapy prescribed by his doctors. Earlier this week, the president’s doctors suggested they would work closely with military medical research facilities and other laboratories on “advanced diagnostic testing” to determine when the president was no longer contagious, but did not elaborate. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, said two negative PCR lab tests 24 hours apart are a key factor in determining whether someone is still contagious. “So, if the president goes 10 days without symptoms, and they do the tests that we were talking about, then you could make the assumption, based on good science, that he is not infected,” Fauci said Thursday on MSNBC. While reports of reinfection are rare, the CDC recommends that even people who have recovered from COVID-19 continue to wear a mask, stay distanced and follow other precautions. It was unclear whether Trump, who eschewed mask-wearing in most settings, would abide by that guidance. The White House, meanwhile, continued to decline to share when Trump last tested negative for the virus — which would help pinpoint when he was infected. Strategic communications director Alyssa Farah said that information was Trump’s “private medical history.” Science & Medicine Dr. Sean Conley, President Trump’s personal physician, isn’t an M.D. He’s a D.O. because he went to an osteopathic medical school. We explain the difference. Oct. 5, 2020 Trump’s campaign and the White House were already drawing up plans for Trump to resume campaigning, eyeing a visit to Pennsylvania on Monday and Michigan on Tuesday ahead of what was to have been next Thursday’s debate. But the Commission on Presidential Debates announced that event would be held virtually in order to “protect the health and safety of all involved.” Trump swiftly rejected that offer, and his campaign later called on the commission to delay the final two debates by a week to alleviate concerns about an in-person contest. Over the objections of some aides, Trump returned to the Oval Office on Thursday, even though a workspace had been set up in the residential section of the White House. Aides were discussing a potential photo opportunity with the president at the White House either Thursday or Friday but plans had not been finalized, according to two White House officials not authorized to publicly discuss internal deliberations. Only a few senior aides, medical staff and security personnel have laid eyes on the president since he returned to the White House on Monday afternoon. Trump also released a video Thursday morning, filmed a day earlier, directly addressing the nation’s seniors — a crucial demographic for his campaign that is also at greatest risk of poor outcomes from the virus — saying, “I want you to get the same care that I got.” On Thursday, Trump continued to credit an experimental drug treatment for the seemingly quick pace of his recovery. He called his diagnosis a “blessing in disguise” in the nation’s battle against the pandemic. Seemingly sensitive to the fact that his treatment course has been far more comprehensive than the care received by average Americans, he promised to swiftly get the drug approved for broader use — and distribute it for free — even though he does not have the power to order that himself. Politics Campaigning together after the vice presidential debate, Biden and Harris look to appeal to voters in Arizona, an important battleground state in the November election. Oct. 8, 2020 Trump received an experimental antibody drug cocktail made by Regeneron through a “compassionate use” exemption, a recognition of the above-and-beyond standard of care he receives as president. The safety and effectiveness of the treatment have not yet been proved. And there is no way for the president or his doctors to know that the drug had any effect. Most people recover from COVID-19. “I had tremendous luck with this Regeneron,” Trump said during the interview. Conley, the White House physician, said in a memo Wednesday that Trump had been symptom-free for more than 24 hours, and that his oxygen saturation level and respiratory rate were normal. Trump speculated that he caught the virus either at the Sept. 26 Rose Garden event announcing his new Supreme Court nominee or at a meeting with military families the following day. He said family members often want to get up close to him and “kiss” and “hug” him. “I can’t say, ’Back up. Stand 10 feet’” away, Trump said.

Court blocks extension of Wisconsin absentee ballot deadline, a win for GOP

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-08/court-blocks-extension-of-wisconsin-absentee-ballot-deadline

A federal appeals court on Thursday blocked a decision to extend the deadline for counting absentee ballots in the battleground state of Wisconsin, in a win for Republicans who have fought attempts to expand voting across the country. If the ruling stands, absentee ballots will have to be delivered to Wisconsin election clerks by 8 p.m. on election day if they are to be counted. Results of the presidential race in the pivotal swing state would be known within hours of polls closing. Democrats almost certainly will appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. Under state law, absentee ballots are due in local clerks’ offices by 8 p.m. on election night, but Democrats and allied groups sued to extend the deadline after the April presidential primary held during the deadly pandemic saw long lines, fewer polling places, a shortage of poll workers and thousands of ballots mailed days after the election. U.S. District Judge William Conley ruled last month that any ballots that arrive in clerk’s offices by Nov. 9 will be counted, as long as they are postmarked by election day, Nov. 3. Politics These states will probably decide if Joe Biden or President Trump wins the election. And their absentee ballot laws could determine when we find out. Oct. 28, 2020 State election officials anticipate as many as 2 million people will cast absentee ballots in November to avoid exposing themselves to the coronavirus at the polls. That would be three times more than in any previous election and could overwhelm election officials and the postal service, Conley wrote. Republicans appealed to a three-judge panel at the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The panel upheld Conley’s ruling on Sept. 29. Republicans then asked all 11 members of the court to review the case. The court stayed Conley’s decision on Thursday. Any development in the case could have ramifications in the presidential race. President Trump won Wisconsin by less than 1 percentage point — fewer than 23,000 votes — in 2016. Polls show the Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden with a slight lead in the state, but both sides expect a tight race. Trump has attacked voting by mail, making false claims of rampant fraud. He has argued mail balloting will hurt his chances at reelection, saying Democrats are more likely to vote by mail while his supporters cast ballots in person.

Judge weighs whether to extend Florida's voter registration deadline after computer failure

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-08/federal-judge-weighs-floridas-voter-registration-deadline

A federal judge pointedly asked on Thursday why the state of Florida could not further extend its voter registration period after a computer meltdown earlier in the week. The failure of state elections servers may have prevented thousands of potential voters from taking part in November’s presidential election. But U.S. District Court Judge Mark E. Walker also wondered whether extending the deadline would be an undue burden on election officials across Florida, who are already under pressure to hold voting amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the intense scrutiny that comes with the state’s status as a national battleground. Walker said he would issue a ruling quickly, perhaps just hours after hearing arguments from lawyers representing Florida’s secretary of state and voter advocacy groups who say thousands of Floridians could be disenfranchised after state elections servers failed, overwhelmed by unprecedented traffic on Monday, the last day to register to vote. After consulting with Gov. Ron DeSantis, Secretary of State Laurel Lee allowed additional registrations for seven hours on Tuesday. Data filed by the state indicated that 50,000 people registered during the extended time period. Based on previous trends, the judge noted, perhaps more than 20,000 additional people may have registered to vote had they been able to access the system. Walker took umbrage at a state lawyer’s argument that other venues were available to register to vote, including in-person at an elections office or by mail. “Are you seriously taking the position that if it shut down for hours, and 50,000 or 60,000 people don’t get to register, that’s a minor thing? For the life of me, I don’t understand that argument,” Walker said. “You all knew people were using this website based on past years,” he said. “You knew thousands of people were using it, thousands of Floridians ... actual U.S. citizens, and it failed for hours.” With Florida’s 29 electoral votes at stake, the case has national implications. Florida’s chief information officer said Wednesday that misconfigured computer servers — not a cyberattack — were to blame for the crash of the state’s voter registration system as the deadline approached for enrolling to cast ballots in next month’s presidential election. Voting rights groups argued that the additional time was inadequate and sued the state to reopen the registration period for an additional two days, which would give more time for Floridians to be notified of the extension and allow them to register through the state’s electronic portal. The state countered that extending voter registration again would create confusion, arguing that a further extension could also interfere with county elections offices around the state as they process vote-by-mail ballots and administer early voting. Walker pushed voting rights groups to justify why a two-day extension was necessary when the online portal was only down for part of a day. The groups include Dream Defenders, New Florida Majority, Organize Florida, LatinoJustice PRLDEF and others. At the end of the hearing, Walker acknowledged that time was of the essence and said he would decide as quickly as he could and possibly issue a ruling Thursday afternoon. During his questioning, Walker noted the high interest in the November election. According to data submitted by Florida officials, there were about 70,100 people who successfully accessed the portal on Monday — the bulk of them able to get through before the system slowed to a crawl at about 5 p.m. In the last seven hours of Monday, only about 8,100 people successfully registered to vote, requested new voter registration cards or made changes to their existing voter information. Walker suggested there could have been far more people who were trying to register. Indeed, state officials said there were about 49,000 people trying to access the system at the peak of the slowdown.

Iran frees rights activist after more than 8 years in prison

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-08/iran-frees-rights-activist-after-more-than-8-years-in-prison

Iran has released a prominent human rights activist who campaigned against the death penalty, Iranian media reported Thursday. The semiofficial ISNA news agency quoted judiciary official Sadegh Niaraki as saying that Narges Mohammadi was freed late Wednesday after serving 8½ years in prison. She was sentenced to 10 years in 2016 while already incarcerated. Niaraki said Mohammadi was released based on a law that allows a prison sentence to be commutated if the related court agrees. In July, rights group Amnesty International demanded Mohammadi’s immediate release because of serious preexisting health conditions and showing suspected COVID-19 symptoms. The Thursday report did not refer to her possible illness. Mohammadi was sentenced in Tehran’s Revolutionary Court on charges including planning crimes to harm the security of Iran, spreading propaganda against the government and forming and managing an illegal group. She was in a prison in the northwestern city of Zanjan, some 174 miles northwest of the capital Tehran. Mohammadi was close to Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, who founded the banned Defenders of Human Rights Center. Ebadi left Iran after the disputed reelection of then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009, which touched off unprecedented protests and harsh crackdowns by authorities. In 2018, Mohammadi, an engineer and physicist, was awarded the 2018 Andrei Sakharov Prize, which recognizes outstanding leadership or achievements of scientists in upholding human rights.

700-year-old Chinese scroll sells for $41.8 million in Hong Kong

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-10-08/700-year-old-chinese-scroll-sells-for-41-8m-in-hong-kong

A 700-year-old Chinese painted scroll from the Yuan Dynasty fetched $41.8 million at a Sotheby’s auction in Hong Kong. The 6-foot, 6-inch scroll, titled “Five Drunken Princes Returning on Horseback,” is by Ren Renfa, a renowned Chinese artist and government official. The painting depicts the princes riding horses, together with four attendants. One of the princes is Li Longji, who later became Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty. The scroll has been documented in imperial collections and bears a collection of seals, including those of several emperors. In 1922, the “Five Drunken Princes Returning on Horseback” scroll was transported out of the Forbidden City by Pu Yi, the last emperor of China, after the fall of Qing dynasty. The artwork was initially estimated to sell between about $10 million and $15.5 million. Many of Ren’s 21 paintings are held in museums or owned by private collectors. “This painting depicts the story of the five drunken princes after they had a very happy time, and then they got drunk and went back home,” said Sally Fong, a specialist of classical Chinese paintings at Sotheby’s. “Among the five princes, one of them is the future emperor. In this painting, we can see that he was depicted as the one who can tolerate the drunkenness, to go back home together with the other drunken princes.”

Rapist who spent 14 years in state mental hospital awaiting trial is ordered released

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-10-08/california-rapist-awaiting-trial-for-14-years-ordered-freed

A convicted rapist who spent 13 years in prison and nearly 14 years in a state mental hospital while awaiting a trial that never came was ordered released Wednesday by a state appeals court. The 1st District Court of Appeal in San Francisco agreed with a lower court judge who said there had been a “systemic breakdown in the management” of Terrance Butler’s case, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Butler, however, will remain confined while prosecutors decide whether to appeal, the news outlet said. Butler was convicted in 1993 of raping two women and attempting to rape a minor. His 18-year sentence was reduced because of time off for good behavior. But as he neared release in 2006, Alameda County prosecutors sought to have him declared a sexually violent predator. California Just before George Vasquez was scheduled to get out of prison, Los Angeles County prosecutors made a plea to the court: Don’t let him free — he’s too dangerous to live in public. Jan. 10, 2018 That would have allowed the state to keep him in a mental hospital indefinitely until he no longer was considered a danger to society. Butler was placed in Coalinga State Hospital in 2007. But his trial was never held. Instead, preliminary proceedings dragged on through more than 50 court hearings involving six prosecutors and eight public defenders who agreed to successive postponements. “Blame for the delay must be shared between a district attorney’s office that abdicated its responsibility for prosecuting this case, a public defender’s office that disregarded Butler’s repeated demands for trial, and a trial court that took no meaningful action,” appellate Justice Gabriel Sanchez said in the 3-0 ruling. Because the proceedings are held in civil court, they aren’t covered by the constitutional right to a speedy trial in criminal cases, but Butler still deserved a “timely” trial and suffered a “significant deprivation of liberty,” according to the appellate court.