week ending Jun 6

 Federal Reserve Discloses Holdings of $1.3 Billion in Exchange-Traded Funds – WSJ --The Federal Reserve’s first $1.3 billion of purchases of exchange-traded funds that invest in corporate bonds show that funds that focus on buying non-investment grade debt accounted for around one sixth of the central bank’s ETF purchases. The Fed announced plans to backstop debts of investment-grade firms after the coronavirus pandemic led to a deep freeze across credit markets in mid-March, and it subsequently said in April it would backstop debt for so-called fallen angels, or firms that had been rated investment grade as of March 22 but were subsequently downgraded to junk status. As part of the backstops, the Fed on May 12 began purchasing exchange-traded funds that provide broad exposure to U.S. corporate bond markets. The Fed said the “preponderance” of those holdings would be in funds whose primary investment objective was in the market for debts with investment-grade ratings, but officials said they would allow for some purchases of ETFs with exposure to junk bonds. The decision to invest in junk debt has been controversial. Some investors have argued that the central bank risked a deeper credit freeze that would lead to higher unemployment if the central bank shunned riskier assets, while others warned that doing so would reward firms and their investors that were already vulnerable to an economic downturn before the crisis due to heavy debt burdens. The disclosures of 158 transactions cover purchases made between May 12 and 18. Of the Fed’s $1.3 billion in ETF holdings as of May 19, around 17% were in funds that invest primarily in junk debt. The funds the Fed invested in have appreciated 2.7% on average since purchases began on May 12, according to Roberto Perli of Cornerstone Macro, a research firm.  The Fed owned $100 million in iShares iBoxx High Yield Corporate Bond ETF, which as of Thursday included small holdings of bonds issued by rental car company Hertz Global Holdings Inc., which filed for bankruptcy protection on May 22. It also included small holdings of retailers J.C. Penney Co. and Neiman Marcus Group Inc. and oil-shale drillerWhiting Petroleum Corp., all of which filed for bankruptcy in recent weeks.  Three ETFs accounted for the majority of the Fed’s investments: iShares iBoxx US Dollar Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF, Vanguard Intermediate-Term Corporate Bond ETFand Vanguard Short-Term Corporate Bond ETF. The Fed can’t purchase more than 20% of an ETF’s assets.

BlackRock Is Bailing Out Its ETFs with Fed Money and Taxpayers Eating Losses; It’s Also the Sole Manager for $335 Billion of Federal Employees’ Retirement Funds → Pam Martens -  BlackRock, the international investment management firm run by billionaire Larry Fink, has played an outsized role in Federal Reserve bailouts of Wall Street. As it turns out, it’s also been quietly managing hundreds of billions of dollars for more than five million federal government employees in their retirement plan, known as the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP). During the last financial crisis of 2007 to 2010, the Federal Reserve gave BlackRock no-bid contracts to manage the toxic assets held in three programs known as Maiden Lane, Maiden Lane II and Maiden Lane III.  BlackRock was also one of the investment managers for the Fed’s mortgage backed securities purchase program during the last financial crisis.  Today, BlackRock has been selected in more no-bid contracts to be the sole buyer of corporate bonds and corporate bond ETFs for the Fed’s unprecedented $750 billion corporate bond buying program which will include both investment grade and junk-rated bonds. (The Fed has said it may add more investment managers to the program eventually.)BlackRock is being allowed by the Fed to buy its own corporate bond ETFs as part of the Fed program to prop up the corporate bond market. According to a report inInstitutional Investor on Monday, BlackRock, on behalf of the Fed, “bought $1.58 billion in investment-grade and high-yield ETFs from May 12 to May 19, with BlackRock’s iShares funds representing 48 percent of the $1.307 billion market value at the end of that period, ETFGI said in a May 30 report.” No bid contracts and buying up your own products, what could possibly be wrong with that? To make matters even more egregious, the stimulus bill known as the CARES Act set aside $454 billion of taxpayers’ money to eat the losses in the bail out programs set up by the Fed. A total of $75 billion has been allocated to eat losses in the corporate bond-buying programs being managed by BlackRock. Since BlackRock is allowed to buy up its own ETFs, this means that taxpayers will be eating losses that might otherwise accrue to billionaire Larry Fink’s company and investors.

BlackRock Authored the Bailout Plan Before There Was a Crisis – Now It’s Been Hired by three Central Banks to Implement the Plan -  Pam Martens --  It’s called “Going Direct.” That’s the financial bailout plan designed and authored by former central bankers now on the payroll at BlackRock, an  investment manager of $7 trillion in stock and bond funds. The plan was rolled out in August 2019 at the G7 summit of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming – months before the public was aware of any financial crisis. One month later, on September 17, 2019, the U.S. Federal Reserve would begin an emergency repo loan bailout program, making hundreds of billions of dollars a week in loans by “going direct” to the trading houses on Wall Street.  The BlackRock plan calls for blurring the lines between government fiscal policy and central bank monetary policy – exactly what the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve are doing today in the United States.  BlackRock has now been hired by the Federal Reserve, the Bank of Canada, and Sweden’s central bank, Riksbank, to implement key features of the plan. Three of the authors of the BlackRock plan previously worked as central bankers in the U.S., Canada and Switzerland, respectively. The authors wrote in the white paper that “in a downturn the only solution is for a more formal – and historically unusual – coordination of monetary and fiscal policy to provide effective stimulus.” We now understand why, for the first time in history, the U.S. Congress handed over $454 billion of taxpayers’ money to the Fed, without any meaningful debate, to eat losses on toxic assets produced by the Wall Street banks it supervises. The Fed plans to leverage the $454 billion into a $4.54 trillion bailout plan, “going direct” with bailouts to the commercial paper market, money market funds, and a host of other markets. The BlackRock plan further explains why, for the first time in history, the Fed has hired BlackRock to “go direct” and buy up $750 billion in both primary and secondary corporate bonds and bond ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds), a product of which BlackRock is one of the largest purveyors in the world. Adding further outrage, the BlackRock-run program will get $75 billion of the $454 billion in taxpayers’ money to eat the losses on its corporate bond purchases, which will include its own ETFs, which the Fed is allowing it to buy in the program.  Helicopter money is also spelled out in the BlackRock plan, which explains why simultaneously with the $454 billion Congress carved out for the Fed under the CARES Act, fiscal stimulus was also “going direct” with $1200 checks and direct deposits to the little people of America and Paycheck Protection Program loans and grants “going direct” to small businesses.

 Michael Hudson: Fed’s $10 Trillion Defends Assets of the Rich --Yves here. I trust you will enjoy Michael Hudson’s discussion of the Fed’s machinations and on the prospects for the economy. Interview by Paul Jay, with transcript. The Federal Reserve is directly buying stocks, bonds, junk bonds, mortgages, junk mortgages, all to prop up the value of assets owned by the top 5%. This does not spur much new production or create jobs.

The Fed Just Unleashed A Trillion In New Debt: Companies Took The Money And Spent It On Dividends While Firing Millions -  In a Bloomberg expose written by Bob Ivry, Lisa Lee and Craig Torres, the trio of reporters show how, 12 years after we first laid out the "New Normal" capital misallocation paradigm, we are again back to square one as the Fed actions - which as even former NY Fed president Bill Dudley admits are brazen moral-hazard - have prompted a record debt binge even as corporate borrowers are firing millions of workers while using the debt to - drumroll - make shareholders richer.Take food-service giant Sysco, which just days after the Federal Reserve crossed the final line into centrally-planned markets on March 23 when it assured that it would make openly purchase corporate debt, Sysco sold $4 billion of debt. Then, just a few days after that, the company announced plans to cut one-third of its workforce, more than 20,000 employees, even as dividends to shareholders would continue.That process repeated itself in April and May as the coronavirus spread. The Fed’s promise juiced the corporate-bond market. Borrowing by top-rated companies shot to a record $1.1 trillion for the year, nearly twice the pace of 2019.  What happened then was a case study of why Fed-endorsed moral hazard is always a catastrophic policy... for the poor, while making the rich richer:Companies as diverse as Sysco, Toyota Motor Corp., international marketing firm Omnicom Group Inc. and movie-theater chain Cinemark Holdings Inc. borrowed billions of dollars -- and then fired workers.Just two weeks ago, Fed chair Powell testified before Congress, and when asked why the Fed is buying investment grade and junk bond debt, Powell responded "to preserve jobs." That was a blatant lie, because as Bloomberg notes, the actions of the companies that benefited from the Fed's biggest ever handout called into question the degree to which the U.S. central bank’s promise to purchase corporate debt will help preserve American jobs.Unlike the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program, which has incentives for employers to keep workers on the job and is only a grant if the bulk of the proceeds are used to retain workers, the taxpayer-backed facilities that the Fed and Treasury Department created for bigger companies have no such requirements. In fact, to make sure the emergency programs help fulfill one of the Fed’s mandates - maximum employment - the central bank is simply crossing its fingers that restoring order to markets will translate to saving jobs. Instead, what the Fed's actions have unleashed so far is a new record debt bubble, with more than $1.1 trillion in new debt issuance in just the first five months of the year, even as companies issuing debt are quick to lay off millions!

U.S. Debt Crisis Comes into View as Fed’s Balance Sheet Explodes Past $7 Trillion  -- Pam Martens -  On May 29, 2019, the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet stood at $3.9 trillion. As of this past Wednesday, May 27, 2020, the Fed’s balance sheet had skyrocketed to $7.145trillion, an increase of 83 percent in one year’s time. But the explosion in the Fed’s balance sheet cannot be attributed solely to the economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The math and the timeline simply do not support that argument. But on December 31, 2019, the Federal Reserve was already deep into a debt crisis in the United States. We know that from the minutes of the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee. The Fed minutes for the meetings on December 10-11, 2019 state that the Fed’s emergency repo loans (that it had started making on September 17, 2019 for the first time since the financial crisis of 2008) had  “totaled roughly $215 billion per day” as of the date of that meeting. Using the Fed’s own Excel spread sheet data for its emergency repo loans, Wall Street On Parade reported on January 27 that the Fed had made $6.6 trillion cumulatively in emergency revolving repo loans to Wall Street since September 17. The first death in the U.S. from COVID-19 did not come until February 28 and was reported by CNN one day later. The Fed started out on September 17 offering overnight loans of $75 billion daily. Three days later, on September 20, it added 14-day term loans. On October 23 the Fed announced that its daily repo loans would be increased from $75 billion to $120 billion while its term loans would continue. On December 12, the Fed announced that it would supplement its repo loans by adding a 32-day loan of $50 billion to its ongoing, twice per week term loans of 14-days and it would increase its overnight loans from $120 billion to $150 billion on December 31, 2019 and January 2, 2020. The Fed said it would also add an extra $75 billion overnight loan, thus bringing an extra $185 billion of liquidity over the turn of the year on top of its ongoing repo loans.Today, the Fed’s balance sheet shows that its repo loan program is still ongoing with a$181 billion balance outstanding. Emergency lending from the Fed’s Discount Window stands at $18 billion. Emergency loans to the trading houses on Wall Street under its Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF) stands at $6 billion. Buying up undesirable debt from money markets under the Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (MMMFLF) shows a balance of $33 billion. Scooping up unwanted commercial paper under the Fed’s Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF) stands at $12.79 billion. Making outright purchases of investment grade and junk-rated corporate bonds under its Corporate Credit Facilities (which is targeted to expand to $750 billion by September 30) was just launched three weeks ago and currently stands at $34.85 billion.

 Coronavirus will cost U.S. economy $8 trillion through 2030, CBO says – WaPo - Fallout from the coronavirus pandemic will shrink the size of the U.S. economy by roughly $8 trillion over the next decade, according to new projections released by the Congressional Budget Office on Monday.In a letter to U.S. lawmakers, the CBO said the U.S. economy will grow by $7.9 trillion less from 2020 to 2030 than it had projected in January. That amounts to a 3 percent decline in U.S. gross domestic product compared to its initial estimate.The stark illustration of the pandemic’s potential economic impact comes one week after White House officials confirmed they would not release their own updated projections this summer in their annual “mid-session” budget review.The pandemic will hamper U.S. economic growth by reducing the amount of consumer spending and closing numerous businesses, the CBO said. Part of the impact will be mitigated by the more than $2 trillion the federal government has already approved in emergency spending for households and businesses.“Business closures and social distancing measures are expected to curtail consumer spending, while the recent drop in energy prices is projected to severely reduce U.S. investment in the energy sector,” said Phillip L. Swagel, the CBO director and former economic expert at the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank.The pandemic’s impact on the U.S. economy has been swift. The unemployment rate jumped from 3.5 percent in February to 14.7 percent in April. Tax revenue plummeted, spending skyrocketed, and the economy quickly contracted after years of growth.  The CBO report was requested by Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who serves on the Senate Budget Committee. The CBO had previously released forecasts for 2020 and 2021.

Budget Office Finds US Economy Won't Return To Normal Until 2030 -  In its first official forecast incorporating the impact from the coronavirus shutdowns, today the Congressional Budget Office said that over the 2020–2030 period, cumulative GDP will be $15.7 trillion, or 5.3%, less in nominal dollars than what the agency projected in January. Putting that number in context, the nominal GDP of the US today is $21.5 trillion, in other words over the next decade, the Coronavirus will have wiped out almost one full year of output potential from the US economy.In real, or inflation-adjusted dollars, some $7.9 trillion in economic activity over the next decade will be lost even with the trillion of rescue funding being poured in to offset the pandemic’s impact.Comparing its interim, May 2020 projections to the last official forecast made in January 2020, the CBO said that the level of nominal GDP in the second quarter of 2020 would be $790 billion (or 14.2%) lower than the agency had previously forecast in January 2020 (a number which unfortunately will only grow larger with time especially if the Atlanta Fed's 52% GDP drop forecast is accurate). Subsequently, the difference between those projections of nominal GDP narrows from $533 billion (9.4% lower in the latest projection) ) by the end of 2020 to $181 billion (2.2 percent lower) by 2030.In real terms, the difference between those projections of real GDP shrinks, to $422 billion in 2019 dollars (7.6% lower in the more recent projection) by the end of 2020 and roughly disappears by 2030. In other words, it will take a decade for the impact of the coronavirus to fully fade away and for the economy to return to its pre-coronavirus normal.The difference between the CBO's January baseline and the nominal and real cumulative GDP projections is shown below. Curiously, while on a real basis the economy takes a decade to revert to normal, in nominal dollars it appears the US can't ever recover its previous trendline.

 U.S. Abandons Open Skies for New Age Space Weapons --With the U.S. deciding to walk out of the Open Skies agreement, the U.S. is signaling to the world that it intends to return to days of Pax Americana that existed post-World War II, when it was the sole possessor of nuclear weapons. It has already walked out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002 under George W. Bush, and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treatyunder Trump. The only nuclear arms control treaty that still remains in place is the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which provides a rough limit and parity on the U.S. and Russia’s nuclear arsenals. Its days also seem to be numbered, as it expires on February 5, 2021, leaving very little time for any serious discussion.The Trump administration is now considering a resumption of nuclear tests, which would be in violation of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, or CTBT. Is this yet another treaty destined for the waste paper basket? This is apart from other nuclear restraint treaties that the U.S. signed with other states such as North Korea and Iran, and subsequently tore up unilaterally, prompting the view that the U.S. is no longer capable of upholding treaties.Marshall Billingslea, who is the U.S. official arms control negotiator, has talked about how the U.S. intends to spend Russia and China “into oblivion,” as it had done with the Soviet Union earlier. Obviously, as an arms control negotiator, he is a fitting successor to John Bolton, whose chief claim to fame is wielding a hammer to smash all arms control agreements.The U.S. is also weaponizing space, and has a new Space Command. Last year, Trump, speaking in the Pentagon, said, “a space-based missile defense layer… [is] going to be a very, very big part of our defense and, obviously, of our offense.”The U.S. continues to pour its money into military technology and its political energy into defense strategies against what it perceives as threats to its global hegemony from China and Russia—even during a pandemic. The U.S. has modeled for the rest of the world that the politics of security lie in terms of arms, no matter that funds are desperately needed for public health.

 The risks of staying in Afghanistan far outweigh the risk of withdrawal -Last Wednesday, President Trump declared that after 19 years in Afghanistan, it is time to “bring our soldiers back home.” The U.S. military, the president, correctly added, had effectively been reduced to, “acting as a police force.” Though Trump’s words alarmed many, observation of ground-truth reality confirms the president’s declaration as being right.Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a prominent advocate of extending our stay in Afghanistan, was quick to oppose Trump’s intent to withdraw from Afghanistan. In a letter sent to the Secretaries of State and Defense, Graham instructed the officials to certify that any agreement with the Taliban would “further the objectives” of leading to the long term defeat of al Qaeda and ISIS. Conducting a “non-conditions based withdrawal” from Afghanistan, the senator wrote, would be “horrendous for our national security interests.”If the senator had his way, he — and those who agree with his position — would be holding American interests hostage to the whims of the Taliban. Unless or until the Taliban took action according to our preferences, our troops would never leave.We must stop tying our national interests to actors and events abroad that are following their agendas and couldn’t care less about helping us.As should be painfully obvious to even the most casual observer, after nearly two decades of abject strategic failure in Afghanistan, the United States will never militarily force the Taliban to bend to our will, no matter how many thousands of troops we deploy or decades we continue fighting.Even more bluntly: we don’t need to defeat the Taliban to ensure our security militarily.As I detailed in a recent in-depth analysis published by Defense Priorities, the myth that we were attacked in September 2001 only because the Taliban harbored al-Qaeda is completely untrue. This is fundamental to understand. Once you realize the physical territory of Afghanistan was only incidental to the original attacks, we quickly recognize that the idea we have to fight until we cleanse Afghanistan of any insurgent or terrorist presence is likewise a myth. Advocates of remaining in Afghanistan until some unstated military objective has been accomplished often claim we would incur risk by withdrawing. A rarely considered–and far more consequential–consideration is the assessment of the risk we incur by staying.

Beijing Retaliates- Trade Deal On Verge Of Collapse As China Halts Some US Farm Imports - But the stock market ramp quickly faded after a Bloomberg report hit according to which showing Beijing had just given the US-China 'Phase 1' trade deal - which has been essentially moribund for weeks now even though President Trump spared it on Friday - one more 'kick', reminding investors where the real near-term macro risk lies: That is, the light-speed "decoupling" of the world's two largest economies.Spare us the commentary about how markets are more concerned with these trifles than the looting-and-burning-and-pillaging unfolding across the US - we warned investors about these risks last night. It appears investors are only just waking up to them, however.In short, reports about Beijing halting some US farm imports have rattled investors, and sent the Chinese yuan traded on- and offshore lower on the day.The decision appears to be the first part of China's "retaliation" against the actions announced by President Trump on Friday, as well as the increasingly belligerent posture taken by his administration in the aftermath of the coronavirus outbreak. China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused the US of undermining bilateral relations, and said it would meet any U.S. action with “firm counterattacks”Perhaps the most obvious "hint" that China would choose the trade channel as its preferred means of retaliation came late last week, as we reported on surging demand from China for Brazilian soy products, a major competitor for US soy.So far, the reaction has been relatively mild in equities and equity futures. But we suspect more headlines about China's reaction to the latest restrictions on Chinese nationals working and studying in the US, announced by Trump on Friday, will hit the tape later in the day.

 U.S. Businesses Brace for Damage as Tensions Grow Over Hong Kong – WSJ —Rising tensions between the U.S. and China over Hong Kong have American businesses caught in the crossfire.Companies in the global financial and trading hub, already battered by a year of violent protests and the coronavirus pandemic, face a long period of further uncertainty amid a fight that they fear could disrupt their operations and that casts doubt over their long-term future here.After China last week approved a plan to impose new national-security laws on Hong Kong, President Trump on Friday said the U.S. would no longer treat Hong Kong as a separate entity from China and would roll back policy exemptions for the city. They could include measures such as export controls, tariffs and visa restrictions, according to analysts, but businesses will have to wait for details and the timing of any moves.“It’s going to be a challenging week ahead as there are no firm details on how this special economic relationship will be untangled,” said Tara Joseph, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong. More clarity is “essential because our business here is large and important,” she said.About 85,000 U.S. citizens work in the city, with more than 1,300 U.S. companies operating here, some with regional headquarters. American companies with offices in Hong Kong range from Apple Inc. to Procter & Gamble Co. and FedEx Corp.The U.S. is Hong Kong’s second-largest trading partner, after China, accounting for 6.2% of trade last year, compared with 50.8% for trade with China. Hong Kong officials point to the U.S. trade surplus with the city, which they said amounted to $297 billion between 2009 to 2018, to show how U.S. interests are also at risk.  “We do not believe that sanctions or trade restrictions against Hong Kong are justified,” a Hong Kong government spokesman said Saturday. “They will lead to a breakdown of the mutually beneficial Hong Kong-U.S. relationship built up over the years and only hurt local and U.S. businesses in Hong Kong and the people working for them.”

Coronavirus Stimulus Funds Are Largely Depleted After Nine Weeks – WSJ —Nine weeks after Congress approved its largest-ever economic relief measure to counter the coronavirus pandemic, most of the direct cash assistance aimed at keeping the economy afloat has been spent or committed. The so-called Cares Act included a projected $1.2 trillion in direct aid, ranging from expanded unemployment benefits and forgivable business loans to cash payments for households, hospitals, cities and states. Congress topped up that sum in April with an additional $400 billion for small businesses and hospitals. Of the total $1.6 trillion in aid, roughly $1.12 trillion, or about 70%, has been distributed, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of government data and estimates by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a bipartisan nonprofit group. “This fiscal stimulus has spent out very quickly relative to reasonable expectations, certainly relative to historical expectations, which is to the credit of the administration,” said Ernie Tedeschi, an economist with Evercore ISI who served in the Treasury Department under President Obama. “In terms of the core assistance to households and businesses, we’re already past the peak,” Mr. Tedeschi said. Direct cash assistance is just one form of coronavirus-related spending; but some economists say it has the biggest impact because it is intended to fill the void in economic activity created by social-distancing measures. “We’re getting most of the benefit from that stimulus right now,” Mr. Tedeschi said. “Virtually everything is committed, and a great deal of it has gone out the door already.” The pace of spending and its impact are at the center of a debate over how much more money is needed to support economic recovery, alongside judgments about how quickly lockdowns should be eased, the progress of the disease and prospects for developing a vaccine. All told, Congress has passed four pieces of emergency legislation authorizing about $3.3 trillion in new spending and tax breaks. Aside from cash assistance, Congress approved measures to make coronavirus testing free, increase health-care funding for states and subsidize paid sick leave for workers affected by the virus. It also allocated to federal agencies more than $330 billion that doesn’t have to be spent until the end of 2021 or later, including funds to the Department of Health and Human Services for researching treatments and a vaccine.

 One-Third of America’s Record Unemployment Payout Hasn’t Arrived - Almost one-third of unemployment benefits estimated to be owed to the millions of Americans who lost their jobs as a result of the coronavirus slump haven’t been paid yet, as flagship policies struggle to cope with the unprecedented wave of layoffs. The Treasury disbursed $146 billion in unemployment benefits in the three months through May, according to data published Monday -- more than in the whole of 2009, when jobless rates peaked after the financial crisis. But even that historic figure falls short of a total bill that should have reached about $214 billion for the period, according to Bloomberg calculations based on weekly unemployment filings and the average size of those claims. Estimated total claims cost calculated by Bloomberg based on unadjusted continuing claims plus Pandemic Unemployment Assistance claims. Claims data for the last two weeks of May are averages of the prior four weeks, PUA data for the last two weeks are averages of the prior two weeks. The estimated gap of some $67 billion shows how emergency efforts to boost payments, and deliver them via creaking state-level systems, are lagging the needs of a jobs crisis that’s seen more than 40 million people file for unemployment as the economy shut down. The gaps in America’s social safety net are becoming apparent at the same time as protests erupt over longstanding racial inequities. The debate over how and when to reopen businesses even as the pandemic continues is also turning acrimonious, in a nation that increasingly feels like a tinderbox. There’s “a huge hole,” said Jay Shambaugh, an economist at Brookings Institution who has been tracking the unemployment payments. “There’s a lot more money that should have gone out that has not gone out.” The bill is still mounting. Economists estimate that another 1.8 million people filed for unemployment last week. That data is due out on Thursday, while Friday’s monthly numbers are forecast to show a jobless rate of 19.5% in May, the highest since the Great Depression.

 Trump, Congress face huge economic decisions over aid as country is rocked by protests - The escalating protests across the United States could intensify a political standoff between the White House and Congress over whether to continue emergency economic assistance for millions of Americans.Policymakers must decide in the coming weeks whether to extend emergency unemployment benefits for more than 25 million Americans. They face growing calls to provide billions of dollars in assistance for states and cities, even as President Trump increasingly feuds with governors and mayors. If lawmakers do not act, about $1 trillion in emergency federal aid used to stabilize the economy will disappear in the next quarter.The expiring aid risks creating a “fiscal cliff” that, if not addressed by lawmakers, could arrest or reverse a rebound, economists say. White House officials and several Republicans have resisted pressure to approve more spending, but they are at odds over how to proceed, and the path forward is unclear.The economic damage continues to come into sharper focus, with the Congressional Budget Office on Monday predicting the coronavirus pandemic’s economic fallout will shrink growth by $8 trillion over 10 years. But political fighting has only worsened since the protests began, and emotions turned raw on Monday. Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) called Trump “scum for fueling racist hate and violence in our country” while Trump lit into Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) for his handling of the coronavirus during a call with governors.Congress does appear poised to approve changes to a small-business loan program as soon as this week that would give certain business owners more time to access government-backed loans and have them forgiven.Even with that breakthrough, the potential for a sudden cessation of emergency federal help could risk catalyzing extremely heated standoffs across major U.S. cities, many of which are also asking for urgent financial assistance to avoid layoffs and service cuts.

Senate passes changes to Paycheck Protection Program The Senate cleared changes to the popular Paycheck Protection Program on Wednesday that will allow small businesses more flexibility in using the rescue loan funds. The bill, which passed the House last week on a 471-1 vote, now heads to President Trump’s desk for his signature. Senators gave unanimous consent for the legislation hours after Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson had raised objections. The coronavirus program provides forgivable loans to help small businesses make their payrolls during the COVID-19 crisis. The bill would extend an eight-week period — when proceeds must be spent for loans to be forgiven — to 24 weeks or until the end of the year, whichever comes first. Businesses would also have as long as five years, instead of two years, to repay any money owed on a loan, and they could use a greater percentage of proceeds on rent and other approved non-payroll expenses. Timing is urgent because the eight-week spending period began expiring last Friday for the first loan recipients after the Small Business Administration program opened April 3. Businesses — especially in the restaurant and hospitality industry, which are only recently getting the green light to reopen — say they need more time to distribute pay. Utah Sen. Mike Lee had also objected to language he and Johnson said would lengthen the application deadline. Maine Sen. Susan Collins didn’t oppose the bill but said she was concerned about the way the House drafted a provision reducing the current requirement that 75% of a loan be used on payroll. Restaurants and other small businesses have said they want flexibility to spend more on overhead expenses, especially in high-rent areas. The bill, HR 7010, would instead require that 60% of a loan be used on payroll. The House bill creates a “cliff,” Collins said in a statement. The current PPP program allows partial loan forgiveness if a company uses less than 75% of a loan for payroll, but the House bill appears to state that none of the loan would be forgiven if the 60% threshold isn’t met. “Instead, the employer is saddled with a debt for the entire amount, and no portion of the loan is forgiven or converted to a grant,” Collins said. Senate Small Business Chairman Marco Rubio last week sought guidance from Treasury on whether that issue can be addressed through regulation. Treasury and the SBA haven’t responded to requests for comment. About $130 billion remains from the second round of $320 billion that Congress approved for PPP. The initial round of $349 billion was tapped in just 13 days.

Close to one in four workers are either on unemployment benefits or are waiting to receive them: Congress must take action --Last week, 2.2 million workers applied for unemployment benefits. This is the 11th week in a row that initial unemployment claims have been more than twice the worst week of the Great Recession.Of the 2.2 million who applied for unemployment benefits last week, 1.6 million applied for regular state unemployment insurance (UI), and 0.6 million applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA). PUA is the new federal program for workers who are out of work because of the virus but who are not eligible for regular UI (e.g. the self-employed). At this point, only 36 states and Puerto Rico are reporting PUA claims. This means PUA claims are still being undercounted. Many commentators are reporting the cumulative number of initial regular state UI claims over the last 11 weeks as a measure of how many people have applied for UI in this pandemic. At this point, I believe we should abandon that approach because it ignores PUA—and is thus an understatement on that front—but may overstate things in other ways (for example, some who were laid off and applied for UI two months ago may now be going back to work). Instead, we can calculate the total number of workers who are either on unemployment benefits, or have applied and are waiting to see if they will get benefits, in the following way:  A total of 19.3 million workers had made it through at least the first round of regular state UI processing as of May 23 (these are known as “continued” claims), and 3.5 million had filed initial UI claims on top of that but had not yet made it through the first round of processing. And, 10.7 million workers had made it through at least the first round of PUA processing by May 16, and 3.2 million had filed initial PUA claims on top of that but had not yet made it through the first round of processing. Even further, by May 16, another 436,000 workers had made it through at least the first round of processing in one of the other unemployment benefits programs, the largest of which are Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation—which is available to workers who have exhausted their regular state benefits—and Short-Time Compensation (more on that below). Altogether, that’s 37.2 million workers who are either on unemployment benefits or who have applied very recently and are waiting to see if they will get benefits—61.4% UI, 37.4% PUA, and 1.2% other programs. Together, that is close to one in four people in the U.S. workforce.

Trump Says He Will Ask Congress To Pass More Stimulus As He Praises V-Shaped Recovery - One day after Bloomberg reported that the White House envisions as much another $1 trillion in the next round of economic stimulus, during his morning press conference praising the payrolls data, President Trump said he’ll ask Congress to pass more economic stimulus, including a payroll tax cut, even after the government reported a surprise improvement in U.S. unemployment on Friday."We’ll be going for a payroll tax cut," Trump said as he was celebrating the jobs report that left most economists speechless. "It’s going to be a tremendous incentive for businesses. We’ll be asking for additional stimulus money."Unironically, just before he announced the need for even more stimulus, the president was praising the V-shaped recovery in both the economy and the stock market.The job surge we're seeing is widespread across American industries! pic.twitter.com/zLyqEykO3Y — The White House (@WhiteHouse) June 5, 2020I  n the same presser, Trump declared Friday a "great day for equality" and a "great day" for George Floyd following a jobs report that showed unemployment falling - except for African Americans - and days of unrest sparked by Floyd's killing."Equal justice under the law must mean every American receives equal treatment in every encounter with law enforcement regardless of race, color, gender or creed," Trump said. "They have to receive fair treatment from law enforcement.""We all saw what happened last week. We can’t let that happen," he continued, referencing Floyd's death."Hopefully George is looking down right now and saying this is a great thing that’s happening for our country. This is a great day for him, it’s a great day for everybody. This is a great day for everybody. This is a great, great day in terms of equality."

The Secret, Absurd World of Coronavirus Mask Traders and Middlemen Trying To Get Rich Off Government Money - I was watching footage of secret stockpiles of N95 masks, so-called proof-of-life videos sent to me by strangers, when Tim, the juicer salesman, called.“My name is Tim, and I heard you’re looking into VPL,” the man said in a squeaky, nervous timbre. “I distanced myself from the company because they weren’t delivering what they said.”A few hours earlier, I had called the owner of VPL Medical LLC, a company outside Los Angeles that had gotten a $6.4 million contract from the Department of Veterans Affairs to supply 8 million three-ply surgical masks to hospitals dealing with the COVID-19 crisis. My call freaked them out, Tim said, and someone at the company had passed my number along to him.Tim, whose last name is Zelonka, said he had driven halfway to that office park from West Hollywood with his briefcase stuffed with cash when his deal to buy a relatively small amount of masks from VPL fell through. He said he thought perhaps he had asked too many questions of a company representative — about where the masks were sourced, if they were kept in sanitary conditions and about the company’s credentials. “He said: ‘They’re not in boxes. They’re in Ziploc bags,’” Zelonka said, recounting his conversation with VPL’s representative. “And I said: ‘That’s not what you’re advertising. You’re advertising made in the U.S.A. and in sealed packaging.’”  That’s when Zelonka said the deal was abruptly canceled by the representative, whom I’d later learn was sued by the Federal Trade Commission in 2018 for a robocalling scheme that involved bogus smoking cessation treatments and sexual performance enhancement pills.   I had called VPL because records showed the company incorporated just four days before it won the VA deal, and it went on to win another $14.5 million no-bid contract the next day from the federal office in charge of the national stockpile. Its new website featured a photo of the sort of “ear loop” mask the federal government has since branded as ineffective Chinese knockoffs. The moniker stands for Viral Protection Labs, but the labs exist only in the stock art chosen for the website.

Hydroxychloroquine debate spills into congressional campaigns - Five months ahead of the general election, Democrats are escalating their attacks against Republicans over the use of a malaria drug to treat Covid-19, dragging a highly polarized medical debate even further into the political realm. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in recent weeks has vocally criticized two GOP incumbents and two challengers for echoing President Trump’s enthusiasm for hydroxychloroquine in March and April. Joe Biden, Trump’s presumptive Democratic challenger, has seized on the president’s remarks, calling his hydroxychloroquine advocacy “totally irresponsible” after the president announced he was taking the drug as a preventive measure. For his part, Trump has dismissed concerns about a growing body of evidence that the drug is not an effective Covid-19 treatment, and concerns about potential side effects, as politically motivated. “If you look at the one survey, the only bad survey, they were giving it to people that were in very bad shape, they were very old, almost dead. It was a Trump enemy statement,” Trump said of one study.  Since Trump first began touting hydroxychloroquine, the debate has turned its attention from promising anecdotes from individual patients and doctors to a growing body of scientific research that shows the drug is not effective. In late April, the Food and Drug Administration, led by a commissioner Trump appointed,warned against using hydroxychloroquine outside of a hospital or clinical trial setting. The French government and several others have since banned use of the drug to treat Covid-19. The debate has effectively served as a dividing line in U.S. politics: In large part, Trump’s supporters and sympathetic media outlets echoed the president’s enthusiasm, while Democrats, with some notable exceptions, generally sided with scientists who insisted there was no reliable science indicating hydroxychloroquine could help treat Covid-19.  Robyn Patterson, a DCCC spokeswoman, said the group’s messaging aimed to highlight Republicans pushing hydroxychloroquine “like hotcakes” even as other governments have banned its use for Covid-19. “It’s reckless and irresponsible for Washington Republicans and their candidates to promote a potentially lethal and scientifically-discredited cure because they think it will improve their lot in the President’s eyes,” she said. 

Experts warn of dire global health consequences if U.S. withdraws from the World Health Organization An American withdrawal from the World Health Organization could wreak profound damage on the global effort to eradicate polio and could undermine the world’s ability to detect and respond to disease threats, health experts warned. The experts, from the United States and beyond, are aghast at President Trump’s announced intention to leave the organization, which he publicly blames for not being tougher on China in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic — at a time when he himself was praising China’s unprecedented efforts to control the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The agency has not yet commented on Trump’s announcement. If it leaves the organization, which was established in 1948, the United States will give up an outsized role in the global health agency and the setting of global health priorities. While Trump has accused the WHO of kowtowing too much to China, in reality, experts acknowledge, other countries have sometimes bristled at how much sway the U.S. has at the Geneva-based agency. “The U.S. has always had an extraordinary influence at the WHO — I mean to the extent that other countries have complained about American influence,” Ilona Kickbusch, a long-time former WHO official and chair of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.In fact, when the WHO underwent a series of reforms following its catastrophic early response to the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak — including setting up a permanent health emergencies program — a lot of the changes implemented were made at the behest of the United States, said Ashish Jha, director of Harvard’s Global Health Institute. The ranks of WHO’s staff are swollen with Americans, some hired directly — such as Stewart Simonson, one of the agency’s assistant director generals — others on secondment from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or other agencies. Were the U.S. to pull out of the WHO, it’s unclear what would happen to the Americans in its ranks —including Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s leading expert on coronaviruses, who flanks Director General Tedros Adhamon Gheybreyesus during the agency’s three-times-weekly Covid-19 press conferences.

Why the Neoliberal Agenda is a Failure at Fighting Coronavirus The utter failure of private capitalism to prepare for the coronavirus should have surprised no one. Private capitalism, as business school graduates repeat, focuses on profit. The “profit incentive,” they learn, makes private capitalism the superior, “most efficient” economic system available. That is its “bottom line” and “chief goal.” The problem is that to produce adequate numbers of testing components, masks, gloves, ventilators, hospital beds, etc., and then to store, secure, monitor, maintain and demographically stockpile them were not and are not privately profitable businesses. Of course, private capitalism’s failures could have been offset if governments compensated for them. Governments might have purchased the necessary medical supplies from private capitalists as they emerged from production at prices yielding them good profits. Governments could then have stored, monitored, replenished, and stockpiled them, and absorbed the costs and risks involved. Indeed, governments in many countries did that. But few maintained stockpiles sufficient for “abnormal” or “serious” viral threats. Most stockpiled only smaller “normal flu” levels of the needed medical supplies. Another pertinent example is government intervention to procure military supplies. It is privately unprofitable to produce, store, secure, monitor, and strategically stockpile tanks, missiles, guns, airplanes, etc., needed for war or “defense.” Private capitalists would not likely produce or import them given the risks and uncertainties of future military conflict. So governments contract to buy them as they are produced at prices profitable for private producers of military supplies. Governments cover the costs and risks of storing, securing, and stockpiling. These immense government subsidies to private capitalists get justified as requirements of national security. What governments do to prepare for military security they do not do (or do inadequately) for health security from, for example, dangerous microbes. Yet viruses have threatened human beings at least as long as military conflict has. Many more Americans were killed by the 1918 influenza pandemic than died in the 1914-1918 world war. Coronavirus has already killed many more Americans than died in the Vietnam War.

New Poll Says a Majority of Americans Would Privilege Slowing the Spread of COVID-19 Over Restarting the Economy (Despite the Relentless Assault of Get Back to Work, Slackers! Propaganda) - Jerri-Lynn Scofield - A  hot-off-the-presses Washington Post- ABC News poll says the majority of Americans surveyed would prefer policies that slow the spread of COVID-19, even if they come at the expense of restarting the economy. This poll was taken before the recent riots swept across the country to slam businesses with physical damage as they were just beginning to reopen their doors, according to the Wall Street Journal, Retailers and Restaurants Hit in Protests, Adding to Coronavirus Damage:  Many retailers and restaurants, already crippled by the coronavirus pandemic, are grappling with damage to their properties and new closures following protests sparked by the death of George Floyd that have sometimes turned violent.  From Minneapolis, where Mr. Floyd died while handcuffed and in police custody, to California and Georgia, big and small retailers and restaurants have shut locations in anticipation of violence or are working to rebuild after destruction over the past week. And poll results show resistance to business interest-driven propaganda that purport to show many Americans (of the US variety) either itching to get back to work for the sheer pleasure  of so doing, or beg to be able to resume their jobs driven by desperation and the failure of U.S. politicians to assist their constituents economically – as by contrast virtually every other developed country has done – so they can shelter in place and not have to trade off their health against their basic economic survival.  More telling I think is the observation that the polling results correspond to the partisan preferences of respondents. As the Washington Post tells the story in Despite widespread economic toll, most Americans still favor controlling outbreak over restarting economy, Post-ABC poll finds: Nearly 6 in 10 Americans say the coronavirus outbreak has exacted a severe economic toll on their communities, but a majority of a divided country still says controlling the virus’s spread is more important than trying to restart the economy, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll. The nationwide survey finds that despite the shared disruption of their daily lives since stay-at-home orders began, partisans differ sharply on how the country should move forward. In the starkest split, 57 percent of Americans overall and 81 percent of Democrats say trying to control the spread of the coronavirus is most important right now, even if it hurts the economy. A far smaller 27 percent of Republicans agree, while 66 percent of them say restarting the economy is more important, even if it hurts efforts to control the virus. Nearly 6 in 10 independents say their priority is trying to control the virus’s spread.

Anger and Unrest Sweep Across U.S. – WSJ - The worst civil unrest in decades erupted in cities across the U.S. this weekend as anger sparked by the death of a black man in Minneapolis police custody touched off demonstrations nationwide as protesters torched vehicles, smashed windows and defaced buildings. The National Guard said about 5,000 of its personnel were activated in 15 states and Washington, D.C., to aid law enforcement with protecting lives and property, as clashes that began last week spread beyond Minnesota. In at least one city, New York, investigators said outside anarchist groups fueled the unrest. Curfews initiated over the weekend were being extended in several cities.  The Minneapolis clashes began after the death of George Floyd, a black man who died during an arrest after a white police officer kept his knee pressed into his neck during an event that was recorded on video. That came after other recent killings of African-Americans and amid severe economic stress in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, creating a highly combustible mix.  Stores along Chicago’s Magnificent Mile were looted, and windows were smashed. Nashville’s City Hall was set on fire. Near Los Angeles, stores along famed Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills were looted and vandalized. In Philadelphia, where police said more than 200 people were arrested in protests Saturday, video posted to social media showed police officers hitting protesters with batons, according to footage verified by Storyful. In Minneapolis, officials said Sunday that they had made strides in curbing lawlessness. The city looked almost militaristic, with major highways closed and a heavy presence of police and the National Guard. But on Sunday evening, a tanker semi-truck drove toward a large group of protesters on Interstate 35W in the city. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said the truck didn’t cause any confirmed injuries. The driver was taken to a hospital, released and taken into police custody, state officials said. “The incident underscores the volatile situation we have out there,” the governor said. As new demonstrations began forming in cities across the country Sunday, volunteers were out in Los Angeles, armed with brooms, trash bags and paint thinner, sweeping up trash and broken glass and trying to scrub away graffiti after a night of rioting and looting. In Minneapolis, volunteers stood in front of the Cup Foods market where Mr. Floyd had been arrested; they passed out cans of infant formula, bags of popcorn, bottled water and other groceries to people passing by.

Meanwhile, As Minneapolis Burns - But while all this has been going on, just in the past week or so our president has been engaging in a series of serious actions that will have long run serious consequences people are barely aware of if they are not undone. It is almost as if he is just outright melting down his presidency and taking the nation with him, although we are too busy looking at the flames in Minneapolis to notice. Here is a list without comment. The US will withdraw from the Open Skies agreement, first proposed by President Eisenhower, that has 35 other signatories. The administration claims the Russians are breaking the treaty, although the specific offenses publicized seem to have nothing to do with this treaty at all. This follows Trump withdrawing us from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Agreement, the Paris Climate Accord, the the TPP, and the Iran JCPOA nuclear deal that Iran was adhering to. Today it was announced that the US will withdraw from the World Health Organization. The administration is proposing changing the status of Hong Kong in connection with the US as well as possibly forcing Chinese corporations to leave the New York stock exchange, not to mention that the daughter of the CEO of Huawei is about to be extradited to the US to be prosecuted for fraud in connection with violating US sanctions against Iran. Another round of EPA regulations are to be ended. Trump refuses to provide aid to the US Postal Service, which might go bankrupt later this year, with Trump declaring that voting by mail is a rigged fraud. He has also issued an executive order to allow the FTC to make social media subject to lawsuits by his conservative allies. And then also today it was announced that his official pandemic task force is now effectively not functional. There is more, but all that is more than quite enough.

Trump hid in bunker during Friday protests outside White House — Secret Service agents rushed President Donald Trump to a White House bunker on Friday night as hundreds of protesters gathered outside the executive mansion, some of them throwing rocks and tugging at police barricades.Trump spent nearly an hour in the bunker, which was designed for use in emergencies like terrorist attacks, according to a Republican close to the White House who was not authorized to publicly discuss private matters and spoke on condition of anonymity. The account was confirmed by an administration official who also on condition of anonymity.The abrupt decision by the agents underscored the rattled mood inside the White House, where the chants from protesters in Lafayette Park could be heard all weekend and Secret Service agents and law enforcement officers struggled to contain the crowds.Friday’s protests were triggered by the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after he was pinned at the neck by a white Minneapolis police officer. The demonstrations in Washington turned violent and appeared to catch officers by surprise. They sparked one of the highest alerts on the White House complex since the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001“The White House does not comment on security protocols and decisions,” said White House spokesman Judd Deere. The Secret Service said it does not discuss the means and methods of its protective operations. The president’s move to the bunker was first reported by The New York Times. The president and his family have been shaken by the size and venom of the crowds, according to the Republican. It was not immediately clear if first lady Melania Trump and the couple’s 14-year-old son, Barron, joined the president in the bunker. Secret Service protocol would have called for all those under the agency’s protection to be in the underground shelter.

Trump says he is mobilizing 'heavily armed' military to stop protests ABC News · In a dramatic escalation of a national crisis, National Guard troops were deployed near the White House Monday evening hours after President Donald Trump said he wanted a military show of force against violent protests gripping the country. Shortly after, Trump came to the White House Rose Garden to call himself the "law and order" president, saying "domestic terrorism" was to blame for the unrest. "As we speak, I am dispatching thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel, and law enforcement officers to stop the rioting, looting, vandalism, assaults, and the wanton destruction of property," he said. "We will end it now."  He called on governors to use their National Guard military police units to "dominate the streets" and threatened to deploy the active duty military if governors failed to use the National Guard more forcefully. Before Trump spoke, tear gas and flash bangs were used to clear what appeared to be peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House and near St. John's Church, which protesters set fire to briefly Sunday night. Trump and aides then walked across Pennsylvania Avenue to pose before cameras at the church, holding a Bible."We have the greatest country in the world, we're going to keep it nice and safe," he said, expressing resolve that the country is coming back but did not otherwise engage on reporter questions. Attorney General Bill Barr, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien and White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany joined the president for a group photo. He then began the walk back to the White House after just a minute or so in front of the church, his daughter Ivanka trailing him. "What the president did was call out the American military against American citizens," New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday just after Trump spoke, "just so he could have a photo op of him walking to the church."

Trump Designates Antifa "A Terrorist Organization" - In what should not come as a surprise to many (especially those with open minds and open eyes), President Trump has tweeted that he is designating Antifa a terrorist organization.The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization.— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 31, 2020   Trump added:The Lamestream Media is doing everything within their power to foment hatred and anarchy. As long as everybody understands what they are doing, that they are FAKE NEWS and truly bad people with a sick agenda, we can easily work through them to GREATNESS!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 31, 2020This decision comes almost a year after he first tweeted that he was considering labeling the militant, black-clad, mask-wearing 'anti-fascist' group as a terrorist organization.

China's Foreign Ministry Tweets "I Can't Breathe!" As America's Rivals Troll US Over Unrest - Entirely to be expected in this rare moment of multiple American cities on fire amid the raging George Floyd protests, US enemies and rivals are seizing the opportunity to troll and mock Washington.Beijing communist party officials are especially taking the US to task over its 'hypocrisy' regarding Hong Kong, starting with the below top Chinese official, the Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Director General:  "I can't breathe." pic.twitter.com/UXHgXMT0lk— Hua Chunying 华春莹 (@SpokespersonCHN) May 30, 2020    During last year's many months-long and at times violent pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, recently flared up again over the deeply controversial 'security law', State Department officials on a near daily basis criticized both the HK police and mainland's harsh response and crackdown. The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying further used a recent RT segment to castigate what she called "THUGS & HEROES HYPOCRISY" in call caps, also as a reference to how Washington immediately dubs 'rioters' in official enemy countries as "heroes" while condemning any similar protest action in its own midst.

Susan Rice Goes Full Conspiracy Rant On CNN: 'Russians Behind Race Protest Mayhem!' "This is fucking lunacy — conspiratorial madness of the worst kind — but it's delivered by a Serious Obama Official and a Respected Mainstream Newscaster so it's all fine," Intercept journalist Glenn Greenwald fired off in response to a CNN segment blaming "foreign interference" for the still raging George Floyd protests and riots. "This is Infowars-level junk. Should Twitter put a 'False' label on this? Or maybe a hammer and sickle emoji?" he added. Indeed after three years of national Russiagate obsession was promptly memory-holed given it died a fiery death with the great nothing-burger that was the Mueller investigation, Obama's former National Security Advisor and later ambassador to the UN Susan Rice appeared on CNN's The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer to blame it all on the... you guessed it:Russians! Absolutely Incredible: Obama's Former NSA Susan Rice on CNN talking about the protests and domestic strife.  "This is right out of the Russian playbook" pic.twitter.com/luXiPV0bOq — Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) May 31, 2020“I’m not reading the intelligence today, or these days — but based on my experience, this is right out of the Russian playbook,” Rice said in the interview.“But we cannot allow the extremists, the foreign actors, to distract from the real problems we have in this country that are longstanding, centuries old, and need to be addressed responsibly.”Predictably and without asking for a shred of evidence, Wolf Blitzer responded: “you’re absolutely right on the foreign interference.” He further asked her on whether the Kremlin might be trying to “embarrass” the US by “promoting the racial divide in our country.” “Well we see it all the time, we’ve seen it for years, including on social media where they take any divisive, painful issue... and they play on both sides,” Rice responded, echoing similar prior accusations that somehow supposed 'Russian intelligence' putting out anti-Hillary memes on Facebook in 2016 secured Trump the election.

Police Spar With Protesters for 6th Straight Night: Live Updates -  By Sunday night, protests continued to rage in most major cities, and the National Guard had been activated in at least 15 states and Washington, D.C.  As the dust settled on the latest round of protests — interspersed with vandalism, looting, and aggressive police action — President Trump (parroting his friend Newt Gingrich) suggested that the people who took to the streets had been paid to do so.The idea that there are puppet masters controlling mass protest has a long history on the right, and a considerable history within this administration; Trump has previously invoked George Soros in conspiracy theories involving immigration, and Soros’s name has been bandied about freely on the right during the last few days of protests. (Authorities in Minnesota went the other way over the weekend, blaming right-wing outside agitators for unrest; the evidence for their claim is unclear.) Trump’s typically bellicose comments on Twitter belie his generally hesitant response to the unfolding conflict. The Washington Post reportsthat the president’s team decided that he should not address the nation in recent days because “he had nothing new to say and had no tangible policy or action to announce yet.” And while Trump tweeted violent threatsabout the sometimes tumultuous protests that have taken place across from the White House at Lafayette Park, the reaction within the building seemed to be more one of fear than defiance. The New YorkTimes reportsthat on Friday, Trump was moved to an underground bunker that has been used during terrorist incidents. And on Sunday night, the White Houseturned off all exterior lighting, as if trying to hide from the encroaching chaos.

Trump pushes back against GOP senators' criticism of dispersal of protesters in Lafayette Square: 'You got it wrong'- President Trump is pushing pushed back against Republican senators’ criticism of the dispersal of protesters from Lafayette Square across from the White House before he took photos in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church, saying in a Tuesday night tweet that they "got it wrong.”The president specifically called out Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), citing an article from The Federalist, a conservative online magazine. “You got it wrong!” Trump posted. “If the protesters were so peaceful, why did they light the Church on fire the night before? People liked my walk to this historic place of worship!”The article Trump pointed to is titled, “Media Falsely Claimed Violent Riots Were Peaceful And That Tear Gas Was Used Against Rioters.”According to reporters on the scene, law enforcement used tear gas to remove demonstrators, who were protesting the death of George Floyd, from Lafayette Square in front of the White House on Monday at least 15 minutes before D.C.'s 7 p.m. curfew. Acting U.S. Park Police Chief Gregory Monahan, however, said law enforcement used pepper balls and smoke canisters to disperse the crowd and objected to reports that have said tear gas was utilized against the protesters.Shortly after the incident, the president walked to St. John’s Church and posed for photos while holding a Bible.Several Democrats and a few Republicans have condemned the treatment of these protesters.  Collins said she thought the dispersal was “unsympathetic” and “painful to watch,” while Sasse said he disagreed with the decision to remove the protesters for a “photo op” and asserted Trump used the Bible as a “political prop.” Lankford said that it was “definitely not” right for tear gas to be used on the demonstrators and criticized the timing of the walk to the church, saying “everyone knew there were going to be protesters in that area” right before the curfew, according to Politico. Several other Republican senators dodged questions on Monday’s removal of demonstrators from Lafayette Square.

Poll: Majority 'sympathetic' to protesters, disapprove of Trump's response - A majority of Americans both sympathize with the protests that have swept the U.S. since the death of George Floyd and give low marks to President Trump’s handling of the demonstrations, a Reuters/Ipsos poll has found.Sixty-four percent of respondents said they were sympathetic to the protests that have erupted across the nation while 27 percent said they were not and 9 percent said they were unsure, according to the poll.More than 55 percent of those surveyed said they disapprove of the president’s response to the protests, including 40 percent who said they strongly disapproved. The percentage who approved, about 33 percent, was lower than the number of those who approved of the job Trump is doing in general.Twice as many independents disapproved of the president’s response, and among Republicans, while 67 percent approved of his response, the figure was about 15 points behind their overall approval of him.A majority of both self-identified Republicans and Democrats said they approved of the protests but felt property damage and looting undermined the cause, with under a quarter believing the looting was justified. Although the bulk of the demonstrations have taken place in cities, majorities in rural and suburban areas also expressed sympathy for the protests, with a little over half of the respondents from rural areas from sympathizing and 70 percent of those in suburban areas saying the same.Respondents said they approve of the police response more than they approve of Trump’s response, but a plurality still disapproved.  Forty-seven percent of respondents disagreed that the police were doing a good job, compared to 43 percent who agreed. A majority of Republicans agreed with the police response while a majority of Democrats disagreed.

 McConnell blocks resolution condemning Trump over treatment of protesters - Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday blocked a resolution from Democrats that would have condemned President Trump after rubber bullets and gas were used on peaceful protesters near the White House. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) tried to pass the resolution, which was introduced earlier Tuesday, by unanimous consent, meaning any one senator could block it. "If a senator objects, they should be asked if they believe Americans do not have the constitutional right to exercise the freedom of speech. ... Do they support the president's use of tear gas against people, including families, who are peacefully protesting in a public park?" Schumer said. The resolution condemns Trump for "ordering Federal officers to use gas and rubber bullets against the Americans who were peaceably protesting in Lafayette Square in Washington, DC on the night of June 1, 2020, thereby violating the constitutional rights of those peaceful protestors." The National Guard, U.S. Park Police and Secret Service used rubber bullets and tear gas to clear demonstrators from Lafayette Square so that Trump could cross the street to St. John’s Episcopal Church, which had been set on fire by vandals the night before. The Washington Post reported that Attorney General William Barr personally ordered for the perimeter near the White House to be extended, pushing protesters away from Lafayette Square. The decision, law enforcement officials told the publication, was made late Sunday or early Monday, but Barr noticed it had not been completed on Monday afternoon and ordered law enforcement to broaden the perimeter. The Democratic resolution would also throw congressional support behind the right of Americans to protest peacefully and the belief that "violence and looting are unlawful, unacceptable and contrary to the purpose of peaceful protests." But McConnell objected, arguing that the Democratic resolution did not address racial injustice or ending riots. "It pays more attention to the precise ways that federal law enforcement affects presidential movement around the White House instead of cities that have been consumed by rioting, looting and violence against police for several nights in a row," he said.

Trump’s Message of Unity: “Vicious Dogs,” “Ominous Weapons,” “Heavily Armed Soldiers” → As racial justice protests raged in cities across the United States over the murder of George Floyd in broad daylight at the hands of four policemen in Minneapolis, President Donald Trump tweeted that if the protesters had breached the fence at the White House, “they would have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen.” (Considering that the President avoided military service on the basis of bone spurs, he probably hasn’t actually seen too many ominous weapons.)Yesterday, President Trump held a phone conference with state Governors around the U.S. He said this at one point: “You have to dominate. If you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time. They’re going to run all over you, you’ll look like a bunch of jerks. You have to dominate, and you have to arrest people, and you have to try people and they have to go to jail for long periods of time.”During the call with Governors, Trump put the Secretary of the Department of Defense, Mark Esper, on the phone. Esper’s message to the Governors was this: “We need to dominate the battle space.” To have a battle waged by the Department of Defense you need an enemy. If the “battle space” is American cities and the people on the other side of the military are American citizens, then it seems reasonable to say that the President and the Pentagon are preparing to go to war against Americans. On the call with Governors, Trump invoked the Occupy Wall Street movement. The President said this:“It’s like a movement, and it’s a movement that if you don’t put it down, it’ll get worse and worse, this is like Occupy Wall Street. It was a disaster until one day, somebody said, that’s enough and they just went in and wiped them out and that’s the last time we ever heard the name Occupy Wall Street, until today when I heard about it, I heard Occupy Wall Street. I haven’t heard about it, I heard about it today for the first time in a long time. They were there forever it seemed on Wall Street. They closed up Wall Street, the financial district of the world, total domination, they were ordering pizzas, nobody did anything.” This is the mind of the President of the free world. Protesters attempting to realign their corrupted democracy while braving snow and ice living in tents on the sidewalks of lower Manhattan (following the greatest bank looting in U.S. history by Wall Street executives) have committed the ultimate crime of getting free pizza delivery.

Donald Trump Orders Up His Own Praetorian Guard, Including Black Hawk Helicopters and the 82nd Airborne with Bayonets -  Pam Martens - U.S. President Donald Trump, the leader of a country which heretofore viewed itself as a beacon of democracy to the rest of the world, is now using military helicopters, a designated commander in combat fatigues, and military police to protect himself from peaceful protesters outside the White House. Trump has bigger, and more dangerous plans.James LaPorta of the Associated Press reported yesterday that combat troops from the 82^nd Airborne have been moved just outside of Washington D.C., are armed with bayonets, and may be called in by the President. The AP reported as follows:“On Tuesday, roughly 700 members of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division had arrived at two military bases near Washington. Another 1,400 soldiers are ready to be mobilized within an hour, the two Pentagon officials said. The soldiers are armed and have riot gear as well as bayonets.”Jack Murphy, writing for ConnectingVets.com, reported that paratroopers from the 82^ndAirborne have also been put on standby at Joint Base Andrews, just outside of Washington, D.C. Murphy reports as follows:“The paratroopers were transported from Pope Army Air Field at Fort Bragg to Joint Base Andrews on three C-17 transport aircraft, sources said. Nine UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters and three CH-47 Chinook helicopters were also transported to Joint Base Andrews. The helicopters were flown into Andrews by pilots and flight crew.” Last evening, multiple TV news programs showed a video of a military helicopter hovering dangerously low over protesters in Washington, D.C. on Monday night. The New York Times reported that it was flying so low that it snapped tree limbs and sent people scurrying. The Washington Post quoted Kyleanne Hunter, a former Marine Corps pilot, stating that “the use of a helicopter’s rotor wash, the downward rush of air from its rotors, is a common military tactic to incite fear, disperse crowds and warn of other capabilities, like rockets and guns.”

'I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act': Defense Secretary Esper breaks with Trump on use of troops - Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Wednesday he opposes using the U.S. military to quiet domestic unrest in a break with President Donald Trump who threatened to deploy federal troops to "dominate the streets." "I say this not only as secretary of defense, but also as a former soldier, and a former member of the National Guard: The option to use active-duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort and only in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations now," Esper said. "I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act." Two administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Trump was angry over Esper’s comments and felt like the defense secretary left the impression it was his decision on whether to invoke the Insurrection Act.Asked whether Trump had lost confidence in Esper, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said, "As of right now, Secretary Esper is still Secretary Esper." Trump will let the public know if he loses faith in Esper, she said.The Insurrection Act is an 1807 law that allows the president to dispatch the military or federalize the National Guard in states that are unable to put down an insurrection or are defying federal law. Protests have roiled cities across the USA after the death of George Floyd, an African American man who suffocated last week after a Minneapolis police officer pinned him to the ground. Trump bemoaned governors' "weak" response to the unrest and said Monday in the Rose Garden that he would deploy federal forces where local authorities were not able to stop violent protests. "If a city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them," Trump said.

James Mattis Denounces President Trump, Describes Him as a Threat to the Constitution - James Mattis, the esteemed Marine general who resigned as secretary of defense in December 2018 to protest Donald Trump’s Syria policy, has, ever since, kept studiously silent about Trump’s performance as president. But he has now broken his silence, writing an extraordinary broadside in which he denounces the president for dividing the nation, and accuses him of ordering the U.S. military to violate the constitutional rights of American citizens.  “I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled,” Mattis writes. “The words ‘Equal Justice Under Law’ are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation.” He goes on, “We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.” “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us,” Mattis writes. “We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.”

 Trump intensifies campaign to brand domestic opposition as terrorism - The Trump administration is continuing its campaign for military intervention against the mass protests over police brutality that have swept the United States since the police killing of 46-year-old African American George Floyd on May 25. Attorney General William Barr and FBI Director Christopher Wray held a press conference Thursday afternoon to voice lying claims that left-wing groups bent on violence had “hijacked” the protests, in an effort to manufacture a pretext for repression. Barr advocated the use of anti-terrorism units to apprehend “agitators” whom he accused of “hijacking” demonstrations. The branding of domestic political opposition as terrorism is aimed at delegitimizing and criminalizing all opposition to police violence and the policies of the oligarchy. The level of lying in the Barr press conference would be admired by Nazi spokesman Josef Goebbels, the propaganda chief for Hitler’s “big lie.” Barr conjured up an invented world in which demonstrations involving millions of people in hundreds of cities, large, medium and small, are being manipulated by Antifa, an “organization” that has not a single identified member. He also claimed that “foreign actors” were intervening in the protests, adding the specter of a Russian, Chinese, Iranian or Al Qaeda role. Antifa is little more than a label adopted by youth who protest against ultra-right and white supremacist provocations. As an organized group, it exists mainly in the fevered imaginations of FBI informers and agents—who likely comprise most of its “membership.” If Antifa did not exist (and it may not), Trump, Barr & Co. would be compelled to invent it, as a pretext for the mass repression that they are carrying out against the American working class. Barr advocated the use of existing Joint Terrorist Task Forces against the supposed Antifa threat. The JTTF unite federal and state police agents in a common effort, initially directed against the Islamic fundamentalists who carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City and Washington, but now to be turned against all left-wing opposition to the policies of the Trump administration and its collaborators at the state level. FBI agents working through the JTTF will go out to question people about their political views, in gross violation of the First Amendment, and seek to criminalize their participation in protests. A Department of Homeland Security memorandum, obtained by Politico, cited the need for intelligence agents to be “vigilant in looking for any kind of emerging threat to the homeland,” while making the revealing admission that “some of the observed suspicious behaviors include constitutionally protected activities…”

Trump’s Anti-Blackness Is Overt in Protest Response and Covert in Policymaking – Alexis Goldstein  - Over the weekend, President Trump used his bully pulpit to openly fantasize about the Secret Service siccing “vicious dogs” on demonstrators outside the White House who were protesting police brutality following the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota last week. Trump’s calls for violence against protesters reflect the anti-Blackness of economic policies he and the GOP have relentlessly pursued since 2016, including recent attempts to destroy public sector jobs and to make discrimination in lending nearly impossible to catch.  One in five Black Americans work in the public sector, where they earn more and face less wage disparities than in the private sector. The United States Postal Service (USPS) is one public sector employer that’s long been a center of Black labor organizing, and, subsequently, a target for privatization. In 2006, George W. Bush signed a law that forced the USPS to pre-fund its pensions 75 years into the future. Trump has tried to go even further, threatening back in March to veto the CARES Act should it contain any aid for the USPS, even as it faces bankruptcy.  Black workers shut out of many jobs due to systemic racism have “traditionally found well-paid and stable employment through the post office.”  The Trump administration has also been busy creating new barriers to housing for Black and Brown U.S. residents. The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was enacted in 1977 in response to racist, government-created redlining to ensure banks are not discriminatory in their lending. Many banks ran afoul of the CRA during the last financial crisis, including OneWest, which is why advocacy groups cried foul when Trump chose former OneWest executive Joseph Otting to run the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a banking regulator. Otting oversaw a dramatic overhaul of the CRA, allowing banks to reduce their lending to low-income communities, a move that faced wide condemnation by civil rights groups. After pushing through these changes that will almost certainly further widen the racial wealth gap and exacerbate the problems of banking while Black, Otting resigned mid-pandemic, telling staff he planned to play lots of golf and tennis. Otting’s lasting legacy will be his efforts to make discrimination in mortgages and bank lending more likely — hopefully it won’t be a lasting legacy; the National Community Reinvestment Coalition has already announced it will sue to block the rule.  Trump is living up well to the legacy of his father, who routinely denied housing to Black people. But he’s also bringing back the same discriminatory political targeting used by white supremacist politicians like Bull Connor and Walter E. Headley.   Trump labeled the Minneapolis protesters “THUGS” and quoted Headley’s statement that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” in a tweet that was later censored by Twitter for “glorifying violence.” Headley was Miami’s police chief from 1948-1968, overseeing two decades of anti-Black violence in Miami including the use of guns, dogs and stop-and-frisk.  Trump continues to celebrate brutality in his response to the uprisings following the police murder of George Floyd — retweeting calls to “use overwhelming force.” His policymaking and those he’s deputized in his administration use similar force to perpetuate violence through anti-Black policies.

European media outlets fear bitter class struggles in the US - “The image of the United States as the centre of Western civilisation is collapsing before our eyes. Will it be possible to rebuild the old image again?,” commented the Polish daily newspaper Rzeczpospolita on Tuesday with reference to the recent events in the US. This sums up the fear of substantial sections of the European ruling class. The claim that capitalist private property and the market economy provided the basis for freedom and democracy, and that altogether this amounted to “Western civilisation” has served as the ideological cement for capitalist rule in Europe—and the United States played not an insignificant part in this. In Western Europe and Germany in particular, it was the US through its economic power and democratic traditions that helped revive the bourgeoisie following its discrediting due to its crimes during the war. In 1990, the American model, although somewhat tarnished even then, played an important role in Eastern Europe in selling the restoration of capitalism and its horrific social consequences as a step in the direction of freedom and democracy. Reading through the European comments on Monday’s events, one senses that they are not particularly troubled by Donald Trump’s efforts to establish a presidential dictatorship. Rather, they fear the president’s provocative actions could provoke resistance and class struggles that will endanger the capitalist system and spread to Europe. After all, the social and political situation is no less explosive there. With a few exceptions, the comments acknowledged that the nationwide protests are not just directed against racism, but are motivated by social oppression and exploitation and are being joined by people of all races and ethnicities. They accuse Trump of dividing instead of reconciling. By contrast, they hardly say a word about the mobilisation of the military and the preparations for dictatorship connected with this. The Norwegian tabloid newspaper Verdens Gang wrote, “Once again it becomes clear how unequal US society is. These problems run deeper than Trump, but the US has never needed a unifying president more than now.” Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung commented, “When the country goes up in flames, the president ought to mediate and unify.” But Trump doesn’t want to and cannot do so. He is “incapable of protecting and calming his compatriots.”

Videos show NYPD cruisers ramming into protesters behind a barricade and sending bodies flying = New York Police Department cruisers were seen on videos ramming down protesters behind a barricade, sending bodies flying. The disturbing videos showed a crowd of protesters surrounding an NYPD cruiser and propping up a barrier in front of it, while throwing what appeared to be water bottles, garbage, and pylons at the car. A second police cruiser can then be seen driving up along the first car. Suddenly, both cars begin slowly driving into the crowd, before abruptly speeding up and sending protesters scattering. The first cruiser then suddenly rams down the barricade, while the people behind it go flying. Screams could be heard over top of the police sirens. The incident allegedly took place at the intersection of Flatbush Ave. and St. Mark's St. just three blocks southeast of the Barclay's Center, where last night's Brooklyn protests were centered. It was unclear whether any of the protesters were injured. The NYPD did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment on the videos. The videos quickly began circulating over social media and drawing outrage. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio described the incident as "troubling" in an interview with NY1, but added that the protesters had been "surrounding" the cruiser and suggested they were to blame. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez weighed in, urging de Blasio to bring the officers involved to justice — and not just with "internal reviews." "NYPD officers just drove an SUV into a crowd of human beings. They could've killed them, &we don't know how many they injured," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. "NO ONE gets to slam an SUV through a crowd of human beings."

 Journalists blinded, injured, arrested covering George Floyd protests -As protests across the U.S. raged over police brutality and the killing of George Floyd, police forces aimed to disperse demonstrators. In some incidents, members of the news media appeared to be targeted, by police and protesters alike. “Targeted attacks on journalists, media crews and news organizations covering the demonstrations show a complete disregard for their critical role in documenting issues of public interest and are an unacceptable attempt to intimidate them,” said Carlos Martínez de la Serna, program director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. “Authorities in cities across the U.S. need to instruct police not to target journalists and ensure they can report safely on the protests without fear of injury or retaliation.” The CPJ said it is investigating reports of attacks and arrests in Louisville, Kentucky, Las Vegas, Atlanta and Washington, D.C.U.S. police have arrested or attacked journalists more than 110 times since May 28, according to the Nieman Foundation for Journalism,President Donald Trump has verbally attacked the media throughout his term. Saturday afternoon, he tweeted a message that "Fake News is the Enemy of the People." Sunday, he accused the media of "doing everything within their power to foment hatred and anarchy."Publisher of USA TODAY and president of news for the USA TODAY Network Maribel Wadsworth, editor in chief of USA TODAY Nicole Carroll and vice president of local news for the USA TODAY Network Amalie Nash called on Sunday for attacks on journalists to end. "We must be able to do our jobs safely," they wrote. "We call for an immediate end to law enforcement harassment and targeting of journalists who are clearly identified, not interfering in police activity and just doing their jobs: Bringing truth to the American people."

2 National Guardsmen Struck By Lightning During Washington DC Protest - In a freak occurrence during Wednesday night's protests, two National Guardsmen were badly injured after being struck by lightning near the White House, officials said early Friday. The two service members were struck shortly after midnight within the Lafayette Park perimeter, where protests over the death of George Floyd continued for a seventh day (note: it was the ninth day of demonstrations in Minneapolis).  Both officers were taken to a nearby hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.Video of the aftermath went viral.Shortly after midnight, #DCsBravest received a call for a report of 2 military personnel suffering the effect s of a nearby lighting strike within the Lafayette Park perimeter. Both were transported with non life threatening injuries. pic.twitter.com/JvwRIHk74k— DC Fire and EMS #StayHomeDC (@dcfireems) June 5, 2020Despite the heavy rain and flood warnings, a core group of protesters returned Thursday night despite the weather after Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser rescinded a planned curfew after there were zero arrests the night before. The DC area saw some pretty intense lightning during last night's storm.

Ten thousand people have been arrested across the US as protests against police violence continue to expand - More than 10,000 people have been arrested in the US during the protests against police violence as of Thursday, the tenth day of demonstrations in a row since George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police on Memorial Day. In a tally taken of recorded arrests across the country, the Associated Press reported that the number of protesters arrested has grown by the hundreds each day. The news agency reported that one quarter of the arrests have been made in Los Angeles followed by New York City, which has 2,000 arrests, Dallas, and Philadelphia. The AP analysis also showed that the majority of the arrests are for “low-level offenses such as curfew violations and failure to disperse.” Exposing as false the claims by President Donald Trump and Democratic politicians such as Minnesota Governor Tim Walz that the majority of the protesters are outside agitators, AP reported that, during a 24-hour period over the weekend in Minneapolis, “41 of the 52 people cited with protest-related arrests had Minnesota driver’s licenses.” Additionally, in the US capital, AP reported, “86 percent of the more than 400 people arrested as of Wednesday afternoon were from Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia.” The actual number of those detained by law enforcement is unknown. “The protesters are often placed in zip-ties and hauled away from the scene in buses,” the report said, “at a time when many of the nation’s jails are dealing with coronavirus outbreaks.”

   US Federal Bureau of Prisons implements full lockdown amid mass protests across the country - The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has placed its facilities on full lockdown as protests triggered by the police murder of George Floyd have spread across the United States and internationally. The BOP runs all federal prison facilities which house nearly 13 percent of all prisoners in the US. This is the first action of this kind since 1995, when a series of prison rebellions beginning in Talladega, Alabama engulfed the system. On Sunday, the BOP sent an announcement to its employees stating, “The BOP has implemented a national lockdown as of 4 p.m. due to the ongoing unrest and riots nationwide.” It continued, “We will assume lockdown protocols for everyone’s safety and until it is calm around the nation.” The BOP oversees 122 prisons across the country with 165,575 inmates and 36,846 employees. This action coincides with an increasingly acute health crisis within the entire US prison system due to the spread of COVID-19. As of May 27, in all US prisons and jails, at least 34,584 people have tested positive for the virus and 455 have died. In BOP facilities alone, there have been 5,239 cases and 64 deaths. Given the widespread lack of testing, these figures are likely an underestimations of the virus’ true toll. Despite a widely-publicized release order by US Attorney General William Barr on April 23, since the beginning of the pandemic only 3,000 BOP inmates have been released. This mirrors slow releases across the entire US prison system since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. As federal law enforcement agents, BOP personnel have also been intimately involved in the violent and unconstitutional attacks by the capitalist state on protesters across the US in recent days. On Tuesday, Barr directed the BOP to send prison riot teams to Miami and Washington, D.C. As early as 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning, heavily armed riot teams were seen guarding roads approaching the White House in Washington, D.C. The federal prison lockdown does not only condemn thousands of inmates to indefinite isolation in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Politically, it exposes the ruling class’s fear of the ongoing international mass protest movement. As the Trump administration intensifies its criminal repression of protesters, it fears that conditions in prisons and the mass sympathy for the strike movement amongst US prisoners will combine and lead to a huge wave of prison rebellions. In conditions where the class lines that divide society are becoming increasingly clear and hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets, the ruling class is not willing to take any chances with its prisons. The potential for prisoner unrest has been exacerbated by their criminal mistreatment during the COVID-19 pandemic.

White nationalist group posing as antifa called for violence on Twitter - A Twitter account claiming to belong to a national “antifa” organization and pushing violent rhetoric related to ongoing protests has been linked to the white nationalist group Identity Evropa, according to a Twitter spokesperson. The spokesperson said the account violated the company's platform manipulation and spam policy, specifically the creation of fake accounts. Twitter suspended the account after a tweet that incited violence. The antifa movement — a network of loosely organized radical groups who use direct action to fight the far-right and fascism — has been targeted by President Donald Trump as the force behind some of the violence and property destruction seen at some protests, though little evidence has been provided for such claims. Other misinformation and misleading claims spread across Twitter on Sunday night and into Monday related to the protests. Two hashtags that trended worldwide on Twitter falsely claimed that there was a "cover-up" or a "blackout" of protests in Washington, D.C., overnight. Both appeared to insinuate that protesters have been silenced in some way, perhaps by a secret internet blackout. NetBlocks, a nonprofit group monitoring worldwide internet access, found no indication of a mass-scale internet disruption in the Washington area overnight or in the last 48 hours. Journalists covering the protests also took to Twitter to disprove the hoax. "A lot of people are asking me about a possible #dcblackout. I've been out near the White House since 4 am and haven't experienced any outage," tweeted Victoria Sanchez, a reporter for WJLA, the local ABC affiliate, adding that her colleagues had posted multiple updates throughout the night.

3 self-proclaimed members of the far-right 'boogaloo' movement were arrested on domestic terrorism charges for trying to spark violence during protests - Three former US servicemen and self-proclaimed members of the far-right "boogaloo" movement were arrested on domestic terrorism charges and accused of carrying unregistered firearms and trying to spark violence during protests against police brutality.According to the charging document, which was reviewed by Business Insider, the three defendants previously served in the US Navy, US Army, and US Air Force.The filing also noted that the men "self-identified as part of the 'Boogaloo' movement," which prosecutors described as "a term used by extremists to signify a coming civil war and/or fall of civilization." According to the Associated Press, all three men are white.According to the Clark Country Detention Center records, Stephen Parshall, 35, Andrew Lynam Jr., 23, and William Loomis, 40, are each being held on $1 million bond. A preliminary hearing will be held on June 17.According to the federal filing, each defendant faces two federal charges, including conspiracy to damage and destroy by using fire and explosives, and possession of an unregistered firearm.Federal prosecutors say the men planned to sow discord at protests in Nevada in early April. They first assembled at a rally to reopen the US economy in Las Vegas, where, according to the filing, one of the men said the group "was not for joking around and that it was for people who wanted to violently overthrow the United States government." The filing stated that all members of the group possessed firearms, including "pistols and rifles, including variations of AR-15's." It also alleged that the three men met several times in May to discuss targeting multiple places to place an "economic burden on businesses and the government."

Searching Twitter For "Racist" Returns Donald Trump As Top Result -  For some strange reason, when one types the word "racist" into Twitter's people search, Donald Trump is the top result - a discovery made days after Trump took action against biased social media platforms.  According to The Independent, Twitter search results are affected by the data they collect on you - including political leaning and your interests, however their search of the word in a private browsing session using Brave browser was the same on both iPhone and Android app.Other users on the social media site have reported the same result.It is not immediately clear why Twitter’s search algorithm promotes the result. Other results in the “  People” section when searching for the word “racist” include accounts who have mentioned the word in their display names, such as the “Yes, You’re Racist” account which raises awareness of racial issues. -The IndependentTwitter claims it's unintentional - explaining that when an account is mentioned frequently alongside certain terms it can affect search recommendations.While unclear how long this has been going on, the discovery comes just days after Trump signed an executive order which chips away at the "liability shield" contained within Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which protects neutral social media companies from being sued over content posted by their users. Last week Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) told Breitbart:

Trump is desperate to punish Big Tech but has no good way to do it - Donald Trump is mad at Twitter, Facebook, and other big technology companies, and in an Oval Office statement on Thursday, he pledged to do something about it. "A small handful of social media monopolies controls a vast portion of all public and private communications in the United States," he said. "They've had unchecked power to censor, restrict, edit, shape, hide, alter, virtually any form of communication between private citizens and large public audiences." After his comments, Trump signed an executive order designed to bring social media companies to heel. But Trump has a problem: US law doesn't give the president much actual authority over technology companies. Indeed, the First Amendment arguably prohibits the federal government from second-guessing the editorial decisions of private companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google. Over the last year, Trump's advisors have been trying to cobble together a package of initiatives that would respond to Trump's desire for action against Big Tech while staying within the bounds of the law. On Thursday, the president finally signed the result of their efforts. It directs various federal agencies to take steps that penalize big technology platforms for perceived political bias. Will this strategy work? We put that question to legal scholars and policy insiders in order to game out how the proposed executive order is likely to unfold in practice. While Trump portrays the executive order as the start of a titanic battle between the White House and big technology companies, the practical results may be much less dramatic.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Says Mark Zuckerberg Is 'Protecting' White Supremacists on Facebook - Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took aim at Mark Zuckerberg after the Facebook founder and CEO critiqued Twitter's decision to put a fact-check on President Donald Trump's tweet for the first time this week. "Zuckerberg is not worried about being bullied by Trump," Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive Democrat from New York, tweeted on Thursday. "He is worried that Facebook's PR operation is falling apart as it's exposed that their platform relies on white supremacists & disinformation peddlers to be successful," she wrote "They aren't ignoring them. They're protecting them." Newsweek reached out to Facebook for comment, but they had not responded by the time of publication. Ocasio-Cortez later re-tweeted a video from an October House Financial Services Committee oversight hearing, during which she interrogated Zuckerberg directly about Facebook's policies regarding white supremacist content and fact-checking. "Facebook's ties to white supremacy-linked orgs and sympathy for disinformation campaigns is not a small thing," she tweeted. "It is high level decision making, and appears to come from the top." Zuckerberg on Wednesday criticized rival social media platform Twitter for placing a fact-check on two tweets sent by Trump that shared false information about mail-in voting and voter fraud. The president has repeatedly said, without evidence, that expanding mail-in voting will lead to widespread voter fraud and that Democrats will use absentee ballots to "rig" the election. "We have a different policy, I think, than Twitter on this," Zuckerberg told Fox News in an interview.

Zuckerberg Leaves Race Justice Leader Frustrated After Call - Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg hosted a nearly hour-long video call with U.S. civil rights leaders to discuss ongoing issues around his company’s policies as they relate to race, elections and other topics. But participants were left disappointed, according to Color of Change President Rashad Robinson, who concluded that Zuckerberg can’t fully grasp the change they seek. In an interview with Bloomberg News immediately after the call, Robinson said that “the problem with my ongoing conversations with Mark, is that I feel like I spent a lot of time, and my colleagues spent a lot of time, explaining to him why these things are a problem, and I think he just very much lacks the ability to understand it.” These comments come at a time when the U.S. is roiled by daily protests for racial justice triggered by the death of George Floyd, an African-American man, while in police custody in Minneapolis. Facebook has come in for criticism from within its own ranks, with an upswell of dismay among employees after the CEO adopted a hands-off approach to messages posted by President Donald Trump that seemed to threaten violence with the words “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Robinson said he wanted Zuckerberg to take concrete action against the post; ideally to take it off the site, but at a minimum, to mark or flag it in some way, as Twitter did, and at least make an effort to adjudicate the internet. “The problem with Facebook is they have a policy problem,” Robinson said. “You can’t have a conversation with Donald Trump, and leave up his Tweet on Facebook platforms talking about shooting protesters.” Robinson said some Facebook employees have reached out, “saying Black Lives Matter, saying I’m going to give money, but having your policies actually hurt black people, people will know the difference.” Some of the company’s senior staff have taken to Twitter to make their discontent public and some employees -- working from home because of the pandemic -- held a virtual walkout, deciding not to log in to work on Monday in protest. Zuckerberg defended his position to leave Trump’s post up without commentary by saying on Friday, “We think people need to know if the government is planning to deploy force.”

The Battle Over Free Speech Online Is a Volcano That’s Ready to Blow - Marshall Auerback - Donald Trump threatened to close Twitter down a day after the social media giant marked his tweets with a fact-check warning label for the first time. The president followed this threat up with an executive order that would encourage federal regulators to allow tech companies to be held liable for the comments, videos, and other content posted by users on their platforms. As is often the case with this president, his impetuous actions were more than a touch self-serving and legally dubious absent a congressionally legislated regulatory framework.Despite himself, Trump does raise an interesting issue—namely whether and how we should regulate the social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as the search engines (Google, Bing) that disseminate their content. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Actlargely immunizes internet platforms from any liability as a publisher or speaker for third-party content (in contrast to conventional media).The statute directed the courts to not hold providers liable for removing content, even if the content is constitutionally protected. On the other hand, it doesn’t direct the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to enforce anything, which calls into question whether the FCC does in fact have the existing legal authority to regulate social media (see this article by Harold Feld, senior vice president of the think tank Public Knowledge, for more elaboration on this point). Nor is it clear that vigorous antitrust remedies via the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) would solve the problem, even though FTC Chairman Joe Simons suggested last year that breaking up major technology platforms could be the right remedy to rein in dominant companies and restore competition.In spite of Simons’ enthusiasm for undoing past mergers, it is unclear how breaking up the social media behemoths and turning them into smaller entities would automatically produce competition that would simultaneously solve problems like fake news, revenge porn, cyberbullying, or hate speech. In fact, it might produce the opposite result, much as the elimination of the “fairness doctrine” laid the foundations for the emergence of a multitude of hyper-partisan talk radio shows and later, Fox News. Given the current conditions, the Silicon Valley-based social media giants have rarely had to face consequences for the dissemination of misinformation, or outright distortion (in the form of fake news), and have profited mightily from it.

Trump says he will move Republican convention out of North Carolina -  President Trump on Tuesday night signaled he will move the Republican National Convention out of North Carolina after the state and the GOP clashed over potential restrictions due to the coronavirus. “Had long planned to have the Republican National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, a place I love. Now, @NC_Governor Roy Cooper and his representatives refuse to guarantee that we can have use of the Spectrum Arena,” Trump tweeted. “Governor Cooper is still in Shelter-In-Place Mode, and not allowing us to occupy the arena as originally anticipated and promised,” he continued, saying the party is “now forced to seek another State to host the 2020 Republican National Convention.” The decision capped weeks of tension between Republican officials and Cooper over whether the massive event could take place without limits on crowd size and requirements that guests wear masks due to the coronavirus pandemic. The convention, which is scheduled to begin Aug. 24, typically attracts thousands of people from across the country. Convention organizers said they wanted 19,000 delegates, staff, volunteers, elected officials and guests to attend the event. Health experts have cautioned against holding large gatherings as the coronavirus outbreak persists. Similar concerns have increased the likelihood that the Democratic convention may take place virtually, but Trump has been adamant he wants an in-person event to mark his nomination for reelection. Cooper said in a letter to Republican National Committee (RNC) leaders earlier Tuesday that it was a “necessity" to plan for a "scaled-down convention with fewer people, social distancing and face coverings." “With the Nation, the State of North Carolina and the City of Charlotte still under states of emergency it’s important to conduct the RNC convention accordingly,” Cooper wrote to RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and Republican National Convention President Marcia Lee Kelly.

Trump gives U.S. agencies power to fast-track big infrastructure projects -  (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order that gives federal agencies emergency powers to fast-track major energy and other infrastructure projects by overriding environmental permitting requirements. The White House said the order was a way to help the economy rebound from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and improve infrastructure. It calls for public works and highway projects as well as energy projects like pipelines and terminals to be expedited. It instructs the Interior, Agriculture and Defense Departments to accelerate projects on federal lands. Trump has been a vocal advocate of fossil fuels as president and has sought to roll back regulations slowing their development and reduce state powers to block projects for environmental reasons. Earlier this year, the Trump administration proposed to streamline the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a bedrock environmental regulation that creates time consuming environmental reviews and public feedback requirements for major infrastructure projects. The proposal is going through a public comment and review period. Critics said Trump’s order comes at the expense of African American and other minorities who tend to live in communities directly affected by major energy infrastructure. “Gutting NEPA takes away one of the few tools communities of color have to protect themselves and make their voices heard on federal decisions impacting them,” said Democratic Congressman Raul Grijalva, chair of the House natural resources committee.

Where Is Ghislane Maxwell Now?  - Jeffrey Epstein is dead, but the accused pedophile financier is still surrounded by multiple mysteries. The source of his vast wealth still isn’t entirely known, nor have rumors that he may have trafficked women and girls to some of the world’s most powerful men been resolved. But one of the biggest lingering unknowns in the story is the status of Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime companion, who’s been alleged by Epstein survivors to have recruited young women and girls into the multimillionaire’s circle and participated in their abuse. Maxwell has denied all accusations of being involved in abuse, and she’s never faced criminal charges. But it’s hard to know much more than that when it comes to her recent years, because no one knows exactly where she is.“I've heard she's in Brazil, I've heard she's in France, I've heard she's in California,” Lisa Bryant, director of the Netflix docuseries Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich, told Esquire.“Who knows where she is, really?” Maxwell is the youngest of Elisabeth and Robert Maxwell’s nine children, and was born in France in 1961. The family lived in an English mansion, and her father was the founder of a media empire and served in Parliament. Maxwell attended one of the UK’s most exclusive boarding schools and then Oxford University. As members of British high society, Maxwell mingled with some of the nation’s most celebrated families, and became friends with Prince Andrew. She moved to the United States the year of her father’s death, and soon met Jeffrey Epstein.  In 2000, she moved into a $4.95 million Manhattan townhouse purchased "by an anonymous limited liability company, with an address that matches the office of J. Epstein & Co.   She was his companion for years, managing his households and introducing him to her society friends.  According to a lawsuit she filed this year in hopes of winning funds from the late financier’s estate, “While under Epstein’s employ, Maxwell was responsible for managing Epstein’s properties located in New York, Paris, Florida, New Mexico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.”“During the course of their relationship, including while Maxwell was in Epstein’s employ,” the lawsuit reads, “Epstein promised Maxwell that he would support her financially. Epstein made these promises to Maxwell repeatedly, both in writing and in conversation.”  Though multiple survivors have alleged that Maxwell participated in Epstein’s alleged crimes, she’s never been criminally charged. One thing that could stymie potential efforts to level charges against Maxwell is the infamous 2008 plea deal that Epstein struck with the US Attorney for Miami, Alexander Acosta, which found him serving just 13 months in prison after initially facing charges that could have garnered him a life sentence. Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich producer Joe Berlinger described the deal to Esquire as “unprecedented, unheard of sweetheart deal” that “included a non-prosecution agreement for named and unnamed co-conspirators.”

 Judges Try To Balance Legal Rights And Courtroom Health - It’s tough getting people to report for jury duty in normal times. It’s even harder during a pandemic. The kidnapping and rape trial of Kenneth Weathersby Jr. opened Feb. 24 in Vallejo, California, but three weeks later two jurors refused to show up after the state ordered people to stay home. Then the state’s chief justice stopped jury trials for 60 days, later extending the suspension into June. Eventually, Solano County Superior Court Judge Robert Bowers had had enough. At 10:24 a.m. on May 20, Bowers called the jurors who were left ― 11, and an alternate ― into Courtroom 101. Bailiffs offered each of the six men and six women a squirt of hand sanitizer before showing them to their seats. Four were led into the jury box, the rest to the gallery, with yellow tape covering groups of three seats to enforce social distancing. “Citizens have a right to trials,” the tall, furrow-browed Bowers told the jurors, pulling down his blue mask to speak. “We have to find a way going forward.” Solano was the first California county to resume a jury trial. Three others — Contra Costa, Santa Clara and Monterey — have notified Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye that they are resuming trials in the coming weeks, despite rising COVID-19 infection rates in the state. In reopening, judges are trying to balance the constitutional rights of the accused to a speedy trial against the safety of jurors, bailiffs, clerks, attorneys, court reporters and others who work in their courthouses. But courtrooms can be snug. Jury rooms almost always are. It will be very hard for people to keep the recommended distance, even as they abstain from the usual buttonholing, emoting and hugging in courthouse hallways. Judges are conferring with health departments to limit the risks. Some courts, but not all, are requiring masks. Some are checking people’s temperatures before allowing them to enter the courthouse. Others may install plexiglass or plastic barriers. Gone, for now at least, are the days when jury duty began with scores of prospective jurors packed into halls and waiting rooms. Courthouses in Contra Costa and Monterey are staggering the times and days of the week when potential jurors report, and calling only 50 people at a time to prevent large groups from gathering. Some are adding temperature checks to their usual security screenings.

Retail Investors Continue To Pile Into Bankrupt Hertz - Here's one for what's left of fans of the Efficient Market Hypothesis: having stampeded into Hertz stock as it was plunging over the past three months, one would expect this bizarre BTFDing to end after the auto rental giant filed for bankruptcy. After all, with the company set to equitize billions in debt, there will be zero left for existing equityholders. One would be wrong: not only has the retail stampede of Robin Hood traders into bankrupt HTZ not moderated, but in the week since the company sought bankruptcy protection, the number of Robinhood holders of the worthless stock has increased by a 50%, hitting a record high 60K according to Robin Track. And while one can, in theory, explain this ludicrous and relentless euphoria to the perpetual BTFD "strategy" spawned by central banks, which now step in every single time there is a modest market pullback, at this point one just has to sit back and laugh at the idiocy that Powell's "market" has become.  Or maybe retail investors will have the last laugh after all, as Powell will one day shock the algos and the veteran Robinhood millennial traders, and announce it will buy Hertz stock. After all, as we first reported last weekend, it already owns defaulted HTZ bonds via the various junk ETFs it has been buying in recent weeks. At this point, Powell may as well go all in.

Extraordinary popular delusions: Endless bull markets and mining on the moon - Fortune-telling remains a mainstay among the financial elite and the lowliest retail investor on the planet alike. The U.S. Federal Reserve Bank has a sort of running fortune-telling tool called GDPNow that takes up-to-date indicators and plugs them into its formula for projecting the current direction of U.S. GDP. GDPNow is revised every few days as new values for its many components become available. The latest reading as of May 29 is minus 51.2 percent. That's an annualized number that is seasonally adjusted. It's a number that suggests that economic activity may have fallen at least as much since January as it did in the first four years of the Great Depression (1929 to 1933). At the bottom of the depression in 1933 the U.S. economy had contracted by about 30 percent. Unemployment in the United States reached 25 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial average has lost almost 90 percent of its value. The current official U.S. unemployment rate at the end of April was 14.7 percent. Expect higher numbers for May. Some 40 million people have filed for unemployment benefits in the last 10 weeks. No one has ever seen anything like it. The pandemic behind these numbers continues to dominate the news. In the face of this economic disaster the U.S. stock market first crashed by about 35 percent and now has risen to within about 10 percent of all-time highs. The explanation is that the United States and the world are about to reverse all the damage that the pandemic inflicted on the economy and go on to greater heights. Investors know this, and the stock market is a discounting mechanism. That's fancy Wall Street talk for fortune-telling mechanism, one that captures all relevant future developments. One could ask why the stock market didn't take into account the impact of the coronavirus pandemic until it was upon us; but that would ruin the story! Another explanation is a blizzard of new brokerage accounts opened by inexperienced investors this year who are throwing money at the stock market as they sit home with little to do but watch cable news and CNBC. They are apparently buying the quick recovery story and for as long as they have money to throw at stocks, the markets may stay aloft. But then there's that nagging GDPNow number that has done nothing but trend downward dramatically for the entire month of May. It's hard to imagine that conditions have turned around or even stabilized at this point.

 Citi warns markets are out of step with grim reality - Citigroup said financial markets were “way ahead of reality” with tougher times to come, warning corporate clients that they should raise as much money as they could before the pandemic’s true cost is factored in by investors. “We definitely feel that the markets are way ahead of reality. We really are telling every client to tap the market if they can because we think the pricing now couldn’t get any better,” Manolo Falco, investment banking co-head at Citigroup, told the Financial Times. “As the second quarter comes along and we start seeing the pain, and the collateral effects of that, we think this is going to be much tougher than it looks.” His comments came at the end of a week when stock markets largely rallied even as millions of businesses around the world remained shut and economies lurched towards their worst recessions in memory. “Markets are pricing a V [shaped recovery], everyone’s coming back to work, and this is going to be fine,” Mr Falco said. “I don’t think it’s going to be that easy quite frankly.” Investors’ optimism led highly rated companies to raise a record $1tn of debt in the first five months of the year, putting investment banks such as Mr Falco’s on course for a big jump in debt capital markets revenues in the second quarter of the year compared with 2019. Mr Falco said the demand for funding could prove to be a “great opportunity” for Citi. Last week senior executives at some of the biggest banks also predicted another strong quarter for trading. This was especially true at JPMorgan Chase, where investment bank boss Daniel Pinto said trading revenues in the second quarter could be up as much as 50 per cent compared with a year earlier. Mr Falco was more circumspect on the prospect of a wave of activist investment in the aftermath of the coronavirus crisis. Low asset prices can tempt activist investors to buy into companies on the cheap and then look for ways to make them more profitable, often by cutting costs and jobs. “You gotta be careful though because an activist can become very quickly a focus of governments if they really step in too hard at a time when people, what they want is to protect employment and to actually get things going in the economy,” Mr Falco said. “We’ve got to be careful because in some cases . . . maybe those [investments] are at the wrong time and could create a lot of anger.”

 ‘Bankrupt in Just Two Weeks’—Individual Investors Get Burned by Collapse of Complex Securities – WSJ -When William Mark decided to get back into investing after the 2008 financial crisis, he looked past stocks and bonds. Needing to play catch-up with his retirement portfolio, the piping engineer decided to bet on a complicated product he hoped would deliver double-digit annual returns. It worked so well—earning him 18% a year in dividends, on average—that he eventually poured $800,000 into the investments, called leveraged exchange-traded notes, or ETNs. When the coronavirus pandemic hit, he lost almost every penny. “I’m 67 years old and I’m basically bankrupt in just two weeks,” Mr. Mark said. The pandemic-fueled economic downturn has sparked turmoil in nearly every financial market. It has taken a particularly brutal toll on investors like Mr. Mark, who wagered on the roughly $7 trillion market for structured products: complex instruments that include ETNs, options-based strategies and certificates of deposits whose returns are tied to stocks or currencies.  Mr. Mark bought a leveraged ETN issued by UBS that bet on companies that invest in the mortgage market, known as mortgage real-estate investment trusts. For others, the search for income led to investments in companies that bundled small business loans or oil pipeline rights, their payouts inflated by borrowed money.  Banks and brokerages advertised them as offering payouts both steadier and more lucrative than plain-vanilla investments such as bonds or index-tracking funds. Most professional money managers avoided them. For many less sophisticated retail buyers, the market blowup taught the kind of painful lesson that comes with just about every economic crisis: There is no such thing as an investment that is both safe and highly profitable. The market’s collapse punished some banks that sold the products, which are considered derivatives. Société Générale, BNP Paribas SA and Natixis SA each lost more than $200 million on their structured-products businesses this year.

IMF Urges Stock Investors to Pay More Attention to Climate Risks - Investors worldwide are underestimating the financial risks from climate change, and companies need to start disclosing their exposure, according to the International Monetary Fund. As global temperatures rise, severe climate events may impact companies owning assets in areas hit by drought, floods, wildfires and storms, the fund said Friday in the latest chapter released from its Global Financial Stability Report. At present, asset prices fail to reflect the risk of extreme weather events that may cost $1 trillion annually starting in 2050, the IMF said. “Equity valuations as of 2019 do not appear to reflect the predicted changes in physical risk under various climate change scenarios,” IMF researchers said in the report, which included an analysis of equity markets in 68 developed and developing countries over the past 50 years. The IMF also flagged transition risks, as governments and markets move toward a carbon-neutral economy. Global temperatures have risen 1.1 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times and at current levels of greenhouse gas emissions are set to rise by 3 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, according to the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Such an increase could unleash irreversible environmental events --from drought to sea-level rise-- and make some areas of the planet uninhabitable. The number of extreme weather events including droughts, wildfires, floods and storms have jumped fourfold since the 1980s, climbing to an average 200 per year for the past 20 years, according to the IMF report. The cost of these climate disasters has also spiked, rising above $120 billion annually from $22 billion in the 1980s, while holding steady at 0.2% of global gross domestic product for the past 30 years. Still, the impact of extreme weather events on stock prices has been generally modest, the IMF report acknowledged, as investors largely discount the potential risks.The fund acknowledged there are several hurdles: Equity investors, who tend to be focused on the short-term, face “a daunting informational challenge” with research that’s long-term by nature. There’s also no regulation or standard method for corporations to disclose climate risks in many countries.

Why The World’s Largest Asset Manager Has Seen Its Shares Soar - At a time when the majority of Wall Street’s mega banks are just starting to buy into the green investing ethos, BlackRock has quickly established itself as the purveyor of ESG and renewables investing. BlackRock owns one of the largest global renewable power platforms, with $5.5 billion in equity assets under management (AUM). In January, the firm pledged to grow its ESG and green portfolio from $90 billion to more than a trillion dollars in the space of a decade. BlackRock now appears desperate to be seen as the kingpin of the green drive, even recently bowing to the demands of Canadian oil and gas producer Ovintiv (NYSE:OVV) shareholders, a move it probably would have considered infra dig just a few years back. And the Fed and the investing universe are loving it. BLK shares have been on a tear, surging 21% over the past two weeks and 8.8% in the year-to-date after the company clinched a deal with the Fed to run a junk-bond purchase program as part of its multi-pronged stimulus effort, never mind the fact that BlackRock happens to be one of the biggest issuers of said ETFs. BlackRock has a similar equities-buying program with the Central Bank of Israel. Even PNC Financial Services Group (NYSE:PNC) recent sale of its 22% stake in BlackRock worth $17 billion due to fears of a torrid U.S. economy was not enough to stop the BLK momentum with large institutional investors from as far off as the Middle East scooping up the shares. In contrast, the Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSEARCA:XLF), an ETF that holds Wall Street bank stocks such as JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM), Bank of America (NYSE:BAC),Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC), Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and Citigroup (NYSE:C), is down 22% in the year-to-date.

CFPB proposes rule to facilitate Libor transition for creditors — The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has proposed an amendment to Truth in Lending Act regulations to address the sunset of the London interbank offered rate scheduled for the end of 2021. Specifically, the proposal would update Regulation Z — under which lenders must disclose certain terms to borrowers or customers with open-end products — to require creditors to issue change-in-terms notices to inform customers of which new interest rate benchmark they will transition to. Credit card issuers and providers of home equity lines would be able to start using a replacement index on or after March 15, 2021, “if certain conditions are met,” the CFPB said Thursday. Although the bureau did not specify which interest rate benchmark creditors should adopt in anticipation of the move away from Libor, the agency proposed that the new benchmark should have “historical fluctuations that are substantially similar and that the new rate selected is substantially similar” to Libor.The CFPB said that the secured overnight financing rate as well as the prime rate published in The Wall Street Journal would meet those qualifications.Additionally, the agency issued guidance in the form of frequently asked questions on the transition away from Libor and published an updated version of its "Consumer Handbook on Adjustable Rate Mortgages" that will require creditors to provide a disclosure outlining a replacement index to Libor.

Fed urged to widen eligibility for pandemic loan programs - — Senators raised concerns Tuesday that two Federal Reserve credit facilities meant to aid localities and midsize businesses hit by the coronavirus pandemic will not work as intended because of eligibility restrictions.At a Senate Banking Committee hearing, members of both parties said thresholds for obtaining aid from the Municipal Liquidity Facility and Main Street Lending Program could hamper the recovery for middle-market firms as well as for state and local governments.“Excessive restrictions not only risk ineffectiveness for the Main Street Lending facilities, but also for other facilities, as well,” said Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho. The two facilities are among roughly a dozen credit backstops the Fed unveiled to combat the economic effects of the pandemic, which combine the central bank's preexisting emergency powers with added funding under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act enacted in March.Tthe Municipal Liquidity Facility and the Main Street Lending Program were funded through money appropriated by the CARES Act; the law also specifically mandated the creation of the Main Street program.Crapo said he was concerned that the minimum population threshold for communities eligibile for the Fed’s municipal facility, which was lowered from 500,000 to 250,000, will still cut off small counties and municipalities. “The Fed updated the term sheet for the Municipal Liquidity Facility to lower the population thresholds for cities and counties, despite not being included in the CARES Act at all,” Crapo said. “While this was a step in the right direction, it still leaves many smaller and rural communities without direct access to financial resources, including no cities or counties in Idaho.”Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., said the loan terms associated with the Municipal Liquidity Facility would prevent localities from utilizing it.“You suggested the Fed’s Municipal Liquidity Facility hasn’t been particularly successful so far possibly because the terms are too tight,” Menendez said to American Action Forum President Doug Holtz-Eakin, a witness at the hearing. “Currently any loans under the Municipal Liquidity Facility would have to be paid back in three years. … Wouldn’t a longer term make more economic sense?”

Federal Reserve expands MLF program to allow more issuers to participate - The Federal Reserve is expanding the number and types of local governments eligible to use its short-term muni note program.The central bank said it would allow all U.S. states to be able to have at least two cities or counties eligible to directly issue notes to its Municipal Liquidity Facility program regardless of population.“Governors of each state will also be able to designate two issuers in their jurisdictions whose revenues are generally derived from operating government activities (such as public transit, airports, toll facilities, and utilities) to be eligible to directly use the facility,” the Fed said in a press release Wednesday. The Fed also released a table, detailing the number of cities and counties, on a combined basis, that governors may designate to participate in the $500 billion program. Before, only cities and counties with populations of 250,000 and 500,000 respectively, were able to directly access the program. Those numbers "were selected to ensure that each U.S. state has at least two total cities and counties (on a combined basis) that may participate in the facility," the Fed explained. This means large, populous states generally cannot designate additional issuers. “A governor that has the ability to designate one designated city or designated county may choose either (i) the most populous city in his or her state that has less than 250,000 residents or (ii) the most populous county in his or her state that has less than 500,000 residents,” the Fed said. For governors that can designate two cities and counties, they can decide to choose — the most populous city and most populous county, the most populous city and second-most populous city or the most populous county and second most populous county.

After PPP reform, more flexibility but same complexity - Legislative fixes to the Paycheck Protection Program should make the forgiveness process more attractive for borrowers, but not much easier to navigate. Bankers said they view the changes, including a lower threshold for payroll expenses and a longer qualification period, as a way for them to reintroduce the program to small businesses that have been wary about participating. While bankers will also have more flexibility in allocating resources, they will also have to adjust the financial implications of their participation since loans will likely stay on their books longer than originally forecast. The adjustments “help lenders from the perspective of the conversation we can now have with our customers” about the new terms, said Clem Rosenberger, CEO of NexTier Bank. “We believe most customers will breathe a sigh of relief as a result of these changes. That’s a great message to be able to share.” Lawmakers late Wednesday intervened in the administration of the $659 billion PPP, lowering the amount that must be spent on payroll to secure forgiveness to 60% from 75%. They also increased the amount of time borrowers have to qualify for forgiveness from eight weeks to 24 weeks.The Small Business Administration and Treasury Department, as the program’s administrators, set the initial payroll requirement and coverage period.A surge of new applications is unlikely, but more small businesses will likely show an interest given the added clarity and flexibility, bankers said. About $124 billion in funds remain under the program’s second phase.Potential borrowers who thought the program would be too much trouble early on are now inquiring about the loans, said Matt Flannery, team leader of SBA lending at the $9.9 billion-asset Provident Financial in Jersey City, N.J. “From a borrower’s perspective, anything that makes forgiveness easier is a welcome relief,”

Lenders, businesses say confusing rules hampered virus rescue - Representatives of lenders as well as businesses that received pandemic bailout money told an oversight board Wednesday that delayed and confusing instructions from the government hampered the effectiveness of the main rescue program for smaller companies. Guidelines for Paycheck Protection Program loans were released on a fragmented basis and underwent several revisions that made it difficult for businesses to know if they qualified for the money and what they must do to get the loans forgiven, said Anthony Wilkinson, president of the National Association of Guaranteed Government Lenders. The guidance, which is at times contradictory, also puts banks making those loans at risk, he said. "Is it any wonder why borrowers and lenders are questioning whether Treasury has set everyone up to fail?" "Is it any wonder why borrowers of all sizes have been returning their loans out of fear of their own government?" Some big restaurant chains like Potbelly Corp. and Ruth's Chris Steak House got loans, while many mom-and-pop companies were left stranded. Both businesses said they would give the loans back after facing criticism from lawmakers and pressure from the Treasury Department. The forum was the first public event for the independent committee created to oversee spending under the $2.2 trillion CARES Act that Congress approved and President Trump signed into law in March. The panel is made up of inspectors general from more than a dozen federal agencies. The effort to help small businesses retain their workers has been the subject of criticism from businesses and lenders who were charged with distributing the money. Some businesses said lenders gave priority to larger companies where the bank could generate larger fees, and lenders have said the spotty regulations and "know your customer" rules left them exposed to losses as businesses rushed to apply for the stimulus funds. PRAC is one of several panels in charge of overseeing government spending to combat the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic. The Senate on Tuesday confirmed former White House lawyer Brian Miller to serve as a special inspector general for pandemic recovery. There's also a bipartisan congressional oversight panel. PRAC investigations are underway looking into airlines receiving federal support, the validity of tax credits claimed by businesses, the accuracy of economic stimulus payments and the Health and Human Services Department's adherence to safety protocols during the outbreak. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce urged the committee to refrain from investigations focused on politically unpopular industries. "There's already growing concern that congressional oversight will in part focus on companies or sectors that various elected officials view as unworthy," said Neil Bradley, the Chamber of Commerce's chief policy officer. "There will likely be numerous requests for this committee to investigate entities not based on evidence of wrongdoing but because of a belief that an industry or entity shouldn't have been allowed to receive assistance in the first place." Even before it was fully operating, Trump had challenged and undercut the power of PRAC, indicating contentious times ahead for the effort to hold agencies accountable for spending and managing a bailout program for small businesses.

Banks have a mountain of deposits, so they don’t need PPP funding - A record surge in bank deposits has given U.S. lenders more cash than they know what to do with. One thing they don’t need: help from the Federal Reserve to fund the government-backed loans they made to small businesses. Banks had tapped only $49 billion from the Paycheck Protection Program Liquidity Facility by May 27 as they loaned $511 billion, according to the central bank and the U.S. Small Business Administration. That’s largely because lenders are sitting on $1.8 trillion of new deposits that have flooded in since March 11 — a 13% increase, and the biggest two-month jump since at least 1973, when comparable data is available. “It looks like this excess liquidity in the banking system is going to stick around much longer,” said Brian Klock, a bank analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. “So if you don’t really need it, why get the Fed loan?” Deposits have surged as drops in securities markets and interest rates for bonds and money market funds pushed savers and investors to banks. Also, a jump in corporate borrowing amid the pandemic has ended up as deposits back at the banks. The Fed loans are pretty cheap at 0.35%, but then deposit costs have gone down considerably as well. Interest-bearing deposits cost JPMorgan Chase 0.52% in the first quarter, and Bank of America paid 0.47% while the average was around 1% for smaller lenders. Meanwhile, non-interest-bearing accounts made up about 30% of all deposits at the four biggest banks, giving them cheaper funding than the Fed’s rate. Among the top U.S. firms, only Citigroup's name showed up on the list of 574 banks that used the Fed’s lending facility as of May 6. Citigroup has borrowed $1.3 billion from the central bank to fund some of the $3.3 billion loans it had made by May 1. It had the highest deposit cost among the four biggest banks in the first quarter at 1.1%, and the smallest deposit base. A Citigroup spokesman declined to comment. While the PPP loans stay on the banks’ balance sheets, they’re risk-free because the SBA guarantees payment — and many will become government grants if companies meet certain criteria. Only a small portion are likely to mature to full term, KBW’s Klock estimates. Depending on how much of the loans are still outstanding and if liquidity gets tighter, banks can still access the Fed’s facility in the next two years.

 Big banks call for blanket forgiveness of PPP loans under $150,000 - Two bank lobbying organizations asked Congress on Tuesday to automatically forgive small-business loans of less than $150,000 that are made under the Paycheck Protection Program. The request comes as the Senate eyes potential changes to the massive emergency relief effort. Last week, the House of Representatives passed legislation that would make it easier for small businesses to get their PPP loans forgiven. One of its provisions would extend the period of time in which companies must use the funds in order to qualify for forgiveness. The Consumer Bankers Association and the Bank Policy Institute, both of which represent big banks, want Congress to go further. In a letter Thursday to Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and other key lawmakers, they argued that blanket forgiveness of small loans would save recipients substantial time and money. Under a $150,000 threshold, some 26% of all PPP loan dollars would qualify for automatic forgiveness, according to the banking trade groups. But 85% of PPP loan recipients would benefit. “Their time and resources would be better focused on getting the economy safely back up and running, not processing burdensome paperwork,” the banking trade groups wrote. Blanket loan forgiveness would also help banks. Under the program’s current rules, loans to borrowers who fall short of the standards necessary for forgiveness may remain on banks’ balance sheets. While those loans are government-guaranteed, they have interest rates of just 1%, and banks would have to spend money to service them. Loans of less than $50,000 in the Paycheck Protection Program can ultimately be expected to cost banks about $500 million, according to an analysis by the consulting firm AQN Strategies. The banking trade groups cited that analysis in their letter Tuesday. The Paycheck Protection Program, which was enacted in late March, has made approximately $660 billion available to small businesses affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Under the program’s existing rules, 75% of loan proceeds must be tied to payroll in order to qualify for forgiveness. The House-passed bill would reduce that threshold to 60%. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnnell has reportedly been checking with senators to see if the House bill can get unanimous support in the Senate, which could enable passage as soon as this week.

Should PPP be extended to vandalized businesses? - Leaders at community development financial institutions are lobbying for looser restrictions on the Paycheck Protection Program so they can use earmarked funds to help small businesses rebuild after days of civic unrest. The Small Business Administration and Treasury Department have allocated $10 billion in the program’s second phase for CDFIs, which focus on minority and other underserved communities. While the money would be helpful for businesses damaged and destroyed from recent riots, PPP funds were intended for borrowers harmed by fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. “We’re looking for everyone and anyone who can help” businesses stung by vandalism and curfews, said David Reiling, chairman and CEO of the $1.2 billion-asset Sunrise Banks in St. Paul, Minn. “Whether that’s with a broom, or whether that’s financially or with your brain, or with prayers, we’ll take them,” Reiling said.“We need more flexibility and a different toolkit,” said Randell Leach, CEO of the $1 billion-asset Beneficial State Bank.Reiling and Leach would like to see PPP adjusted to allow more funds to be used on nonpayroll expenses, as well as longer repayment windows, particularly in light of setbacks many borrowers have encountered in the past week.“We need to start thinking about these loans on a 10- to 15-year horizon,” Leach said.

Stimulus debit cards cause confusion - Many Americans are receiving prepaid debit cards instead of a U.S. Treasury stimulus check, but some recipients “thought the cards were junk mail or scams,” the Post says. “The cards, issued by the Treasury’s financial agent, MetaBank, were sent to four million Americans in an effort to speed up the process of getting out the payments. The delivery caught a lot of people by surprise, resulting in skepticism about the legitimacy of the payment.” “The prepaid debit cards can be used to make purchases online and at any retail location where Visa is accepted. Recipients can also receive cash from ATMs and transfer funds to their personal bank accounts. But many people are discovering that there are limits on how much money they can access at one time. Many seniors reached out concerned that they would have to make multiple trips to an ATM to get the cash from the card.”

 'Indefinite shutdowns' harming U.S. economy, new OCC chief says  - Acting Comptroller of the Currency Brian Brooks took an extraordinary step for a bank regulator Monday, calling on states and municipalities to end “essentially indefinite” shutdown orders that were put in place to limit the spread of the coronavirus. Brooks, who has only been on the job since Friday, said protracted stay-at-home policies pose risks to the economy that must be weighed against the benefits. He noted more specifically of potential fallout for banks, such as declining commercial real estate values, and even “the very real risk of increases in bank robberies” because of a proliferation of face masks. "Your members should consider these risks carefully and weigh them against the scope and duration of continued lockdown orders in making your decisions, because certain aspects of these orders potentially threaten the stability and orderly functioning of the financial system the OCC is charged by law to protect," Brooks said in a letter to the the National League of Cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National Association of Governors. Brooks was the first federal bank regulator to wade into the debate over the pace of reopening that has largely pitted business advocates against public health experts. The latter have pleaded for caution in easing stay-at-home policies amid the risk of additional waves of coronavirus outbreaks. But bank trade groups have largely stayed on the sidelines of the debate as well. The acting comptroller said banks involved in commercial real estate must contend with the risk of “lengthy property vacancies that result from extended stay-at-home orders,” which, Brooks said, could lead to a spike in burglary and vandalism. He argued that the loss of typical business revenue from local lockdowns would make it much more difficult for banks to make loans, particularly if the lockdowns stretched on indefinitely. “Banks lend to customers based in part on their assessment of customers’ current and expected future income, which largely determine their ability to repay the debt,” Brooks wrote. If delinquency rates began a rapid ascent, he continued, it would “threaten the community and mid-size banks that are the economic lifeblood of local communities, a factor that your members should take into account in weighing the risks and benefits of lengthy continued lockdown orders.” The letter did not acknowledge the potential health risks of re-opening businesses before local officials have contained the spread of the coronavirus, which many experts have warned could lead to a second wave of infections and deaths within months and the economy being re-shuttered. Citing news reports, he criticized “certain cities” that had turned off the utilities of businesses that operated in defiance of lockdown orders, saying that such an act could “impair their condition, structural integrity, and value, thus impairing the collateral that secures real estate loans.” "While some cities and states are reopening their economies, others reportedly are extending their lockdown orders for weeks or even months," Brooks said. "Such essentially indefinite requirements that businesses remain closed increases other risks to properties securing bank loans."

Waters criticizes OCC chief's comments on stay-at-home orders— House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters blasted a recent letter by acting Comptroller of the Currency Brian Brooks suggesting that states and municipalities should end "indefinite shutdowns" related to the coronavirus.Within days of taking the helm of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Brooks drafted a letter Monday to groups representing mayors, governors and others saying that extended stay-at-home orders pose economic risks that will be felt by banks. He noted that face-mask requirements in bank branches could stoke "the very real risk of increases in bank robberies."But Waters accused Brooks of adopting a view that is counter to the public health recommendations. “With this inappropriate letter pressuring city and state officials to end important public safety measures put in place to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus, the new Acting Comptroller is transparently pandering to President Trump, who has made clear that he would prefer that we all pretend that there is no pandemic, that more than a hundred thousand Americans have not lost their lives already, and that many more are not at risk,” the California Democrat said in a press release late Thursday. It was the second time during Brooks’s first full week as acting comptroller that he drew criticism from Waters. On Monday, Waters said it was “shameful” for Brooks to finalize a rule clarifying that a loan's interest rate remains legally intact after it is acquired by a purchaser in a state with a lower rate cap.Waters said Brooks should not be issuing new rules or sending directives to state and local officials as acting comptroller.“He should focus on temporary stewardship of the agency, not issuing new rules, as he did on the first day on the job with a harmful rule on transferred loans which allows rent-a-bank schemes to evade state usury laws, or distributing inflammatory and ill-advised missives to state and local officials on the front lines of the pandemic, as he has done with this letter,” Waters said.

Acting comptroller warns on masks - Acting comptroller of the currency Brian P. Brooks “is not letting his first full week on the job pass quietly, warning that measures meant to contain the spread of the coronavirus — including mandates for the use of masks in public — could endanger the financial system. Mr. Brooks, a former banker, sent letters to the country’s mayors and governors about the negative effects of restrictions on public activity. Among them, he said: Face masks could lead to more bank robberies.”“Citing reports that some places would consider shutting off utility services to businesses that violate lockdown orders, the letter warned that cutting off water and electricity could hurt the value of the properties those businesses occupied. That, in turn, could hurt the banks that held mortgages on them. Mr. Brooks also warned that forcing small businesses to stay closed could harm them financially — perhaps making them unable to pay back their loans. That, too, could harm the banks.”“Finally,” Mr. Brooks wrote, “lengthy and potentially permanent requirements that individuals wear face masks in many or even all public spaces create the very real risk of increases in bank robberies. Broadly applicable face mask requirements are not safe or sustainable on a permanent basis.”“Brooks was the first federal bank regulator to wade into the debate over the pace of reopening that has largely pitted business advocates against public health experts,” American Banker’s Brendan Pedersen reports.’

Financial Lynching Must Be Part of the National Debate -  Pam Martens -- The protests last week and this past weekend were sparked by unspeakable cellphone videos of a Minneapolis policeman, Derek Chauvin, torturing and murdering George Floyd with his knee crushing his throat for almost nine minutes as Floyd lay handcuffed and pinned face down on the ground by Chauvin and three other police officers. Only Chauvin has been charged with third degree murder and manslaughter.  Chelsea Peterson, a white protester in Portland, Oregon on Friday night, told CNN she wanted to “show my solidarity with my black brothers and sisters.” Peterson added: “It was important for me as a white person to actually show up because it is our responsibility to dismantle the systems of oppression that we have created.”   Two of those systems of oppression are the Wall Street mega banks and the Federal Reserve, which have institutionalized enforced inequality in the United States, particularly in minority communities. Let’s start with Citigroup, one of the largest Wall Street banks and a serial predator. On July 20, 2001, Gail Kubiniec, a former assistant manager at a Citigroup affiliate, CitiFinancial, testified to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on the predatory lending habits of the firm. Kubiniec stated:   “I and other employees would often determine how much insurance could be sold to a borrower based on the borrower’s occupation, race, age, and education level. If someone appeared uneducated, inarticulate, was a minority, or was particularly old or young, I would try to include all the coverages CitiFinancial offered. The more gullible the consumer appeared, the more coverages I would try to include in the loan…” The black community is particularly unattuned to the ways of Wall Street because Wall Street, for the past four decades, has systematically refused to hire and train black people as financial advisors.  Walk into any of the largest Wall Street brokerage firms today and you’ll see a self-portrait of upper management’s racism and sexism: women sitting at secretarial desks outside fancy offices occupied by predominantly white males. According to the EEOC, as well as the recent racial discrimination class actions filed against UBS and Merrill Lynch, blacks make up between 1 per cent to 3.5 per cent of stockbrokers – this after 30 years of litigation, settlements and empty promises to do better by the largest Wall Street firms.” Instead of putting the serial predators at Citigroup in jail and letting the bank fail when it became insolvent in 2008, the Federal Reserve secretly made $2.5 trillion cumulatively in revolving loans to Citigroup, at below-market interest rates (some at less than ½ of one percent interest) for two and one-half years. And despite the Justice Department receiving multiple referrals for potential criminal prosecutions of Citigroup executives from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, Obama’s Justice Department did not prosecute one Citi executive for their crimes before and during the financial crisis.  While Citi was getting this $2.5 trillion in super cheap loans from the Fed, it continued to charge high double-digit interest rates to struggling consumers on their credit cards and foreclosed on the homes of thousands of minorities who had been thrown out of work because of Citigroup and other Wall Street banks’ corruption. To keep its foreclosures out of the press, Citigroup used an alias.

May 2020: Unofficial Problem Bank list Increased to 65 Institutions - The FDIC's official problem bank list is comprised of banks with a CAMELS rating of 4 or 5, and the list is not made public (just the number of banks and assets every quarter). Note: Bank CAMELS ratings are also not made public. CAMELS is the FDIC rating system, and stands for Capital adequacy, Asset quality, Management, Earnings, Liquidity and Sensitivity to market risk. The scale is from 1 to 5, with 1 being the strongest. As a substitute for the CAMELS ratings, surferdude808 is using publicly announced formal enforcement actions, and also media reports and company announcements that suggest to us an enforcement action is likely, to compile a list of possible problem banks in the public interest. Here is the unofficial problem bank list for May 2020. Here are the monthly changes and a few comments from surferdude808: Update on the Unofficial Problem Bank List for May 2020. During the month, the list increased by one to 65 banks after two removals and three additions. Aggregate assets were little changed at $48.5 billion from last month. A year ago, the list held 73 institutions with assets of $54.6 billion. Actions were terminated against Sevier County Bank, Sevierville, TN ($332 million) and Nantahala Bank & Trust Company, Franklin, NC ($157 million). Florida Capital Bank, National Association, Jacksonville, FL ($496 million); Bank of Louisiana, New Orleans, LA ($78 million); and State Bank of Nauvoo, Nauvoo, IL ($33 million). The order against the Bank of Louisiana does have a certain entertainment value, should you have time on your hands you may want to give it a read. Normally by this time after a calendar quarter-end, banks would have filed updated financials and the FDIC would have provided an update on the Official Problem Bank list, but 30 days was added to the financial filing deadline because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Look for that update in next month’s comment.

 2 banks burn to ground in San Diego suburb as protests turn to violence, looting - The violent unrest gripping the nation spread Saturday night to a suburb of San Diego, where rioters burned two banks to the ground and looted and destroyed many other businesses. Peaceful protests over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis turned into riots as night fell on La Mesa, a suburb of about 60,000 people east of San Diego, leaving a trail of destruction. They torched the Chase and Union banks next door to each other, Fox 5 reported. Windows were smashed at many businesses, including a Goodwill store, a real-estate office and a popular bar. Daniel Buxton, the owner of Play It Again Sports, said he returned to his establishment to find “complete destruction.” “Took what they could, destroyed what they could and got out,” he told local station KPBS. He added that looters used bats to destroy the inside and lit a fire which the sprinklers had doused. Video of looters busting through glass windows and raiding a Walmart after midnight at the Grossmont Center in La Mesa was captured by KNSD. San Diego police officers, aided by other law enforcement agencies, walked shoulder-to-shoulder through the streets after 2 a.m. Sunday, telling hundreds of protesters and observers that they would be arrested for unlawful assembly if they didn’t disperse. “I think people are hurting and they’re angry and they’re trying to be heard because there’s no other way to get anyone’s attention,” Ally Kaiahua, a white woman, told The Associated Press about the property damage in La Mesa. “It’s unfortunate but this has been part of our history and how things get done because they don’t listen any other way.”

Police: Man Dies After Attempting To Break Into North Philadelphia ATM With Explosives, Approximately 30 ATMs Damaged - — Police are investigating a series of ATM explosions after several loud booms were heard throughout Philadelphia overnight. In all, a source tells CBS3 some 30 ATMs were damaged, and a botched attempt left one person dead Tuesday morning.It appears ATMs were still being targeted Tuesday night. Police responded to a reported ATM explosion at North 31st and Baltz Streets in Brewerytown after 10:30 p.m.CBS3’s Kimberly Davis heard a loud bang followed by flames. There is no word if any money was taken. Chopper 3 was over West Susquehanna Avenue and North 2nd Street in Kensington around 6 a.m. Tuesday. The bomb squad had been called in after an ATM explosion rocked the neighborhood. Police say a 24-year-old man tried using an explosive device to blow up the ATM by Sidekicks Sports Bar, but when the device went off, he was thrown to the ground with serious injuries. He was rushed to a nearby hospital and died. Meantime, there were several other ATM explosions across Philadelphia overnight. Video from Amber Street and East Allegheny Avenue in Kensington shows an ATM blown apart with the main compartment pried open. Several Loud Booms Heard Throughout Philadelphia Overnight May Have Been ATM Explosions Video from 7th Street and Girard Avenue in Fishtown shows at least three people setting an explosive on an ATM, running away and then going back to the ATM. Two ATMs at 61st Street and Woodland Avenue in Southwest Philly also look like they were blown up. A butcher from a shop there says before the explosions, the shop was looted overnight and the safe and cash registers were stolen. But the owner of the store was taken into custody. “They were out here. It was mobs of people out here and they got into pretty much every store: the Dunkin’ Donuts, the jewelry store, the Metro. It was a complete madhouse out here,” the man said. “I was in shock and I’m going on 53 so I’ve seen a lot, but nothing like that.” Police tell Eyewitness News vandals are quickly moving from one crime scene to another, making it difficult for police to keep up with them. In all, a source tells CBS3 some 30 ATMs were damaged and an undisclosed amount of money was stolen. Police say the explosive device never penetrated the ATM’s safe. Live explosives were recovered at the scene.

Auto title lender slammed by CFPB order over finance charges - The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ordered a Tennessee payday and auto title lender to pay $2 million for engaging in an allegedly deceptive scheme to collect millions in additional finance charges from over 4,000 Mississippi borrowers. The CFPB said Tuesday that Approved Cash Advance, in Cleveland, Tenn., sent loan disclosures to 4,129 Mississippi consumers stating legitimate finance charges, and then sent a separate document with fees that were more than five times higher.The CFPB said a borrower who was supposed to pay $119.50 in finance charges as disclosed, would have paid $657.20 based on the subsequent fee schedule. When consumers were overcharged, the company then refused to issue refunds, retaining consumers’ overpayments for months and sometimes years, the bureau said. Refunds began in 2015 but were not completed until late 2017. The company overcharged borrowers a total of $3.5 million in additional finance charges on auto title loans that already carried annual percentage rates of $290%, the agency said. Approved Cash Advance, a unit of Main Street Personal Finance, did not respond to a request for comment. The company operates 156 stores in eight mostly Southern states.The agency said the company's conduct during a one-year period starting in October 2014 violated Regulation Z, which implements the Truth in Lending Act. The company was ordered to pay $3.5 million in consumer redress, but the CFPB agreed to $2 million instead given what it called “Approved Cash’s demonstrated inability to pay.” The bureau also imposed a $1 civil money penalty.In addition, the consent order states that Approved Cash also engaged in unfair debt collection tactics by “making numerous calls to consumers’ workplaces, references, and other third parties after being asked to stop, and improperly [disclosing] consumers’ debts to third parties or used tactics that risked such disclosure.”

Coronavirus still a threat to credit scores despite congressional relief - The coronavirus relief bill enacted by Congress in March aimed to shield credit scores from the fallout of consumers skipping loan payments due to the pandemic. But observers say borrowers benefiting from the provision still face risks.The legislation aims to treat pandemic-related forbearance plans similar to the relief provided after hurricanes or other natural disasters. Creditors can now attach a "disaster code" to a loan telling the credit bureaus that a consumer was hurt financially by the coronavirus, and their score should be unaffected.But experts warn that consumers may not realize that their credit reports could still become impaired once a forbearance plan or other type of relief expires. “As soon as the lender stops reporting with the disaster code, it ostensibly unfreezes the credit report to the consumer and they will be evaluated based on any negative events that happened,” said James Garvey, founder and CEO of Self Financial Inc., a Texas fintech firm that tries to help unbanked consumers build their credit.Use of such disaster codes has never been so widespread and it is not even clear yet how many borrowers have sought relief. The credit reporting industry plans to release a report in the coming weeks indicating how many of the 220 million consumer credit files have been flagged with a disaster code. So far, credit reporting advocates say the implementation of the measure in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act is going smoothly.“We are not seeing a lot of pushback from consumers and it appears that credit reporting under the CARES Act is going well,” said Francis Creighton, president and CEO of the Consumer Data Industry Association, which represents the three major credit bureaus Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.Yet some borrowers have faced apparent blowback from forbearance plans in their credit files.

How lenders are preparing for a wave of loan modifications— For the first weeks of the coronavirus crisis, mortgage servicers were in triage mode. As the government issued a flurry of measures to deal with financial hardships resulting from widespread economic shutdown, servicers rushed to grant the CARES Act mandated forbearances for GSE conforming loans.But as the growth rate in forbearances has slowed, lenders are gaming out their plans for the moment when the 12-month forbearance period ends, puzzling over how to prepare themselves for what may come next. "How many people are ultimately going to request forbearance and how quickly will the economy recover?" said Peter Carroll, executive of public policy and industry relations at CoreLogic. "And based on that how many homeowners will the industry be having to assist?" While the government has in recent weeks issued additional guidance, allowing borrowers to tack missed payments onto the end of Fannie and Freddie loans for example, many loans will still need to be modified. But the extraordinary amount of unknowns to do with the question of when and how widespread economic recovery could happen make it difficult to design proactive measures to get ahead of the problem. "Servicers are reacting with incredible speed to address this crisis," said Laurence Platt, a mortgage industry attorney with Mayer Brown. "But they're just a service provider, they can’t make it up as they go along. They have to get directions from the owners or the insurers of the loan. And the owners or the insurers of the loan are evolving their standards trying to address the crisis."Offering a consumer a modification at this point in time might be a waste of energy, for example, since investor and regulatory guidelines regarding these forbearances are in a state of flux.What the requirements are now regarding the end of forbearance period may be different from what they might be when the borrower actually exits; those rules have been updated several times already. "So a premature modification doesn’t make any sense, you've got to wait and see where the borrower is at the time," said Platt.

MBA Survey: "Share of Mortgage Loans in Forbearance Increases to 8.46%" of Portfolio Volume -- Note: To put these numbers in perspective, the MBA notes "For the week of March 2, only 0.25% of all loans were in forbearance."    From the MBA: Share of Mortgage Loans in Forbearance Increases to 8.46%  The Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) latest Forbearance and Call Volume Survey revealed that the total number of loans now in forbearance increased from 8.36% of servicers’ portfolio volume in the prior week to 8.46% as of May 24, 2020. According to MBA’s estimate, just over 4.2 million homeowners are now in forbearance plans. .. “MBA’s survey continues to indicate that fewer homeowners are seeking forbearance as more states across the country reopen their economies and prospects begin to improve. The share of loans in forbearance increased by only 10 basis points over the week of May 24th,” said Mike Fratantoni, MBA’s Senior Vice President and Chief Economist. “Policy support for households, including expanded unemployment insurance benefits and other transfers, have helped many stay on their feet during this crisis. With 11.82 percent of Ginnie Mae loans currently in forbearance, FHA and VA borrowers are struggling the most.”  Added Fratantoni, “Forbearance requests and call volume declined relative to the prior week and led to further declines in wait times and abandonment rates.” This graph shows the percent of portfolio in forbearance by investor type over time.  Most of the increase was in late March and early April.  The MBA notes: "Forbearance requests as a percent of servicing portfolio volume (#) dropped across all investor types for the sixth consecutive week relative to the prior week: from 0.28% to 0.20%."

Black Knight: Number of Homeowners in COVID-19-Related Forbearance Plans Declines Slightly – Note: Both Black Knight and the MBA (Mortgage Bankers Association) are putting out weekly estimates of mortgages in forbearance. From Black Knight: Black Knight: Number of Homeowners in COVID-19-Related Forbearance Plans Falls for First Time Since Crisis Began; 8.9% of All Mortgages Now in Forbearance:
• According to the McDash Flash Forbearance Tracker, as of June 2, 2020, 4.73 million homeowners – or 8.9% of all mortgages – are in COVID-19 mortgage forbearance plans
• Active forbearance volumes decreased by a net 34,000 over the past week, marking the first weekly decline since the crisis began
• According to the McDash Flash Payment Tracker, as of May 26, a significantly lower share of homeowners in forbearance had remitted May payments (22%) than did in April (46%), pointing to another likely rise in the delinquency rate for May
“After rising sharply in April and then leveling off toward the end of May, the number of American homeowners in forbearance plans has now decreased for the first time since the crisis began,” said Jabbour. “There were a net 34,000 fewer homeowners in forbearance as of June 2. The decline was actually greater among government-backed mortgages, which saw 43,000 fewer total forbearance plans than last week, but this was partially offset by an increase of 9,000 new plans on mortgages held in bank portfolios and private-label securities. ”The McDash Flash Forbearance tracker shows that the 4.73 million loans in forbearance represent 8.9% of all active mortgages and account for a little over $1 trillion in unpaid principal. An estimated 7.1% of all GSE-backed loans and 12.3% of FHA/VA mortgages are now in forbearance.

States try to help borrowers left out of federal forbearance plans - One criticism of a federal law granting forbearance to homeowners affected by the coronavirus pandemic was it only applied to government-backed loans. Two states are aiming to cover the rest of the mortgage sphere.Industry experts say bills in New York and California could be the impetus for other states to provide necessary relief for the 30% of the mortgage market not backed by Uncle Sam.Lawmakers in both states want to enable homeowners with non-government loans to obtain forbearance for up to a year and to prohibit servicers of such loans from charging lump-sum payments right after the forbearance ends. “I would expect similar legislation by states to ensure customers are receiving forbearance relief, no matter who holds or services their mortgage," said Allison Schoenthal, a partner and head of consumer finance litigation at Hogan Lovells.In March, Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, which provided 180 days of forbearance and another 180 days, if needed, to struggling borrowers while waiving late fees and additional interest. But that relief only applied to loans backed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Federal Housing Administration and other smaller agencies. Meanwhile, whereas the CARES Act largely left it up to agencies such as the Federal Housing Finance Agency and FHA to instruct servicers on how they can collect payments post-forbearance, the New York and California bills more clearly restrict mortgage servicers and state-chartered banks from collecting payments immediately.

Millions Of Americans Skip Payments As Tidal Wave Of Defaults And Evictions Looms - NPR - Americans are skipping payments on mortgages, auto loans and other bills. Normally, that could mean massive foreclosures, evictions, cars repossessions and people's credit getting destroyed.But much of that has been put on pause. Help from Congress and leniency from lenders have kept impending financial disaster at bay for millions of people. But that may not last for long.The problem is that these efforts aim to create a financial bridge to the future for people who've lost their income in the pandemic — but the bridge is only half-built. For one thing, the help still isn't reaching many people who need it."My wife has filed, certified every week for her unemployment for 10 weeks now, and they have done nothing," says Jonathan Baird of Bruceton, Tenn. "We've struggled."Baird is a disabled veteran, not injured in wartime, who gets a small disability pension. When the pandemic hit, his wife lost her job as a home health aide. That was most of their income. And like many other contract workers, she has run into long delays trying to collect unemployment.Meanwhile, Baird says his mortgage company told him that he didn't qualify for a federal program to postpone payments. Many homeowners have been given wrong ormisleading information from lenders about that. And it appears that is what happened in Baird's case.Baird also called Ford to try to get a break on the payments for his pickup truck. "When I contacted them, they told me that there was nothing they could do," he says. "Just basically make your payment or suffer the late fees."

 MBA: Mortgage Applications Decreased, Purchase Applications up 18% Year over Year --From the MBA: Mortgage Applications Increase in Latest MBA Weekly SurveyMortgage applications decreased 3.9 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending May 29, 2020. This week’s results included an adjustment for the Memorial Day holiday. .. The Refinance Index decreased 9 percent from the previous week and was 137 percent higher than the same week one year ago. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index increased 5 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index decreased 7 percent compared with the previous week and was 18 percent higher than the same week one year ago....“Purchase applications continued their recent ascent, increasing 5 percent last week and 18 percent compared to a year ago. The pent-up demand from homebuyers returning to the market continues to support a recovery from the weekly declines observed earlier this spring,” . “However, there are still many households affected by the widespread job loss and current economic downturn. High unemployment and low housing supply may restrain a more meaningful rebound in purchase applications in the coming months.”   “In contrast to the upswing in purchase activity, refinance applications fell for the seventh consecutive week – even as the 30-year fixed rate hit another MBA survey-low of 3.37 percent. After reaching a peak of 76 percent earlier this year, refinances now account for less than 60 percent of activity, and the index is now at its lowest level since February 21.’ ... The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($510,400 or less) decreased to 3.37 percent from 3.42 percent, with points decreasing to 0.30 from 0.33 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent loan-to-value ratio (LTV) loans.  The first graph shows the refinance index since 1990.

CoreLogic: House Prices up 5.4% Year-over-year in April --The CoreLogic HPI is a three month weighted average and is not seasonally adjusted (NSA). From CoreLogic: CoreLogic Reports April Home Prices Increased by 5.4% Year Over Year Home prices nationwide, including distressed sales, increased year over year by 5.4% in April 2020 compared with April 2019 and increased month over month by 1.4% in April 2020 compared with March 2020 (revisions with public records data are standard, and to ensure accuracy, CoreLogic incorporates the newly released public data to provide updated results).The CoreLogic HPI Forecast indicates that home prices will increase on a month-over-month basis by 0.3% from April 2020 to May 2020, and decline 1.3% on a year-over-year basic from April 2020 to April 2021. 2021 will mark the first year home prices are expected to decline in more than nine years.“The very low inventory of homes for sale, coupled with homebuyers’ spur of record-low mortgage rates, will likely continue to support home price growth during the spring. If unemployment remains elevated in early 2021, then we can expect home prices to soften. Our forecast has home prices down in 12 months across 41 states.” - Dr. Frank Nothaft, Chief Economist for CoreLogic“Tight supply and pent-up demand, particularly among millennials, provides optimism for a bounce-back in the housing market purchase activity and home prices over the medium term. The next 12 to 18 months are going to be very tough times for the broader economy. As employment and economic activity begin to pick up, as it will surely do, we expect housing to be a driver in a national recovery.” -Frank Martell, President and CEO of CoreLogicCR Note: The overall impact on house prices will depend on the duration of the crisis.

 Zillow Case-Shiller April Forecast: Still Showing Increasing YoY Price Gains - The Case-Shiller house price indexes for March were released last week. Zillow forecasts Case-Shiller a month early, and I like to check the Zillow forecasts since they have been pretty close.  From Zillow: March Case-Shiller Results and April Forecast: Housing Maintains its Strength” The strong buyer demand heading into this crisis has held fairly steady in the months since the outbreak, as record-low mortgage rates and inventory levels have maintained competition in the markets and placed upward pressure on home prices. So much remains uncertain – including the longer-term path for home prices – but for now, competition for homes is holding strong and keeping prices afloat. Annual growth in April as reported by Case-Shiller is expected to accelerate in the 10- and 20-city indices, and stay steady in the national index. S&P Dow Jones Indices is expected to release data for the April S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices on Tuesday, June 30. The Zillow forecast is for the year-over-year change for the Case-Shiller National index to be at 4.4% in April, the same as 4.4% in March.

Construction Spending Decreased in April - From the Census Bureau reported that overall construction spending decreased in April: Construction spending during April 2020 was estimated at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1,346.2 billion, 2.9 percent below the revised March estimate of $1,386.6 billion. The April figure is 3.0 percent above the April 2019 estimate of $1,307.1 billion. Both private and public spending decreased: Spending on private construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1,004.1 billion, 3.0 percent below the revised March estimate of $1,035.6 billion. ... In April, the estimated seasonally adjusted annual rate of public construction spending was $342.1 billion, 2.5 percent below the revised March estimate of $351.0 billion.This graph shows private residential and nonresidential construction spending, and public spending, since 1993. Note: nominal dollars, not inflation adjusted. Residential spending is 21% below the previous peak. Non-residential spending is 13% above the previous peak in January 2008 (nominal dollars). Public construction spending is 5% above the previous peak in March 2009, and 30% above the austerity low in February 2014. Year-over-year Construction SpendingThe second graph shows the year-over-year change in construction spending. On a year-over-year basis, private residential construction spending is up 6.2%. Non-residential spending is up 1.1% year-over-year. Public spending is up 0.8% year-over-year. This was above consensus expectations of a 6% decrease in spending, and construction spending for February and March were revised up. Construction was considered an essential service in most areas and hasn't declined sharply like many other sectors.

Update: Framing Lumber Future Prices Up Year-over-year --Here is another monthly update on framing lumber prices.   Lumber prices declined sharply from the record highs in early 2018, and then increased until the COVID-19 crisis.This graph shows two measures of lumber prices: 1) Framing Lumber from Random Lengths through May 22, 2020 (via NAHB), and 2) CME framing futures.Right now Random Lengths prices are up 27% from a year ago, and CME futures are up 14% year-over-year. There is a seasonal pattern for lumber prices, and usually prices will increase in the Spring, and peak around May, and then bottom around October or November - although there is quite a bit of seasonal variability.  Prices fell sharply due to COVID-19, however prices have bounced back (Note: Construction is considered an essential activity is ongoing in many areas)

Hotels: Occupancy Rate Declined 43.2% Year-over-year, Seventh Consecutive Week of Higher Demand  -From HotelNewsNow.com: STR: US hotel results for week ending 30 May: STR data ending with 30 May showed another small rise from previous weeks in U.S. hotel performance. Year-over-year declines remained significant although not as severe as the levels recorded previously. 24-30 May 2020 (percentage change from comparable week in 2019):
• Occupancy: 36.6% (-43.2%)
• Average daily rate (ADR): US$82.94 (-33.3%)
• Revenue per available room (RevPAR): US$30.34 (-62.1%)
“A seventh consecutive week of higher demand and occupancy was highlighted by three submarkets actually showing positive year-over-year occupancy comparisons for the weekend,” said Jan Freitag, STR’s senior VP of lodging insights. “Two of those areas, Titusville/Cocoa Beach and Melbourne/Palm Bay, likely received a boosted from the SpaceX launch activities on Saturday. The third submarket, Corpus Christi, further supports previous analysis that there is demand ready to return, but for now, it is more visible from leisure sources and in destinations that are set up well for drive-to business. “Because the situation intensified more toward the end of the week, and because there has not been a great deal of demand in downtown areas because of the pandemic, there wasn’t a noticeable impact from protests and the unrest occurring in major cities. That is something to monitor in our next dataset and perhaps beyond depending on how the situation plays out.” The following graph shows the seasonal pattern for the hotel occupancy rate using the four week average. The red line is for 2020, dash light blue is 2019, blue is the median, and black is for 2009 (the worst year probably since the Great Depression for hotels). During 2009 (black line), many hotels were struggling. At this point in the year, the 4-week average in 2009 was 56%. Now it is just at 33.6%! (The median is 65%).

Las Vegas Visitor Authority: "No Convention Attendance, Hotel Occupancy 1.7%" in April --From the Las Vegas Visitor Authority: April 2020 Las Vegas Visitor Statistics With global travel restrictions and stay‐at‐home orders in place due to the COVID‐19 pandemic, Las Vegas visitation in April was a small fraction of normal levels (107k visitors), limited to est. stays with friends or relatives and/or those in non‐gaming properties that remained open for essential transient lodging.No measurable convention attendance occurred during the month. With the vast majority of the destination's hotel rooms temporarily unavailable to book, occupancy was 1.7% while the average day rates (ADR) among those properties that were open came in at approximately $60. Here is the data from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.The blue and red bars are monthly visitor traffic (left scale) for 2019 and 2020. The dashed blue and orange lines are convention attendance (right scale). Convention traffic in April was down 100% compared to April 2019. And visitor traffic was down 97% YoY. The numbers for May will be very low too.

"We Still Expect To Be Paid" - America's Largest Mall Operator Sues Gap For $70M In Back-Rent -Largely shafted by the stimulus bills as Democrats tried to prevent any federal money from going to "Trump's real-estate friends", landlords have grown so desperate for revenue that they're resorting to extreme and potentially burdensome tactics, like taking tenants to court to try and squeeze more blood from a stone. Simon Property Group, one of the biggest - if not the biggest - mall operator in the US, us suing GAP, one of its largest tenants, claiming the retailer failed to pay more than $65.9 million in rent and other charges due during the coronavirus pandemic.CNBC, which brought us the story, says the battle is unfolding in a Delaware state court. The lawsuit "highlights the mounting tension between retail landlords and their tenants, many of which stopped paying rent after the crisis forced them to shut stores." It was filed on Tuesday. And a reporter at CNBC was apparently told to "expect more" lawsuits, apparently by somebody at SPG.That GAP hasn't been paying rent isn't a surprise; the company shared its plans to stop paying rent and other monthly expenses with shareholders, savings that it projected would put $115 million a month in GAP's coffers. In total, SPG's malls have 412 GAP stores, which makes GAP - and its Banana Republic and Old Navy brands - as one of the company's biggest "in-line" tenants.And GAP warned its shareholders about the prospects for litigating stemming from this decision back in April.Gap also warned in late April that litigation could arise as a result of its skipped payments. "Although we believe that strong legal grounds exist to support our claim that we are not obligated to pay rent for the stores that have been closed...there can be no assurance that such arguments will succeed," the company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission at the time.SPG CEO David Simon  said his company still expects to be paid for the months those stores were closed, payments that would be a massive burden on GAP, which is already allowing burdensome debt service to eat into profits.

US Consumer Credit Crashes As Americans Repay A Record Amount Of Credit Card Debt  - One of the striking changes to US consumer behavior spawned by the economic shutdowns from the coronavirus pandemic, was the unprecedented surge in personal savings which as we learned last week, exploded to a record 33% of disposable personal income... ... as the annualized amount of Personal Savings soared by a mindblowing $4 trillion in May, rising from $2.1 trillion to $6.1 trillion. Now, thanks to the latest consumer credit data released by the Fed, we know what much of that saving went to: paying down debt. According to the Fed's latest G.19 statement, in April total consumer credit plunged by a record $68.8 billion, smashing expectations for a modest $20 billion drop sparked by last month's $6.8 billion (revised) drop, and more than 3x greater than the biggest consumer credit drawdown observed during the financial crisis. Just like March, the bulk of the credit repayment took place in revolving credit although to a far greater degree as Americans repaid a record $58 billion on their credit card bills as US consumer society literally went into reverse and instead of spending wildly as it does every other month, usually spending what it can't afford, US consumers repaid the most on their credit cards ever. However, in perhaps a more notable departure from March when total consumer credit also tumbled even as non-revolving credit rose, in April non-revolving credit - auto and student loans - also posted a sharp drop. In fact, the drop, while not the biggest on record, was the biggest since the financial crisis. It wasn't immediately clear if this particular drop was due to shrinkage in student or auto loans: the full detail will be published in two months time when the Fed reveals the quarterly change in those two series. 

Two-Thirds of Public Restaurants Are Seen at Risk of Bankruptcy - Nearly two-thirds of publicly traded restaurants are at risk of bankruptcy as the Covid-19 pandemic batters the industry, according to a new study. The concern is higher for small companies and restaurants that specialize in dine-in, consulting firm Aaron Allen & Associates said in an analysis. It identified Bloomin’ Brands Inc., Potbelly Corp. and Chili’s owner Brinker International Inc. among those at greater risk. “It’s really the full-service model that’s in the biggest danger,” principal Aaron Allen said. “Some of those that are in casual dining -- a lot of those had already been bleeding cash, bleeding locations.” The study paints a bleak picture for an industry already upended by broad stay-at-home orders that led to sharp declines in restaurant sales. While Americans are starting to venture out again, the dining recovery may be slow with unemployment on the rise, cautious spending and also ongoing concerns about health and safety.That could create an opportunity for a lucky few companies at the top of the food chain, Allen said. Some of the largest firms entered the downturn with the financial wherewithal to survive and perhaps lead an industry consolidation. “The big will eat up the smaller and weaker competition.” Bloomin’ Brands said it’s tightly managing expenses and fortified its finances with a recent bond offering that gave the company $470 million in liquidity. Dining rooms are starting to reopen and sales at Outback Steakhouse -- the company’s biggest brand -- are improving, down 38% for the week ended May 3, said Chief Financial Officer Chris Meyer. “Bloomin’ Brands is among the best positioned in casual-dining to weather this environment,” he said. “We believe we’re going to emerge from this pandemic a stronger company.” A representative of Potbelly declined to comment, while Brinker didn’t respond to requests for comment. Allen’s analysis, which calculated risk scores for 46 companies using metrics such as working capital and earnings, finds 65% in what it calls the “distress zone.” The at-risk companies account for about 73,000 individual restaurant locations in the U.S. and $85 billion in annual sales. Another 22% of companies are in the “gray zone,” with lower potential for default but which are still not entirely safe, the analysis found.

Chain restaurants have permanently closed over 500 locations so far in 2020. Here's the full list. - As soon as the pandemic hit, restaurant-industry experts knew that many restaurants wouldn't make it through. On April 1, UBS predicted that one in five restaurants may close as a result of the pandemic. While independent restaurants have been hit much harder than many chains, chains aren't immune. Chains often rely on independent owner-operators to run restaurants, and these franchises often don't have the same robust financial resources of the brands they represent. Even though much of America is opening up, most locales have implemented social-distancing guidelines that make it impossible for restaurants to generate a profit even if they reopen dining rooms. And early data has indicated that reopening isn't the fiscal cure-all some hoped it would be, especially for restaurants. Some chains have already filed for bankruptcy protection or closed all restaurants. Others are taking a slower, quieter, or more measured approach to closures. However, this is likely only the beginning of a large wave of closures for casual-dining concepts, which are much less likely to make it through the pandemic unscathed than delivery-oriented restaurants. Here's a list of chain-restaurant closures since the pandemic started.

Retailers and Restaurants Hit in Protests, Adding to Coronavirus Damage - WSJ - Many retailers and restaurants, already crippled by the coronavirus pandemic, are grappling with damage to their properties and new closures following protests sparked by the death of George Floyd that have sometimes turned violent. From Minneapolis, where Mr. Floyd died while handcuffed and in police custody, to California and Georgia, big and small retailers and restaurants have shut locations in anticipation of violence or are working to rebuild after destruction over the past week. Target Corp., TGT -2.11% Walmart Inc., WMT +0.09% Nike Inc. and small family businesses have collectively closed hundreds of locations or are recovering from looting and physical damage related to protests. Adidas said it was temporarily closing all its U.S. stores, while Amazon. com Inc. said it had scaled back or adjusted delivery routes in a handful of cities to protect employees. Many executives and business owners expressed solidarity with protesters, who object to broader issues of racism and social justice. Around a dozen Walmart stores have been damaged, with more closed pre-emptively over the past few days. On Sunday evening, Walmart closed several hundred stores throughout the country. The damage so far has included looting and other property damage, but no employees have been hurt, a Walmart spokesman said Sunday. “What’s disturbing over the last 24 hours is it isn’t just at night,” the spokesman said. “We’ve even had issues this morning in broad daylight. We want to make sure our associates are safe.” Walmart Chief Executive Doug McMillon said in a statement Friday that “this week is further proof we must remain vigilant in standing together against racism and discrimination.” Target Corp., which is based in Minneapolis, over the weekend closed more than 200 U.S. stores, boarding up many of them pre-emptively, said a spokesman. The situation is fast-moving and some stores have reopened, in some cases with more limited hours, the spokesman said.

US food prices see historic jump and are likely to stay high (AP) — As if trips to the grocery store weren’t nerve-wracking enough, U.S. shoppers lately have seen the costs of meat, eggs and even potatoes soar as the coronavirus has disrupted processing plants and distribution networks. Overall, the cost of food bought to eat at home skyrocketed by the most in 46 years, and analysts caution that meat prices in particular could remain high as slaughterhouses struggle to maintain production levels while implementing procedures intended to keep workers healthy. While price spikes for staples such as eggs and flour have eased as consumer demand has leveled off, prices remain volatile for carrots, potatoes and other produce because of transportation issues and the health of workers who pick crops and work in processing plants. In short, supermarket customers and restaurant owners shouldn’t expect prices to drop anytime soon. “Our biggest concern is long-term food costs. I believe they will continue to go up,” “You can pick an ingredient and I can tell you there are shortages,” she said. Big fluctuations in food prices began in March, when the coronavirus pandemic began to sink in for U.S. consumers. The Labor Department reports that the 2.6% jump in April food prices was the largest monthly increase in 46 years. Prices for meats, poultry, fish and eggs increased the most, rising 4.3%. Although the 2.9% jump in cereals and bakery products wasn’t as steep, it was still the largest increase the agency has recorded.

Energy expenditures as a percentage of PCE at All Time Low - Note: Back in early 2016, I noted that energy expenditures as a percentage of PCE had hit an all time low. Here is an update through the recently released April PCE report. Below is a graph of expenditures on energy goods and services as a percent of total personal consumption expenditures through April 2020.This is one of the measures that Professor Hamilton at Econbrowser looks at to evaluate any drag on GDP from energy prices.  Data source: BEA.The huge spikes in energy prices during the oil crisis of 1973 and 1979 are obvious. As is the increase in energy prices during the 2001 through 2008 period.In April 2020, energy expenditures as a percentage of PCE was at a record low of 3.54% of PCE.  This was below the previous low of 3.66% in February 2016.This new record happened even with a 13.6% annual rate decrease in overall PCE in April (energy expenditures declined more in April than overall PCE).

Auto Sales Plunge 33% In May, Set For Worst Year Since 2009 - US auto sales are expected to continue their historic plunge in May, further pressuring an industry that is on the brink of all out collapse due to the pandemic lockdowns, plunging used car prices and suffering from a pre-virus recessionary environment.Sales figures for May are expected to fall 33% to just 1.05 million units, according to Cox Automotive and CNBC. Even worse, data from Bank of America indicates that demand for new vehicles could be dropping off a cliff at the same time the industry is getting ready to ramp up production again. The numbers show a sequential improvement from April, but still offer an ominous outlook for the auto industry heading into the second half of 2020. Cox Automotive estimates the pace for U.S. car sales to be about 11.4 million units sold by the end of the year, which would make 2020 the worst year for car sales since 2009. These numbers compare to 17.4 million cars sold in 2019. And it may not be because drivers are staying home anymore. Bank of America data from gas stations shows that drivers are back on the road again. "We estimate that gas consumption (in gallons) was still down about 30% YoY in April, but improved to -14% for the week ending May 23rd (latest available)," the bank wrote in a May 29 note. May's numbers are in focus since the month kicks off summer sales season, traditionally the point in the year when dealers try to move inventory to make room for new models. Last weekend, some dealers offered incentives like 0% financing and 84 month financing offers to try and entice buyers into showrooms. Some of the most generous incentives, offered around the time the virus started, are already being roped in as sales dead-cat bounce off their 2020 monthly lows. Auto analysts are blaming a lack of readily available inventory for the drop in sales, which is hilarious since the country is suffering from an unprecedented glut.

BEA: May Vehicles Sales increased to 12.2 Million SAAR -- The BEA released their estimate of May vehicle sales this morning. The BEA estimated light vehicle sales of 12.21 million SAAR in May 2020 (Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate), up 40.0% from the revised April sales rate, and down 29.8% from May 2019.Sales in April were revised up from 8.58 million SAAR to 8.73 million SAAR. This graph shows light vehicle sales since 2006 from the BEA (blue) and an estimate for May 2020 (red).The impact of COVID-19 is significant, and it appears April was the worst month. The second graph shows light vehicle sales since the BEA started keeping data in 1967. Note: dashed line is current estimated sales rate of 12.21 million SAAR.Sales collapsed in the second half of March, and really declined in April.  However sales rebounded somewhat in May (but were still down almost 30% YoY).

DOT: Vehicle Miles Driven decreased 18.6% year-over-year in March --This will be interesting to track. The most recent release is for March 2020. The Department of Transportation (DOT) reported:: Travel on all roads and streets changed by -18.6% (-50.6 billion vehicle miles) for March 2020 as compared with March 2019. Travel for the month is estimated to be 221.0 billion vehicle miles.The seasonally adjusted vehicle miles traveled for March 2020 is 221.1 billion miles, a -18.5% (-50.3 billion vehicle miles) decline from March 2019. It also represents -19.3% decline (-52.9 billion vehicle miles) compared with February 2020.Cumulative Travel for 2020 changed by -5.4% (-40.1 billion vehicle miles). The cumulative estimate for the year is 706.5 billion vehicle miles of travel.

ISM Manufacturing index Increased to 43.1 in May - The ISM manufacturing index indicated contraction in May. The PMI was at 43.1% in May, up from 41.5% in April. The employment index was at 32.1%, up from 27.5% last month, and the new orders index was at 31.8%, up from 27.1%. From the Institute for Supply Management: May 2020 Manufacturing ISM® Report On Business® “The May PMI® registered 43.1 percent, up 1.6 percentage points from the April reading of 41.5 percent. This figure indicates expansion in the overall economy after April’s contraction, which ended a period of 131 consecutive months of growth. The New Orders Index registered 31.8 percent, an increase of 4.7 percentage points from the April reading of 27.1 percent. The Production Index registered 33.2 percent, up 5.7 percentage points compared to the April reading of 27.5 percent. The Backlog of Orders Index registered 38.2 percent, an increase of 0.4 percentage point compared to the April reading of 37.8 percent. The Employment Index registered 32.1 percent, an increase of 4.6 percentage points from the April reading of 27.5 percent. The Supplier Deliveries Index registered 68 percent; though down 8 percentage points from the April figure of 76 percent, this high reading elevated the composite PMI®. Here is a long term graph of the ISM manufacturing index. This was close to expectations of 43.0%, but the readings for new orders and employment were even worse than the headline. This suggests manufacturing contracted further in May.

Markit Manufacturing: "Ongoing COVID-19 impact drags output down further in May" - The May US Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index conducted by Markit came in at 39.8, up 3.7 from the 36.1 final April figure. Markit's Manufacturing PMI is a diffusion index: A reading above 50 indicates expansion in the sector; below 50 indicates contraction.Here is an excerpt from Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at IHS Markit in their latest press release:“Manufacturing remained in a deep downturn in May, as measures taken to contain the spread of COVID-19 continued to cause production losses, disrupt supply chains and hit demand. Job losses meanwhile continued to run at one of the highest rates in over a decade, and pricing power has collapsed.“With increasing numbers of companies restarting production, we should see some improvements in the output trend in coming months, and it was reassuring to see signs of the downturn already starting to ease in May, suggesting April was the eye of the storm as far as the production collapse is concerned.“There remains a high risk that any recovery will be frustratingly slow as ongoing social distancing measures, high unemployment, job insecurity and damaged balance sheets constrain consumer and business spending. The recovery will of course also fade quickly if virus infections start to rise again. For now, however, we focus on the good news that we may be past the worst in terms of the economic decline.” [Press Release] Here is a snapshot of the series since mid-2012. Here is an overlay with the equivalent PMI survey conducted by the Institute for Supply Management (see our full article on this series here).

Output Decline at Factories Eases, But Recovery Set to Be Slow – WSJ - Factories in the U.S. and abroad continued to reduce output and shed jobs in May, though the pace of deterioration moderated as governments moved to ease coronavirus-related restrictions on their economies. Surveys of purchasing managers at manufacturers in the U.S., Asia and Europe offered signs that the decline in global factory activity is starting to bottom out after the record fall seen in April. But sentiment remained negative, suggesting any recovery in the months ahead could be tentative. The U.S. Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index for May rose to 43.1 from an 11-year low of 41.5 in April. The index’s core components all remained well below the 50 level that marks the threshold between contraction and expansion. A majority of survey respondents said both production and new orders worsened in May from April, and two-fifths reported lower employment levels. The factory indexes add to other signs the U.S. and other countries may have reached an economic bottom, though recoveries could be slow. Unemployment is up sharply across the globe. Services industries, hit particularly hard by the virus, are just starting to recover. And consumer spending, an important catalyst for the U.S. and other economies, remains weak. “We’re probably past the worst in terms of rates of decline, but things are still quite bad,” said Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at Maria Fiorini Ramirez Inc. He said forward-looking aspects of the ISM survey are still “extremely weak,” suggesting little evidence of the V-shaped economic recovery that policy makers are hoping for. Tim Fiore, who manages the ISM’s factory survey, said he expects further improvement in June as state governments allow more nonessential economic activities to resume. But until a vaccine or an effective treatment for Covid-19 becomes available, social-distancing efforts will limit the number of workers allowed on factory floors, likely restraining production. Only in China, the first major economy to begin reopening after the novel coronavirus outbreak, did factories report an increase in activity. But the surveys suggested that its nascent economic recovery is already beginning to stall, with export orders falling sharply amid continued global efforts to contain the pandemic. The surveys indicate the worst might be over for manufacturers, and activity could start to increase in coming months. But the road back to the levels of output and employment seen at the end of last year is set to be long and bumpy.

AAR: May Rail Carloads down 27.7% YoY, Intermodal Down 13.0% YoY - From the Association of American Railroads (AAR) Rail Time Indicators.  Huge swaths of the U.S. and global economies remained shut in May and the impact on rail traffic was predictable. Total U.S. carloads fell 27.7% in May 2020 from May 2019, the biggest year-over- year decline for any month on record (our year-over-year comparisons begin in 1989) and worse than the 25.2% decline in April. For intermodal, things were bad but not as bad: originations were down 13.0% in May, better than the 17.2% decline in April. This graph from the Rail Time Indicators report shows the six week average of U.S. Carloads in 2018, 2019 and 2020: Average weekly total carloads in May 2020 of 185,043 were also the lowest on record. Of the 20 commodity categories we track, just one (farm products excluding grain) had carload gains over last May.In 2020 through May, total U.S. carloads were down 14.7%, or 815,413 carloads, from last year. The second graph shows the six week average of U.S. intermodal in 2018, 2019 and 2020: (using intermodal or shipping containers): U.S. intermodal originations were down 13.0% in May 2020, an improvement from the 17.2% decline in April 2020 but still the 16th straight year-over-year monthly decline for intermodal. Prior to the pandemic, the average monthly decline was around 6%, which is clearly much less than the declines of the past two months. Intermodal is suffering from, among other things, weak consumer demand and fewer cargo ships calling on U.S. ports. Note that rail traffic was weak prior to the pandemic.

Trade Deficit increased to $49.4 Billion in April - From the Department of Commerce reported: The U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis announced today that the goods and services deficit was $49.4 billion in April, up $7.1 billion from $42.3 billion in March, revised.   April exports were $151.3 billion, $38.9 billion less than March exports. April imports were $200.7 billion, $31.8 billion less than March imports. Both exports and imports decreased in April. Exports are down 28% compared to April 2019; imports are down 22% compared to April 2019. Both imports and exports have decreased sharply due to COVID-19. The second graph shows the U.S. trade deficit, with and without petroleum. U.S. Trade Deficit The blue line is the total deficit, and the black line is the petroleum deficit, and the red line is the trade deficit ex-petroleum products. Note that the U.S. exported a slight net positive petroleum products in recent months. Oil imports averaged $34.72 per barrel in April, down from $47.09 in March, and down from $63.47 in April 2019. The trade deficit with China decreased to $22.5 billion in April, from $26.8 billion in April 2019.

U.S. Exports, Imports Fell Sharply in April Amid Coronavirus Disruptions – WSJ —U.S. exports and imports both posted their largest monthly decreases on record amid coronavirus-related shutdowns around the world. Imports fell 13.7% in April from March, and exports dropped 20.5%, the largest declines since record-keeping began in 1992, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. The trade deficit expanded 16.7% to a seasonally adjusted $49.41 billion. “Beyond the fact that we’re seeing a significant widening of the trade deficit, what really strikes me is the pace at which trade flows are declining,” with imports and exports down about a quarter since the coronavirus outbreak. Exports of aircraft and cars have dropped as manufacturers such as Boeing Co. were hit by the world-wide disruption of travel and auto makers including Ford Motor Co. closed factories to prevent the spread of the virus.   Global trade flows may start to pick up again as some factories reopen and the easing of social-distancing measures revives consumer demand. “Much of the disruption may have already occurred,”  Exports of goods in April were the lowest since late 2009, when the nation was recovering from a deep recession, Thursday’s report showed Imports of goods were the lowest since late 2010. A similar trend was seen in Canada, where the goods trade deficit widened in April as exports plunged to their lowest level in over a decade. Statistics Canada attributed the dramatic drops in exports and imports to factory shutdowns, weaker energy prices and widespread economic restrictions as authorities moved to contain the spread of the new coronavirus. While the U.S. usually runs a deficit in goods, it runs a surplus in services. That surplus, in services such as medical care, travel, higher education and royalties, decreased by $1.3 billion in April to $22.4 billion, its lowest since December 2016. In the first quarter, a narrowing trade deficit helped limit a sharp contraction in the U.S. economy. As a whole, the economy still shrank at a 5% annual rate, the steepest drop since the last recession. Trade is expected to subtract from gross domestic product this quarter should the deficit continue to widen. How will trade look different in a post-pandemic world? Join the conversation below. The U.S. deficit in goods with China widened to $25.96 billion from $16.99 billion the prior month. Year to date, the deficit with China amounts to $87.60 billion, compared with $123.68 billion in the same period of 2019. Chinese state-controlled companies have canceled some shipments from U.S. farm exporters, according to maritime officials, as tensions between Washington and Beijing rise over China’s handling of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and the coronavirus pandemic. The cancellations involve orders made following the phase-one trade pact between the two countries signed in January, in which China committed to increasing farm imports from the U.S. Lockdowns associated with the pandemic, which originated in China late last year, have sapped global commerce and growth, disrupted supply chains and closed factories and stores. Detroit’s car companies agreed in March to temporarily shut down factories in the U.S., Mexico and Canada to limit the spread of the new coronavirus. The companies started reopening the factories in May. Boeing Co., the country’s largest exporter, said in late March that it would suspend airliner production in the Seattle area, and General Electric Co. said it would lay off workers making jet engines for customers including the aerospace giant. The International Monetary Fund said in April that it expected the U.S. economy would shrink 5.9% this year. It predicted the global economy would contract 3% in 2020. China’s growth would slow to 1.2% this year, the IMF projected, from 6.1% last year. Global trade, already experiencing its weakest activity since the 2008-09 financial crisis because of the two-year U.S.-China trade conflict, is likely to contract by 11% in 2020, the IMF said, a collapse that would make it difficult for countries to revive their economies by increasing exports. MORE ON THE ECONOMY

 ISM Non-Manufacturing Index increased to 45.4% in May - The May ISM Non-manufacturing index was at 45.4%, up from 41.8% in April. The employment index increased to 31.8%, from 30.0%. Note: Above 50 indicates expansion, below 50 contraction. From the Institute for Supply Management: May 2020 Non-Manufacturing ISM Report On Business®  “The NMI® registered 45.4 percent, 3.6 percentage points higher than the April reading of 41.8 percent. This reading represents contraction in the non-manufacturing sector for the second consecutive month, following a 122-month period of expansion. The Business Activity Index increased 15 percentage points from April’s figure, registering 41 percent. The New Orders Index registered 41.9 percent; 9 percentage points higher than the reading of 32.9 percent in April. The Employment Index increased to 31.8 percent; 1.8 percentage points higher than the April reading of 30 percent.  “The Supplier Deliveries Index registered at 67 percent, down 11.3 percentage points from April’s all-time-high reading of 78.3 percent, which elevated the composite NMI®. The Supplier Deliveries Index is one of four equally weighted subindexes that directly factor into the NMI®, along with Business Activity, New Orders and Employment. Supplier Deliveries is the only ISM® Report On Business® index that is inversed; a reading of above 50 percent indicates slower deliveries, which is typical as the economy improves and customer demand increases. The higher readings for supplier deliveries the past three months are primarily a product of supply problems related to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. This graph shows the ISM non-manufacturing index (started in January 2008) and the ISM non-manufacturing employment diffusion index. The headline index understated the weakness in the survey. The Supplier Deliveries index once again boosted the composite NMI, but the employment index was near last month's record low.

 Markit Services PMI: "Business activity slumps further amid COVID-19 pandemic" - The May US Services Purchasing Managers' Index conducted by Markit came in at 37.5 percent, up 10.8 from the final April estimate of 26.7. The Investing.com consensus was for 36.9 percent.Here is the opening from the latest press release: Commenting on the latest survey results, Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at IHS Markit, said:"The PMI numbers indicate that the US economy remained in a steep downturn in May. Encouragingly, the rate of contraction has eased considerably since the height of the lockdown in April as some firms get back to work and economic activity starts to resume."While views about prospects for the year ahead remained negative on balance, the degree of pessimism has also moderated considerably since April, to hint that sentiment is improving as increasing numbers of companies see the worst of the lockdown being behind them."A substantial part of the service sector nevertheless continued to be devastated by social distancing measures, and looks set to remain so for some months to come, limiting scope for a v-shaped recovery. The ongoing steep fall in employment remains a particular concern, pointing to a weakened consumer sector but also underscoring heightened risk aversion as companies seek to cut costs in the face of collapsing sales and an uncertain outlook." [Press Release] Here is a snapshot of the series since mid-2012. Here is an overlay with the equivalent PMI survey conducted by the Institute for Supply Management, which they refer to as "Non-Manufacturing" (see our full article on this series here). Over its history, the ISM metric has been significantly the more volatile of the two.

Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims decrease to 1,877,000 --The DOL reported: In the week ending May 30, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 1,877,000, a decrease of 249,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised up by 3,000 from 2,123,000 to 2,126,000. The 4-week moving average was 2,284,000, a decrease of 324,750 from the previous week's revised average. The previous week's average was revised up by 750 from 2,608,000 to 2,608,750. The previous week was revised up.This does not include the 623,073 initial claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA).The following graph shows the 4-week moving average of weekly claims since 1971.

Unemployment Claims Hold Steady as Economy Slowly Reopens – WSJ - The number of workers applying for and receiving unemployment benefits was historically high but eased at the end of May, indicating the U.S. labor market has weathered the worst of the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. The ranks of Americans drawing on unemployment benefits ticked up to 21.5 million in the week ended May 23, though the pace of increase significantly slowed from earlier in the crisis, the Labor Department said Thursday. So-called continuing claims are released with a one-week lag and appeared to hit a peak in early May. New applications for unemployment benefits have trended down since the pandemic and related lockdowns triggered a surge in claims at the end of March. Last week, there were 1.9 million unemployment claims, the first time initial claims have fallen below 2 million a week since the week ended March 14. “The ongoing retreat in the level of initial claims is welcome news,” said Nancy Vanden Houten, lead economist at Oxford Economics. “We still expect the recovery in the labor market to be painfully slow.” While initial claims have been easing from their peak, the weekly totals have remained higher than the prepandemic record of 695,000 claims in October 1982. It will probably take years for the economy to fully regain the millions of jobs lost during the pandemic. Protests after George Floyd was killed while in police custody could delay the economic recovery as large companies including Macy’s Inc. and Kroger Co. postponed store reopenings or cut back hours in response to the social unrest. A separate May report on U.S. employment, to be released Friday, will shed light on the magnitude of the employment losses that have occurred during the pandemic. Layoffs have continued and are expected to cause nonfarm payrolls to fall by 8 million in May, after a combined drop of 21.4 million in March and April. The unemployment rate is projected to rise to 19.5% in May from 14.7% in April, which would be the highest for records tracing back to 1948. Thursday’s report showed that the number of applications for unemployment benefits fell last week in 36 states. The same number of states recorded a decline in the number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits for the week ended May 23. “That suggests maybe we’re starting to see a bit of rehiring taking place as lockdown restrictions are eased,”

Jobless claims: “less awful” trend mainly continues - for now - The monthly May data has started to come in, giving us our first comparable data after the coronavirus recession struck. In housing, vehicle sales, and manufacturing, the theme is “less awful.” Meanwhile, weekly initial and continuing jobless claims give us the most up-to-date snapshot of the continuing economic impacts of the coronavirus to the average worker. Eleven weeks after calamity first struck, the theme is the same: “less awful.” First, here are initial jobless claims both seasonally adjusted (blue) and non- seasonally adjusted (red). The non-seasonally adjusted number is of added importance since seasonal adjustments should not have more than a trivial effect on the huge real numbers: There were 1.603 million new claims, which after the seasonal adjustment became 1.877 million. This is a -249,000 decline from last week’s number, and the lowest so far since the virus struck. Since we are a month after some States “reopened,” these new claims primarily represent spreading second-order impacts. Unfortunately, the “less bad” trend did not occur in continuing claims, which lag one week behind. Both the non-seasonally adjusted number (red), and the less important seasonally adjusted number (blue) rose, by 437,000 and 649,000 respectively, although both remained substantially below their peaks of two weeks ago: This tells us that, as of two weeks ago, the new damage outweighed callbacks to work. Let’s be clear: all of these numbers are awful, Great Depression-scale readings. The “good” news is still that climbing back from recession bottoms always has to start with “less awful” news, and overall this is what we got in this week’s jobless claims report. By way of historical comparison, initial jobless claims peaked in late March 2009, a little over two months before that recession officially ended. The big caveat: the virus does not care about States’ claiming that they are reopened. There is accumulating evidence that new infections have stopped declining on a nationwide basis, and both those and deaths have started to increase again slightly. So restrictions might need to be renewed. Also, given GOP opposition in the Senate, it appears that enhanced unemployment benefits are going to end next month. Since it is almost certain that the economy will still be very depressed at that point, a further huge wave of negative impacts seems increasingly likely.

ADP: Private Employment decreased 2,760,000 in May - From ADP: Private sector employment decreased by 2,760,000 jobs from April to May according to the May ADP National Employment Report®. The report utilizes data through the 12th of the month. The NER uses the same time period the Bureau of Labor and Statistics uses for their survey. As such, the May NER does not reflect the full impact of COVID-19 on the overall employment situation.Broadly distributed to the public each month, free of charge, the ADP National Employment Report is produced by the ADP Research Institute® in collaboration with Moody’s Analytics. The report, which is derived from ADP’s actual payroll data, measures the change in total nonfarm private employment each month on a seasonally-adjusted basis...“The impact of the COVID-19 crisis continues to weigh on businesses of all sizes,” said Ahu Yildirmaz, cohead of the ADP Research Institute. “While the labor market is still reeling from the effects of the pandemic, job loss likely peaked in April, as many states have begun a phased reopening of businesses.”This was well above the consensus forecast for 9,000,000 private sector jobs lost in the ADP report. The BLS report will be released Friday, and the consensus is for 8,250,000 non-farm payroll jobs lost in May.

US economy shed 2.76 million private payrolls in May: ADP  - U.S. employers cut 2.76 million private payrolls in May, according to a report Wednesday from ADP, as the coronavirus pandemic weighed on domestic economic activity and the labor market for another month.The job cuts reflected in ADP’s report came in again at a historically high level, but was well below the figure many market participants were bracing to receive. Consensus economists expected private sector job losses to total 9 million for May, according to Bloomberg data. Stock futures extended gains following the report.  In April, private-sector job losses were at a record high of 19.557 million, following revisions from the 20.236 million cuts previously reported, ADP said.“The impact of the COVID-19 crisis continues to weigh on businesses of all sizes,” Ahu Yildirmaz, co-head of the ADP Research Institute, said in a statement. “While the labor market is still reeling from the effects of the pandemic, job loss likely peaked in April, as many states have begun a phased reopening of businesses.”The services sector again bore the brunt of the payroll declines in May, as ongoing social distancing measures and business closures hammered the restaurant, travel and tourism industry in May. Overall, service-sector payrolls slumped by 1.967 million.Within services, trade, transportation and utilities industries led declines in payrolls, shedding 826,000 jobs, and health-care and social assistance roles fell by 333,000. Education industries were the only category that posted net job gains for May, with these rising by 166,000.The goods-producing sector saw broad-based job losses across all industries. Manufacturing payrolls slid by 719,000 for the month, and each of the mining and construction sectors posted job losses in the tens of thousands.By company size, large businesses – or those with 500 employees or more – posted the largest drop in payrolls for May, with these cuts totaling 1.604 million. Medium-sized businesses with between 50 and 499 employees shed 722,000 payrolls, and small businesses cut 435,000 jobs. Though still a grim print underscoring widespread joblessness in the country, the better-than-feared report Wednesday fueled optimism among some analysts that the early stages of reopening in the economy were helping to cap new job cuts.

U.S. Unemployment Rate Fell to 13.3% in May – WSJ - The U.S. jobless rate fell to 13.3% and employers added 2.5 million jobs in May, early signs the labor market is mending as the economy started to reopen following lockdowns related to the coronavirus pandemic. Employment rose sharply across industries, including leisure and hospitality, construction, education and health services, and retail, the Labor Department said. “These improvements in the labor market reflected a limited resumption of economic activity that had been curtailed in March and April due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and efforts to contain it,” the department said Friday in a release. The jobless rate fell from 14.7% a month earlier, which was the highest on records dating from 1948. A broader measure of unemployment—which includes part-time workers and those who gave up looking for jobs—fell to 21.2% from 22.8% a month earlier. The economy had lost 22.1 million jobs combined in March and April when states and localities ordered many businesses to shut down to combat the spread of the virus. In May, with some areas starting to reopen, some businesses rehired workers. “The bounceback started earlier than most expected, but don’t get too excited about this one month of data,” Nick Bunker, economist for hiring website Indeed, said in a note. “It’s not clear how enduring this will be.” Despite the gains last month, the jobless rate is still exceptionally high, and 21 million workers remained unemployed.  Other data suggest the labor market stabilized in recent weeks, though it likely suffered another setback from riots and looting after George Floyd was killed in police custody May 25 in Minneapolis. Friday’s report showed the unemployment rate was uneven across racial groups.The unemployment rate for African-Americans rose by 0.1 percentage point in May to 16.8%. The rate for Asians increased to 15% from 14.5% in April. The rate for Latinos was 17.6% in May, down 1.3 percentage points from April’s record high. The rate for white workers fell 1.8 percentage points in May to 12.4% The jobless rate fell for both women and men, but the rate for women was higher, 14.5% versus 12.2% for men. In February, before the economic shock due to the pandemic began, the unemployment rate was slightly lower for women, 3.4% compared with 3.6% for men. Of those unemployed due to job loss, 84% reported themselves as on a temporary layoff, meaning they expect to return to their prior employer within six months. While that is historically high, the share is down slightly from 88% in April.  Some industries that were the quickest to lay off workers in March added many of those workers back in May.

May Employment Report: 2,500,000 Jobs Added, 13.3% Unemployment Rate - From the BLS: Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 2.5 million in May, and the unemployment rate declined to 13.3 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. These improvements in the labor market reflected a limited resumption of economic activity that had been curtailed in March and April due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and efforts to contain it. In May, employment rose sharply in leisure and hospitality, construction, education and health services, and retail trade. By contrast, employment in government continued to decline sharply. ... The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for March was revised down by 492,000, from -881,000 to -1.4 million, and the change for April was revised down by 150,000, from -20.5 million to -20.7 million. With these revisions, employment in March and April combined was 642,000 lower than previously reported.The first graph shows the year-over-year change in total non-farm employment since 1968. In May, the year-over-year change was -17.665 million jobs. Total payrolls increased by 2.5 million in May. Payrolls for March and April were revised down 642 thousand combined. The second graph shows the job losses from the start of the employment recession, in percentage terms. The current employment recession is by far the worst recession since WWII in percentage terms, and the worst in terms of the unemployment rate. The third graph shows the employment population ratio and the participation rate. The Labor Force Participation Rate increased to 60.8% in May. This is the percentage of the working age population in the labor force. The Employment-Population ratio increased to 52.8% (black line). The fourth graph shows the unemployment rate. The unemployment rate decreased in May to 13.3%. This was well above consensus expectations of 8,250,000 jobs lost, however March and April were revised down by 642,000 combined. This was a surprising employment report since all other data pointed to more job losses in May. …

U.S. Hiring Rebounds, Defying Forecasts for Surge in Joblessness --America’s labor market defied forecasts for a Depression-style surge in unemployment, signaling the economy is picking up faster than anticipated from the coronavirus-inflicted recession amid reopenings and government stimulus. A broad gauge of payrolls rose by 2.5 million in May, trouncing forecasts for a sharp decline following a 20.7 million tumble the prior month that was the largest in records back to 1939, according to Labor Department data Friday. The jobless rate fell to 13.3% from 14.7%. U.S. stocks jumped after the report with the S&P 500 up 2.9%, adding to weeks of gains in equities since mid-March. The figures were so astonishing that President Donald Trump held a news conference, where he called the numbers “outstanding” and predicted further improvement before he’s up for re-election in November. While the overall picture improved, there are still major caveats: 21 million Americans remain unemployed with a jobless rate higher than any other time since 1940, indicating a full recovery remains far off with many likely to suffer for some time. And the return to work is uneven, with unemployment ticking up among African Americans to 16.8%, matching the highest since 1984, even as unemployment rates declined among white and Hispanic Americans. That comes amid nationwide protests over police mistreatment of African-Americans, which have drawn renewed attention to race-based inequality. The unexpected improvement wasn’t limited to the U.S. figures. North of the border, Canadian employment rose 290,000 in May, compared with forecasts of a 500,000 slump, its statistics office reported Friday. The data show a U.S. economy pulling back from the brink as states relax restrictions and businesses bring back staff amid record government stimulus, including loans that were contingent on rehiring workers. At the same time, the lack of an effective treatment for Covid-19 -- which has already killed more than 100,000 in the U.S. -- means infections may persist and possibly surge in a second wave, with the potential to further shake the labor market and extend the economic weakness. “Clearly the labor market turned the corner in late April, early May. We’re seeing a rebound of labor-market activity,” said Michael Englund, chief economist at Action Economics, who had estimated a payrolls decline of 2 million, the second-closest estimate. He expects June economic and labor-market data to show further improvements and plans to revise up his forecast for second-quarter gross domestic product.

May Jobs Report: 2.5M Jobs Added, Unemployment Rate Drops to 13.3% - This morning's employment report for May showed a 2.5M increase in total nonfarm payrolls, which was above the Investing.com forecast of -8M. Here is an excerpt from the Employment Situation Summary released this morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics: Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 2.5 million in May, and the unemployment rate declined to 13.3 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. These improvements in the labor market reflected a limited resumption of economic activity that had been curtailed in March and April due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and efforts to contain it. In May, employment rose sharply in leisure and hospitality, construction, education and health services, and retail trade. By contrast, employment in government continued to decline sharply. This news release presents statistics from two monthly surveys. The household survey measures labor force status, including unemployment, by demographic characteristics. The establishment survey measures nonfarm employment, hours, and earnings by industry. For more information about the concepts and statistical methodology used in these two surveys, see the Technical Note. Data collection for both surveys was affected by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. In the establishment survey, approximately one-fifth of the data is collected at four regional data collection centers. Although these centers were closed, about three-quarters of the interviewers at these centers worked remotely to collect data by telephone. Additionally, BLS encouraged businesses to report electronically. The collection rate for the establishment survey in May was 69 percent, slightly lower than collection rates prior to the pandemic. The household survey is generally collected through inperson and telephone interviews, but personal interviews were not conducted for the safety of interviewers and respondents. The household survey response rate, at 67 percent, was about 15 percentage points lower than in months prior to the pandemic. In the establishment survey, workers who are paid by their employer for all or any part of the pay period including the 12th of the month are counted as employed, even if they were not actually at their jobs. Workers who are temporarily or permanently absent from their jobs and are not being paid are not counted as employed, even if they are continuing to receive benefits. The estimation methods used in the establishment survey were the same for May as they were for April. However, after further research, BLS extended the modifications that were made to the April birth-death model back to March, which accounted for a portion of the revision to March data. For more information, see www.bls.gov/cps/employment-situation-covid19-faq-may-2020.pdf . In the household survey, individuals are classified as employed, unemployed, or not in the labor force based on their answers to a series of questions about their activities during the survey reference week (May 10th through May 16th). Workers who indicate they were not working during the entire survey reference week and expect to be recalled to their jobs should be classified as unemployed on temporary layoff. In May, a large number of persons were classified as unemployed on temporary layoff. However, there was also a large number of workers who were classified as employed but absent from work. As was the case in March and April, household survey interviewers were instructed to classify employed persons absent from work due to coronavirus-related business closures as unemployed on temporary layoff. However, it is apparent that not all such workers were so classified. BLS and the Census Bureau are investigating why this misclassification error continues to occur and are taking additional steps to address the issue. If the workers who were recorded as employed but absent from work due to “other reasons” (over and above the number absent for other reasons in a typical May) had been classified as unemployed on temporary layoff, the overall unemployment rate would have been about 3 percentage points higher than reported (on a not seasonally adjusted basis). However, according to usual practice, the data from the household survey are accepted as recorded. Here is a snapshot of the monthly percent change in Nonfarm Employment since 2000. We've added a 12-month moving average to highlight the long-term trend.

Economists Have Biggest Miss Ever in U.S. Jobs-Report Shocker -- The monthly U.S. jobs report can often surprise relative to projections, but forecasts have never been so spectacularly wrong as they were for May’s data out Friday, raising the question of why this miss was so wide.  A record 2.5 million workers were added by employers during the month, compared with a median projection for a loss of 7.5 million jobs. Of the 78 economists surveyed by Bloomberg, the most optimistic forecast called for an 800,000 decline. Their estimates also expected the unemployment rate to approach 20% -- the highest since the Great Depression in the 1930s -- when in fact it declined to 13.3%.   Playing a huge role in economists’ forecasts were floods of applications for jobless insurance and tens of millions of Americans still on benefit rolls -- the extent of which the nation has never experienced in such a short timespan. Moreover, economists’ models probably failed to fully take into account the government’s relief response, specifically the Paycheck Protection Program that provides firms funding to keep workers on staff.  “High frequency data -- including mobility stats and small business openings -- have been pointing to a trough in economic activity since mid-April,” Jefferies economists Aneta Markowska and Thomas Simons said in a note to clients. “Jobless claims did not fit with that picture, suggesting there was no positive follow-through to the labor market. We now know that claims were wrong. The May employment report was rock solid, with broad-based gains across many industries.” Before this year, the biggest single-month miss on the payrolls report was 318,000 in February 2003, according to Bloomberg survey data going back to 1996.   The sudden nature of the downturn is putting a premium on real-time data to help produce more in-the-ballpark estimates for economic data.  “No data set that economists are using has this kind of black swan event available to them,” said David Gilbertson, vice president of strategy and operations at Kronos, a software and services company that tracks time-clock punches from clients that represent about 3.2 million U.S. workers. “There’s nothing in this data that gives an indication of what happens in an economy when this many jobs are lost this quickly. There’s nothing in their models to indicate what’s going to happen.”  Michelle Meyer, head of U.S. economics at Bank of America Corp., pointed to the 1.4 million jobs added in the restaurant industry and said, “maybe this is an indication that PPP is working and it’s being distributed to small businesses -- restaurants -- and they’re using it to bring workers back.”

May jobs report: a welcome positive shock HEADLINES:

• 2,509,000 million jobs added. This makes up about 12% of the 22.1 million job losses in March and April.
• U3 unemployment rate improved 1.4% to 13.3%, compared with the January low of 3.5%.
• U6 underemployment rate improved 1.6% to 21.2%, compared with the January low of 6.9%.
• March and April were both revised further downward, by -492,000 and 150,000 respectively, for a net of -642,000 more jobs lost compared with previous reports.
• the average manufacturing workweek rose 0.8 hours from 38.1 to 38.9 hours. This is one of the 10 components of the LEI and will be a positive.
• Manufacturing jobs rose by 225,000. Manufacturing has still lost 1.145 million  jobs in the past 3 months, or close to 10% of the total.
• construction jobs rose by 464,000. Even so, in the past 3 months -596,000 construction jobs have been lost, or about 8% of the total.
• Residential construction jobs, which are even more leading, rose by 65,600. Even so, in the past 3 months there have still been -58,800 lost jobs, or about 7% of the total.
• temporary jobs rose by 41,300. Since February, there have still been -852,800 jobs lost, or over 1/4 of all temporary help jobs.
• the number of people unemployed for 5 weeks or less declined to 3.875 million, compared with April’s total of 14.283 million. This is similar to the “less awful” readings of the weekly initial jobless claims.
• Professional and business employment rose by 127,000, which is still 2.156 million, or about 10% below its February peak.
• Average Hourly Earnings for Production and Nonsupervisory Personnel: declined $0.14 from $25.14 to $25.00, which is still a gain of over 3% in 2 months. This reflects that job losses were primarily among lower wage earners.
• the index of aggregate hours worked for non-managerial workers rose by 4.9%. In the past 3 months combined this has nevertheless fallen by about 10%.
• the index of aggregate payrolls for non-managerial workers rose by 4.4%. In the past 3 months combined this has nevertheless fallen by about 11%. 
• Full time jobs were responsible for 2.2 million of the gains.
• Part time jobs were responsible for 1.6 million of the gains.
• The number of job holders who were part time for economic reasons declined  by 254,000 million to 10.633 million. This is still an increase since February of   6.315 million.

SUMMARY:  This report was a positive shock. Rehiring in May outweighed the continuing and spreading layoffs. At first blush it appears this was primarily among the retail and leisure and hospitality sectors which were more than decimated in March and April.  A few sectors have recovered more than half of the jobs that were lost, but most have only regained 10% or 20% of their losses. Further, because average hourly wages have maintained over 80% of the increase in April - because lower wage jobs were primarily lost - this strongly suggests that the job recalls were relatively speaking tilted towards higher paying jobs as well. Most importantly, aggregate payrolls are still down more than 10% from their recent peak. Unless a miracle happens and a huge majority of the job losses are reversed in the next 45 days, when the enhanced unemployment insurance passed by Congress runs out in July, there is going to be a major knock-on shock to the economy.

Comments on May Employment Report - The May employment report was surprising. Every key indicator - ISM surveys, ADP employment report, unemployment claims and more - suggested further job losses in May. Instead the BLS reported job gains of 2.5 million (about 10 million better than consensus forecasts), and the unemployment rate decreased to 13.3%. The reference week in May (includes the 12th) was too soon to be impacted by most areas "reopening".  One possibility is that many companies brought back employees to qualify for the PPP (Payroll Protection Plan). Earlier: May Employment Report: 2,500,000 Jobs Added, 13.3% Unemployment RateIn April, the year-over-year employment change was minus 17.7 million jobs. One of the keys to follow will be the number of workers on temporary layoff.   This increased from 801 thousand in February, to 1.848 million in March, and to 18.063 million in April. This decreased by 2.7 million in May to 15.343 million. It could be that companies let too many workers go in April and brought some back - or this might be related to PPP adjustments. Since the overall participation rate has declined due to cyclical (recession) and demographic (aging population, younger people staying in school) reasons, here is the employment-population ratio for the key working age group: 25 to 54 years old. The prime working age will be key in the eventual recovery. The 25 to 54 participation rate increased in May to 80.7%, and the 25 to 54 employment population ratio increased to 71.4%.  From the BLS report: "The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons, at 10.6 million, changed little in May, but is up by 6.3 million since February. These individuals, who would have preferred full-time employment, were working part time because their hours had been reduced or they were unable to find full-time jobs. This group includes persons who usually work full time and persons who usually work part time." The number of persons working part time for economic reasons decreased in May to 10.633 million from 10.887 million in April. These workers are included in the alternate measure of labor underutilization (U-6) that decreased to 21.2% in May. This is down slightly from the record high last month for this measure (since 1994). The previous peak was 17.2% during the Great Recession. This graph shows the number of workers unemployed for 27 weeks or more. According to the BLS, there are 1.164 million workers who have been unemployed for more than 26 weeks and still want a job. This will increase sharply in 4 or 5 months, and will be a key measure to follow during the eventual recovery. Summary: The headline monthly jobs number was surprising, and well above expectations.  However, the previous two months were revised down significantly.  The headline unemployment rate decreased to 13.3% (probably closer to 16% according to the BLS). Since the reference week included the 12th of May, this was too soon to be impacted by "reopenings" in most areas. That will be more of a June story. Instead this increase in employment was likely due to companies rehiring because they let too many people go in April, and because some companies needed to rehire to qualify for PPP forgiveness. As a reminder, the course of the economy will be determined by the course of the pandemic.

Where Employment Improved—and Where It Didn’t – WSJ -- Employment rebounded broadly in May as companies reopened following coronavirus shutdowns. Among goods-producing industries, manufacturing showed strong gains. In the services category, jobs in food services and drinking places rose by 1.4 million, accounting for about half of the gain in total nonfarm employment. On the other hand, government payrolls continued to shrink as steep declines in revenue forced cities and states to lay off workers.Construction registered the strongest improvement among goods-producing industries with an increase of 464,000 jobs, or almost half the number lost in April. Despite the coronavirus shutdowns, house prices continued to rise, and some real-estate brokers and economists say they see signs that demand for new homes has started to rise in recent weeks.Employment in services such as education, health care and hospitality dropped sharply when the U.S. went into lockdown, but those sectors saw the strongest revivals last month. Employment in two categories—leisure and hospitality, and retail trade—accounted for more than half of the rebound in payrolls across the economy.The unemployment rate ticked down for both sexes, with the rate still higher for women, who are overrepresented sectors such as education, leisure and hospitality. Those jobs were hard hit by social-distancing measures because they involve close personal contact.The coronavirus pandemic took the greatest toll on the least-educated workers, who are concentrated in hard-hit industries like retail and hospitality. One in five workers who didn’t complete high school remained out of work in May.  Unemployment declined among white and Hispanic workers but rose for blacks and Asian Americans. The rate for black Americans was 16.8% in May, the highest since March 2010, in the aftermath of the last recession.

"Nothing Like This Has Happened Before": A Shocked Wall Street Responds To Payrolls, Offers 3 Options What Happened --"Nothing like this has happened before."That was the response of Bloomberg commentator John Authers to today's jobs report, pointing out that the spread of the unemployment rate compared to the lowest estimate was the greatest on record.  He wasn't the only person shocked by today's BLS report showing that nonfarm payrolls gained by 2.5 million on expectations of a 7.5 million drop with most sectors flat to up, as the unemployment rate dropped to 13.3% vs expectations of a surge to 19.1%. And, as we first noted earlier, while the report clearly confirmed Trump's political message of a V-shaped recovery, the shock was that the surge in jobs came before lockdowns ended. Adding to the confusion is that ongoing Unemployment Claims surged after the April survey period and then they retreated by the end of the May survey period, but even here the increase was 3M+ in ongoing claims.One explanation for this bizarre divergence came from SouthBay Research which noted that it had previously pointed out problems with Jobless Claims numbers, pointing to the 37 million jump in cumulative claims which included: Fraud: 3.7M (extrapolating from Washington State anecdote)    Seasonal Adjustment: 4M   Run-rate: 2M    By these estimates, SouthBay calculates that 27 million in non-seasonal Initial Jobless Claims were filed. However, the BLS only recognized only 18M lost Private Payroll jobs (March-May)This led Southbay to propose the following three options about what is going on:

• Option #1: Employers added 9M jobs from April 13th-May 12th.  Somehow, the partial slight re-opening in some states in early May led to an unprecedented hiring spree
• Option #2: The BLS data is just...wrong
• Option #3: The Jobless Claim data is horribly flawed.  Incorrect or fraudulent claims ran closer to 30% and not 10% of the total

And echoing what we said earlier, SouthBay concludes that "Today's report confirms what we already knew: that business is back to hiring.  The surprise is that it came roaring back BEFORE lockdown ended." Other Wall Street strategists were no less surprised, as the following collection of soundbites courtesy of Bloomberg indicates:

This Makes No Sense: In Month When US Was Shut Down, BLS Estimated That 345K New Businesses Were Formed - As people dig deeper in the entrails of the most bizarre - and most politicized - jobs report in history, they keep finding more and more irregularities.Consider this: according to the BLS report, which was based on a survey week from May 10th through May 16th when virtually all of the US was still shut down, the government decided that a record number of new businesses were formed. According to the BLS's Birth/Death model which is used to adjust the raw payrolls data for estimated new business openings and closures, a record 345K new jobs were created due to new businesses opening in a month when - we will repeat again - the US was largely shut down! This also means that over 60% of the business closures from the month of April (April Birth/Death -553K) were somehow undone in a month when the US was still mostly closed down.Needless to say, this was entirely a statistical adjustment in the "eye of the beholder", one which even the BLS felt ashamed of, because in a little noticed addendum to the jobs report, the BLS announced it had made "changes" to its net birth-death model due to the coronavirus pandemic, changes which apparently included the modeling of massive business reopenings when millions of small businesses were shutting down. From the BLS: These two methodological changes are the following:

• A portion of both reported zeros and returns from zero in the current month from the sample were used in estimation to better account for the fact that business births and deaths will not offset.
• Current sample growth rates were included in the net birth-death forecasting model to better account for the changing relationships between business openings and closings.

Firstly, BLS included a proportion of reports that fell to zero employment and reports that returned from zero employment in the current month in the over-the-month change of the sample-based estimates. Typically, reports with zero employment in either the previous or current month are not included in estimation. To account for an excess amount of reports going to zero employment as well as reports returning from zero employment, CES calculated the probabilities that either a reported zero or a return from zero exceeded what would be expected for the month. These "excess zeroes" and "excess returns from zero" partially account for drops in employment (when more business deaths than are usually observed in historical population data occur) and for increases in employment (when there are more business births than normal). Secondly, BLS adjusted the portion of business births and deaths that cannot be accounted for using our sample data by including more recent information.  Using additional regression variables in the net birth-death forecasts accounted for 345,000 in employment for May at the total private level .

BLS Admits “Survey Error” May Have Reduced Unemployment Rate By Up To 3% --Earlier we pointed out some statistical aberrations that helped explain some of the shocking surprise in today's jobs report. But none other than the BLS itself admitted that a "misclassification error" led to the unemployment rate being as much as 3% higher than reported.Here is what the BLS said about adjustments to the household survey as a result of the Coronavirus shutdowns:... there was also a large number of workers who were classified as employed but absent from work. As was the case in March and April, household survey interviewers were instructed to classify employed persons absent from work due to coronavirus-related business closures as unemployed on temporary layoff. However, it is apparent that not all such workers were so classified. If the workers who were recorded as employed but absent from work due to "other reasons" (over and above the number absent for other reasons in a typical May) had been classified as unemployed on temporary layoff, the overall unemployment rate would have been about 3 percentage points higher than reported (on a not seasonally adjusted basis).So the BLS knows there is an error and is hoping to fix it..."BLS and the Census Bureau are investigating why this misclassification error continues to occur and are taking additional steps to address the issue."... but not yet:"However, according to usual practice, the data from the household survey are accepted as recorded. To maintain data integrity, no ad hoc actions are taken to reclassify survey responses." One can only imagine what other "survey errors" were made but not fixed for the sake of "data integrity."

One-Third of America’s Record Unemployment Payout Hasn’t Arrived Almost one-third of unemployment benefits estimated to be owed to the millions of Americans who lost their jobs as a result of the coronavirus slump haven’t been paid yet, as flagship policies struggle to cope with the unprecedented wave of layoffs. The Treasury disbursed $146 billion in unemployment benefits in the three months through May, according to data published Monday -- more than in the whole of 2009, when jobless rates peaked after the financial crisis. But even that historic figure falls short of a total bill that should have reached about $214 billion for the period, according to Bloomberg calculations based on weekly unemployment filings and the average size of those claims. Estimated total claims cost calculated by Bloomberg based on unadjusted continuing claims plus Pandemic Unemployment Assistance claims. Claims data for the last two weeks of May are averages of the prior four weeks, PUA data for the last two weeks are averages of the prior two weeks. The estimated gap of some $67 billion shows how emergency efforts to boost payments, and deliver them via creaking state-level systems, are lagging the needs of a jobs crisis that’s seen more than 40 million people file for unemployment as the economy shut down. The gaps in America’s social safety net are becoming apparent at the same time as protests erupt over longstanding racial inequities. The debate over how and when to reopen businesses even as the pandemic continues is also turning acrimonious, in a nation that increasingly feels like a tinderbox. There’s “a huge hole,” said Jay Shambaugh, an economist at Brookings Institution who has been tracking the unemployment payments. “There’s a lot more money that should have gone out that has not gone out.” The bill is still mounting. Economists estimate that another 1.8 million people filed for unemployment last week. That data is due out on Thursday, while Friday’s monthly numbers are forecast to show a jobless rate of 19.5% in May, the highest since the Great Depression.

 Census: Household Pulse Survey shows 48.1% of Households lost Income --From the Census Bureau: Measuring Household Experiences during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic The U.S. Census Bureau, in collaboration with five federal agencies, is in a unique position to produce data on the social and economic effects of COVID-19 on American households. The Household Pulse Survey is designed to deploy quickly and efficiently, collecting data to measure household experiences during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Data will be disseminated in near real-time to inform federal and state response and recovery planning.…Data collection for the Household Pulse Survey began on April 23, 2020. The Census Bureau will collect data for 90 days, and release data on a weekly basis. This will be updated weekly, and the Census Bureau released the fourth week of survey results today. This survey asks about Loss in Employment Income, Expected Loss in Employment Income, Food Scarcity, Delayed Medical Care, Housing Insecurity and K-12 Educational Changes.

AMC Theaters warns of ‘substantial doubt’ about future as pandemic fallout continues -- AMC Theaters is warning investors about its incredibly uncertain future as financial fallout from the pandemic continues, blatantly stating that “substantial doubt exists about our ability to continue as a going concern for a reasonable period of time.” A new 8-K filing arrived ahead of AMC Theaters’ upcoming earnings call next week, and it wasted no time going over the disastrous situation the company has found itself in. The filing comes with a long list of ways that AMC Theaters, the largest theater chain in the United States, is trying to stay afloat, but it acknowledged that the pandemic makes the future more uncertain than ever before. The theater chain already carried a massive debt load of approximately $5 billion by the end of 2019 and is continuing to borrow more as the company tries to make it through an unprecedented tumultuous period. AMC Theaters expects a loss of somewhere between $2.1 and $2.4 billion in the first quarter, and it maintained a cash balance of $718.3 million as recently as April.Over the last few months, AMC Theaters has effectively generated no revenue, as government-imposed restrictions and theatrical delays have stopped the company’s primary revenue generator: movie tickets and concessions. AMC Theaters, alongside competitors, is hopeful that theaters can begin to reopen en masse in July, just in time for Warner Bros.’ highly anticipated Christopher Nolan feature, Tenet.If AMC Theaters isn’t able to begin operations by then, “substantial doubt exists about our ability to continue as a going concern for a reasonable period of time.” The filing adds that because AMC has never “previously experienced a complete cessation of our operations,” the company is unable to make any predictions because everything is up in the air and changing all the time.

Major League Baseball plans to open season in midst of pandemic - On March 12, Major League Baseball (MLB), in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, suspended spring training and postponed the start of the 2020 regular season.Initially, the opening of the season was to be delayed for just two weeks, but this was pushed back in response to updated recommendations issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which urged restrictions on events of more than 50 people for eight weeks.On March 27, MLB and the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) finalized an agreement that established a potential framework for the 2020 season. Players would receive pro-rated salaries for the number of games played. Players and owners were willing to stretch the postseason well into November in order to maximize the number of games played.In the ensuing weeks, various scenarios were proposed as to when and where to start the season. In early May, based on the expectation that the COVID-19 spread would be contained, MLB announced an 82-game season that would begin by the first week of July, with spring training resuming by June 10. Teams believe most pitchers need about four weeks to get ready, and position players need about three.MLB's plan, which calls for “frequent” but not daily testing, quarantines only individuals who test positive and contravenes federal guidelines that advise individuals who come in contact with a confirmed infection to quarantine for at least two weeks.The Harvard Global Health Institute recommends states conduct at least 152 tests per day for every 100,000 people. But only four out of the 17 states with MLB teams currently meet that standard. How MLB avoids competing for desperately needed resources has gone unanswered. With MLB losing roughly $75 million a day, according to estimates by Patrick Rishe, director of the sports business program at Washington University in St. Louis, officials are contemplating a half-season plus expanded playoffs—well over 1,200 games across the nation. Baseball contends it can counteract the virus by disinfecting baseballs, deep-cleaning clubhouses, and, at least initially, banning paying customers from the ballpark.

Nebraskans Ask For Protections For Meatpacking Workers: “Essential Workers Are Essential Lives”  -Hundreds of Nebraskans gathered at the Capitol Sunday to demand more action to protect essential workers, especially those at meatpacking plants. The Capitol steps filled up long before the rally. Hundreds of people were there for a Black Lives Matter protest later in the afternoon, but eagerly joined the crowd advocating for meatpacking workers. Maira Mendez says both of her parents work at the Smithfield Foods packing plant in Crete. "We won’t allow employers and government officials to classify plant workers as essential workers without treating them as essential lives," Mendez said." Maira Mendez is the daughter of two workers at the Smithfield Foods packing plant in Crete. (Becca Costello, NET News) She says Gov. Pete Ricketts has not done enough to ensure packing plants are following guidelines recommended by the CDC and OSHA. And state Sen. Tony Vargas agrees, after listening to the stories of workers. "Workers are still working too closely on assembly lines," Vargas said. "Their employers are threatening them, saying that if they go to the media or to the public with these experiences they will lose their jobs. And if they are sick, they're encouraged to go to work anyway." At least 3,000 meatpacking workers in Nebraska have tested positive for COVID-19 and 11 have died. Advocates say plants didn’t act quickly enough to protect workers and are still prioritizing profit over safety.

Workers sickened after Amazon sprays industrial strength chemicals to disinfect warehouse - At least three Amazon workers in Ohio fell sick after management sprayed industrial strength chemicals to disinfect a warehouse while workers were still inside, according to information provided to the International Amazon Workers’ Voice. Amazon workers from the Cincinnati, Ohio area told the IAWV that company officials first tried to conceal the fact that four workers at the facility had tested positive for COVID-19. Once word began to spread among workers that there were confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the warehouse, management decided to have the warehouse “decontaminated.” According to workers, this meant spraying industrial-strength disinfecting chemicals in the workplace while workers continued to work. “The HR [human resources] team has neglected to notify employees that there were four cases of positive COVID-19 until time had passed and the word was getting out,” said an Ohio worker with first-hand knowledge who was interviewed by the IAWV. Amazon has fired numerous workers who have spoken out about safety concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic, so this worker asked to remain anonymous. At the beginning of May, “there was a text sent to employees stating a coworker had tested positive in April and the HR team was taking precautions. The management had a company come in to spray industrial strength sanitizer during work hours without closing the facility down for the recommended two hours,” the worker said. “Two employees had to leave because they came in contact with the chemical resulting in hives, rash, itchy skin and one employee became nauseous and had to leave,” the worker continued. “The company who sprayed had their employee in hazmat gear including respirators. Not once did it dawn on the management that the employees should not be in contact with the chemical or breathe it in.” “Since that incident, management has required the company to spray at 4:30 AM while employees wait to start, sitting in the break room (6ft apart) for 30 minutes.” The company hired to do the disinfecting recommends that no employees work in the area for two hours, and then only with proper ventilation. Amazon has “still not acknowledged the recommendations of the company spraying the facility,” said the worker.

Microsoft to replace MSN news production workers with artificial intelligence - Microsoft is firing dozens of news contractors after June 30 and replacing them with artificial intelligence (AI). Around 50 journalists and editors in the US contracted though Aquent IFG and MAQ Consulting and 27 in the UK contracted through PA Media (formerly the Press Association) will lose their jobs. These workers operate MSN news pages, curating content and in some cases rewriting headlines and editing content to fit the format. MSN was launched as Microsoft’s news portal in 1995. At its launch, MSN published original content as well as links to news, weather and sports updates. In 2014, the site was relaunched as a partner with other news sites, paying them to redistribute their content. At the launch of Microsoft News in June 2018, Microsoft said it had more than 800 editors working in 50 locations around the world. The company has been gradually moving toward AI for its news work in recent months, using AI to scan for content and process and filter it. Software can also suggest photos for human editors to pair with content. In the “About us” section of msn.com, Microsoft states: “Every day, our publishing partners send us more than 100,000 unique pieces of content. Our AI scans the content as it arrives, processes it to understand dimensions like freshness, category, topic type, opinion content and potential popularity and then presents it for our editors. Our algorithms suggest appropriate photos to pair with content to help bring stories to life. Editors then curate the top stories throughout the day, across a variety of topics, so our readers get the latest news from the best sources.” The layoffs indicate that Microsoft aims to eliminate the manual curation step and fully automate the process, with the potential loss of hundreds of jobs.

‘Why Do We Always Get Hit First?’ Proposed Budget Cuts Target Vulnerable Californians - Shirley Madden, 83, relies on a caregiver and her two grown daughters to remain living at home — and not in a nursing home. Her daughters, 55-year-old Carrie and 60-year-old Kristy Madden, both use wheelchairs and need a second caregiver to help them navigate their own daily lives. But that critical caregiving support, along with other health care benefits for millions of Californians, could be scaled back to help plug a massive budget deficit triggered by the coronavirus. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed sweeping budget cuts to safety-net health care programs ― including Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program for low-income people ― just as enrollment is projected to spike because of record job losses related to the pandemic. Health care experts also fear the cuts could jeopardize billions of dollars in emergency federal health funding allotted to California.  Madden’s fears are compounded by the COVID-19 crisis, which has hit older people and those with chronic health conditions the hardest. She doesn’t want her mother, her sister or herself to end up in a nursing home or other long-term care facility — the settings with the most outbreaks of COVID-19. States across the country are eyeing Medicaid cuts to balance their budgets, in part because health care is usually the biggest portion of state spending, after education. They also project that more people will sign up for the public health care program, as the number of unemployed Americans hits astronomical heights. More than 20 million Americans filed for unemployment in April, raising the unemployment rate at least to 14.7%, the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s. New York approved Medicaid cuts that will take effect after the federal emergency ends, while Georgia has instructed all its agencies to reduce spending by 14%. In California, where almost 2.9 million people have filed for unemployment in the past two months, Newsom described the proposed budget cuts as “prudent” and “strategic,” a huge pivot from the grand plans he unveiled earlier this year to expand health care to some of the neediest residents.

Denver Was Booming Before the Coronavirus Pandemic. Now It Hopes to Bounce Back – WSJ - Before the coronavirus pandemic, few American cities were creating jobs faster than Denver. Nor had many places aligned themselves so closely with sectors that have since been battered by shutdowns aimed at curbing the spread of the virus, such as tourism and energy. Now the Mile High City may also hold answers about the post-coronavirus economic outlook: whether cities that outperformed during the longest expansion in U.S. history are better cushioned to navigate a recovery. In Denver’s case, some of the same factors that propelled it—such as a younger, more educated and wealthier population—may outweigh disadvantages of high exposure to crisis-hit sectors, according to local business owners and economists. A few months back when the U.S. was enjoying joblessness at a half-century low, Denver area employment proved consistently healthier than the national average, according to the U.S. Labor Department. The city’s expanding population earned a median income of $63,793—6% above the national average—and underpinned surging property values. They patronized hundreds of new restaurants a year in places such as the trendy RiNo district. An important component of Denver’s vitality has included attracting outsiders: tourists and convention-goers, but also companies and job seekers. Chunks of that revenue have been erased by lockdowns and social distancing. Resort, hotel, restaurant and airport layoffs in Denver and across Colorado have propelled state jobless claims to nearly 500,000 in recent weeks—compared with jobs added as recently as February.Denver’s 4.6% jobless rate in March, the most recent month available, exceeded the national average for the first time since early 2012, according to the Labor Department. The fall in economic activity also caused a collapse in global oil prices, costing oil patch jobs in Denver.

NYC’s Metropolitan Opera artists face uncertain future due to coronavirus lockdown For the past two months of the coronavirus quarantine, Metropolitan Opera House singer Abigail Mitchell has used her small upper Manhattan apartment as a temporary studio space.On most days, the soprano enters the bedroom — the area of her home that’s farthest from the neighbors — sits down at her keyboard, and runs through the obligatory scales before trying her vocal chords on new arias, or long songs featuring soloist parts.Promote health. Save lives. Serve the vulnerable. Visit who.intMitchell, 35, a full-time Met chorus member, has embraced this new routine — but it’s a far cry from the electrifying frenzy of day-long rehearsals and nightly performances at the famed Metropolitan Opera House in Lincoln Center, which shuttered its doors in March due to the looming threat of COVID-19. Hundreds of part-time and full-time singers, directors, dancers, musicians, stagehands and supportive staff members have been out of work for over eight weeks due to the pandemic.While the chorus is scheduled to resume rehearsals July 27 to prepare for the fall season, many members wonder whether that too will be postponed.“I doubt that’s going to happen,” said Met chorus member Ned Hanlon, 36, of the Upper West Side. “To stand in a group of people and sing for a group of people is exactly the kind of thing we can’t do right now.”“Like with all (of those in) the performing arts, we were among the first to lose our jobs,” he added. “And we’re going to be some of the last people to get our jobs back.”

 Public education job losses in April are already greater than in all of the Great Recession - EPI Blog -- It has been well documented that fiscal austerity was a catastrophe for the recovery from the Great Recession. New estimates show that without sufficient aid to state and local governments, the COVID-19 shock could lead to a revenue shortfall of nearly $1 trillion by 2021 for state and local governments. In lieu of substantial federal investments, budget cuts are certain. But I, for one, did not expect to see the losses as soon as April. As of the latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), state and local government employment fell by 981,000, with the vast majority of losses found in local government. And the majority of those local government losses are in the education sector, with a loss of 468,800 jobs in local public school employment alone.State and local government austerity in the aftermath of the great recession contributed to a significant shortfall in employment in public K–12 school systems, a shortfall that continued through 2019. The figure below shows that, as of early 2020, public employment in elementary and secondary schools had yet to recover the level it had reached prior to the losses of the Great Recession. Furthermore, employment levels in the public education system have failed to keep up with growth in public school enrollment since 2008. As of September 2019, the start of the most recent pre-pandemic school year, local public education jobs were still 60,000 short of their September 2008 level, and they were over 300,000 lower than they would have needed to be to keep up with public school enrollment.Then, the pandemic hit and local education jobs dropped sharply. More K–12 public education jobs were lost in April than in all of the Great Recession. And that’s before any austerity measures from lost state and local revenue have been put in place. While some teachers were spared, namely elementary and middle school teachers, others were not. Half of the job losses in K–12 public education between March and April were among special education teachers, tutors, and teaching assistants. Not only are these job losses devastating to those no longer getting a paycheck, but they negatively impact the education students receive.

New Jersey Becomes First State to Put the Climate Crisis in Its K-12 Curriculum - New Jersey has invested in the future health of the planet by making sure the next generation of adults knows how human activity has had a deleterious effect on the planet. The state will be the first in the nation to make the climate crisis as part of its curriculum for all students, from kindergarten all the way to 12th grade, asNorthJersey.com reported.  The Garden State's Board of Education adopted the standards on Wednesday, with the intention of implementing them for the start of school in September 2021. The move drew praise from former Vice President Al Gore, who said in a statement, according to NJ.com: "I am incredibly proud that New Jersey is the first state in the nation to fully integrate climate education in their K-12 curricula. This initiative is vitally important to our students as they are the leaders of tomorrow, and we will depend on their leadership and knowledge to combat this crisis." As NJ.com reported, the New Jersey Student Learning Standards, which outline what is taught in New Jersey's public schools, now include language that requires climate change education across seven areas: 21st Century Life and Careers, Comprehensive Health and Physical Education, Science, Social Studies, Technology, Visual and Performing Arts, and World Languages. The move makes New Jersey the first in what is likely to be a nationwide trend. According to a NPR/Ipsos poll published last year, more than 80 percent of American parents and nearly 90 percent of American teachers said that climate change should be taught in schools.

Nearly half of all teachers in Brookline, Massachusetts receive pink slips - The Public Schools of Brookline, a district located in Greater Boston, Massachusetts, handed out just over 300 pink slips last Friday, nearly half of the district’s 645 teachers. These drastic cuts follow the similar elimination of all art, PE and music classes in the nearby working class town of Randolph. The fact that such devastating cuts can take place in a middle class town like Brookline, where the median income stands at $111,289, demonstrates that only the wealthiest layers of society are safe from the pandemic’s fallout and many similar stories will soon emerge with horrifying frequency across the US. Although the full list of staff that received pink slips is not public, based on discussions between teachers it appears that the departments most affected by the layoffs are physical education, art, early education and special education, with entire departments being laid off, along with many paraprofessionals and librarians. Perhaps most disturbingly, all school nurses were laid off, whose work will be more essential than ever if schools reopen in the fall. The Brookline School Committee (BSC) announced in a letter sent to the school community that they had “no choice but to provide layoff notices to some of our valued teachers and staff,” citing “the COVID-19 induced budget crisis in the Town of Brookline and the contractual obligation with the Brookline Educators Union (BEU) to provide notices of layoff by May 30.” The letter also falsely states that no departments are being cut, even though many could be staffed by zero teachers come September. The night before the pink slips were distributed, a community member broke the news in a local Facebook group, writing, “the school committee plans to lay off hundreds of Brookline teachers,” and adding that they had “just learned about this tonight.” The group was immediately alight with hundreds of comments, largely consisting of parents in distress. “This is beyond horrible. I am sick,” wrote one Brookline parent, quickly capturing the sentiment of many.

Will State and Local Governments Hire 1 Million Teachers in June and July? No, but ... There will be some weird seasonal adjustments this year!  Every year, state and local governments let about 2 million teachers go in late Spring, and then hire them back at the end of Summer.  Since this happens every year, the BLS adjusts for this seasonal pattern in the monthly employment report.  However, in 2020, state and local governments let almost 1.2 million teachers go in March, April and May, Not Seasonally Adjusted (NSA). On a seasonally adjusted basis, this was just over 1 million teaching jobs lost (State governments usually start letting teachers go in May, so some of the NSA job losses were expected).  What this means is that instead of letting close to 2 million teachers go in late Spring (NSA), state and local governments will only let go less than 1 million teachers. This creates a weird seasonal adjustment problem.  By the end of July, the normal number of teachers (around 2 million) will probably have been let go.  Since the BLS has already reported over 1 million teaching jobs lost seasonally adjusted (SA), the seasonally adjusted number from the BLS will have to show something like an increase of 1 million teacher jobs in June and July! State and local governments will not hire 1 million teachers in June and July, but the BLS seasonally adjusted report will show those hires to make the numbers balance out.  Just something to remember over the next two months.

Chevron's support was invaluable to Appalachia STEM training program - The Appalachia Partnership Initiative (API) has given an effective boost to vocational training and education in technology in Pennsylvania, thanks to invaluable support from the Chevron Corp.  The international oil-and-gas colossus has provided guidance in developing the comprehensive API program, which provides technical training to prepare students in West Virginia and Ohio as well as Pennsylvania for careers in the energy industry and in the high-end manufacturing sector as well. Chevron also came forward with an ante of $20 million that lifted the API initiative off the ground in 2014.The API has since blossomed into a focused and high-functioning program that brings up-to-date training to students, including those with special needs or kids who are more inclined to hands-on, project-based training as opposed to what Jim Denova, vice president of the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation called, “lecturing, memorizing, testing and forgetting.”  The generous presence of Chevron also enabled the API to expand beyond state and county boundaries and forge a truly regional program that might not be possible if it were to be organized by disparate state and local district education departments. After its launch five years ago, the API program has touched around 80,000 students and provided updated training for some 1,000 teachers in 27 counties in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia.

US universities and colleges appeal for legal immunity from coronavirus lawsuits as campuses plan to reopen in fall - In a letter to Congress, the American Council on Education, a policy group for universities and colleges in the US, pleaded on Thursday for legal liability protections ahead of potential lawsuits brought by students, faculty and staff as campuses plan to reopen in the fall in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. The letter was co-signed by 70 other higher education associations.The move comes as over a dozen campuses currently face class action lawsuits from students demanding a partial reimbursement in tuition costs as schools moved instruction online due to campus closures in response to the pandemic.The onset of the coronavirus pandemic has had a major financial impact on higher education institutions. Some schools estimate losses in the millions for the portion of the spring semester under lockdown, with predicted losses of up to $1 billion this coming year. According to Inside Higher Ed, schools anticipate at least a 15 percent drop in enrollment nationwide for the 2020–21 school year, amounting to a $23 billion revenue loss.Likewise, state funding for education has been slashed substantially in several states as tax revenues have fallen as a result of mass unemployment, decreased consumer spending and a lack of federal aid during the pandemic. The largest budget shortfalls have been reported in California and New York, where cuts in education have been reported at $18 billion and $15 billion, respectively.Universities and colleges depend on state funds for a portion of their revenue, but have become increasingly reliant on revenue streams coming from student enrollment in tuition costs, residence fees, sports revenue and dining. As a result of years of budget cuts in education, the business model of the university requires the in-person attendance of students, faculty and staff. The Chronicle of Higher Education recently outlined a number of measures being planned by schools for in-person instruction in the fall, ostensibly meant to ensure social distancing protocols at campuses. Plans for instruction vary but revolve around measures such as the mandatory use of masks on campus and a 6ft distance from other students and faculty. Cartoon images in The Chronicle article illustrate the measures, for example showing students spaced out in classrooms and one-way entrances and exits to buildings. Other measures include a reduction in class sizes and a reorganization of class schedules to accommodate for longer times between classes and deep cleaning of classrooms.

 US colleges prepare full opening of campuses in the name of football -- American colleges and universities have begun announcing plans for how they will reopen campuses for the fall 2020 semester amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, with many schools indicating that they will operate on a modified schedule or implement more online learning options for the fall. However, many prominent schools including the University of Louisville, Syracuse University, the University of Texas at Austin and Ohio State University, among others, have unveiled plans to reopen with in-person classes and other school activities for the fall semester. The schools that are particularly committed to having full or partial reopening of campus activity all have one thing in common: large multimillion-dollar football or basketball programs, with playing seasons that start in the fall. Over the past several decades, college sports has become a multibillion-dollar industry and has made athletics the center of revenue and funding plans in most major US universities. In early May, the National College Athletics Association (NCAA) released a statement outlining their plan for resuming college sports, titled, “Core Principles of Resocialization of Collegiate Sport.” The principles include a number of conditions that must be met in order for sports to begin: COVID-19 testing for the athletes, adherence to federal guidelines, and a three-phase plan where social distancing measures are gradually lifted over time. These “principles'' differ little from the phony PR statements of other industries which have already begun sending workers back to factories and workplaces. In these instances, the workers are being forced to return to work with little to no protections that they had been promised. Unsurprisingly, COVID-19 cases have surged in many of these major industrial sectors. Students returning to campuses, living in crowded residence halls and attending large classrooms, will be confronted with similar circumstances. They will have no guarantee that they will not catch the virus and spread it to others once they return to school. Eager to restart the multibillion-dollar college sports industry, NCAA has also announced that it will permit student athletes to return to campus for summer workouts and training starting on June 8. Most schools with large sports programs will have their teams on campus in June to prepare for the upcoming season. Some schools like the University of Oklahoma will wait, but only until July 1, before sending their students back to training. Delaying training could set back the athletic performance of those teams. For college sports, winning games is critical for revenue streams.

Students Demand Lax Grading For Black Students. University Agrees... Students at the University of Washington are demanding that black students be given leniency on finals because they are too “busy fighting for [their] rights to sit down and study.” The university is advising professors to do just that.  An online petition calls for laxed grading and accommodations, specifically for Black students. So far, the petition has amassed more than 26,000 signatures.“...give Black students a break! We are already DISPROPORTIONATELY impacted by this pandemic in terms of health care access and financial hardship. Now add state-sanctioned violence, how do you expect us to enter finals in this headspace?!” reads the petition."You need to encourage and demand professors to accommodate their black students during this time. If UW truly understands our pain, UW will be a part of alleviating it,” the petition continues. “We can’t sit back and watch as injustices unfold before our eyes. We don’t have the privilege that white and non-black students do to ignore what’s happening and stay at home to study for finals," the petition added.“We are busy fighting for our rights and for the rights of future black children and students to sit down and study. The least UW could do is demand professors to accommodate us during this time”“I recognize that this institution and others across the country were not built to serve marginalized students, specifically Black students. Still to this day, institutions such as UW, do not serve Black students to the same capacity that white students benefit from,” student government president Kelty Pierce told The Daily.A template to help professors announce these accommodations has been circulating on social media, reading “Dear Students, I am writing to you to offer accommodations for black students in this class during the end of this class and finals.” “Many black students are not just using this time to cope emotionally, but to fight on the front lines of these protests and actively work and take action on what has been happening to the black community.” it continues. Nicole McNichols, UW Psychology Professor provided Campus Reform with a copy of the email she sent to her own students.  “I sent this on Sunday before I knew about the petition,” McNichols said. “Obviously, I support the petition and absolutely believe the accommodations it requests should be honored by all faculty. Students need all of the support and compassion we can afford to give them right now.”

Student Loan Relief Stalls After Wall St. Beats Consumer Financial Protection Bureau In Court -- On Sunday, U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika ruled in favor of a coalition of financial firms and rejected an agreement that had been made by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with 15 members of the National Collegiate Student Loan Trusts.The settlement would've resulted in student loan relief for "hundreds of thousands" of borrowers, according to Bloomberg/LA Times. But Noreika ruled that lawyers hired to act on behalf of the trusts lacked the authority to deal with the CFPB and although the trustee, Wilmington Trust, had the authority to - it didn't agree to the proposed settlement.The result of the settlement would have been the auditing of 800,000 student loans to help investigate and resolve allegations of collection agencies flooding the nation's courts illegally with false paperwork. Some borrowers had luck in fighting the collection attempts in court, meaning the settlement would have likely paved the way for more relief.  "Banks, insurers, debt collectors and hedge funds" all fought against the settlement, arguing that one equity holder of the National Collegiate trusts, VCG, didn't have the right to approve the agreement with the CFPB. The trusts are owned billions of dollars and are among the nation's largest owners of private student debt. Many of the loans, made more than 10 years ago, have ranked among the "worst-performing student loans ever packaged into securities."About half of the $12 billion that had been packaged into securities were in default at the time the 2017 settlement was proposed.

Getting killed by police is a leading cause of death for young black men in America – Aug 2019 - About 1 in 1,000 black men and boys in America can expect to die at the hands of police, according to a new analysis of deaths involving law enforcement officers. That makes them 2.5 times more likely than white men and boys to die during an encounter with cops.The analysis also showed that Latino men and boys, black women and girls and Native American men, women and children are also killed by police at higher rates than their white peers. But the vulnerability of black males was particularly striking.“That 1-in-1,000 number struck us as quite high,” said study leader Frank Edwards, a sociologist at Rutgers University. “That’s better odds of being killed by police than you have of winning a lot of scratch-off lottery games.”The number-crunching by Edwards and his coauthors also revealed that for all young men, police violence was one of the leading causes of death in the years 2013 to 2018. Annual mortality rates are reported as deaths per 100,000 black men ages 25 to 29.Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2015. *Figure is the median of 2013-2018 mortality rate calculated in PNAS study led by Frank Edwards.The findings, published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, add hard numbers to a pattern personified by victims like Eric Garner,Tamir Rice and Freddie Gray.Five years after police in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Mo., fatally shot Michael Brown, protesters and activist groups have focused public attention on the disproportionate use of force against African Americans and other people of color.  Scientists, meanwhile, are increasingly studying police violence as a public health problem whose long-term harms radiate far beyond the original victim.

Overdose Deaths Have Skyrocketed in Chicago, and the Coronavirus Pandemic May Be Making It Worse - Opioid-related deaths in Cook County have doubled since this time last year, and similar increases are happening across the country. “If you’re alone, there’s nobody to give you the Narcan,” said one coroner.  As COVID-19 kills thousands in Chicago and across Illinois, the opioid epidemic has intensified its own deadly siege away from the spotlight, engulfing one public health crisis inside another.More than twice as many people have died or are suspected to have died of opioid overdoses in the first five months of the year in Cook County, when compared with the same period last year, according to a ProPublica Illinois analysis of medical examiner’s office death records. There have been at least 924 confirmed or suspected overdose deaths so far in 2020; there were 461 at this time last year. And much like the coronavirus outbreak, the opioid epidemic has disproportionately affected African Americans on Chicago’s West and South Sides.Statewide, opioid deaths also are outpacing 2019 numbers, largely due to the increase in Cook County. The deadly surge comes at what was supposed to be a turning point for Illinois. A 2017 state action plan from then-Gov. Bruce Rauner vowed to halt the “explosive growth” of opioid deaths and reduce the projected number of opioid-related deaths this year by a third. Based on the number of overdose deaths so far in Cook County alone, it’s highly unlikely the state can meet that goal.While the spike in deaths began several months before the first known case of the coronavirus appeared in Illinois, COVID-19 appears to be exacerbating the crisis.“This is going to make it so much worse,” said Kathleen Kane-Willis, a researcher with the Chicago Urban League who has studied the opioid epidemic for more than a decade, adding that the true impact of the pandemic on drug overdoses likely won’t be known for some time. “It’s going to wear on people. It’s going to make them more anxious and depressed,” she said. “Being thrust into poverty is such a stressor, and people do turn to substances to get through that stress.”

Grief, lockdown and coronavirus: a looming mental health crisis - In almost 29 years of marriage to a rabbi, attending many of her Jewish community’s significant life events, Susannah Kraft had never attended a virtual funeral. Then in March, she went to her husband’s.The service for Rabbi Neil Kraft, the 69-year-old father of their two sons and wrestling superfan who she describes as wise, mischievous and kind, was extremely personal. Nonetheless, she says, it felt “one removed — we weren’t there”.  But overall, the disruption to the traditional funeral, burial and mourning rites has been disorientating. “It’s very difficult,” says Ms Kraft, who was allowed to visit her husband's grave this weekend. “The grieving and mourning when you haven’t actually been to the grave, it enhances the air of surrealness. Everything’s magnified; when are we going to go to the cemetery, who knows? When are we going to see family, who knows? Time is stretchy.”  Just as the global pandemic is forcing a reappraisal of the way we work, socialise and travel, so too for death. From Bergamo to Brooklyn, Lille to London, the events of recent months have been so fast-moving that it can sometimes be difficult to take in the immensity of the personal trauma so many people have gone through — losses that could leave scars that last for years.With the jobs that have disappeared, the careers upended and the businesses closed, the economic impact of the crisis will take a toll on the wellbeing of millions of people. Domestic violence charities have warned about a sharp increase in cases during lockdown.  But one of the hardest wounds to heal will be the sheer volume of death and the way that the natural order of saying goodbye to loved ones has been upended by the special conditions imposed by an infectious disease pandemic. The death toll in the US has now passed 102,000 while in the UK it is more than 38,000.For individuals, this will leave a private anguish that some — although not all — might find hard to come to terms with: for societies, it means a potential mental health crisis that could start to emerge as the lockdown is eased. Grief is chaotic and uncertain, says Julia Samuel, a bereavement psychotherapist in London who warns about the mental health impact from mourning under the isolation of lockdown. “What helps is that ritual. Touch, hugging, people coming round.”

The safety problem for restaurants isn’t the dining room. It’s the kitchen. WaPo - Restaurants across the country are starting to reopen — some tentatively and some, like C&C Coffee and Kitchen in Castle Rock, Colo., with viral enthusiasm. As customers head back out to eat, most of the public discussion about safety is focusing on the front of the house — where customers sit. Some restaurants are rearranging dining rooms. A few are coming up with adorable, slightly creepy ways to enforce social distancing at tables: The Inn at Little Washington, the D.C. area’s only three-Michelin-starred restaurant, is planning to fill seats with mannequins. Everything will be fine, it seems, as long as patrons stay six feet apart. But in the back of the house, the part that most customers never see, a very different conversation is taking place. Chefs and other kitchen staff are quietly raising the alarm about the prospect of returning to what once passed for normal: chaotic, overcrowded, poorly ventilated kitchens where everyone is shouting, everyone is touching multiple surfaces and nobody has time for safety precautions when the front of the house gets slammed. “We’re touching food. We’re in close contact. There’s no social distancing,” says Michelle DeChesser, 52, a 20-year kitchen veteran who has worked as a chef at upscale restaurants from Portland, Ore., to Lancaster, Pa. Independent chef-owners, who work alongside their staff, are torn between giving customers something approximating a normal restaurant experience and keeping themselves and their employees safe. “It’s crazy for people to think they can run old-school-style table service — and I say ‘old school’ meaning, like, two months ago,” says Eric Rivera, 38, the chef and owner of Addo in Seattle. Like a lot of the independent chef-owners I talked to, Rivera is completely reconfiguring his restaurant, including the kitchen, to keep both the front and back of the house safe. “Our dining room now looks like a warehouse,” says Rivera, who is offering only takeout and delivery for now. “We have metro shelving. It’s like a grocery store.”

  People Who Test Positive for COVID-19 After Recovering Aren't Infectious -Around the world, there have been several cases of people recovering from COVID-19 only to later test positive again and appear to have another infection. Such cases have had doctors and researchers puzzling over whether recovered people continue to be contagious, and if they could get a second infection.Now, new research published by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that recovered COVID-19 patients who test positive again aren't infectious.The study also found that most patients who recover have neutralizing antibodies — the type of antibody that confers immunity and protects people from getting sick again."This study addresses the question of whether patients who have recovered from COVID-19 are still infectious, and which is a question that has been troubling us for some time," said Dr. Heidi J. Zapata, a Yale Medicine infectious disease doctor. "This study suggests that patients that are recovered are no longer contagious."The Viral Material in Re-Positive Cases Isn’t InfectiousThe Korean study examined 285 patients who tested positive again for the new coronavirus after they recovered from COVID-19, which had been confirmed via a negative test result.The researchers swabbed the patients and examined the viral material to determine whether it was still actively infectious.The team was unable to isolate live viral material, indicating that the positive diagnostic tests were picking up dead virus particles."[This] may speak for the fact that the virus may be dead or not be fit enough to grow — therefore the virus may not be fit enough to infect a new host," said Dr. Andres Romero, an infectious disease specialist at Providence Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California.The researchers also tested 790 people who'd been in close contact with the "re-positive" patients. Of the 27 who tested positive, no cases appeared to be caused from exposure to someone who appeared to have a reinfection.The report also found that the vast majority of recovered patients (96 percent) had neutralizing antibodies, indicating that they conferred immunity. "Whether this is indicative of a completely protective response remains to be proven. If this study holds true, then people who have recovered can get back to work," Zapata said.

Coronavirus: The mystery of ‘silent spreaders’ As the crisis has unfolded, scientists have discovered more evidence about a strange and worrying feature of the coronavirus. While many people who become infected develop a cough, fever and loss of taste and smell, others have no symptoms at all and never realise they're carrying Covid-19. Researchers say it's vital to understand how many are affected this way and whether "silent spreaders" are fuelling the pandemic. When people gathered at a church in Singapore on 19 January, no-one could have realised that the event would have global implications for the spread of coronavirus. It was a Sunday and, as usual, one of the services was being conducted in Mandarin. Among the congregation at The Life Church and Missions, on the ground floor of an office building, was a couple, both aged 56, who'd arrived that morning from China. As they took their seats, they seemed perfectly healthy so there was no reason to think they might be carrying the virus. At that time, a persistent cough was understood to be the most distinctive feature of Covid-19 and it was seen as the most likely way to transmit it. Having no symptoms of the disease should have meant having no chance of spreading it. The couple left as soon as the service was over. But shortly afterwards, things took a turn for the worse, and in a wholly confusing way. The wife started to become ill on January 22, followed by her husband two days later. Because they had flown in from Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak, that was no big surprise. But over the following week, three local people also came down with the disease for no obvious reason, leading to one of Singapore's first and most baffling coronavirus cases. Working out what had happened would lead to a new and disturbing insight into how the virus was so successfully finding new victims.

The Finnish COVID dogs’ nose knows! - According to the preliminary tests, trained scent detection dogs seem to be quick in performing the new task and might even be more sensitive than many of the tests that are now on the market. The extremely sensitive olfactory sense of dogs might prove to become a groundbreaking new tool in the fight against the COVID-19. These trained medical scent detection dogs have previously worked with identifying different types of cancers. Researchers at the veterinary and human medicine faculties at the University of Helsinki have now joined forces to identify COVID-19 infected individuals using canine scent detection. The first dogs that now have been trained, have succeeded in differentiating COVID-19 patient’s urine samples from urine samples of healthy individuals. "We have solid experience in training disease related scent detection dogs. It was fantastic to see how fast the dogs took to the new smell", says research and DogRisk-group leader Anna Hielm-Björkman. The researchers are now starting a large collection of patient samples to ascertain the first observations and to be able to continue training more dogs. The researchers also need to clarify what the dogs are identifying in the patient samples and how long the smell stays after the infection has passed.

Doctor’s Note: Does a high viral load make coronavirus worse? - According to a study from the Royal College of Physicians in the United Kingdom, one-fifth of hospital doctors are off work sick or in quarantine due to COVID-19. Even more concerning are the hundreds of healthcare professionals that have died from COVID-19, with the toll reaching at least 630 according to Medscape. One of the theories as to why many otherwise healthy front-line healthcare workers are dying from the coronavirus is that they are exposed to higher amounts of COVID-19 particles while treating patients. This is known as the viral load, which is the number of viral particles carried by an infected person that they then shed into their environment. Doctors have to get very close to patients in order to carry out procedures like taking samples from them or performing intubation and extubation (putting in and taking out breathing tubes), so it is assumed that more viral particles will be transferred to them. If you have a high viral load you are more likely to infect other people, but questions are also being asked about whether a high viral load could make your outcome from a COVID-19 infection worse. With infections like the middle eastern respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which are coronaviruses that share some similarities to COVID-19, there is a correlation. In the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak, it was found that patients with higher initial viral loads had worse outcomes, and it was suggested that viral load should be taken into consideration in addition to age and comorbidities when predicting the prognosis of patients infected with SARS. There was also a similar finding in influenza studies. In one study, healthy participants were given escalating doses (known as a human challenge) of influenza type A, and it was documented that the number and severity of symptoms correlated well with viral load. However, with COVID-19 the results thus far have been less conclusive.

Can You Catch COVID-19 Through Your Eyes? --Virologist Joseph Fair, PhD, an NBC News contributor, raised that concern when he became critically ill with COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. From a hospital bed in his hometown of New Orleans, he told the network that he had flown on a crowded plane where flight attendants weren’t wearing masks. He wore a mask and gloves, but no eye protection.“My best guess,” he told the interviewer, “was that it came through the eye route.”  While Fair is convinced that eye protection helps, other experts aren’t sure..  Some research has begun pointing in that direction, according to Elia Duh, MD, a researcher and professor of ophthalmology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore.The clear tissue that covers the white of the eye and lines the inside of the eyelid, known as the conjunctiva, “can be infected by other viruses, such as adenoviruses associated with the common cold and the herpes simplex virus,” he says. There’s the same chance of infection with SARS-CoV-2, says Duh.  To study whether SARS-CoV-2 could infect the eyes, Duh and fellow researchers at Johns Hopkins looked at whether the eye’s surface cells had key things that made the virus more likely to enter and infect them.In their study, which is now being peer-reviewed, the team examined 10 post-mortem eyes and five surgical samples of conjunctiva from patients who did not have the coronavirus. They wanted to see whether the eyes’ surface cells produced the key receptor for coronavirus, the ACE2 receptor.In order for SARS-CoV-2 to enter a cell, “the cell has to have ACE2 on its surface so that the coronavirus can latch onto it and gain entry into the cell,” Duh says.Not much research existed on ACE2 and the eye’s surface cells, he says. With the team’s findings, “We were really struck that ACE2 was clearly present in the surface cells of all of the specimens.” In addition, the researchers found that the eye’s surface cells also produce TMPRSS2, an enzyme that helps the virus enter the cell.More research is needed for a definitive answer, Duh says. But “all of this evidence together seems to suggest that there’s a good likelihood that the ocular surface cells are susceptible to infection by coronavirus.”

Distance, masks and eye protection are highly effective in limiting spread of virus, review finds -- A new review of coronavirus transmission studies funded by the World Health Organization determined that physical distancing and face coverings, including tightfitting masks and goggles, are effective in preventing the spread of the virus.The review, published Monday in the Lancet medical journal, was based on evidence gathered in a wide array of studies focused on the transmission of coronaviruses that cause covid-19, SARS and MERS. People who maintained a distance of at least one meter, about three feet, from one another in “health-care and community settings” dramatically reduced their risk of contraction, and that protection increased if more distance was maintained, the review found.“The risk for infection is highly dependent on distance to the individual infected and the type of face mask and eye protection worn,” the report said. “From a policy and public health perspective, current policies of at least [one meter] physical distancing seem to be strongly associated with a large protective effect, and distances of [two meters] could be more effective.” The researchers also found that respirators are more effective than surgical masks but that surgical masks offer more protection than single-layer masks. Eye coverings “might also add substantial protection,” the researchers found. The report noted that more research is still needed, particularly on covid-19, but that the findings can inform official guidelines on protective gear, which remain inconsistent.

Protestors Urged to Wear Masks, Wash Hands and Get Tested for COVID-19 - The nationwide horror at the killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police has triggered protests in 75 cities. People are demonstrating against the systemic racism that has made people of color targets of lethal actions by law enforcement. In response, elected officials and public health experts are walking a fine line of affirming the rights of protestors while simultaneously worrying that the protests will lead to a new wave of coronavirus infections. "All things considered, there's little doubt that these protests will translate into increased risk of transmission for COVID-19," said Maimuna Majumder, a computational epidemiologist at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, to The Atlantic. The protests over the injustice of police officers disproportionately killing people of color have coincided with how COVID-19 deaths disproportionately hit racial minority communities. That phenomenon exposed huge disparities in resources and access to care in a country without universal healthcare. As The Atlantic noted, the pandemic and unrest together have trapped the country in a bind. The demonstrations oppose police brutality. But peaceful, masked protesters — and the journalists covering them — have sometimes been met with an overly aggressive police response. Yet, the demonstrations and the aggressive response by police are likely to exacerbate the spread of the coronavirus. The scenes of protestors holding hands, or shouting in the face of police, or singing in close quarters has raised concern that the protests will act as super spreaders."If you were out protesting last night, you probably need to go get a COVID test this week," said Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms at a news briefing Sunday, as NBC News reported. "[B]ecause there's still a pandemic in America that's killing black and brown people at higher numbers."The Atlantic noted the aspects of the protests and the police response that may contribute to a spread of the coronavirus. "The virus seems to spread the most when people yell (such as to chant a slogan), sneeze (to expel pepper spray), or cough (after inhaling tear gas). It is transmitted most efficiently in crowds and large gatherings, and research has found that just a few contagious people can infect hundreds of susceptible people around them. The virus can spread especially easily in small, cramped places, such as police vans and jails."

What makes a Covid-19 patient a 'superspreader'? | Advisory Board Daily Briefing - Scientists around the globe are tracking so-called "superspreading events" in which a single person infected with the new coronavirus triggers a larger outbreak—and they're beginning to learn why some infected patients are more likely to be superspreaders than others, Kai Kupferschmidt reports for Science Magazine.  Scientists tracking the new coronavirus' spread have generally focused on two numbers, Kupferschmidt reports. The first is called the reproduction number (R), which represents the average number of new infections caused by a single infected person. The second is called the dispersion factor (k), a number indicating the likelihood that a particular disease will spread in clusters. Without any social distancing, the new coronavirus' R-number is around three, Kupferschmidt reports.    But Jamie Lloyd-Smith, who has studied the spread of pathogens at the University of California-Los Angeles, said the vast majority of infected individuals don't spread the virus at all. "The consistent pattern is that the most common number is zero," he said. "Most people do not transmit." This is why scientists also look at the dispersion factor (k); the lower the k number, the more likely it is the virus is spread by small group of people. So far, estimates of the k number for SARS-CoV-2, which is the name of the new coronavirus, have varied, Kupferschmidt reports. One estimate from researchers at the University of Bern concluded the k number for the new coronavirus is higher than the k numbers for SARS and MERS.However, a recent research article by Adam Kucharski of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) estimated that k for Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, is 0.1. "Probably about 10% of cases lead to 80% of the spread," Kucharski said. Experts explain that these numbers are important because it allows policymakers to target social distancing policies at the types of gatherings where superspreading is likely to occur. "If you can predict what circumstances are giving rise to these events, the math shows you can really, very quickly curtail the ability of the disease to spread," Lloyd-Smith said.

Why Americans Are Tiring of Social Distancing and Hand-Washing – 2 Behavioral Scientists Explain - States are beginning to open up their economies after successfully slowing the spread of the coronavirus. Much of the credit for that goes to Americans dutifully following prescribed behavior. People have been washing their hands frequently, maintaining physical distance from others,wearing face masks, sanitizing door knobs and even disinfecting food and packages brought into the house.But in order to continue to contain the spread of the virus, we’ll still need to sustain these behaviors for weeks and maybe months to come. Will people be able to maintain their vigilance over time?As scholars who study health-related behavior change, we’re skeptical. While continuing to wash your hands and stay six feet away from others doesn’t seem so hard for an individual, the problem is that people are unable to “see” the benefits of their actions – and thus often don’t recognize just how important they are. As a result, adherence to these protective behaviors could wane over time without policies designed to sustain them. It is, in fact, remarkable to us that efforts to promote hygiene measures have been as successful as they have been. That’s because they are almost the embodiment of the types of protective measures that people are especially bad at taking.The most obvious reasons are that maintaining physical distances and constantly washing hands are inconvenient and require constant vigilance. The costs of these behaviors are immediate, but the benefits are delayed.A more subtle and equally important reason, however, is that the benefits are intangible: You can’t touch, taste, feel or see the benefits of, for example, wiping off your door knob.One reason the benefits are intangible is that people tend to be insensitive to even dramatic changes in probabilities – such as from one-in-a-thousand chance to one-in-a-million chance – when it comes to small probability events such as the chance of contracting coronavirus. This is true unless the change in probability leads to certainty that the event will not occur, which is why people are not eager to engage in preventive behaviors unless they completely eliminate the risk, as research by psychologists has shown.

Resident physicians should have a say in their working conditions - In Chicago’s South Loop, the nightly salutation to health care workers begins at 8 p.m., first with a few flashing lights from old holiday decorations, followed by a cacophony of car horns, boomboxes, and metal railings being transformed into percussion sets. The nightly celebration has become a source of comfort for us, two oncology fellows, as we nervously watch Chicago’s daily Covid-19 numbers. As thoughtful as the ritual is, though, it feels inadequate. Nurses, physicians, and other hospital workers are dying, including resident physicians working on the frontlines. All are suffering new emotional traumas, creating fresh wounds in places where scar tissue hasn’t yet formed.As fellows, we join resident physicians, or residents as they are more commonly known, in the community of graduate medical education trainees. We are doctors who have finished medical school and are completing supervised training to become board certified, independently practicing physicians. Residents and fellows do much of the work in teaching hospitals, yet have little or no say about their working conditions and lack the bargaining power to improve them. The power imbalance between trainees and their hospitals has become even more lopsided in the Covid-19 pandemic. Across the United States, health care workers, including residents and fellows, have experienced lack of access to adequate personal protective equipment, inadequate supervision in taking care of critically ill patients with Covid-19, and punitive measures when speaking out about their struggles caring for patients. The nearly 35,000 resident physicians in the United States frequently work more than 80 hours a week for an average of $61,200 a year while carrying an average debt burden of more than $190,000. While pay and hours have improved somewhat over the past 40 years, residents endure three to seven years of this experiential learning to eventually gain their employment. Throughout that time, they meaningfully contribute to patient care and their hospitals’ bottom lines at every step.

Doctors Aren’t Just Fighting a Pandemic, but Also an ‘Infodemic’ - With more than 1.7 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States and more than 100,000 deaths from the virus, physicians face unprecedented challenges in their efforts to keep Americans safe.They also encounter what some call an "infodemic," an outbreak of misinformation that's making it more difficult to treat patients."The most prevailing theme regardless of misinformation on a website or someone sharing a Facebook post is eroding trust. Medical experts and doctors who are trying to help patients, whether in general or in the office, [are seeing] the doctor-patient relationship being broken down over time and especially during this pandemic,"Dr. David Stukus, associate professor of pediatrics in the division of allergy and immunology at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, told Healthline.Stukus says people are having a hard time trying to understand what information is reliable and what information they can trust."Oftentimes their personal doctor may give them information that contradicts what they heard online or from someone else, and that really puts the patient in a tough position as they try to determine the best path forward for their own health," he said.While misinformation online has been around for a while, Stukus says it has increased during the pandemic."Previously, there were different focuses of misinformation, such as anti-vaccine groups or conspiracy theorists or unsubstantiated claims about supplements. Now all those different areas are focused on one area, and that's COVID-19," he said.

Should I Take Vitamin D to Protect Myself from COVID-19? - It’s summertime, and as we head outside to enjoy the weather, there’s an added benefit: The sunlight will prompt our skin to make vitamin D, which may help us fight COVID-19. But don’t think I’m promoting sunbathing – there’s more to the story.  Recent research indicates that healthy vitamin D levels may make infection by the SARS-CoV-2 virus less likely and reduce the body’s inflammatory response to the virus helping to limit severe complications. And there’s research to suggest that boosting our vitamin D levels may offer greater protection. A study conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic showed vitamin D supplements were safe and protective against respiratory infections. Of the study’s participants, those with the lowest vitamin D levels going into the study experienced the most significant drops in infection rates while on the supplements. Clinical trials are in place to give us information about the impact of vitamin D supplements on the COVID-19 infection specifically. At this time, we don’t know if taking moderate or high doses of vitamin D will prevent COVID-19 or reduce the rates of severe complications.  Even though there’s still much we don’t know about the SARS-CoV-2 virus, we do have reason to believe that vitamin D will help your body fight it.

Summer Heat Won't Kill the Coronavirus, New Study Says - Researchers have found that warm temperatures in the U.S. this summer are unlikely to stop the coronavirus that causes the infectious disease COVID-19, according to a new study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Disease.The findings of the scientists refute President Trump's claim in March that "when it gets a little warmer [the virus] miraculously goes away." It also refutes his insistence in April, when he cited Department of Homeland Security data, that summer heat will kill the virus, which led him to wonder about shining a UV light inside the body or injecting disinfectant into the bloodstream, both of which are extremely dangerous. While the flu is seasonal, researchers who have tested the coronavirus in the lab found that the coronavirus is sensitive to heat and light, but those are at extremes. Summer temperatures may account for a slight decline in cases, but nothing that will allow us to return to normal or kill the virus, as Newsweek reported."There is an association between temperature and rate of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 virus which may result in modest decline in the community transmission of SARS-CoV-2 with warmer weather," the researchers wrote in their conclusion, according to Newsweek. "This effect is modest, however, and is unlikely to slow down disease spread if containment measures are relaxed."Higher humidity and warmer temperatures seem to make the virus less stable. In warmer temperatures, the small virus-bearing droplets sent into the air by a cough or sneeze are more likely to attract water vapor, become heavier and drop out of the air before infecting someone. The opposite happens during colder, drier conditions when the droplets are lighter and stay airborne for longer, as WPIX in New York reported. Co-author Dr. Shiv T. Sehra, assistant professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, said in a statement, according to Newsweek: "While the rate of virus transmission may slow down as the maximum daily temperature rises to around 50 degrees [Farenheit], the effects of temperature rise beyond that don't seem to be significant."Based on our analysis, the modest association suggests that it is unlikely that disease transmission will slow dramatically in the summer months from the increase in temperature alone."

Russia Developing Coronavirus Treatment That Disinfects the Body With UV Light From Inside -- Scientists in Russia are developing a treatment for coronavirus that uses ultraviolet (UV) light to disinfect the body from the inside, Andrei Goverdovsky, from state nuclear agency Rosatom, has said.In an interview with Country Rosatom, the agency's newsletter, Goverdovsky said physicists at the Institute of Physics and Power Engineering (IPPE) are currently developing methods to combat viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19. He said they have called the project "luminous gas.""So far, no one has managed to hold UV disinfection inside a person," he said. "We figured out how to do this. We select molecules and gas components that when inhaled remain activated and emit ultraviolet light directly in the lungs. We hope that in addition to coronavirus, our method [can be used to] treat tuberculosis, oncology and other diseases." Further details on how the technique works and what tests had been carried out as part of the project were not available.  The idea of putting UV light inside the body to treat coronavirus was highlighted by President Donald Trump during a press conference where he made a number of controversial remarks regarding possible COVID-19 therapies. At the briefing, on April 23, Trump asked if there was something that could be done to use disinfectant to kill the virus "by injection."

ICUs Become A ‘Delirium Factory’ For COVID Patients --Doctors are fighting not only to save lives from COVID-19, but also to protect patients’ brains.Although COVID-19 is best known for damaging the lungs, it also increases the risk of life-threatening brain injuries — from mental confusion to hallucinations, seizures, coma, stroke and paralysis. The virus may invade the brain, as well as starve the organ of oxygen by damaging the lungs. To fight the infection, the immune system sometimes overreacts, battering the brain and other organs it normally protects.Yet the pandemic has severely limited the ability of doctors and nurses to prevent and treat neurological complications. The severity of the disease and the heightened risk of infection have forced medical teams to abandon many of the practices that help them protect patients from delirium, a common side effect of mechanical ventilators and intensive care.And while COVID-19 increases the risk of strokes, the pandemic has made it harder to diagnose them.When doctors suspect a stroke, they usually order a brain MRI — a sophisticated type of scan. But many patients hospitalized with COVID-19 are too sick or unstable to be wheeled across the hospital to a scanner, said Dr. Kevin Sheth, a professor of neurology and neurosurgery at the Yale School of Medicine.Many doctors also hesitate to request MRIs for fear that patients will contaminate the scanner and infect other patients and staff members.“Our hands are much more tied right now than before the pandemic,” said Dr. Sherry Chou, an associate professor of critical care medicine, neurology and neurosurgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.In many cases, doctors can’t even examine patients’ reflexes and coordination because patients are so heavily sedated.“We may not know if they’ve had a stroke,” Sheth said.

Nearly half a million health care workers worldwide infected with coronavirus - A report issued Wednesday by the International Council of Nurses (ICN) finds that more than 600 nurses worldwide have died in the coronavirus epidemic, and that an estimated 450,000 health care workers of all kinds have been infected.The death toll among nurses is more than double the 260 reported on May 6 by the ICN, partly from more countries issuing reports but mainly from the ongoing impact of the pandemic, which has now hit 6.5 million people globally, with more than 380,000 dead.The Geneva-based nursing association said there was no actual count of the number of health care workers infected because so many countries’ health agencies were not tracking deaths and infections by occupation. The ICN has accumulated statistics from some countries and anecdotal reports from others to produce a low-end figure of 230,000 health care workers infected. The higher estimate of 450,000 is based on the finding that 7 percent of all those contracting COVID-19 are health care workers and then taking 7 percent of the 6.5 million total cases reported. Infection rates among health care workers are particularly high in Latin America, while 30 percent of all cases in Ireland are health care workers. In other countries, including Spain and Germany, the infection and fatality rates for health care workers are much lower. The United States seems to be at the higher end of the range—initial estimates had health care workers comprising 10 to 20 percent of those infected—but there are no current figures that cover all 50 states.The ICN renewed its appeal for national governments to both keep comprehensive records and step up the provision of Personal Protective Equipment and other measures to protect nurses on the front line of the struggle against the pandemic.“For weeks now we have been asking for data about infections and deaths among nurses to be collected,” the statement declares. “We need a central database of reliable, standardised, comparable data on all infections, periods of quarantine and deaths that are directly or indirectly related to COVID-19… Without this data we do not know the true cost of COVID-19, and that will make us less able to tackle other pandemics in the future.”The ICN report also notes “disproportionate deaths among black, Asian and minority ethnic HCWs (health care workers),” specifically Filipino workers in Britain.The alarming report from the nurses’ group came as the global total of infections rose by more than 100,000 for the fifth straight day, an unprecedented rise that is concentrated in the Western hemisphere: Brazil, Chile, Peru and Mexico, as well as the United States. World Health Organization Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “For several weeks, the number of cases reported each day in the Americas has been more than the rest of the world put together.”

These Athletes Had the Coronavirus. Will They Ever Be the Same?  --NYT - The coronavirus has infected millions of people around the world. Athletes tend to view themselves as perhaps better equipped than the general population to avoid the worst consequences of the disease the virus causes, Covid-19.Yet interviews with athletes who have contracted the virus — from professionals to college athletes to weekend hobbyists — revealed their surprise at the potency of its symptoms, struggles to reestablish workout regimens, lingering battles with lung issues and muscle weakness, and unsettling bouts of anxiety about whether they would be able to match their physical peaks. And with sports leagues around the world scrambling to restart play, more athletes could soon be taking on a significant amount of risk.“It definitely shook me up a bit — it was very surreal, you know?” Von Miller, a linebacker for the Denver Broncos who contracted the virus, said in an interview. “My biggest takeaway from this experience is that no matter how great of shape you are in physically, no matter what your age is, that you’re not immune from things like this.” Experts warn that the virus does not discriminate.That was the lesson Andrew Boselli, an offensive lineman at Florida State, learned as members of his family — including his father, Tony, 47, a former N.F.L. lineman — began showing symptoms in March.“I knew I was young and healthy,” said Boselli, 22, who moved home to Jacksonville, Fla., after the university closed its doors. “I play Division 1 football, and I’ve been training my butt off all winter and spring. I thought I had no worries. I wasn’t going to get it.”That bullish attitude faded days later, when he awoke feeling sluggish and short of breath. That night, his body temperature climbed to 104. “It was the sickest I’ve ever felt,” said Boselli, who continued to feel shortness of breath and fatigue for about week and a half.In Italy, Paulo Dybala, an Argentine player with Juventus, described his own unnerving experience dealing with respiratory symptoms. “I would try to train and was short of breath after five or 10 minutes,” Dybala said in an interview with the Argentine Football Association, “and we realized something was not right.”Panagis Galiatsatos, a pulmonary physician and assistant professor at Johns Hopkins, said that, like much about the disease, the long-term consequences for athletes who contract it are not fully understood.

Novel coronavirus losing potency, top Italian doctor says The new coronavirus is losing its potency and has become much less lethal, a senior Italian doctor said on Sunday. "In reality, the virus clinically no longer exists in Italy," said Alberto Zangrillo, head of the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan in the northern region of Lombardy, which has borne the brunt of Italy's coronavirus outbreak. "The swabs that were performed over the last 10 days showed a viral load in quantitative terms that was absolutely infinitesimal compared to the ones carried out a month or two months ago," he told RAI television. Italy has the third-highest death toll in the world fromCOVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, with 33,415 people dying since the outbreak came to light on February 21. It has the sixth-highest global number of cases at 233,019. Shops, cafes reopen as Italy lifts coronavirus restrictions (3:01) However, new infections and fatalities have fallen steadily in May and the country is unwinding some of the most rigid lockdown restrictions introduced anywhere in Europe. Zangrillo said some experts were too alarmist about the prospect of a second wave of infections and politicians needed to take into account the new reality. "We've got to get back to being a normal country," he said. "Someone has to take responsibility for terrorising the country." The government urged caution, saying it was far too soon to claim victory. "Pending scientific evidence to support the thesis that the virus has disappeared...I would invite those who say they are sure of it not to confuse Italians," Sandra Zampa, an under-secretary at the health ministry, said in a statement. "We should instead invite Italians to maintain the maximum caution, maintain physical distancing, avoid large groups, to frequently wash their hands and to wear masks." A second doctor from northern Italy told the national ANSA news agency that he was also seeing the coronavirus weaken. "The strength the virus had two months ago is not the same strength it has today," said Matteo Bassetti, head of the infectious diseases clinic at the San Martino hospital in the city of Genoa. "It is clear that today the COVID-19 disease is different."

Experts dispute reports that coronavirus is becoming less lethal - Has the novel coronavirus in Italy changed in some significant way? That was the suggestion of a top doctor in northern Italy who reports that patients to his hospital have been showing up with lower levels of the virus in their upper respiratory tracts compared with those two months ago. Alberto Zangrillo, head of San Raffaele Hospital in Milan, roiled the global public health community on Sunday when he told RAI, the national TV station, that “the virus clinically no longer exists in Italy,” with patients showing minute amounts of virus in nasal swabs. Zangrillo theorized in a follow-up interview with The Washington Post that something different may be occurring “in the interaction between the virus and the human airway receptors.”He added, “We cannot demonstrate that the virus has mutated, but we cannot ignore that our clinical findings have dramatically improved.” The comments, which received widespread attention following a Reuters report, prompted vigorous pushback from Michael Ryan, a top official with the World Health Organization, who said Monday during an online news conference that “we need to be exceptionally careful not to create a sense that all of a sudden the virus by its own volition has now decided to be less pathogenic. That is not the case at all.” The consensus among other experts interviewed Monday is that the clinical findings in Italy likely do not reflect any change in the virus itself. Zangrillo’s clinical observations are more likely a reflection of the fact that with the peak of the outbreak long past, there is less virus in circulation, and people may be less likely to be exposed to high doses of it. In addition, only severely sick people were likely to be tested early on, compared with the situation now when even those with mild symptoms are more likely to get swabbed, experts said. The pandemic is evolving rapidly, with the rate of new cases declining in some hard-hit areas of the world, including northern Italy and New York City, while rising dramatically in Brazil, Peru and India. The virus, however, is mutating at a slow rate, experts say. Some strains of the virus have become more dominant, but there is no firm evidence yet that any of them are more contagious or deadly, according to scientists who have reviewed recent genetic studies.

Two 'Unusual' COVID-19 Features Convincing Scientists It Was Man-Made - Two unique features of SARS-CoV-2 are convincing a growing number of scientists that it was man-made, and not the result of natural evolution, according to the Daily Telegraph. First, the virus binds more strongly to human ACE2 enzymes than any other species, including bats. Second, SARS-CoV-2 has a "furin cleavage site" missing in its closes bat-coronavirus relative, RaTG-13, which makes it significantly more infectious - a finding we reported in late February.  According to Israeli geneticist, Dr. Ronen Shemesh, the Furin site is the most unusual finding. "I believe that the most important issue about the differences between ALL coronavirus types is the insertion of a Furin protease cleavage site at the Spike protein of SARS-CoV-2," he said. "Such an insertion is very rare in evolution, the addition of such 4 Amino acids alone in the course of only 20 years is very unlikely." Shamesh, who is working on a treatment for COVID-19, believes the novel coronavirus was most likely created in a lab, and did not evolve in nature."There are many reasons to believe that the COVID-19 generating SARS-CoV-2 was generated in a lab. Most probably by methods of genetic engineering," he said, adding "I believe that this is the only way an insertion like the FURIN protease cleavage site could have been introduced directly at the right place and become effective."  Dr Shemesh, who has a PhD in Genetics and Molecular Biology from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and over 21 years of experience in the field of drug discovery and development, said it is even “more unlikely” that this insertion happened in exactly the right place of the cleavage site of the spike protein - which is where it would need to occur to make the virus more infectious. -Daily Telegraph   "What makes it even more suspicious is that fact that this insertion not only occurred on the right place and in the right time, but also turned the cleavage site from an Serine protease cleavage site to a FURIN cleavage site," he added.

More than 25,000 nursing home residents and 400 staff have died during pandemic, federal report shows -- More than 25,000 residents died and 60,000 were infected as the coronavirus swept through U.S. nursing homes in recent months, particularly affecting facilities with a history of low marks for staffing and patient care, the federal government reported Monday.The virus also infected 34,000 staff and took the lives of more than 400, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency that oversees the nation’s nursing homes.The numbers represent the first official national accounting of fatalities in the 15,000 nursing homes that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding. The tally, however, is incomplete. Only about 80 percent of the nation’s nursing homes reported data to the federal government, and they were required only to include cases since early May.CMS officials nevertheless said they were confident the figures offer a reliable snapshot of the pandemic in the nation’s hard-hit nursing homes.“This represents a good picture of where we’ve been,” CMS Administrator Seema Verma said in a call with reporters Monday afternoon.A Washington Post accounting of cases and deaths in nursing homes shows a higher toll and that tally rounds up data from less than half of the states. Based on reports from 21 states since the beginning of the pandemic, The Post found that more than 28,000 residents have died. Of the homes that reported data to CMS, 1 in 5 recorded at least one death from covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and 1 in 4 had at least one positive case. In the District of Columbia and three states — New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts — more than 1 in 10 nursing home residents died, according to the data collected so far by CMS.An early analysis by CMS showed that nursing homes that have received poor marks for nurse staffing and patient care were more likely to see higher case counts than those with stronger track records.Statistical analyses touted by the industry, by contrast, suggest that the outbreaks have little to do with the quality of nursing homes. Instead, studies indicate that a home’s location and size are better predictors of an outbreak.

Coronavirus: California cases surpass 111,000 amid protests - As mass protests and looting in cities throughout California gripped much of the public’s attention Sunday, the death toll from COVID-19 and the number of people infected with the virus continued to rise. According to data compiled by this news organization, California had 111,904 confirmed coronavirus cases and 4,172 deaths as of Sunday evening.The state recorded 2,039 new cases, a seven-day average of 2,527 per day — the highest daily average since the start of the pandemic. There also were 29 new deaths recorded, though the average number of daily fatalities has declined slowly since May 21, when there was an average of 78 new deaths. In the Bay Area, the number of people with COVID-19 reached 14,156 Sunday, with 219 new reported cases. The seven-day average of new cases in the 10 counties also was 219, a notable increase from an average of 146 new cases from two weeks earlier.The total number of fatalities also grew in the Bay Area to 445, with two deaths recorded Sunday. The deaths were in Alameda and San Francisco counties. But the specter of COVID-19 didn’t stop thousands of people from spilling into the streets of cities throughout California to protest police brutality, following the Memorial Day death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. The state currently is under a state of emergency due to the pandemic. Many protesters paid some mind to COVID-19 by donning masks and by appearing to avoid clustering too closely. People involved in looting also wore masks, though that may also be because they didn’t want to be identified by police. The looters also tended to move in groups, with little apparent concern about social distancing. In either case, crowds filling city and suburban centers has raised concerns among political leaders, physicians and public health officials about the possibility of new coronavirus outbreaks, just as the state begins reopening after weeks of stay-at-home orders, the New York Times reported. In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti warned that the protests could become “super-spreader events,” referring to the types of gatherings that can lead to an explosion of secondary infections, the New York Times reported.   Some infectious disease experts told the New York Times that they at least were reassured that the protests took place outdoors, explaining that the open-air settings could mitigate the risk of transmission. But another expert, medical historian Howard Markel, told the Times that parades and other large gatherings that took place in the midst of the 1918 influenza pandemic were sometimes followed by spikes in influenza cases.

 Washington, DC area begins reopening as coronavirus infections top 100,000 - Public officials throughout the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area are rushing to reopen the region’s businesses, even as medical experts warn of the dangers of resuming normal economic activity. As of Friday, the Washington, D.C. region, which consists of the District of Columbia and its outlying suburbs in Maryland and Virginia, had recorded 100,000 COVID-19 infections. Last week, the D.C. area was cited by top White House coronavirus task force members as one of the United States’ main centers for the infectious disease. As of Monday, the state of Maryland reported having 52,778 cases with 2,532 dead; Virginia on Friday had 44,607 cases and 1,375 deaths; Washington, DC had 8,801 cases and 466 deaths. Throughout the course of the week ending Friday, the region added over 10,000 new COVID-19 cases. Despite this, officials throughout the region all gave pronouncements that it was time for the areas hardest hit to reopen. On Friday, the heavily infected Northern Virginia suburbs began “phase one,” with restaurants, nonessential retail, childcare and places of worship resuming. In the days following Democratic Governor Ralph Northam’s announcement last week, the state posted records for new infections. The Washington Post reported the previous week’s daily average to be 1,028 cases on Wednesday, over 100 cases more per day than in mid-May.  Virginia may begin phase two as early as next week. In Maryland, officials in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties are planning to reopen this week. The two counties, which lie on the immediate borders of the District of Columbia, have by far produced the highest numbers of infections in the state, with Prince George’s County having over 15,000 cases and Montgomery County over 11,000. As of Wednesday, Montgomery County had met only two of its nine basic metrics for reopening. Perhaps most absurd was the decision by Washington, D.C.’s Democratic mayor, Muriel Bowser, to begin reopening on Friday. Earlier in the week, the city government announced that, despite increased COVID-19 infections last weekend, the city was “back on track” to meeting its goals of seeing 14 days of lowered infections. Following another decrease last Monday, Bowser “reset” the countdown to day 11. The infection rate for the Northern Virginia D.C. suburbs averaged about 20 percent. In Maryland and Washington, DC the rates were 12.5 percent and 17.2 percent last week. In Maryland’s Montgomery County and Prince George’s County, the rates were much higher, standing at 14.4 percent and 19.4 percent, respectively.

 Coronavirus dashboard for June 2: the US has settled into a depressing status quo - The US seems to have settled into a status quo where it accepts 20,000 new coronavirus infections and 1,500 deaths each day. This is what I forecast about a month ago, as lockdown regimens were abandoned in much if not most of the country: periods of waxing and waning waves of infection because there simply isn’t the political or social willpower to “crush the curve.” Meanwhile Vietnam, a developing country with a 90,000,000 population, which immediately went on a regimen of testing and tracing per the WHO recommendations, and has nearly universal wearing of masks, has not recorded a single coronavirus death. Below I show cases, because there are no deaths in Vietnam to show!: Domestically, it continues to be the case that only Oregon, with a population of about 4.5 million, in addition to several rural States and the island State of Hawaii, has “crushed the curve”: States that had early outbreaks, like NY, have seen dramatic reductions, but as the graph below shows, even with a -87% decline in new infections, NY still has more new infections even on a per capita basis than half of all the States, as shown in the below graph of new infections in the bottom 25 States plus NY: Here is a map showing new cases and deaths per capita for all 50 States, from Conor Kelly, who continues to do great graphic work: Here is his graphic overview of deaths, new cases, testing, and the % of positive tests: In the past 14 days, the 7 day average of new cases in the US has only declined by 1,624 cases, from 22,918/day to 21,294/day. Of that, 767 have been in NYS, in which they have declined from 2,045/day to 1,278/day. What about in States that have most egregiously ended restrictions? While the individual State data is noisy, and in some notorious cases (FL and GA) very unreliable, the below graph (again from Conor Kelly) for the Confederacy as a whole, shows that new cases started to increase as of April 28, while deaths have only increased after May 26, a 4 week lag: Between some very bad social behavior over Memorial Day weekend and the civil unrest of the past week, I would expect new cases to increase in many areas in the next 14 days, and deaths to follow a week or two after that.

 Native American Tribes’ Pandemic Response Is Hindered by Inequities -- The SARS-CoV-2 virus is novel, but pandemic threats to indigenous peoples are anything but new. Diseases like measles, smallpox and the Spanish flu have decimated Native American communities ever since the arrival of the first European colonizers.  Now COVID-19 is having similarly devastating impacts in Indian country. Some reservations are reporting infection rates many times higher than those observed in the general U.S. population.  Many face long-standing food and water inequities that are further complicated by this pandemic.On the Navajo reservation, which covers more than 27,000 square miles in Arizona, Utah and New Mexico, 76% of households already have trouble affording enough healthy food, and the nearest grocery store is often hours away. COVID-related restrictions have further curtailed access to food supplies. Clean water for basic sanitary measures like hand-washing is also scarce. Native Americans are 19 times more likely to lack indoor plumbing than whites in the U.S. Nearly one-third of Navajo households lack access to running water. Many health issues that can increase COVID-19 mortality rates occur at high levels among Native Americans. These underlying and preexisting conditions – things like hypertension, diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease – are linked to diet and stem from disruption and replacement of Indigenous food systems. These factors have clear health impacts. On the Navajo reservation, for instance, through May 27, 2020,4,944 people out of a population of 173,000 had tested positive for COVID-19, and 159 had died. This infection rate per capita exceeds those in hot spots such as New York and New Jersey. Many tribal members rely on the federal government's Indian Health Service for health care. But lack of capacity at the agency has hampered its response. Budget shortfalls, inaccurate data, the challenges of providing rural health care and ongoing personnel shortages in IHS clinics are compounded by staff beingpulled away to fight the virus in large cities.And while many states have raised frustrations with the Trump administration's unwillingness to distribute protective supplies from the dwindling national stockpile, IHS and tribal health care authorities never had access to the stockpile at all. Although the federal government has begun distributing relief funds to IHS agencies, there have been serious problems with the accompanying supplies. The Navajo Nation has received faulty masks, and a Seattle Native health center asked for tests but received body bags instead.

 "A W-Shaped Epidemic Is Now Emerging As Our Expected Case Forecast" -- Here's our weekly update on pandemic numbers in Italy and the US. In general, Italy continues to come in at expectations.  However, new cases have picked up, running almost double expectations of a week ago.  We had noted the difficulties of forecasting the ultimate taper of new cases.  Reducing these will take longer than expected, and our model suggests that new cases in Italy will not fall below 100 until June 22nd, 14 days later than our expectations of just one week ago.  And this could easily be pushed out again. The US continues to underperform badly in some areas. Total confirmed cases have reached 1.75 million.  Deaths at 103,000 continue to run just about at expectations, as they have for weeks.  The death rate continues to come in just below expectations. New confirmed cases continue to look terrible. We projected 11,300 cases for May 30; the actual was 25,300, 125% above forecast over just a week's horizon.  US containment efforts are visibly failing.  As a result, the forecast date for new cases coming in below 1000 has been pushed back an alarming 40 days to July 29th. The forecast for new cases below 100 has been pushed out 56 days to August 28th.  The US may enter the new flu season beginning in late September with new cases still in the thousands.   Thus, there will be limited lifting of social distancing practices and very possibly a resumption of tighter lockdowns in the fall as a new outbreak flares. A "W"-shaped epidemic is now emerging as our expected case forecast, with the economic and social consequences implied.

JPMorgan Is "Counting The Days" Until The Second Covid Wave - As governments ease lockdown restrictions, attention is focused on the risk of a second wave of COVID-19 infections. And, as JPMorgan writes, "the message from most people is: so far, so good, although as everyone also recognizes the lags with COVID-19 are long, so that three-to-four weeks need to pass in order to see how easing restrictions will impact new infections." Encouragingly, as JPM economist David Mackie points out, we have passed that point for a number of European countries. For example, Denmark started to ease lockdown restrictions 49 days ago without any sign of a second wave of infection. But, in JPM's view, "this way of counting the days is misleading, and it will take a while longer before we know whether restrictions have been eased too much or not." In a report titled "Counting the days: risks of a COVID-19 second wave", Mackie writes that the collapse in mobility when lockdown restrictions were imposed played a key role in driving the reproduction number (R-naught) below one. But, mobility has not been the only development weighing on the reproduction number, with JPM claiming that a number of other developments, including the buildup of immunity in the population, the reduced susceptibility of young people, the prospect of self-isolation of vulnerable individuals, the impact of weather and the impact of wearing masks and increased hygiene, all exert downward pressure on the reproduction number as mobility increases.  The bank's analysis suggested that only when mobility increases more than halfway back from full-lockdown levels to pre-lockdown levels is there a risk of the reproduction number moving back above one. This suggests that, in assessing the risk of a second wave (or counting down the days to one), we should start counting the days from the moment that mobility in each country returns to the halfway mark.  This is what the JPM strategist has done in the table below, and it presents a much more cautious picture. As Mackie writes, "if we assume that it takes up to 28 days before we will see clear signs of a second wave, then only Norway and Denmark are close to that point. For the rest of Western Europe, we need to wait a while longer. Indeed, although mobility has increased in the United Kingdom and Italy since the lockdowns were eased, neither country has seen it return to the halfway mark."

Global Coronavirus Cases Top 6 Million as Lockdown Measures Ease - The total number of confirmed coronavirus cases passed six million Sunday, even as many countries begin to emerge from strict lockdowns. As of Monday morning, the total global tally of cases was at 6,172,448, with 372,136 deaths, according toJohns Hopkins University. The U.S. still leads the world for both caseloads and deaths, with nearly 1.8 million cases and 104,383 fatalities. Brazil now has the second-highest number of cases, at 514,849.\  Combatting the outbreak has become a charged political issue in Brazil, The Guardian reported, as governors and mayors impose lockdown measures while rightwing President Jair Bolsonaro rails against the "tyranny of total quarantine." The country's health ministry said it had no idea when the outbreak would peak, and experts say its caseload could be much higher than reported because there has not been widespread testing. Meanwhile, U. S. President Donald Trump announced Saturday that the G7 meeting he had wanted to host in Washington, DC in late June would be postponed until September, The Guardian reported further. The decision reverses an intention laid out in a May 20 tweet. "Now that our Country is 'Transitioning back to Greatness', I am considering rescheduling the G-7, on the same or similar date, in Washington, D.C., at the legendary Camp David. The other members are also beginning their COMEBACK. It would be a great sign to all - normalization!" he wrote. His reversal came days after German Chancellor Angela Merkel told him in a phone call that she thought holding the summit was a health risk. Her office said on Saturday she would not attend the meeting unless the coronavirus situation had changed substantially, The Associated Press reported.

'The price you pay': Sweden struggles with 'herd immunity' experiment - Unlike its Nordic neighbors, Sweden decided early on in the pandemic to forgo lockdown in the hope of achieving broad immunity to the coronavirus. While social distancing was promoted, the government allowed bars, restaurants, salons, gyms and schools to stay open. Initially, Sweden saw death rates from COVID-19 that were similar to other European nations that had closed down their economies. Sweden’s 7-day rolling average of daily confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million, while declining from highs in late April, is the highest in Europe, according to online publication Our World in Data.  Using the 7-day average as a benchmark, the ratio of Sweden deaths to U.S. deaths is 3 to 2."I’d say it hasn’t worked out so well," said Dr. George Rutherford, professor of epidemiology at the University of California, San Francisco. "I think the mortality in Norway is something like ten-fold lower. That’s the real comparator." (Norway's 7-day rolling average death rate is less than .01 per 1 million people.)"If you let this go or don’t try very hard or go about it in somewhat of a more restrained way rather than we have here, this is the price you pay," Rutherford said. "Maybe it didn’t hurt businesses, but you have twice the mortality rate of the United States. All those people who died were part of families and they were citizens and part of the fabric of Swedish society. And now they’re gone because of a policy that hasn’t worked out quite the way they thought it would." Scientists estimate herd immunity for the coronavirus is reached when 70-90% of the population becomes immune to a virus, either by becoming infected or getting a protective vaccine. Despite its relaxed response, Sweden is nowhere near to hitting that goal. Tests on 1,118 Stockholm residents carried out by Sweden's Public Health Agency over one week in late April showed that only 7.3% had developed the antibodies needed to stave off the disease.

Man Behind Sweden’s Controversial Virus Strategy Admits Mistakes - Sweden’s top epidemiologist has admitted his strategy to fight Covid-19 resulted in too many deaths, after persuading his country to avoid a strict lockdown. “If we were to encounter the same illness with the same knowledge that we have today, I think our response would land somewhere in between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world has done,” Anders Tegnell said in an interview with Swedish Radio. Tegnell is the brains behind Sweden’s controversial approach to fighting the virus, and the government of Stefan Lofven has deferred to the epidemiologist in its official response to the pandemic. Gatherings of more than 50 people continue to be banned, but throughout the crisis Swedes have been able to visit restaurants, go shopping, attend gyms and send children under 16 to school. The laxer approach to containing the virus has drawn both praise and condemnation from across the globe. What is beyond debate, however, is the effect the strategy has had on the country’s death toll. At 43 deaths per 100,000, Sweden’s mortality rate is among the highest globally and far exceeds that of neighboring Denmark and Norway, which imposed much tougher lockdowns at the onset of the pandemic. “Clearly, there is potential for improvement in what we have done in Sweden,” Tegnell said. The comments appeared to frustrate some members of the government. Sweden’s minister of health and social affairs, Lena Hallengren, said Tegnell “still can’t give an exact answer on what other measures should have been taken. That question remains, I think,” the minister said, according to Dagens Nyheter. Until now, Tegnell had argued that the long-term nature of the Covid-19 pandemic required a more sustainable response than severe and sudden lockdowns. Despite criticism from abroad, Tegnell’s strategy enjoyed widespread support in Sweden. But with many other European Union countries now rolling back their lockdowns after appearing to bring Covid-19 under control, there are signs that Sweden may be left behind. That includes the freedom of movement of its citizens, as some EU countries restrict access to people coming from what are deemed high-risk Covid zones. What’s more, there’s so far limited evidence that Sweden’s decision to leave much of its society open will support the economy. Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson recently warned that Sweden is facing its worst economic crisis since World War II, with GDP set to slump 7% in 2020, roughly as much as the rest of the EU.

 Nearly 65,000 COVID-19 deaths in UK according to Financial Times - There have been at least 64,500 deaths in the UK linked to coronavirus, according to modelling by the Financial Times. Its figures were based on those released Tuesday by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The ONS found that deaths registered in England and Wales with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 reached 44,401 by May 22. When figures for Northern Ireland are added, the total reaches just over 50,000. On Tuesday, the government announced a further 324 deaths, meaning that even its own heavily manipulated death toll calculation has reached almost 40,000 (39,369). These are the highest number of COVID-19 deaths of any country except the United States. The data used by the Johnson government to compile its daily figures only includes people who died with positive test results confirmed by a Public Health or National Health Service laboratory. They do not, it states, include “deaths of people who had COVID-19 but had not been tested, people who were tested positive only via a non-NHS or Public Health laboratory, or people who had been tested negative and subsequently caught the virus and died.” Financial Times economics editor Chris Giles tweeted of the ONS data, “Following today’s official excess deaths figures and hospital data, a cautious estimate for the total UK excess deaths during the coronavirus pandemic up to 2 June is 64,500. Of these 61,920 have happened, the rest are estimates.” The FT’s modelling follows an extensive survey of 19 countries carried out by the newspaper last week. It found that the UK was only behind Spain in its COVID-19 deaths in Europe, according to “excess mortality figures.” The UK’s death rate from the disease was 891 deaths per million, while Spain’s was 921 per million. In each country the figure was based on the number of “excess deaths” since the week ending March 20. The UK was in first place internationally until May 21, when Spain revised sharply upwards its mortality estimates, adding 12,000 to its toll of excess deaths, taking them to 43,000. Excess deaths are defined as the number of deaths in a certain period compared to a five-year average. The FT noted, “The data were compiled from national statistical agencies for 19 countries for which sufficient information exists to make robust comparisons. The figures include all of the European countries hit hard by coronavirus.” The excess deaths method of compiling figures for COVID-19 is internationally recognised as the best. The Heath Foundation explains, “Excess deaths is a better measure than the COVID-19 deaths of the pandemic’s total mortality. It measures the additional deaths in a given time period compared to the number usually expected and does not depend on how COVID-19 deaths are recorded.”

British lawmaker admits government’s widely mocked sex ban is ‘ridiculous’  — The British government altered its coronavirus rules on Monday, making it illegal for two or more people from different households to meet up indoors or spend the night in private with one another, sparking widespread mockery on social media.Appearing on “Good Morning Britain” the next day, Conservative Party lawmaker Tobias Ellwood came under pressure from anchor Piers Morgan to admit his true feelings about the lockdown sex ban.“I’m happy to say it’s ridiculous,” he said, adding he did not want to spend time talking about a story he had not had the chance to read up on.Those caught spending the night in another household can be prosecuted and fined up to $125 if found to be breaking the rules. Couples who do not live together are, however, allowed to spend time together outside — although intercourse outdoors is also illegal in Britain.On Tuesday morning, the hashtag #SexBan was trending in Britain, as many mocked the government for its attempt at keeping people apart to prevent transmission of the virus.Simon Clarke, a junior housing minister, told LBC radio the new measures are designed to make sure “we don’t have people staying away from home at night.”The amendment to the rules prompted many Britons to recall the recent scandal of Neil Ferguson, a key science adviser to the British government, who wascaught breaking lockdown rules by allowing a woman described as his “married lover” to visit him at his home. He had been a driving force behind the government’s strict lockdown rules.

Brazil passes Italy's coronavirus death toll with another daily record - Brazil registered a record 1,473 more coronavirus-related fatalities in the 24 hours to Thursday, its health ministry reported, with the country’s death toll now at 34,021.  The new fatalities push Brazil's toll past that of Italy, which has reported 33,689 deaths so far, according to Johns Hopkins University's tally. Brazil now has the third-highest death toll worldwide, behind the United States and the United Kingdom.The health ministry also said it registered 30,925 new coronavirus cases over the previous 24 hours, increasing the nationwide total to 614,941.Senior health ministry official Eduardo Macário acknowledged that the country is facing difficulties even measuring the extent of coronavirus contagion.  “The government has been working to reduce under-reporting, expanding the testing capacity,” he said at a press conference.

Hundreds of schools in South Korea reopened, only to close again as the country sought to avoid a spike in coronavirus cases -- An uptick in coronavirus cases forced South Korea to close hundreds of schools that had reopened only days earlier, and delay others from welcoming back students. Some schools resumed classes last week with multiple precautions in place to reduce the infection's rate of spread. The schools were disinfected and students underwent temperature checks, wore face masks, and maintained social distance. Plastic barriers also separated students while they ate and studied, according to the Korea Times. More schools were scheduled to accept students starting Wednesday. But the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) reported 79 new cases on Thursday. Of those, 69 were reported at a distribution center in Bucheon, the Yonhap News Agency reported. This news prompted 838 schools of the nation's 20,902 to postpone reopening and stick with remote learning, the Korea Times said. South Korea has been heralded as one of the few countries to get its coronavirus response right due to widespread testing, contact tracing, quarantine, and lockdown. As of Saturday, the country had reported 11,441 cases and 269 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. But this new setback forced the government to reinstate restrictions. Parks, galleries, museums, and theaters in the Seoul metropolitan area have been shuttered for two weeks, CNN reported. Internet cafes have also been urged to close through June 14, and people have been asked to remain indoors and to avoid hosting gatherings for two weeks. Events organized by the government have been postponed, too.

 Indian government abandons lockdown measures as coronavirus infections soar - Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government yesterday initiated phase one of their so-called “unlockdown,” under which all remaining closures and restrictions on gatherings to halt the spread of the highly contagious and potentially lethal virus are to be lifted. Even as COVID-19 infections soar across India, Modi’s Hindu-supremacist government is making clear that it is abandoning any concerted effort to fight the pandemic’s spread. Yesterday, with confirmed COVID-19 cases reaching 190,535, India displaced France to become the country with the seventh highest number of novel coronavirus infections in the world. Just in the past week alone, India recorded more than 50,000 new cases. Monday saw yet another daily record for new cases, with 8,392 registered. India’s official COVID-19 death total now stands at 5,164, with more than 2,000 deaths reported in the past 12 days. Under the “unlockdown,” the government is accelerating the process launched in late April of lifting the sweeping lockdown measures Modi imposed, with just a few hours’ notice, on March 25. A Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) statement issued on the weekend announced the removal, as of Monday, of all central government restrictions on intra- and interstate travel and the reopening of places of worships, hotels, restaurants and shopping malls beginning June 8, outside specially designated containment areas. Under phase two of the “unlockdown” set for July, decisions on reopening schools and other educational institutions will be taken “after consultations with States and Union territories’ administrations.” Metro (subway) systems, cinemas, gymnasiums, bars and meeting halls are to remain closed until the third phases of the “unlockdown.” International air travel also remains suspended. In line with the central government’s reckless push to reopen the economy, even India’s worst-hit states—like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan—have announced their own “conditional easing” of restrictions.

Antibodies Testing in Karachi Reveals COVID19 Exposure Runs in Double Digits -  Riaz Haq -  Antibodies testing of 7,000 adults in Karachi reveals that as many as 15% of them have already been exposed to COVID19 without experiencing symptoms, according to a study by Dr. Wajiha Javed of Getz Pharma in Pakistan.  It takes at least 40% of the population to be exposed to build herd immunity. This may be the only way to normalcy unless there is a vaccine available sooner. Human body naturally produces antibodies to fight viruses of various kinds, including the coronavirus. Presence of antibodies in a person confirms that he or she has been exposed to a virus regardless of symptoms. It can even detect body's immune response to a low-level viral load. Such an immune response also occurs to a vaccine which does not make you sick but helps build immunity. More low level exposure to viruses in large numbers of people is in fact a good thing because it helps build herd immunity. It takes at least 40% of the population to be exposed to build herd immunity.  Getz Pharma's Dr. Wajiha Javed told me in the latest update on her ongoing work that serology tests have so far been administered to 7,000 adults aged 18-65 over the last 6 weeks in Karachi. 15% of them have tested positive for antibodies. People tested included those working for banks, restaurants, textile mills, factories, media and health care workers. Antibody testing kits detect the response of the body rather than the virus or antigen itself. These tests do not have the issue of low viral load. Antibody tests can detect exposure to Covid-19 even in asymptomatic cases. Generally, antibody testing kits have a high level of accuracy, especially on sequential testing. The kit Getz Pharma has been using has a sensitivity (the ability to correctly detect positive cases) of 95.3% and specificity (the ability to correctly detect negative cases) of 98.7% for IgG, and the sensitivity is 86.48% and specificity is 95.18% for IgM, according to Dr. Wajiha Javed.

 Iran warns of another ‘dangerous peak’ over a month after easing lockdown - Iran reported nearly 3,000 new coronavirus cases on Monday, the highest daily rise in two months, as the country’s health minister warned that Iranians are facing another wave.“The outbreak is not over yet, and at any moment it may come back stronger than before,” Health Minister Saeed Namaki said in a televised news conference,Reuters reported. “If our people fail to respect the health protocols … we must prepare ourselves for the worst situation.”Iran was one of the countries worst-hit by the virus in the region, even amid allegations that the government was covering up the true extent of infections and deaths. Nonetheless, as official fatalities began to drop in April, authorities began easing lockdown measures. The country hit a near-two-month low in deaths on May 2, Agence France-Presse reported.Now, over a month later, cases are surging again. Iranian authorities have attributed the increase in part to the government’s accelerated testing efforts.But Namaki also criticized Iranians who have not been maintaining social distancing and other virus-related measures.“There is still a long way ahead of us in our fight against this virus,” he said. “All the health protocols should be respected.” He cited the provinces of Sistan and Baluchistan, Kermanshah and Hormozgan as areas with quickly increasing infection rates.From Asia to Europe, countries have struggled in recent weeks to contain new virus flare-ups as they have lifted restrictions on movement and economic activities.

 COVID-19 pandemic exposes a rapidly developing global health crisis - The World Health Organization (WHO) press briefing on Monday focused their report, not on the break in their relationship with the United States or the protests that are seeing the tattered social threads unravel quickly. Instead, they emphasized their concerns over the state of global health that has been exacerbated by the pandemic. The globe continues to see daily cases of COVID-19 exceed 100,000 per day, with close to 6.4 million cumulative cases. Total deaths are approaching 380,000 as the pandemic is settling in the Americas for the present moment. In response to a question as to whether the virulence of the virus seems to be waning, both Drs. Michael Ryan and Maria Van Kerkhove rejected such claims. The genetic studies do not support such a mutational shift. Instead, they attribute the change in the numbers to public health measures that have thus far been employed. However, with lockdowns and travel restrictions making the delivery of critical medical supplies to the much-needed developing world difficult, the WHO warned that if these disruptions are not soon overcome, communities across the globe could be facing health consequences on a massive scale. Last month they noted that the world could expect 500,000 more deaths from AIDS in the coming year. They also estimated that 1.4 million people could succumb to tuberculosis if access to vital medications is not available. Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) Based on these concerns, WHO conducted a survey in May—a rapid assessment of service delivery for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) like diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular and chronic respiratory diseases—with 155 countries submitting. These NCD illnesses, which kill more than 41 million people each year (equivalent to 71 percent of all deaths globally), make these populations more vulnerable to becoming severely ill and at risk for succumbing to infection with SARS-CoV-2 (the coronavirus). According to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, “Many people who need treatment for diseases like cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes have not been receiving the health services and medicines they need since the COVID-19 pandemic began.”Low-income countries have been most severely impacted in services for NCDs. More than half the reporting countries have reported that such services have been partially or entirely disrupted, while at least two-thirds said rehabilitation services had been affected. Almost unanimously, every country stated that health workers had been reassigned, wholly or partially, to support COVID-19 response. Screening for breast and cervical cancer has been postponed in more than half of the countries. Of note, in 2018, 627,000 women died from breast cancer and 300,000 from cervical cancer.

 Mass reopenings worldwide have accelerated the coronavirus pandemic - The mass economic re-openings in the Americas, Europe and Asia that began in May have paved the way for a massive spread of the coronavirus pandemic internationally. According to data aggregated by Worldometer, the average number of new cases has been more than 115,000 since May 27, a number which has been steadily rising since May 12. The accelerating spread is also reflected in the number of new deaths each day. Starting in April, the number of new deaths had begun to decrease, a result of the physical distancing taken up by hundreds of millions of workers, toilers and youth around the world. The rate of new deaths, however, has now stabilized at an average of 3,770, as those people have been steadily forced back to work, and it is poised to climb in the wake of the hundreds of thousands of new infections. As of this writing, there have been nearly 6.7 million officially confirmed cases and more than 390,000 deaths caused by COVID-19 worldwide. A plurality of cases are in the US and Brazil, which have totals of 1.9 million and 610,000 cases, respectively, along with 110,000 and 33,000 deaths. The governments of both countries have also whipped workers back into factories and plants under threat of economic destitution if they don’t return. In Brazil, meatpacking plants were opened on May 20, while auto production started resuming the previous week. Hundreds of workers in these facilities have already become infected, spreading it to their homes and their communities. Despite this, President Jair Bolsonaro is storming ahead with the full reopening of the country, overseen by local mayors and regional governors. Factories in the United States began opening even earlier. Some states, including Oklahoma, North Dakota and Nebraska, never had stay-at-home orders, while states such as Georgia began reopening the last week of April. Certain industries, such as auto, waited until the second or third week in May to fully resume manufacturing their products, but these were only shut down in the first place as a result of wildcat strikes that erupted in mid-March, after reports emerged of infections spreading in the auto plants. The spread is in every state. While states such as New York, New Jersey, New Mexico and Connecticut report a 14-day decrease in the number of new daily cases, nearly half of states have an increase in new cases, particularly in areas where the pandemic did not initially widely infect the population. Florida, for example, yesterday saw its highest new case count yet, bringing its total of cases above 60,000. The state’s death toll stands at more than 2,600. Mexico has also emerged as a new hotspot for outbreaks of the pandemic. It is now on par with the United States and Brazil for the number of new deaths each day, and is the fourteenth country to exceed 100,000 cases and the seventh to breach 10,000 deaths. Hundreds of these were caused by the premature reopening of the country’s maquiladora sweatshops, which are used by US auto and other manufacturing companies to produce cheap parts.Similarly in India, large sections of industry were ordered to resume production in mid-May, particularly parts and car companies. Even then, the number of cases in the country was still increasing, largely a result of the haphazard lockdown implemented by the Modi government in April that trapped millions of migrant workers in the already crowded and unsanitary slums of Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad and other cities. The Modi government’s actions have caused India’s official case and death counts to soar. They currently stand at 226,000 and 6,309, respectively, and are increasing exponentially.

A New Hybrid Fungus Found in Hospitals Is Linked to Lung Disease - We are evolutionary biologists who are trying to understand why certain fungi infect hundreds of thousands of patients each year while others are harmless. We are particularly interested in infections caused byAspergillus fungi, a group of molds – multicellular fungi that typically grow by forming networks of hairlike filaments – that can cause very serious infections in patients with weak immune systems. While examining Aspergillus strains isolated from patients with lung-related diseases, we unexpectedly discovered an Aspergillus hybrid that infects humans. This finding is significant not only because this is the first known example of a hybrid mold infecting humans but also because accurate identification of the species causing disease is key for managing fungal infections. For the last few years, our team at Vanderbilt University, Gustavo Goldman's team at São Paulo University in Brazil and many other collaborators around the world have been collecting samples of fungi from patients infected with different species of Aspergillus molds. One of the species we are particularly interested in isAspergillus nidulans, a relatively common and generally harmless fungus. Clinical laboratories typically identify the species of Aspergillus causing the infection by examining cultures of the fungi under the microscope. The problem with this approach is that very closely related species of Aspergillus tend to look very similar in their broad morphology or physical appearance when viewing them through a microscope. Interested in examining the varying abilities of different A. nidulans strains to cause disease, we decided to analyze their total genetic content, or genomes. What we saw came as a total surprise. We had not collected A. nidulans but Aspergillus latus, a close relative of A. nidulans and, as we were to soon find out, a hybrid species that evolved through the fusion of the genomes of two other Aspergillus species: Aspergillus spinulosporus and an unknown close relative of Aspergillus quadrilineatus. Thus, we realized not only that these patients harbored infections from an entirely different species than we thought they were, but also that this species was the first ever Aspergillus hybrid known to cause human infections. Hybrid fungi that can cause infections in humans are well known to occur in several different lineages of single-celled fungi known as yeasts. Notable examples include multiple different species of yeast hybrids that cause the human diseases cryptococcosis and candidiasis. Although pathogenic yeast hybrids are well known, our discovery that the A. latus pathogen is a hybrid is a first for molds that cause disease in humans.

Crab blood to remain big pharma's standard as industry group rejects substitute -Horseshoe crabs’ icy-blue blood will remain the drug industry’s standard for safety tests after a powerful US group ditched a plan to give equal status to a synthetic substitute pushed by Swiss biotech Lonza and animal welfare groups.The creatures’ copper-rich blood clots in the presence of bacterial endotoxins and has long been used in tests to detect contamination in shots and infusions.More recently, man-made versions called recombinant Factor C (rFC) from Basel-based Lonza and others have emerged.An industry battle has been brewing, as another testing giant, Lonza’s US-based rival Charles River Laboratories, has criticised the synthetic option on safety grounds.Maryland-based US Pharmacopeia (USP), whose influential publications guide the drug industry, had initially proposed adding rFC to the existing chapter governing international endotoxin testing standards.USP has now abandoned that, it announced late on Friday, opting instead to put rFC in a new stand-alone chapter. This means drug companies seeking to use it must continue to do extra validation work, to guarantee their methods of using rFC tests match those of tests made from horseshoe crab blood.The decision gives the drug industry fewer incentives to end its reliance on animal-based tests, even as companies like Lonza and France’s bioMerieux promote man-made alternatives and wildlife advocates worry about horseshoe crab bleeding’s effect on the coastal ecosystem.USP told Reuters on Sunday its experts concluded there was too little practical experience with drug products tested with rFC to put the synthetic tests on equal footing with horseshoe crab blood tests, which have been widely used for decades.

Should the Rich Be Allowed to Buy the Best Genes? - I’m at a conference in Quebec City on CRISPR, the molecular tool designed to edit genes, and it has the same vibe as the meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club and the West Coast Computer Faire did in the 1970s, except that the hip young innovators are programming with genetic code rather than computer code. Now that schools are finally realizing that every kid should learn how to code, they are going to have to switch from teaching 0101 to A.G.C.T., the four bases of our DNA. Many of the star pioneers are here, including Berkeley’s Jennifer Doudna, who in 2012 co-discovered how to combine two snippets of RNA with an enzyme to make a programmable scissors that could cut DNA at a precise location, and Feng Zhang of the Broad Institute, who raced her to show how the tool could edit genes in humans and is now in a battle with her for patents to the technology. The atmosphere is charged with the catalytic combination of competition and cooperation reminiscent of when Bill Gates and Steve Jobs frequented the early personal-computer shows. The big news involves transposons, known as “jumping genes,” which in nature can hop from one place to another on chromosomes. Sam Sternberg, a whip-smart young biochemist who studied under Doudna, has just published his first breakthrough paper, which describes how to create a CRISPR-like system that inserts a tailored jumping gene into a desired DNA location. But to Sternberg’s surprise, Feng Zhang was able to get a similar paper of his own into a journal a few days earlier. The talk turns from science to the ethical issues hovering over CRISPR. Feng Zhang and another of the early pioneers, Erik Sontheimer, talk about the need for a moratorium on making edits that can be inherited. But already the genes may be out of the bottle. In November, a Chinese doctor made the explosive announcement that he had edited two embryos to try to make them immune to H.I.V., and a Russian doctor is touting his own plans to edit embryos to try to fix congenital deafness. There is general agreement among the scientists at dinner that, when it’s safe and practical, heritable edits ought to be used to fix bad single-gene mutations, such as Huntington’s disease and sickle-cell anemia. But they recoil at the idea of using gene editing for human enhancements, such as trying to give our kids more muscle mass, or height, or perhaps someday higher I.Q.’s and cognitive skills. The problem is that the distinction is difficult to define⁠—is preventing obesity a cure or enhancement?⁠—and even more difficult to enforce. “Look at what parents are willing to do to get kids in college,” Feng Zhang says. “Some people will surely pay for genetic enhancement.”

 Cut air pollution to help avoid second coronavirus peak, - Air pollution must be kept at low levels to help avoid a second peak of coronavirus infections, according to a cross-party report from MPs. There is growing evidence from around the world linking exposure to dirty air and increased infections and deaths from Covid-19. Lockdowns cut air pollution levels in many places, but the MPs said measures were needed to ensure it remains low. The report is based on evidence from scientists, businesses and local authorities and proposes a series of actions, including the continuation of home working, increased cycle lanes and training, more frequent public transport services to avoid crowding and the phasing out of wood and coal burning in homes. It also urges the rollout of clean air zones, currently delayed by the pandemic, and a scrappage scheme for dirty vehicles. The launch of the report also revealed new evidence of a biological mechanism that could explain how air pollution increases Covid-19 infections and the suggestion that pollution could help explain why certain minority ethnic groups have been more affected by the virus. “We need a wide-ranging air quality response as we emerge from lockdown and not an accentuated Covid-19 second peak because people get into their cars instead of using public transport or working from home,” said MP Geraint Davies, chair of the all-party parliamentary group on air pollution. Davies said measures to reduce pollution, such as travelling less, were the same as those that reduced contact between people and therefore the risk of infection. “They go hand in hand,” he said. The report will be submitted to government. Davies said: “This is something that should be on the prime minister’s desk and taken very seriously.” Prof Jonathan Grigg of Queen Mary University of London said: “It is increasingly likely that air pollution increases vulnerability to Covid-19 infection. Preventing the most polluting traffic from re-emerging on to our roads should therefore be part of Covid-19 policy.” He told the launch event that his new laboratory research had shown short-term exposure of airway cells to pollution particles from traffic increased the number of the ACE2 receptors that coronavirus hijacks to enter the body. “We showed a highly significant increase,” he said.

Something in the water: Pollutant may be more hazardous than previously thought - Sometimes toxins, such as hazardous wastes and industrial byproducts, seep into groundwater, the source of our drinking water. One such pollutant is perchlorate, a chemical compound used in rocket fuels, fireworks, fertilizers and other materials. The compound is thought to contribute to health issues in humans such as hypothyroidism, the decreased production of hormones from the thyroid gland, which can impact development.In a new study published May 25, 2020, in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine, Vanderbilt University and the University of California, Irvine, report on the mechanism that perchlorate uses to impact and damage normal functioning of the thyroid gland.The findings, they say, suggest that an acceptable safe concentration of perchlorate in drinking water is 10 times less than previously thought. The researchers focused on how perchlorate blocks a main route by which iodide, the negatively charged form of the element iodine, enters thyroid cells. Iodide helps the thyroid make hormones that are essential to the body's regulation of metabolism, temperature and other important functions. Thyroid cells control the incoming flow of iodide by using a protein channel called the sodium/iodide symporter, also known as the Na+/I- symporter or NIS. Like other cellular transport systems, a "lock-and-key" approach is used to move iodide, with NIS acting as the lock and sodium as the key. Sodium fits into NIS at two binding sites to unlock the channel, enabling iodide to pass through and accumulate inside a thyroid cell.  The team, led by L Mario Amzel, Ph.D., professor of biophysics and biophysical chemistry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and Vanderbilt University researcher Nancy Carrasco, M.D., determined that perchlorate blocks the channel by latching onto the NIS protein and changing its shape. Less sodium binds to the misshaped channel, thereby significantly lowering the amount of iodide that can be moved inside thyroid cells.

COVID-Related Fiscal Issues Could Become New Excuse to Privatize Drinking Water – Is Chester, Pennsylvania, the proverbial canary in the coal mine? Sure does look like it. The Philadelphia suburb is trying to sell its drinking water system. “The city’s fiscal issues have been greatly exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis,” Mayor Thaddeus Kirkland wrote in an April letter to residents. “It is our hope that the fiscal problems will be of a limited duration, however, as there is a path to financial stability on the horizon.”  That “path to financial stability” is to hand over the Octoraro Reservoir and the surrounding 1,358 acres of public land to a private corporation. Water bills would almost certainly go up, because, on average, private water utilities charge 59 percent more than public utilities. The system’s public workers would be outsourced (and almost certainly paid less). And all that land could be fenced off from public use. For what? Somewhere around $200 million. A nice chunk of change, given Chester’s longtime budget issues. But add up the headaches and rate increases that often come with privatization, plus the loss of public control and land access, and it wouldn’t be worth it.    Chester isn’t alone. Nationwide, water and wastewater systems are expected to lose $27 billion in revenue this year. And water isn’t all that’s at stake. Word on the street is, there’s a renewed effort to privatize St. Louis Lambert International Airport, a plan axed back in January because it made zero fiscal sense. As a finance executive admitted back in 2008, “Desperate government is our best customer.” Chester must resist the temptation of the fleeting sugary high a few hundred million dollars would bring. Does it want to be another tragic story of privatization gone wrong? Does it want to be like Chicago, which recklessly sold off its downtown parking meters in 2008 for at least a billion dollars under value? Does it want to be the next Flint, where a private water company was part of the team that enabled a lead crisis? Selling off access to drinking water — a fundamental public good — is wrong, no matter the circumstances, and especially during a pandemic.t

When it comes to access to clean water, 'race is still strongest determinant,' report says -When it comes to access to safe potable water, “race is still the strongest determinant," according to a recent report that found that more than 2 million people in the U.S. and Puerto Rico don't have access to running water and basic indoor plumbing. The human rights nonprofit Dig Deep alongside the U.S. Water Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting investment in water infrastructure, released the new estimate in a report this month, "Closing the Water Access Gap in The United States." George McGraw, who co-wrote the report and is the chief executive of Dig Deep, deemed the lack of water access a "silent crisis," especially in minority communities.Latino and African American households are twice as likely as white households to lack indoor plumbing while Native Americans are 19 times more likely, according to the report.Whereas communities grappling with water issues may feel like their problems are specific and isolated, the report urges looking at the issue as a national crisis and tackling it through a combination of factors: not just more government funding but encouraging partnerships with groups and flexible funding methods to provide families with the necessary infrastructure at the household level. In areas along the Texas border as well as in rural areas in Puerto Rico, the lack of safe water and indoor plumbing goes back generations to communities that were built informally in remote areas away from the infrastructure grid. In some of the Texas "colonias," as they are called, some of the low-income families thought they would eventually get water when they built on their plots. A century ago, the U.S. government responded swiftly to public health concerns by investing in water systems that provided safe drinking and wastewater services to Americans, after waterborne illnesses such as cholera were among the nation's leading causes of death. "But when we said everybody, we meant white folks," said McGraw, adding that many poor, tribal and immigrant communities were excluded from water access initiatives.

 Federal Court Reverses EPA Approval of Crop-Harming Dicamba -  A federal court overturned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) approval of dicambaWednesday, meaning the controversial herbicide can no longer be sprayed in the U.S.The product, originally designed by Monsanto, is opposed by some farmers and environmental groups because it can drift when sprayed, damaging wildlife and other crops."Today's decision is a massive win for farmers and the environment. It is good to be reminded that corporations like Monsanto and the Trump Administration cannot escape the rule of law, particularly at a time of crisis like this," lead counsel George Kimbrell of the Center for Food Safety told U.S. Right to Know. "Their day of reckoning has arrived."The Center for Food Safety sued the EPA together with National Family Farm Coalition, Center for Biological Diversity and Pesticide Action Network North America. The groups argued that the EPA broke the law when it ruled on the safety of a kind of dicamba designed by Monsanto to be sprayed widely over crops genetically engineered to be resistant to the herbicide. This method means the dicamba can drift to other, non-resistant crops.The herbicide is believed to have damaged 3.6 million acres of soybeans in 2017, and more than 1 million in 2018, Bloomberg News reported. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the EPA "substantially understated the risks" of the herbicides and also "failed entirely to acknowledge other risks," according to U.S. Right to Know. The ruling impacts the dicamba-based herbicide sold by Bayer, which acquired Monsanto in 2018. It also prohibits the use of BASF's Engenia and Corteva Agriscience's FeXapan, Reuters reported.

 Flooding in central Michigan exposes decades of Dow Chemical’s environmental crimes - A major health crisis threatens residents of central Michigan after last week’s flooding that displaced more than 10,000 people and destroyed thousands of homes. There have been widespread concerns about potential chemical leakage from the flooded containment ponds at the Midland Dow Complex and the spread of dioxin by the flood from a Superfund cleanup site downriver to larger areas. In response, Dow Chemical announced last Wednesday that there were “no reported product releases,” and the state of Michigan announced on May 27 that it would begin testing soil sediments taken from the Tittabawassee River this Thursday. However, the statement from Dow and the small-scope testing proposed by the state are woefully inadequate and in no way reassuring. The potential environmental and health crisis triggered by this flooding is a long time in the making and rooted in Dow’s decades-long criminal practice of dumping chemicals, failure to ensure safe working conditions, and above all, disregard for the health and well-being of the population. In Dow’s reporting of its flooded containment ponds, the contents of these ponds were left unmentioned, and their real purpose was glossed over. Dow’s containment ponds collect chemical run-offs from a large cement trench running throughout the Midland Dow complex. As explained to the WSWS by a former Dow employee, the company “had trucks come in that would take the containers [of various chemicals], but they didn’t have a reservoir to collect any residual chemicals” besides the containment ponds, “which would overflow” with ground level chemicals when it rained. Because almost anything on the Dow complex could end up in the containment ponds, the flooding of these ponds could mean a plethora of leaked chemicals. The former employee also mentioned that during her time at the company less than 15 years ago, she didn’t feel Dow had any flood protection plans or programs. On top of the possibility of chemical leaks, the flooding’s destruction of the dioxin cleanup work in progress at the Superfund site downriver also has far-reaching environmental and health implications. Dow has been disposing dioxin into its surroundings through airborne emissions and direct release into the Tittabawassee River for decades, polluting at least 50 miles along the river. Dioxin, the major toxic pollutant at the Superfund site, is a common industrial by-product from combustion or pesticide manufacture. Dioxins can persist in the human body for lengthy periods and may lead to cancer, skin diseases, reproductive and developmental issues, and immune system damage. Abnormally high levels of dioxin already exist both in the environment and the circulation systems of residents.

Plastic's Back! COVID Contamination Concerns Crush California's Green New Deal  -Disposable plates, silverware, and straws are making a comeback in California. New guidelines issued by the CDC recommend restaurants use plasticware by default as a way to limit the spread of the virus upon reopening.  Environmental groups have become infuriated with the new recommendation, as it now means all their hard work to ban plastic straws and push a "Green" New Deal could come to an abrupt end (maybe temporarily) because according to the CDC, throwaway dishes, utensils, napkins, and tablecloths could reduce virus spread. California recycling and clean water groups recently delivered a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom, questioning how exactly plasticware diminishes the probabilities of contracting the virus and also accused petrochemical companies of "trying to influence CDC guidelines for reopening food establishments in their favor.""The idea that the CDC recommends that single-use disposable items should be preferred seems a little illogical to me," Chris Slafter, interim coordinator of Clean Water Action's ReThink Disposable program, which provides grants to restaurants and advises them on how to transition and replace plasticware to more sustainable products, told Politico. "Someone still has to handle that item before it goes into a customer's hand."In pre-corona times, California and its green activists led the way in eliminating plastic straws and other petroleum‐based plastics from the restaurant industry as they have long criticized the items eventually end up in the oceans, polluting and killing wildlife.   We recently noted that microplastics have also ended up in human stool. Now, in post-corona times, with California's restaurant industry crashed (according to OpenTable data from late May), eateries that have been opened with carryout only and ones that have just fully reopened, have turned to plasticware over the CDC's new sanitary guidelines.

Massachusetts city’s residents ‘need to be listened to’ on pollution concerns | Energy News Network - Chelsea environmental justice advocates fight for a seat at the table for energy and industrial projects in their city.As the community of Chelsea grapples with soaring rates of COVID-19 infectionpossibly tied to the area’s low air quality, locals are demanding a greater say in the pollution-generating projects that are developed in their city.“Community members need to be listened to,” said Roseann Bongiovanni, executive director of GreenRoots, an environmental justice organization focused on Chelsea and surrounding communities. “We’re the local experts — we know exactly how we’re being impacted, we know that our neighborhoods are some of the least healthy in the state.”Massachusetts has been one of the states with the most coronavirus infections: Only New York and New Jersey have had higher per capita rates of COVID-19 cases. Within the state, the towns and cities hardest hit have almost all been communities with higher-than-average numbers of minorities and immigrants, and average incomes well below state norms. State Attorney General Maura Healey last month put out a report documenting this connection and calling for policies that will make vulnerable communities healthier and more resilient in the face of future public health crises, from disease to climate change. “These health disparities are the predictable end point of decades of policy choices that incentivize economic, housing, and environmental injustice,” the report reads. “This must change. And our efforts to remedy environmental injustice must begin now.”In Chelsea, where more than 7% of the population has tested positive for COVID-19, activists say this analysis tells a familiar story of environmental injustice. The numbers, they say, highlight an urgent need for state policies that both decrease the burning of fossil fuels and give the people living with this air pollution a stronger voice in the choices that affect their communities.

 New Study Shows Global Warming Intensifying Extreme Rainstorms Over North America --New research showing how global warming intensifies extreme rainfall at the regional level could help communities better prepare for storms that in the decades ahead threaten to swamp cities and farms.The likelihood of intense storms is rising rapidly in North America, and the study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, projects big increases in such deluges. "The longer you have the warming, the stronger the signal gets, and the more you can separate it from random natural variability," said co-authorMegan Kirchmeier-Young, a climate scientist with Environment Canada.Previous research showed that global warming increases the frequency of extreme rainstorms across the Northern Hemisphere, and the new study was able to find that fingerprint for extreme rain in North America."We're finding that extreme precipitation has increased over North America, and we're finding that's consistent with what the models are showing about the influence of human-caused warming," she said. "We have very high confidence of extreme precipitation in the future." At the current level of warming caused by greenhouse gases—about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit above the pre-industrial average—extreme rainstorms that in the past happened once every 20 years will occur every five years, according to the study. If the current rate of warming continues, Earth will heat up 5.4 degrees by 2100. Then, 20, 50 and 100-year extreme rainstorms could happen every 1.5 to 2.5 years, the researchers concluded."The changes in the return periods really stood out," she said. "That is a key contributor to flash flooding events and it will mean that flash flooding is going to be an increasing concern as well."

Tropical Storm Amanda Kills 14 in El Salvador, Forces 4,200 to Evacuate - At least 14 people were killed when Tropical Storm Amanda walloped El Salvador Sunday, Interior Minister Mario Duran said.Four people are missing, according to Noticias El Salvador, and around 200 homes were damaged by falling trees, flooding and mudslides, AFP reported. "We lost everything, we've been left with nowhere to live,"   San Salvador, the nation's capital, saw half of the nation's total fatalities, its Mayor Ernesto Muyshondt said. He said the storm had forced 4,200 people into government shelters in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. "We are experiencing an unprecedented situation: one top-level emergency on top of another serious one," he told AFP, referring to the pandemic. The government of El Salvador has reported a total of 2,582 coronavirus cases. Forty-six people have died, and 1,063 have recovered. Amanda strengthened into a tropical storm before making landfall Sunday, making it the first named storm of the East Pacific 2020 hurricane season, AccuWeather reported. It later weakened into a tropical depression and then a tropical rainstorm, but forecasters say its heavy rainfall still poses a major risk to Central America early this week. Because of its heavy rainfall, it was forecast to be a 1 on the AccuWeather RealImpact™ Scale for Hurricanes. "Heavy rainfall will be the greatest threat over Central America, particularly in the higher terrain or Guatemala and El Salvador where rainfall totals of 18-24 inches are possible," AccuWeather senior meteorologist Randy Adkins said. That rainfall has already turned deadly in the form of floods and landslides. One person drowned in a flooding river, while another was crushed by a collapsing wall, Reuters reported. An eight-year-old boy was killed when his house collapsed. The storm is estimated to have caused $200 million in damage to El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele said, according to AFP. He declared a 15-day state of emergency to recover from the storm.

Cristobel Crawls Through Mexico and Will Be a Tropical Storm Threat to U.S. Gulf Coast This Weekend - At a Glance:

• Tropical Depression Cristobal is spinning over eastern Mexico.
• It's expected to emerge into the Gulf of Mexico late Friday.
• It will then head toward a northern Gulf Coast landfall as a tropical storm by later Sunday.
• Cristobal's heavy rain and high surf should begin to reach the Gulf Coast on Saturday.
• Areas near the Gulf Coast from Texas to Florida should monitor the progress of Cristobal.
• Cristobal was spawned by a large system called a Central American Gyre and the remnants of an Eastern Pacific tropical storm.
• This gyre and Cristobal will produce torrential rain and life-threatening flooding and mudslides in Mexico and Central America.

Cristobal is crawling over Mexico and will track toward the Gulf Coast of the United States this weekend with expansive threats of flooding rain, coastal flooding, high surf and gusty winds. Cristobal weakened to a tropical depression Thursday morning but is expected to strengthen into a tropical storm again by Friday night or early Saturday. Cristobal is currently drifting eastward at less than 5 mph over eastern Mexico's Campeche state following its landfall Wednesday morning just west of Ciudad del Carmen.  Cristobal became the earliest-in-season third named Atlantic storm – previously held by Tropical Storm Colin on June 5, 2016 – Tuesday in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico. Last year, the "C" storm, Chantal, didn't develop until Aug. 20.Cristobal will linger inland or near the Bay of Campeche coast of eastern Mexico through Friday morning, lacking any significant steering winds aloft. It is expected to begin turning toward the northeast soon.This weekend, Cristobal will be drawn northward into the Gulf of Mexico through a break in subtropical high pressure.That should bring Cristobal's center near the northern Gulf Coast of the United States Sunday evening or night, anywhere from the upper Texas coast to the Mississippi coast. It remains too soon to determine exactly where this system would come ashore, but overall, confidence in this general track scenario is high.

Tropical Storm Cristobal heads toward Gulf Coast. Some areas could see a foot of rain - Rain bands from Tropical Storm Cristobal reached the northern Gulf Coast on Saturday morning as the storm continues to strengthen in the Gulf of Mexico. A tropical storm warning is in effect for southeastern Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the western Florida Panhandle. Tropical storm-force winds could arrive as early as Saturday night. As of Saturday morning, Cristobal was moving north at 12 mph with 50-mph maximum sustained winds, according to the National Hurricane Center. The center of the storm is expected to make landfall just west of New Orleans, but forecasters warn the worst winds and rain will extend far to the east into the Florida Panhandle. Cristobal is expected to make landfall over southeast Louisiana, but the worst rain and winds will be to the east of the storm’s center, forecasters say. Residents from southeast Louisiana to the Florida Big Bend should brace for deadly storm surge and flooding this weekend as the slow moving-storm is sure to bring heavy rains and high winds to the region, according to the National Weather Service. The advisory impacts “immediate coastal areas” stretching from the Mississippi River to Ocean Springs. Forecasters also issued a storm surge warning for portions of coastal Mississippi including Biloxi, Gulfport and Pass Christian. The southeast Louisiana coastline could also see minor to moderate flooding, forecasters say. “Heavy rainfall will spread onto portions of the Gulf Coast, from East Texas to Florida, this weekend into early next week, with areas of flash flooding and rapid rises on smaller streams and rivers possible,” according to the weather service.

FPL adopts expanded hurricane response plan in wake of COVID-19 staff measures  As the hurricane season approaches, utilities in the potential storm paths are re-evaluating their response plans in the wake of another disaster, the COVID-19 pandemic. Florida Power & Light Co., announced it is factoring the pandemic into all of its planning for hurricanes this summer and fall. It also is urging customers to do the same. “FPL and many of our customers have been through storms together, but this year is like no other,” said FPL President and CEO Eric Silagy. “We face the real and daunting prospect of staring down something none of us has ever had to deal with: a hurricane and a global pandemic at the same time. While the circumstances have changed, FPL’s steadfast commitment to restoring power safely and as quickly as possible has not.” FPL will hold its annual dry-run exercise in storm response June 22-26. The effort will include more than 3,000 employees tested on how to deal with a simulated hurricane while also employing safety measures related to the coronavirus. In addition to the annual drill, FPL will test its new pandemic safety procedures for restoration crews in an exercise at a staging site during the week of June 15. Under the expanded response plan, FPL will require its entire restoration workforce to undergo daily health screenings before going to work to restore power after a hurricane. FPL is altering the layout of staging sites – which are like miniature cities with lodging, parking, food, showers and laundry for out-of-state crews who assist FPL with restoration – to account for social distancing and limited interaction. FPL will also expand its use of smaller, micro-staging sites.

Cyclone Nisarga Menaces Mumbai, Forcing 100,000 to Evacuate in Pandemic - At least 100,000 people were evacuated along India's west coast as the country's financial capital of Mumbai awaits its first cyclone in more than 70 years.Cyclone Nisarga comes as Mumbai struggles to contain the coronavirus pandemic. The city is the worst hit in India, with more than 40,000 confirmed cases and almost 1,400 deaths, BBC News reported."Everything we didn't want to happen right now is happening," one city official said on TV, as The Guardian reported.The storm made landfall around 1 p.m. local time with wind speeds of up to 68 miles per hour, the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) said, as CNN reported. Before making landfall, it strengthened over the Arabian Sea into to a Severe Cyclonic Storm in the West Pacific, the equivalent of slightly less than a Category 1 Atlantic hurricane. The biggest threat from the storm is likely to be flooding. It is projected to rain heavily and could produce a storm surge of up to 3.3 to 6.6 feet that could swamp parts of Mumbai, Thane and Raigad districts.The storm made landfall in Alibag town, south of Mumbai. Alibag is "Mumbai's answer to Martha's Vineyard," a beach-side town where many of Mumbai's wealthy have vacation homes, The Guardian pointed out. The storm is the first cyclone to hit Mumbai since 1948, when a storm killed 12 and injured more than 100.

Data Find Rainforests Lost 14,000 Square Miles in 2019 --Satellite data collated for the World Resources Institute (WRI) showed primal rainforest was lost across 38,000 square kilometers (14,500 square miles) globally — ruining habitats and releasing carbon once locked in wood into the atmosphere.The count by the University of Maryland means that 2019 was the third most devastating year for primary forests — comprising old-growth trees and highly diverse wildlife — since scientists began such surveys two decades ago.Brazil burnt, logged and bulldozed a third of the area lost, with the Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia placed second and a distant third, concluded WRI experts from the Global Forest Watch (GFW) project."Primary forest loss was 2.8% higher in 2019 than the year before and has remained stubbornly high for the last two decades despite efforts to halt deforestation," exclaimed the study's authors.Brazil's losses preceded President Jair Bolsonaro's legislative moves to loosen rules that would otherwise protect regions from minerals extraction and agriculture."Hot spots" identified in satellite images, said the WRI, had corresponded with reports of land-grabs inside the Trincheira/Bacaja indigenous reserve of Brazil's Para state. Deforestation across the Amazon was nearing a threshold, calculated another in March, that once crossed would see it morph into arid savannah within 50 years.

Mangroves Threatened by Sea Level Rise Could Disappear by 2050 - Mangroves play a vital role in capturing carbon from the atmosphere. Mangrove forests are tremendous assets in the fight to stem the climate crisis. They store more carbon than a rainforest of the same size. However, they are under threat from sea level rise. A new study found that if emissions continue unabated, mangroves will not be able to keep up and could disappear in 30 years, as The Verge reported. The new study published in the journal Science found that mangroves will start to die out if sea levels rise just six millimeters per year. However, mangroves are more likely to survive when sea level rise is less than 5 millimeters (about 0.2 inches) per year, which is projected for low-emissions scenarios this century, according to a Rutgers University statement. "Under high-emissions scenarios, rates of sea-level rise on many tropical coastlines will exceed 7 millimeters per year, the rate at which we concluded there's a 6.2 percent probability mangroves can sustain growth," said co-author Erica Ashe, a post-doctoral scientist in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Rutgers University, in the statement. "The loss of these mangrove ecosystems could result in increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and fewer vital buffers against storm surges in the long run."  Around the world, there are 80 different species of mangrove trees. All of them grow in warm, shallow, coastal waters around the tropics. They spread their roots in sediment that is under the water, while their upper trunks, branches and leaves are above the water. The forests usually flood twice a day during high tide, according to Newsweek.  They play a crucial role in stabilizing the coastline, providing protection from storms, waves, and tidal erosion. Their root systems provide a habitat for fish and other animals, according to Newsweek. Mangrove forests work their magic by pulling freshwater from salty seawater to serve as a nursery for fish, crustaceans and shellfish. But if their roots are completely submerged for too long, the mangroves will drown.  Ashe and her colleagues examined sediment core samples from 78 locations around the world. Those samples shed light on how mangroves responded to past changes in the rate of sea level rise, which went from more than 10 millimeters (0.39 inches) per year nearly 10,000 years ago to almost stable around 4,000 years later, as Newsweek reported. They discovered that mangrove ecosystems only developed when rates of sea level rise dropped below about 7 millimeters a year.

 Game Warden Shortage Threatens Wildlife - In Georgia there are just 213 game wardens to enforce state fish and wildlife laws, investigate violations, assist with conservation efforts and collect data on wildlife and ecological changes across 16,000 miles of rivers and 37 million acres of public and private lands. Statewide 46 counties have no designated game warden at all. The shortage could lead to wildlife crimes going undetected. "The more officers we have in the field, the more contact those officers have with the public, the more violations we'll find," says Major Mike England, a game warden with the Law Enforcement Division of theGeorgia Department of Natural Resources. "The locals in the counties without game wardens are very vocal about it; it's like living in a town with no police department."  Georgia is not an anomaly. Nationwide states struggle to recruit, hire and train game wardens. These law-enforcement officers — also known as conservation officers, forest rangers, gamekeepers or wildlife troopers — are on the frontlines of conservation, but significant staffing shortages, especially in rural communities, put wildlife and the environment at risk.  It's not just an issue in the United States. A 2018 United Nations report noted a worldwide increase in environmental crimes and cited a "lack of capacity in the enforcement chain" as one of the major gaps in ability to respond. And the current COVID-19 pandemic could exacerbate the problem.

Sixth Mass Extinction Accelerating, Study of Land Animals Finds - The sixth mass extinction is here, and it's speeding up.A new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Monday, found that 515 land animals are currently on the brink of extinction. That's slightly less than the at least 543 species that disappeared last century.  However, these extremely endangered species are expected to disappear in the next two decades, Stanford University explained in a press release."When humanity exterminates populations and species of other creatures, it is sawing off the limb on which it is sitting, destroying working parts of our own life-support system," study coauthor and Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich said in the press release. "The conservation of endangered species should be elevated to a national and global emergency for governments and institutions, equal to climate disruption to which it is linked." Ehrlich helped to write a 2015 study confirming that a sixth mass extinction had begun, and he now says the extinction rate is likely higher than previously thought. Species are going extinct at rates hundreds or thousands of times faster than the "background" rate for the last tens of millions of years, and are being killed off by one overriding factor: us. Several specific human actions are behind these losses, including habitat loss, hunting, the introduction of invasive species, pollution, the wildlife trade and the climate crisis."The massive losses that we are experiencing are being caused, directly or indirectly, by the activities of Homo sapiens," the study authors wrote.To draw their conclusions, the researchers looked at data on 29,400 land vertebrate species compiled by theIUCN Red List of Threatened Species and BirdLife International, The Guardian explained. Of those species, 515 had populations of fewer than 1,000, and about half of the 515 were down to less than 250 individuals. Because ecosystems are so interconnected, the disappearance of any of these at-risk species would put other species at risk. For example, when sea otters were overhunted in the Bering Sea, the population of sea urchins bloomed, devouring kelp forests and driving the Steller's sea cow to extinction. Eighty-four percent of species with populations under 5,000 live in the same regions as species with populations under 1,000, making such a domino effect more likely.

Thousands of Species Are Fleeing to Earth's Poles en Masse, And a Pattern's Emerging  - We know that global warming is forcing many animals around the world to flee their normal habitats, but now, an exhaustive analysis has shown marine species are booking it for the poles six times faster than those on land.  Drawing together 258 peer-reviewed studies, researchers compared over 30,000 habitat shifts in more than 12,000 species of bacteria, fungi, plants, and animals. The resulting database, named BioShifts, is the first comprehensive analysis of its kind, and while the database is limited by our own, human research biases, the data we have certainly suggests marine species are following global thermal shifts much closer than land animals. While land species definitely are moving closer to the poles as the planet heats up, this shift is "at a pace that is much slower than expected, especially in areas with warm climates," the authors write. In the review, amphibians were found to be moving up slope at over 12 metres a year, while reptiles seem to be headed towards the equator at 6.5 metres a year.Insects, which incidentally carry many diseases, were found to be moving poleward at 18.5 kilometres per year.Relatively, that's a lot, but in the bigger picture, marine species were moving towards the poles at an average pace of nearly 6 kilometres per year, while land animals were only shifting upslope at a mean pace of nearly 1.8 metres per year (slightly faster than previous estimates for land species, but still comparatively slow).This discrepancy between land and water could exist for several reasons. It might, for instance, be a product of temperature sensitivity. Air conducts heat 25 times less effectively than water, and many land animals can easily regulate their body temperature if they want.On the whole, this would logically leave marine species and many ectotherms - cold-blooded species - much more susceptible to Earth's fluctuating temperatures.

Zombie Fires Could Be Awakening in the Arctic - Some fires won't die. They survive underground during the winter and then reemerge the following spring, as documented in places like Alaska. They're called "overwintering," "holdover," or "zombie" fires, and they may have now awoken in the Arctic Circle — a fast-warming region that experienced unprecedented fires in 2019.. The European Union's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service is now watching these fires, via satellite. Zombie fires smolder underground for months, notably in dense peatlands (wetlands composed of ancient, decomposed plants), and then flare-up when it grows warmer and drier. "Zombie" is fitting. "It really does describe what these fires do," said Thomas Smith, an assistant professor in environmental geography at the London School of Economics. "They recover and they're difficult to kill." In April, two snowmachine-riding fire technicians found a zombie fire still smoldering near Willow, Alaska. The fire started in August 2019. This smoldering can quickly escalate to new blazes. "Zombie fires start burning as soon as the snow melts," said Jessica McCarty, an Arctic fire researcher and assistant professor in the Department of Geography at Miami University. These overwintering fires are most likely to emerge after big wildfire years with lots of burned land. They often light up on the edge of the previous year's blazes. "It suggests a fire might have survived," said Smith. Then, the fires can ignite dried-out vegetation. Importantly, it's difficult to say with certainty that the remote, early-season Arctic Circle fires identified by the European Union's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service are all actually zombie fires. It's possible people lit some or many of the blazes for agricultural purposes, or by accident. "It's really difficult to say for sure," noted Smith.

Melting Ice Opens Doors for Wider Spread of Contaminants, Diseases - Drowning polar bears and crumbling coastal communities are the most visible effects of melting glaciers and sea icein the polar regions, and now scientists are learning about less obvious but still alarming results of this shift: the wider spread of wildlife disease and contaminants. The COVID-19 pandemic has also hindered researchers’ efforts to perform 2020 fieldwork and collect data, potentially complicating further studies on the topic As melting ice allows pathways to open up in the Arctic, people and animals can use these routes to access previously inaccessible areas. Corporations and governments are making plans to use a more open Arctic for shipping routes and development, which could end up releasing more contaminants into the ecosystem. Animals, meanwhile, may already be traversing these open passageways to travel to new locations and spread disease. “By altering animal behavior and removing physical barriers, loss of sea ice may create new pathways for animal movement and introduction of infectious disease into the Arctic,” says a paper published by researchers, including Tracey Goldstein, an associate director of the One Health Institute at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. She and her colleagues published the study in the journal Scientific Reports. It explores how melting sea ice may be facilitating the spread of a disease called Phocine distemper virus (PDV) among marine mammals. PDV, a highly infectious virus, can afflict marine mammals with respiratory and neurological problems, and also make affected animals more susceptible to secondary infections. In 1988, an outbreak of PDV killed over 23,000 European harbor seals, and a 2002 epidemic killed over 30,000. In 2004, scientists found the same disease was affecting otters in Alaska, and they’ve indicated they believe melting sea ice may be to blame. Previously, North Atlantic and North Pacific populations of otters were not known to interact – experts believed sea ice prevented them from reaching one another, and they are not known to travel far. But they now are suggesting melting ice could have created a pathway for the animals to make contact and spread the disease, perhaps with other species acting as intermediaries.“Openings in the sea ice along the Russian coast were linked to the increased likelihood of PDV exposure or infection,” the researchers wrote. “And peaks of viral exposure in 2003 and 2009 occurred after a year with low sea ice extent and open water along the Russian coast, suggesting that multiple introductions may have occurred.”

Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Levels Are at Their Highest in 23 Million Years -- Human activity has pushed atmospheric carbon dioxide to higher levels today than they have been at any other point in the last 23-million-years, potentially posing unprecedented disruptions in ecosystems across the planet, new research suggests.  Understanding atmospheric concentrations of CO2 is "vital for understanding Earth's climate system" because it "imparts a controlling effect on global temperatures," said scientists in a study published in Geology.  Climate change is largely driven by a disproportionate increase of CO2 in the atmosphere largely resulting from the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas as well as cutting down or burning forests that serve as carbon stores, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. A 2013 study published by theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that climate change from CO2 and greenhouse gas emission is not only caused by humans but has had "widespread impacts on human and natural systems."Previous measurements have turned to ice cores to determine CO2 levels present in the atmosphere throughout Earth's history, but have only pieced together the last 800,000 years. To expand upon this record, researchers at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette used fossilized remains of ancient plant tissue to produce a record of atmospheric CO2 dating back 31 million years of "uninterrupted Earth history." As plants grow, the amount of two stable carbon isotopes, carbon-12 and carbon-13, change in response to CO2 levels in the atmosphere. With this in mind, the research team measured the relative amount of these carbon isotopes in fossil plant materials from 700 measurements, published in 12 studies, characterizing ancient plants and their lipids in order to calculate concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere during the timeframe that the plants grew. This atmospheric "timeline" did not show fluctuations in CO2 that are comparable to increases seen in the last century. In fact, the highest concentrations of CO2 were found during the Miocene, between 5 and 23 million years ago, but were still determined to have been below present-day levels. "These data suggest present-day CO2 exceeds the highest levels that Earth experienced at least since the Miocene, further highlighting the present-day disruption of long-established CO2 trends within Earth's atmosphere," write the study authors in Geology.

‘Like Trash in a Landfill’: Carbon Dioxide Keeps Piling Up in the Atmosphere – NYTimes - Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached their annual peak last month, and once again were the highest in human history. Despite the economic collapse resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, which has led to sharp declines in carbon dioxide emissions, the amount of the greenhouse gas has continued to climb. The May monthly average was 417.2 parts per million, according to scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. Separately, researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported a slightly lower May average of 417.1 parts per million.The readings are about one-half of 1 percent higher than the previous high, in May 2019. The year-to-year increase of about 2.5 parts per million is in line with the average annual increase during the past decade. Half a century ago, the average annual increase was just 0.8 parts per million. Emissions have fallen sharply this year as first China and then many other countries shuttered factories and other businesses, and locked down cities amid the pandemic. One recent estimate suggested that, over all for 2020, emissions from human activity could drop nearly 8 percent, which would be the largest year-to-year decline ever recorded. But even a drop of that magnitude is overshadowed by natural variability in carbon emissions from vegetation and soil in response to seasonal changes in temperature and soil moisture, Scripps scientists said in a news release announcing the readings. They estimated that human-caused emissions would have to drop by 20 percent to 30 percent for at least six months to result in a slowing of the rate of increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. “People may be surprised to hear that the response to the coronavirus outbreak hasn’t done more to influence CO2 levels,” said Ralph Keeling, a geochemist who runs the Scripps Oceanography CO2 program. The project, begun by his father, Charles D. Keeling, has been taking readings since 1958 at a NOAA observatory on Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii. “But the buildup of CO2 is a bit like trash in a landfill,” he said. “As we keep emitting, it keeps piling up. The crisis has slowed emissions, but not enough to show up perceptibly at Mauna Loa.” Editors’ Picks

The climate movement's silence -  The mainstream environmental movement has long been full of straight-up, unapologetic racists. Like the criminal justice system, American environmentalism was built on a foundation of anti-Black, anti-Indigenous discrimination, which its modern leaders have worked hard to reverse.There has been some progress, said Liz Havstad, the executive director of Hip Hop Caucus, a Black-centered progressive group. “Environmental organizations will make statements expressing solidarity with black communities and with Black Lives Matter now, which is an important step,” she said. “In the past, there has absolutely been silence around these issues in the climate movement.”Some in the climate community are indeed speaking up in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police. Big green groups like Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters, and Earthjustice have released statements condemning the killing and emphasizing their commitments to racial justice. High-profile white climate activists like Greta Thunberg and Jane Fonda have spoken out. And 350.org has even aligned its demands with protesters. Other high-profile climate activists and groups, however, have remained silent on George Floyd’s death. Neither Al Gore, Bill Nye, nor Leonardo DiCaprio have made statements about the killing, the protests, or systemic police brutality. Citizens Climate Lobby has not made a statement on its website or on Twitter. NRDC has not released a statement on the violence—but it did retweet a Black Lives Matter tweet about it. It simply does not make sense for anyone in the environmental or climate movement to stay silent on systemic racism, said Havstad. “The burden of the issues that you’re working on are falling harder on all people color, and particularly Black people,” she said. “Unless you’re willing to solve the roots of that disproportionate impact, you’re not solving anything at all.” The environmental movement’s unwillingness to strongly advocate for racial justice is also likely a big reason why Black people are severely underrepresented in mainstream environmental groups; are less likely to identify as “environmentalists;” and less likely to participate in outdoor recreation, despite consistently reporting higher concern for the environment and the climate than white people. It’s not that they don’t care about solving a crisis that disproportionate affects them. It’s that they’re being pushed away from the biggest conversations with the loudest voices. “Anti-blackness is rampant in the climate and environmental movement,” Havstad said. “It’s our responsibility to align our climate and environmental work with the movement for black lives.”

 EPA Likely to Approve Mine That Threatens Alaska's Largest Salmon Hatchery -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wrote a letter to the Army Corps of Engineers last week to say that it would not oppose or put a stop to a huge copper and gold mine near the world's largest sockeyesalmon fishery, as The Washington Post reported.  The Pebble Mine, a vast copper and gold deposit, is worth an estimated $500 billion in natural resources. However, it is in the Bristol Bay region of southwest Alaska, a resource that brings in $1.5 billion annually and provides a vital food source for thousands of Alaska Native residents who live there, according to PBS. An effort to build the mine at the heart of the Bristol Bay watershed has been an ongoing fight in Alaska.  The project was seemingly dead in 2012, but it got a new lease on life with the Trump administration when the Pebble Partnership filed for a permit with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in late 2017. The EPA has raised many concerns about the project, saying that it may result in substantial and unacceptable impacts to "aquatic resources of national importance," as Alaska Public Media reported.  In response, the Army Corps of Engineers announced what that the least damaging way to bring the ore out of the mine would be to take it out around the north side of Lake Iliamna, according to Alaska Public Media. Mark Ryan, a lawyer in private practice who served as regional counsel in EPA Region 10 between 1990 and 2014, told The Washington Post that the EPA's letter appears contradictory."It's a very odd letter," Ryan said. "It points out the mine's very serious environmental damage but then does not invoke EPA's powers to elevate the issue for further discussion." "Today's decision ... gives us more reason to believe that there will be no veto," Pebble CEO Tom Collier said in a written statement, as Alaska Public Media reported. "This is consistent with our observation that (the Corps) and EPA, and the other cooperating agencies, have been working well together to resolve all outstanding issues."

Rio Tinto Blasted Away an Ancient Aboriginal Site. Here’s Why That Was Allowed –- In the expansion of its iron ore mine in Western Pilbara, Rio Tinto blasted the Juukan Gorge 1 and 2 — Aboriginal rock shelters dating back 46,000 years. These sites had deep historical and cultural significance.The shelters are the only inland site in Australia showing human occupation continuing through the last Ice Age.The mining blast caused significant distress to the Puutu Kunti Kurrama traditional land owners. It's an irretrievable loss for future generations.Aboriginal cultural heritage is a fundamental part of Aboriginal community life and cultural identity. It has global significance, and forms an important component of the heritage of all Australians.But the destruction of a culturally significant Aboriginal site is not an isolated incident. Rio Tinto was acting within the law.   In 2013, Rio Tinto was given ministerial consent to damage the Juukan Gorge caves. One year later, an archaeological dig unearthed incredible artefacts, such as a 4,000-year-old plait of human hair, and evidence that the site was much older than originally thought.But state laws let Rio Tinto charge ahead nevertheless. This failure to put timely and adequate regulatory safeguards in p lace reveals a disregard and a disrespect for sacred Aboriginal sites.The history of large developments destroying Indigenous heritage sites is, tragically, long. A $2.1 billion light rail line in Sydney, completed last year, destroyed a site of considerable significance.More than 2,400 stone artifacts were unearthed in a small excavated area. It indicated Aboriginal people had used the area between 1788 and 1830 to manufacture tools and implements from flint brought over to Australia on British ships. Similarly, ancient rock art on the Burrup Peninsula in north-western Australia is under increasing threat from a gas project. The site contains more than one million rock carvings (petroglyphs) across 36,857 hectares.This area is under the custodianship of Ngarluma people and four other traditional owners groups: the Mardudhunera, the Yaburara, the Yindjibarndi and the Wong-Goo-Tt-Oo.But a Senate inquiry revealed emissions from adjacent industrial activity may significantly damage it.The West Australian government is seeking world heritage listing to try to increase protection, as the regulatory frameworks at the national and state level aren't strong enough. Let's explore why.

Explosion at Indian thermal power plant kills four workers - A massive explosion at a Neyveli Lignite Corporation (NLC)-owned thermal power plant in southern India on May 7 has taken the lives of four workers. Two permanent workers—Sharfuddin, 54, and Pavadai—and two contract workers—Shanmugam, 26, and Balamurugan, 36—have succumbed to severe burns in hospital. Four other contract workers—Anburaj, Jayshankar, Manikandan, Ranjitha Kumar—were injured by the blast. They were initially admitted to a NLC-run hospital in Neyveli, then later shifted to Kauveri private hospital in Trichi city due to the seriousness of their injuries. The tragic deaths are a result of the management’s hasty moves to resume work, in line with the Modi government’s instructions to reopen the economy, despite the worsening COVID-19 pandemic. The NLC management resumed operations at the plant on April 8 without carrying out mandatory maintenance procedures and ensuring safety measures. Its failure to renew outdated boilers led to the explosion. This was an act of callous disregard for the basic safety of workers, in addition to pushing them back to work amid the rapid spread of the coronavirus in Tamil Nadu and across India, which also placed their lives in grave danger. Tamil Nadu has become the second most pandemic-affected Indian state, after Maharashtra. As of Sunday, Tamil Nadu’s recorded infection cases rose to 22,333, while the figure for the whole country reached 190,162. Trade unions linked to almost all the main political parties operate at the NLC, including the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), affiliated to the Stalinist Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM. They are complicit in this tragedy because they refused to demand mandatory safety measures at the plant. The NLC is a highly profitable, central government-owned corporation, based in Neyveli, 200 kilometres southwest of Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu. The company mines lignite and generates electricity. It has four open cut mines with an annual capacity of about 30 million tonnes in Neyveli and one open cut mine at Barsingsar in the state of Rajasthan. It operates four thermal electric power stations in Neyveli and one at Barsingsar. The workers’ deaths triggered protests by their families and fellow workers. They demanded financial compensation of 10 million rupees and a permanent job for a member of each victim’s family. The NLC rejected the demand and offered to pay only 1.5 million rupees.

Electric-Car Sales Shrink in China but Remain a Government Priority – WSJ —China’s leaders are looking for new ways to draw consumers to electric vehicles as interest in them slumps. April was the first month in which Chinese EV sales declined while the overall auto market grew. Gasoline-car sales in April rose 6% from a year earlier, snapping a 21-month streak of declines, but EVs were down 27%—a sharp reversal for a segment that had outperformed the overall market until this year. The demand slump is a headache for China’s political leaders, who have championed EVs in hope of turning the country into a world power in next-generation transport. It is also a challenge for Tesla Inc. TSLA -1.84% and other auto makers that have been plowing investment into EV production in anticipation of Chinese buyers flocking to the vehicles. The Covid-19 pandemic has made matters worse, EV dealers say. “After the epidemic, [consumers] need a sense of security—a car they can trust,” said Ma Qiang, a dealer in the southern city of Shenzhen. That means falling back on familiar brands and the doughty internal combustion engine, said Mr. Ma, who sells EVs produced by BYD Co. 1211 +0.42% and BAIC Motor Corp., 1958 +6.90% the two largest Chinese producers of the vehicles. The government had set a sales goal of two million electric vehicles this year, but analysts expect only around 1.1 million vehicles to find buyers, down about 10% from last year. Officials aren’t giving up. While that goal for 2020 looks well out of reach, another target for EVs has been raised: instead of accounting for 20% of Chinese vehicle sales in 2025, the prospective share is now 25%. And top leaders have repeated their determination to bring EVs into the mainstream.

Congress Investigates How Marathon Petroleum and Koch Network Influenced Clean Cars Rollbacks -  On Thursday, May 28, several Democratic members of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, along with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), sent a letter to Marathon Petroleum seeking information on the oil company’s involvement in the Trump administration’s rollback of clean car standards. The Congressmembers are also investigating Marathon’s coordination with, and financial ties to, various free-market groups and whether those relationships are compatible with the groups’ tax-exempt status.The letter follows an October 29, 2019 House Oversight Environment Subcommittee hearing on oil industry influence in the vehicle fuel economy rollback, and comes one day after 23 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit challenging the rollback.The Trump administration’s Safer Affordable Fuel Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles rule, finalized on March 31, weakens greenhouse gas emission regulations and corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards from a 5 percent annual increase to 1.5 percent yearly increase. Under the new rule, fuel efficiency for new cars and light trucks would decrease from 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 to 40 miles per gallon. Laxer fuel economy standards means vehicles will consume more gasoline, which explicitly benefits the oil industry. According to Senator Whitehouse’s testimony during the House Oversight hearing last fall, the Obama-era clean car standards were expected to save Americans $1.7 trillion dollars in fuel savings, which is lost revenue for oil companies like Marathon.As the members of Congress write in their letter to Marathon President and CEO Michael J. Hennigan, the weakening of the clean car standards “raises serious questions about whether the Trump Administration is endangering the health and safety of the American people for the sake of higher profits for oil companies.” 

First Gulf Stream ocean current energy farm 'by next year' after Florida tests  -- A first array of clean-energy turbines tapping the fast-flowing US Gulf Stream could be turning next year following trials of three ocean current energy technologies off Florida by developer OceanBased Perpetual Energy (OPE).The three-day tests of the turbines, carried out with the Florida Atlantic University’s Southeast National Marine Renewable Energy Centre at a location some 20 miles (32km) off the coast, represents the first time energy has been harnessed from the Gulf Stream for a full 24 hours using “only the water’s perpetual flow”.“This historic demonstration shows the world that the Gulf Stream can produce clean, renewable perpetual power on a 24-hour-a-day basis using a variety of turbine concepts,” said OPE chairman Nasser Alshemaimry.“It is the starting point for commercialising ocean current energy in the Gulf Stream, thus reducing fossil fuel dependency and benefiting our climate and the planet for generations to come.”He hold Recharge: “The process to install 3-5MW next year [starts now]. We are in the process of licensing by the federal and State Governments. Stakeholders’ outreach will start next week and will take few months. Bottom line, from now on, all it needs is licensing and permits."

GRID: 5th Circuit considers quashing Texas transmission law -- Wednesday, June 3, 2020 -- Federal appeals court judges this week questioned whether they could overturn a 2019 Texas law giving existing utilities in the Lone Star State priority in constructing electric transmission lines.

Texas electricity reserves temper concerns over unfinished power projects -Texas is heading into summer with a larger power reserve than last year, when soaring temperatures put pressure on consumers to conserve power to prevent outages.But ongoing generating projects that represent an unusually high proportion of new power capacity is under construction and isn’t scheduled to be complete until mid- to late July.

Rensselaer waste-to-fuel developers grilled over project plans - A proposed $35 million trash-to-fuel processing facility at the site of the former BASF chemical plant here would substitute recycled materials for dirty coal as a fuel for concrete plants, steel mills and other industrial uses. That was the message Thursday night during a Zoom presentation by BioHiTech, the company that wants to build the fuel processing facility here. Not everyone is convinced however, as most of the questions during a two-hour presentation and discussion came from opponents worried about traffic, odors and possible seepage into the Hudson River. The 72,000-square-foot plant on a 10-acre lot would consist of large, deep pits under a building, where items like plastics and organic waste are separated out and turned into a papery fuel. There’s a ready market for such fuels, said Emily Dyson, who works with the company’s existing plant in West Virginia. “They want as much fuel as we can make,” Dyson said of their industrial customers. Developed in Italy, the technology has been used in Europe for about a dozen years, said Dennis Soriano, the company’s director of business development. The facility would employ about 25 people locally.

Deadlines loom for states mulling exit from FERC grid order -- Monday, June 1, 2020 --The clock is ticking for states weighing plans to exit the nation's largest capacity market, PJM Interconnection LLC. States such as Illinois, New Jersey and Maryland inch nearer each day to being locked into new federal rules that threaten to drive up costs and make it harder for them to achieve climate goals. PJM's capacity market is meant to ensure there's enough generation available to meet demand during the peak hour of the year. The market is run through an auction, typically held three years in advance. But there's been no auction for the last two years after Federal Energy Regulatory Commission declared in June 2018 that state subsidies for nuclear plants and renewable energy were distorting the PJM market. FERC followed up last December with an expanded minimum offer price rule (MOPR) that established a floor for state-subsidized generation (Energywire, Dec. 20, 2019). The rule has spurred multiple lawsuits and uncertainty about the future of a market that, ironically, was meant to provide certainty. Among the key questions states and generators are grappling with are ones involving the timing and impact of FERC's expanded price rule. Also up in the air is when FERC will approve auction rules proposed by PJM, something that could happen as soon as next month. Illinois has been out in front among states that have begun to evaluate plans to opt out of PJM's capacity market. Under such plans, utilities would remain part of the larger energy market, but they could elect to supply their own capacity needs (Energywire, March 1, 2019). But doing so takes time, and in Illinois' case, it requires legislation. Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) made clean energy a policy priority for this year's legislative session. But like elsewhere, COVID-19 shifted the state's focus, and the Legislature recessed yesterday without passing a bill. "A lot of people are very disappointed that this had built up so much momentum to get done this spring. But like so many things during the pandemic, there didn't seem to be an opportunity for a comprehensive energy bill."

Healey calls for orderly transition away from natural gas - ATTORNEY GENERAL MAURA HEALEY petitioned the Department of Public Utilities on Thursday to investigate how the state’s natural gas utilities should transition to a future where the fuel they are selling no longer fits in with the state’s carbon emission goals. Massachusetts has set a goal of zero carbon emissions by 2050, and Healey argues the state, natural gas utilities, and their customers need to start planning. The petition said California and New York have already launched similar investigations. “As electrification and decarbonization of heating increases, the Commonwealth’s natural gas demand and usage from thermal heating requirements will decline substantially and could be near zero by 2050,” the petition says. “As the Commonwealth reduces its fossil fuel consumption, the Department should establish a consistent regulatory framework that protects customers and maintains reliability and safety during the transition.” Healey recommended the investigation be conducted in two phases – one phase focusing on utility forecasts about their role in a decarbonized economy and the second on the policies needed to reach the state’s emission mandates. Her petition raises a host of questions that need to be answered, including whether renewable natural gas (gas made from cow manure, for example) has potential. The attorney general’s petition comes at a time when environmental advocates are pressing for a reduction in natural gas usage even as industry officials say the fuel is cheap, plentiful, and gaining market share. Tom Kiley, president and CEO of the Northeast Gas Association, which represents gas utilities in nine northeastern states, said he had been alerted by Healey’s office that the petition was coming but hadn’t seen it. He acknowledged an energy transition is in the works, but said the natural gas industry is on the upswing right now, not the downswing. He said the region added 1,200 megawatts of natural gas-fired power plants last year and 52 percent of homes use the fuel for heating. He also said natural gas is responsible for squeezing oil and coal plants out of the market, helping the state meet its 2020 carbon emissions goals. “We’re going to be around for decades,” Kiley said. Healey raises concerns in her petition that as the customer base of natural gas utilities shrinks, state leaders will need to figure out a way to protect the remaining customers from being stuck with larger and larger bills.

Efficiency significantly cheaper than natural gas, DOE study concludes - Natural gas energy efficiency programs run by utilities saved energy at a cost of about $0.40/therm from 2012 to 2017 — less than half of the national average retail price of gas during that period, according to new research from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.   Gas cost about $1/therm during those years, according to researchers, and U.S. households and businesses spent approximately $65 billion on utility-supplied natural gas in 2018. In that same year, utilities spent more than $1.4 billion on gas efficiency programs, according to the American Gas Association (AGA) which represents gas delivery companies.  Efficiency advocates say there are even more savings to be had through the electrification of end-uses — something the study did not consider. They say the gas industry may be building unnecessary infrastructure. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, around 90% of proposed gas power plants and their pipelines are likely to be unnecessary by 2035.  Gas efficiency programs yield a range of positives, according to Berkeley Lab. Utilities say they recognize this, and have been making those investments for decades. "Energy efficiency programs for customers of natural gas utilities provide multiple benefits, including improving energy affordability and resilience and easing gas pipeline constraints," according to the DOE report. The new results are similar to a 2014 Berkeley Lab study, which found savings of $0.38/therm from 2009 to 2011. Researchers "expected the results for the new study to be higher than their 2014 study for several reasons, including the assumed impacts of inflation on efficiency program costs and the use of different base years," according to DOE.

Ex-FERC commissioners debate solutions to coal self-commitments said to cost millions - Reports from the Union of Concerned Scientists, Sierra Club and others are finding that self-committing coal-fired power is costing consumers across wholesale power markets millions of dollars annually. Within the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) region, uneconomic self-commitment cost ratepayers $350 million in 2018, averaging $60 per customer, according to a report released last week from the Union of Concerned Scientists(UCS). Some of the utilities pegged as the worst offenders disputed UCS' findings in full, as did coal power advocate America's Power. Other utilities in the MISO market argue self-commitment is an important and necessary mechanism to avoid startup and shutdown costs. But a few utilities have shifted practices away from self-committing and toward seasonal commitments and economic dispatches in response to increased regulatory scrutiny in some states. State regulators have a vital role to play in determining whether such practices should fundamentally change a state's regulatory policy, former Federal Energy Regulatory Commissioner Suedeen Kelly told Utility Dive. "If you really want to change this, and you want to get rid of the uneconomic commitment, you got to change it at the state," said Kelly. "This is a clear indication that there are market distorting, subsidized resources that I believe FERC should take a look at." Dockets in Indiana, Minnesota and Missouri are examining the issue and UCS says more oversight is needed if states want to maximize the value of their wholesale markets. "This issue will not be resolved until state commissioners step up and tackle it," Joe Daniel, senior energy analyst at UCS and lead author of the report told Utility Dive. "The recipe for success is having thoughtful, concerned commissioners who are willing to scrutinize utility practices and willing to work with the utilities to find a solution." Another former federal energy regulator argues the issue should be resolved by FERC. Similar to what he says is a resource-neutral, good faith attempt to cut out market distortions in the PJM Interconnection through the Minimum Offer Price Rule, FERC has a responsibility to address this issue, former FERC Chair Jon Wellinghoff told Utility Dive. "This is a clear indication that there are market distorting, subsidized resources that I believe FERC should take a look at," he said. "FERC's intent in the PJM MOPR, and hopefully its intent in any investigation it would open up here in MISO with respect to these out-of-market, uneconomic resources, is to ensure that the subsidies are driven out of the markets."

Tlaib: Using coronavirus aid to bail out fossil fuel industry is ‘irresponsible’  ⋆ A Michigan lawmaker and several of her Democratic colleagues do not want fossil fuel companies to be bailed out in future COVID-19 relief legislation, arguing this would divert critical funding for citizens. President Trump previously said large oil and gas companies — who have stared down negative price points as low as -$37 a barrel and are seeing low sales due to stay-home orders — should receive such bailouts. But Democrats have urged his administration and their congressional colleagues not to allocate COVID-19 relief dollars to energy corporations. In early May, U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Detroit) signed off on a letter that asked U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to refuse attempts at granting immunity to fossil fuel companies through future COVID-19 relief legislation. U.S. Rep. Andy Levin (D-Bloomfield Twp.) also signed the letter. “For us, it’s a huge public health crisis,” Tlaib told the Advance. Tlaib also joined Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and more than 40 colleagues to send a bipartisan letter to Jerome Powell — chairman of the Federal Reserve Board — and wrote they would “fiercely resist” a federal expansion of the Main Street Lending Program to include oil, coal and gas companies. Trump-linked fuel firms already received millions from a chunk of CARES Act funding intended for small businesses, the Guardian reported. In another instance, a provision in the stimulus law allowed a bankrupting drilling company to claim a $9.7 million tax refund, then asked a bankruptcy judge to match that amount to distribute as bonuses to executives, per a Bloomberg investigation. That same provision allowed 37 companies with ties to the oil industry to claim tax benefits, which total about $1.9 billion so far. “The expansion of the program under the Trump administration, to me, creates an immediate risk to taxpayers,” Tlaib said. Tlaib represents Detroit, which has experienced several environmental injustice issues. In early 2020, policymakers called US Ecology’s expansion of a hazardous waste plant in southeast Detroit an example of environmental racism. Expanding the plant — a storage ground for toxic waste — would encroach on a large, densely-populated part of the urban area. And the Motor City — which already contains Michigan’s most-polluted ZIP code and already reports high rates of asthma and respiratory issues — has taken the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on the state.

Dominion urges voluntary utility disconnect ban extension (AP) — Dominion Energy Virginia asked state regulators Monday to give utilities the option to suspend service disconnections for another four months due to the coronavirus pandemic. The state’s largest electric utility made the request in a filing with the State Corporation Commission, which in March issued a suspension of electricity, gas, water and sewer utility service disconnections for nonpayment. It later extended the moratorium to June 15. The commission has warned that the moratorium is not sustainable “on an unlimited basis” and that the cost of unpaid utility bills are ultimately borne by paying customers as operational costs of the utility. “These costs do not disappear; they are shifted to other customers, who themselves may be struggling to make ends meet in the economic catastrophe caused by the COVID-19 pandemic,” the commission said when it granted the extension. Last week, the commission issued an order seeking comment through Friday on next steps, given “the huge importance of this issue to millions of Virginia utility customers, both residential and business, as well as to Virginia’s economy.” In written comments submitted Monday, Dominion suggested that the SCC allow the discretion for utilities to continue the moratorium “on a voluntary basis” for an additional four months. The company wrote that it would opt to extend the disconnect ban and a late payment fee moratorium. “This voluntary extension will allow utilities to implement their own individual programs to assist customers in need as well as encourage payment as customers are able, helping to protect against cost shifting to other customers,” Dominion wrote.

Northern Appalachia Q1 coal deliveries to US power plants fall 26% on year: EIA - — Northern Appalachian coal deliveries to US power plants totaled 14.85 million st in the first quarter of 2020, down 20.4% from 18.65 million st in the final quarter of 2019 and down 26% from 20.06 million st in the year-ago period, according to data from the US Energy Information Administration. Stay up to date with the latest commodity content. Sign up for our free daily Commodities Bulletin. Sign Up March deliveries of NAPP coal to power plants totaled 4.54 million st, up 0.2% from February, but down 36% compared with the year-ago month, the data show. Delivered costs averaged $51.86/st in Q1, compared with $51.19/st in Q4 and $55.94/st in the year-ago quarter, according to the EIA data. NAPP coal deliveries in Q1 had an average heat content of 11,972 Btu/lb and an average sulfur content of 5 lb SO2/MMBtu, compared with 12,047 Btu/lb and 5 lb SO2/MMBtu a year earlier. Contract deliveries, or purchases with a term of one year or longer, totaled 12.92 million st in Q1, down from 16.98 million st in Q4 and 17.56 million st in the year-ago quarter. Spot purchases, or contract deliveries of less than one year, also fell to 1.18 million st in the latest quarter from 1.63 million st in Q4 and 1.81 million st a year earlier. New contract purchases totaled 754,555 st in Q1, up from 38,629 st in Q4 and 692,072 st in the year-ago quarter, the data show. The majority of the new contract coal, or 77%, came from Consol Energy. Barge deliveries fell to 7.35 million st in Q1 from 8.69 million st in Q4 and 9.07 million st a year earlier. Rail deliveries fell to 4.42 million st from 6.18 million st in Q4 and 7.28 million st in Q1 2019. Over 1.77 million st was delivered by truck in Q1, down from 1.93 million st in the prior quarter and 2.04 million st in the year-ago quarter, while 1.31 million st was moved by conveyor, down from 1.84 million st in Q4 and 1.68 million st a year ago. Mines in the West Virginia segment of Northern Appalachia delivered 6.02 million st of coal to power plants in Q1, down from 7.53 million st in Q4 and 9.69 million st in the year-ago quarter. Pennsylvania's mines delivered 6 million st of coal to the generation sector in the latest quarter, down from 7.52 million st in Q4 and 7.6 million st a year earlier. Ohio coal mines shipped 2.4 million st to power plants, down from 3.02 million st in Q4, but up from 2.34 million st in Q1 2019, while Maryland coal mine deliveries totaled 428,575 st, down from 580,022 st in Q4 and 435,445 st a year earlier. The Gavin Power Plant in Gallia County, Ohio, remained the top delivery point for NAPP coal. The 2.6 GW plant took delivery of 1.66 million st in Q1, down from 1.82 million st in Q4, but up from 1.33 million st in Q1 2019.

Unruh: State may have a role in keeping Coal Creek open -A state senator from Beulah told an interim Legislative committee there’s a lot of concern in Coal Country about the planned closure of the Coal Creek Station power plant near Underwood. The plant’s owner – Great River Energy – has said it plans to close the plant in 2022, replacing it with wind power from Minnesota, as well as natural gas. The plant runs on lignite from the Falkirk Mine. And it employs a number of people in central North Dakota. Great River said it had been looking for a buyer, but couldn't find one. State Sen. Jessica Unruh (R-Beulah) told the Legislature’s interim Energy Development and Transmission Committee there are efforts underway to try and keep it open. "I belive there will be a role that the state will play, as we move forward with this project," Unruh said. "I don't think anyone quite knows what that is right now." Unruh said research to be done by the Energy and Environmental Research Center at UND on “carbon capture utilization and storage” might help. "That will be a very big piece of what it will take to keep all the facilities associated with Coal Creek Station up and running as we move into the future," Unruh said. One of those pieces is the co-located Blue Flint Ethanol Plant, which uses the CO2 steam to produce ethanol. The research project is to see if CO2 can be stored, and used later for ethanol production. The Lignite Research Council voted to approve about 45 percent of the more than $6 million project. But the LRC added a "claw-back" provision, so that if the site was abandoned, the money would be paid back to the state. But the state"s Industtrial Commission would not sign off on that provision, sending the matter back to the LRC.

Federal Judge Rules Citizen Lawsuit Can Proceed Against Justice Family-Run Coal Companies -- A federal judge has denied a request by coal companies owned by the family of West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice to dismiss a lawsuit over selenium violations at a southern West Virginia coal mine. The Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, Appalachian Voices and the Sierra Club in sued Bluestone Coal Corporation in August 2019, using the citizen lawsuit provision of the Clean Water Act. The groups alleged that the Justice companies were discharging selenium at the Red Fox Surface Mine in McDowell County at levels that violated federal mining permits. Selenium, a chemical element found in coal that bioaccumulates, has been linked to growth deformities and reproductive failure in fish. According to court documents Bluestone reported 107 violations since July 2018 — 42 violations of its average selenium limits and 65 violations of its maximum selenium limits. The company paid $278,000 in fines. But environmental groups argued the company should be subject to millions more in civil penalties. Bluestone and its affiliates, including Red Fox’s operator Southern Coal Corporation, disagreed. They urged the court to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the Justice coal companies are being monitored by federal environmental regulators under a 2016 agreement. Between 2009 and 2014, 27 Justice coal companies accumulated more than 23,000 water pollution violations at mines in West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama. The companies reached a settlement deal with the Environmental Protection Agency that included a $900,000 civil penalty and an agreement to implement an estimated $5 million in pollution control measures. The deal also required the Justice companies to provide quarterly pollution reports to regulators. Selenium was not a pollutant covered under the agreement, court documents note. Bluestone argued that because of the 2016 agreement with the EPA, also known as a consent decree, environmental groups could not bring a citizen lawsuit against them over the selenium pollution. They argued the lawsuit “would create undue interference” with the federal deal.   In his opinion issued Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge David Faber disagreed. In his 29-page ruling, he sided with environmental groups and questioned whether the 2016 EPA agreement did enough to prevent the Justice coal companies from polluting.

COAL: Murray Energy's tailspin puts mine cleanup fund 'in crisis' -- Monday, June 1, 2020 -- The bleak financial situation of Murray Energy Corp. — the nation's largest privately held coal company — is pushing Ohio's nearly insolvent abandoned mine reclamation fund to the brink of collapse, experts warn.

Murray Energy files notices projecting thousands of layoffs in West Virginia  — Six Murray Energy Corp. subsidiaries filed mass layoff notices covering 2,453 employees in West Virginia. Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (“WARN”) notices were filed May 28 with WorkForce West Virginia and include operations in Ohio, Marshall and Marion counties. Murray’s Anchor Longwall & Rebuild Inc. listed 139 workers who could be affected, as well as 82 workers with its Kanawha Transportation Center Inc., both listed in Ohio County. Murray’s Ohio County Coal Co. listed 447 workers potentially affected in Marshall County, as well as 854 workers with its Marshall County Coal Co. Murray’s Harrison County Coal Co. showed 448 workers could be affected in Marion County, as well as 483 workers at its Marion County Coal Co. The filings reported June 17 as the projected date for the potential layoffs. Telephone and email messages seeking comment from Murray Energy Corp. were not immediately returned. Murray Energy, the largest privately held coal company in the U.S., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October 2019 while facing more than $8 billion in potential and actual legacy liabilities and $2.7 billion in outstanding funded debt obligations. Murray Energy Corp. acknowledged Wednesday that it has defaulted on its $440 million bankruptcy financing package, setting up a pivotal month for the nation’s largest private coal producer as it aims to leave Chapter 11 amid a market downturn exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.

Operators shut down Seabrook reactor after 'unplanned event' -– The Seabrook Station nuclear power plant had to be manually shut down by plant operators Friday afternoon after an unplanned insertion of control rods. Peter Robbins, director of nuclear communications for NextEra Energy, Inc., the owner of the plant, said in a statement Monday "our operators followed their procedures and training and initiated a manual shutdown of Seabrook’s reactor after an issue with a piece of equipment. All systems responded normally and the equipment issue has been addressed. Seabrook Station is in the process of returning to full power." In a notification to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the company said the plant was running at 100 percent power on Friday when "the reactor was manually tripped" when a group of control rods "unexpectedly inserted" into the reactor. David A. Lochbaum, a member of the advisory board of the nuclear watchdog group C-10 Research & Education Foundation, Inc., and a former director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of Concerned Scientists, studied the report and said, "The key takeaway is that the plant operated as it was supposed to, and this was more of an economic event than a safety event. The control rods being inserted caused the plant to power down." Natalie Hildt Treat, executive director of the Amesbury-based C-10, said in a statement Monday, "While it was disconcerting to learn that Seabrook Station had an unplanned event that resulted in the reactor being manually shut down, it sounds like safety mechanisms worked as they were supposed to work." She cited Lochbaum's report to C-10 about the shutdown, in which he wrote "there were little to no safety implications," and she added, "That is certainly a relief."

 Shut-down TMI closer to getting permission to cut emergency response requirements and payments - The staff of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has recommended approving the Three Mile Island owner’s request to scale down the plan and process for protecting and warning the public in the event of an accident.If the NRC accepts the recommendation, TMI-owner Exelon will be allowed to, among other things, allow the 10-mile evacuation zone surrounding the facility to lapse and to end off-site radiation monitoring and regular testing of nearly 100 sirens throughout the zone. Exelon also would reduce its involvement in off-site emergency planning, and its financial contribution toward local planning and response capabilities.Exelon says those things will soon become unnecessary because of reduced threat of serious accident at TMI, which shut down for good in September and no longer has a functioning nuclear reactor. Stored radioactive waste is expected to remain at the plant for decades.Exelon argues the former response measures will no longer be needed as of 488 days after the plant’s Sept. 20, 2019 shut down. When that data arrives in early 2021, fuel rods submerged in a cooling pool will have cooled to the point they are unlikely to cause a serious fire and radiation release if the pool were to leak, according to Exelon.The local watchdog organization Three Mile Island Alert has opposed the request which, if granted, would amount to an “exemption” from normal rules.Eric Epstein of TMI Alert wants the full response to plan to stay in place until there’s no longer spent fuel being stored at the site. Removal of the radioactive waste is decades away. TMI Alert contends there’s still potential disaster from events such as a terrorist attack on the plant or an airplane crashing into the site.“The plant wasn’t designed to be a radioactive waste site,” Epstein said Tuesday. “We didn’t sign up to be a high-level radioactive waste site without any fallback plan.” Epstein’s organization has been unsuccessful in attempts to force a public hearing on the Exelon request. He said Tuesday he continues to explore legal options, but it might now require action by Pennsylvania lawmakers to thwart the request. Epstein has been discussing the situation with lawmakers for months.

Youngstown 'fracking' opponents to file appeal in federal court - Organizers behind an effort to let cities like Youngstown and other voters in Ohio ban fracking in their communities are taking their fight to a federal appeals court. A coalition of activists from Youngstown and other parts of Ohio has filed a notice in the U.S. Sixth Court of  Appeals challenging a federal judge's ruling against their claim that state and local elections boards violated their constitutional rights by preventing voters from deciding environmental issues such as fracking.In April, U.S. District Court Judge Benita Pearson dismissed the lawsuit filed by grassroots environmental groups in seven Ohio counties, including Susie Beiersdorfer and Dario Hunter of Frackfree Mahoning Valley, which has been unsuccessful eight times in backing a ballot issue to ban fracking inside Youngstown city limits. Fracking Opponents have expressed concern that fracking could endanger water supplies and pose other environmental hazards.The lawsuit claimed that election boards and the Ohio Secretary of State had violated the groups' constitutional right to free speech and due process by rejecting petitions signed by hundreds and thousands of registered voters seeking ballot space on issues dealing with clean water, fracking, injection wells, and other environmental concerns.The groups say election officials and the Secretary of State should not be allowed to keep questions from the voters based on the content of the issues. Judge Pearson ruled that the plaintiffs failed to show that "local, community self-government" is a constitutional guarantee in this case.

Gulfport updates Utica Shale plans - Gulfport Energy plans to complete three additional Utica Shale wells during the second half of the year The wells would give Gulfport incremental production in the coming months, the Oklahoma City-based driller said in a press release. Gulfport has deferred production until later this year and into early 2021 in the hope that prices for natural gas and oil will rise by then. The company predicted that net production for 2020 would land between 1 billion and 1.075 billion cubic feet equivalent per day. Gulfport’s prior estimate put production in the range of 1.1 billion to 1.15 billion cubic feet equivalent per day. Gulfport has drilled more than 400 wells in Ohio’s Utica Shale, the most of any publicly traded company. 

PTTGC, Daelim postpone investment decision on Ohio project -- PTTGC America and Daelim Chemical USA, equal partners in their long-planned PTTDLM petrochemical project in Mead Township, Belmont County, Ohio, have delayed making a final investment decision (FID) on their multi-billion-dollar petrochemical project, originally expected in the middle of 2020. Senior company sources in Bangkok told CW on Monday that the FID is expected to be made either at the end of this year or, more likely, next year and it would take five to six years to complete construction of the facilities. This would take the project’s completion date to around 2027–28. PTT Global Chemical (PTTGC), parent of PTTGC America, first announced plans for the project in 2015. In 2018, Daelim Industrial joined as partner. The companies were hoping to make an FID on the project by the middle of this year. The company tells CW that engineering studies are still being carried out on the project, which would be based on an ethane cracker designed to produce 1.5 million metric tons/year (MMt/y) of ethylene using ethane from the Marcellus and Utica shale deposits. The downstream configuration has not yet been fully decided on but could involve the entire ethylene output being used to make the equivalent amount of high-density and linear low-density polyethylene and/or some of the ethylene also used to make ethylene glycol. Most of the output would be sold on the US market. The company tells CW that the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic as well as the latest forecasts in demand are the main reasons for the delay. PTTGC CEO Kongkrapan Intarajang said recently that the company will review its short- and long-term investment plans worldwide based on projects’ costs as well as changes in product demand expected in the post-COVID-19 global economy. President and CEO of PTTGC America, Toasaporn Boonyapipat, said on Monday, "While the pandemic has prevented us from moving as quickly as we would like within our previous timeline, our best estimate is for a final investment decision by end of this year or in the first quarter of next year." PTTGC has spent about $200 million on site preparation and engineering studies so far. Bechtel was last year selected as the engineering, procurement, and construction contractor on the project, of which the initial costs were estimated at $5–6 billion. The complex would be located on a 500-acre site of a former coal-fired power plant. The site is owned by the potential investors. It would also include on-site railcar and truck loading facilities, supporting utilities, infrastructure, storage tanks, and logistics facilities.

Shell Plastics Plant Trump Touted Faces Oversupply Risks: Energy Institute Report - The New York Times — A massive Pennsylvania plastics project that President Donald Trump touted during a visit last year faces risks of oversupply and a low price outlook for the materials, a report by an institute that examines energy issues said on Thursday. The Pennsylvania Petrochemical Complex plant in Beaver County, owned by Shell, has been promoted by some as an economic savior in a region still suffering from the demise of steel industry in the 1980s. But the $6 billion to $10 billion plant, expected to open in 2021 or 2022, faces competition from other major plants owned by companies like Exxon Mobil, expected growth in recycled plastics, and the sluggish global economy, according to the report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, which supports the transition to green energy. "A lot of people think it's the second coming of the steel industry ... but this is way too weak of a proposition and a questionable economic development choice," Tom Sanzillo, IEEFA director of finance and former first deputy comptroller of New York state, said. Sanzillo hopes local officials and investors will ask questions about the plant. Shell spokesman Curtis Smith said the short-term outlook for the chemicals business is challenging, but long-term demand for petrochemical products will grow. The project is advantaged given its proximity to abundant, inexpensive feedstock, Smith said, referring to the region's natural gas and ethane. Trump won Pennsylvania in the 2016 election by less than 1 percentage point and has visited the state often ahead of the November vote. "This is just the beginning," Trump told thousands of building workers wearing yellow vests at the plant last August. "My administration is clearing the way for other massive, multibillion-dollar investments." He said the project would have never happened without him, although its final permits were issued before he was elected. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Shell’s Plastics Plant Outside Pittsburgh Has Suddenly Become a Riskier Bet, a Study Concludes - The same economic forces that are delaying construction of a plastics plant in Ohio will make another one under construction in western Pennsylvania less profitable and riskier to shareholders, an economic think tank warns in a new report.The massive, multibillion-dollar Shell Polymers plant rising from the banks of the Ohio River in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, is expected to make 1.6 million metric tons of plastic pellets annually—the building blocks for such products as bags, bottles, food packaging and toys. But a new study from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis warns that Shell will be making less plastic and less money while facing increasingly stiff competition. That means the company won't likely be able to hire as many workers and will contribute less to the local economy, IEEFA concludes. One key factor: the price of plastics has fallen 40 percent since the plant was planned several years ago, as a global petrochemical industry has raced to boost production capacity. These changing economics, made worse by fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, will have significant implications for Shell's investors, local and state governments in Pennsylvania, and the people of Pennsylvania, who have supported the project through tax breaks. IEEFA, a non-profit whose work is aimed at supporting a sustainable energy economy, called on Shell to be transparent with its investors and the public as economic conditions have changed."It will be a distressed asset for years to come," said Tom Sanzillo, director of finance for the energy institute. "Only increased public disclosure by Shell can ensure that problems are faced squarely and with common sense."A Shell spokesman, Curtis Smith, acknowledged "the short-term outlook for this business is challenging given global macro conditions, but it remains our view that long-term demand for the wide variety of products derived from petrochemicals will continue to grow and provide attractive returns."

Report: Fossil fuel industry could see prolonged financial distress - The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), an organization largely funded by various anti-fossil fuel agencies, on Thursday released a study that said the risks for Shell’s petrochemical complex indicates less profitability than originally projected, noting that Shell could see prolonged financial distress.The petrochemical industry in Beaver County could face prolonged financial distress, according to a report by an advocate organization for sustainable energy.The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), an organization largely funded by various anti-fossil fuel agencies, on Thursday released a study that said the risks for Shell’s petrochemical complex indicates less profitability than originally projected, noting that Shell could see prolonged financial distress.“The current economic climate poses risks for this investment ... This complex will not be as profitable as originally presented. This has significant implications for jobs, taxes and economic spinoffs,” said Tom Sanzillo, IEEFA’s director of finance, in a release.  Kathy Hipple, a financial analyst and co-author of IEEFA’s recent report, said the profitability of the complex is due to “a cumulative set of missed revenue and profit targets, as well as an oversupply of plastics, unpredictable costs, lost market share, diminished growth and increased competition.” According to the report, the price of plastics was in the $1 per pound range between 2012 to 2016, while today, plastics are 40 to 60 cents per pound range. Last month, Royal Dutch Shell announced it was selling its Appalachian shale gas holdings in northwestern Pennsylvania for $541 million following steep first-quarter profit hits company leaders attributed to coronavirus shutdowns. But Shell has been slowly shedding its shale assets in the Appalachian Basin for years alongside Chevron Corp., which announced late last year it was looking to sell Marcellus and Utica shale holdings in the region.

Oil, gas and plastics hit by COVID-19; producers await rebound - Ellwood City Ledger - As oil and gas producers wrestle with economic uncertainty and price slumps related to COVID-19, industry supporters expect a swift rebound. Business shutdowns and stay-at-home orders in place to combat the pandemic delayed progress on two Appalachian petrochemical facilities, and a global drop in demand has reduced fracking and drilling activities here and across the United States. The country’s oil prices fell below zero for the first time in history just last month, although prices are climbing again as COVID-19 precautions lift. Shale production in the Appalachian Basin has slowed by less than 2 percent in recent months, but new figures indicate a sharper drop in the average production of new wells. U.S. Energy Information Administration analysts say nationwide natural gas prices will likely remain below average until business activities resume and production slows at the end of the year. Kallanish Energy this week reported a 6.8 percent increase in Pennsylvania’s quarterly natural gas production — the lowest statewide growth rate since 2017. Even pre-pandemic, an abundance of cheap gas produced in the Permian Basin and other shale reserves was flooding the natural gas market and driving prices down. Global energy prices had declined, and Pennsylvania utilities were paying less for natural gas.   EQT Corp. and Range Resources, the region’s two largest gas drilling companies, announced plans to lower capital spending by $75 million and $90 million this year, respectively; however, both companies still expect to meet annual production goals. “The outlook for natural gas prices later this year and into 2021 has drastically improved since our year-end call in mid-February,” said Cabot Oil and Gas Corp. CEO Dan Dinges on a recent earnings call, echoing similar statements made by other regional producers. EQT plans to temporarily halt production of nearly one-third of its daily natural gas output in Pennsylvania and Ohio until market conditions improve later this year.

Pa. Supreme Court denies Sunoco pump station appeal - The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has dealt another blow to the Mariner East Pipeline through Lebanon County. The state’s top judicial body on Monday, June 1 denied the company’s petition to appeal a lower court’s decision, putting the future of the Sunoco Pipeline’s pump station in West Cornwall Township in jeopardy. The court upheld an October 2019 ruling by the Commonwealth Court, which said the West Cornwall Township Zoning Hearing Board acted improperly in May 2015 when it issued a permit for construction of a pumping station along Route 322 near Butler Road. The station, according to previous reports, is needed to provide the pressure necessary to maintain the volatile gases in a liquid state while being transported. However, construction was completed in September 2014 and gases began flowing through the station in January 2015, several months before the permit was issued. The Concerned Citizens of Lebanon County (CCLC) brought suit against pipeline owner Energy Transfer Partners, the parent company of Sunoco, in a case that bounced between the township and Court of Common Pleas for several years until a fresh appeal landed it before Commonwealth Court, which decided in CCLC’s favor. Sunoco in January filed a petition with the state Supreme Court to allow them to appeal the Commonwealth Court’s decision. “We are very pleased, after five years of litigation, to finally be vindicated,” CCLC member Pam Bishop said Tuesday. “The permit that was issued has been voided,” she said. “If it was anybody else, and the township found a building that did not have its permit … the township would ask them to take it down. That would be the normal procedure. We’re not sure what the township will do.”

 Tensions With China Are Wounding West Virginia — The One State The President Wanted To Save -  The political season will enter guns a blazing after Labor Day. But the players are warming up now — something triggered by some states and their attorneys general who are asking that the Chinese government be held to account for the outbreak of COVID-19. It’s a ploy that has an uncommon twist.   One of the politicos calling for such action is West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who is struggling to get his footing after getting knocked out of the U.S. Senate race by Joe Manchin in 2016. The reason Morrisey’s signature stands out is that West Virginia is in deep in negotiations with the China Energy Investment Corp. — a deal that would have it invest $84 billion to develop the state’s shale gas fields; China wants to feed its chemical and manufacturing base.  The prospective deal would be a game-changer for West Virginia. The three-year investment from China would exceed the state’s annual $75 billion gross economic output. Moreover, China is one of the few countries in the world still buying coal and China paid American coal producers at least $128 million last year. U.S. utilities, meanwhile, are closing their coal-fired units and replacing them with natural gas and renewables. West Virginia sits atop the Marcellus Shale basin, which holds 141 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas. The Utica Shale basin, which is next door, is just as plush. That means China could invest its $84 billion in Pennsylvania or Ohio — states that may value their business and that do not engage in inflammatory political rhetoric. The worst offender is Donald Trump, who said last week at the White House, “They've ripped off the United States like no one has ever done before.”   If China Energy does invest in West Virginia, it could trigger an economic boon there: It would attract cracker plants that break apart the “dry gas” used to heat homes from the “wet gas” used in chemical manufacturing. It could also be used as a magnet to attract an ethane storage and distribution hub to harness petrochemicals. Economic developers note that such an investment is worth 100,000 new jobs — chump change, though, for career politicians.

Ballad of a Land Man: Kentucky theatre takes on fracking --On a temporary stage deep in the Appalachian woods of Rockcastle County, Kentucky, the outdoor play Ezell: Ballad of a Land Man was a different kind of production. The five acts—called Welcome, Journey, Performance, Return and Feast—generated  an immersive storytelling experience, through which the audience was invited to feel a connection to place and to consider the intricacies of stewardship and belonging.   For creator Bob Martin and producer Carrie Brunk, Ezell is an outgrowth of both a passion for locally-engaged theater and their community’s efforts to resist the expansion of fossil fuel extraction. The two, known collectively as Clear Creek Creative, have deep roots in Kentucky and intimately aware of the painful history of resource extraction in Appalachia.   A speculator for oil and gas companies knocked on Martin’s and Brunk’s door in 2014, offering a lease for the mineral rights on the land they call home. At the time, oil and gas companies were aggressively positioning themselves for fracking the Rogersville Shale that lies under a great swath of eastern Kentucky.   We first meet Ezell as he bounds on to the makeshift stage. His enthusiasm for life is infectious. His character is neither a hero nor a villain. He’s human. Complicated. Real. We see his scars from a hard life of working in coal mines and the military. He returns to his ancestral land, perhaps the last place he felt whole, in an attempt to repair the rifts in his arduous life.  The one-man play powerfully wrestles with the personal, financial, generational, and societal barriers Ezell faces to truly going home. As the character says in the play: “Well cousin, to sit on MY porch of MY cabin, I’m gonna have to give up farmin’ these hillside flats and drinkin’ from that spring and trade them for these frackpads and these deep wells. That’s right... And they’re gonna need water, and a lot of it, over 2 million gallons per well. So they’ll tap that spring and they shoot that water down two miles deep and 2 miles across in every direction to break open that shale and bring up that gas. AND, I’ll sit on MY porch, and look out over that holler with these FRACKPADS and all these generators lined up pumping out 24 HOURS A DAY, 7 DAYS A WEEK!”  But it’s more complex than that: Ezell also shares tender observations about what has been and will be lost. The majestic chestnut trees that proliferated in the forest. The cold, clear spring with 57 degree water. The family graveyard going back generations. The traditions of the Cherokee people who once lived in the hills and valleys.

NJ Investigates Whether It Has Enough Natural Gas Capacity for the Next Decade - The state is launching an investigation into whether New Jersey has enough natural gas capacity to serve its customers over the next decade, a probe that could alter whether an expansion of new pipelines continues. The proceeding, sought by both gas utilities and conservation groups opposed to the buildout in recent years, aims to answer whether there is enough capacity in the pipeline system and what ‘’nonpipeline’’ solutions can reduce stress on the system during times of peak demand. The bigger-picture issue for critics of the pipeline expansion is how to rein in policies to ensure six million people in New Jersey rely on gas to heat their homes, and align them more with the Murphy administration’s clean-energy agenda and goals to reduce emissions contributing to climate change. “Now, more the ever, we should be vigilant about not wasting precious resources on unneeded projects,’’ said Tom Gilbert, campaign director for energy, climate and natural resources for the New Jersey Conservation Foundation. “Gas experts have shown that New Jersey has a surplus of available natural gas today and at any point in the foreseeable future.’’

NJ tells high court not to bite on 'overstated' impacts in pitch from PennEast — The State of New Jersey has told the US Supreme Court that PennEast Pipeline exaggerated the industrywide harms likely to result from a federal appeals court decision blocking condemnation of property in which the state holds an interest. The June 2 brief from the state comes as PennEast has asked the national's high court to overturn a 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals decision it contends would enable states to block interstate gas pipelines, threatening the nation's energy markets and likely chilling investments in infrastructure across the country. Oil and gas trade groups and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission have also warned of far-reaching consequences of the September 2019 3rd Circuit ruling. That decision found state sovereign immunity blocked PennEast from pulling New Jersey into federal court to condemn more than 40 properties in which the state held an interest. The ruling threw into question the route for the 116-mile, 1.1 Bcf/d natural gas project linking Marcellus Shale dry gas production to markets in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. New Jersey in its brief filed June 2 argued the Supreme Court should not take up the case because there was no circuit court split to resolve and the 3rd Circuit ruling was unanimously decided, reflecting proper application of sovereign immunity and statutory interpretation rules. As such, it said the petition for Supreme Court review rested heavily on overstated warnings of dire consequences. "PennEast is wrong" in asserting the 3rd Circuit created a state veto of interstate natural gas pipelines that will prevent development across the country, New Jersey argued. The decision only identifies which parties can file appropriate condemnation suits, it said. "That is why this question has arisen so infrequently, and why it is not likely to arise frequently in the future," New Jersey said. "The sky has not fallen," since a district court upheld Texas' analogous assertions of sovereign immunity in a condemnation action involving Sabine Pipe Line in 2017, New Jersey argued in the brief. Rather, FERC has received 53 applications for major new natural gas projects and approved 34 with 19 pending and no denials. And, parties have only identified two cases, including PennEast, since the Texas ruling in which states asserted immunity, it said.

Court ruling could delay compressor project — While it could delay the project from coming online and cost the gas company money, a federal appeals court decision to throw out an air permit issued by state regulators will not stop ongoing construction of a natural gas compressor station on the banks of the Fore River, Mayor Robert Hedlund said. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit on Wednesday overturned the air permit for the natural gas compressor station Enbridge is building in North Weymouth, ordering the state Department of Environmental Protection to conduct a new analysis of what would be the best available control technology to limit air pollution. In his decision, Judge William Kayatta said the state did not follow its own procedures when it approved a gas turbine, rather than an electric motor, to cut emissions at the station. The state will need to hold proceedings regarding the control technology for the project. Kayatta disagreed with many of the other arguments that petitioners made in their attempts to get the permit tossed, such as the regulators’ failure to consider existing levels of air toxins such as benzene and formaldehyde that already exist in the Fore River Basin. Hedlund praised Town Solicitor Joe Callanan and outside lawyers for their work on the town’s appeal, which raised the issue of using a gas-fired turbine to power the compressor. Hedlund said the state Department of Environmental Protection could either conduct the analysis and still allow the gas turbine, or require Enbridge to modify its plans and use an electric motor. “We have to remain vigilant to protect the health and safety of our residents because this does not stop construction of this facility,” Hedlund said. “It has the potential to delay Enbridge a couple of months, so we remain vigilant to look at all issues to protect the health and safety of residents.” The compressor station is part of the Atlantic Bridge project, which would expand the Houston company’s pipelines from New Jersey into Canada. Enbridge got the final go-ahead from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in November and started cleanup of contamination at the site shortly after. The company also needed several state permits, all of which were granted by regulators despite vehement and organized opposition from local officials and residents for several years.

State’s top court wrestles with land seizure for National Fuel pipeline plan –  New York State's highest court heard arguments Tuesday on whether an Allegany County widow must surrender land to National Fuel for construction of a natural gas pipeline. The pipeline would move natural gas from Pennsylvania to Canada through Western New York. The Court of Appeals case may turn on which of two bureaucratic findings the court thinks controls the outcome. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission granted National Fuel a permit for the Northern Access pipeline. But the state Department of Environmental Conservation refused to grant the company a water quality certificate allowing the pipeline to cross streams in Western New York. There are 192 stream crossings along the 97-mile route from the fracking fields of Pennsylvania – 26 miles in Pennsylvania, 71 miles in Western New York. Pennsylvania authorities have granted National Fuel all the permits it sought, but New York has not. FERC officials ruled the DEC's rejection of the stream crossing permit invalid because the decision came 36 days after the expiration of a deadline set in the federal Clean Water Act for the DEC to act on National Fuel's request. The company and the DEC had agreed to an extension of the deadline, but FERC said the Clean Water Act doesn't allow extensions. The DEC and the Sierra Club sued FERC in federal court. The case is pending before the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, with National Fuel intervening on FERC's side. Tangled up in all the legal and regulatory issues are 200 acres in Clarksville owned by Theresa Schueckler, whose late husband, Joseph, refused to sell a slice to National Fuel for its pipeline. National Fuel took the Schuecklers to court early in 2017, and a State Supreme Court justice in Allegany County granted National Fuel the power to seize their land under the state's eminent domain law. The Schuecklers appealed and in November 2018 won a 3-2 ruling by the Appellate Division, where the majority decided to ignore FERC's decision that the DEC acted too late. The three judges said National Fuel couldn't seize land for a project that hadn't been approved by the DEC.

E.P.A. Limits States’ Power to Oppose Pipelines and Other Energy Projects - The New York Times — The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday announced that it had limited states’ ability to block the construction of energy infrastructure projects, part of the Trump administration’s goal of promoting gas pipelines, coal terminals and other fossil fuel development. The completed rule curtails sections of the U.S. Clean Water Act that New York has used to block an interstate gas pipeline, and Washington employed to oppose a coal export terminal. The move is expected to set up a legal clash with Democratic governors who have sought to block fossil fuel projects. Specifically, it limits to one year the amount of time states and tribes can take to review a project and restricts states to taking water quality only into consideration when judging permits. The Trump administration has accused some states of blocking projects for reasons that go beyond clean water considerations, such as climate change impacts. Andrew Wheeler, the administrator of the E.P.A., said the agency was moving to “curb abuses of the Clean Water Act that have held our nation’s energy infrastructure projects hostage, and to put in place clear guidelines that finally give these projects a path forward.” States, he said, would no longer be allowed to use the law to object to projects “under the auspices of climate change.” The rule was initially proposed in August shortly after President Trump issued an executive order directing agencies to “promote efficient permitting processes and reduce regulatory uncertainties that currently make energy infrastructure projects expensive and that discourage new investment.” Mr. Trump then directed the E.P.A. to revise rules for permits issued under Section 401 of the Clean Water Act, which gives states and tribes the ability to judge the potential impact that energy projects and other construction proposals might have on water quality. He called the current rules “outdated.” The American Gas Association, which represents natural gas distribution and transmission companies, praised the changes and described states’ objections to pipelines and other projects as “abuse.”

Environmental groups open new line of attack at FERC on Atlantic Coast Pipeline | S&P Global Platts — A coalition of environmental groups opened June 1 a new front in their legal war against the 600-mile, 1.5 Bcf/d Atlantic Coast Pipeline project, contending that a supplemental environmental impact statement is needed.The action comes as lead developer Dominion Energy already is laboring to get the project back into construction after a series of legal setbacks. For instance, it is hoping for a positive US Supreme Court decision soon to help reinstate permission vacated by a federal circuit court for the pipeline to cross the Appalachian Trail.The project is intended to move Appalachian gas to mid-Atlantic markets. Should the developer prevail in the Supreme Court, it faces a possible new avenue of litigation in the form of a roughly 4,000-page filing posted on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's website June 1 by Southern Environmental Law Center, Appalachian Mountain Advocates and Chesapeake Bay Foundation on behalf of a coalition of conservation groups.The groups argued in the filing that a supplemental EIS is needed in light of new information that has come to light since FERC issued an EIS for the pipeline project in 2017, and given upcoming FERC decisions on key matters such as whether to extend certificate authorization for the project beyond the October expiration date and whether to lift FERC's existing stop-work order on construction. Part of the groups' rationale for a new review is that the region's energy infrastructure has undergone a dramatic shift away from gas-fired power, while the cost of the pipeline has ballooned. "In January 2020, Virginia — the site of over half of the ACP's proposed route — told the Supreme Court that in light of the mounting evidence that the pipeline is not needed, the ACP threatens Virginia's natural resources without clear corresponding benefits," they wrote.

EPA Changes Rule To Limit States' Ability To Oppose Pipelines, Energy Projects - Federal environmental regulators finalized a rule Monday that reduces the time states have to approve federal permits for energy projects. The Environmental Protection Agency finalized changes to a portion of the Clean Water Act called Section 401. For decades, it has given states and tribes the power to review new projects to make sure they don’t harm local waterways. Under the law, states also had the power to withhold approval and set special conditions. In West Virginia, for example, the rule allowed environmental regulators to revoke and then reissue a permit for the Mountain Valley Pipeline. Section 401 has been used by some states, like New York, to prevent new pipelines from being built.In a press release, the EPA said some states abused the law, using it to stall energy projects, and the new rule, which sets a one-year time limit for states to approve or reject projects, is returning the law to its original intention.“EPA is returning the Clean Water Act certification process under Section 401 to its original purpose, which is to review potential impacts that discharges from federally permitted projects may have on water resources, not to indefinitely delay or block critically important infrastructure,” said EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler.Under the adjusted rule, states are also now only able to consider water quality impacts, not a project's impacts on things like climate change.Environmental groups opposed the rule change.In a statement, Jon Devine, director of federal water policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council said the rule was a mistake and infringes on states' rights.  “Enforcing state and federal laws is essential to protecting critical lakes, streams, and wetlands from harmful pollutants and other threats,” he said. “But the Trump administration’s rule guts states' and tribes' authority to safeguard their waters, allowing it to ram through pipelines and other projects that can decimate vital water resources.”

Besieged by Protesters Demanding Racial Justice, Trump Signs Order Waiving Environmental Safeguards --With the nation convulsed by multiple crises, President Donald Trump returned to a favorite stand-by of his presidency—asserting his authority to sweep aside environmental restraints and speed up construction of oil and gas pipelines.  But the executive order that he signed Thursday night—the third of his presidency aimed at expediting pipelines—is destined to spur more of the type of litigation that has rendered his previous directives ineffective so far. The White House invoked the same legal authority the president has to expedite hurricane and flood response actions to declare an "economic emergency," that requires the waiving of environmental reviews and other regulations. "This order will be a sitting duck for the sorts of legal challenges that have been so successfully brought against other Trump environmental rollbacks," said Michael Gerrard, founder and faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. "Few developers or lenders will risk millions on starting construction in reliance on this order surviving in court."  The White House provided few details on the order before the scheduled signing at 4:30 p.m. "I can tell you it does have to do some of the permitting and energy as it relates to rebuilding this country," said presidential spokesman Hogan Gidley in a brief noon appearance before reporters.  Finally, after 6:15 p.m., the White House made copies of the order available.  "From the beginning of my Administration, I have focused on reforming and streamlining an outdated regulatory system that has held back our economy with needless paperwork and costly delays," Trump said in the document. "Antiquated regulations and bureaucratic practices have hindered American infrastructure investments, kept America's building trades workers from working, and prevented our citizens from developing and enjoying the benefits of world-class infrastructure. The need for continued progress in this streamlining effort is all the more acute now, due to the ongoing economic crisis." The president's critics were quick to point out that his order was poorly timed, since minority communities would be disproportionately affected by his move to waive the environmental review mandated under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).   "Gutting NEPA takes away one of the few tools communities of color have to protect themselves and make their voices heard on federal decisions impacting them."

Natgas flows to U.S. LNG export plants sink to 9-month low due to coronavirus -  (Reuters) - The amount of natural gas flowing on pipelines to U.S. liquefied natural gas export plants is at its lowest levels since August, a signal of weak worldwide demand due to government lockdowns to repress the coronavirus. Worldwide gas prices have plunged to record lows in Europe and Asia as lockdowns squeeze demand. Consumption of liquefied natural gas (LNG) has remained stronger than gasoline demand as LNG is used for power generation, but the cash crunch hitting the global economy has cut demand. The amount of gas flowing to U.S. LNG plants was on track to fall to a nine-month low of 4.3 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd), data provider Refinitiv said in a preliminary report Monday that may be revised on Tuesday. U.S. gas at the Henry Hub <0#NG:> in Louisiana has traded higher than European benchmarks <since the end of April and was expected to remain more expensive through September. Most of the feedgas decline was at Cheniere Energy Inc’s (LNG.A) export plants at Sabine Pass in Louisiana and Corpus Christi in Texas. Cheniere said it does not comment on operations. Analysts said U.S. LNG feedgas has declined due to the recent wave of cargo cancellations around the globe, after hitting a record in February before most government-imposed lockdowns. Buyers in Asia and Europe have already canceled over 20 U.S. LNG cargoes for both June and July, and more cancellations are anticipated.

Spot LNG, the worst-performing energy commodity, faces more price pain - (Reuters) - With the recovery in crude oil prices, spot liquefied natural gas (LNG) has assumed the unwanted mantle of the worst-performing major energy commodity this year. Spot LNG for delivery to North Asia in July dropped to $1.85 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) in the week to May 29, down from $1.92 mmBtu the prior week and matching the all-time low this year reached in the seven days to May 1. The price is down by nearly three-quarters from the winter demand peak of $6.80 per mmBtu from mid-October, and is almost two-thirds weaker on a year-to-date basis. In contrast, benchmark Brent crude futures have rallied nearly 150% since hitting the intraday low this year of $15.98 a barrel on April 22, ending at $39.79 on Wednesday. When it hit the April low, Brent was down 78% from its peak so far this year of $71.75 a barrel on Jan. 8, and it is still down by close to half since that high. But Brent’s partial recovery is an example of what happens when some supply discipline is applied to the markets. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies, including Russia, in the group known as OPEC+ agreed in April to end their price war and cut output by a combined 9.7 million barrels per day (bpd) for May and June. What crude oil shows is that having a producer organisation willing to prop up prices by cutting supply gives a better outcome price-wise than allowing only market forces to do the job. In LNG, the situation is more complex than crude. LNG trains are difficult to shut down, or even run at substantially reduced rates, meaning that closing down production is usually the very last option a producer will consider. As in crude, it seems the bulk of involuntary supply cuts is coming from the United States, where the rising price of natural gas has rendered U.S. LNG uncompetitive in both the key European and Asian markets.

Magnolia LNG sale falls through to company with ties to Lafayette, new buyer steps up - The Australian parent company behind the Magnolia LNG project near Lake Charles canceled a deal to sell the operation to a British business with a significant presence in Lafayette in late May. Global Energy Megatrend Ltd. was expected to pay $2.25 million to LNG Ltd. by May 15, but on May 25 the deal was terminated due to the buyer's "failure to close the transaction within the required timeframe." One day later, Magnolia LNG Holdings LLC, a Delaware-based entity incorporated on May 7, stepped up and bought Magnolia LNG for $2 million. The new purchase agreement includes an unsecured noninterest bearing promissory note worth $1.3 million if the Magnolia LNG project raises enough capital to begin construction. The new buyer also agreed to work with LNG Ltd. on a potential recapitalization of the company expected to be completed on Nov. 30. The deal includes the permits, land, detailed engineering plans and a contract for development, in addition to the underlying technology related to the LNG project. Former proposed buyer Global Energy Megatrend had described itself as an integrated natural gas company that has been leasing U.S. natural gas fields and investing in pipelines that lead to Louisiana ports and LNG export terminals. Global Energy Megatrend co-founders include Lafayette businessmen Bill Miller of Miller Energy LLC, Ben Blanchet and Eddie Moses of Miller Thomson & Partners LLC. It also has co-founders in London. Before that, LNG Ltd. had expected to be sold in a $75 million deal to Singapore-based LNG9 Ltd., but investors pulled out of that deal after a loan fell through. LNG Ltd. recently appointed administrators who were tasked with dealing with a potential insolvency; the company was on track to run out of money in May. In Australia, where LNG Ltd. is headquartered, administration is akin to Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in the United States. Magnolia LNG was expected to export 8.8 million tons of LNG each year, but has not started construction. The project already has permits from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

U.S. natural gas storage capacity remained relatively unchanged in 2019 - (EIA) Underground natural gas storage capacity in the Lower 48 states has remained relatively flat since 2012. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) measures working natural gas storage capacity in two ways: design capacity and demonstrated peak capacity. Both measures of capacity were relatively unchanged in 2019; design capacity declined 0.4% and demonstrated peak capacity increased 0.1% compared with 2018. For the sixth year in a row, no new storage fields were completed. Design capacity is calculated as the total of the working gas capacity for all active facilities in the Lower 48 states as of November 2019. Design capacity is an engineering estimate based on the physical characteristics of the reservoir, installed equipment, and operating procedures on the site, which often must be certified by federal or state regulators. Design capacity declined by 19 billion cubic feet (Bcf) in the Lower 48 states during 2019. Most of this decline occurred in the Mountain region, where working design capacity fell by 15 Bcf, or slightly more than 3% of the regional total.  Storage operators may reduce design capacity at a storage field following an asset acquisition or reassessment of the operational capabilities. In the Mountain region, Spire Storage West reduced the working design capacity at the Belle Butte (formerly Ryckman Creek) field by 16 Bcf after acquiring the field in 2018.  Increases in design capacity occurred primarily in the Pacific and East regions. In the Pacific region, the Northwest Natural Gas Company completed the North Mist capacity expansion project in Oregon, increasing working natural gas capacity by 2.5 Bcf. The North Mist expansion project was the only new natural gas storage reservoir to come online in 2019, increasing capacity at the Mist Underground Natural Gas Storage Facility. The facility provides flexible natural gas storage to Portland General Electric’s Beaver and Port Westward facilities to balance renewable power generation, such as wind and solar, which varies in response to changing weather conditions.  Demonstrated peak capacity is calculated as the total of the highest storage levels reached by each storage facility during any month during the most recent five-year period, with the most recent period covering December 2014 to November 2019 (the beginning of each annual heating season). Demonstrated peak reflects how storage facilities were actually used, not just how they were designed. Demonstrated peak capacity remained nearly flat, increasing 3 Bcf, or 0.1%, for the Lower 48 states in 2019 compared with 2018, marking the first time that this metric posted an annual increase since November 2016.

U.S. natural gas falls 4% as LNG exports drop on record low global prices - (Reuters) - U.S. natural gas futures fell over 4% on Monday as liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports continued to drop with record low gas prices in Europe and Asia. The price decline came despite forecasts for warmer U.S. weather and higher air conditioning demand over the next two weeks than previously expected. Front-month gas futures for July delivery fell 7.5 cents, 4.1%, to settle at $1.774 per million British thermal units. Data provider Refinitiv said gas output in the U.S. Lower 48 states was on track to fall to 87.6 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) on the first day of June, down from a one-year low of 89.3 bcfd in May and an all-time monthly high of 95.4 bcfd in November. With warmer weather coming, Refinitiv projected demand, including exports, would rise from 80.2 bcfd this week to 81.8 bcfd next week. That is higher than Refinitiv's forecasts on Friday of 78.5 bcfd this week and 79.3 bcfd next week. With U.S. gas prices expected to remain higher than European benchmarks through September, the amount of pipeline gas flowing to U.S. LNG export plants was on track to fall to a nine-month low of 4.3 bcfd on the first day of June as buyers cancel cargoes. That is down from an eight-month low of 6.4 bcfd in May and a monthly record high of 8.7 bcfd in February. Most of the daily decline in LNG exports is expected at Cheniere Energy Inc's exports plants at Sabine Pass in Louisiana and Corpus Christi in Texas, according to early Refinitiv data. Cheniere said it does not comment on its operations. Analysts at Energy Aspects said they expect around 125 U.S. cargoes to be shut-in this summer, potentially slashing LNG deliveries to Europe by up to 424 billion cubic feet compared to what was expected earlier.

U.S. natgas futures gain on storm concerns and rising LNG exports - (Reuters) - U.S. natural gas futures climbed on Wednesday ahead of a storm that could disrupt Gulf Coast production and as liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports edge up with gas prices rocketing higher in Europe. After dropping to record lows last week, major European gas benchmarks soared more than 40% over the past three days, driving forwards for September at the Title Transfer Facility (TTF) in the Netherlands above the U.S. Henry Hub in Louisiana for the first time since late April. In the Gulf of Mexico, meanwhile, Tropical Storm Cristobal is expected to sweep across Louisiana's on- and offshore production areas over the coming weekend. Front-month gas futures rose 4.4 cents, or 2.5%, to settle at $1.821 per million British thermal units. Looking ahead, futures for the balance of 2020 and calendar 2021 were trading about 23% and 47% over the front-month, respectively, on hopes the economy will snap back as governments lift coronavirus-linked travel restrictions. Data provider Refinitiv said average gas output in the U.S. Lower 48 states fell to 88.3 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) so far in June, down from a one-year low of 89.3 bcfd in May and an all-time monthly high of 95.4 bcfd in November. With the coming of warmer summer weather, Refinitiv projected U.S. demand, including exports, would rise from 81.0 bcfd this week to 82.0 bcfd next week. The amount of pipeline gas flowing to U.S. LNG export plants was on track to reach 4.5 bcfd on Wednesday up from a 13-month low of 3.8 bcfd earlier in the week. That compares with an eight-month low of 6.4 bcfd in May and a monthly record high of 8.7 bcfd in February. Analysts said U.S. LNG exports dropped in recent months as buyers cancel cargoes due to the collapse in European prices.

US working natural gas volumes in underground storage rise 102 Bcf on week: EIA | S&P Global Platts — US working gas in storage increased by 102 Bcf last week, which was less than the market expected, but Henry Hub futures remained static following the report. The amount of natural gas in US underground storage facilities increased 102 Bcf to 2.714 Tcf in the week that ended May 29, according to the US Energy Information Administration's weekly report, released June 4. The injection was below the consensus expectations of analysts S&P Global Platts surveyed that called for a 111 Bcf build. Responses to the survey ranged from injections of 93 Bcf to 122 Bcf. The injection was 16 Bcf, or 13.6%, below the 118 Bcf build reported in the same week a year ago and 1 Bcf below the five-year average increase of 103 Bcf, according to EIA data. US supply-and-demand balances were largely flat week on week, with large offsetting changes in residential and commercial and power burn demand leaving only a small change, according to S&P Global Platts Analytics. Gas-fired power generation demand rose 2.9 Bcf/d on the week, with gains spread across most regions, with the Midwest, East, and South Central regions adding upward of 800 MMcf/d apiece. At the same time, the Midwest and East regions had residential and commercial demand falling by 1.4 Bcf/d and 800 MMcf/d, respectively. On the US level, declines continued in industrial, LNG feedgas and Mexican exports demand further. Upstream, total supplies held mostly steady, increasing by less than 100 MMcf/d on the week to an average 90.4 Bcf/d. Storage volumes now stand 762 Bcf, or 39%, above the year-ago level of 1.952 Tcf and 422 Bcf, or 18.4%, above the five-year average of 2.292 Tcf, the data show. The NYMEX July futures contract remained unchanged at $1.82/MMBtu in trading following the release of the weekly report and was little changed in the following 30 minutes. Henry Hub NYMEX futures for the balance of summer were trading mostly flat June 4 to the day prior's close of $2.03/MMBtu, and flat to where it was priced a week ago, after some vacillation and a brief dip below $2/MMBtu earlier in the week. Spreads to next winter remain wide, with the July-through-October strip trading nearly 80 cents below the November-through-March window, as the market eyes a bullish 2021 on a tighter market stemming from supply drops from reduced associated gas production.

U.S. natgas flat as rising LNG exports offset small output increase - (Reuters) - U.S. natural gas futures were little changed on Thursday as rising liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports offset a smaller-than-expected weekly storage build and an increase in output. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said utilities injected 102 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas into storage during the week ended May 29. That was less than the 110-bcf build analysts forecast in a Reuters poll and compares with an increase of 118 bcf during the same week last year and a five-year (2015-19) average build of 103 bcf for the period. The increase boosts stockpiles to 2.714 trillion cubic feet (tcf), 18.4% above the five-year average of 2.292 tcf for this time of year. Front-month gas futures rose 0.1 cents, or 0.4%, to settle at $1.822 per million British thermal units. Refinitiv said gas production in the U.S. Lower 48 states fell to an average of 88.5 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) so far in June from a one-year low of 89.3 bcfd in May and an all-time monthly high of 95.4 bcfd in November. Traders, however, noted daily output was up from a one-year low of 87.3 bcfd hit a couple of weeks ago. The amount of pipeline gas flowing to U.S. LNG export plants was on track to reach 5.2 bcfd on Thursday after dropping to a 13-month low of 3.7 bcfd on Monday. That compares with an eight-month low of 6.4 bcfd in May and a monthly record high of 8.7 bcfd in February. Analysts said U.S. LNG exports dropped in recent months after buyers canceled cargoes due to the collapse in European prices. But after collapsing to record lows last week, major European gas benchmarks have soared around 50% this week. That drove forwards for August and September at the Dutch Title Transfer Facility (TTF) above the U.S. Henry Hub for the first time since late April.

U.S. natgas slides on cooler weather and lower mid-June demand – (Reuters) - U.S. natural gas futures slipped 2% on Friday on forecasts for milder weather and lower air conditioning demand in mid-June. The decline came despite an increase in liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports and concerns a tropical storm threatening the Gulf of Mexico could cut output. Front-month gas futures for July delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange fell 4.0 cents to settle at $1.782 per million British thermal unit. For the week, the front-month was down about 2% after rising almost 7% last week. Tropical Storm Cristobal is expected to sweep across Louisiana's on- and offshore production areas over the weekend. Refinitiv said gas production in the U.S. Lower 48 states fell to an average of 88.6 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) so far in June from a one-year low of 89.3 bcfd in May and an all-time monthly high of 95.4 bcfd in November. With the coming of milder weather in mid-June, Refinitiv projected U.S. demand, including exports, would rise from 81.2 bcfd this week to 82.2 bcfd next week before sliding to 81.6 bcfd in two weeks. The amount of pipeline gas flowing to U.S. LNG export plants was on track to reach 5.0 bcfd on Friday after dropping to a 13-month low of 3.7 bcfd Monday. That compares with an eight-month low of 6.4 bcfd in May and a monthly record high of 8.7 bcfd in February. Analysts said U.S. LNG exports dropped in recent months after buyers canceled cargoes due to a collapse in European gas prices. Major European benchmarks have soared around 60% this week from record lows last week, boosting forwards at the Dutch Title Transfer Facility (TTF) for all months over the U.S. Henry Hub for the first time since late April.

Is Puerto Rico About to Give Another Terrible Energy Contract to an American Company? - On January 6 and 7, a 6.4-magnitude earthquake and aftershocks struckPuerto Rico, killing at least one person, injuring more, and causing mass blackouts across the island’s already hobbled electrical grid. Citing damage to the Costa Sur power plant, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, or Prepa, said in late January it would need to purchase some 500 megawatts of temporary generating capacity.Now it looks like an American natural gas company could win this contract, flooding the island with fossil fuels rather than investing in the renewable energy that experts say could better withstand both earthquakes and hurricanes. The company’s prior business in Puerto Rico has been conducted with minimal public oversight and a seemingly lax relationship to legal standards governing maritime fuel transport.On its quarterly earnings call in early May, New Fortress Energy announced that it had been shortlisted by Prepa, the island’s sole electric utility, to fill the gap left by damage to Costa Sur. For at least one year, NFE would supply 500 MW worth of generating capacity, reportedly at the cost of some $70 million a month. There’s also a possibility that Prepa could end up permanently purchasing this generating capacity. This would all be a pretty good deal for NFE, which is looking for a place to stash and burn extra fossil fuels that appear to be sourced largely fromthird-party providers, in addition to its liquefaction facility in Miami. As the company’s founder and CEO, Wes Edens, said on the call, “We’ve got a couple of cargoes extra that we have contracted for that we don’t need right now. And I think that what we will do is, either sell those on an outright basis or swap them into cargoes that we can then use in Puerto Rico.”  Should NFE win its bid, the Federal Emergency Management Agency might furnish the funds to do just that and could reimburse the cost of the temporary generation per the terms of the Stafford Act. It wouldn’t be a great deal for building a more resilient Puerto Rican energy grid. “They just want to flood Puerto Rico and the Caribbean with fracked gas,” said Ruth Santiago, an attorney with the Environmental Dialogue Committee supporting Queremos Sol (“We Want Sun”), a platform for clean energy development and climate justice backed by a number of environmental and community groups and unions across the island. The coalition has opposed the most recent contractor bidding process, as well as ongoing fossil fuel development on the island.

Equinor planning to shut Gulf production ahead of Cristobal — Equinor is removing workers from its Titan platform in the Gulf of Mexico and is tentatively planning to shut oil production on June 5 ahead of Tropical Depression Cristobal. Cristobal was weakened from a tropical storm to a depression as it hovered over southern Mexico, but the US National Hurricane projects it to regain tropical storm strength as soon as June 5 and make landfall in Louisiana on June 7. The Norwegian energy firm only operates Titan in the Gulf but holds ownership stakes in other facilities. Equinor produces about 120,000 boe/d from the Gulf. Total crude oil production from the US Gulf is nearly 2 million b/d, according to the US Energy Information Administration. "We are currently monitoring the path of the storm and have begun the process of removing non-essential personnel from the Titan facility," Equinor spokesman Erik Haaland said. "If the track of the storm continues along its projected path, we expect to shut in production and remove remaining personnel on Friday." The largest producers in the US Gulf already are taking action to remove non-essential workers or to reduce production volumes temporarily. BP was the first to say it had begun ramping down its output. "With forecasts indicating that Cristobal will begin moving north across the Gulf of Mexico later this week, BP has begun removing offshore personnel and ramping down production at BP's operated facilities Thunder Horse, Atlantis and Na Kika," BP spokesman Jason Ryan said June 3. "Non-essential personnel are being evacuated from BP's operated Mad Dog platform, but production remains unaffected at this time." Murphy Oil said June 4 it began evacuating non-essential personnel from the Gulf, but a spokesman declined to comment on specific locations and on any impacts to production volumes. Talos Energy said it is preparing to evacuate workers. Other producers are beginning to reduce personnel as well.

Plaquemines Parish Faces Service Cuts, Layoffs And A Big Question: Can It Still Rely On Oil?  -The people of Plaquemines Parish are experienced in surviving disasters, from floods to hurricanes, but now this community is facing one of the biggest threats yet: the collapsing oil market. The parish’s budget is tied to the price of oil because the parish is in the oil business. It owns about 100,000 acres of land in the Gulf of Mexico that it leases out to oil companies, which pay to drill there.Last year, the parish hired its usual consultants and the finance office worked up estimates for this year’s budget accounting for the price of oil. A barrel of oil then was $59. Now it’s just $30. Because of the coronavirus’ impact on oil prices, the parish faces a $7.5 million budget shortfall, forcing lawmakers to consider whether to raise taxes, lay off staff, cut services, or all of the above. At a recent parish council meeting, held on Zoom, finance manager Tommy Serpas proposed taking out bonds to cover the difference and keep the government operating.“When we run out of money in August or September, how are we going to pay the bills? I mean, everything will have to stop. We won’t be able to pay anything,” he said, sounding exasperated.   Councilmember Trudy Newberry agreed: “This pandemic is an eye-opener. We need to get off our butts and we need to do something!”

 19 energy companies have filed for bankruptcy in 2020: law firm –  Texas-based Gavilan Resources last month filed for Chapter 11 protection, saying it intends to sell its business and assets. It cited the coronavirus pandemic and the oil price rout along with an ongoing dispute with a joint venture partner in the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas, Kallanish Energy reports. It is among 19 new bankruptcies filed in 2020 through May 31 by U.S. energy companies, according to a list maintained by the Haynes and Boone law firm. The firm with headquarters in Dallas, Texas, said the 19 filings reflected a total debt of $13.1 billion. Other firms filing for federal protection include Whiting Petroleum, Echo Energy Partners, Ultra Petroleum, Skylar Exploration, Diamond Offshore, Freedom Oil and Gas, and Templar Energy. There were 51 bankruptcy filings from Jan. 1 through May 31 in 2016; 14 in 2017, 18 in 2018, and 18 in 2019, the law firm said in its Oil Patch Bankruptcy Monitor. Overall, there are about 225 bankruptcy cases across the country pending in federal bankruptcy courts, as of May 31, it said. There have been predictions that a wave of Chapter 11 filings is coming and that more than 100 U.S. energy companies may be forced to declare bankruptcy this year after the coronavirus pandemic and the oil price rout. According to Haynes and Boone, there have been 13 bankruptcies by oilfield service companies in 2020, through May 31. Those filings had a total debt of $11.6 billion, it said. That compares to 28 bankruptcies from Jan. 1 through May 31 in 2017, eight in 2018 and four in 2019, the law firm said in a separate listing of wellfield service companies. 

Stuck with too much diesel, U.S. refiners need to restrict runs - Kemp (Reuters) - U.S. refiners are struggling to manage their production and stocks as the economy’s uneven re-opening leaves demand for some refined fuels recovering much faster than others. Output cuts by OPEC+ and U.S. domestic producers have brought crude inventories under control, but stocks of refined products, especially diesel and other middle distillates, are rising unsustainably. U.S. consumption of gasoline is recovering much faster than diesel, as stay-at-home orders are lifted but much of the manufacturing, freight and distribution system is still operating at reduced rates. By focusing on meeting rising demand for gasoline, their most important product by volume and revenue-generation, refiners have left the market awash with diesel, which is now depressing profit margins. In the week to May 29, refiners boosted crude processing to an average of 13.3 million barrels per day (bpd), up from a recent low of 12.5 million bpd in mid-April (https://tmsnrt.rs/3dvwo8o). Gasoline consumption continued to recover steadily, with the volume supplied to the domestic market reaching an estimated 7.5 million bpd last week, up from a low of just 5.1 million bpd in early April. More than half of the gasoline consumption lost when the country went into lockdown has now returned as stay-at-home orders are lifted and private motoring increases. But distillate consumption is showing a much softer recovery, with supply last week at just 2.7 million bpd, no higher than during the most intense lockdown in early April. Gasoline stocks remain high but appear under control, rising by 3 million barrels last week and up just 11 million barrels since the country went into lockdown in late March. Stocks are around 24 million barrels (10%) higher than year-ago levels and 38 million barrels (17%) above the ten-year seasonal average, which is manageable. By contrast, distillate stocks surged by almost 10 million barrels last week, the ninth weekly increase in a row, with inventories up by 52 million barrels (43%) since the end of March. Distillate stocks are now 45 million barrels (35%) higher than at the same point last year and 43 million barrels (33%) higher than the ten-year seasonal average, and are still trending higher.

20,000 gallons of oil found illegally buried in Crosby, leaking into nearby waterway, officials say - The Harris County Precinct 1 Constable’s Office is investigating what they call a serious crime against the environment in Crosby, Texas.On May 28, environmental investigators were called to 1017 Church Street and discovered tens of thousands of gallons of oil buried illegally at the property.“It was buried here and it is everywhere," said Harris County Precinct 1 Constable Alan Rosen. “You can smell it, you can see it and it is oozing out of the ground as we dig.”Rosen says investigators were tipped off by a citizen who saw oil flowing into a nearby drainage ditch.During the investigation, Rosen says members of his Environmental Crimes division discovered ruptured barrels of oil buried deep in the ground in layers on the property. That oil was then discovered leaking into a nearby drainage ditch.“It stretched at least one-quarter mile west along Church Street and 655 feet to the south along the San Jacinto River Authority’s clean water basin," officials wrote in a press release.Crews are working to try and clean up the leaking oil and prevent it from spreading further into surrounding waterways.“Since last week remediation teams have removed over 20 thousand gallons of contaminated oil/water mix from those ditches.”Investigators said the size and volume of the contamination were among “the largest and most significant they have ever worked.”“This is a very serious environmental case,” Rosen said.The Harris County District Attorney’s Office helped Constable’s deputies obtain a search warrant Friday. Soil samples from the property will undergo chemical analysis and if investigators can prove the chemical on the property did in fact seep into the nearby ditches, they may seek criminal charges, officials wrote.As of Friday night, property owner Wesley Zarsky has not been arrested or charged.A temporary restraining order was obtained to prevent Zarsky from dumping any kind of hazardous waste or oil on the property and force him to begin cleanup.Officials estimate the total cost of cleanup has already surpassed $1 million.

Armed With Eminent Domain, Pipeline Projects Continue to Burden Landowners During the Pandemic -- Pipeline giant Kinder Morgan is cutting a 400-mile line across the middle of Texas, digging up vast swaths of private land for its planned Permian Highway Pipeline. The project is ceaseless, continuing through the coronavirus pandemic. Landowner Heath Frantzen said that dozens of workers have showed up to his ranch in Fredericksburg, even as public health officials urged people to stay at home.  “There weren’t wearing masks. They weren’t wearing gloves. They weren’t practicing social distancing,” he said. Frantzen believes the workers pose a danger to him and his 85-year-old father, whom he cares for. While the laborers are confined to the pipeline’s path, he worries they could spread the coronavirus by touching fence railings or gates that he might later handle. In Texas, where the governor exempted pipeline projects from his March stay-at-home order, companies like Kinder Morgan have few checks on their power of eminent domain, which allows them to build pipelines through privately owned farms and ranches that lie in their way. Eminent domain is broadly unpopular and, when used for pipelines, legally contentious. The coronavirus adds a new wrinkle to the debate over the practice as companies like Kinder Morgan continue to work through the pandemic, vexing landowners. “It is wild that people are being forced to accept others onto their land at this time, and if they have an issue with what’s happening, they have to put themselves at risk to address workers directly,” said Erin Zweiner, who represents Blanco County and Hays County in the Texas House of Representatives. “These are workers who hop all over the country, so they’re pretty high-risk spreaders.”

Drilling drought --Monday marked the first day of Hurricane Season and there's already a tropical depression in the Bay of Campeche, but there's a drought of sorts in progress.The Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas is on the verge of entering a drilling permit drought.Houston oil company EP Energy was the only company to file a drilling permit for a project in the region from May 20 to 26. EP Energy, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October, is seeking permission to drill a single horizontal well in La Salle County.Record low crude oil prices caused by the coronavirus pandemic continue to take their toll on drilling permits fillings. Only 23 companies filed for 45 drilling permits in Texas from May 20 to 26.

Permian gas pollution halves in upside of oil crash --Natural gas pollution at the world's most prolific oilfield will halve in the coming months, providing an environmental upside to the worst crash in the price of crude in decades.As tumbling demand forces producers to shut in wells across the US, analysts at Rystad Energy estimate the amount of gas flared — where drillers burn off the less valuable gas found alongside the oil — in the Permian Basin will fall from 600m cubic feet a day at the beginning of the year to below 300m cubic feet in the second half.The drop-off is equivalent to the amount of gas required to heat half of all homes in Texas.“In the second quarter we will definitely see a massive decline,” said Artem Abramov, head of shale research at Rystad. “More or less all fracking activities are on hold. Where there is still activity going on it is marginal.” Flaring occurs where gas is recovered as a byproduct of oil drilling. Often a lack of infrastructure makes finding a market for the gas uneconomical, so the easiest option is to set it alight.But the practice is highly polluting. Burning the gas emits carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And where equipment is not up to scratch, it can also lead to methane — which traps far more heat than CO2 — being vented directly into the air. The shale boom of the past decade has caused US oil production to soar, allowing Donald Trump to boast of “energy independence”. Output surpassed 13m barrels a day earlier this year, with the Permian accounting for more than a third of this.But with the growth in production has come a rise in flaring. The Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the practice in much of the Permian, issued almost 7,000 licences last year — more than 20 times the figure a decade earlier. Among the basin’s biggest flarers on an absolute basis are ExxonMobil-owned XTO Energy, Diamondback E&P and Encana Oil and Gas, according to the regulator.However, smaller, private equity-backed companies, eager to make quick returns, tend to be the worst offenders, analysts said. The Railroad Commission lists small-time producers including Continental Trend Resources, Siltstone Resources and Mammoth Exploration — which only produce a few hundred barrels of oil a day between them — as having the worst record for flaring relative to output.

State Reopenings Give Oil And Gas Producers A Temporary Boost -  podcast - Over the past few months, the pandemic has had a profound impact on almost every aspect of the U.S. and Texas economies. Added to that, huge drops in the oil market have devastated Texas’ most lucrative export industry.But Matt Smith, director of commodity research at ClipperData, told Texas Standard host David Brown that oil and gas producers might get some relief as states reopen and people return to work. He said oil prices are slowly starting to climb.“As oil has rallied in the last month or so … oil prices are dragging gasoline prices higher, even though demand hasn’t necessarily done that ‘V’ rebound by any means,” Smith said.Oil prices will likely continue to climb along with consumer demand, and also if OPEC continues to limit oil production. Earlier this year, OPEC member country Saudi Arabia flooded the market, which contributed to the steep drop in oil prices.But Smith warned that stability in the oil and gas market is still tenuous, especially as Latin America faces its worst phase so far of the COVID-19 pandemic. What you’ll hear in this segment:

• – Why Latin America matters to U.S. oil and gas producers
• – Whether summer travel could bolster the energy sector
• – How the rise in telecommuting could have long-term effects on oil and gas production

Shale Oil Production Bouncing Back With Prices-- Early signs of a shale rebound are becoming evident as crude prices emerge from their dramatic collapse earlier this year. EOG Resources Inc., America’s largest shale-focused producer, plans to “accelerate” output in the second half after shutting in about a quarter of its crude in May, exploration chief Ken Boedeker told an RBC Capital Markets conference Tuesday. Permian producer Parsley Energy Inc. is also turning wells back on just weeks after closing the taps, and producers in the Bakken formation in North Dakota are also easing the rate of shut-ins. After the breakup in the OPEC+ alliance in March and a plunge in demand because of virus-related lockdowns, which pushed the price of West Texas Intermediate to minus $40 a barrel on April 20, oil has been on a steady march upward during the past month. While the U.S. benchmark price is still about 40% below its high point in January, it has jumped to more than $35, above the operating costs of some shale wells that had been closed to save cash. Futures were up 2.3% at $36.24 at 11:50 a.m. in New York. EOG’s strategy “is to really accelerate our production into what we see as a price recovery in the second half of the year,” Boedeker said. The company, which began shutting wells in March and took 125,000 barrels a day off the market in May, recently reduced its hedge position, eliminating some protection against lower prices in a sign of confidence the price recovery will take hold. Parsley will restore the “vast majority” of the 26,000 barrels of daily output it turned off last month, it said in a slide deck for an investor presentation.” Meanwhile, shut-ins in the Bakken totaled 475,000 barrels a day as of May 28, about 7% less than a fortnight earlier. The number of frack crews working in shale fields is believed to have now bottomed at about 80 fleets, with “noticeably higher” completion work in the next three to six months,  Based on current budget tweaks announced by explorers, as many as 50 frack crews could still be added by the end of the year, with that number doubling if oil prices move closer to $40 a barrel,

 US Production May Be Significantly Less Than EIA Estimate: Bloomberg, Reader -- June 4, 2020 - After the EIA weekly petroleum report was released yesterday, a reader who follows this very, very closely, noted:  I haven't even looked at the rest of the report, but the first thing I noticed is that a million barrels of oil per day went missing for the third week in a row, ie, production + imports + storage withdrawal has been 1 mbpd greater than refinery use + exports + the SPR addition...  Best guess is that their production number has been wrong...  You can see my reply at this post.  Overnight, Bloomberg posted an article saying the very same thing: oil traders are asking why US inventory math doesn't add up. “Oil traders and analysts scrutinizing U.S. inventory data for signs of a market recovery are being confronted by an odd situation: the math just doesn’t add up.  Various government data sets including stockpiles, production, imports and exports are signaling that current official figures on at least some supplies are excessive.The excess is showing up in the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s so-called crude supply adjustment factor -- the difference between stockpile numbers and those implied by production, refinery demand, imports and exports.That has averaged negative 980,000 barrels daily over the past four weeks -- the largest in records going back to 2001, and equivalent to more than 27 million barrels.”That's nearly exactly what the reader reported: a one-million-bopd discrepancy. The Bloomberg article continues:The adjustment factor tends to swing back and forth ...Some investors lay the blame for the current discrepancy on U.S. oil production numbers. While daily output fell 700,000 barrels to 11.2 million in May, they believe oil’s plunge into negative territory in April should have led to a steeper decline. Just last month, consultancy IHS Markit said that U.S. oil producers are in the process of curtailing 1.75 million barrels a day of existing output by early June...

 Lower crude oil prices will mean less exploration and development -According to the financial reports analyzed by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), global expenditures related to oil and natural gas exploration and development (E&D) increased $42 billion (13%) for 102 publicly traded oil companies in 2019, totaling $361 billion. As a result of significant crude oil price declines in 2020, however, global proved reserves will likely be revised downward, and E&D expenditures will also likely decline. Several companies have already announced large budget reductions.EIA based its analysis and its recently published 2019 Financial Review primarily on the published financial reports of 102 publicly traded companies, so the conclusions do not necessarily represent the sector as a whole because the analysis does not include private companies that do not publish financial reports.According to their financial statements, these 102 companies produced 22.2 billion barrels of oil equivalent (BOE), a measure that reflects their combined production of crude oil and natural gas, and spent $361 billion in E&D. Dividing these companies’ E&D expenditures by their combined production volumes provides a ratio of $16/BOE in 2019, or about one-quarter of the average Brent crude oil price of $64/barrel (b).In its May Short-Term Energy Outlook, EIA forecasts Brent crude oil prices will average $34/b in 2020. If this crude oil price forecast is realized, E&D expenditures per BOE could fall to less than $10/BOE in 2020 if E&D expenditures remain at about one-quarter of the Brent crude oil price.Proved reserves are estimated quantities of oil and natural gas that analysis of geological and engineering data demonstrates with reasonable certainty are recoverable under existing economic and operating conditions. Because crude oil prices directly affect the profitability of E&D projects, changes in the prices companies use to develop their calculation of reserves can significantly affect their proved reserves levels and the volume of reserves they can claim as additions.

Some analysts still bet on Chesapeake going bankrupt this year - Oklahoma City’s Chesapeake Energy continues to be on a list of analysts who predict will be among those firms filing for bankruptcy this year, a move hastened perhaps by the COVID-19 pandemic and the oil crisis.Analyst Travis Hoium, writing for Motley Fool predicted Chesapeake is one of three firms he believes will head to bankruptcy court yet this year.The oil industry has been flipped on its head over the last few months as economic shutdowns around the world have caused demand to plummet by around 20%. For a short time, oil futures prices even went negative in the U.S. because there was more supply than demand.“Producers and suppliers in the oil market are trying to cut costs and adjust finances as quickly as possible, but not everyone will survive. And Occidental Petroleum (NYSE:OXY), Chesapeake Energy (NYSE:CHK), and Transocean (NYSE:RIG) are three that I think might be considering bankruptcy by the end of the year,” wrote Hoium.Chesapeake Energy has always been a company willing to take risks to grow its business, but that’s likely to backfire. The company has $8.9 billion of debt and even before COVID-19 and the resulting drop in oil prices wasn’t able to squeeze out much of a profit.Cash on hand was a meager $82 million as of March 31, 2020, so there isn’t a big financial backstop on the balance sheet either. To shore up the balance sheet and pay off $253 million of debt coming due this year, management had planned to sell $300 million to $500 million of non-core assets, which will likely be difficult in the current energy environment. Oil prices have recovered slightly over the past month but for Chesapeake Energy, the drop in natural gas prices could be offset any oil gains. The company is still a big producer of natural gas and that market has collapsed as well. Chesapeake Energy may have enough hedges and assets to survive for a few more months, but if the weak energy market continues much longer it won’t survive the year.

Enbridge likely to miss prime construction season for new Minnesota pipeline - Enbridge had hoped this month to be building its controversial and much-delayed oil pipeline across northern Minnesota. Instead, the company may miss prime construction season for the second year in a row.Minnesota pollution-control regulators are expected to announce this week whether to make a deeper inquiry into Enbridge’s pipeline construction permits.If they do — and that seems increasingly likely — Enbridge probably won’t be able to start construction until late fall at best.The $2.6 billion proposed pipeline, which is a replacement for its deteriorating Line 3, has been winding through the state’s regulatory process for five years. The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) reapproved the new Line 3 in early February.The PUC is the primary regulator of oil pipelines in Minnesota, including determining the risk of oil-spill hazards once they are in operation. But Enbridge must also get more technical approvals from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) and other agencies.The MPCA in February released “draft permits” for the new Line 3 construction. In April, environmental groups and Ojibwe bands that oppose the new line petitioned the MPCA to conduct a “contested case” on the permits.A contested case usually involves hearings and a review by an administrative law judge. Darin Broton, an MPCA spokesman, said Tuesday that the agency is still reviewing its decision, though he declined to disclose it.“We are looking at the legal guidance set by the [Minnesota] Court of Appeals in the PolyMet case,” he said. “The Court of Appeals made it clear that agencies don’t have unfettered discretion to reject a contested case if issues of fact are unresolved.”

State officials agree to give Line 3 permits additional scrutiny  State regulators agreed Wednesday to hold an additional hearing on a key permit for the proposed Line 3 replacement project, a process that is expected to delay construction of the controversial oil pipeline by several months. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency announced that a contested case hearing will be held later this summer on a draft water quality permit for the project, in which a state administrative law judge will hear additional evidence on the proposed pipeline’s impacts on wetlands and stream crossings. The decision to hold the additional hearing pushes back the MPCA’s deadline to make a decision on the permit — known as a 401 water quality certification — until Nov. 14, three months past the original timeline. “The contested case hearing will help ensure the certification is protective of one of Minnesota’s most important resources,” said MPCA Commissioner Laura Bishop in a statement. State utility regulators have already approved Enbridge’s controversial project. The Canadian company wants to replace an aging, deteriorating pipeline that delivers crude from the Alberta oil sands across northern Minnesota. But the project has been stalled by legal and regulatory delays, which have raised the estimated project cost to $2.9 billion. The company still needs additional construction permits from the MPCA, the state Department of Natural Resources, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In a statement, Enbridge said it still anticipated starting construction on the project before the end of the year, a process that will take six to nine months to complete. “While the contested case has caused a delay to the permitting process, we believe this additional step will strengthen the MPCA’s decision record,” said Vern Yu, Enbridge’s president of liquids pipelines. The Red Lake Nation and White Earth Band of Ojibwe, along with several individuals and environmental groups — including Friends of the Headwaters, the Sierra Club and Honor the Earth — had asked for the contested case hearing on a number of grounds, including the pipeline’s contribution to climate change and the risk of oil spills. But the hearing the MPCA granted will focus on relatively narrow issues, including the amount of wetlands that will be impacted by the project, and the potential impacts where the proposed pipeline would cross streams and rivers. The Sierra Club’s North Star Chapter Director Margaret Levin welcomed the additional scrutiny on Line 3. “This tar sands pipeline would be a disaster for our waterways and communities, she said.

US states have spent the past 5 years trying to criminalize protest  --The Minnesota legislature has spent the last five years preparing for the kind of protests that have rocked the city over the past week in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd — by attempting to criminalize them.From 2016 through 2019, state lawmakers introduced ten bills that either made obstructing traffic on highways a misdemeanor or increased penalties for protesting near oil and gas facilities. Most of these legislative proposals were introduced in response to ongoing protests against a controversial oil pipeline as well as those following the police killing of Philando Castile in a St. Paul suburb in 2016. The bills would have allowed protesters to be jailed for up to a year, fined offenders up to $3,000 each, and allowed cities to sue protesters for the cost of police response. Many of the bills were introduced in 2017 after racial justice activists in the state made headlines shutting down a major highway. A coupleothers were in response to protests in 2016 and 2019 against the energy company Enbridge’s planned replacement of a pipeline running from Alberta to Wisconsin.None of the bills have yet become law, but three failed only because they were vetoed by the governor. Two bills introduced earlier this year are still on the table. One would make trespassing on property with oil and gas facilities punishable by up to three years in prison and a $5,000 fine. The other would make those who assist such activity civilly liable for damages.Over the past half-decade, a wave of bills that criminalize civil disobedience has swept state legislatures across the country — particularly those controlled by Republican lawmakers. According to a new report by PEN America, a nonprofit advocating for First Amendment rights, 116 such bills were proposed in state legislatures between 2015 and 2020. Of those, 23 bills in 15 states became law. While there is no comprehensive count of the number of people arrested and prosecuted under these new laws, activists protesting oil and gas activity have been charged with felonies in Houston and Louisiana. This year alone, four states — Kentucky, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Utah — passed laws that increased penalties and charges for either interfering with oil and gas activity or disturbing meetings of government officials. (Interfering with oil and gas activity may include obstructing the construction or operation of pipelines and other “critical infrastructure.”) As of May, 12 other bills are pending in various state legislatures — all of them introduced before the past week’s unrest. If passed, these bills would increase disciplinary sanctions for campus protesters, classify trespassing on property with oil and gas infrastructure a felony, and expand the definition of rioting, among other things. More bills increasing penalties for protesters may be on their way. In response to the recent protests against George Floyd’s killing, a Tennessee lawmaker has proposed increasing penalties for rioting and South Dakota Governor Kristi Noemhas said that her administration is looking into legislative proposals to respond to the recent unrest.

 Old U.S. Oil Refinery to Pursue New Green Life After Crude Crash - HollyFrontier Corp.’s Cheyenne refinery will stop using crude oil and be repurposed to pump out renewable diesel, which is typically made from soybean oil, recycled cooking oil and animal fats. That’s after processing margins plummeted on thecollapse in fuel demand due to Covid-19-related lockdowns. Cheaper renewable energy projects have already led to decreasing coal output across the U.S., and now -- in the wake of oil’s historic crash -- some fuel producers are grappling with diminished returns from turning crude into fuel.  The company expects to spend $125 million to $175 million to re-purpose Cheyenne to produce about 90 million gallons per year of renewable diesel by the first quarter of 2022. The plant will stop consuming crude oil at the end of July this year, and 200 workers will be laid off, according to HollyFrontier.The conversion plan comes as dozens of small refineries nationwide brace for a big spike in costs to comply with the Renewable Fuel Standard, which mandates they blend biofuel into gasoline or buy tradable credits to comply. For years, many small refineries have won exemptions from the mandate, but under a federal appeals court ruling in January, only refineries that have continually been granted waivers can count on getting them in the future.HollyFrontier is effectively shedding the Cheyenne refinery’s biofuel-blending obligation under the RFS and transforming it into a plant that stands to benefit from the program.Using the converted plant, HollyFrontier will be able to produce not just renewable diesel encouraged by the RFS but also compliance credits that can be sold separately. However the transition comes with other costs, as fewer workers will be necessary to run the converted plant. The RFS is effectively forcing theclosure of a plant that generated tax revenue and jobs for Wyoming and mandating its replacement be a smaller plant that employs far fewer people to sell fuel to California, said a refining industry official who asked not to be named discussing industry strategy.

  How Amazon Is Bringing the Keystone XL Pipeline Online – Steve Horn -Amazon has cemented a partnership with the company that owns the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, recently announcing that TC Energy is “going all-in” on Amazon Web Services. The Canadian pipeline corporation, formerly known as TransCanada, has “migrated almost 90 percent of its corporate and commercial applications” to Amazon Web Services, according to a May 13th statement from Amazon. TC Energy plans to migrate all of its data to Amazon’s cloud, and AWS has already helped the pipeline company develop a suite of workflow automation, data analytics, and machine learning programs.“TC Energy is going all-in on the world’s leading cloud, moving its entire infrastructure to AWS,” the AWS release says. “TC Energy is leveraging the breadth and depth of AWS services, including machine learning, analytics, database, serverless, storage, and compute to deliver energy and generate power more efficiently for millions of homes in North America.”The announcement comes just weeks after TC Energy’s long-contested Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry some of the dirtiest, most carbon-intensive oil on the planet from the Alberta tar sands basin to Nebraska, faced a major legal setback when its permit was vacated by a federal judge. It also comes amid a time of tumult for Amazon, which has, in recent weeks, faced criticism for its treatment of frontline workers during the coronavirus pandemic, and for firing employees calling for more protections. Last year, Amazon tech workers launched a movement calling on CEO Jeff Bezos to adopt a stricter company-wide climate policy and to cancel its contracts with oil and gas companies. Bezos responded by issuing Amazon’s Climate Pledge, which promised to see the company go carbon neutral by 2040. He also stated that the company would continue to do business with the oil and gas industry. This puts Amazon at odds with Google, which recently announced it would not develop custom A.I. tools that enhanced the extraction rate of fossil fuels.“So Amazon is helping build the Keystone pipeline — as plain an example of climatic destruction and human rights abuse as exists on the planet,” said author, activist, and 350.org founder Bill McKibben, who led the opposition to Keystone XL for much of the 2010s, to OneZero in an email. “And for what? So the richest man on earth can be a little richer? The levels of ugliness here just seem endless.”

Trump rule limits states from blocking pipeline projects  - The Trump administration gutted a key portion of the Clean Water Act on Monday, limiting states’ ability to block controversial pipeline projects that cross their waterways. The final rule from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) targets Section 401 of the law, which lets states halt projects that risk hurting their water quality. It’s been a target of President Trump, who last April ordered the agency to accelerate and promote the construction of pipelines and other important infrastructure. “Today, we are following through on President Trump’s Executive Order to curb abuses of the Clean Water Act that have held our nation’s energy infrastructure projects hostage, and to put in place clear guidelines that finally give these projects a path forward,” EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in a statement. The Clean Water Act essentially gives states veto power over large projects that cut through their rivers and streams, giving them a year to weigh permits and determine how projects would impact their water quality. Environmentalists see it as a way for states to assert their power to block risky projects, but the fossil fuel industry and many Republicans say the section has been abused to stall infrastructure. “This rule is an egregious assault on states’ longstanding authority to safeguard the quality of their own waters. Despite the Trump administration’s professed respect for ‘cooperative federalism,’ it is clearly willing to steamroll states’ rights and greenlight major construction projects with no regard for how they might damage state waters,” Lisa Feldt with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation said in a statement. Two states run by Democrats have recently used the law to sideline major projects: New York denied a certification for the Constitution Pipeline, a 124-mile natural gas pipeline that would have run from Pennsylvania to New York, crossing rivers more than 200 times. Washington state also denied certification for the Millennium Coal Terminal, a shipping port for large stocks of coal.The new policy from the Trump administration would accelerate timelines under the law, limiting what it sees as state power to keep a project in harmful limbo. The need for a 401 certification from the state will be waived if states do not respond within a year. On a call with reporters, Wheeler accused some states of abusing the law, dragging out the certification for years or denying projects for reasons not sufficiently tied to water quality, “wrapping projects in a bureaucratic Groundhog Day in the hopes that investors become frustrated and end development.” States will still be able to block certain projects, but Wheeler warned states risk having their veto power overturned if they stray beyond water quality issues when denying a certification. Climate change or concerns over water scarcity would not be enough for a state to deny certification to a project, he said.

 U.S. States Just Lost Pipeline Veto Rights And That’s A Big Deal For Oil --The oil and gas industry in the United States scored a big win this week after the EPA narrowed the focus of a rule that up until now, allowed states to refuse to grant pipeline permits—or stall them indefinitely. But under the Trump Administration’s guidance, the EPA is saying no more shenanigans.  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued a final rule narrowing the scope of review for proposed oil and gas pipelines that states should consider under a section of the Clean Water Act for energy infrastructure.Up until now, states have been using Section 401 of the Clean Water Act to deny permits to oil and gas pipeline projects.But this final rule makes it clear: under the Clean Water Act Section 401, states can look at the water issues only—not larger issues such as climate change–when asked to review an energy infrastructure project.States will also be required to complete the review within one year of receiving a certification request—a rule that will surely cramp the styles of the anti-fossil fuel states.The EPA’s actions this week isn’t so much a change in policy or intent of policy, but a clarification of the spirit of the existing Clean Water Act, which the EPA contends was never designed to blanketly oppose oil pipelines on broad climate change grounds, after the FERC had given a project a green light. This keeps the assessment of the broader environmental impact in the hands of the FERC, not each state.“When states look at issues other than the impact on water quality, they go beyond the scope of the Clean Water Act,” EPA said in a statement.“EPA is returning the Clean Water Act certification process under Section 401 to its original purpose, which is to review potential impacts that discharges from federally permitted projects may have on water resources, not to indefinitely delay or block critically important infrastructure,” EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said.

Oil and babies don't mix: Wells linked to low birthweight -- Pregnant women in rural California who lived near active oil and gas wells were 40% more likely to give birth to low birthweight babies, according to new research published today.The study led by University of California scientists is the first to investigate what California’s constellation of oil and gas development means for babies born nearby. The finding couldgalvanize efforts in the state Legislature to require buffer zones around oil and gas activities.The researchers found that 6% of women living near rural oil and gas wells that churned out more than 100 barrels a day had low birthweight newborns, compared to 5% of women with no oil and gas production nearby. When the researchers factored in variables like the mother’s age and socioeconomic status, that translates to a 40 percent increased likelihood. Low birthweight babies, who weigh less than 5.5 pounds at birth, may be healthy but often have a higher rate of illnesses, such as respiratory diseases and difficulty fighting infections, as well as developmental delays. The researchers reviewed nearly 3 million birth certificates from 2006 to 2015 in the Sacramento Valley, San Joaquin Valley, South Central Coast and Los Angeles Basin.While the link between oil and gas production and low birthweight babies was found in rural areas, it didn’t hold up in urban areas, such as large parts of the Los Angeles region. But a well churning out oil in a city backyard is not necessarily benign.  Morello-Frosch said it’s possible the link to low birthweight babies is there, but it’s just hard to spot because oil and gas might produce a smaller share of the overall pollution in urban areas. In addition, people in rural regions are exposed to pollutants — in groundwater, for instance — that might make them more vulnerable to pollution from oil and gas production.  The findings, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, support a handful of studies in other states, including Colorado and Pennsylvania. Those earlier studies reported increased odds of health effects among babies born near oil and gas development, including premature births, heart defects, and low birthweight.

How Should California Wind Down Its Fossil Fuel Industry?  - California’s energy past is on a collision course with its future. Think of major oil-producing U.S. states, and Texas, Alaska or North Dakota probably come to mind. Although its position relative to other states has been falling for 20 years, California remains the seventh-largest oil-producing state, with 162 million barrels of crude coming up in 2018, translating to tax revenue and jobs. At the same time, California leads the nation in solar rooftops and electric vehicles on the road by a wide margin and ranking fifth in installed wind capacity. Clean energy is the state’s future. By law, California must have 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2045, and an executive order signed by former Governor Jerry Brown calls for economywide carbon-neutrality by the same year. So how can the state reconcile its divergent energy path? How should clean-energy-minded lawmakers wind down California’s oil and gas sector in a way that aligns with the state’s long-term climate targets while providing a just transition for the industry’s workforce? Any efforts to reduce fossil fuel supply must run parallel to aggressive demand-reduction measures such as California’s push to have 5 million zero-emission vehicles on the road by 2030, said Ethan Elkind, director of Berkeley Law's climate program. After all, if oil demand in California remains strong, crude from outside the state will simply fill the void. “If we don’t stop using it, then that supply is going to get here, even if it’s not produced in-state,” Elkind said in an interview. Lawmakers have a number of options for policies that would draw down and eventually phase out fossil fuel production in California, according to a new report from the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment at the UC Berkeley School of Law, co-authored by Elkind and Ted Lamm. They could impose a higher price on California's oil production through a "severance" tax or carbon-based fee, with the revenue directed to measures that wean the state from fossil fuels. (California, alone among major oil-producing states, does not have an oil severance tax.) Lawmakers could establish a minimum drilling setback from schools, playgrounds, homes and other sensitive sites. They could push the state's oil and gas regulator, the California Geologic Energy Management Division, to prioritize environmental and climate concerns. A major factor holding lawmakers back is, of course, politics. Given the state’s clean-energy ambitions, it might surprise non-Californians that the oil and gas industry is one of the Golden State’s most powerful special interest groups.

Canada is the largest source of U.S. energy imports - Canada is the largest source of U.S. energy imports and the second-largest destination for U.S. energy exports behind only Mexico. Energy is an important component of trade between Canada and the United States. In 2019, based on the latest annual Standard International Trade Classification (SITC) data from the U.S. Census Bureau, energy accounted for US $85 billion, or 27%, of the value of all U.S. imports from Canada. Crude oil and petroleum products accounted for 91% of the value of U.S. energy imports from Canada and 89% of the value of U.S. energy exports to Canada.The United States exported US $23 billion worth of crude oil, petroleum products, natural gas, and electricity to Canada in 2019, about 8% of the value of all U.S. exports to Canada and the second-highest level recorded after peaking in 2014.U.S. crude oil imports from Canada accounted for 56% of all crude oil imports to the United States in 2019, averaging 3.8 million barrels per day (b/d)—up from 3.7 million b/d in 2018. In 2019, the United States exported 459,000 b/d of crude oil to Canada, which remained the largest destination for U.S. crude oil exports. U.S. crude oil exports to Canada are typically light, sweet grades that are shipped to the eastern part of the country. U.S. crude oil imports from Canada tend to be heavy and are sourced from oil sands in Alberta (Western Canada), and most of these exports flow to U.S. Midwest refineries.Crude oil trade by rail has become more attractive because pipeline capacity in Canada has at times been insufficient to accommodate Canada’s growing crude oil production. Consequently, U.S. imports of Canada’s crude oil by rail have more than tripled from an average of 91,000 b/d in 2016 to an average of 300,000 b/d in 2019. More than half of the crude oil volume imported by rail (171,000 b/d) went to the U.S. Gulf Coast region. Petroleum product trade between the United States and Canada is relatively balanced in both volume and value. Canada is the largest source of U.S. petroleum and refined products imports. In 2019, the United States imported a record 610,000 b/d of petroleum products from Canada, or 26% of all U.S. petroleum product imports last year. These imports were valued at more than US $14 billion.  Natural gas trade between the United States and Canada is dominated by pipeline shipments, which accounted for 98% of all U.S. natural gas imports in 2019. Historically, the United States has imported more natural gas than it has exported by pipeline to Canada. Natural gas imports from Canada in 2019 totaled 7.4 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) and were valued at US $6 billion in 2019. Most of the natural gas the United States imported from Canada originated in Western Canada and was shipped to U.S. markets in the West and Midwest regions. U.S. natural gas exports to Canada mainly go into the eastern provinces of Canada.

Push Comes To Shove - Will Crude Shippers Soon Need To Commit To Enbridge's Mainline System? - Up in Canada, there is finally a regulatory timeline for reviewing Enbridge’s long-standing proposal to revamp how it allocates space — and charges for service — on the company’s 2.9-MMb/d Mainline. But the plan to convert the largest crude oil pipeline system out of Western Canada from one whose space is 100% uncommitted and allocated every month to one with 90% of its capacity locked in via long-term contracts remains controversial, especially among producers. Plus, the world has changed in the past few months. Oil sands and other production in Alberta and its provincial neighbors is off sharply in response to pandemic-related demand destruction and low oil prices, and the always-full Mainline has been running at well under 90% of its capacity lately. Further, the Trans Mountain Expansion and Keystone XL projects — competitors to the Mainline in a way — have progressed this year, making shippers wonder whether to lock in capacity on the Mainline if TMX and KXL’s completion may be imminent. Today, we begin a short series on the prospective shift to a contract-carriage approach on the primary conduit for heavy and light crudes from Western Canada to U.S. crude hubs and refineries.

Unknown quantity of oil spilled from refinery into city sewers - An unknown amount of oil from the Co-op Refinery Complex (CRC) spilled into Regina’s sewers sometime last week. According to Brad DeLorey, spokesperson for the CRC, the spill was detected May 22 “late in the morning.” The amount of oil spilled was not known by DeLorey or the City of Regina as of Friday evening. “I don’t know the quantity; the situation has been resolved and they are looking at a long-term solution with the City of Regina,” said DeLorey. The preliminary investigation attributes the spill to high winds. As DeLorey explained, high wind gusts caused waves to form on outdoor ponds located at the CRC where oil is stored. The waves then kicked up sediment sitting on the bottom of the ponds, dislodging the sludge, which then caused a discharge after entering a pump. “Some of that got into the discharge to the city wastewater system,” said DeLorey, quoting an engineer that was familiar with the spill. Normally wastewater from those ponds would discharged to the city for treatment. DeLorey said that since there was no threat posed by the spill, the city and the refinery did not alert the public. An investigation into the cause of the spill and the amount of oil that was spilled is currently underway. When asked if wind has ever caused a similar spill, DeLorey said that he was not aware, saying that it could have been because of the “constant 70 km/h wind.” Wind speeds on May 22 recorded by Environment Canada registered a top speed of 48 km/h. In the days prior to the spill being detected, wind speeds reached 64 km/h on May 20 and 67 km/h on May 21. In an emailed response, a spokesperson for the city said it had been made aware of the spill and quickly contained it. “As a precaution, downstream users are being notified, but no action is required at this time,” said the spokesperson. According to the spokesperson, the city is still conducting tests on the impact of the spill, anticipating test results early this coming week. “The Water Security Agency and the Ministry of Environment indicated that there was low risk to the environment,” said a city spokesperson. The Ministry of Environment will not be investigating the spill at this time according to Wayne Wark, executive director of communications with the ministry. That’s due to an effluent agreement between the city and the refinery. “The discharge was confined to a contained system,” Wark said in an email. He added that the discharge did not affect the natural environment.  “It was the City that first identified the incident/impact to its Wastewater Treatment Facility,” said Wark.

Oil spill at Regina Co-op refinery believed to be low risk - An investigation into the May 22 oil spill at the Co-op refinery in Regina is being deemed low risk downstream according to the Water Security Agency (WSA). A statement from Federated Co-op Limited (FCL) on May 30 said an unknown amount of oil spilled into city sewers, eventually showing irregularities when being analyzed by wastewater treatment plant operators. FCL further stated there was no threat to the natural environment. Unifor 594, the union that represents locked out refinery employees during the nearly six-month labour dispute with FCL, is concerned that the City of Regina did not send out a notification about the incident until it was first reported by the media a week later. Patrick Boyle, a spokesperson with the WSA, said it’s being called a spill, but it’s a little different compared to usual oil spills into the environment. When the issue was discovered at the wastewater treatment plant, workers were able to divert what was happening into one of their lagoons. “There’s a treatment system that happens and it is effectively contained within that,” explained Boyle. “What we have asked the city to do is to increase monitoring testing downstream to make sure there are no impacts.” Boyle added that they’ve notified downstream landowners about the issue.“There’s not that many users downstream, but it’s important to get that notification there so they have the same information everyone else has.”Early stages of the investigation show strong winds resulted in a discharge of sludge into the sewage system. The WSA will be working to provide a full assessment of what happened at the refinery that day. Boyle said there are still questions left unanswered at this time.

 Fuel oil contaminates Langley salmon-bearing stream - An apparent fuel oil spill that contaminated Fraser Creek near the Langley airport on Saturday afternoon, May 30, may be connected to an upstream leak in Murrayville near Langley Memorial Hospital the day before, said Langley Fire Department deputy chief Bruce Ferguson.“We had a leak [there near LMH] on Friday,” Ferguson told the Langley Advance Times.Ferguson said the exact source of the contamination could not be determined when fire crews and cleanup specialists were called to the area.  A company under contract with the Township is handling the cleanup, Ferguson said.Stanley Brown, who lives in the area, reported the contamination Saturday afternoon.Brown said he noticed “a very strong” odor while he was out for a walk around 2 p.m. Saturday in the Derek Doubleday Arboretum at the southwest corner of Langley Airport, near the new hangers.“I smelt it and then I looked and I saw the oil,” Brown related.“The creek was 20 to 25 per cent covered and you could see it roiling up in the current.”When he crossed the Nicomekl River at Fraser Hwy., Brown again encountered a strong smell of fuel and saw “lots of oil visible in the river.”“I could smell it from 50 feet  away,” Brown recalled.He said the amount of oil appeared to be spreading Sunday, despite the deployment of containment booms.A Township of Langley Watercourse Classification map ranks Fraser Creek and the Nicomekl River as Class “A” salmon bearing streams, meaning they are inhabited year round or have the potential for a “year round fish presence upon reasonable means of access enhancements.” There have been warnings about the impact of urbanization, pollution, and spills on the salmon population, with the Langley-based Nicomekl Enhancement Society warning salmon populations in the Pacific Coast are under threat, with their numbers dwindling.

Putin orders state of emergency after huge fuel spill inside Arctic Circle - President lambasts power plant owner ‘for not reporting earlier’ incident bigger than Kerch spill. About 20,000 tonnes of diesel fuel has spilled into the Ambarnaya River outside Norilsk.  Vladimir Putin has ordered a state of emergency after 20,000 tonnes of diesel fuel spilled into a river inside the Arctic Circle. The spill occurred when a fuel reservoir at a power plant near the city of Norilsk collapsed on Friday. The plant is operated by a division of Nornickel, whose factories in the area have made the city one of the most heavily polluted places on Earth. During a video conference on Wednesday that was broadcasted on television, Putin lambasted the head of the Nornickel subsidiary that owns the power plant, NTEK, after officials said the company failed to report the incident. “Why did government agencies only find out about this two days after the fact? Are we going to learn about emergency situations from social media? Are you quite healthy over there?” the Russian president told Sergei Lipin, the head of NTEK.  Nornickel said NTEK had reported what happened in a “timely and proper” way. The governor of the Krasnoyarsk region, where Norilsk is located, told Putin he only learned of the real situation on Sunday after “alarming information appeared in social media”. Putin said he agreed that a national state of emergency was needed in order to call in more resources for the cleanup effort. Russia’s investigative committee, which deals with major crimes, announced it had launched three criminal investigations into the accident and detained a power plant employee. Alexei Knizhnikov of the World Wildlife Fund said the environmental group was the one who alerted cleanup specialists after confirming the accident through its sources. “These are huge volumes,” he said. “It was difficult for them to cover it up.” The volume of the spill is vastly larger than the 2007 Kerch spill, which involved 5,000 tonnes of oil, Knizhnikov said. At the time the spill in the Black Sea strait was the largest of its kind for Russia and required intervention of the military and hundreds of volunteers. Knizhnikov said diesel fuel is lighter than oil, so it was likely to evaporate rather than sink but was also “more toxic to clean up”. The Ambarnaya River that bore the brunt of the spill will be difficult to clean up because it is too shallow to use barges and the remote location has no roads, officials told Putin. Russia’s environment minister, Dmitry Kobylkin, said he thought burning the fuel, which some are suggesting, was too risky. “It’s a very difficult situation. I can’t imagine burning so much fuel in an Arctic territory … such a huge bonfire over such an area will be a big problem.”

Vladimir Putin declares state of emergency in Arctic region over Norilsk fuel spill --  Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared a state of emergency in a region of Siberia after an estimated 21,000 tonnes of diesel fuel spilled from a power plant storage facility, in an accident experts say will take "decades" to clear. The spill took place last week at a power plant in an outlying section of the city of Norilsk, 2,900 kilometres north-east of Moscow. A fuel tank at a power station in the remote, industrial region lost pressure on May 29 and leaked fuel and lubricants into the Ambarnaya River, according to the Investigative Committee, Russia's top criminal investigation body. The Ambarnaya feeds a lake from which springs another river that leads to the environmentally delicate Arctic Ocean. At a televised government meeting to discuss the spill, Mr Putin said he was shocked to find out local authorities had only learned of the incident from social media two days after it happened and scolded the region's governor Alexander Uss on air. "Are we to learn about emergency situations from social networks? Are you alright healthwise over there?" Mr Putin said, waving his hand across his eyes. The state environment watchdog said 15,000 tonnes of oil products had seeped into the river system with another 6,000 into the subsoil. The state fisheries agency says the river will need decades to recover. An expanse of crimson water could be seen stretching from shore to shore down a river and one of its offshoots in aerial footage published by the RIA news agency this week. The environmental impact from the spill could last for "decades", Russia's Greenpeace climate project manager Vasily Yablokov has said. Diesel fuel removed from the river has been placed in temporary reservoirs.(Supplied: Severny Gorod)"We're currently talking about cleaning up the initial pollution from the surface of the water, pumping out the fuel, pumping out the polluted water as far as possible, depending on the reservoirs, cleaning up the polluted ground," he said. "However, there will be enough pollution to poison [the environment] for years to come and it will require recultivation, cleaning, which will take years." Alexei Knizhnikov of the World Wildlife Fund's Russia operation said the damage to fish and other resources could exceed 1 billion rubles ($20.8 million). Over 100 specialists have been dispatched to the area by the emergency services, as well as equipment and experts from Russian state oil corporations.

20,000 Ton Oil Spill in Russian Arctic Has 'Catastrophic Consequences' for Wildlife  -- Russian President Vladimir Putin declared an emergency after 20,000 tons of diesel fuel spilled into a river in the Arctic Circle.The accident is the second largest oil spill in terms of volume in modern Russian history, the Word Wildlife Fund (WWF) told AFP, as BBC News reported. The oil spread around 7.5 miles from the fuel site, turning the Ambarnaya river bright red, and contaminated a total of 135 square miles."The incident led to catastrophic consequences and we will be seeing the repercussions for years to come," Sergey Verkhovets, coordinator of Arctic projects for WWF Russia, said in a statement reported by CNN. "We are talking about dead fish, polluted plumage of birds, and poisoned animals."Russia's environmental ministry Rosprirodnadzor is already reporting contaminant levels in the water that are tens of thousands of times higher than the safe limit. "[T]here has never been such an accident in the Arctic zone, " former deputy head of Rosprirodnadzor Oleg Mitvol told BBC News. The spill occurred last Friday when a fuel tank at a power plant near the city of Norilsk in Siberia collapsed. The plant is owned by a subsidiary of Norilsk Nickel, the world's No. 1 producer of nickel and palladium. Its factories are also the reason why Norilsk is one of the most polluted places on Earth, The Guardian reported. The plant initially attempted to clean the spill on their own and did not tell authorities about the incident for two days, Ministry of Emergency Situations head Evgeny Zinichev said, according to CNN. "These are huge volumes," he said. "It was difficult for them to cover it up."The governor of the Krasnoyarsk region, where the spill took place, told Putin he only learned of it Sunday from social media posts. The Russian government has opened three criminal investigations into the incident and detained one plant employee.

Global Gas Market Still Extraordinarily Oversupplied -- The specter of negative prices is hanging over energy markets more than a month after oil’s unforgettable crash below zero. While crude has staged a rapid recovery after a deal by the biggest producers to curb a surplus, the $600 billion global gas market remains extraordinarily oversupplied. Traders and analysts say the worst may be yet to come as demand falls and storage nears capacity, creating the ideal conditions for negative prices in some parts of the world. It shows just how far the global energy industry is from recovering from a pandemic-fueled slide in demand and signals more pain for producers from the shale fields of Texas to Australia’s Curtis Island. Unlike the oil market, there’s been no sign of a coordinated response to address the glut, meaning the fallout could be deeper and longer. “We are in uncharted territory with low demand levels and high storage stocks,” said Guy Smith, head of gas trading at Swedish utility Vattenfall AB. “In the shorter term there is real risk that conditions may be set to allow negative prices in Europe, but only in the very short term.” The fuel, used to generate power and heat and as a feedstock for chemicals and fertilizers, was already slated to have a terrible year after a mild winter exacerbated a glut. But things turned from bad to worse as the pandemic hammered demand, forcing major buyers to reject deliveries. Meanwhile, top sellers haven’t yet throttled back enough output as stockpiles near capacity. Like oil’s brief plunge in April below minus-$40 a barrel, the key factor is the lack of storage to absorb excess supply. Traders and analysts point to Europe as the first market likely to hit that crisis point, which could have ripple effects for buyers and sellers from the U.S. to Asia. While the oil market has a broad, if fragile, alliance of producers to manage production and rescue prices, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, the gas market lacks a coordinated approach, allowing the current oversupply to drift unchecked.

Oil Tankers Off Chinese Coast Signal Rapid Rebound - Queues of tankers have formed off China’s busiest oil ports as the vessels wait to offload crude for refineries that are quickly ramping up production amid a rapid rebound in fuel demand. Two dozen or more crude-laden tankers are waiting to discharge at terminals on China’s east coast that supply state-owned and independent refiners in the region, according shipbrokers and vessel-tracking data. Asia’s largest economy is leading a recovery in oil consumption, with demand in May almost back to levels seen before the coronavirus triggered stay-at-home orders. Chinese refineries are increasing operations to convert more crude into gasoline and diesel after factories reopened and millions of people returned to work following the easing of restrictions. Government policy dictating that the retail price of fuels won’t be cut in line with sub-$40 a barrel oil has also boosted refining margins in the country. “China’s demand recovery and current low oil prices have prompted refiners, especially the independents, to ramp up crude runs,” said Serena Huang, a Singapore-based analyst at analytics firm Vortexa Ltd. “This crude import momentum could be rolling over to June if refiners’ appetite remain strong.” The fleet of tankers arrived in Chinese waters during the second half of May and the ships have been idling off ports in Shandong and Liaoning provinces, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Most of the vessels are Suezmaxes and Very-Large Crude Carriers, which are estimated to be collectively carrying about 4 million tons or more of oil from countries including Russia, Colombia, Angola and Brazil. Shandong is home to the Qingdao and Rizhao terminals and China’s independent refiners -- known as teapots -- that have staged a v-shaped recovery. Run rates rose to a record high of about 76% at the end of May, compared with a low of 42% in February, according to industry consultant SCI99. Meanwhile, the queues might get even longer, with the highest number of supertankers since at least the start of 2017 hauling crude to China from almost everywhere across the globe.

Abu Dhabi Mulling Pipeline Stake Sale-- Abu Dhabi’s state-owned energy producer is close to selling a multibillion-dollar stake in its natural gas pipelines to an investor group backed by Global Infrastructure Partners and Brookfield Asset Management Inc., in what is set to be one of the year’s biggest infrastructure deals. The buyers could sign an agreement with Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. for a 49% stake in the pipelines this month, according to people with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified as discussions are private. A deal could value the pipelines at more than $15 billion, including debt, they said said. Equity financing has been arranged and the bidders are negotiating the terms of a debt package with banks, the people said. While discussions are advanced and ongoing, the timing and valuation could still change, according to the people. The GIP consortium also includes Italian infrastructure operator Snam SpA, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Singapore sovereign fund GIC Pte and South Korea’s NH Investment & Securities Co. Representatives for Adnoc, GIP, Brookfield, Ontario Teachers’, Snam and NH Investment declined to comment. Representatives for GIC did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Infrastructure investors have been defying the dealmaking downturn brought on by the coronavirus pandemic to deploy capital. The Adnoc deal could surpass KKR & Co.’s agreement in March to buy the waste-management arm of U.K. utility owner Pennon Group Plc for 4.2 billion pounds ($5.2 billion). It could also top plans by Portugal’s biggest oil company, Galp Energia SGPS SA, to sell its gas distribution assets for as much as 1.5 billion euros ($1.7 billion). Abu Dhabi has been opening up the operations of its state-owned oil producer to foreign partners as part of a push to diversify its economy and generate additional sources of funding. Adnoc has already sold shares in its distribution unit and brought in international investors to its refining and oil field services business. KKR and BlackRock Inc. agreed last year to invest $4 billion in Adnoc’s oil pipeline network. GIC bought a stake in the business later.

OPEC+ to Discuss Production Cut Extension-- OPEC+ is set to discuss a short extension of its current output cuts, according to a delegate, as the cartel considers bringing forward its next meeting a few days to June 4. The cartel and its allies are considering extending the current cuts for one to three months, the delegate said. As the situation in the oil market is moving fast, the preference is to take short-term measures and not disrupt the rebalancing of the market, the delegate said. The existing deal -- struck in April as energy demand and prices collapsed because of the coronavirus pandemic -- calls for output curbs to ease from July. But that’s up for discussion at the next meeting. Russia wants to start easing from July, people familiar with the situation said last week. Oil prices have rallied as the output curbs coincided with a stronger-than-expected rebound in demand. But with lockdowns easing across the globe, fears that the pandemic could have a second wave make predictions of a recovery perilous. At about $35 a barrel, prices are below what most producers need for government spending. West Texas Intermediate crude and Brent, the global benchmark, edged lower in Asian trading on Monday as the protests in the U.S. damped risk sentiment. The date of the meeting, which will be held by video conference, was still to be confirmed late on Sunday, after people familiar with the situation said OPEC members were close to an agreement to bring it forward to June 4. An earlier date would give the oil cartel more flexibility to change its current production limits. OPEC members usually decide their plans for shipping oil to customers for July in the first week of June, so an earlier meeting would give them more time to react. Algerian Energy Minister Mohamed Arkab, who holds the rotating presidency, proposed June 4, instead of June 9-10. The 23-nation OPEC+ coalition led by Saudi Arabia and Russia is undertaking record oil-production cuts to prop up prices. At the meeting it will decide whether to keep the existing agreement, or extend the current curbs. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its partners committed to lowering output by 9.7 million barrels a day, or about 10% of global supply, in May and June. In addition, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates made further voluntary cuts of about 1.2 million barrels a day for June, bringing the total OPEC+ curbs to almost 11 million barrels a day. Production cuts are meant to be eased to about 7.7 million barrels a day in July.Nigeria and the state oil company of Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s capital, have already announced plans to increase exports in July in line with the OPEC+ deal from April.

Oil Demand Expected to Fall 11.5 Percent - Global oil demand will decrease by 11.5 percent, or 11.4 million barrels per day (MMbpd), year on year in 2020, according to Rystad Energy’s latest demand forecast. Total oil demand is projected to fall to 88.1MMbpd this year from approximately 99.5MMbpd last year, Rystad outlined. May demand is expected to fall by 20.5 percent to 78.5MMbpd and June demand is forecasted to hit 84MMbpd. Rystad believes total global demand for road fuels will fall by 9.9 percent, or 4.7 MMbpd, year on year to 42.7MMbpd. Jet fuel demand is anticipated to decline by almost 40.8 percent, or 2.9MMbpd, year on year to 4.3MMbpd. Rystad forecasts that in 2020, total oil demand in the United States will fall 11.8 percent, or 2.4MMbpd, to 18.1MMbpd and that total oil demand in Europe will drop by 15.6 percent, or 2.2MMbpd, to 12MMbpd. Looking ahead to 2021, Rystad expects total oil demand to rebound to 96.3MMbpd. Road fuel demand is expected to average 46MMbpd and jet fuel demand is expected to average 6.2MMbpd next year. Rystad anticipates total oil demand in the U.S. to average 19.4MMbpd and total oil demand in Europe to average 13.2MMbpd in 2021. Rystad’s newest demand forecast is the latest in a line of weekly predictions that aim to calculate the effect of Covid-19 on oil demand. These are frequently updated as a result of evolving developments around the world. Rystad’s previous demand forecast saw oil demand falling by 10.8 percent, or 10.7MMbpd, in 2020. Road fuel demand was anticipated to fall by 10.8 percent, or 5.1MMbpd, year on year and jet fuel demand was projected to drop by almost 33.6 percent, or 2.4Mmbpd, year on year. There have been 5.9 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 around the world, with 367,166 deaths, as of May 31, according to the latest figures from the World Health Organization.

The Brent crude oil matrix, the linkages that make it work and implications for global markets.  Do not try and refine the Brent; that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth...there is no Brent. Then you will see it is not the Brent that gets refined; it is only yourself. For those who are not fans of The Matrix, that sentence may seem a little cryptic, but it makes a point that is little understood outside the rarified world of crude oil trading. The production of North Sea Brent crude oil is down to less than a couple of hundred barrels per day. Soon it will be gone altogether. But 70% of all crude oil in the world is tied either directly or indirectly to the price of Brent. How is that possible? Well, it’s because Brent is no longer simply a grade of crude oil. Over the past two decades, it has evolved into an intricate, multi-layered matrix of trading instruments, pricing benchmarks and standard contracts that is a world unto itself. A world with a huge impact across almost everything in today’s energy markets. Unfortunately, no one can be told what Brent is. You have to see it for yourself. So that’s where we’ll go in this blog series. Warning: To read on is like taking the red pill. When the prompt futures price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil plunged to $37.63/bbl below zero on April 20 (see One Way Out), the corresponding price for North Sea crudes, known collectively as Brent, remained positive, and never fell lower than a positive $19/bbl during the late-April meltdown. This relative stability has been touted by some as a justification for crude markets to rely even more on the Brent benchmark, or alternatively for CME WTI at Cushing to morph to a more Brent-like settlement system (more on that distinction later). But simple comparisons between the two benchmarks can be misleading. Brent and WTI are structurally quite different and serve very different markets. Furthermore, Brent has many challenges of its own, not the least of which has been the steady decline of North Sea crude oil production over the past 30 years. As we said above, to understand Brent, you have to see it for yourself. And that means that to understand where Brent is going, we need to review where Brent has been. It has been a long and winding road from the early 1970s until today.

Oil prices slip as wary traders eye upcoming OPEC+ meeting - Oil prices fell nearly 1% on Monday as traders hedged bets with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) considering meeting as soon as this week to discuss whether to extend record production cuts beyond end-June. Brent crude fell 34 cents to $37.50 a barrel, in the first day of trading in the contract with August as the front month. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures for July delivery were at $35.17 a barrel, down 32 cents, by 0123 GMT. The price falls come after front-month Brent and WTI prices posted their strongest monthly gains in years in May. Gains were boosted by OPEC crude production dropping to its lowest in two decades with demand is expected to recover as more nations emerge from coronavirus lockdowns. "The focus is very much on OPEC+," OCBC economist Howie Lee said, referring to the grouping of OPEC and its allies including Russia. OPEC+ agreed in April to reduce output by an unprecedented 9.7 million barrels per day (bpd) in May and June after the coronavirus pandemic ravaged demand. "We might see a cautious pullback in (crude) prices given that downstream prices haven't caught up ... but if OPEC+ does come up with a three-month extension, there's a possibility that prices may hit the $40 level," Lee said. Still, tensions between the United States and China weighed on global financial markets while traders are also keeping an eye on riots over the weekend that have engulfed major U.S. cities. Saudi Arabia is proposing to extend record cuts from May and June until the end of the year, but has yet to win support from Russia, sources have told Reuters. Algeria, which currently holds the OPEC presidency, has proposed an OPEC+ meeting planned for June 9-10 be brought forward to facilitate oil sales for countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait. Russia has no objection to the meeting being brought forward to June 4. Meanwhile supply in North America is also falling as data from Baker Hughes showed that the U.S. and Canada oil and gas rigs count dropped to a record low in the week to May 29. 

Oil Rally Fizzles-- The historic oil-supply curbs by OPEC, Russia and other nations that helped spur May’s record price rally are hanging in the balance as the cartel and its allies dicker over when to hold their next meeting. Oil futures settled slightly lower in New York on Monday amid mixed signals from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its confederates about the timing of their next discussions. One idea floated is to bring the meeting forward by several days to Thursday to consider prolonging production limits for as long as three months, according to a delegate. Without an extension, the existing caps begin to wind down next month -- a schedule Russia so far prefers to stick to. Meanwhile, onshore oil exploration in the U.S. shrank for the 11th consecutive week to a level not seen since before the shale revolution kicked off more than a decade ago. Despite well shut-ins across North America, U.S. imports of Saudi crude have surged, swelling supplies held in storage. American stockpiles are “probably heading higher at least in the short term as more imports come in,” said Peter McNally, an analyst at Third Bridge Group Ltd. “The market is oversupplied to begin with. Everyone is looking for more signs of demand firming.” West Texas Intermediate for July delivery settled down 5 cents at $35.44 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent, the international benchmark, rose 48 cents to $38.32. An earlier OPEC+ meeting would give the producer group more flexibility to change its current production limits. The group’s preference is to take short-term measures on cuts as the situation is volatile, the delegate said. The coalition -- which includes OPEC’s 13 members plus another 10 exporters -- has achieved 92% compliance, according to data analytics firm Kpler. Iraq and Nigeria have been laggards in meeting their pledged targets. Meanwhile, the U.S. Oil Fund ETF begins its monthly roll of futures contracts on Monday. The fund plans to sell its July holdings and buy more November and January futures over the next 10 trading sessions.

Oil Rallies Towards $40 As OPEC+ Nears Deal - Oil prices rose once again on rising odds of an OPEC+ extension. Brent is now nearing $40 per barrel, a remarkable comeback after crashing below $20 per barrel a little more than a month ago.Saudi Arabia and Russia are close to inking a two-month extension of the current oil production cuts, extending the agreement through September 1. Saudi Arabia wants an extension through the end of the year while Russia has favored easing the cuts in July. A two-month extension would be a middle-ground compromise.   In the North Sea, almost a third of the oil left on the UK continental shelf is no longer economical to extract. The rig count in the Gulf of Mexico has also fallen by almost half.. After the U.S. downgraded its status with Hong Kong, following Beijing’s new national security law in the territory, China is now threatening to curtail American farm purchases. . In an effort at infrastructure stimulus, China is reviving a $20 billion petrochemical project in Shandong province. “The 400,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) refinery and 3 million tonne-per-year ethylene plant in Yantai, Shandong, the country’s hub for independent oil refineries, was proposed years ago but approval has been slowing in coming because of China’s struggle with excess refining capacity,” Reuters reported.The sharp oil production cuts have led to a decrease in the cost of shipping. Prices for chartering an oil vessel fell 77 percent from the peak in March.   Occidental Petroleum cut its quarterly dividend by 91 percent, and shareholders will only receive one penny per share on July 15. In March, Oxy cut its dividend to 11 cents, from 79 cents previously.  The rig count fell to 301 rigs last week, the lowest level on record since 1949.

Oil rises nearly 4% ahead of OPEC+ meeting, easing lockdowns - Oil prices were up about $1 a barrel on Tuesday on expectations that major producers will agree to extend output cuts during a video conference likely to be held this week and as countries and U.S. states begin to restart after coronavirus lockdowns. West Texas Intermediate crude climbed $1.37, or 3.87%, to settle at $36.81 per barrel. Brent crude rose 2.7%, or $1.04, to $39.36 a barrel. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and others including Russia, a grouping known as OPEC+, are considering extending their production cuts of 9.7 million barrels per day (bpd), or about 10% of global production, into July or August, at a meeting expected to be held on June 4. "Most likely, OPEC+ could extend current cuts until Sept. 1, with a meeting set before then to decide on next steps," said Citi's head of commodities research Edward Morse. Under the original OPEC+ plan, the cuts were due to run through May and June, scaling back to a reduction of 7.7 million bpd from July to December. Saudi Arabia has been pushing to keep the deeper cuts in place for longer, sources said. The gradual reopening of businesses in a growing number of U.S. states and countries around the world after shelter-in-place mandates caused by the coronavirus pandemic also oil boosted prices. "As the economy opens up, there's more and more people on the road. That's going to be good, obviously, for crude oil," said Bob Yawger, director of energy futures at Mizuho in New York. Steadily increasing gasoline demand in the United States and falling crude inventories at the nation's oil storage hub in Cushing, Oklahoma, has also supported prices, Yawger said. Industry group American Petroleum Institute will release its weekly oil inventory report later in the day, with official data following on Wednesday.

Oil falls below $40 on doubts early OPEC+ meeting will go ahead this week - Oil prices erased gains on Wednesday, with Brent crude futures falling back below $40 a barrel, on doubts an early meeting of some of the world's most powerful oil producers will go ahead as planned. OPEC and non-OPEC allies, a group of oil producers sometimes referred to as OPEC+, had been expected to hold their next meeting on Thursday. However, while OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia and non-OPEC leader Russia were thought to have tentatively agreed on a one-month extension to production cuts, S&P Global Platts reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed sources, the date of a meeting to finalize the deal remains uncertain. OPEC member Algeria, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the group, proposed late last month that the meeting should be brought forward from the original date of June 9-10. Brent crude futures traded at $38.91 a barrel during Wednesday afternoon deals, down over 1.5%. Earlier in the session, the international benchmark had climbed above the $40-a-barrel mark for the first time since March 6. Meanwhile, U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures stood at $36.26, almost 1.6% lower. The contract had also climbed to its highest level since early March earlier in the trading day, but it has since erased those gains. Oil prices have soared in recent weeks, rebounding from the lows of April amid optimism about an economic recovery in China and as other economies seek to gradually relax lockdown measures. In April, OPEC+ agreed to cut oil production by a record 9.7 million barrels per day (b/d), approximately 10% of global output. The move was designed to prop up prices as the coronavirus pandemic led to an unprecedented collapse in oil demand. The production cuts began on May 1 and are set to run through to the end of June. Under the current deal, the cuts will then be tapered back to 7.7 million b/d from July through to the end of 2020, and 5.8 million b/d from January 2021 through to April 2022.

Oil prices finish at highest in 3 months as traders await next move for OPEC+, digest U.S. supply data - Oil futures Wednesday closed higher, extending a move around the highest level since early March, as uncertainty over whether a meeting of crude producers will be held this week or next raised doubts about a willingness to substantially extend global production cuts that taper after June. Weekly declines in U.S. crude stockpiles and supplies at the Cushing, Okla. storage hub reported by the Energy Information Administration on Wednesday offered little support to oil prices, as petroleum product inventories climbed.West Texas Intermediate crude for July delivery tacked on 48 cents, or 1.3%, to settle at $37.29 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange after surging 3.9% on Tuesday.  Global benchmark Brent saw its August contract rise 22 cents, or 0.6%, to end at $39.79 a barrel on the ICE Futures Europe, after gaining 3.3% in the prior session.Prices for WTI and Brent crude marked their highest since March 6, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Amena Bakr, deputy bureau chief at Energy Intelligence, reported that a June 4 meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies appeared “unlikely,” via Twitter on Wednesday. She said in a separate tweets that setting the date of next meeting is “contingent on all members of the group sticking to their quotas.” Member states that haven’t achieved their quotas in May will be asked to make up for that in the coming months, Bakr wrote, citing OPEC sources.Reuters reported Wednesday that Saudi Arabia and Russia have reached a preliminary agreement to extend existing cuts by one month. The reductions had been set to taper down to 7.7 million barrels starting in July.Bloomberg News, meanwhile, also reported that Russia and several other producers favor extending the group’s current cuts by one month, citing people familiar with the matter. The report said major producers are cognizant that rising prices of crude benefit U.S. shale production, which is likely to come back on line as futures react to efforts by OPEC+ to stabilize the commodity’s value.U.S. crude inventories, meanwhile, fell in the latest week.The Energy Information Administration reported Wednesday that U.S. crude inventories edged down by 2.1 million barrels for the week ended May 29. That compared with a forecast by analysts polled by S&P Global Platts for an average climb of 3.5 million barrels. The American Petroleum Institute on Tuesday reported a fall of 483,000 barrels, according to sources.A drop in imports led to the fall in crude inventories, as well as an increase in refinery runs and a 4 million-barrel shift of oil from commercial inventories into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, said Matt Smith, director of commodity research at ClipperData. “Without this transfer, oil inventories would have reached a record high,” he told MarketWatch.

Oil Traders Ask Why U.S. Inventory Math Isn’t Adding Up - Oil traders and analysts scrutinizing U.S. inventory data for signs of a market recovery are being confronted by an odd situation: the math just doesn’t add up. Various government data sets including stockpiles, production, imports and exports are signaling that current official figures on at least some supplies are excessive. While it’s unclear where exactly the discrepancy lies, the difference could potentially signal a more bullish outlook for crude prices as they claw their way back after diving below zero in April. The excess is showing up in the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s so-called crude supply adjustment factor -- the difference between stockpile numbers and those implied by production, refinery demand, imports and exports. That has averaged negative 980,000 barrels daily over the past four weeks -- the largest in records going back to 2001, and equivalent to more than 27 million barrels. The adjustment factor tends to swing back and forth, depending on irregularities in various surveys the EIA pulls from for its reports. For these weekly reports, the EIA is not able to collect domestic crude oil production, instead estimating it from its short-term energy outlook model. Some investors lay the blame for the current discrepancy on U.S. oil production numbers. While daily output fell 700,000 barrels to 11.2 million in May, they believe oil’s plunge into negative territory in April should have led to a steeper decline. “This is a high frequency data series, and so there’s often some smoothening that results from it,” said John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital, who added the discrepancy may have to do with production figures. “When the numbers are off, you just have to make sure you’re checking everything else independently, like other ways to track import and exports numbers.” Just last month, consultancy IHS Markit said that U.S. oil producers are in the process of curtailing 1.75 million barrels a day of existing output by early June due to operating cash losses, lack of demand and storage capacity and an unwillingness to sell resources at low prices. Some of that lower production is already becoming evident, according to information disclosed in various company announcements and state data.

Saudi Arabia and Russia push for an extension to output cuts, OPEC+ meeting this week still possible - Some of the world's most powerful oil producers had been expected to convene on Thursday, with energy market participants closely monitoring whether the influential group will officially agree to extend their deepest ever round of output cuts. OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia and non-OPEC leader Russia were thought to support a one-month extension of the current level of supply cuts, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed OPEC sources. However, the date of a virtual meeting to finalize an agreement was still unclear on Thursday afternoon. OPEC and non-OPEC allies, sometimes referred to as OPEC+, were originally scheduled to review their production cuts on June 9-10. Late last month, Algeria, which currently holds the rotating OPEC presidency, proposed this meeting should be brought forward to Thursday. An OPEC+ meeting was still possible this week, according to Reuters, citing unnamed OPEC sources, if Iraq and other non-complying members promised to deepen their production cuts. Brent crude futures traded at $39.50 a barrel during early afternoon deals, down more than 0.6%. The international benchmark rose above $40 a barrel for the first time since March 6 in the previous session, before erasing those gains amid OPEC+ uncertainty. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures stood at $36.78 a barrel, almost 1.4% lower. The contract also climbed to its highest level since early March on Wednesday. Oil prices have marched higher in recent weeks, recovering from a dramatic fall in April which saw Brent futures hover close to 20-year lows and WTI tumble into negative territory for the first time in history. It comes amid optimism about an economic recovery in China, the world's second-largest economy, and as other countries across the globe seek to gradually lift coronavirus lockdown measures.

 Oil rises slightly as traders await clarity on output cuts - Oil prices were little changed on Thursday as investors awaited a decision from top crude producers on whether to extend record output cuts. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and allies led by Russia, a group known as OPEC+, are debating when to hold ministerial talks to discuss a possible extension of the existing cuts. Brent crude futures were up 6 cents, or 0.2%, at $39.85 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate crude futures gained 12 cents to settle at $37.41 per barrel. Saudi Arabia and Russia, two of the world's biggest oil producers, want to extend cuts of 9.7 million barrels per day (bpd) that major producers agreed to in April. But a suggestion by OPEC president Algeria to meet on Thursday was delayed amid talks about poor compliance by some producers. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates are not planning to extend voluntary additional output cuts of 1.18 million bpd after June, indicating that crude supply could rise next month regardless of any OPEC+ decision. "OPEC appears 'damned if they do and damned if they don't' with regard to extended near term production reductions," . "Any decision to forgo any extension of current cuts would easily unleash a near term selling spree while an agreement to extend cuts beyond next month would have longer term bearish implications as upward adjustments to third quarter shale production forecasts would likely be required." Concerns about a resurgence of U.S. shale production, which is already showing signs of revival, was one reason Moscow and Russia only backed prolonging cuts into July rather than agreeing a longer extension, sources briefed on OPEC+ talks have said. Meanwhile, U.S. government data on Wednesday showed large increases in fuel inventories as demand remains impaired due to the coronavirus pandemic. "Large oil inventory builds across the U.S., Europe and Japan last week are weighing on oil prices,"   Striking a bullish note, however, Russia's Energy Minister said the oil market in July could face a shortage of 3-5 million bpd, Interfax news agency reported.

Oil Prices Surge As OPEC+ Nears Deal - Oil prices jumped yet again on positive news from OPEC+ as well as a far better than expected jobs report. Brent surged by more than $2 per barrel while WTI approached the $40 mark.  OPEC+ made a breakthrough in negotiations and the group is slated to meet on Saturday to sign off on the deal, which calls for a one-month extension of the 9.7 mb/d cuts. A sticking point had been the poor compliance rate from Iraq, but the Iraqi government agreed to strict compliance, although there could be a domestic backlash from doing so. The U.S. unemployment rateunexpectedly fell to 13.3 percent in May, with the return of 2.5 million jobs. Economists had expected the unemployment rate to jump to around 20 percent. The numbers led to a wave of optimism around economic recovery.  The Libyan National Army (LNA) retreated from Tripoli, ending a 14-month assault on the capital. The civil war has also become a proxy battle between other world powers. The prime minister of the Government of National Accord (GNA) traveled to Ankara to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.   In a sign of the times, investment bank Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co., which was an important player in financing the U.S. shale industry, will begin research on clean technologies. The firm will cut back on the number of oil and gas companies it covers, and use an existing equity research team to cover clean tech. GM is developing an electric van for commercial use, a multibillion-dollar segment of the transportation sector, according to Reuters. “It’s going to be similar to what the Model 3 has done for the consumer market,” a UPS executive told Reuters. “Now all of a sudden, we’re off to the races.” The GM van is due to start production in late 2021. Vattenfall AB is going forward with a 1,500-megawatt offshore wind project in the North Sea, and the project carries no government subsidies. When it comes online in 2023, it will be the world’s largest, but won’t carry that title for long as a larger project in the UK is scheduled to come online shortly after. While many of the integrated oil majors have promised larger investments in renewable energy, Norway’s Equinor stands out. The majors are estimated to spend $18 billion combined per year by 2025 on renewables, but Equinor will account for $10 billion of that total, according to Rystad Energy. The Norwegian company will be the only one to invest a majority of its greenfield capex in clean energy.

Crude oil prices climb 5% on US jobless drop, Opec+ meeting hopes - Oil prices rose on Friday after an unexpected fall in the May US jobless rate and Opec's decision to bring forward to Saturday discussions on whether to extend record production cuts. Brent crude futures were up $2.07, or 5.2 per cent, at $42.07 a barrel by 11:05 a.m. EST (1505 GMT). US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures rose $1.65, or 4.4 per cent, to $39.02 a barrel. The US Labor Department reported a surprise fall in the jobless rate to 13.3 per cent last month from 14.7 per cent in April. Brent has risen 17 per cent since Friday to reach a three-month high, in a range more comfortable for producers like Russia. The contract has more than doubled since crashing as low as $15.98 a barrel on April 22. WTI is up 11 per cent. Both benchmarks were headed for a sixth week of gains, lifted by the output cuts and signs of improving fuel demand as countries ease lockdowns imposed to fight the new coronavirus outbreak.

 Oil jumps 5% as traders await OPEC+ meeting on extending supply cuts -- Oil prices rose on Friday after OPEC decided to move up discussions on whether to extend record production cuts to Saturday, indicating that some laggard countries may have agreed to align themselves with the deal. Brent crude futures were up $2.46, or 6.2%, to trade at $43.45 per barrel, while West Texas Intermediate traded $2.06, or 5.5%, higher at $39.48 per barrel. Brent has risen 16% since Friday to reach a three-month high, settling in a range more comfortable for producers like Russia. The contract has more than doubled since it crashed to as little as $15.98 a barrel on April 22. WTI is up nearly 14% from Friday's close, leaving benchmarks on track for a sixth week of gains, lifted by the output cuts and signs of improving fuel demand as countries ease lockdown measures imposed to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus. Russia's energy ministry said on Friday a video conference of a group of leading oil producers, known as OPEC+, would be held on Saturday. OPEC and its allies had said they would bring forward the meeting, which had been scheduled for next week, should Iraq and others agree to boost their adherence to existing supply cuts. "Prices are up with the meeting scheduled for tomorrow. There was lots of confusion... so it looks like they found a way forward," Olivier Jakob at Petromatrix consultancy said. Saudi Arabia and Russia, two of the world's biggest oil producers, want to extend output cuts of 9.7 million barrels per day (bpd) into July. If OPEC+ fails to agree to roll over the current output curbs, that would mean the cut could drop back to 7.7 million bpd from July through December as previously agreed. "The growing fear is that not only will a deal to extend the deep cuts not be reached, but (some) producers may even relax their current over-compliance. This would ultimately see output rise in coming weeks," ANZ Research said in a note. Adding support was the first tropical storm of the season in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. Storm Cristobal is expected to enter the central Gulf this week, an area rich with offshore platforms, and could see landfall along Louisiana's refinery row on Sunday. U.S. energy companies have already closed some production. "It's not big, but there will be some shut-ins," Jakob said.

Oil prices log over 11% weekly rise, with OPEC+ set to meet Saturday to discuss extension of output cuts - Crude-oil futures ended sharply higher Friday, supported by news that major oil producers will convene Saturday to discuss plans for extended productions cuts, while an unexpected monthly climb in U.S. jobs suggested a recovery in energy demand mat be at hand. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, collectively known as OPEC+, said they would hold meetings via videoconference on Saturday, with the OPEC member conference set to begin at 2 p.m. Central European time, or 8 a.m. Eastern time, and an OPEC+ conference to begin two hours later. The major oil producers are expected to reach an official agreement to extend record oil production cuts of 9.7 million barrels a day through July, according to The Wall Street Journal. The group decided to move forward a meeting that had been planned for June 9-10, after a tentative plan to meet on June 4 fell apart. The weekend meeting is being viewed as a signal to crude investors that the group will deliver substantive near-term measures to stabilize oil’s value. “It’s all about the OPEC+ meeting,” wrote Bjornar Tonhaugen, Rystad Energy’s head of oil markets, in a Friday note. “As it was initially intended to happen on Thursday, when that did not materialize, prices fell because traders sensed a lack of agreement between the extended group’s producing countries.” “Now the mood has changed again and prices rose, following news that a consensus may have been reached and a meeting is across the corner,” he wrote. Meanwhile, U.S. data released Friday showing that the nation regained 2.5 million jobs in May and the unemployment rate fell to 13.3% from 14.7% in April, with that data leading to a rally in the stock market. “The oil price rally went into overdrive after a surprisingly robust U.S. labor market report,” “The economic recovery is already happening and that could do wonders for crude consumption.” West Texas Intermediate crude for July delivery rose $2.14, or 5.7%, to settle at $39.55 a barrel a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Global benchmark Brent saw its August contract BRNQ20, -0.54% climb $2.31, or 5.8%, to end at $42.30 a barrel on the ICE Futures Europe. For the week, WTI front-month U.S. oil futures were up 11.4%, while Brent climbed 11.8%m according to Dow Jones Market Data. Both benchmarks tallied their sixth consecutive weekly gain and marked a fourth session at their highest settlement since March 6.

Saudi, Russia agree oil cuts extension, raise pressure for compliance - (Reuters) - OPEC leader Saudi Arabia and non-OPEC Russia have agreed a preliminary deal to extend existing record oil output cuts by one month while raising pressure on countries with poor compliance to deepen their cuts, OPEC+ sources told Reuters. However, there was no agreement yet on whether to hold an OPEC+ output policy meeting on Thursday with the main obstacle being how to deal with countries that have failed to make the deep supply cuts required under the existing pact, the sources said. OPEC+ agreed to cut output by a record 9.7 million barrels per day, or about 10% of global output, in May and June to lift prices battered by plunging demand linked to lockdown measures aimed at stopping the spread of the coronavirus. Rather than easing output cuts in July, OPEC and its allies, a group known as OPEC+, were discussing keeping those cuts beyond June. “Saudi Arabia and Russia are aligned on the extension for one month,” one OPEC source said. “Any agreement on extending the cuts is conditional on countries who have not fully complied in May deepening their cuts in upcoming months to offset their overproduction,” the source said.

OPEC+ Extends Oil Cuts in Win for Saudi-Russian Alliance - OPEC+ agreed to a one-month extension of its record output cuts and adopted a stricter approach to ensuring members don’t break their production pledges. The deal will underpin the oil market recovery, easing the financial pain felt by resource-dependent emerging economies, shale explorers in Texas, and blue-chip companies like Royal Dutch Shell Plc. It’s a victory for Saudi Arabia and Russia, who put a destructive price war behind them to successfully cajole Iraq, Nigeria and other laggards to fulfill their promises to cut production. The two leaders of OPEC+ showed that they intend to keep a close watch on the oil market, meeting every month to assess the balance between supply and demand amid an uncertain economic recovery from the global pandemic. “Our collective efforts have borne fruit, and despite many uncertainties, there are encouraging signs that we are over the worst,” said Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman. “Demand is returning as big oil-consuming economies emerge from pandemic lockdown,” he added. After a video conference lasting several hours on Saturday, delegates said all nations had signed off on a new deal for a production cut of 9.6 million barrels a day next month. That’s 100,000 barrels a day lower than the reduction in June because Mexico will end its supply constraints, but a tighter limit than the 7.7 million barrels a day set for July in the group’s previous agreement. In addition, the communique states that any member that doesn’t implement 100% of its production cuts in May and June will make extra reductions from July to September to compensate for their failings. Those promises are a particular vindication for the Saudi minister, who has consistently pushed fellow members to stop cheating on their quotas since his appointment last year. But they could also add an element of risk. In theory, the entirety of the 23-nation production agreement, which runs until April 2022, is now contingent on every member making 100% of their pledged cuts, according to the communique. That’s something rarely achieved in the 3 1/2 years that OPEC+ has existed, or indeed the decades-long history of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries itself.

OPEC+ keen to keep U.S. shale in check as oil prices rally - (Reuters) - When OPEC, Russia and their allies agreed in April to slash oil production, little did they expect that their initiative to prop up collapsing prices would be helped by a swift drop in U.S. output. Now that crude has rallied on the back of those cuts from below $20 a barrel to $40 or more, the group known as OPEC+ faces a fresh challenge: stopping U.S. shale production delivering another surprise by recovering equally quickly. “The plan is to stick to prices of $40-$50 per barrel because as soon as they rise any further to say $70 per barrel it encourages too much oil production, including U.S. shale,” said a Russian source familiar with OPEC+ talks on the issue. OPEC+ sources told Reuters on Wednesday that Russia and Saudi Arabia had reached a compromise to extend into July the group’s existing output cuts of 9.7 million barrels per day (bpd), the equivalent of 10% of global output. Those deep cuts had been due to be implemented in just May and June, before curbs were to be slowly eased. Concerns about a resurgence of U.S. shale, which is already showing signs of revival, was one reason Moscow and Russia only backed prolonging cuts into July rather than agreeing a longer extension, two sources briefed on OPEC+ talks said.

 Trudeau government exploits pandemic to renew $14 billion arms deal with despotic Saudi regime - On April 9, just as Canada was beginning to see a dramatic surge in COVID-19 infections across the country, the Trudeau government lifted its moratorium on the issuing of new export licences for arms shipments to Saudi Arabia. The ban was originally adopted as part of a hypocritical public relations exercise, undertaken by the Trudeau government after the Saudi regime’s grisly murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018 had provoked international anger and revulsion. The Liberals’ “moratorium” was adopted above all to divert attention from revelations that the Saudi army used Canadian-made light armoured vehicles (LAVs) and other military equipment to suppress an uprising in the eastern part of the country in 2014. Canadian military equipment has also played a role in Riyadh’s bloody war on neighboring Yemen, which has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians and left the country in ruins. The Trudeau government launched a year-long “review” of how the Saudis have used LAVs manufactured at a London, Ontario-based General Dynamics’ subsidiary under a $14 billion Canadian government-brokered arms deal. The probe was conducted by Global Affairs, the new name given to Canada’s Foreign Ministry, which plays a central role in advancing Canada’s imperialist interests and ambitions abroad. Predictably, the government review, which will not be made public, concluded that there was “no substantial risk” that the Saudi government, which beheads dozens of people every year and tortures political opponents, would use Canadian-made arms to violate human rights. It even claimed that the exports would “contribute to regional peace and security.” Amnesty International, Project Ploughshares, Oxfam and other groups have condemned the Trudeau government’s decision, which they claim will inevitably cause death and devastation in the entire region. These organizations also criticized the “hypocrisy of the Canadian government” for approving military exports to Saudi Arabia while voicing support, only days later, for a UN call for a global ceasefire during the pandemic.

China’s Barely Begun Economic Recovery Shows Signs of Stalling – WSJ —China’s economic recovery hit a speed bump in May as the coronavirus pandemic began curbing the world’s demand for Chinese goods. More and more Chinese factories have reopened for work in the past three months as authorities have eased their once-aggressive coronavirus measures. But now they are facing the dire reality of falling orders from overseas customers. The conundrum can be seen in official and private gauges of China’s factory activity. China’s official manufacturing purchasing managers index and a closely watched private survey, the Caixin China manufacturing purchasing managers index, both showed factory activity expanding in May. For the official factory survey, the reading of 50.6 marked the third straight month of expansion, while the Caixin survey showed factory activity jumping to a four-month high of 50.7 in May, from 49.4 in April. For both indexes, the 50 mark separates expansion from contraction. Below the surface, however, there is evidence that China’s nascent economic recovery is already beginning to stall. While China’s official PMI, released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Sunday, showed continued expansion, the magnitude of the gains fell for a second straight month, and a subindex to measure production slipped to 53.2 from 53.7 in April—pointing to sluggish demand. Worryingly, the new-export-orders subindex, a gauge of external demand, continued to remain deep in contractionary territory, though it improved to 35.3 in May, from 33.5 in April. Meanwhile, the Caixin PMI survey, which is tilted toward smaller private manufacturers, showed new export orders contracting at a historically sharp rate, Caixin Media Co. and research firm IHS Markit reported Monday.

 China’s Digital Currency Could Challenge Bitcoin and Even the Dollar - The Chinese government has begun a pilot program for an official digital version of its currency—with the likelihood of a bigger test at the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022. Some observers think the virtual yuan could bolster the government’s power over the country’s financial system and one day maybe even shift the global balance of economic influence.  The program started small in April, with a limited rollout in the cities of Shenzhen, Suzhou, Chengdu, and Xiong’an—a new “smart” city in the making, southwest of Beijing, conceived by President Xi Jinping. Local media have reported that some of the money was distributed in the form of transport subsidies paid to individuals in Suzhou.The rise of independent cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ether, meanwhile, have created the danger that a huge swath of economic activity will occur out of the view of policymakers. China, in recent years, has cracked down on the use of such coins but was quick to see some potential in the basic idea—as long as it had some control. China started studying issuance of its own digital unit as far back as 2014. “This has very strong political will behind it,” says Andrew Polk, co-founder and head of economic research at Trivium China, a Beijing-based consultant. “They see an opportunity of being a global leader here.”While a digital currency is likely years away from a national rollout, China’s moves have triggered concern about a new threat to U.S. financial dominance. Aditi Kumar and Eric Rosenbach of the Harvard Kennedy School, writing in May for Foreign Affairs, argue that the digital version of the renminbi, as China’s currency is officially known, could eventually allow Iran and others to more easily evade U.S. sanctions or move money without it being spotted by the U.S. government. That’s because it might one day be possible to transfer the digital currency across borders without going through dollar-based international payments systems.Not everyone is so worried. Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has written, also for Foreign Affairs, that despite China’s plans, the threat to the dollar’s status as the world’s preferred currency is “not a serious concern.” Even if a digital yuan proves to be highly mobile around the world, the dollar is widely trusted, and oil and other key commodities are still priced in it.

Protests across New Zealand over US police murder of George Floyd - Tens of thousands of people joined protests and vigils in New Zealand yesterday in solidarity with the mass movement that has erupted in the United States following the brutal murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers. Media reported that at least 4,000 people gathered in Auckland's Aotea Square and marched to the US consulate. Photographs and videos shared on social media appear to show far larger crowds, with some estimating the number to be in the tens of thousands. In Wellington, at least 2,000 people held a vigil outside parliament and hundreds marched to the US embassy. About 500 joined a protest in Christchurch and hundreds more in Dunedin. The rallies were part of a powerful wave of international protests. About 2,000 people gathered in Perth, and rallies are scheduled for other Australian cities over the coming days. Protests have been held across Europe, Canada and in Japan, among other places. The international movement reflects the intense opposition that has built up in the working class, over decades, not only against police brutality but also never-ending war and unprecedented levels of social inequality. The failure of governments to stop hundreds of thousands of deaths from COVID-19, and the destruction of tens of millions of jobs, has further fuelled the outrage. The New Zealand crowds were largely made up of young workers and students, of all ethnicities including white people, Maori, Pacific Islanders and immigrants from many nationalities. Marchers chanted “Black lives matter” and “I can’t breathe”—the last words of George Floyd as he was choked to death by police officer Derek Chauvin.

 World’s Biggest Lockdown to Push 12 Million Into Extreme Poverty in India - Abdul Kareem was forced out of school and into a life of odd jobs like repairing bicycles before he finally managed to pull his family out of abject poverty transporting goods across the Indian capital in a mini truck. The job, and the slim financial security that came with it, was the first stepping stone to a better life. All that is now gone as India reels under the economic impact of its protracted coronavirus lockdown. Kareem’s out of a job and stranded in his village in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh with his wife and two children. Their minuscule savings from his 9,000 rupees ($119) a month job have been exhausted, and the money he saved for books and school uniforms is spent. “I don’t know what the job situation will be in Delhi once we go back,” Kareem said. “We can’t stay hungry so I will do whatever I find.” At least 49 million people across the world are expected to plunge into “extreme poverty” -- those living on less than $1.90 per day -- as a direct result of the pandemic’s economic destruction and India leads that projection, with the World Bank estimating some 12 million of its citizens will be pushed to the very margins this year. Some 122 million Indians were forced out of jobs last month alone, according to estimates from the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy, a private sector think tank. Daily wage workers and those employed by small businesses have taken the worst hit. These include hawkers, roadside vendors, workers employed in the construction industry and many who eke out a living by pushing handcarts and rickshaws. For Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who came to power in 2014 promising to lift India’s poorest citizens out of poverty, the fallout from the lockdown brings with it significant political risk.   The breadth and depth of this renewed economic pain will only increase the pressure on his government as it works to steer the country’s economy back on track. “Much of the Indian government’s efforts to mitigate poverty over the years could be negated in a matter of just a few months,”  “More people could die from hunger than the virus.”

India's Electricity Generation Plunges As Worst Economic Downturn In Decades Unfolds - India has announced plans to ease a strict national lockdown even as the spread of COVID-19 shows no signs of abating. Restaurants, hotels, malls, and places of worship could reopen in the near term. Despite reopening plans, India's economy is rapidly deteriorating, which has led to a significant decline in electricity generation. Even before the two-month lockdown, India's economy was decelerating and now faces the worst recession in four decades. The country's economy could contract by at least 5% this fiscal year. Economic paralysis has led to a collapse in electricity generation across the country, plunging 14.3% in May, compared with a 24% decline in April, a new Reuters analysis of government data showed. The report said electricity demand was higher among households, as consumption among industries and commercial places was still widely depressed. Factories account for 50% of India's annual electricity demand, which suggests operating capacity is still low. India's economic downturn will result in a decline in the country's electricity demand for the next several years. Global rating and research agency CRISIL recently said it could take upwards of three years for the economy to get back to growth activity seen in 2019. This means India will not see a V-shaped economic recovery, but rather one that is more of a U or L-shaped. CRISIL believes India's economy will suffer a 10% permanent loss to real GDP thanks to the pandemic-induced downturn. India will need fiscal support from the government this year to counter the recession. If policy support is limited, it means the downturn will increasingly get worse in the back half of 2020.

COVID-19 Impact on the Fashion Industry: Slow Down -- Jerri-Lynn Scofield - Many of my contacts in the artisanal fashion world have been badly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, They’ve had to shut down or suspend their businesses entirely. They’re not making anything and they are not providing any work for their artisans.Much of my focus at the moment is on studying textile production in India, where the national lockdown policy has been particularly severe. Some parts of the country – but not all –  are just beginning to ease restrictions, but the pandemic has dealt serious blows– in some cases  mortal ones – to many producers. I  hope my friends and contacts find ways to survive. I also follow the broader story in some of the specialty publicationsJING Daily covers as its bailiwick the business of luxury in China – and until now, their approach seems to be if the editors click their heels, the fashion business can continue pursuing the same trends as before. Well, I don’t think so. But I continue to read their panglossian coverage for its cockeyed optimism. More thought-provoking is the approach of the Business of Fashion, which combines pieces on the continuing consolidation and collapse of the retail sector, sustainability, and the ephemera of fashion, among other topics. Last week, the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) and British Fashion Council (BFC) took a preliminary stab at broaching the future of fashion topic, which I stumbled upon via an article in Treehugger, It’s time for a fashion industry reset: It is a well-known fact that fashion is notoriously harmful to the environment. It’s said to be the second most polluting industry in the world after the oil and gas sector, emitting enormous amounts of carbon for all the shipping of textiles and finished products, the water-intensive production of cotton, and the toxic finishing processes for countless fabrics that get flushed into waterways with little to no treatment. Then there’s the rampant waste caused by fast fashion’s cheap, quasi-disposal styles. So it’s clear that something needs to change, but what and how exactly?The new recommendations call for a new way of doing business that’s a fairly radical departure from the norm, but at the same time logical and reasonable to implement. All of the suggestions revolve around the concept of slowing down, as the current “fast, unforgiving pace” makes life hectic and stressful for designers, brands, and retailers.(I have covered fashion’s environmentally destructive habits extensively; see here. here, here,here, here, and here for some background and context.) Specific recommendations for the future of fashion are spelled out in this press release, The Fashion Industry’s Reset: An Important Message from the BFC & CFDA. What the BFC and CFDA  agree on is that the world has changed, and profoundly so, and fashion too must change:

 The Price Of Half The World's Staple Food Is Up 70% In 2020 - First the good news: after soaring to record highs one month ago due to widespread shutdowns of meat processing plants and supply chain impairments, wholesale beef prices have tumbled sharply and are just barely higher than where they were before the coronavirus pandemic struck. Now the not so good news: as Bank of America's Michael Hartnett notes in his Flow Show today, while beef may be affordable again, rice - the staple food for half of world's population - is becoming increasingly unaffordable, "surging 70% since Jan on COVID-19 labor supply chain hit & stockpiling." Should rice prices not revert to normal and soon, how long before the protests, riots and looting that are currently sweeping the US and various European countries spread across the entire world, this time over a far more tangible cause: hunger. As a reminder, it was the surge in food prices in late 2010 and early 2011 that precipitated the Arab Spring protests that toppled numerous political regimes and eventually culminated with the mass exodus of migrants from northern Africa and the middle east toward Europe.

Sweeping attacks on migrant workers in Russia amid COVID-19 pandemic - A tidal wave of anti-immigrant measures is under preparation in Russia, as the Kremlin and its nominal political opponents in other parties attempt to divert mass discontent over the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and skyrocketing poverty by promoting xenophobia and Russian chauvinism. There are currently 11 million foreign workers in Russia, of which nearly half are from the former Soviet republics in Central Asia. Official unemployment in the country has doubled since March and now stands at nearly 1.7 million. It is expected to reach 5 to 6 million by the end of the year. According to a recent poll by the Levada Center, 28 percent of the Russian population said they would join street protests over collapsing incomes and living standards. Under these conditions, the federal news agency RIA Novosti reported last Friday that the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) is considering the creation of a vast database that contains foreign workers’ biometric information, health histories, details of their legal and “social” status, and criminal records. These laborers would be required to put the app “Migrant” onto their smartphones, which would track their movements and activities and link to the database. The entire system would assign each individual a “migrant social trust rating,” which would automatically decrease if the person refused to download the software. In order to facilitate the rollout of “Migrant,” the government is considering a mass amnesty for undocumented workers. The aim is to induce undocumented immigrants to register with the state. The government would simultaneously unveil a labor exchange for migrants, where workers would receive job placements in a narrow range of specific, low-wage industries.  In short, the aim is to create a government-run caste system in the Russian labor force, with migrants funneled into the worst-paid jobs and subject to constant surveillance.

The European PMIs look troubling - Today marked the release of the final readings for manufacturing activity for May. And we have some concerns about how they’re being interpreted. The surveys ask purchasing managers whether activity over the current month has declined, improved, or stayed about the same compared with the previous month. Note, it does not ask them whether activity has declined, improved, or stayed about the same compared with average levels of activity. These responses are then tallied up to produce a net figure where 50 signals no change in activity from month to month. Therefore, anything below 50 is a contraction, and anything above 50 an expansion. For much of April advanced economies shut down due to the pandemic. Production lines across Europe that had ground to a halt in March — either because of local restrictions or disrupted supply chains — were still more or less closed.Towards the end of the month and into May, however, many factories began to reopen. In Germany, for instance, Volkswagen restarted production at its Wolfsburg plant on April 27. In harder-hit Italy, manufacturers began to return to work in early May. So it is rather surprising, then, that today’s PMIs suggest that manufacturing activity continued to decline between April and May. The Italian headline reading at 45.4 is still below the crucial 50 level that separates an expansion in activity from a contraction — which is remarkable given that it fell all the way to 31.1 in April. The German reading came in at 36.6, above the April figure of 34.5 but still deep below 50, suggesting month-on-month conditions worsened. Given how awful conditions were in April, one would expect any reading below 50 for May to be seized upon as an unmitigated disaster.Not so, judging from the market reaction. Many of the major European indices are closed today, but the FTSE 100 is up by just over 1 per cent at time of writing. (In the UK, the headline reading was 40.7 for May). Perhaps part of the problem is that people are forgetting that 50 marks the crucial boundary between expansion and contraction and are viewing a higher number as a good thing in and of itself — even though a figure below 50 following a month in which all-time lows were hit in many jurisdictions suggests conditions remain abysmal. Others might interpret the PMI as a gauge of where conditions are compared with more normal times. But that’s not what the survey records at all. So unless respondents are en masse answering the wrong question, this would appear unlikely factor for the May readings. So what is going on here? One feature of the current crisis that IHS Markit’s chief business economist Chris Williamson thinks might be distorting the headline readings is the degree to which global supply chains have been disrupted. Usually delivery times shorten when demand is weak, with this “positive” offering a boost to headline readings when output is falling. But that’s not happening in this instance, where we have both a supply and demand shock happening at the same time. Via Williamson:

 Economic Scars for Decades to Come - Der Spiegel  -Sometimes Yavuz Dașkin worries that everything was in vain: the six years of study at universities in Giessen and Hamburg, the semester abroad in Oslo, half a dozen internships. He finally wanted to start his career and write his master’s thesis while working in a company this fall. He has written application letters to a number of companies, but has received one rejection letter after the other, and the response is always the same: There are no more jobs for students because of the coronavirus pandemic. "I have to completely rethink things,” Dașkin says. Similar stories from students leaving high school or university are everywhere these days. Of the cancelled traineeship at the travel agency, the cancelled trainee post in event marketing, of the future hotel management trainee who nobody needs right now. Or of the engineer trainee who isn’t getting that dream job at German flag carrier Lufthansa. Of the non-university prep high school graduates who are in a state of panic because very few of them are landing training positions.This year, a half-million students will graduate from university in Germany. They are entering a labor market that is "essentially frozen,” says Detlef Scheele, the head of the Federal Employment Agency. At the end of the summer, more than a half-million vocation trainees were hoping to begin apprenticeships, but nobody knows how many spots will still be available. Scheele is urging companies to continue with their trainee programs at all costs. "We can’t have a lost corona graduating class of 2020,"  he says. It’s a seemingly absurd turn of events for a generation that grew up in an era of what appeared to be a never-ending economic boom, a golden decade in which the German economy never stopped growing. An economy that had the lowest unemployment rate in history, a shortage of skilled workers and a surfeit of jobs. Prospects looked a lot better only a few months ago: You could head abroad after graduation and travel around the world and then, at some point, find a job, maybe even just a half-time one.

 European Central Bank Ramps Up Stimulus Program Beyond $1.5 Trillion – WSJ —The European Central Bank scaled up its bond-buying program to €1.35 trillion ($1.52 trillion) Thursday in a bold move that puts the ECB’s stimulus effort in line with that of the Federal Reserve, while U.S. unemployment and trade data pointed to a rocky recovery from the pandemic shutdowns that crippled the global economy. Investors cheered the ECB’s decision, pushing the euro to its highest level against the dollar since March and fanning a recent rally in eurozone equity and bond markets. The move eases pressure on the region’s embattled governments and underscores a recent shift in Europe, where policy makers initially lagged behind the U.S. in the amount of firepower they threw at the crisis but have over the past week unveiled a series of bold stimulus moves. “The euro area economy is experiencing an unprecedented contraction,” ECB President Christine Lagarde said at a news conference. Economic output in the region is likely to shrink by 8.7% this year before rebounding by 5.2% next year, said Ms. Lagarde, who didn’t rule out an even deeper downturn. That contraction is larger than what is expected for the U.S., where the economy is forecast to shrink by 6.6% this year and grow by 5.0% in 2021, according to The Wall Street Journal’s May economist survey.

5am starts, poverty wages and no running water—the grim reality of “picking for Britain” - For decades, the UK’s agricultural industry has relied on migrant labour. Each year, an estimated 80,000 workers, primarily from Eastern Europe, come to harvest Britain’s fruit and veg. But this year, due to Covid-19 travel restrictions and ongoing uncertainties regarding Brexit, many would-be fruit pickers have been unable to make the trip. This has left a gaping hole in the agricultural workforce—one which British workers are expected to fill. On the 19th May, Environment Secretary George Eustice launched the official “Pick for Britain” campaign, encouraging the population to take up work on farms across the country. If it fails, the media’s bleak premonitions of “a disastrous situation” in which “mountains of food are left to rot” could find themselves realised. Signalling an intensification of the recruitment drive, last week the government wheeled out Prince Charles. Donning his humblest, most rumpled coat, in a video message he urged viewers to sign up. While acknowledging that the work would be “unglamorous and at times challenging,” Charles unashamedly evoked notions of national duty and that fabled “blitz spirit.” I’ve been working on a strawberry farm since mid-April. Like others, I wasn’t covered by the government’s furlough scheme and wanted to help the country in a time of crisis. But as I watched Charles’s broadcast from a blustery field, the gale pummelling at my caravan’s chipboard walls, I couldn’t help but feel that I knew something I shouldn’t. It was as if I’d taken a glance behind the curtain and, to my horror, found the machine.

More than half of parents defy UK school reopening: Education unions seek to demobilise popular opposition-  More than a million children who Boris Johnson’s government wanted to force into classes yesterday were kept at home by worried parents, fearing an explosion in COVID-19 cases in schools that will spread throughout the population. More than 2 million pupils in nursery, reception, Year 1 and Year 6 were made eligible to return to school from Monday so their parents can be forced back to work. But the Association of School and College Leaders said that in the schools that were opened, only between 40 and 70 percent of pupils returned—possibly as few as 800,000. Fears among parents and teachers of the impact of reopening schools were heightened by warnings over the weekend by four leading members of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group (SAGE) and from the Association of Directors of Public Health (ADPH). Calum Semple, professor in Child Health and Outbreak Medicine, said, “I think a political decision has been made to tie in with when school was due to start, were everything normal, but it’s not normal … Essentially, we’re lifting the lid on a boiling pan and it’s just going to bubble over.” John Edmunds, professor of infectious disease modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, warned, “There are still 8,000 new infections every day in England without counting those in hospitals and care homes … If you look at it internationally, it’s a very high level of incidence.” Professor Peter Horby, chair of the Government’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG), said that SAGE had been very clear that “test, trace, isolate must be fully running” before lockdown is relaxed. Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Institute, tweeted, “COVID-19 spreading too fast to lift lockdown in England.”