week ending July 25

 Immaculate Deception, Fed Style - Edward J. Kane -During the years leading up to the Great Financial Crisis, Fed officials began to tell outsiders more and more about what members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) were thinking in setting operative interest-rate and price-level targets. My new INET Working Paper is adapted from a chapter in a book I am now writing. It treats the flood of selected policymaking information released by the committee after each meeting as misleading patter meant to distract the committee’s audience from observing the hard-to-defend cumulative effects Fed policies have had on the distribution of income and wealth. As in stage magic, lobbying activity that determines how differently FOMC policies actually impact the rich, the poor, and the middle classes still takes place behind an informational curtain. Today, as during the Great Financial Crisis, the Fed’s policy strategy has been to prevent open insolvencies at US megabanks by making subsidized loans to US megabanks’ insolvent foreign counterparties (and to the foreign taxpayers that would otherwise have been asked to rescue them). At the same time, Fed leaders have resisted a broad-based bailout of insolvent US homeowners and landlords. During the GFC, they stood by as US banks foreclosed on all but a few privileged categories of distressed mortgage borrowers. Although households are receiving some help in the current go-around, forbearance is not forgiveness. Unpaid rents and mortgage payments are still mounting up. The overwrought praise that Wall Street and the media subsequently heaped on Treasury and Federal Reserve leaders for being willing to punish lower-income households to get the rich through the Great Financial Crisis established a nasty precedent that is guiding monetary policy today. This unspoken precedent is “Bankers and Brokers first.” A precedent is a previous event or action that sets a standard or guide for how one or one’s successors should (and therefore probably would) act in similar circumstances in the future. The 2008 troika of Bernanke, Geithner, and Paulson congratulated themselves for having the “courage” to put the interests of foreign bankers and major US financial institutions (including a few of its automobile makers — think the airlines and tourism industry today) ahead of ordinary US citizens. The victory laps that Barney Frank and Chris Dodd are taking this week for passing Dodd-Frank not only celebrate this approach, but provide opportunities for them to claim that they rescued rich and poor alike from complete and utter ruin [see, e.g., Bernanke, Geithner, and Paulson (2018)]. This portrait of distributional neutrality is propaganda of a high order. Current and former Fed and Treasury officials cannot fail to understand that, in accepting so much adulation, they have cemented a series of dangerous precedents. If public-service norms were more evenly balanced, instead of simply accepting praise, they might feel an obligation to identify the downside of following their lead in the future.

Watchdog urges Fed to extend more virus aid to states, small firms - The Federal Reserve isn’t moving quickly enough to get loans to cash-strapped small businesses and local governments struggling to cope with the coronavirus crisis, according to a panel created to monitor billions of dollars in aid approved in response to the pandemic. U.S. central bank programs have purchased only two loans — one to the state of Illinois through its municipal lending facility and a $12 million package through its Main Street lending program, which only became operational on July 6, the Congressional Oversight Commission said in a report released Monday.  “Our initial reaction is that a purchase of one $12 million loan over a week and one half seems like a small amount, given the economic challenges facing some small and medium sized businesses,” the panel said in its third monthly report. In previous reports, the panel has said that Fed and Treasury Department relief efforts might be falling short in helping small business and state and local governments and found that only a small fraction of the money allocated for loans has been spent. In the new report, it said the Fed has lent only $13.6 billion of the $454 billion allocated for its programs, raising questions about whether the eligibility requirements need to be loosened. The commission was created at the insistence of congressional Democrats during negotiations that led to approval of the $2.2 trillion CARES Act stimulus package earlier this year. The new report comes as Congress begins negotiations over another round of stimulus, which Democrats say must include more money for states and local governments. President Trump met with top Republican lawmakers on Monday to iron out differences over a GOP-only proposal. Members have said the lack of a chairman has hampered the panel’s ability to establish a strategy for policing the $500 billion in bailout money. Joseph Dunford, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, withdrew from consideration for the post earlier this month. The oversight panel has four members: Democratic Rep. Donna Shalala of Florida; GOP Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania; Bharat Ramamurti, a former aide to Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts; and GOP Rep. French Hill of Arkansas.

Fed board nominees move one step closer to Senate approval - Judy Shelton, President Trump’s contentious pick for the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, cleared a key hurdle to confirmation by winning the approval of a majority on the Senate Banking Committee. She was backed in a party-line vote Tuesday, 13-12. The committee also voted in favor of Fed nominee Christopher Waller, currently director of research at the St. Louis Fed. His nomination passed 18-7. Shelton — who has drawn sharp criticism for her unorthodox views on monetary policy and for her sudden willingness to espouse an approach that hews with the president’s — could still fall short before the full Senate, where four Republican defections could block her confirmation. Utah’s Mitt Romney has already said he has “concerns” about the nomination. Some Shelton critics have warned that Trump might elevate her to replace Jerome Powell when his term ends in 2022, imperiling the independence of the U.S. central bank. That’s assuming the president wins re-election in November and is unhappy with his current Fed chair, whom he’s recently praised after years of harsh criticism for too-tight policy. Committee Chair Mike Crapo, Republican of Idaho, said Shelton had affirmed in writing that she believed in Fed independence and that diverse views were important for monetary policy. Ranking Democrat Sherrod Brown of Ohio in turn issued a scathing critique of Shelton, calling her a “dangerous pick” who represents “a threat to our economy, our democracy, and our country.” If Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is confident he has 50 Republican votes in hand, he has the power to call a vote before the Senate recesses for its August break. Shelton holds a doctorate in business administration from the University of Utah and acted as an informal adviser to the Trump campaign in 2016. A strict inflation hawk, she long favored returning the U.S. to the gold standard and has questioned the need for a central-bank-controlled benchmark interest rate. When she emerged as a candidate for a Fed post in early 2019, Shelton also began calling for lower interest rates, a contradiction with her earlier views on inflation but in line with Trump’s demands for easier monetary policy. That exposed her to charges her policy decisions would be driven by political loyalties. “A Chair Shelton could have plenty of capacity to inflict real damage both on the institution but much more importantly on the U.S. economy and the financial system,” said David Wilcox, former director of the Fed’s domestic research and forecasting division. Shelton, during her testimony at a February hearing, insisted that no one will tell her what to do. “I wish to emphasize my commitment to honor the constitutional authority of Congress to regulate the value of U.S. money,” Shelton said. “I believe that the independence of the Federal Reserve is a vital aspect of its credibility with the public.” Waller, a respected economist and Fed insider, won bipartisan support for his confirmation as expected.

Senate panel advances Trump Fed nominee who recently supported gold standard  - President Trump’s controversial nomination of Judy Shelton to the Federal Reserve won the support of a Senate panel Tuesday, paving the way for a final confirmation vote on her appointment to the central bank’s board of governors. The Senate Banking Committee voted along party lines to recommend Shelton’s confirmation as a Fed governor, the last hurdle she faced before a full vote in the GOP-controlled Senate on her nomination. All 13 Republicans on the Banking Committee voted in favor of Shelton, who has drawn criticism for her past support of linking the U.S. dollar to the gold standard, while all 12 Democrats voted in opposition. Shelton’s embattled road to the Fed board appears to be clearing despite early doubts about her viability, including pushback from some GOP senators and the opposition of economists and former Fed officials across the political spectrum. Republicans say that Shelton’s past stances would not impede her service at the central bank, but offer a novel view on the economy. “Dr. Shelton's experience working for nonprofits and academic institutions forged her deep knowledge of democracy, economic theory and monetary policy that will broaden and diversify the Fed’s perspective,” said Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) ahead of the vote. “I'm confident that her deep understanding of the Fed's monetary policy toolkit, monetary history, and commitment to maintaining Fed independence will serve the Fed well and its ongoing efforts to stabilize markets and toward its mission of price stability and full employment.” Shelton is a former U.S. executive director at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

If We Were to Implement a Gold Price Target, What Should the Fed Funds Rate Be? - Menzie Chinn - Given the Senate Banking Committee’s approval of Judy Shelton’s nomination to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, it seems like a good time to see what stabilizing the price of gold in US dollars would’ve required in terms of the policy rate (akin to how the exchange rate is managed). Using the policy rate to  stabilize the dollar price of gold at February 2020 levels would required the increase of the Fed funds rate by 1.15 percentage points higher than it was at that time.  The Fed actually decreased the Fed funds rate by 1.5 percentage percentage points by June 2020.  Figure 1: Price of gold (blue). Red line at NBER defined peak. Source: London bullion market 3pm via FRED. To obtain this estimate this out, consider the relationship between the log price of gold and the nominal Fed funds rate, estimated over the 1968M03-2019M02 period.   pgold = 6.423 – 10.210 fedfunds    Adj-R2 = 0.17, DW = 0.007 n = 612.Bold figures denote significance at the 1% msl, using HAC robust standard errors. fedfunds expressed in decimal form, i.e., 5% = 0.05.  In log terms, the price of gold is 11.8% higher in July (throught 20th) than in February 2020. This implies that the Fed funds rate would have to be 0.118/10.210 = 0.0115, i.e., 1.15 percentage points higher than in February 2020. That would mean the Fed under this targeting should have raised — not lowered — the Fed funds rate, as shown below.  Figure 2: Effective Fed funds rate, % (black), and implied gold price target at 2020M02 levels (red square). Source: Federal Reserve Board and author’s calculations.  More on the gold standard, here.

Romney says he will oppose Shelton’s Fed confirmation - Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah said he will vote against Judy Shelton, one of two Trump administration nominees to the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors. ”I’m not going to be endorsing,” Romney told reporters Thursday. “I will be voting against it.” Shelton, an informal adviser to President Trump’s campaign in 2016, is nominated along with Christopher Waller, a director of research at the St. Louis Fed. They both won the support of a majority on the Senate Banking Committee on July 21.  The two now require majority approval by the full Senate. If, as expected, Democrats vote in unison to reject Shelton’s candidacy, her confirmation could be blocked by Romney and three additional Republicans voting against. No floor vote has yet been scheduled for either nominee. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican who has sometimes bucked her party in the past, indicated that she is likely to support Shelton’s confirmation. “Right now I’m leaning toward it," Murkowski said. "I have a few more things I want to read, probably tonight. But right now, yes.” Shelton is regarded suspiciously by many in central banking circles for policy views that are well outside the mainstream — including a history of admiration for the gold standard — and for being a political loyalist who might bend to Trump’s will. Shelton appeared to abandon her longstanding advocacy for ultratight monetary policy when she emerged as a Fed candidate, publicly aligning herself with the president’s calls for lower interest rates. Waller is widely expected to receive majority support with some Democrats supporting his confirmation. Shelton critics fear most, however, that she might be picked for the Fed’s top job when Powell’s term expires in 2022 if Trump is re-elected. Such a promotion would require another confirmation by the Senate.

 Chicago Fed National Activity "Index Suggests Economic Growth Increased Further in June" - Note: This is a composite index of other data.  From the Chicago Fed: Index Suggests Economic Growth Increased Further in June Led by improvements in production- and employment-related indicators, the Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI) increased to +4.11 in June from +3.50 in May. Three of the four broad categories of indicators used to construct the index made positive contributions in June, and two of the four categories increased from May. The index’s three-month moving average, CFNAI-MA3, moved up to –3.49 in June from –6.36 in May. This graph shows the Chicago Fed National Activity Index (three month moving average) since 1967. According to the Chicago Fed: The index is a weighted average of 85 indicators of growth in national economic activity drawn from four broad categories of data: 1) production and income; 2) employment, unemployment, and hours; 3) personal consumption and housing; and 4) sales, orders, and inventories. ...  A zero value for the monthly index has been associated with the national economy expanding at its historical trend (average) rate of growth; negative values with below-average growth (in standard deviation units); and positive values with above-average growth.

Q2 GDP Forecasts: Probably Around 35% Annual Rate Decline --GDP is reported at a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR). So a 35% Q2 decline is around 10% decline from Q1 (SA). From Merrill Lynch:  The advance 2Q GDP estimate comes out next Thursday and will reveal the depth of the recession. Real activity likely collapsed -36% qoq saar, translating into a peak-to-trough decline of -11.7%. ... We forecast a contraction of -5.7% in 2020, followed by a 3.4% rebound 2021. [July 24 estimate]   From the NY Fed Nowcasting Report The New York Fed Staff Nowcast stands at -14.3% for 2020:Q2 and 13.3% for 2020:Q3. [July 24 estimate]   And from the Altanta Fed: GDPNow The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in thesecond quarter of 2020 is -34.7 percent on July 17, down from -34.5 percent on July 16. [July 17 estimate]

The economic recovery is reversing - The New York Fed's Weekly Economic Index (WEI) is reversing course, showing real-time, high-frequency economic data is again turning negative after climbing back from April and May's coronavirus-driven swoon. The index is one of many that show the economy is getting worse in a trend that could be picking up steam. The WEI represents the common component of 10 different daily and weekly series covering consumer behavior, the labor market and production. It is scaled to the four-quarter GDP growth rate and if it continues on its current trajectory would mean U.S. GDP is poised to sink by 7% in Q3 and decline year over year for the third straight quarter. In addition to the New York Fed's index, real-time data trackers from Goldman Sachs, Jefferies and Oxford Economics have all turned from stalling to falling. The St. Louis Fed's coincident employment index has turned lower, showing jobs growth has reversed. The number of employees returning to work at small- and medium-sized businesses declined by at least 5% from early June to mid-July, according to Homebase.  TSA data showed the first weekly decline in people passing through checkpoints since April. "Economic data over the next few weeks will likely underscore the depth of the recession and provide a warning that a full recovery is still far from being achieved," David Kelly, chief global strategist at JPMorgan Asset Management, says in a note to clients.  While many investors are counting on stimulus from Congress as well as a renewed balance sheet expansion from the Fed if economic data continue to deteriorate, Kelly says this is akin to "pumping air into a leaky tire." "Government spending will also likely drag on the economy as many state and local governments will be forced to cut payrolls to balance budgets in reaction to the deep recession and lack of sufficient federal government aid." He anticipates real GDP will fall 7.5% year over year in the third quarter, with much slower future progress without the widespread distribution of a vaccine.  "To state the obvious, economic uncertainty is extraordinarily high right now, even eclipsing levels at the worst of the financial crisis," Kelly says. "It is the pandemic, rather than any lack of stimulus, that is holding the economy back." "[I]n a pandemic economy, stimulus alone cannot trigger a full recovery."

US Covid-19 surge could trigger a double-dip recession FT - The relentless rise in the number of new US Covid-19 infections, which is being followed by increased hospitalisation rates and fatalities in the worst affected states, suggests that Anthony Fauci of the White House coronavirus task force was justified when he recently described the deteriorating situation as a “perfect storm”.So far, the US policy response has been muted, certainly compared to nationwide lockdowns in other countries in March. And markets remain surprisingly relaxed, reportedly because investors are optimistic that an effective vaccine from the Oxford university or Moderna trials may be “within sight”. Those trials are highly encouraging. But even the most favourable outcome in vaccine development would come too late to save the US economy from the spread of the virus over the next three months. Unless public policy can control the rate of infections across the American sunbelt, there could be adverse consequences for any US economic recovery over the rest of this year. Consensus economic forecasts have not yet given much weight to this increasing risk, although the US Federal Reserve is increasingly worried. Fulcrum economists have developed a new model which tracks the epidemic on a state-by-state basis, based on the now-familiar SIRD model used by the Imperial College Covid-19 response team and other researchers.It suggests that the virus’s effective reproduction number, known as R, is now above the critical level of 1 in all but five of the US’s 50 states. Weighted by gross domestic product, this means that 95 per cent of the US economy is affected by a viral reproduction rate high enough to cause an exponential rise in the number of cases — unless something intervenes to prevent this. Other researchers have found similar results.This spread of R levels above 1 is the broadest it has been since the epidemic started. In March, absolute levels of R were higher in the north east, when the reproduction rate exceeded 3 for several weeks and infection numbers doubled every few days.In the current wave, the generally lower levels of R have slowed down the spread of the disease. Furthermore, the age distribution of the infected group is younger, and the case fatality rate within intensive care units has fallen as treatment has improved. As a result, there has been political resistance to full lockdowns in the most severely affected states. Unfortunately, international experience suggests that delayed lockdowns result in worse outcomes for cases and fatalities, at least in the short term.

R Is for Recession Unless We Can Go Below 1 - John Authers - The pandemic continues to be as divisive a subject as it is possible to imagine, and it might yet — as the economist Gavyn Davies says — inflict a double-dip recession on us all. The problem isn’t necessarily whether to issue official stay-at-home orders, or reopen schools, but that a failure to beat the coronavirus has a chilling effect on economic activity. Exhibit a) is the extraordinary difference in the return to restaurants in Germany (which appears to have the virus relatively under control) and the U.S. (which does not). This chart is from George Saravelos of Deutsche Bank AG: America isn’t going to reopen much more until the populace is convinced that the pandemic is under control. And the differences over fiscal policy currently roiling Congress could be critical because the number of people still on some form of assistance (normal jobless claims or the specific Covid relief introduced earlier this year) remains very high. This chart from High Frequency Economics illustrates the situation clearly: It therefore grows vital to bring the R number — the number of new people who each infected individual will infect on average — below the level of 1. Once this has been reached, the disease is no longer spreading. Unfortunately, Davies writes in the Financial Times, R is above 1 in 45 of the 50 U.S. states, which between them account for 95% of U.S. GDP. Unless this number reduces quickly, the likelihood is that the disease will become prevalent enough to change people’s behavior, whatever politicians do.  But if we look across the Sun Belt states where the disease is rampant, the data give at least some cautious signs for optimism. The surge in cases looks as though it should pass without overwhelming hospital systems — although there is no reason for complacency. For evidence, I return to Arizona’s Covid dashboard, which includes lots of useful information that nevertheless has caused much confusion. We now know that deaths were in fact rising significantly at the point that this chart was published. So far, according to the official tally, 2,761 Arizonans have died of the pandemic, of whom 27% are aged 64 or less. Can the death rate also hit a level in the next week, as hospitalizations appear to have done, and then start to decline? This is naturally the most important human question. But the chances of returning economic activity and avoiding a double-dip recession could also depend on physicians’ attempts to keep people across the Sun Belt alive in the next few weeks, as well as on the ability to everyone to change their behavior in the way that is needed to bring R below 0.

Covid-19 Economic Realities Sinking in as Denialism Wanes, Desperation Rises - Yves Smith - Perhaps it was last week’s continuation of bad unemployment figures combined with the recognition that PPP employment-maintenance requires were rolling off and more layoffs are likely. Maybe it was Delta saying it was cancelling half the flights it had planned to add in August. Maybe it’s the severity of the coronavirus surges. Who knows what the trigger was, or whether it’s just the accumulation of evidence, but big businessmen, who are required to project optimism, are more and more sending downbeat messages about where the economy is going.It’s becoming clear that understanding where the economy is going now depends on understanding where Covid-19 is going. The evidence from the lockdowns was that activity and spending fell before governments intervened. And the contraction was most pronounced in wealthy neighborhoods, even though the blow fell on the less-well-off who commuted in to work there. Those who have the luxury of being able to curtail their activities are largely doing so. Look at big cities. Large companies are overwhelmingly continuing work at home where they can. Business travel is dead; business hotels in NYC like the Four Seasons, the Grand Hyatt, and the Hilton on 6th Avenues are closed. We thought the initial recovery would peter out and turn into at best stagnation and more likely further decay, on the assumption of entire sectors not participating much if at all in a rebound (live entertainment, business travel, tourism, elective surgeries, restaurants) plus Covid-19 being likely to rebound in the fall. With Covid-19 infections rising in nearly all states, the situation is even worse than we’d anticipated. Most of the issues we’ll discuss below are familiar to reader, but there’s value in putting them together and seeing where they lead. First to the disease, then to the economic implications.

20Y Treasury Prices At Record Low Yield Amid Relentless Demand For Duration - Two months after the first 20Y auction in 34 years priced at a yield of 1.22% amid surprisingly strong demand, moments ago the Treasury sold its third batch of the recently restarted 20Y Treasury in the form of a $17 billion reopening (19-years-10-months) of the original Cusip (SR0), which priced at a high yield of 1.059%, far below last month's 1.314%, yet tailing modestly to the 1.050% When Issued. The auction metrics are as follows:

• Bid to Cover: 2.43x compared to 2.63x last month and below the 2.53x in the inaugural, May auction.
• Indirects: 67.0%, well above both June's 61.6% and May's 60.7%
• Directs: 11.8%, a bit drop from the 16.5% in June, and also below May's 14.7%
• Dealers: 21.2%, almost unchanged from last month's 21.9%.

One possible reason for the modest tail is that the curve has been rallying, with 10Y trading below 0.59%, just shy of all time lows, thus providing little opportunity for concession. Of course, since there is just one auction in recent history to compare today's auction to, superficially the auction was quite strong, although one look at the curve shows that the 20Y is somewhat "kinky" on the curve.

 The US Can Now Buy Canada- Treasury Cash Balance Hits A Record $1.812 Trillion - The Treasury cash balance has been surging ever since a flood of T-Bill issuance was unleashed at the start of Q2 to prefund the trillions in fiscal stimulus outlays that are needed to keep the US economy for collapsing, with the total amount of cash on (Steven Mnuchin's) hand rising by a record $1.4 trillion, since April 1. On July 17, shortly after the tax deadline date, the Treasury cash balance hit a new all time high as the Treasury pocketed tens of billions via taxes, and it is now a record high $1.812 trillion.  Putting this amount of cash in context it represents about $5,660 for every man, woman and child in the US (which many would say should be sent out directly to these people instead of provided to US corporations so they can repurchase stock), it is greater than the market cap of Apple even with the current insane meltup in the Nasdaq, and is greater than the GDP of the 10th largest nation in the world, Canada.. ... which means that if Trump wanted to, he could buy all of Canada and not even have to LBO it, but instead pay cold, hard cash for it. Joking aside, the massive cash build up is likely a preamble to forgiving the roughly $500 billion in PPP grants which will be "repaid" down using Treasury cash. Yet even so, it would mean that the Treasury would still have about $1.3 trillion left over, which is curious as the Treasury's own most recent quarterly projections ions anticipated "only" $800 billion in Treasury cash at the end of Q2. As such, the amount of excess cash means either that the US needs to issue far less debt in the current quarter than previously forecast (about $3 trillion), or the Treasury needs to find new and creative ways of delivering all this cash to Americans (ideally individuals rather than corporations this time).

White House threatens veto of defense bill over Confederate provision  --The White House on Tuesday threatened to veto annual defense policy legislation in part because it includes a provision that would direct the Pentagon to rename military bases currently named after Confederate leaders. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a statement hours before a House vote on the massive defense policy bill expressing “serious concerns” about multiple provisions of the bill. The White House said that if the bill were presented to President Trump in its current form, “his senior advisors would recommend that he veto it.” “The Administration strongly objects to section 2829, which would require renaming of certain military institutions,” the statement reads. “It also has serious concerns about provisions of the bill that seek to micromanage aspects of the executive branch’s authority, impose highly prescriptive limitations on the use of funds for Afghanistan, and otherwise constrain the President’s authority to protect national security interests.” The White House said that many of the provisions “would pose significant challenges” to the administration’s implementation of its national defense strategy. Trump has previously expressed opposition to the renaming of bases named after Confederate leaders — a position that put him at odds with Pentagon leaders — and has also defended flying the Confederate flag as “freedom of speech.” Trump has described the bases named for Confederate leaders as a part of American history. The president threatened to veto the bill, formally known as the National Defense Authorization Act, in a tweet earlier this month. In an interview with Fox News over the weekend, Trump appeared to soften his position, saying that he “might” veto the bill. The statement released Tuesday describes the provision as “part of a sustained effort to erase from the history of the Nation those who do not meet an ever-shifting standard of conduct,” pointing to ongoing efforts to rename or topple federal monuments and memorials. “President Trump has been clear in his opposition to politically motivated attempts like this to rewrite history and to displace the enduring legacy of the American Revolution with a new left-wing cultural revolution,” the OMB statement reads.

House Passes Defense Bill Renaming Confederate Bases, Setting Up Showdown With Trump Who would have thought that in 2020 famous Army base names like Fort Hood or Fort Bragg might hold up America's central and crucial defense spending bill? On Tuesday President Trump said he would veto this year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) if it strips Confederate names from military bases. The issue which would see iconic longtime base names ditched for their Confederate 'taint' became front and center after months of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests rocked the nation. AP file image This after the House passed it Tuesday in a 295-125 vote. The White House subsequently warned in a statement: "President Trump has been clear in his opposition to politically motivated attempts like this to rewrite history and to displace the enduring legacy of the American Revolution with a new left-wing cultural revolution," according to Politico. Another provision Trump reportedly objects to is limiting spending on Afghanistan, which he's previously expressed a strong desire to pull out of, and what's seen as other Democrat-led attempts to curb his authority. The current $740 billion is considered "must pass" legislation given it sets next year's policy and spending for the Department of Defense, including pay for troops and defense hardware and combat gear acquisitions. Another interesting debate is centered in the Pentagon's controversial program to transfer military-grade equipment to local civilian police departments, greater scrutiny of which came in the wake of George Floyd protests. The Senate defeated an amendment which would have blocked the program.

House-passed defense spending bill includes provision establishing White House cyber czar - The House version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed Tuesday included a provision establishing a national cyber director at the White House, a role that would help coordinate federal cybersecurity efforts. Bipartisan legislation establishing this position was originally introduced last month, and was added to the NDAA as part of a larger cybersecurity package on Monday. The national cyber director would serve as the president’s principal advisor on cybersecurity and emerging technology issues, and serve as a coordinating force for federal cyber action. The national cyber director would replace the previous White House cybersecurity coordinator role, which was eliminated by former national security advisor John Bolton in 2018 in an effort to decrease bureaucracy. Bipartisan support for reestablishing the position with further authorities has increased in recent months as cyberattacks targeted as hospitals, COVID-19 research, and other sectors have skyrocketed. The House passed the overall 2021 NDAA by a vote of 295-125 Tuesday afternoon. The Senate has not yet voted on its version of the NDAA, but the version that cleared the Senate Armed Services Committee included a clause requiring an “assessment” of the “feasibility” of establishing the position, throwing into question whether the position will be established. The measure creating the provision was included in the NDAA as part of a slate of legislation designed to boost federal cybersecurity. Many of the measures included were based on recommendations from the Cyberspace Solarium Commission (CSC), a group established by Congress to recommend ways to defend the United States in cyberspace. Another measure added to the NDAA gives the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) the ability to issue subpoenas to internet service providers compelling them to release information on cyber vulnerabilities detected on the networks of critical infrastructure groups. Other clauses included were those to establish a five-year term for the directors of CISA, to establish a biennial tabletop exercise led by DHS to evaluate the ability of the federal government to respond to a cyberattack on critical infrastructure, and the establishment of a federally-funded center to develop cybersecurity insurance certificates. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee where many of these policies originated, said in a statement Tuesday that “these amendments all play a critical part in mitigating our nation’s cyber risk and working to stay ahead of evolving cybersecurity threats.”

Trump asked envoy to see if UK would move British Open to his Scottish resort: NYT - U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom Robert Wood Johnson told colleagues in early 2018 that President Trump had asked him to see if the British government would help Turnberry – the president's Scottish golfing resort – secure an offer to host the British Open, the world's oldest golf tournament, The New York Times reports.The newspaper, citing three people with knowledge of the situation, reported Tuesday that Johnson's deputy, Lewis Lukens, advised him not to raise the idea but Johnson decided to nonetheless, running the idea by David Mundell, Scotland's then-secretary of State.  A statement from Downing Street obtained by the newspaper said that the U.S. diplomat “made no request of Mr. Mundell regarding the British Open or any other sporting event."  The White House declined to comment to the Times about Trump's reported instructions and both Johnson and the State Department also declined to comment.

GOP coronavirus proposal takes shape -- Republicans are preparing to roll out their latest coronavirus relief proposal as soon as next week as Congress faces growing pressure to act amid a surge of new cases. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is planning to start briefing his caucus next week on the forthcoming Republican proposal, which he wants to use as a framework for negotiations with Democrats. “Once we go back into session next week, I’ll begin socializing ... internalizing, if you will, discussions that I’ve had during this week off, with my members,” McConnell said during a stop in Kentucky on Tuesday. Asked what the Senate’s agenda will be, McConnell separately told WRVK, a Kentucky radio station, that “this new coronavirus package will be front and center. That will dominate our time ... starting next week.” McConnell and other Republicans say the roughly $3 trillion bill passed by the House in late May is “dead on arrival” in the Senate. Republicans and the White House are spending the two-week recess drafting and discussing their own measure. Lawmakers will return to Washington on Monday, which will leave the House and Senate just a couple of weeks to work out a final deal. The Senate is scheduled to be in session until Aug. 7, setting a natural deadline for the upcoming talks. The House is set to leave on July 31, though House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on Tuesday that she would “absolutely” delay the start of recess. Some key points of the GOP measure are already taking shape: The White House has signaled that it wants a price tag of roughly $1 trillion, while Senate Republicans have drawn a red line on including liability protections for hospitals, schools and businesses to help shield them from coronavirus-related lawsuits. Those protections are scheduled to be retroactive dating back to December 2019 through approximately December 2024, with exceptions for entities that were “grossly negligent” or engaged in intentional misconduct. “That will be in any bill that passes the Senate,” McConnell said on Tuesday. In addition to liability protections, the forthcoming Republican measure is expected to focus on getting kids back in schools for in-person classes starting in the fall, including helping cover associated costs. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) during a press conference in South Carolina said he wanted the next bill to help “absorb” costs for school districts. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, recently noted that by some estimates schools could need up to $75 billion, adding, “We should spend that money for schools and for colleges.” The president has threatened to cut off funding for schools that do not reopen for classes. Economic adviser Larry Kudlow, who has called resuming in-person classes a “very, very high priority,” added to Fox News that Trump “would be willing to consider additional funding for state and local governments if the schools do reopen.” Both Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and McConnell have indicated support for another round of stimulus checks, though the GOP leader has signaled there will likely be a lower income ceiling of $40,000 per year.

GOP signals Trump's payroll-tax cut in Republican coronavirus bill — for now - Top administration officials signaled on Monday night that a payroll-tax cut, a top priority for President Trump, is in the forthcoming Republican coronavirus aid proposal, at least for now. Asked if the payroll-tax cut had to be in the Republican bill, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters "it's in the bill." "So we'll see," he added. "We look forward to meeting with everybody." White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, asked about the payroll-tax cut, added that it "plans to be in it." "I mean, that’s part of the proposal," he added. The administration is pushing to include a payroll-tax cut in the fifth coronavirus aid package. Trump publicly pitched the idea during a meeting at the White House on Monday with Mnuchin, Meadows, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). "I think it's a very important thing. ...I think it's an incentive for companies to hire their workers back. ... A payroll-tax cut to me is very important," he told reporters. McCarthy told reporters after the meeting that the payroll-tax cut would be in the forthcoming GOP bill. Talk of including the payroll-tax cut in the Republican proposal is largely fluid, with a GOP bill not yet released. Republicans and the White House are still negotiating among themselves. Mnuchin and Meadows are set to brief the Republican conference during a closed-door Tuesday lunch. They will also meet again with a smaller group of GOP senators and have their first meeting with Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said that he personally doesn't support including the payroll-tax cut in the next coronavirus aid package, but floated that it could be in the initial version of the Republican bill. "I would say that it is a big priority, as you know, for the President. And so his advocates, Mnuchin and Meadows and others, I think will probably try and ensure that it's at least included in the first draft," Thune said, before laughing. "Let's put it that way." Asked if that meant it could come out later, Thune added that "there are a lot of Republicans who don't like it for a lot of different reasons." 

GOP Stimulus Bill To Include Payroll Tax 'Deferral' And Direct Payments, Reduced Unemployment Boost - A new pandemic relief bill being drafted by Senate Republicans and the White House would include a payroll tax 'deferral', as well as another round of direct payments to individual Americans - potentially at the same $1,200 level as the previous stimulus in the Cares Act. According to the Washington Post, the payroll tax deferral is in lieu of an outright cut - which keeps down the technical cost of the overall bill, but could also be waived entirely by lawmakers at a later date."It’s been proven to be successful and it’s a big saving for the people. It’s a tremendous saving and an incentive for companies to hire their workers back and to keep their workers," Trump said of the payroll tax relief, following a Monday meeting in the Oval Office which included Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin."The payroll tax to me is very important," Trump added of the 7.65% tax paid by employers and employees which funds Social Security and Medicare.Mnuchin, meanwhile, "confirmed Republicans plan to reduce the size of a $600-per-week enhanced unemployment benefit approved in March, which will begin running out for millions of Americans later this week," according to the Post, which notes that Republicans have argued that many workers are making more thanks to the enhanced unemployment benefits than they were while employed."We’re going to make sure that we don’t pay people more money to stay at home than go to work, we want to make sure that people who can go to work safely can do so," said Mnuchin. "We’ll have tax credits that incentivize businesses to bring people back to work, will have tax credits for [personal protective equipment] for safe work environments."On Tuesday, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows will be meeting with the full Senate GOP conference at their weekly policy lunch in order to review the proposal.According to McConnell, the legislation will contain liability protection for businesses, healthcare providers and others per the Post."We don't need an epidemic of lawsuits." The GOP legislation will reportedly omit funds for cities and states which Democrats have requested, and will instead allow governors and local leaders to more easily tap into $150 billion which has already been reserved, according to the Post, citing two other people familiar with the talks.

Full liability release for businesses and hospitals - It’s necessary, Mitch McConnell and his colleagues say, because of a “flood” of frivolous lawsuits crushing businesses and threatening economic recovery. So it’s important to say this clearly and out loud: there is no crisis of COVID-19 litigation. It’s made-up, it doesn’t exist, it’s a ploy to get businesses out of paying for compliance. That’s entirely it.We have all the evidence we need on this. Hunton Andrews Kurth, a law firm, has been dutifully tracking COVID-19 complaints at its website for all to see. As of today, it shows 3,521 “complaints,” but the majority of those involve petitions for prisoner release and fights over insurance claims, as well as consumer and contract disputes. Under “labor and employment” there are a grand total of 302 cases, total, across the entire country.There are 616 “civil rights” claims, and while most of those are challenges to stay-at-home orders, a couple of those might be business-related. At least one high-profile workplace case, against Tyson and JBS meatpacking plants, is being contested under the Civil Rights Act. The claim is that the largely Black and Latino workforces were not protected due to racial discrimination, compared to the mostly white managers. But that’s a very particular situation. If you’re talking about the kind of cases that McConnell claims are “flooding” courts—“conditions of employment” cases alleging wrongful death, exposure to COVID-19, or a lack of personal protective equipment—there are 67 such cases. There are 33 wrongful death cases in the “Health/Medical” section but almost all of them have been filed against nursing homes. There are 6 malpractice cases, only one a COVID-19 misdiagnosis that resulted in death (three others are about nursing homes). There’s exactly one (1) miscellaneous wrongful death tort case outside the labor and health sections.

McConnell says next COVID-19 relief bill will include stimulus checks  -Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday that Republicans want to include a second round of stimulus checks and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funding as part of their forthcoming coronavirus proposal. "Speaking of building on what worked in the CARES Act, we want another round of direct payments, direct payments to help American families keep driving our national comeback," McConnell said from the Senate floor. The March $2.2 trillion coronavirus package included a one-time $1,200 payment for Americans who make up to $75,000 per year. The amount of the direct payment was scaled down until it hit an income level of $99,000 per year where it was phased out altogether. McConnell, during his floor speech, did not provide details on who would qualify for the next round of stimulus checks. But traveling across Kentucky during the two-week July 4 recess, he repeatedly referenced individuals who make up to $40,000 per year, suggesting Republicans could place a lower income ceiling to qualify for the direct assistance in the next coronavirus bill. Republicans embracing the next round of checks is a stark turnaround from recent months, where several GOP senators said they were either opposed to or not convinced of the need for more checks. The Trump administration initially requested two rounds of checks as part of the March coronavirus bill. But GOP senators, at the time, rejected that and instead did a one-time check. The movement toward a second round of checks comes as the economy remains rocky as the country's coronavirus cases continue to climb. Unemployment also remains stuck in the double digits. In addition to a second round of stimulus checks, McConnell said Republicans also supported a second tranche of PPP funding, which provides loans to businesses with fewer than 500 employees. There's bipartisan support for another round, though a key group of negotiators are looking at tightening the qualifications for qualifying for the help. "With a majority of businesses expected to exhaust their initial paycheck protection funding this summer, we'll also be proposing a targeted second round of PPP, with a special eye toward hard-hit businesses," McConnell said.

 Senate GOP Weighs Short-Term Extension For Unemployment Aid While Lawmakers Fight Over Stimulus - With a $2.5 trillion gulf between Republican and Democratic stimulus packages - and ongoing negotiations between the White House and Senate GOP over issues such as a payroll tax cut favored by President Trump, chances of a successful negotiation happening anytime soon are fleeting at best - and will most likely continue beyond when the $600 weekly unemployment carved out under the Cares Act is set to lapse at the end of the month. Notably, the Republicans are aiming for a $1 trillion stimulus package, while Democrats have a $3.5 trillion price tag on theirs. In order to address what will undoubtedly be a protracted negotiation, lawmakers are considering a side-deal which would extend the unemployment bonus, according to Bloomberg.. While Republicans have criticized the $2,400 per month stipend as a disincentive to seek work, the plan to extend the benefits has drawn the support of GOP Senators, including Marco Rubio (R-FL), who acknowledged that lawmakers are considering the plan. That said, the size and scope of any extension is currently unknown. Both parties also support extending supplemental unemployment benefits. Some Republicans have floated the idea of structuring it so that unemployment insurance replaces 70% to 75% of previous wages rather than the flat $600 per week boost to state benefits in the last stimulus. But others, including Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa, have insisted that the solution has to be simple enough for the states to easily implement.  Not in favor of the extension is House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), who said "I would prefer not to see a short-term extension," adding that he wants "to give people the security they are not going to be let down and fall through the cracks in September and October." Meanwhile, the White House has softened its tone regarding a mandatory payroll tax holiday, though on Tuesday Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said that President Trump is still in favor of the measures.

How Mitch McConnell’s Hostility to the Unemployment Supplement Puts Ordinary Americans’ Welfare at Risk --  Although Army veteran and community volunteer Ken Merkel slashed his car insurance, quit his satellite TV service and canceled a life insurance policy, he still needs $600 in weekly federal unemployment payments to make ends meet.But this lifeline for Merkel and more than 30 million other unemployed workers is in jeopardy because Senate Republicans refuse to extend the benefits period and pass other legislation critically needed to battle the pandemic.Instead of safeguarding hard-working Americans who fell on hard times through no fault of their own, callous Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—the person who controls the Senate’s agenda—put them squarely in harm’s way. The Democratic-controlled House already passed the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act to combat the pandemic and help millions of average Americans avert financial calamity.The commonsense legislation would extend emergency federal unemployment benefits, due to expire at the end of July, through January. It would provide aid to local governments struggling to maintain essential public services because of COVID-19 budget crises, deliver another round of stimulus checks to hard-pressed families and ensure that those who lose their jobs continue to receive health insurance.The HEROES Act would finally force the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration totake steps to protect workers from COVID-19 on the job. And it would allocate billions of dollars for COVID-19 testing and contact tracing, measures crucial for controlling the virus in hotspots like Alabama and McConnell’s home state of Kentucky.But more than two months after the House passed the HEROES Act, it languishes in the Senate. In refusing to bring the measure to a vote, McConnell flaunts both his disdain for average Americans and his indifference to the enormous damage that COVID-19 continues to inflict on the country each day.

Depleted Trump Economic Team Faces Major Test Over Extending Coronavirus Relief Efforts – WSJ - The White House’s freewheeling approach to policy-making faces a key test next week as negotiations begin with Congress over extending emergency economic relief measures during the coronavirus pandemic. The stakes are high. Economists say the next aid package will be critical in shaping the pace of recovery from the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression. The Trump administration hasn’t publicly detailed its proposals. It has offered competing visions in recent months, at first over whether an additional package would be needed at all, and more recently over whether it should tilt more toward tax cuts and hiring incentives or toward providing more direct spending.President Trump has voiced support for both, but the administration has yet to reconcile how to do this while satisfying many congressional Republicans who want to hold down the cost of another bill.Moreover, the administration has seen heavy turnover since Congress passed a $2.2 trillion economic relief bill in March, further complicating efforts to forge consensus or provide leadership to congressional Republicans.As a result, political analysts say Senate Republicans, led by Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, are poised to play the larger role in negotiations with House Democrats on legislation that will shape the U.S. economic outlook in the crucial months before the November election.When Congress passed relief bills last spring, many policy makers expected the economy would be on its feet again by the summer. Since then, a wave of new Covid-19 cases threatens to stall the nascent recovery as dozens of states pause or reverse plans to reopen.The White House and lawmakers returning from  recess next week are under pressure to pass another measure before departing for their August break, because expanded jobless benefits expire at the end of this month and the virus is spreading in more states. The White House’s negotiations are being led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who has a close working relationship with Trump adviser Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council. Mark Meadows, Mr. Mnuchin, a former investment banker, has been the most public economic voice in the administration. He has a working relationship with both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell. Some conservatives, however, see him as too eager to cut deals with Mrs. Pelosi.

GOP governors in hardest hit states split over COVID-19 response - The governors of the two largest Republican-run states are diverging in their responses to a massive surge in coronavirus cases. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a major Trump ally in a key 2020 battleground, has consistently downplayed the severity of the outbreak even as it worsens in his state. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, meanwhile, has started taking steps to address the spike in cases, though not on the same scale as many Democratic governors or even some fellow Republican ones. Their actions underscore the varying degrees to which GOP governors are willing to follow President Trump's lead in the fight against COVID-19. DeSantis is a first-term governor who eked out a narrow victory in 2018 after being endorsed by Trump several times. Political observers believe that relationship has influenced his response to the outbreak. "Clearly, they've been joined together politically, and DeSantis owes the fact that he is governor today to President Trump," said Aubrey Jewett, a political scientist at the University of Central Florida. On Friday, when Florida reported nearly 11,500 new cases and almost 9,000 people hospitalized, DeSantis said he thinks cases are stabilizing. Like Trump, DeSantis has largely been dismissive of the devastating impact of COVID-19 and at times antagonistic toward virus-related restrictions. He has refused to issue a statewide mask order, cut funding for disease treatment in prisons and eliminated the state’s entire online learning budget. His position on masks aligns him with Trump, who has declined to issue a nationwide mandate for facial coverings in public. Before last weekend, Trump had repeatedly declined to wear a mask in public, even as Republican lawmakers had urged him to set an example for the country. In Texas, another state where cases are surging, Abbott budged from some previous positions. He recently reversed his months-long opposition to masks, mandating them in certain counties. The mandate applies to most of the counties in the state, but some local sheriffs have said they will refuse to enforce it. "That's not enough," Obasi said. "You've seen mayors and you see judges begging to be able to do more but can't because it would be more restrictive than state restrictions." Houston's mayor has been pleading for the authority to issue a two-week shutdown to slow the spread of the virus, but has been rebuffed by Abbott.

Thoughts on CARES II: Additional Disaster Relief – McBride - A month ago I outlined a few key items for additional disaster relief.  Time is running short. This morning, the WaPo had an article on some proposals: GOP coronavirus bill likely to include payroll tax cut and tie school money to reopening plansThe emerging GOP coronavirus relief bill appears likely to embrace some of President Trump’s key priorities, despite opposition from within his own party, including a payroll tax cut, very little aid to state and local governments, and measures tying school funding to the reopening of classrooms.The proposed payroll tax deferral is inane (using a "deferral" as opposed to a cut is an accounting gimmick).  This proposal targets money for people with a low marginal propensity to consume (MPC).Compare that to the current Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC) that targets unemployed people with a high MPC, and helps them pay their bills (grocery, rent, mortgage, etc). Other people's spending is our income, so during this crisis, we want to provide disaster relief to the people that are most impacted by the crisis (the unemployed), and those with a high MPC. A few suggestions:
First, we need to address the health crisis. This means additional money for hospitals, testing, trace-and-isolate programs, and personal protection equipment (PPE).   Test results are taking far too long, and that isn't useful.   We need to significantly improve our testing (and turnaround).  Also, it appears PPE is running low again for our healthcare workers.  This puts these frontline workers at risk.
Second, we need to provide additional disaster relief to the unemployed. I discussed this last month, and this includes an extension of the Extension of Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC), even if the amount is reduced. This is critical, or we will see a significant slump in spending in August, and a sharp increase in delinquencies (rents, mortgages, credit cards, etc). We will also need to extend the term of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). This program has kept many small businesses alive, and millions of employees employed. There will have to be additional disaster relief for these companies, or millions of people will be let go soon.
Third, we need to provide State government relief. It is time for a substantial state relief package. Without relief, the states and local governments will have to start laying off a significant number of employees. These are some key areas, and it seems very likely there will be a "CARES II" act.  But it has to be sized and structured appropriately.

Lawmakers seek extension for tribes to spend stimulus money following Treasury delays - Lawmakers are stepping in to seek more time for tribal governments to spend coronavirus relief money after funding slated for Native American communities was delayed by the Treasury Department. A new bill, which has been introduced by bipartisan teams in both the House and Senate, would give tribal governments until December 30, 2022 to spend funds that would otherwise must be spent by the end of this year. “Tribal communities ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic received federal resources and relief far too late – pitting them right up against fast approaching spending deadlines,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), one of the Senate sponsors, adding that the legislation “will allow tribal governments extra time to address the planning needs for these critical funds.” Tribes were allotted $8 billion in funds through the $2.2 trillion March CARES legislation. But the funding was repeatedly held up by Treasury Sec. Steven Mnuchin, who delayed releasing the funds as litigation proceeded over whether corporations affiliated with tribes should receive funds. So-called Alaska Native Corporations, which have vast land holdings and secure significant profits from timber and oil sales, had sued to receive some of the funding but were blocked by a May court ruling. Treasury began to release some of the funding in May, but it wasn’t until a June court decision by the same judge that Mnuchin was forced to release all of the funding. “The Secretary has now taken more than twice as much time as Congress directed to distribute all CARES Act funds,” U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta wrote at the time. “The 80 days they have waited, when Congress intended receipt of emergency funds in less than half that time, is long enough.”

 Strip Clubs Being Left Bare By Paycheck Protection Program -Among everybody's favorite "small businesses" that shut down due to the pandemic earlier this year were our fine country's strip clubs. And like every other business in the "hospitality" industry, these clubs hoped the government's Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) would help them stay afloat during the shutdown. But a little known provision in the Trump administration's program that bans companies that “present live performances of a prurient sexual nature” from participating has stopped some clubs in their tracks. Several have sued and Federal judges have rebuked the SBA for excluding them, according to Reuters. It's the latest in a growing list of criticisms of the program, which has been rife with waste, fraud and abuse since its inception. Meanwhile, some legitimate businesses in the hospitality industry, like gentleman's clubs, can't get access to funds. It's still unclear if the SBA will even work with the clubs that have won court orders.Brad Shafer, an attorney who convinced a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan to issue a ruling in May ordering the SBA to work with more than 50 strip clubs, said: “The ball is in the SBA’s court right now. We still don’t know the end of this story.”  Reuters was able to find 36 organizations that represented "dozens" of strip clubs across the country that were approved for between $11.15 million and $27.95 million from the program. Some businesses had to wait until after the court's decision to get their funding. John Meehan, who owns Cheerleaders strip clubs in New Jersey and Philadelphia, was denied by PNC for loans. He said: “I wasn’t complaining, but I was scratching my head.” A spokeswoman for PNC said she didn't know why the loans were denied: “Under those guidelines, applicants were responsible for certifying that they met applicable SBA eligibility requirements, and lenders were not required to independently verify such eligibility."

Not ageing well . . . A month ago, when the public health community was warning about the dangers of premature opening and our reality show President was turning mask-wearing into a culture war issue, David Henderson and Jonathan Lipow decided to use precious space on the Wall Street Journal op ed page to publish an essay titled “The Data Are In: It’s Time for Major Reopening” (ungated at the link).  They argue that “populationwide lockdowns should end” and even suggest that social distancing has been harmful.  OK, then, I guess there’s no need to second-guess re-opening bars in Florida or Arizona.  And no need to worry about testing and contact tracing, despite the fact that one of the papers they cite to support their position recommends it.  And no need to tear our hair out worrying about masks.  It’s all good.

Trump administration expands assault on coronavirus testing - In an interview with Chris Wallace that aired Sunday on “Fox News Sunday,” US President Donald Trump continued his attacks on mass coronavirus testing in the United States. While claiming that countries in Europe “don’t test,” supposedly explaining the continent’s lower case count, Trump decried testing in the US for “really skew[ing] the numbers.” He asserted, “In a way we’re creating trouble.” The president also said that “many of those cases shouldn’t even be cases,” because “many of those cases are young people that would heal in a day.” Trump then added, “They have the sniffles and we put it down as a test.” Wallace was forced to correct Trump, stating that “Testing is up 37 percent. Cases are up 194 percent. It isn’t just that the testing has gone, the virus has spread. The positivity rate has increased.” Trump’s interview was broadcast as the number of cases in the US has already exceeded 3.8 million, more than any other country in the world, and as the number of deaths has soared to 143,000. Worldwide, there are now 14.6 million cases and 608,000 deaths. The majority of reported daily new cases and deaths are from the United States, Brazil, India, South Africa and Mexico. Florida continues to be the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States, having recorded more than 12,000 new cases yesterday and at least 87 deaths. California had the second highest number of new cases, 8,115, and 11 deaths. Ohio, which Governor Mike DeWine has touted as doing “very well,” had the second highest death toll yesterday, 40 people, along with more than 1,000 new cases. Texas ranked third in both metrics, with 7,389 new cases and 39 reported deaths. Even New York, which has been hailed as a success story in controlling the coronavirus after being the world epicenter in April, recorded 850 cases and 18 deaths. The state of Montana, which had two multi-day stretches of no new cases in May, now has one of the fastest-growing outbreaks in the country. Other states with large case counts or deaths rates—or both—include Georgia, Arizona, Louisiana, North Carolina and South Carolina. According to the coronavirus tracking website covidexitstrategy.org, 17 states in the American South and West have “uncontrolled spread” of the disease while only four across the country are “trending better” in regard to their outbreak. In the interview with Fox News, Trump also reiterated his demand that children attend school in the fall, regardless of their safety. “Young people have to go to school. There are problems when you don’t go to school, too.” He then again threatened to withhold federal money from states and school districts that don’t reopen. “There is going to be a funding problem. When they don’t open their schools, we’re not going to fund them.”

Trump implodes on 'Fox News Sunday'  - Most of the time, you know when Donald Trump’s going to appear on Fox News. Because he tells you ahead of time. Trump’s the only politician today who’s his own publicist, alerting his 55 million Twitter followers whenever he’s going to show up on “Fox & Friends,” or with prime-time hosts Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson or Laura Ingraham. For him, even though he’s been president for 3 1/2 years, it’s still all about ratings, ratings, ratings. Trump notifies us when he’s going to be on Fox News most of the time. But not the last time. He didn’t tweet a peep about his appearance with Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday,” July 19. Why not? Because it was a total, unmitigated disaster. For the first time, Trump was not allowed to ramble, change the subject, exaggerate or repeat his oft-repeated lies. He tried, but Wallace challenged him, corrected him, fact-checked him and badgered him into answering the question — leaving Trump flustered, confused, angry, baffled and unable to substantiate any one of his standard big lies. On the coronavirus, for example, Trump again insisted the United States has done more testing and has a lower mortality rate than any other country — which Wallace showed is demonstrably not true. Trump also showed a stunning lack of knowledge about how bad things are and lack of concern for victims of the disease. He baffled public health officials by claiming that many cases amount to nothing more than a bad case of the “sniffles,” that will “heal in a day.” He again insisted that the “Chinese virus” would someday “disappear.” “I’ll be right, eventually,” he bragged, as if he were talking about the Astros winning another World Series “eventually” — showing no empathy for those who might die in the meantime. In fact, pressed by Wallace for his reaction to over 140,000 deaths from COVID-19 so far, the best Trump could offer was, “It is what it is.” On the Black Lives Matter movement, Trump doubled down in opposition. He again claimed, wrongly, that whites were as likely to be victims of police abuse as Blacks. He defended the Confederate flag, insisting it has nothing to do with racism. He vowed to block any attempt by the Pentagon to remove the names of Confederate generals from military bases in the South. “I don’t care what the military says,” Trump told Wallace. He also twice charged that former Vice President Joe Biden had publicly called for defunding the police, which Wallace again showed was not true. On 2020, Trump also revealed how out of touch he is with reality. He dismissed two recent polls showing him losing to Biden by double digits as “fake polls.” He claimed Biden was “not competent to be president,” insisting that “Joe doesn’t even know he’s alive.” And, like the wannabe dictator he is, Trump refused to say whether, were he to lose, he’d abide by the results of the election. “I have to see. Look, I have to see,” Trump told Wallace.

Undermining the CDC Puts Lives at Risk -- Michael R. Bloomberg - In the midst of a devastating pandemic, President Donald Trump is destroying the CDC’s ability to discharge its most vital responsibility: to maintain active surveillance of diseases by gathering, analyzing and reporting data. Even by this president’s low standards, this is unconscionable. With Covid-19 surging out of control and health-care workers in many states struggling to keep up with the patient load, the president has authorized the Department of Health and Human Services to demand that hospitals change the way they report data to the federal government. Stop sending statistics on patient numbers, bed availability, ventilators and other key data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the agency said, and instead direct the information to HHS headquarters in Washington. Oh, and make this change within two days.Don’t mistake this new policy for a bureaucratic adjustment of no great significance, or just one more effort by the Trump administration to annoy its critics. It’s much worse than that. This change is so reckless — make no mistake: people will die as a result — it borders on criminality.It isn’t the first time that President Trump’s administration has sidelined the CDC, a public health institution that has been a model for the world. Administration officials have often questioned the agency’s guidance, including on mask-wearing and school reopening, and have gone so far as to accuse it of “undermining the president” in advising pregnant women of the risks of Covid-19. Robert Redfield, the current CDC director, has not conducted the kind of regular press briefings that, in a normal administration, give the public accurate information on disease outbreaks. On Friday, it blocked CDC officials from appearing at a House committee hearing on school reopenings. But this latest change is the most destructive so far. The CDC’s long-established National Healthcare Safety Network, the biggest and most-used infection-tracking system in the U.S., is trusted for the accuracy and completeness of its data. Until recently, it gathered the Covid-19 hospital statistics, analyzed them and reported back to the states twice a week. Now, the HHS has turned the job over to a Pittsburgh company, TeleTracking Technologies, which is to be paid more than $10 million, with no guarantee that the information will be made public.

Democrats Demand Trump Reverse Order Directing COVID-19 Data to HHS - Democratic lawmakers in the House and Senate are demanding that the Trump administration immediately reverse an order requiring hospitals to send Covid-19 patient information directly to a Health and Human Services database instead of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a change that threw the data-collection process into chaos as states struggle to cope with soaring infections. NPR reported Friday that "hospital data in Kansas and Missouri is suddenly incomplete or missing" following the Trump administration's directive, which took effect on July 15 to the dismay of experts and local officials who previously relied on the CDC system to track the coronavirus and allocate resources."The Missouri Hospital Association reports that it no longer has access to the data it uses to guide statewide coronavirus planning, and the Kansas Hospital Association says its hospital data reports may be delayed," according to NPR. "The absence of the data will make it harder for health and public officials, as well as the general public, to understand how the virus is spreading."Led by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), 46 members of the Senate Democratic caucus sent a letter to Vice President Mike Pence and Coronavirus Task Force Coordinator Deborah Birx demanding that the White House reverse its decision to divert Covid-19 data from the CDC to an HHS database run by TeleTracking Technologies, a private contractor."In the midst of a global pandemic, these changes pose serious challenges to the nation's response by increasing the data management burden for hospitals, potentially delaying critical supply shipments, compromising access to key data for many states, and reducing transparency for the public," the senators wrote. "The Trump administration's mismanagement of the Covid-19 response and refusal to heed public health expertise continue to put the country in a dangerous position."Nearly 70 House Democrats on Friday sent a letter to HHS Secretary Alex Azar urging the agency to reverse the new directive, which the Trump administration portrayed as an attempt to streamline the data-reporting process."This is another unethical and irresponsible effort to hinder public access to data and remove transparency and accountability from the administration's poor management of this pandemic," the lawmakers wrote.

Pressed on Surging Covid-19 Cases and Test Shortages, Trump Says U.S. Is 'Envy of the World' - President Donald Trump claimed in a newly aired Fox News interview Sunday that the United States is the "envy of the world" when it comes to Covid-19 testing capacity, a boast that came as state and local leaders continue to raise alarm about widespread test shortages and delays as coronavirus infections surge nationwide.Pressed by Fox News' Chris Wallace on rising Covid-19 infections, shortages of testing kits and personal protective equipment for frontline workers, and rapidly dwindling hospital capacity, Trump — who is attempting to block billions of dollars in new funds for testing and contact tracing — said he takes responsibility for how the U.S. has handled the pandemic but added that "some governors have done poorly.""They're supposed to have supplies ... I supplied everybody," the president said. "Now we have somewhat of a surge in certain areas. In other areas we're doing great. But we have a surge in certain areas. But you don't hear people complaining about ventilators, we've got all the ventilators we could use, we're supplying them to other countries.""We have more tests by far than any country in the world," Trump said. When Wallace pointed out that the Covid-19 positivity rate is rising sharply even as more tests are conducted, Trump said dismissively: "Many of those cases are young people that would heal in a day. They have the sniffles and we put it down as a test.""Cases are up because we have the best testing in the world," Trump said, once again falsely blaming the increase in testing for the growing number of positive coronavirus cases in the U.S., which now leads the world in confirmed infections. "No country has ever done what we've done in terms of testing. We are the envy of the world."

 Trump Compares Coronavirus to 'Sniffles' as U.S. Death Toll Tops 140,000  -President Donald Trump continued to downplay the severity of the coronavirus pandemic one day after the U.S. death toll passed 140,000, according to a Reuters tally. "Many of those cases are young people that would heal in a day," Trump said in an interview with Fox News Sunday, as NPR reported. "They have the sniffles, and we put it down as a test." Also on Saturday, the global death toll rose past 600,000, Johns Hopkins University said, as The Associated Press reported. The world also broke its record for the most new cases reported in a day, with 259,848. The U.S. continues to lead the world in both deaths and cases. Out of more than 14.5 million cases worldwide, it is responsible for more than 3.7 million of them, according to Monday morning figures from Johns Hopkins University.Trump's remarks came during a discussion of the rising U.S. caseload with Fox News host Chris Wallace,Business Insider explained.During the interview, Trump claimed that the rising case count was due to an increase in testing. "We go out into parking lots, and everything, everybody gets a test. We find, if we did half the testing — with all of that being said, I'm glad we did it, this is the right way to do it. I'm glad we did what we're doing, but we have more tests by far than anywhere else in the world," he said, as Business Insider reported.  Wallace challenged that the rise in cases could not only be attributed to more tests — while testing has increased 37 percent, cases have increased 194 percent, he said. "it isn't just that the testing has gone up but that the virus has spread, the positivity rate has increased, the virus is worse than it was," Wallace pointed out. It was at this point that Trump said most of those cases were "sniffles" that would never have been uncovered if it weren't for extensive testing.  This isn't the first time that Trump has diminished the seriousness of the new disease. In March, he told Fox's Sean Hannity that people with mild cases could go to work and get better. This contradicted Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advice that anyone exhibiting symptoms should stay home and contact a doctor.

U.S. to pay Pfizer, BioNTech $1.95 billion for COVID-19 vaccine -(Reuters) - The U.S. government will pay nearly $2 billion to buy enough of a COVID-19 vaccine being developed by Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) and German biotech BioNTech SE (22UAy.F) to innoculate 50 million people if it proves to be safe and effective, the companies said on Wednesday. The contract for 100 million doses of the vaccine amounts to a $39 price tag for what is likely to be a two-dose course of treatment. The contract is the most the United States has agreed to spend on a vaccine, although previous deals with other vaccine makers were intended to also help pay for development costs. Pfizer and BioNTech will not receive any money from the government unless their vaccine succeeds in large clinical trials and can be successfully manufactured, according to a Pfizer spokeswoman. Under the agreement, the government would also have an option to procure an additional 500 million doses. Pfizer said the price for the additional doses would be negotiated separately if the U.S. orders them. The vaccine, if successful, will be made available to Americans at no cost, although their health insurance may be charged, the U.S. department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said. Pfizer Chief Executive Albert Bourla has said the company intends to make a profit on the vaccine. He has also said that spending its own money, rather than government money to develop the vaccine should help speed the process. Pfizer hopes to start its pivotal late-stage trial of the vaccine as early as next week, pending regulatory approvals, Chief Scientific Officer Mikael Dolsten said in an interview. “We’re already starting to the process of allocating vaccine vials to a variety of different clinical sites in the U.S. and elsewhere,” Dolsten said. “We’re looking at the map and getting good advice from the CDC. Where do we have the greatest incidence of COVID-19 disease?” Vaccine trials are more efficient if conducted in areas where high rates of active infection are prevelant.

California governor told he had to ask and thank Trump to get help with COVID-19 response: report --White House officials told California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) he would need to personally appeal to President Trump and thank him if he wanted aid in obtaining coronavirus test swabs, according to The New York Times. The move was part of a deliberate decision by the Trump administration in mid-April when the White House, deciding the pandemic was on the downslope, decided it had given state governments all the aid they would need to handle any further outbreaks, the Times reported. Deborah Birx, the chief coordinator for the White House’s coronavirus task force, told officials on April 11 that while Boston and Chicago were nearing their peak, other hard-hit cities were on the other side of the crisis. Birx was consistently more optimistic than her colleague and friend Anthony Fauci, telling the task force the virus had hit its peak in mid-April and appearing open to the idea that some death and hospitalization counts could be inflated. Administration and state officials told the Times that Birx played a greater role than previously known in the White House’s public position that the virus was on the decline and that the models she used for the assessment did not properly capture how Trump’s eagerness to quickly return to normal would undermine social distancing measures. She frequently characterized the task ahead after she said the virus had peaked was “putting out the embers,” phrasing White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and the president would later adopt. The task force proceeded assuming the U.S.’ curve would reflect that of Italy, which turned out not to be the case. Moreover, the Times reported, the administration did not grasp that their assessment of the virus’s spread had been incorrect until early June, and internal fissures remain on how much they should acknowledge in public. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez (R), himself a survivor of the virus, told the Times the White House was far more focused on reopening businesses than developing contingency plans for cities and states in case of a resurgence. “It was all predicated on reduction, open, reduction, open more, reduction, open,” he told the Times. “There was never what happens if there is an increase after you reopen?”

Are Anti-Mask Masks Legal? -  There is a new form of protests sweeping across the country as individuals put on anti-Mask masks to defy mandatory mask rules. The anti-masks are made of thin material, mesh or even crochet and are advertised as having no protective qualities for Covid-19.  The question is whether they are legal.  They appear to be so. A popular video shows a man wearing a mesh mask to a Tampa Walmart and saying “It was almost like not wearing a mask at all. Nobody cared. That’s because it’s not about safety. It’s all about compliance.”  Most laws like Alabama‘s only refer to a “covering” not a mask with protective qualities: each person shall wear a mask or other facial covering that covers his or her nostrils and mouth at all times when within six feet of a person from another household in any of the following places: an indoor space open to the general public, a vehicle operated by a transportation service, or an outdoor public space where ten or more people.  Maryland requires masks: each person shall wear a mask or other facial covering that covers his or her nostrils and mouth at all times when within six feet of a person from another household in any of the following places: an indoor space open to the general public, a vehicle operated by a transportation service, or an outdoor public space where ten or more people are gathered.” However, consider the definition of face coverings:“Face Covering” means a covering that fully covers a person’s nose and mouth, but is not a Medical-Grade Mask. The term “Face Covering” includes, without limitation, scarves and bandanas.”A mesh mask does cover the fact and, since scarves can be used, there is no effort to indicate a threshold protective level or dimension.  There are vast differences between masks and stores are unlikely to want to police the sufficiency of masks, particularly if the states do not specify minimal standards.  Even creative work on the noun “cover” does not help much.  Oxford defines it as simply “a thing that is put over or on another thing.”  A permeable material still covers the mouth and nose. It just does little else. Twitter is replete with such anti-masks with such disclaimers as “Stylish, breathable and don’t protect you from a darn thing! Masks required? No problem! Breath free while making a statement.”

‘Bizarre’ that face masks are a partisan issue, NIH chief says - It’s “bizarre” that mask-wearing has become a partisan issue in the U.S., and the “divide between different political perspectives” is making it harder to curb the coronavirus, the director of the National Institutes of Health said.Speaking Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins said he didn’t want anybody to think that wearing a mask is “something optional” as the nation attempts to tamp down the COVID-19 outbreak, which is running at record levels.“Imagine you were an alien coming to the planet Earth and looking around,” Collins said. “You would be totally astounded, puzzled, amazed. ... How could it be that something as basic as a public health action, that we have very strong evidence can help, seems to attach to people’s political party?” Opinion polls have shown that many more Democrats than Republicans say masks should be worn in public places most or all of the time. Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, echoed the plea to wear face masks on CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” adding that it might be “wishful thinking” that everyone will mask up.“There’s a hardened percentage of the population that just feels that the masks are some infringement on their liberty,” Gottlieb said. The noncompliance makes it difficult to get the virus’ spread fully under control, he said.President Trump said in a “Fox News Sunday” interview that he wouldn’t issue a nationwide mask order as a matter of “freedom.”Collins said nobody at the White House has asked him to demote or fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, a once ubiquitous figure at coronavirus task force briefings who hasn’t spoken publicly at the White House since late April. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which Fauci has led since 1984, is part of the Bethesda, Md.-based NIH.Trump, in his pre-taped comments on Fox, called Fauci a “little bit of an alarmist” but said the two men have a “great relationship.”

Trump says coronavirus will 'get worse before it gets better' - President Trump said Tuesday that the novel coronavirus outbreak in the United States would “get worse before it gets better” amid surges in cases in parts of the country. “It will probably, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better,” Trump, reading from prepared remarks, told reporters at a White House briefing Tuesday evening. “Something I don’t like saying about things, but that’s the way it is.” He went on to implore Americans to wear masks, practice physical distancing and wash their hands, and he urged young Americans to avoid bars. “We’re asking everybody that when you are not able to socially distance, wear a mask,” Trump said. “Whether you like the mask or not, they have an impact. They’ll have an effect, and we need everything we can get.” The remarks represented a notable shift in tone for the president. Until Tuesday, he had largely downplayed the rise in cases in states like Florida, Arizona, Texas and California, and for weeks he had declined to urge the use of face masks. The United States has repeatedly set daily records for new coronavirus cases, eclipsing 76,000 new cases on Friday. The country recorded more than 1,000 coronavirus deaths Tuesday, representing the first time since May it has surpassed that grim milestone. As of Tuesday afternoon, more than 141,000 people had died from COVID-19 in the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins University. During an interview that aired on "Fox News Sunday," Trump falsely attributed the rise in cases to increased testing capacity and asserted that the U.S. would “put out the flames.” On Tuesday, Trump acknowledged a “concerning rise” in cases in the western and southern parts of the country while expressing optimism that the federal government and state leaders could meet the challenge. He said his administration is increasing supplies and personnel to states that have seen a surge in cases.

PANDEMIC: Trump says open schools, but FEMA keeps its closed -- Monday, July 20, 2020 -- The Federal Emergency Management Agency has scrapped plans to reopen its three world-renowned training academies for first responders next month and will keep the campuses closed until at least Oct. 1 because of the growing COVID-19 pandemic. FEMA postponed a scheduled Aug. 2 reopening of its training academies in Maryland and Alabama at the same time President Trump was pressuring public schools to open their campuses to students when classes resume next month.Trump has threatened to withhold federal education funds from school districts that keep their campuses closed and has said schools in some European countries have opened successfully.The FEMA academies, which have been closed since March, are staying shut because "FEMA's top priority remains the health and safety of FEMA employees, instructors, students, and visitors on campus," the agency said on its website last week.FEMA has not provided online classes to replace the courses that were taught at its campuses in Emmitsburg, Md., and Anniston, Ala.Although FEMA said the campuses would remain closed "through at least October 1," a senior FEMA official said the closures could last until next year.The closures are generating concern among senior members of Congress and emergency management experts as federal agencies are predicting above-normal hurricane and wildfire seasons.  "If FEMA is unable to restart its emergency response training programs in the near future, it will have ramifications for disasters this year and for years into the future," said House Homeland Security Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) in a statement to E&E News. The academies train tens of thousands of emergency responders a year. Rank-and-file firefighters and paramedics get a week or two of basic-level training that can help them maintain a professional certification. Police commissioners and fire chiefs compete to enroll in the yearlong part-time National Emergency Management Executive Academy. The ongoing closure of the academics deprives emergency personnel of essential training, Manning said, and could influence the debate over opening public schools.

McCarthy introduces legislation to sanction foreign hackers targeting COVID-19 research -House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Tuesday introduced legislation to sanction foreign hackers involved in attempts to target and steal research on COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. The Defend COVID Research from Hackers Act would allow the president to impose sanctions on foreign individuals engaging in hacking activity that compromises economic and national security or public health and freeze any American assets of these individuals. The bill also requires the secretary of State, in consultation with the director of national intelligence, to submit a report to Congress within 180 days of the bill’s passage on “the extent of known cyber-enabled activities or attempted cyber-enabled activities” around COVID-19. McCarthy said in a statement that Congress should take steps to protect American researchers working on a “Victory Vaccine” to combat COVID-19, vowing that the U.S. would share any vaccine it developed with the world. “We have seen that other nations – like China – use this virus to exploit other countries for political advantages,” McCarthy said. “We refuse to allow our innovation to be exploited by China, Russia, or any other hackers. We are going to protect the cure from falling into the wrong hands so that no one can use it as leverage for their own malicious ends.” He emphasized that “the stakes are too high for these significant cyber crimes to go unpunished. My legislation will hold these criminals accountable.” Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) proposed the addition of the bill to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on the House floor Tuesday directly before the House was scheduled to vote on the overall legislation, arguing that foreign efforts to target COVID-19 research, particularly from Chinese actors, should not go unpunished. “Americans are dying, China is hacking and we in Congress must act,” Green said. “Hacking American intellectual property will not be tolerated, especially when it jeopardizes the lives of Americans. If we can’t agree on punishing those who hack the heroes fighting for a cure for COVID, I don’t know what we can agree on.”

US indicts Chinese nationals on trumped-up hacking charges - In an escalation of the bipartisan anti-China campaign, US Department of Justice officials in Spokane, Washington on Tuesday unsealed an indictment against two former engineering students, charging them with hacking in order to steal data on COVID-19 vaccine research. In the 11-page indictment, Chinese citizens Li Xiaoyu, 34, and Dong Jiazhi, 33, are accused of working on behalf of the Chinese government to hack into the computer systems of US and international companies in order to steal trade secrets, personal information, and information on a potential COVID-19 vaccine. The indictment states that the two not only worked on their own “for profit,” but also at the direction of the Ministry of State Security (MSS), a civilian spy agency, on behalf of the Chinese government. Each of the two is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit computer fraud, conspiracy to commit theft of trade secrets, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, unauthorized access of a computer and seven counts each of aggravated identity theft. If convicted on all counts and given maximum sentences, the pair would spend up to 64 years in prison. However, it is extremely unlikely they will ever be extradited to the US. Li Xiaoyu and Dong Jiazhi, the indictment alleges, are former classmates at the University of Electronic Science and Technology, “an electrical engineering college in Chengdu, China.” Li and Dong are accused of using “their technical training to hack the computer networks of a wide variety of companies,” beginning in September 2009. The indictment does not allege that the defendants actually stole any information related to COVID-19 vaccine research. This, however, did not stop the Washington Post, CNBC, MSNBC and the New York Times from running headlines accusing the two of “stealing vaccine data for China” (the Times) or smearing China for “sponsoring criminal hackers targeting coronavirus vaccine research” (the Post). The accusations come less than a week after the intelligence agencies of the US, Canada and the UK accused the Russian government of “plotting to steal” coronavirus research. The Times breathlessly promoted the baseless claims of the intelligence agencies on its front page, despite there being no actual evidence or named victims. It also follows unsubstantiated allegations by FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General William Barr that China has been hacking into US-based companies involved in coronavirus vaccine research.

U.S. gives China 72 hours to shut Houston consulate as spying charges mount - (Reuters) - The United States gave China 72 hours to close its consulate in Houston amid accusations of spying, marking a dramatic deterioration in relations between the world’s two biggest economies. The U.S. State Department said on Wednesday the Chinese mission in Houston was being closed “to protect American intellectual property and Americans’ private information.” China’s foreign ministry said Washington had abruptly issued the demand on Tuesday and called it an “unprecedented escalation.” The ministry threatened unspecified retaliation. The Chinese Embassy in Washington had received “bomb and death threats” because of “smears & hatred” fanned by the U.S. government, spokeswoman Hua Chunying wrote in a tweet. “The U.S. should revoke its erroneous decision,” she said. “China will surely react with firm countermeasures.” Communist Party rulers in Beijing were considering shutting the U.S. consulate in the central city of Wuhan in retaliation, a source with knowledge of the matter said. U.S.-based China experts said Beijing could also opt to target more important consulates in Hong Kong, Shanghai or Guangzhou, something that could hurt American businesses. The Houston move comes in the run-up to the November U.S. presidential election, in which President Donald Trump and his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, have both tried to look tough towards China. Speaking on a visit to Denmark, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo repeated accusations about Chinese theft of U.S. and European intellectual property, which he said were costing “hundreds of thousands of jobs.” While offering no specifics about the Houston consulate, Pompeo referred to a U.S. Justice Department indictment on Tuesday of two Chinese nationals over what it called a decade-long cyber espionage campaign that targeted defense contractors, COVID-19 researchers and hundreds of other victims worldwide. 

 US orders closure of China’s Houston consulate, raising the danger of war - Tuesday’s order by the Trump administration for China to close its consulate in Houston within three days, without providing any details to justify its decision, is a dangerous and unprecedented escalation in the US conflict with China. Coming amid a tense standoff between US and Chinese warships in the South China Sea, it is hard to see the move as anything besides a step toward war. The White House and the US political establishment as a whole, facing a massive domestic crisis over its failure to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, which has already cost nearly 150,000 American lives, is seeking to divert internal tensions outward to an external “enemy.” China’s foreign ministry condemned the closure of its oldest consulate in the US, which has been in existence since the two countries normalised diplomatic ties in 1979. A spokesperson called it “an outrageous and unjustified move that will sabotage relations between the two countries.” The US government made no attempt to explain its totally unsubstantiated claims against Beijing. The State Department vaguely accused China of conducting “massive illegal spying and influence operations throughout the United States.” Spokesperson Morgan Ortagus echoed the litany of wild allegations issued by Donald Trump this week, accusing China of “violating” US sovereignty, “intimidating” the American people, thieving “American jobs” by “unfair trade practices” and “other egregious behaviour.” Asked for specifics on why the consulate was being closed, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo responded only with sweeping assertions that China was stealing US intellectual property, which was “costing hundreds of thousands of jobs.” Pompeo told reporters in Copenhagen, Denmark: “President Trump has said, ‘Enough, we’re not going to allow this to continue to happen’.” On Twitter, Republican Senator Marco Rubio, a long-time agitator against China, was even more vague and provocative. “China’s consulate in #Houston is not a diplomatic facility. It is the central node of the Communist Party’s vast network of spies & influence operations in the United States. Now that building must close & the spies have 72 hours to leave or face arrest. This needed to happen.”

China orders U.S. Chengdu consulate shut; protesters jeer Houston closure (Reuters) - China on Friday ordered the United States to close its consulate in Chengdu in response to a U.S. order for China to shut its Houston consulate, where staff packed up belongings watched by jeering protesters amid a sharp deterioration in relations between the world’s two largest economies. The order to close the consulate in Chengdu, a city in southwestern China’s Sichuan province, continued Beijing’s recent practice of like-for-like responses to Washington’s actions. Beijing had threatened retaliation after the Trump administration this week gave it 72 hours - until 4 p.m. on Friday - to vacate its consulate in the Texas city, and had urged the United States to reconsider. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Thursday the consulate had been “a hub of spying and intellectual property theft.” Washington and its allies must use “more creative and assertive ways” to press the Chinese Communist Party to change its ways, he said. Shortly after a U.S. government closure order for the mission took effect at 4 p.m. Central Time, a group of men who appeared to be American officials were seen forcing open a back door of the Houston consulate. The men did not respond when asked who they were by reporters. Earlier, the same group of men was seen padlocking a door on another side of the building. After the men went inside, two uniformed members of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security arrived to guard the door. They also did not respond to questions from reporters.

White House warns China against 'tit-for-tat retaliation' with Chengdu consulate - (Reuters) - The White House urged China on Friday not to engage in “tit-for-tat retaliation” by ordering the U.S. consulate in Chengdu closed in response to Washington’s shuttering of Beijing’s consulate in Houston. “Our action to direct the closure of PRC Consulate General in Houston was taken to protect American intellectual property and Americans’ private information,” National Security Council spokesman John Ullyot said. “We urge the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) to cease these malign actions rather than engage in tit-for-tat retaliation.”

Chinese Consulate fight shows Trump's hard-liners are in charge - Donald Trump spent the first three years of his presidency balancing the demands of hardliners who wanted a crackdown on China against his own desire to pursue a trade deal and cultivate a stronger relationship with Xi Jinping. The unexpected order Wednesday to close the Chinese consulate in Houston made one thing clear: the hawks are now in charge. Eager to blame China for the Covid-19 pandemic and fed up with what U.S. officials call a history of espionage and intellectual-property theft, Trump has allowed a small group of advisers led by Secretary of State Michael Pompeo to push U.S. policy toward its most antagonistic in decades. The result is a series of sanctions, restrictions and condemnations that culminated in the Houston decision. “Despite the overall message that the administration was tough on China we saw very much the opposite until we had a pandemic to contend with,” said Mira Rapp-Hooper, a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations. “They actually pursued a very narrow China policy up until spring.” The battle has now been opened on a range of fronts: China’s tightening grip over Hong Kong, its treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, its infiltration of technology and the theft of intellectual property. In nearly every policy realm, the U.S. is pushing back harder. It’s banning Chinese academics and expelling Chinese journalists and warning that the U.S. needs to cut its dependence on Chinese goods. Pompeo’s team, along with Deputy National Security Adviser Matt Pottinger, are the key architects of the change. They’re finding a more willing audience in the White House for their argument that the U.S. needs to strike back after what they see as decades spent ignoring China’s behavior, criticizing both Republican and Democratic administrations for being naive. According to one person familiar with internal discussions, Pompeo and his in-house advisers have come to conclude that a capitalist, democratic U.S. and a Communist, unelected leadership in China are fundamentally at odds and cannot coexist. “America is engaging in a response to Chinese Communist Party and aggression in a way that America has not done for the past 20 years,” Pompeo said on June 19. “We responded to their military, use of military force, by moving back. We responded to their use of diplomatic coercion via retreating. Donald Trump is not going to permit that, and we made that clear.”

"Trade War 4.0": How the EU Plans to Punish US Tech --This is a follow-up to the earlier post about how the EU and US are on a collision course over the tax treatment of American tech giants, which the EU believes are operating nearly tax-free within their countries. If we were still dealing with old-fashioned goods, the solution for the EU would be simple: apply tariffs, which are taxes on goods. After all, the US is applying those on a lot of EU goods right now. But how would you retaliate against services which the US is dominant in? Since these are intellectual property-rich things, you would make it easier to violate IP.  Now, if there is anything the US guards zealously, it's the intellectual property of its firms. Even the WTO reflects this American predilection by incorporating Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) despite there already being a United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) since 1967. To be sure, the EU is also IP-rich and also pushed for IP inclusion at the WTO. However, the clear difference circa 2020 is that while the US is strong in technology IP, the EU is rather less so. Maybe it's really anger at not getting enough taxes out of the US tech giants. Or maybe it's just plain jealousy that the EU hasn't really developed many of these next-generation industries. No matter; the EU is looking to hit US IP in the quarrel over American tech giants as an emergent trade war strategy: The EU is preparing a law that could allow its executive body, the European Commission, to hit back against U.S. tariffs by imposing sanctions on the intellectual property of companies such as Amazon, Google and Facebook. In a rare united front, Europe's main political groups on July 6 backed proposals to strengthen the EU's trade powers by expanding them into the realm of services and intellectual property rights, which they argue would allow them to match U.S. trade firepower... Lawmakers in Brussels think sanctions on services will be a bigger deterrent than tariffs on soybeans and machinery. They would also be a better fit for highly globalized value chains, where production easily jumps borders... Sanctions directly targeting a company's intellectual property, by contrast, would catch a larger share of America's high-value exports, and would be much harder to circumvent [by relocating production outside the US]. Experts contacted by POLITICO agreed that trade retaliation on services and intellectual property would be a powerful weapon, but cautioned that the U.S. could react furiously.  Essentially, the US has found it easy to conduct trade warfare with Europe because the EU still largely exports goods to America. The opposite does not hold, though: the US export mix to the EU is biased towards services, which again cannot be tariff-ied. By abrogating US IP as cross-retaliation, though, the EU walks a tightrope. Truly, it is the nuclear option that would prompt a significant deterioration in transatlantic trade relations. Even in the age of Trump, that's not a place more level-headed Europeans would like to head towards. 

 US trade policy milks America's dairy farmers --U.S. dairy is in trouble. That’s why, in a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, 50 members of the House of Representatives lobbied for greater access to the Japanese market. They’re in for a big disappointment. Japan is a big market for U.S. dairy. And dairy is an important agricultural export for the United States. Dairy farms have been hit hard over the past few years, with more than 6,000 having gone out of business, amounting to a 15 percent decline. The letter looks to Japan, where demand will shortly outstrip domestic supply. Opportunity beckons. But there’s a problem. Japan has trade agreements with Europe on the one hand, and Canada, New Zealand and other powerhouse dairy exporters through the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) on the other. These agreements include tariff and other preferences that give European, Canadian and New Zealand exporters a big advantage over U.S. dairy. So, what’s the solution? The letter pins its hopes on Phase 2 of the U.S.-Japan trade deal. The “ask” is that Phase 2 give U.S. dairy the same tariffs that Europe, Canada and New Zealand get. The language is fanciful: “Japan must ensure that the terms of trade offered to the United States are better than those offered to other, less valuable, markets.” This can’t happen. The reason is simple: The World Trade Organization (WTO). Europe, Canada and New Zealand, for example, get better tariff treatment and other concessions because of the trade agreements they’ve signed with Japan. The WTO allows this. But the WTO does not allow ad hoc tariff discounts in lieu of a trade agreement. This is exactly what the House members are demanding. The only solution is for the U.S. to match the free trade deals that Europe, Canada, New Zealand and others have signed with Japan, like CPTPP. But Phase 2 U.S.-Japan can’t pull this off. Even building on Phase 1, it won’t cover “substantially all” trade, one of two criteria set out by the WTO. Instead, U.S.-Japan is a patchwork of give-aways to a few industries, most in the form of Japanese promises to buy more from the United States. Interestingly, Brussels has informed Tokyo that all Japanese trade deals should cover substantially all trade, an undeniable swipe at U.S.-Japan. Lighthizer can count on getting more letters. That’s why he voiced frustration last week about how free trade agreements and multilateralism don’t go together. He was targeting his remarks at Europe, which has concluded 77 bilateral trade deals. This wasn’t an endorsement of the WTO. Rather, Lighthizer was bemoaning the fact that the U.S. has fallen behind Europe in signing bilaterals. It’s doubtful, moreover, that the Trump administration is interested in playing catch up. These days, Washington sees tariffs as political leverage over other countries. The U.S.-Japan deal, like the U.S.-China one, preserves this leverage while managing a few trade lines through barter, all with little congressional oversight. That 50 House members lobbied for such a deal suggests that Congress is willing to play along.

Trump-owned properties in the US have imported more than 8 tons of Chinese goods since September --President Donald Trump's US properties imported more than eight tons of Chinese goods since September, according to a CNN analysis. More than six tons of tables were shipped to Trump International Hotel in New York last fall and two tons of cabinets were delivered to Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles in May, CNN reported.On the 2016 campaign trail and throughout his presidency, Trump has accused China of unfair trade practices and pledged to address the trade deficit between the two countries.As part of his "America First" policy, Trump entered a months-long tariff war with Beijing and has pressured American companies to redirect their business within the U.S. Trump's "tough on China" stance appeared to soften in early January when a phase one trade deal was reached, though soon afterward he escalated attacks on Beijing after the coronavirus outbreak began. Over the past few months he has repeatedly used racist slurs like "kung flu" and "Wuhan virus" as part of his attempt to blame on China for the spread of the disease, which has been devastating the U.S.Trump has used China as a campaign talking point in an attempt to distinguish himself from presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, who he has claimed is "weak on China" and "China's puppet."The news of Trump Organization's dealings come after Biden released his $700 billion campaign proposal last week aiming to boost the economy by emphasizing investment in American products and research, a plan that White House trade adviser Peter Navarro has dubbed as "blatantly ripping off" Trump's agenda.

Looming Immigration Services Shutdown May Fuel Voter Suppression in 2020 - Alexis Goldstein -Trump’s ghoulish exploitation of the coronavirus pandemic to further his anti-immigrant policies has also manufactured a crisis at the federal agency responsible for green cards, citizenship, asylum and myriad other immigration matters. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is about to run out of money, and if Congress doesn’t act, will furlough more than two-thirds of the USCIS workforce in August. Such a shutdown would further extend the “invisible wall” Trump created to suppress immigration of all kinds. In an election year in which Trump seems determined to use every tool of voter suppression possible, the shutdown of USCIS could mean hundreds of thousands of potential new voters may be denied the ballot.  Trump’s policy changes pre-pandemic were already creating staggering wait times at USCIS, a problem that received congressional scrutiny. But coronavirus, combined with Trump’s exploitation of the crisis to shut down immigration even further, is not only exacerbating the backlog, but is also leading to a 50 percent decrease in fees beginning in March. This has left USCIS, which is almost entirely funded by fees paid by immigrants, in need of a $1.2 billion bailout. Without it, the agency says it will be forced to furlough nearly two-thirds of its entire staff (13,400 of 20,000 employees) on August 3. When Trump took office, USCIS had a surplus. Less than three years later, the agency finds itself in crisis. Observers of USCIS believe the funding crisis, although exacerbated by coronavirus, is due to mismanagement. Trump repeatedly raided USCIS to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE): In 2019 and 2020 USCIS transferred $415.2 million total in revenue to ICE. Under Trump, USCIS enacted a slew of new policies and regulations that both suppress immigration and divert resources and money. For instance, changing regulations regarding who is considered a “public charge” to prevent people from becoming green card holders, suspending Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), and eliminating Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for hundreds of thousands of people unable to return to their country of nationality due to armed conflict or natural disaster. And the White House suspended the H-1B program — these are visas often employed by wealthy employers like Wall Street and tech firms to hire temporary workers. These visas can cost nearly $6,000 per worker, so the Trump administration’s changes to this program significantly cut into USCIS revenues.

Democratic senators call for ethics review into Ivanka Trump's Goya tweet - A pair of Democratic senators are calling for a review into whether Ivanka Trump, the daughter of President Trump and a senior White House adviser, violated federal ethics rules by tweeting her support for the Goya Foods brand. In a letter sent to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics on Monday, Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) voiced concerns that the tweet represented a breach of federal rules barring public officials from using their position to endorse any private product, according to a copy obtained by The Hill. Politico first reported on the letter. Warren and Carper called for the agency to provide answers on whether the tweet served as a misuse of Ivanka Trump's position and what disciplinary actions could be enforced in response. The U.S. Office of Government Ethics did not immediately return a request for comment from The Hill. The senators' request came less than a week after Ivanka Trump sparked an uproar by sharing a photo of herself on Twitter holding a Goya Foods beans can. The caption of the tweet included the company's trademark slogan, "If it’s Goya, it has to be good,” in both English and Spanish. The post appeared to be a show of support for Goya Foods CEO Robert Unanue, who faced backlash earlier this month after praising the president at a White House event. The tweet, however, quickly prompted accusations that she was using her official position to endorse a private product. Walter Shaub, the former director of the Office of Government Ethics, said in a series of tweets that Ivanka Trump's post appeared to be an ethics violation because she disclosed her official title on her Twitter account. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) last Friday filed a complaint alleging that Ivanka Trump violated the Standards of Conduct, a policy prohibiting White House employees from using their government position to endorse a product, service or enterprise. The complaint requested that the Office of Government Ethics launch a probe into whether disciplinary action was warranted.

Trump to send federal forces to more 'Democrat' cities - (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Monday said he would send law enforcement to more U.S. cities, as a federal crackdown on anti-racism protests in Oregon with unmarked cars and unidentified forces angered people across the country. Trump, a Republican, cited New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore and Oakland, California, as places to send federal agents, noting the cities’ mayors were “liberal Democrats.” Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot frequently blasts Trump on Twitter. “We’re sending law enforcement,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “We can’t let this happen to the cities.” State and local leaders in Oregon, as well as members of Congress, have called for Trump to remove Department of Homeland Security secret police forces from Portland, Oregon, after videos showed unidentified federal personnel rounding up people and whisking them away in black minivans. “Not only do I believe he is breaking the law, but he is also endangering the lives of Portlanders,” the city’s mayor, Ted Wheeler, tweeted, having previously called the federal presence “political theater” in an election year. Trump, trailing in opinion polls behind Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, in June declared himself “president of law and order” and threatened to send the U.S. military into cities after sometimes violent protests and looting in the aftermath of African American George Floyd’s death in police custody in Minneapolis. Federal agents last week began cracking down on Portland protests against police brutality and systemic racism, using tear gas to defend federal buildings and taking some activists into custody without explanation.

President Trump sending federal police agents into major American cities - Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, President Trump praised the kidnapping of protesters by unidentified federal agents in Portland, Oregon as a “fantastic job” and vowed to send similar law enforcement groups into New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore and Oakland. Responding to questions regarding reports that the White House was sending 175 federal troops to multiple cities, Trump said, “Well, it depends on what your definition of ‘troops’ is. I mean, we’re sending law enforcement.” He went on, “I’m going to do something—that, I can tell you. Because we’re not going to let New York and Chicago and Philadelphia and Detroit and Baltimore and all of these—Oakland is a mess. We’re not going to let this happen in our country. All run by liberal Democrats.” Speaking about the federal agents in Portland, Trump said, “They’ve been there for three days. They really have done a fantastic job in a short period of time. No problem. They grab a lot of people and jail the leaders.” Without presenting any evidence to back up his claims, Trump attempted to present the protesters in Portland as criminals: “People say protesters. These people are anarchists, people that hate our country and we’re not going to let that go forward. And I’ll tell you what--the governor, the mayor, the senators, they’re afraid of these people. That’s the reason they want us to help them. They’re afraid. I believe that they may even be physically afraid of these people, because what they are doing is incredible. “We didn’t just go there. It wasn’t like it was started right away. We waited 51 days. We said, ‘we can’t let that happen anymore.’ But these are anarchists.” The Chicago Tribune reported Monday that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is sending 150 agents to Chicago this week. Quoting anonymous sources, the Tribune report said that agents of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, were being sent to assist city law enforcement in crime-fighting efforts. The sources did not spell out precisely what the HSI agents would be doing in Chicago. Colleen Connell, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Illinois, condemned the actions of the Trump administration. She said, “Make no mistake: Trump’s federal troops will not be a constructive force in Chicago. As our colleagues have seen in Portland, Trump’s secret forces will terrorize communities and create chaos. This is not law and order. This is an assault on the people of this country, and the specific protections of protest and press in the First Amendment.”

 Ocasio-Cortez to introduce bill requiring federal officers to identify themselves  - Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and District of Columbia Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) will introduce a bill that would require all federal law enforcement officials to clearly identify themselves. The bill would compel all on-duty agents to clearly display their agency name, their own last name and their identification number and would create a new oversight process within the Justice Department requiring recurring audits by its inspector general, The Nation reported. While the issue has dominated the news in recent days since the Department of Homeland Security Personnel, many of them in unmarked vehicles, descended on Portland, Ore., Ocasio-Cortez’s office told the publication the legislation had been in the works before they were dispatched. “Lots of lawyers are asking the same thing: Where’s the transparency? Unidentified internal security forces are apprehending American citizens, and accounts allege these apprehension processes are more similar to overseas renditions than traditional arrests,” Irvin McCullough, deputy director of legislation at the Government Accountability Project, told The Nation after viewing the draft bill. “Citizens deserve to know who’s arresting them—or at least what entity—to report any abuses they suffer or witness,” he added. “Federal law enforcement officers should have their identifying information displayed while on duty,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “This is basic.”

Philly DA Says He'll Prosecute Trump 'Stormtroopers' Sent To Control BLM Chaos -- Philadelphia's top prosecutor says he's ready to 'fight fascism' and will take legal action against federal law enforcement officers sent to enforce the law as BLM protests continue to rage across the city. "My dad volunteered and served in World War II to fight fascism, like most of my uncles, so we would not have an American president brutalizing and kidnapping Americans for exercising their constitutional rights and trying to make America a better place, which is what patriots do," Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner told Bloomberg CityLab in an interview published Wednesday. "Anyone, including federal law enforcement, who unlawfully assaults and kidnaps people will face criminal charges from my office," he added. President Trump suggested this week that he would deploy federal agents in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore and Milwaukee after Homeland Security officers were deployed to Portland, Oregon - where they came under fire for grabbing protesters off the street and detaining them in what Trump described as a "fantastic job." Trump says the troops are necessary to maintain order and protect federal property, in what Elizabeth Goitein of the Brennan Center for Justice said was a pretext to have federal agents supplant local police. 

Naked Athena Rousts Republican Nazi Gestapo – Tomcat - For the past several days we’ve been discussing the crimes committed by the Republican Nazi Gestapo that criminal Fuhrer Trump* sent to Portland to bully, harass and intimidate peaceful demonstrators.  The governor, the mayor, the state AG, two Senators, four House Reps, the ACLU and more have been unable to deter these stormtroopers from their crimes.  However, one naked woman sent them scurrying away in abject terror like the Republican cowards they are!. A protester dubbed ‘Naked Athena’ confronted Portland police wearing only a face mask and beanie.The unidentified woman struck a series of ballet and yoga poses in front of anti-riot officers at around 1.45 am on Saturday morning.Surreal video footage from the scene shows the woman striding towards the officers, who were in heavy protective gear including gas masks and helmets, almost completely naked……The standoff comes after the city of Portland marked its 50th consecutive night of unrest following the death of George Floyd, with crowds taking to the streets to denounce racial injustice.Officers proceed to fire pepper balls at the woman’s feet and another protester is filmed rushing to protect her with a makeshift shield.However she side-steps him to perform a series of yoga poses in front of the officers and even reclines onto the street at one point.Her graceful poses stand in stark contrast to the heavily-armed guards.According to Dave Killen, a photographer for The Oregonian, the officers left around 10 minutes after the naked woman showed up….Inserted from <The Daily Mail>The article is incorrect about one thing.  As you’ll see in the video, the federal Republican Nazi Gestapo are in the center of the combat line.  Portland police, acting in violation of their superiors’ orders, are deployed on both flanks.Here’s a video of the incident.  Although it does contain nudity, it is in no way sexual. : Naked Woman Protester Scares Away Portland Police

Prosecutor Falsely Claimed Patricia McCloskey’s Gun Was Capable of Firing When She Brandished It Outside Her Home  -Patricia McCloskey’s handgun was inoperable when she brandished it to ward off demonstrators who had congregated on her front lawn, but a St. Louis prosecutor ordered crime lab technicians to reassemble the gun in working order and then attested that it was “readily capable of lethal use” in charging documents filed against McCloskey.McCloskey has stated that the handgun she used was inoperable, which under Missouri law would exonerate her from the charge of unlawful use of a weapon. However, assistant circuit attorney Chris Hinckley wrote that the gun was “readily capable of lethal use” when charging McCloskey on Monday, a St. Louis NBC affiliate reported.“The firearm could not be test fired as submitted,” reads a report from the St. Louis police crime lab obtained by 5 On Your Side. “At the request of ACA Chris Hinckley, the firearm was field stripped and found to have been assembled incorrectly….The firearm was reassembled properly, test fired and functioned as designed.” Crime lab workers photographed the disassembly and reassembly process.McCloskey’s husband Mark also brandished a firearm, an AR-15 rifle. The couple said they had intentionally rendered the handgun inoperable so that they could use it as a prop in court, in a separate case brought against a gun manufacturer. The McCloskeys responded to a June 28 incident during which George Floyd protesters broke into their gated community while attempting to reach the house of St. Louis mayor Lyda Krewson. “The group began yelling obscenities and threats of harm to both victims,” a police report stated. “When the victims observed multiple subjects who were armed, they then armed themselves and contacted police.”

Biden Proposes Ending the GILTI Loophole -- Alex Parker covers an interesting and important tax policy issue: Former Vice President Joe Biden’s recent proposal to secure medical supply chains in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic includes tweaks to the 2017 federal tax overhaul, reigniting the debate about whether its international provisions are pushing manufacturing facilities offshore …Former Vice President Joe Biden’s recent proposal to secure medical supply chains in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic includes tweaks to the 2017 federal tax overhaul, reigniting the debate about whether its international provisions are pushing manufacturing facilities offshore … the TCJA exempted most foreign income from taxation as part of a shift toward a more territorial tax system, similar to those used in Europe and much of the world. But it also enacted new provisions, including the GILTI tax and the base erosion and anti-abuse tax, which lawmakers said would block companies from shifting U.S. income abroad. Many of the structures for tax avoidance that have drawn public scrutiny and outrage over the past decade have involved intangibles, which are relatively easy to move from jurisdiction to jurisdiction to chase the lowest tax rate. But the very attribute that makes them difficult to tax also makes them difficult to define. Rather than attempt to pinpoint the intangibles themselves, the TCJA instead targets unusually high returns on tangible assets. Under the GILTI provision, the total foreign income of a U.S. company, beyond a 10% return on its offshore depreciable tangible assets, is taxed at 10.5%. That rate is half of the overall corporate rate of 21%. As the bill was passed by Congress in 2017, Democrats and outside critics quickly noted that the GILTI tax could encourage companies to shift investments in tangible assets abroad. Because the GILTI tax kicks in only at a 10% return on foreign tangible property, the more valuable that property is, the smaller the ultimate GILTI tax bill will be. Even further, because GILTI is calculated at the global level, in most cases it would not matter where new tangible assets were located; as long as they were offshore, they would decrease the GILTI tax. A reduced rate on foreign-derived intangible income, or domestic income defined through a formula similar to GILTI, also creates a similar incentive, critics contend. If a company has tangible assets at home, it will have less income defined as FDII, and less of the tax benefit. The 2017 tax cut for rich people was written in secret by Republicans who had told us that it would somehow stop transfer pricing manipulation and would encourage onshoring. But when the details were released, a lot of economists including conservative economics were taken back by the complexity of the international provisions.

 Brad Setser on Offshoring Life Science Production and Transfer Pricing - I just posted a discussion of an interesting proposal from Biden written by Alex Parker who mentioned some February 5, 2020 testimony from Brad Setser. The gist of this testimony was noted back in a March 26, 2019 blog post entitled When Tax Drives the Trade Data:   I often hear that pharmaceuticals are one of America’s biggest exports. But that isn’t what is in the actual trade data (see exhibits 7 & 8). American firms (or formerly American firms, if there has been an inversion) may own the intellectual property behind many successful drugs, but the active ingredients themselves are often manufactured abroad. In fact, the (goods) trade deficit in pharmaceuticals now exceeds the surplus in civil aircraft. This trade isn’t obviously driven by differences in labor costs. The biggest sources of pharmaceutical imports, Ireland and Switzerland, aren’t exactly low wage countries. Trade here seems motivated in large part by the ability to use transfer pricing to shift profits to low tax jurisdictions. And the new Tax Cuts and Jobs Act if anything looks to have made those games more not less attractive. The incentive to offshore intellectual property generally remains—the “GILTI” rate on profits shifted to no tax jurisdictions is the lowest rate in the tax code. And the lower tax on intangibles than on tangibles has created an incentive to offshore actual production and jobs as well—the more tangible assets abroad, the higher your deemed tangible income and the lower your tax on your intangible income (the same is true for firms that retain their intellectual property in the United States, as there is a lower tax rate on the export of intangibles than the export of tangibles). To be concrete, a firm with its intellectual property in the Caribbean believes it can reduce its effective tax rate to under 10 percent (a rate somewhat below the global “minimum”). It is too early to say definitively that these incentives drove the increase in the pharmaceutical deficit in 2018. But it doesn’t seem too early to say that there is no evidence that these kind of tax games have gone away after the tax reform. Brad’s thesis is certainly going to be controversial. As I read what he is saying is that it is not just the GILTI provisions of the 2017 tax cut that led to the increase in the life science trade deficit over the years. Rather it was the weak enforcement of basic transfer pricing rules that allowed Big Pharma to massively evade U.S. corporate taxes and created these perverse incentives. While we were told that the 2017 Republican tax cut for the rich would close the transfer pricing loopholes and perverse incentives they clearly did not. I’m all for scrapping GILTI and FDII for a lot of reasons but these steps alone will not fundamentally change what Brad is suggesting unless we start actually enforcing good old fashion transfer pricing rules. Let’s hope Biden has this in mind.

Biden Unveils $775 Billion Plan For Universal Child & Elder Care - Days after unveiling his 'Green New Deal' inspired infrastructure plan that will move the US to "100% green energy" by 2035 (much to the dismay of the energy industry, and taxpayers, who would probably rather see that money go to building bridges, airports and highways), the former Vice President is back with another expansionist, big-government plan to implement universal childcare across the US.  Biden's plan calls for shelling out $775 billion to boost child care and care for the elderly. We imagine Biden's campaign advisors feel that such a promise might resonate with suburban parents anxious about school closures and the struggle to find child care while they work.The third plank of the Democratic nominee’s economic plan, it calls for universal preschool for three- and four-year-olds and would also eliminates the waiting list for home and community services under Medicaid while offering low-income and middle-class families a tax credit of as much as $8,000 to help pay for child care. If all that weren't enough, the law increases pay for caregivers and educators.Amusingly, Biden's "caring economy" plan, if enacted, would be financed by new taxes on the sales of commercial real estate, which would deal another blow to the already hard-hit CMBS market.Here's more from BBG:Joe Biden on Tuesday unveiled a $775 billion plan to bolster child care and care for the elderly that would be financed by taxes on real estate investors with incomes of more than $400,000 as well increased tax compliance by high-income earners.The Biden campaign did not fully explain how the plan for a “caring economy” would be financed, but officials highlighted some tax breaks they would seek to eliminate to raise revenue.In particular, a senior campaign official said a Biden administration would take aim at so-called like-kind exchanges, which allow investors to defer paying taxes on the sale of commercial real estate if the capital gains are reinvested in another property. The official also said they would prevent investors from using real estate losses to lower their income tax bills.

Everybody that has a baby gets a million dollars,' Kanye West says at 1st campaign rally - Kanye West kicked off his first presidential campaign event in North Charleston, South Carolina, Sunday evening, a day before the state's deadline to file signatures as an independent candidate. The rapper appeared shortly after 5 p.m. at the Exquis Event Center rally with the numbers "2020" in his hair.West invited a couple of young women from the audience to speak on stage about issues that concerned them, such as education inequity and police brutality. He then launched into a speech that touched on a wide range of topics, from his battle with opioids to his business dealings with Adidas, before elaborating on his pro-life stance.He broke into tears talking about what he said was his father's desire to abort him, and his wife having their first child "even when I didn't want to.""I almost killed my daughter. I love my daughter. … God wants us to create," said West, who has four children with Kim Kardashian West."No more Plan B -- Plan A," he said, to a mixed response from the audience.West clarified that he thinks abortion should be legal, but that there should be more support for those who need it."The maximum increase would be everybody that has a baby gets a million dollars or something in that range," said West.

President Trump Cancels Jacksonville Component Of Republican National Convention - The Jacksonville, Fla., component of the Republican National Convention has been canceled, President Trump announced on Thursday, as cases of the coronavirus continue to spike across that state. "I looked at my team and I said the timing for this event is not right. It's just not right with what's been happening," Trump said at the daily coronavirus briefing. "They said 'Sir, we can make this work very easily.' ... I said there's nothing more important in our country than keeping our people safe, whether it's from the China virus or the radical left mob." Delegates to the convention will still meet in Charlotte, N.C., to hold small, formal business meetings as planned, but Trump's keynote Jacksonville speech will no longer take place. A Thursday Quinnipiac University opinion poll of Florida voters shows that 62% of respondents thought it would be unsafe to hold a convention in the state, compared with 34% who thought it could be managed safely.

 Trump aims to bar undocumented immigrants from counting toward House representation - President Trump on Tuesday issued an order that blocks undocumented immigrants from being counted in the 2020 census for the purpose of allocating congressional representation. The order, which immediately prompted legal challenges, amounts to something of a workaround for Trump after the Supreme Court last year blocked the administration from adding a citizenship question to the decennial survey. The rationale for the memo rests on the argument that the president has final say over transmitting the final census report to Congress and that the Constitution does not explicitly define which persons must be included in determining apportionment. "The discretion delegated to the executive branch to determine who qualifies as an 'inhabitant' includes authority to exclude from the apportionment base aliens who are not in a lawful immigration status," the order states. "Excluding these illegal aliens from the apportionment base is more consonant with the principles of representative democracy underpinning our system of Government. The order implicitly calls out California — a state represented overwhelmingly by Democrats in Congress — in making the argument for discounting undocumented immigrants, noting that "one State is home to more than 2.2 million illegal aliens." "Including these illegal aliens in the population of the State for the purpose of apportionment could result in the allocation of two or three more congressional seats than would otherwise be allocated," the order states. In a statement, Trump framed the memo as an effort to push back on "the radical left," an indication he believes it will appeal to his base of supporters ahead of November's election. "There used to be a time when you could proudly declare, 'I am a citizen of the United States,'" Trump said. "But now, the radical left is trying to erase the existence of this concept and conceal the number of illegal aliens in our country. This is all part of a broader left-wing effort to erode the rights of Americans citizens, and I will not stand for it."

Justice Department appears to be rewarding Trump allies, punishing enemies, legal experts say -  (Reuters) - When President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen sued late on Monday over his return to prison, he said he was facing retribution because he is writing a book critical of his former boss.The surprise move against Cohen, who had been released to home arrest because of the coronavirus pandemic, has some legal experts and congressional Democrats asking whether Trump and U.S. Attorney General William Barr are manipulating the justice system to reward Trump’s allies and punish his enemies.Trump’s decision to spare longtime friend Roger Stone from prison, and the Department of Justice dropping its case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn despite his guilty plea have commanded more national attention. But outspoken critics, including Cohen and celebrity attorney Michael Avenatti, may be getting worse treatment, some legal observers said.Cohen, who once boasted he would “take a bullet” for Trump before turning on him, said a July 9 meeting with probation officials ended with marshals shackling him after he hesitated to sign a gag order banning him from engaging with the media, using social media or writing a book. Days earlier, Cohen hadtweeted that his book was nearly complete.“He is being held in retaliation for his protected speech, including drafting a book manuscript that is critical of the President,” said the lawsuit against Barr filed in federal court in Manhattan. A hearing has been scheduled for Thursday on an emergency motion seeking Cohen’s immediate release. A Department of Justice spokeswoman declined to comment on the lawsuit. “The White House had nothing to do with Mr. Cohen’s re-imprisonment and that decision was made independently by the Bureau of Prisons,” a White House official said. The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is an arm of the Justice Department. In the book, tentatively titled “Disloyal: The True Story of Michael Cohen, Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump,” Cohen said in court papers he will detail alleged racist remarks by Trump about former President Barack Obama and former South African President Nelson Mandela.

ACLU and lawyers sue to free ex-Trump attorney Michael Cohen(AP) — President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer sued Attorney General William Barr and the Bureau of Prisons director Monday, saying he’s being unjustly held behind bars to stop him from finishing a book that criticizes Trump. The lawsuit on behalf of Michael Cohen was filed late Monday in Manhattan federal court, alleging his First Amendment rights were violated when he was returned to the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, New York, on July 9. A message for comment was left with the Justice Department. Cohen, 53, had been furloughed in May as part of an attempt to slow the spread of the virus in federal prisons. He had served only a year of his three-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to campaign finance charges and lying to Congress, among other crimes. Cohen's campaign finance charges related to his efforts to arrange payouts during the 2016 presidential race to keep the porn actress Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal from airing claims of extramarital affairs with Trump. Trump has denied the affairs. Monday's lawsuit said Cohen made it clear recently that he planned to release a tell-all book just before the November election.

Twitter bans thousands of QAnon accounts in crackdown -  Twitter has banned thousands of accounts affiliated with QAnon as part of a crackdown on the conspiracy theory, a spokesperson for the platform confirmed to The Hill on Tuesday. Accounts and content tied to QAnon will no longer be included in email, push or follow recommendations. Twitter will also take steps to limit the spread of that content in trends and search. Roughly 150,000 accounts worldwide will be affected by that change, according to Twitter. More than 7,000 affiliated accounts have already been removed in recent weeks for violating the platform's rules against spam, manipulation and evading bans. NBC News first reported the takedowns. The crackdown on the QAnon theory – which posits that President Trump and the military are working together to expose a shadowy cabal of figures in media, entertainment and politics – comes amid problems with harassment against certain figures, according to Twitter. Some celebrities, including Chrissy Teigen, have been targeted online by social media users recently. The once-fringe online theory has gained mainstream recognition in recent months, with multiple Republican candidates for Congress expressing support for its tenets. The FBI labeled the loose community a potential domestic terror threat last year.

The Left is Now the Right - - Taibbi - In August, 2005, Rolling Stone sent me to cover a freak show. In a small Pennsylvania town called Dover, residents contrived to insert a sentence about teaching “intelligent design” into the curriculum, and fought for its right to do so in an extravagantly-covered trial in the “big city” capital of Harrisburg. Dover’s school board president, Alan Bonsell, was a fundamentalist who believed God shaped man from dust.  When a Christian attorney named Robert J. Muise tried to cross-examine the smooth-talking Superstars of Science who’d flown in from places like Brown and Harvard to denounce “intelligent design,” journos murdered their thesauruses looking for new words for “hayseed.” The chuckling press section felt like front row of a comedy club.  Fifteen years later, America is a thousand Dovers, and the press response is silence. This time it’s not a few Podunk school boards under assault by junk science and crackpot theologies, but Princeton University, the New York Times, the Smithsonian, and a hundred other institutions.  When the absurdity factor rocketed past Dover levels this week, the nation’s leading press organs barely commented, much less laughed. Doing so would have meant opening the floodgates on a story most everyone in media sees but no one is allowed to comment upon: that the political right and left in America have traded villainous cultural pathologies. Things we once despised about the right have been amplified a thousand-fold on the flip. Conservatives once tried to legislate what went on in your bedroom; now it’s the left that obsesses over sexual codicils, not just for the bedroom but everywhere. Right-wingers from time to time made headlines campaigning against everything from The Last Temptation of Christ to “Fuck the Police,” though we laughed at the idea that Ice Cube made cops literally unsafe, and it was understood an artist had to do something fairly ambitious, like piss on a crucifix in public, to get conservative protesters off their couches.Today Matt Yglesias signing a group letter with Noam Chomsky is considered threatening. Moreover a lot less than booking a Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit can get you in the soup – a headline, a retweet, even likes are costing people jobs. Imagine how many movies Milos Forman would have had to make if Jerry Falwell had been able to get people fired this easily. This is separate from the Democratic Party “moving right,” or in the case of issues like war, financial deregulation, and surveillance, having always been in lockstep with the right. This is about a change in the personality profile of the party’s most animated, engaged followers.

Inside Donald Trump and Kanye West's unlikely friendship -- Rapper and newly minted billionaire Kanye West celebrated the Fourth of July by tweeting out his 2020 bid for president. Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his wife Kim Kardashian West each sent support tweets.West has enjoyed a very public friendship with the current occupant of the White House over the years. "One of the main reasons I wore the red hat as a protest to the segregation of votes in the Black community. Also, other than the fact that I like Trump hotels and the saxophones in the lobby," West told Forbes in July 2020.In the same Forbes interview, West added that he was "taking the red hat off" and that Trump was losing his support because "it looks like one big mess," specifically alluding to reports of Trump hiding inside a bunker during the Black Lives Matter protests in May. Trump has maintained that he was inspecting the bunker. Here's a look inside West and Donald Trump's camaraderie over the years.

Beer Countess Who Flew Epstein's 'Lolita Express' 32 Times Quits Child Protection Charity - The wife of a British aristocrat and frequent flyer on Jeffrey Epstein's 'Lolita Express' has stepped down from her role volunteering for the UK's National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC). Clare Hazell - an interior designer who became the Countess of Iveagh after her 2001 marriage to the 4th Earl of Guinnes (of the brewing dynasty) - took 32 flights on Epstein's infamous airplane between 1998 and 2000, which included "trips to his homes in New York, Florida, the Caribbean and New Mexico," according to the Daily Mail. Epstein accompanied Hazell on all but one of the trips aboard the plane, per flight logs.Ms Hazell was studying at Ohio State University in the 1990s and reportedly had a modelling agency and an apartment in Columbus, Ohio.The friend described her as being at Epstein's 'beck and call', saying how mutual plans would be cancelled immediately if she was needed by Epstein and Maxwell. -Daily MailHazell, now known as Lady Iveagh, worked for Epstein 'Madam' Ghislaine Maxwell according to accuser Maria Farmer, who says she also interacted with Iveagh at the Ohio estate of Victoria's Secret boss Leslie Wexner. Farmer said that Hazell "liked having nice drinks, piles of cash and nice outfits." She was listed in Jeffrey Epstein's famous Black Book as "Clare Hazell-Iveagh."  Another Epstein accuser, Virginia Giuffre, accused Hazel of sexually abusing her: Hazell, formerly the President of the NSPCC's West Suffolk branch hosted events for the charity at Elveden Hall - a lavish estate in Suffolk, England owned by the Guinness family since 1894 in which several scenes from Eyes Wide Shut were filmed. The estate now operates as a farm, growing root vegetables and cereals on the 22,000 acre property.

Son of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas killed, husband shot -  (AP) — A gunman shot and killed the 20-year-old son of a federal judge in New Jersey and shot and injured her husband Sunday at the family home, the state’s chief district judge said. The shootings occurred at the North Brunswick home of Judge Esther Salas, and killed her son, Daniel, Chief District Judge Freda Wolfson told The Associated Press. Her husband, defense lawyer Mark Anderl, was injured, Wolfson said.The gunman posed as a delivery driver, according to a judiciary official who wasn’t authorized to comment and spoke anonymously to the AP. They said Salas was in the basement at the time and wasn’t injured and her husband is recovering from surgery.  The perpetrator, believed to be a lone gunman, was not in custody, the official said. Salas, seated in Newark's U.S. District Court, was nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed in 2011. Prior to that she served as a U.S. Magistrate Judge in New Jersey, after working as an assistant public defender for several years. Her highest-profile case in recent years was the financial fraud case involving husband-and-wife “Real Housewives of New Jersey” reality TV stars Teresa and Joe Giudice, whom Salas sentenced to prison for crimes including bankruptcy fraud and tax evasion. Salas staggered their sentences so that one of them could be available to take care of their four children.In 2017, she barred federal prosecutors from seeking the death penalty against an alleged gang leader charged in several Newark slayings, ruling the man’s intellectual disability made him ineligible for capital punishment. Salas later sentenced the man to 45 years in prison.More recently, Salas has presided over an ongoing lawsuit brought by Deutsche Bank investors who claim the company made false and misleading statements about its anti-money laundering policies and failed to monitor “high-risk” customers including convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Suspect Who Killed Son Of Epstein-Linked Judge Identified - Last night's killing in North Brunswick has dominated the news cycle on Monday as numerous 'experts' have stepped forward to denounce the connection between the shooting and a civil suit against Deutsche Bank that Judge Salas had recently been charged with overseeing.Now, authorities are telling media that the suspect in the shooting has been found dead via suicide in Liberty, NY.That's an unexpectedly morbid turn. But there's more: The suspect was a white man (remember, lower-case "w" for white) who wore a face covering and a FedEx uniform, law enforcement sources told ABC News, and he used an ordinary car to make a getaway.But here's the real twist. Though his name hasn't been released, authorities said the suspect was an attorney who once argued a case before Judge Salas, back in 2015. Police told reporters that they suspect the suspect killed himself with a self-inflicted gunshot. Here's more from ABC: The suspect was later found dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound near Liberty, New York, multiple law enforcement sources told ABC News. A municipal employee discovered the body in a car. The deceased suspect was an attorney who had a case before Judge Salas in 2015, sources said. A FedEx package addressed to Judge Salas was discovered in the car, sources said."As a judge, she had threats from time to time, but everyone is saying that recently there had not been any," said Mayor Womack, who is personal friends with the judge and her husband.  FedEx Spokesman Jim Masilak said in a statement, "We are aware of the media reports and are fully cooperating with investigating authorities." It sounds plausible enough. However, in a world where everything with even the most remote connection to Epstein inspires intrigue and suspicion, we wouldn't be surprised if the authorities' eventual report produces more questions than answers.

Roy Den Hollander ID’d as suspect in shooting at Judge Esther Salas’ home --Salas’ son, Daniel Anderl, 20, was fatally shot, while his father, prominent attorney Mark Anderl, 63, was critically wounded.Salas, believed to have been in the home’s basement at the time, was unharmed.The jurist had been assigned a number of high-profile cases over the years — including, recently, a class-action suit from Deutsche Bank investors who claim the company failed to monitor “high-risk” customers like late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.  Den Hollander had a case pending before Salas, challenging the military’s men-only draft, according to The Daily Beast, which first reported his involvement in the case.But ABC 7 NY has reported that investigators believe Salas’ husband was the intended target.The motive remains unclear.On Monday, Den Hollander was found dead, near a gun possibly used in the attack, and a package or envelope addressed to Salas, according to sources.Through the years, Den Hollander fired off a number of farfetched lawsuits, often trying to advance his men’s rights agenda.In 2007, Den Hollander filed a class-action suit in Manhattan federal court against several city nightclubs, claiming that offering women lower prices on ladies’ nights was discriminatory. The next year, Den Hollander took Columbia University to court, claiming that the Ivy was a “bastion of bigotry” that discriminated against men through its Women’s Studies Department.

Ghislaine Maxwell Hamstrung By Her Own 2016 Testimony, While Ex-Friend Claims She Hired Provocateur Jacob Wohl To Smear Accusers - In July of 2016, Ghislaine Maxwell spent two days with a group of attorneys in a midtown Manhattan law office and described her role in Jeffrey Epstein's life - claiming that "A very small part of my job was from time to time to find adult professional massage therapists for Jeffrey." Her testimony was obtained as part of a now-settled defamation lawsuit brought by accuser Virginia Giuffre, who claims both Epstein and Maxwell sexually abused her.“My job included hiring many people” including cooks, gardeners, pilots, assistants and cleaners for his six homes, Maxwell said in a deposition. “A very small part of my job was from time to time to find adult professional massage therapists for Jeffrey.” –Bloomberg Now, prosecutors allege Ghislaine lied nine times during the deposition, according to Bloomberg. According to an indictment against the now-jailed Maxwell unsealed on July 2, Maxwell lied when she denied knowing anything about Epstein's recruitment of underage girls, as well as the dead pedophile's interactions with underage girls at his properties around the globe.One day after Maxwell's deposition was partially unsealed, Epstein was found dead in a Manhattan jail cell following his arrest on charges which included sex-trafficking minors.A former friend of Maxwell has told the Daily Mail that the British socialite hired ham-handed provocateurs Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman to smear alleged Epstein victims, and to try and use DC connections to get Attorney General William Barr to fire New York US Attorney Geoffrey Berman fired in order to stall or stop the criminal investigation into Maxwell. One of the women they tried to use for their smear plots, Maryland model and paralegal Kristin Spealman, told DailyMail.com the men had been hired by Maxwell, who currently faces trial over charges she and Epstein trafficked underage girls for sex.Spealman, 36, said the lobbyists bragged to her they had been hired around early June for $25,000 to dig up dirt on Maxwell's alleged sex trafficking victims and to get Berman fired using Burkman’s supposed influence with Attorney General William Barr.Berman ultimately stepped down after a push from Barr. But less than two weeks later, Maxwell was charged on July 2 as being part of Epstein's sex trafficking ring and taken into custody. -Daily Mail

 Trump on Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell: 'I wish her well' - President Trump on Tuesday said he wishes Ghislaine Maxwell well as the associate of Jeffrey Epstein awaits a trial on charges that she helped recruit girls who were sexually abused. "I haven't really been following it too much. I just wish her well, frankly. I've met her numerous times over the years, especially since I lived in Palm Beach, and I guess they lived in Palm Beach," Trump told reporters at a White House briefing on the coronavirus pandemic. "But I wish her well, whatever it is," he added. Maxwell pleaded not guilty earlier this month to sex crime and perjury charges. Authorities allege she helped entice and transport minors to engage in sexual acts in the mid-1990s. Her trial is scheduled to begin in July 2021. A Manhattan judge denied her bail at her hearing, saying she posed a risk to flee the country. Maxwell pleaded not guilty last week to federal sex trafficking charges. Trump's connections to Epstein and Maxwell came under scrutiny after Epstein was indicted last summer on sex trafficking charges. The billionaire killed himself in his jail cell last August while awaiting trial. Prior to his death, prosecutors in New York alleged that Epstein, 66, engaged in sex acts with girls as young as 14 and had some girls recruit others to be part of an alleged sex trafficking operation. Epstein denied any wrongdoing. Trump and Epstein were known to run in the same social circles in New York and Florida. Trump told New York magazine in a 2002 article that Epstein is a "terrific guy" and "a lot of fun to be with."

Catch and Kill: The Protection Racket Used by Trump, Weinstein, Epstein and Wall Street – Pam Martens -When it comes to the crime families of New York, they literally do catch and kill people who can’t be trusted to keep the secrets of their criminal operations. When it comes to the superrich in New York, they’re more inclined to “catch and kill” the story, rather than the accuser. (Jeffrey Epstein’s untimely death last year may be an exception.)On October 11, 2017, Jim Rutenberg, writing for the New York Times about the aiders and abettors to Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assaults, explained the catch and kill strategy as follows:“There is also another dynamic at play, involving something akin to a protection racket. This is the network of aggressive public relations flacks and lawyers who guard the secrets of those who employ them and keep their misdeeds out of public view.”Keeping the secrets out of public view can involve a payoff to the victim and an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) or it can involve a more twisted version: getting a news outlet or Hollywood studio to pay big bucks to buy the story rights from the victim, with the promise to release the story to the public, then killing the story and making sure it doesn’t see the light of day anywhere else. This happens to a far greater extent than Americans currently understand.The mushrooming transmutations of catch and kill today involve not just public relations flacks, high-priced lawyers, publishers, mainstream media and Hollywood studios. Increasingly, catch and kill includes the U.S. Department of Justice, making this version of catch and kill exponentially more dangerous to American democracy.We’ll start off with a few of the catch and kill operations that you may have heard something about and then move on to the insidious Wall Street operations that have not, heretofore, been looked upon as catch and kill operations.

 JPMorgan Managed Millions For Ghislaine Maxwell Despite Booting Epstein In 2013 - While Ghislaine Maxwell hasn't disclosed which banks managed tens of millions of dollars for the British socialite, Bloomberg reports that one of them was JPMorgan. Not only that, the bank run by Jamie "That's why I'm richer than you" Dimon continued to do business with Maxwell after they kicked Jeffrey Epstein to the curb in 2013 - despite her well-known affiliation as the dead pedophile's 'madam.'Epstein played a pivotal role in the rise of Barclays CEO Paul Staley, while Staley ran JP Morgan's private bank - referring wealthy clients to the banker and helping to arrange the bank's 2004 acquisition of Highbridge Capital Management. Staley left JPMorgan in 2013 - the same year the bank severed ties with Epstein.Going back about two decades, Epstein regularly brought Staley business when he ran JPMorgan’s private bank and the two were close professionally, according to a person familiar with the matter. One of those introductions Epstein made was to hedge fund billionaire Glenn Dubin, the New York Times reported. -BloombergMaxwell, meanwhile, had at least $10 million under management at JPMorgan private bank, according to Bloomberg, citing two people with direct knowledge of the matter - one of whom said she was a client on or before 2009.  Her money there was handled by a team that included several dozen relationship managers, advisers and others who specialize in closely held businesses. The bank continued to work with her after Epstein moved funds to Deutsche Bank AG in 2013.

 Executives Of Bankrupt Companies Made $131 Million In Bonuses This Year  - While a wave of bankruptcies continues to wash over the country as a result of the pandemic (and just poorly run businesses), that hasn't stopped the executives of some of the biggest trainwrecks in recent business history from collecting fat bonus checks, despite driving their respective companies into the ground. Among the higher profile names are companies like J.C. Penney, Chesapeake Energy and Hertz, who have all filed for bankruptcy protection this year.They have also all awarded their executives significant bonuses totaling $10 million, $25 million and $1.5 million respectively in the weeks - or sometimes days - leading up to their bankruptcies. And they're not the only ones.Out of the 100 companies that have filed for bankruptcy since the Covid lockdowns began, Bloomberg estimates that 19 of these companies have committed to paying a total of $131 million in retention and performance bonuses. The companies claim the bonuses are to keep their management teams in order to lead their turnarounds. Yes, the very same management teams that led the companies to bankruptcy to begin with. And the bonuses are tough to claw back unless they are made after a company officially files for protection with the court. At a place like J.C. Penney, where thousands will lose their job, the company's CEO stands to make $4.5 million in bonuses. Hertz doled out $1.5 million to its top three executives as part of $16.2 million in retention bonuses three days before it filed for bankruptcy. Frontier Communications issued bonuses in February, before filing for bankruptcy in April. Chesapeake said in May it intended to pay $25 million in bonuses to 21 executives while requiring others to take salary cuts. The CEO of Intelsat, who led the company to its bankruptcy and has been in charge since 2015, is lined up for a $6.9 million bonus. Ian Keas, a principal at Pearl Meyer, an executive-compensation consulting firm, said: “Board members want the people that know the business, know the assets of the company, know the nuances and facets of the business, and can leverage that understanding and knowledge to extract value going forward.” Julie Farb, director of the Center for Strategic Research at AFL-CIO, a federation of 55 labor unions, had a slightly different take on the bonuses: “We really find them offensive in light of the median worker pay, the reductions in benefits and layoffs due to store closings. It’s all made worse in the current Covid environment.”

Jeff Bezos is now personally worth more than Nike, McDonald's, Costco, and almost 50% of the Dow  - The world's wealthiest man is worth more on paper than Nike's entire $122 billion market capitalization. The sportswear titan made $39 billion in sales and had almost 77,000 employees and more than 1,100 retail stores worldwide last year. Bezos's fortune also exceeds the $143 billion market cap of McDonald's. The fast-food giant generated $21 billion in sales last year and had 205,000 employees and 39,000 restaurants globally.The Amazon chief is also richer than the $145 billion market cap of Costco. The mega-retailer racked up $153 billion in revenue last year from its 99 million Costco cardholders, and employed 254,000 people.The comparison of Bezos' net worth to some of America's biggest companies wasfirst made by Fortune.The spike in Amazon's stock price, and therefore Bezos' fortune, reflects the company's gains during the coronavirus pandemic.More people are shopping on its website, watching movies and TV shows on Prime Video, and relying on its AWS cloud platform while stuck at home, and investors are betting Amazon can retain many of those new customers.As a result, Bezos is also now worth more than Oracle ($176 billion market cap), Salesforce ($172 billion), and IBM ($112 billion). His wealth is more than double the market caps of Starbucks ($88 billion) and Goldman Sachs ($73 billion), and more than triple the market caps of General Electric ($62 billion) and Target ($60 billion).The Amazon boss is worth more than 13 of the Dow 30 companies, and more than 85% of the stocks in the Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500. Only 30 companies across the three indexes have a higher market cap than Bezos' net worth.

What Banks Tell Us About Covid-Era Business: ‘Everybody Is, Bluntly, Struggling’ – WSJ -- Big banks expect the coronavirus recession to cut a wide swath through corporate America. When they reported second-quarter earnings this past week, big U.S. lenders said they don’t expect the U.S. economy to pull out of its slump soon. A protracted downturn, bank executives said, bodes poorly for all manner of American businesses, even those not directly affected by the travel bans and social-distancing measures put in place to curb the virus. From the first quarter to the second, the four biggest American banks nearly doubled the amount of money they set aside to cover soured corporate loans. It was different in the first quarter, when banks increased provisions for consumer loans far more. Even what looked like good news wasn’t really. Investment-banking revenue soared in the second quarter. But the gains didn’t come from advising CEOs on deals; rather, banks raked in fees helping companies stockpile cash to ride out the downturn. “Everybody is, bluntly, struggling,”  . “The generic corporate client we talk to, who’s otherwise open and doing business, is almost without exception down from what they would have expected going into the year and down from where they were last year.” Banks have unrivaled visibility into the health of the U.S. consumers and businesses. In the second quarter, they saw some alarming things. One by one, bank executives warned that the worst of the coronavirus recession has yet to come. They said they no longer expect a quick snapback in economic activity or employment. “I don’t think anybody should leave any bank earnings call this quarter simply feeling like the worst is absolutely behind us and it’s a rosy path ahead,” Citigroup Inc. Chief Executive Michael Corbattold analysts Tuesday. “I don’t want to be pessimistic…I want to be a realist.”  The four biggest American banks— JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup, Bank of America Corp.and Wells Fargo & Co.—set aside $33 billion in the second quarter to cover loans that could go bad. Corporate lending accounted for $16.8 billion of it, up from $8.8 billion in the first quarter.  JPMorgan, the biggest U.S. bank by assets, set aside $4.6 billion for commercial loan losses, up from $2.4 billion in the first quarter. It kept its consumer provision flat at $4.4 billion.

 Why coins are scarce and what government, banks are doing about it - Federal regulators and financial industry representatives are expected to release a set of recommendations in the coming weeks about how to jump-start the circulation of coins, which has slowed to a crawl during the coronavirus pandemic, according to two participants in the discussions. Meanwhile, a number of banks — from JPMorgan Chase to community banks in Wisconsin and New York — have taken action on their own to address the shortage, including offering consumers bonuses for change brought in, stockpiling coins and strategically moving coins among branches. The Federal Reserve has held two four-hour meetings this month with a task force that includes officials from the U.S. Mint, banking organizations, coin aggregators, armored money carriers and retail trade groups to figure out how to get coins flowing again and cash registers restocked. The group is considering a public call for coin deposits and ways to fix hang-ups in the supply chain that have caused lags in coin orders, said Coinstar CEO Jim Gaherity and Carey Whaley, an executive at the Independent Community Bankers of America, whose organizations belong to the task force. When local economies closed to ward off the spread of the coronavirus, paper money and coins fell further out of favor as consumers used their debit and credit cards more often or made digital payments. There was early confusion over how easily the virus could be transmitted over paper currency and coins as banks closed branches at the start of the pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has urged retail employees to wash their hands after exchanging money. But a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in April found evidence that the virus was more stable on plastic than copper, which is one of the main materials used to make U.S. coins. For shops and other small businesses that rely on physical money and coins to give out as change, the shortage has become another weight as they try to stay afloat through the pandemic. There are about $48 billion in coins circulating at any given time, said Matt Finn, chief economist at Old National Bank in Evansville, Ind. On top of a curtailment in production by the U.S. Mint at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the public health emergency forced consumers to “abruptly change their consumption habits,” especially affecting coin-heavy services such as laundromats, public transportation and vending machines. The system — in which businesses collect coins and deposit them at banks, which send the money to the Federal Reserve, which then redistributes the change — was “severely disrupted” on both ends as businesses closed down and customers stopped going to the bank, Finn said. “The system got lumpy,” he said. “The coins didn’t go anywhere, and that’s precisely the problem — they didn’t go anywhere. Now the economy is reopening, but the coinage isn’t where it needs to be yet.”

ABA offers political lifeline on masks, and banks are relieved - Bankers are embracing the American Bankers Association's public backing of mandatory mask-wearing in branches as the kind of political cover they need to enforce strict public health practices at branches. With coronavirus cases rising throughout the country, banks' efforts to protect customer and employees' health have clashed with opposition to mask-wearing. Differing guidelines across jurisdictions have forced banks to shift their approach back-and-forth. “It got to the point a few weeks ago where it was crazy, we were continually changing our policy for employees,” said Luanne Cundiff, president and CEO of the $384 billion-asset First State Bank of St. Charles, Mo., where two of the bank’s three primary markets are under mask–wearing orders. "Banks in different markets where [there are] different requirements were causing confusion," she added. Cundiff expressed hope that the ABA's recommendation will help establish consistent standards. “It was good for banks in our position — banks in different markets where it was causing confusion — that our association took the lead,” she said. “I think any kind of push to educate the general public and the workforce is a benefit to us all.” Laurie Stewart, president and CEO of the $738 million-asset Sound Financial Bancorp in Seattle, said employees have been wearing masks voluntarily since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended it in late April. "It was certainly mixed guidance in the beginning," she said, adding that the ABA recommendation "has really solidified it." Bank regulators have no formal mask-wearing policies, but acting Comptroller of the Currency Brian Brooks made waves when he said in June that masks in branches could lead to more bank robberies, even during a pandemic. While public health experts consider face masks an effective measure against spreading COVID-19, opposition to mask-wearing has intensified in some parts of the country. But after Target, Walmart, Kroger and most other major retailers adopted face mask rules this week following a spike in COVID-19 cases and deaths, the ABA urged financial institutions to follow suit. "I encourage you today to adopt and publicly pronounce a policy requiring all who enter your branches to wear a mask," ABA President and CEO Rob Nichols said in a letter July 19 to bank CEOs. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency have left it up to individual banks to decide whether to require face masks be worn in bank branches.

 Congress wants to extend PPP, lenders ready to move on - Bankers are largely ready to move on from the Paycheck Protection Program, even as lawmakers discuss extending the effort through the rest of the summer. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told the House Small Business Committee last week he was receptive to proposals to keep the PPP open past its scheduled Aug. 8 expiration, while suggesting that legislators add to the program’s $131 billion in remaining funds. Legislators are also working on a bill to grant small businesses access a new round of PPP funding if they have less than 300 workers and “substantial revenue loss,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., tweeted on Tuesday morning. While bankers still support the program conceptually, they are less enthused about participating. For many, the time has come to focus on PPP loan forgiveness, assessing the status of deferrals and pursuing traditional lending opportunities. “None of the bankers I’ve talked to regret participating, but we’re worn out from borrowers asking when their loans will be forgiven,” said Robert Franko, president and CEO of the $2.2 billion-asset First Choice Bancorp in Cerritos, Calif. Though he still backs PPP, John Buhrmaster, president and CEO of 1st National Bank of Scotia in Scotia, N.Y., said the $492 million-asset bank’s lenders are “absolutely” fatigued from working their way through the program’s complexities. “This is a community service,” Buhrmaster added, pointing to the 1% interest rate cap for PPP loans. “With the amount of time and how we had to change the structure of our bank to produce these loans, it’s not a profitable business.” Banks receive fees for PPP originations, but they will be recognized over the life of the loans. The economics changed when recent legislation increased the amount of time borrowers have to spend PPP proceeds from eight weeks to 24 weeks. “Initially, those fees looked pretty good,” Buhrmaster said. “Now that it’s a 24-week program, the amortization of those fees is definitely not as attractive.” Lenders have originated less than 500,000 PPP loans since May 30, according to data from the Small Business Administration. Nonbanks, which represent about 15% of approved PPP lenders, have accounted for nearly a quarter of those loans.  The program ran out of its initial $349 billion appropriation after just 13 days of operation. New loan originations resumed April 27, when Congress approved another $310 billion in funding. About 40% of the added funds remain nearly three months later.

 House passes AML reforms in defense spending bill— The House voted to approve a defense spending bill that includes a banking industry-supported measure to reform anti-money-laundering regulations. The National Defense Authorization Act was approved in a 295-125 vote late Tuesday. It included an amendment to require companies to disclose their true owners at the point of incorporation to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. The provision would remove the burden from banks to report their customers’ beneficial owners. “Anonymous shell companies are the vehicles of choice for money launderers, criminals, and terrorists,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., who introduced the amendment but voted against the overall defense spending package for other reasons. “Unfortunately, the United States is the world’s capital of anonymous shell companies. My bill would correct this by requiring companies to disclose their true beneficial owners to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.” A separate anti-money-laundering reform measure was also included in the NDAA aimed at improving information sharing between financial institutions, law enforcement and the Treasury Department. The Senate is also considering a defense spending bill and could vote to pass its version as early as this week. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, and Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the top Democrat on the committee, have introduced a similar beneficial ownership amendment. It is unclear whether that amendment will be approved in the Senate’s NDAA legislation. The amendment, which is aimed at cracking down on anonymous shell companies, was initially passed by the House as a standalone bill last year, with the support of roughly two dozen Republicans. Separate legislation was also introduced in the Senate last year by four Democrats and four Republicans, but has not received a committee vote or Senate floor consideration, partially because of opposition from small businesses. While Maloney's amendment passed, she did not support the full defense spending bill, saying it "continues to explode the Pentagon’s budget while too many Americans are suffering."

FDIC floats certification program for fintechs working with banks - The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is seeking comment about a potential set of standards and a certification program intended to make it easier and less costly for financial institutions to partner with technology firms, the agency said Monday. The request for information will address several matters. For instance, it seeks comment on the idea of the FDIC partnering with a standards-setting organization that would develop best practices for technology firms that want to work with banks. The standards-setter would focus on areas such as credit underwriting models. The FDIC is also exploring the possibility of a voluntary certification program that would assess a technology company’s compliance with the standards. “Fostering innovation in the financial sector is a top priority for the FDIC,” Chairman Jelena McWilliams said in a press release. “We have to remove unnecessary regulatory impediments that banks must overcome when developing or deploying new technologies.” The agency expects the program will be particularly beneficial to community banks that may not have the budgets to invest in their own technology, or lack sufficient staffing or the technical expertise to properly assess new products. “The cost to innovate is in many cases prohibitively high for community banks,” McWilliams said in October during a speech at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “They often lack the expertise, the information technology, and research and development budgets to independently develop and deploy their own technology. That is why partnering with a fintech that has already developed, tested, and rolled out new technology is often a critical mechanism for a community.” The FDIC's program could also benefit fintechs seeking partnerships with community banks. A tech company could potentially apply for one certification that would be accepted by many institutions rather than spending time and resources on a patchwork of different requirements. The request for information is part of the FDiTech initiative, which aims to promote the use of new technologies across the financial services sector. The public will have 60 days to provide comments

OCC allows banks to hold cryptocurrency assets for safekeeping — The U.S. regulator of national banks issued an interpretative letter giving banks the all-clear to hold cryptocurrency assets on behalf of their customers. The letter, dated Wednesday, clarifies the stance by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency that bank custody services, which have long been understood to include holding digital assets, can extend to cryptographic keys and other crypto-related assets. "We conclude a national bank may provide these cryptocurrency custody services on behalf of customers, including by holding the unique cryptographic keys associated with cryptocurrency," Jonathan Gould, senior deputy comptroller and chief counsel, wrote in the letter, which was addressed to an unnamed bank that had sought the opinion. "This letter also reaffirms the OCC’s position that national banks may provide permissible banking services to any lawful business they choose, including cryptocurrency businesses, so long as they effectively manage the risks and comply with applicable law." Gould's letter does not carry the weight of a regulation, but it could serve as a road map for banks considering offering cryptocurrency services, which have largely been provided by other types of firms. “From safe-deposit boxes to virtual vaults, we must ensure banks can meet the financial services needs of their customers today,” acting Comptroller of the Currency Brian Brooks, formerly the chief legal officer of the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, said in a press release. “This opinion clarifies that banks can continue satisfying their customers’ needs for safeguarding their most valuable assets, which today for tens of millions of Americans includes cryptocurrency." Because cryptocurrency is decentralized and encrypted, an individual’s crypto assets have typically been guarded by a complicated alphanumeric passcode or “key.” Losing that key can be devastating for cryptocurrency holders. But giving custody of it to a regulated exchange, such as Coinbase, can provide a backstop. The OCC’s letter argues that custody of a cryptocurrency asset is a necessary regulatory innovation for the banking sector in light of recent technology developments. “The OCC recognizes that, as the financial markets become increasingly technological, there will likely be increasing need for banks and other service providers to leverage new technology and innovative ways to provide traditional services on behalf of customers,” Gould wrote. “By providing such services, banks can continue to fulfill the financial intermediation function they have historically played in providing payment, loan and deposit services.”

OCC seeks to clarify oversight of third-party lending relationships — The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has issued a proposal to further clarify how lending relationships between national banks and third parties are regulated. The intent is to make it easier for banks to use such relationships to “facilitate affordable access to credit,” according to the proposal, which the OCC released Monday. Banks often sell loans to third parties to manage risk and fund additonal lending. But the current legal framework has created uncertainty as to which party is the “true lender,” which affects how the OCC supervises the lending relationship, the proposal says. Under the plan, a true lender is the entity named as the official lender at a loan’s origination date or the entity that funds the loan on the origination date. When a national bank is the true lender, the OCC is the prudential regulator of the activities in question. "If the bank makes the loan in the context of a relationship with a third party, the OCC ensures that the bank has instituted appropriate safeguards to manage the associated risks," the proposal says. "In contrast, if a third party makes a loan as part of a relationship with a bank, the OCC is not the prudential regulator of the lending activity, though it still assesses the bank’s third-party risk management in connection with the relationship itself." Lack of clarity on regulatory oversight "may discourage banks and third parties from entering into relationships, limit competition, and chill the innovation that results from these partnerships — all of which may restrict access to affordable credit,” the proposal says. The proposal was issued almost two months after the OCC finalized a workaround of a 2015 court decision, Madden v. Midland Funding, that limited banks’ ability to sell off loans. That rule clarified that a loan's interest rate can remain legally intact even after the loan is acquired by a purchaser in a state with a lower rate cap. The OCC said the new proposal would “operate together” with its workaround of the Madden decision. “Once it is determined that a loan has, in fact, been made by a bank under the clear standards set out in this proposal, the applicable federal legal framework (1) determines the interest permitted on the loan … and (2) permits the loan to be subsequently sold, assigned, or otherwise transferred without affecting the interest term, pursuant to the Madden-fix rule,” the proposal says. The OCC will accept comments on the proposal on or before Sept. 3.

Uncertainty about CFPB has banks leery of small-dollar lending -- The Trump administration has urged banks and credit unions to compete with high-cost payday lenders to offer more credit options to consumers. But banks remain wary of a product they still see as risky, observers said.The prudential bank regulators issued guidance in May encouraging banks to embrace small-dollar lending to help consumers hurt by the coronavirus pandemic. Two days later, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau approved a process for banks to offer installment loans or lines of credit for amounts of up to $2,500.But nearly two months later, banks are still said to be balking at a product that the industry for the most part has long viewed with reluctance.Bankers remain concerned about the profitability of such products. The upcoming presidential election, which can determine who leads the regulatory agencies, also raises questions about the durability of recent guidance. “As quickly as these rules change, they can flip back, so for a bank to spend a lot of time and effort to create a product to fit this market and have the rules change a year from now, it’s hard to imagine they will do that work," said Doug Farry, co-founder of Employee Loan Solutions, a Solana Beach, Calif., technology company that helps employees qualify for low-cost small-dollar loans.  The recent stance of Trump administration regulators is in stark contrast to the warnings for banks from the previous administration about offering small-dollar loans. But with the 2020 election less than four months away, polls favor the presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. And a recent Supreme Court decision making it easier for the president to fire a CFPB director calls into question the job security of Kathy Kraninger, the agency's current chief.So far, only a handful of banks offer well-known small-dollar lending products. U.S. Bank in Minneapolis offers loans between $100 and $1,000. KeyBank in Cleveland offers a KeyBasic line of credit between $250 and $5,000. “This is going to take some time,” said Alex Horowitz, a senior officer at the Pew Charitable Trusts, who has talked with banks and service providers about creating small-dollar loan products. Others suggested banks may wait for the political and regulatory environment to settle down since the election could result in a U-turn on regulatory policy. If President Trump loses the election, many expect Kraninger's days would be numbered in a Joe Biden administration. The Supreme Court ruling allowed CFPB directors to be fired at will, striking down a statutory provision in the Dodd-Frank Act.

Zions braces for loan charge-offs in industries hard hit by pandemic - Zions Bancorp. in Salt Lake City is anticipating charge-offs will rise through the end of the year driven by weaknesses in industries hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. The $75 billion-asset company said that the volume of problem loans spiked in the second quarter and that about $4.2 billion of commercial loans, or 8.6% of its loan portfolio, are at risk of default. More than $1 billion of the problem credits are commercial real estate loans made to retailers and roughly $640 million are loans to the struggling hotel sector. Many borrowers in the technology, telecommunications and transportation sectors are also struggling to keep pace with payments, executives said. “We expect adverse credit migration, we expect charge-offs,” Chief Financial Officer Paul Burdiss said in an earnings call with analysts late Monday. Since they began reporting earnings last week, many banks have warned of more charge-offs to come and highlighted high levels of stress in sectors most affected by lockdowns and stay-at-home orders. Western Alliance Bancorp in Phoenix, for example, said that more than 90% of its loans to the hotel industry are in some form of deferral. Other lenders, including Regions Financial in Birmingham, Ala., and Hancock Whitney in Gulfport, Miss., pointed to energy lending as a particular area of weakness, as demand for oil and gas has plummeted during the pandemic. The $144 billion-asset Regions reported $85.8 million in gross losses on its energy book in the second quarter, more than it lost on that portfolio in 2018 and 2019 combined. The $31.7 billion-asset Hancock Whitney, meanwhile, recently sold nearly $500 million of energy loans as part of a broader effort to de-risk its portfolio. “We're not thinking about selling off a portion of our portfolio to reduce the risk,” said President and Chief Operating Officer Scott MacLean. Hancock Whitney’s “exposures were pretty different than ours and they had a more regionalized portfolio as well.”

Commercial Mortgage Delinquencies Near Record Levels -Delinquency rates across commercial properties have shot up faster than at any other time.As thousands of restaurants, hotels, and local businesses in the U.S. struggle to stay open, delinquency rates across commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) - fixed income investments backed by a pool of commercial mortgages - have tripled in three months to 10.32%.As Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld notes, in just a few months, delinquency rates have already effectively reached their 2012 peaks. To put this in perspective, consider that it took well over two years for mortgage delinquency rates to reach the same historic levels in the aftermath of the housing crisis of 2009.The above chart draws data from Trepp and illustrates the recent shocks to the CMBS market, broken down by property type. While there is optimism in some areas of the market, accommodation mortgages have witnessed delinquency rates soar over 24%. Amid strict containment efforts in April, average revenues per room plummeted all the way to $16 per night—an 84% drop. Similarly, retail properties have been rattled. Almost one-fifth are in delinquencies. From January-June 2020, at least 15 major retailers have filed for bankruptcy and over $20 billion in CMBS loans have exposure to flailing chains such as JCPenney, Neiman Marcus, and Macy’s. On the other hand, industrial property types have remained stable, hovering close to their January levels. This is likely attributable in part to the fact that the rise in e-commerce sales have helped support warehouse operations. For multifamily and office buildings, Washington’s stimulus packages have helped renters to continue making payments thus far. Still, as the government considers ending stimulus packages in the near future, a lack of relief funding could spell trouble.

Does Congress have cure for what's ailing CRE borrowers? -— Lawmakers are weighing a plan to help commercial real estate borrowers that are otherwise barred from accessing relief programs like the Paycheck Protection Program. The coronavirus pandemic has forced shopping malls to a standstill, cleared out hotels and shuttered offices. All of that spells trouble for commercial real estate. But despite calls for government relief, aiding the CRE sector is complicated by the fact that many borrowers cannot take on new debt as part of their lending terms. That makes loans issued through the PPP and the Federal Reserve's Main Street Lending Program unavailable to them. Rep. Van Taylor, R-Texas, who sits on the House Financial Services Committee, has circulated a draft bill authorizing the Treasury Department to purchase preferred equity investments in CRE-related businesses, using funding from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act. The draft bill "is positive in that it doesn't run afoul of the no-additional-debt covenants,” said Patrick Sargent, a partner in Alston & Bird’s finance group. “Plus, it would [provide] a return to the government ... on its money.” Regulators and other administration officials implementing the CARES Act have struggled to figure out how best to address CRE loan defaults, with borrowers increasingly unable to service their debt without incoming revenue. In the PPP, even though aid recipients can ultimately write off the financial relief as a grant, the funds are initially disbursed as loans through third-party banks. “This is a problem we have not addressed yet,” Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., said of the struggles for the CRE sector at a June 30 hearing of the House Financial Services Committee. “I think we’re going to see, without intervention, a wave of foreclosures and defaults.” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told Barr that they had not yet figured out a way to set up an emergency lending facility for commercial real estate, and weren’t sure that extending debt to those borrowers would be in their best interest. “Debt doesn’t solve every problem,” Powell said. “You’ve got people who can’t currently service debt, you’ve got these inflexible arrangements, and so there’s a serious problem here that needs to get fixed and we’re racking our brains to see how it could be something we could do by lending.”

The Fed Rides to the Rescue of JPMorgan and Citi Again – This Time It’s Their Commercial Real Estate Mortgages -   Pam Martens --Quietly, on July 13, the New York Fed published a list of asset-backed loans that it had approved for eligibility in one of its emergency lending  programs, the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, otherwise known as TALF. The New York Fed stuck a smattering of small business loans and one student loan product on the list. Everything else was securitized pools of mortgages on commercial real estate, much of it issued by JPMorgan and Citigroup. TALF was supposed to help the consumer by keeping interest rates down on consumer loans. It’s pretty tough to find a connection between the consumer and commercial real estate mortgages on hotels, shopping malls and office buildings.One thing notable about the New York Fed’s approved list is that the securitizations of these commercial mortgages by JPMorgan had occurred as far back as 2013 and in the case of Citigroup, as far back as 2015. Is it really the job of the Fed to bail out the banks from old deals that are now souring? You may be wondering if the commercial real estate mortgages had already been securitized and sold off to investors, how does this constitute a bailout of the banks by the Fed. It’s because the market value of those deals had been dramatically sagging until the Fed set up its bailout program, thus boosting the market value of those deals as well as similar mortgages still on the books of the banks.The purpose of TALF, according to the Fed, is to “help meet the credit needs of consumers and businesses by facilitating the issuance of asset-backed securities.” Note the word “issuance” in this sentence. Bailing out old deals that have already been issued does nothing to help new issuance, unless one considers the Fed distorting the market to be a help.  According to its newly released transaction data for TALF, it has made a total of $252 million in loans thus far – the vast majority of which involved commercial real estate loans issued by the biggest Wall Street banks at some point over the past seven years. (To check out the transaction data, scroll down here to Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, click on the transaction data and use the tabs at the bottom of the spreadsheet.)

Democratic bills would bar GSEs from charging forbearance fees— A new proposed bill would prevent Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from charging fees for acquiring loans put in forbearance because of the coronavirus pandemic. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., unveiled the Promoting Access to Credit for Homebuyers Act on Wednesday. The bill would require the two government-sponsored enterprises, as well as the Federal Housing Administration, to continue backing mortgages subject to forbearance plans without imposing additional restrictions or costs on borrowers or lenders. “We must ensure that homebuyers facing financial strain are not arbitrarily denied access to mortgage credit throughout this emergency,” Menendez said. “This bill will help remedy the Trump administration’s ongoing failure to support hard working families and consumers facing hardship and delivers critically needed stimulus to our economy.” A companion bill in the House to prohibit such fees has been introduced by Rep. Juan Vargas, D-Calif. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act passed in March allowed a six-month forbearance period for homeowners with federally backed mortgages. They can then seek an additional six months of forbearance if they have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Federal Housing Finance Agency later announced that while Fannie and Freddie could buy loans already in forbearance, the GSEs would charge originators a loan-level pricing adjustment of 5% to 7%. The added cost was seen by many in the industry as too steep.

Small-business bankruptcy program adds new risk to home equity loans - To their list of worries about how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting customers and their own bottom lines, bankers can now add this: a potential spike in home mortgage modifications tied to small-businesses bankruptcies. Many entrepreneurs opening a business for the first time will often use the equity in their homes as collateral on loans needed to buy equipment or hire workers. Last year, Congress made changes to the bankruptcy code that allowed borrowers to modify these second mortgages in the event their businesses fail, perhaps saving them from having to sell their homes to settle their debts. Protections were further expanded when the coronavirus relief package was passed in March. But while these changes provide a measure of relief to borrowers — particularly with bankruptcies expected to increase as the pandemic drags on — they can cause problems for banks and investors that hold the loans. That’s because interest rates are often lowered in the modification process, reducing a loan’s value. In one case involving a mortgage on a bed and breakfast in California, the owner proposed a plan in the new bankruptcy program that would have reduced the secured portion of the mortgage to the value of the property and would be paid down over a new 30-year term at 4.25% interest. The servicing company handling the loan had proposed selling the property to satisfy the owner’s debts, though the case has yet to be resolved. “It could be a headache in that a mortgage that a lender thought was not modifiable is now suddenly modifiable,” said Bonnie Pollack, a partner at Cullen and Dykman who represents lenders in these new bankruptcy cases. The new subchapter V of the Chapter 11 bankruptcy process was signed into law last year and became available in February. It provides small-business owners and individuals with business debt of up to a little more than $2.7 million with a streamlined path to restructuring. One of the advantages to subchapter V allows a residential property owner to have their mortgage modified to lower their monthly payments and ease some terms as long as the home loan was taken out to fund their business — often in the form of a cash-out home equity refinance, or collateral mortgage for business debt. The coronavirus relief package expands, until March 2021, the debt limit for subchapter V to $7.5 million, increasing the number of potential mortgages with terms once thought set in stone at risk of being eased. Banks have been combing through their portfolios searching for which mortgages might suddenly be modified in the new bankruptcy program. An exact number across the industry is hard to pin down, but a 2018 survey by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. shed some light on how often small-business owners use the equity in their homes to secure a loan.

 Big banks urge HUD to shelve redlining plan. Small banks say not so fast — In what is a sea change from their prior stance in “disparate impact,” big banks are urging the Trump administration to reconsider plans to weaken fair-lending rules. But the banking industry is far from united in that view, and so far the agency responsible for enforcing fair-lending laws, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, has shown no willingness to abandon the proposal. Large lenders including Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo all urged HUD to withdraw a plan that would put more of an the onus on borrowers to prove discrimination when bringing redlining claims against lenders. They argue that the proposal, first introduced a year ago, would weaken efforts to curb discrimination at a time of intense national focus on racial equity. But small banks continue to support the proposal, saying it would reduce frivolous claims and help focus fair-lending enforcement on catching the truly bad actors. “We do not want to see the proposal retracted,” said Lilly Thomas, executive vice president and senior regulatory counsel at the Independent Community Bankers of America. A 2015 Supreme Court decision affirmed disparate impact, which enables plaintiffs to allege discrimination even if a lender did not show discriminatory intent. But the ruling also suggested that HUD should restrict how the legal doctrine is applied. The HUD proposal would establish a five-step procedure for a consumer to demonstrate discrimination. Consumer advocates have argued that the plan would effectively make the burden of proof too high. The industry initially supported the plan widely. In an October 2019 comment letter, the Mortgage Bankers Association, whose membership includes the nation’s largest banks, said it “supports HUD’s decision to amend its disparate impact standard to” be consistent with the Supreme Court ruling.” But following nationwide protests over systemic racism in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, large lenders and their trade groups have changed course. “At a time when we as a nation are having important and too-long-ignored conversations about racial inequality, we believe it is appropriate to withhold publication of the final disparate impact rule,” Robert Broeksmit, the MBA's president and chief executive, wrote in a July 16 letter. “Instead, we call on HUD to bring the housing, lending, and civil rights communities together for renewed discussions about how to address the stubbornly wide housing and wealth gaps faced by communities of color that still exist — and by some measures have grown worse — more than 50 years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act.” BofA, Citi, JPMorgan, Quicken Loans and Wells Fargo expressed similar sentiments in letters of their own. They cited recent events — including the heavy impact of the coronavirus pandemic on low- and moderate-income communities — and the nationwide conversation about systemic racism as justifying a pause in the rulemaking effort.

BankThink: Trump’s attempt to weaken fair housing rules is beyond tone deaf - Eradicating structural racism has suddenly appeared on the agenda of virtually all private, public and nonprofit organizations, but the Trump administration remains unmoved leading up to the November elections. Nowhere is this more evident than in housing market and housing finance policies and proposals.Structural racism has again catapulted to the forefront of national matters, with “Black Lives Matter” and “Defund the Police” slogans painted on streets across America. So too, corporate America has joined in the fight against inequality by committing $1.6 billion to organizations fighting racism and injustice. Yet the Trump administration seems intent on doing everything it can to perpetuate rather than ameliorate structural racism, as well as its costly repercussions. These patterns are not just spatial curiosities. They are at the core of a host of economic and social problems. Research has demonstrated that residents of predominantly poor and non-white neighborhoods have lower incomes, fewer and less-safe housing choices, limited access to healthy food and health care services, inferior educational opportunities and more.Beyond this, all neighborhoods are affected in the more segregated cities, which experience lower levels of economic growth, average incomes and educational attainment in addition to higher homicide rates than less segregated cities. One can make the case that not all people of color want to reside in an integrated community, but discrimination by providers of housing services remains a central cause of the nation’s segregated housing patterns.  There have been some positive developments in recent years prior to when the Trump administration took several steps to eliminate or weaken some of the key tools that have accounted for that progress.   But now, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has proposed a revised rule that would make it virtually impossible for a plaintiff to establish disparate impact discrimination, while making it easy for respondents to avoid liability. One defense could be that the policy or practice that adversely affected a protected class was a standard industry practice. In other words, if everybody engages in a problematic practice then it’s okay.   But many lenders, including Bank of America and Quicken Loans, have urged HUD to scrap its plan to rollback this critical tool for addressing structural racism. Similarly, HUD has proposed a new rule regarding the obligation of recipients of federal community development funds to affirmatively further fair housing. The Obama administration previously issued a clarification to this obligation that included requiring fund recipients to examine the local housing market and identify discriminatory policies and practices, then take actions to eradicate those problematic actions.    Sadly, the louder the call for addressing structural racism, the more this administration seems to double down on its opposition to that agenda.

Trump rolls back fair housing rule with executive order - The Department of Housing and Urban Development on Thursday said it would terminate and replace the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, calling it “complicated, costly, and ineffective" while anti-discrimination advocates condemned the move. "After reviewing thousands of comments on the proposed changes to the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing regulation, we found it to be unworkable and ultimately a waste of time for localities to comply with, too often resulting in funds being steered away from communities that need them most," said HUD Secretary Ben Carson in a press release. "Instead, the Trump administration has established programs like Opportunity Zones that are driving billions of dollars of capital into underserved communities where affordable housing exists, but opportunity does not." The president previously tweeted his intention to roll back the statute on July 2, noting it is "having a devastating impact on … once thriving suburban areas," to the vast dismay of equality groups. "It’s a dark day for the country when the president boasts about maintaining housing segregation, and the agency charged with carrying out the Fair Housing Act becomes a tool to help him do it," Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said in a statement. "Secretary Carson must withdraw this perverse rule and reinstate the 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule so America can get to the long-overdue work of fulfilling the promise of the Fair Housing Act." In March, Brown led an opposition to the rollback, penning a letter to HUD with 36 other senators.   "The president’s implication that this five-year old rule somehow ruined suburbs is both counterfactual and a transparent shoutout to white supremacists who don’t like that America’s suburbs, along with the entire country, have become more diverse," Van Tol said. "Ending housing segregation and discrimination isn’t just about housing. It’s about ending racism and white supremacy in everyday life that blocks people of color from opportunities for a good life that are available to whites, including access to great schools, homes, jobs, health care, clean air and water, nutritious food and the ability to save and invest in housing anywhere, and through that investment accumulate and pass on wealth to the next generation," Van Tol continued. "The Trump administration just said no to all of that. It’s shameful."

The Government Is Walking Blind Into the Coronavirus Housing Crisis  - Alexis Goldstein - A decade ago, the lack of a government database tracking foreclosures left policymakers reliant on data from the private actors that caused or exacerbated the crisis—like the Mortgage Bankers Association, a front group for the mortgage industry that lobbied heavily against state regulations; or the real estate information firm RealtyTrac, which stands to profit handsomely from a foreclosure crisis. As Sam Jewler and Chris Herwig documented in 2012, the lack of federal data led to wildly different estimates for the number of foreclosures. In Chicago, estimates for vacant properties ranged from around 5,000 (the official city count) to18,000 (as reported by The Chicago Tribune) to over 100,000 (as city housing activists attested).There is no official estimate for how many foreclosures there were in the last crisis. Journalist Laura Gottesdeiner, in her book A Dream Foreclosed: Black America and the Fight for a Place to Call Home, estimated that 10 million people were foreclosed on—a number roughly equivalent to the population of the state of Michigan. In 2009, the Congressional Oversight Panel noted that without accurate numbers, everyone was “flying blind.” The lack of data had consequences for policymakers, who were unable to do basic things, such as properly deploy resources to the hardest-hit areas or determine how many homeless families there were and where they went after they lost their homes. The absence of reliable information even led to massive problems for election “get out the vote” efforts, because voter files no longer had correct addresses. To address this problem, in 2010, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act mandated the creation of a database to track homeowners who were either late on their mortgage payments or in foreclosure. While there is a National Mortgage Database Program, the database’s sample size is woefully small: a mere 5 percent of all mortgage holders. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau makes some anonymized data about mortgage delinquencies available, but it is also based on a 5 percent sample. Ten years since the passage of Dodd-Frank, the robust foreclosure database the law calls for is still nowhere to be found. As the saying goes, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.”

MBA Survey: "Share of Mortgage Loans in Forbearance Decreases for Fifth Straight Week to 7.80%" 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 Decreases for Fifth Straight Week to 7.80%The Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) latest Forbearance and Call Volume Survey revealed that the total number of loans now in forbearance decreased by 38 basis points from 8.18% of servicers’ portfolio volume in the prior week to 7.80% as of July 12, 2020. According to MBA’s estimate, 3.9 million homeowners are in forbearance plans....“The share of loans in forbearance dropped to its lowest level in over two months, driven by an increase in the pace of exits as more homeowners have been able to get back to work,” said Mike Fratantoni, MBA’s Senior Vice President and Chief Economist. “The decline in the forbearance share was broad based, with decreases for GSE, Ginnie Mae, and portfolio/PLS loans.”Added Fratantoni, “Almost half of borrowers remaining in forbearance are now in an extension of the original term, while the remainder are in their initial forbearance plan. The pace of new forbearance requests remains quite low compared to earlier in the crisis, but we are watching carefully for any increases due to either the pick-up in COVID-19 cases or the cessation of enhanced unemployment insurance benefits at the end of this month.” 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, and has been trending down for the last five weeks. The MBA notes: "Total weekly forbearance requests as a percent of servicing portfolio volume (#) remained flat relative to the prior week at 0.13%. "

Black Knight: Number of Homeowners in COVID-19-Related Forbearance Plans Increased Slightly - Note: Both Black Knight and the MBA (Mortgage Bankers Association) are putting out weekly estimates of mortgages in forbearance.  From Forbearance Volumes See Slight Rise to 4,119,000The latest data from the McDash Flash Forbearance Tracker shows that there was minimal overall change in the number of active forbearance cases this week (+2K), bringing the total number of loans in active forbearance to 4,119,000. The slight rise was driven  by a modest increase in forbearance plans among portfolio/private labeled securitization loans (+12k) and FHA/VA loans (+8k). The number of forbearances among GSE loans fell by 18k for the week. CR Note: There will be another disaster relief package soon (aka CARES II), but we might see an increase in forbearance activity if the package isn't available by early August.

Black Knight: National Mortgage Delinquency Rate Decreased in June, "Serious Delinquencies Surge to 9-Year High" --Note: Loans in forbearance are counted as delinquent in this survey, but these loans are not reported as delinquent to the credit bureaus.From Black Knight: Mortgage Delinquencies Improve for the First Time Since January, While Serious Delinquencies Surge to 9-Year High

• After rising from 3.2% in January to 7.8% in May, the national delinquency rate improved for the first time in five months, falling to 7.6% in June as the overall number of past-due mortgages declined by 98,000
• Serious delinquencies – those 90 or more days past due – rose by more than 1.2 million as the initial wave of borrowers financially impacted by COVID-19 missed their third mortgage payment
• At 1.87 million, the number of seriously delinquent mortgages is now at its highest level since early 2011
• With federal foreclosure moratoriums still in place, active foreclosure inventory continues to dwindle; June’s 192,000 active foreclosures were the fewest on record, dating back to 2000
• Prepayment activity hit its highest level in 16 years in June, fueled by record-low 30-year interest rates and surging refinance incentive
emphasis added

According to Black Knight's First Look report for March, the percent of loans delinquent decreased 2.3% in June compared to May, and increased 104% year-over-year.The percent of loans in the foreclosure process decreased 4.2% in June and were down 27.1% over the last year. Black Knight reported the U.S. mortgage delinquency rate (loans 30 or more days past due, but not in foreclosure) was 7.59% in June, down from 7.76% in May.The percent of loans in the foreclosure process decreased in June to 0.36% from 0.38% in May.The number of delinquent properties, but not in foreclosure, is up 2,084,000 properties year-over-year, and the number of properties in the foreclosure process is down 67,000 properties year-over-year.

Lawler: Serious Delinquency Rate on FHA-Insured SF Loans Surged in June -- Note that Lawler is discussing the sharp increase in serious delinquencies in June according to the Early Warning System. This means people have missed three payments (although many of these people are probably in forbearance programs.)  While the FHA’s “official” monthly loan performance report for June is not yet available on its website, data from the FHA’s Early Warning System indicates that FHA’s Early Warning System indicate that the serious delinquency rate on FHA-insured single-family loans surged in June. Delinquency rates in the EWS do not match those in the official report, but the two delinquency rates tend to move together over time.

NMHC: Rent Payment Tracker Finds Decline in People Paying Rent as of July 20th --Without further disaster relief, there will a significant housing and financial issue.   From the NMHC: NMHC Rent Payment Tracker Finds 91.3 Percent of Apartment Households Paid Rent as of July 20: The National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC)’s Rent Payment Tracker found 91.3 percent of apartment households made a full or partial rent payment by July 20 in its survey of 11.1 million units of professionally managed apartment units across the country.This is a 2.1-percentage point decrease from the share who paid rent through July 20, 2019 and compares to 92.2 percent that had paid by June 20, 2020. These data encompass a wide variety of market-rate rental properties across the United States, which can vary by size, type and average rental price."The extended unemployment benefits and other government support that have proven critical to keeping apartment residents in their homes expire in just a few days,” said Doug Bibby, NMHC President. "Lawmakers are currently negotiating, but Members of Congress and Trump administration leaders need to understand that unless comprehensive action is taken now to protect the tens of millions of Americans who live in an apartment home, they risk destabilizing the nation's housing market, undermining the nascent economic recovery, and turning the ongoing health and economic crisis into a housing crisis." CR Note: It appears fewer people are paying their rent compared to last year (down 2.1 percentage points from a year ago).   In the previous surveys, over the last few months, people were paying their rents at about the same pace as last year.   The disaster relief has been key to helping people pay their bills, especially the extra unemployment benefits and the PPP.

 NMHC: "July Apartment Market Conditions Showed Continued Impact of COVID-19 Outbreak" - The National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC) released their July report: July Apartment Market Conditions Showed Continued Impact of COVID-19 Outbreak Apartment market conditions weakened in the National Multifamily Housing Council’s Quarterly Survey of Apartment Market Conditions for July 2020, as the industry continues to cope with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The Market Tightness (19), Sales Volume (18) and Equity Financing (34) indexes all came in well below the breakeven level (50). However, in a positive sign, the index for Debt Financing (60) signaled improving conditions. ? “Recent spikes in COVID-19 cases have caused many areas of the U.S. to scale back or completely reverse their attempts at reopening their local economy. As a result, unemployment levels stand elevated in double digits as much of the nation’s business activity remains temporarily shuttered,” noted NMHC Chief Economist Mark Obrinsky. “Amidst this COVID economy, 71 percent of respondents reported looser market conditions this quarter compared to the prior three months, marking the second consecutive quarter of deteriorating conditions.” “The Federal Reserve has countered this economic malaise with aggressively accommodative monetary policy, resulting in historically low interest rates. This, in turn, has created favorable pricing for debt financing, leading more respondents than not (44% to 25%) in this round of the survey to report improving conditions for borrowing. Nevertheless, these improved financing conditions have been largely confined to stabilized multifamily assets, and underwriting standards remain fairly stringent.”  …The Market Tightness Index increased from 12 to 19, indicating looser market conditions. The majority (71 percent) of respondents reported looser market conditions than three months prior, compared to 8 percent who reported tighter conditions. One in five respondents (21 percent) felt that conditions were no different from last quarter.

FHFA House Price Index: Down 0.3% in May - The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has released its U.S. House Price Index (HPI) for May. Here is the opening of the press release: U.S. house prices fell in May, down 0.3 percent from the previous month, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) House Price Index (HPI). House prices rose 4.9 percent from May 2019 to May 2020. The previously reported 0.2 percent increase for April 2020 was revised downward to 0.1 percent.For the nine census divisions, seasonally adjusted monthly house price changes from April 2020 to May 2020 ranged from -1.0 percent in the New England division to +0.1 percent in the South Atlantic division. The 12-month changes were all positive, ranging from +3.7 percent in the New England division to +6.3 percent in the Mountain division.“U.S. house prices posted a small decrease in May compared to April but remained 4.9 percent higher than a year ago,” according to Dr. Lynn Fisher, Deputy Director of the Division of Research and Statistics at FHFA. “The May HPI results are based on contracts for sale signed in late March and throughout April, which was a period when many states announced stay-at-home orders. The number of transactions powering the FHFA HPI in May was down by just over 30 percent compared to a year ago, reflecting the early effects of COVID-19 shutdowns. Based on the rebound in mortgage applications for home purchases and pending home sales in May, we expect the number of transactions increased somewhat in June.” The chart below illustrates the monthly HPI series, which is not adjusted for inflation, along with a real (inflation-adjusted) series using the Consumer Price Index: All Items Less Shelter.

Mortgage Applications Increase in Latest MBA Weekly Survey --Mortgage applications increased 4.1 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending July 17, 2020.... The Refinance Index increased 5 percent from the previous week and was 122 percent higher than the same week one year ago. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index increased 2 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index increased 2 percent compared with the previous week and was 19 percent higher than the same week one year ago.“Mortgage applications increased last week despite mixed results from the various rates tracked in MBA’s survey. The average 30-year fixed rate mortgage rose slightly to 3.20 percent, but some creditworthy borrowers are being offered rates even below 3 percent. As a result, these low rates drove a 5 percent weekly gain in refinances and a robust 122 percent increase from a year ago,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s Associate Vice President of Economic and Industry Forecasting. “There continues to be strong homebuyer demand this summer, as home shoppers have returned to the market in many states. Purchase activity increased again last week and was up 19 percent compared to last year – the ninth straight week of year-over-year increases.”... The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($510,400 or less) increased to 3.20 percent from 3.19 percent, with points increasing to 0.35 from 0.33 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent loan-to-value ratio (LTV) loans.

 U.S. Existing-Home Sales Rose 20.7% in June – WSJ - A sluggish U.S. housing market is staging a recovery amid the pandemic, shaking off high unemployment and a rising number of infections as buyers with pent-up demand seize on record-low mortgage rates. Sales of previously owned homes rose 20.7% in June over the prior month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.72 million, according to data from the National Association of Realtors released Wednesday, the biggest monthly increase on record going back to 1968. The surge in existing-home sales follows other recent bullish indicators such as rising new-home sales, robust home-builder activity and a flood of mortgage applications. Driving sales are apartment renters seeking more space, young families moving to the suburbs, and wealthy city dwellers looking for second homes, brokers and economists say. At the same time, the supply of houses for sale remains low, with the pandemic making potential sellers cautious about letting people tour their homes. “The housing market is hot, red hot,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for NAR, an industry trade group. “As we are coming out of the lockdown, we see this backlog of buyers...trying to take advantage of the record-low mortgage rates.” Even with the jump in home sales, monthly activity remains well below levels that were seen before the spring lockdowns. June sales marked an 11.3% decrease from a year earlier. Many potential buyers remain on the sidelines, concerned about job security or the health risks related to visiting homes. Sales of previously owned homes, which make up the vast majority of U.S. housing stock, were particularly strong last month in the West and South. Mr. Yun said activity was higher in small towns and suburbs than in urban centers. Compared with a year earlier, sales increased for homes between $250,000 and $500,000, while declining for lower-priced and higher-priced homes. David Mahaffey and Liz Morrison bought their first house in Plano, Texas, in June. PHOTO: JACKELYN KRAMER Rising home sales could boost the economy, as builders ramp up construction and new homeowners splurge on furniture and renovations. But a resurgence in Covid-19 cases and continued high unemployment could weigh on demand in the coming months. The housing market typically accounts for between 15% and 18% of the U.S. economy, according to the National Association of Home Builders.

 Existing Home Sales Rebound By Most Ever In June (But Miss Expectations Despite Record Low Rates) - Existing home sales were expected to play a big catch up in June after significantly disappointing in May as pending- and new-home-sales rebounded strongly from the March/April plunge during lockdowns. Existing Sales did rebound strongly - up 20.7% MoM - a record MoM rise but that was less than expectactions of a 21.4% rise and left sales down 11.3% YoY... This pushed Existing Home Sales SAAR back up to 4.72mm...The median existing-home price for all housing types in June was $295,300, up 3.5% from June 2019 ($285,400), as prices rose in every region. June’s national price increase marks 100 straight months of year-over-year gains.“The sales recovery is strong, as buyers were eager to purchase homes and properties that they had been eyeing during the shutdown,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist.“This revitalization looks to be sustainable for many months ahead as long as mortgage rates remain low and job gains continue.”Sales for June increased in every region. Median home prices grew in each of the four major regions from one year ago.

• Sales in the Northeast rose 4.3%, recording an annual rate of 490,000, a 27.9% decrease from a year ago. The median price in the Northeast was $332,900, up 3.6% from June 2019.
• Midwest sales increased 11.1% to an annual rate of 1,100,000, down 13.4% from a year ago. The median price in the Midwest was $236,900, a 3.2% increase from June 2019.
• South sales jumped 26.0% to an annual rate of 2.18 million, down 4.0% from the same time one year ago. The median price in the South was $258,500, a 4.4% increase from a year ago.
• West sales ascended 31.9% to an annual rate of 950,000 in June, a 13.6% decline from a year ago. The median price in the West was $432,600, up 5.4% from June 2019.

But, despite record low mortgage rates, buying has not coming back as much as expected...  Finally, Yun concludes that significantly low inventory was a problem even before the pandemic and says such circumstances can lead to inflated costs.“Home prices rose during the lockdown and could rise even further due to heavy buyer competition and a significant shortage of supply.”Total housing inventory at the end of June totaled 1.57 million units, up 1.3% from May, but still down 18.2% from one year ago (1.92 million). Unsold inventory sits at a 4.0-month supply at the current sales pace, down from both 4.8 months in May and from the 4.3-month figure recorded in June 2019.

Comments on June Existing Home Sales -  Bill McBride - Earlier: NAR: Existing-Home Sales Increased to 4.72 million in June.  A few key points:
1) Existing home sales are counted at the close of escrow, so the June report was mostly for contracts signed in April and May.  Some of the increase this month was probably related to pent up demand from the shutdowns in March and April.   I expect a further increase in sales in July (July will be mostly contracts signed in May and June when the economy was much more open).   However, with the high unemployment rate - and the recent surge in COVID infections, housing might be under some pressure later this year.  That is difficult to predict and depends on the course of the pandemic.
2) Inventory is very low, and was down 18.2% year-over-year (YoY) in June. This is the lowest level of inventory for June since at least the early 1990s.
3) As usual, housing economist Tom Lawler was closer to the actual NAR report than the consensus forecast.
This graph shows existing home sales by month for 2019 and 2020.Note that existing home sales picked up somewhat in the second half of 2019 as interest rates declined.  Even with weak sales in April, May, and June, sales to date are only down about 8% compared to the same period in 2019. The second graph shows existing home sales Not Seasonally Adjusted (NSA) by month (Red dashes are 2020), and the minimum and maximum for 2005 through 2019. Sales NSA in June (510,000) were 3.4% below sales last year in June (528,000).

New Home Sales increased to 776,000 Annual Rate in June --- The Census Bureau reports New Home Sales in June were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of 776 thousand.  This is the highest sales rate since 2007.  The previous three months were revised down slightly, combined. Sales of new single-family houses in June 2020 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 776,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This is 13.8 percent above the revised May rate of 682,000 and is 6.9 percent above the June 2019 estimate of 726,000. The first graph shows New Home Sales vs. recessions since 1963. The dashed line is the current sales rate. The second graph shows New Home Months of Supply. New Home Sales, Months of Supply The months of supply decreased in June to 4.7 months from 5.5 months in May. The all time record was 12.1 months of supply in January 2009. This is in the normal range (less than 6 months supply is normal). Starting in 1973 the Census Bureau broke inventory down into three categories: Not Started, Under Construction, and Completed. The third graph shows the three categories of inventory starting in 1973. The inventory of completed homes for sale is still somewhat low, and the combined total of completed and under construction is close to normal.

A few Comments on June New Home Sales – McBride -New home sales for June were reported at 776,000 on a seasonally adjusted annual rate basis (SAAR). Sales for the previous three months were revised down slightly, combined.  This was well above consensus expectations, and this was the highest sales rate since 2007. Clearly low mortgages rates, and low sales in March and April (due to the pandemic) have led to a bounce back in sales in May and June (and probably in July).
New home sales are counted when the contract is signed, whereas existing home sales are counted when the transaction closes.   So new home sales performed better than existing home sales in May and June (on a year-over-year basis).   Based on mortgage applications and regional pending home sales reports, there will be a further pickup in existing home sales in July, and builder reports suggest there will probably be a further pickup in new home sales too. Important: No one should get too excited.  Many years ago, I wrote several article about how new home sales and housing starts (especially single family starts) were some of the best leading indicators for the economy.   However, I've noted that there are times when this isn't true.   NOW is one of those times. Currently the course of the economy will be determined by the course of the virus, and New Home Sales tell us nothing about the future of the pandemic.  Without the pandemic, I'd be very positive about this report.  The longer the pandemic lasts, the more long term damage to the economy - and, if the pandemic worsens and persists - that will eventually negatively impact housing.  The outlook for housing depends on the outlook for the pandemic.

AIA: "Architecture billings remain in negative territory, begin to stabilize" -Note: This index is a leading indicator primarily for new Commercial Real Estate (CRE) investment.   From the AIA: Architecture billings remain in negative territory, begin to stabilize Demand for design services from architecture firms began to stabilize in June, following their peak declines in April, according to a new report today from The American Institute of Architects (AIA).AIA’s Architecture Billings Index (ABI) score for June was 40.0 compared to 32.0 in May. The May ABI score indicates that a significant share of architecture firms still saw their billings decline from May to June, however the share reporting declines slowed significantly. Index scores for new project inquiries and new design contracts also showed signs of stabilizing, posting scores of 49.3 and 44.0 respectively.“While business conditions remained soft at firms across the country, those with a multifamily residential specialization saw the most positive signs,” said AIA Chief Economist Kermit Baker, PhD, Hon. AIA. “Unfortunately, conditions at firms with a commercial/industrial specialization are likely to remain weak for an extended period of time, until hospitality, office and retail facilities can fully reopen, and design demand for this space begins to increase.”
• Regional averages [3 month average]: Midwest (36.8); West (36.8); South (35.9); Northeast (34.2)
• Sector index breakdown: multi-family residential (44.7); institutional (38.9); mixed practice (35.3); commercial/industrial (30.1)

Hotels: Occupancy Rate Declined 39% Year-over-year -From HotelNewsNow.com: STR: US hotel results for week ending 18 July - U.S. hotel performance data for the week ending 18 July showed slightly higher occupancy and room rates from the previous week, according to STR.
12-18 July 2020 (percentage change from comparable week in 2019):
• Occupancy: 47.5% (-38.9%)
• Average daily rate (ADR): US$98.56 (-28.0%)
• Revenue per available room (RevPAR): US$46.87 (-56.0%)
The following graph shows the seasonal pattern for the hotel occupancy rate using the four week average. The occupancy rate for the last five weeks was 43.9%, 46.2%, 45.6%, 45.9% and 47.5% The increases in occupancy have slowed and are well below the median for this week of 78%.

 Executives reap millions in bonuses as US retail apocalypse escalates - The retail industry in the United States has been ravaged by an unending wave of closures, bankruptcies and liquidations since the depths of the Great Recession in 2008. The current social and economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to accelerate this collapse, which has been dubbed the retail apocalypse. A record 9,302 store closures were announced last year and 2020 is on track to see three times as many closures. In April alone, 2.1 million jobs were lost in the retail sector making it one of the worst hit areas of the American economy. Yet amid this historic crisis, US firms have continued to shower executives with millions of dollars in bonuses while millions of retail workers were laid off. A Reuters analysis of securities filings and court records found that nearly a third of the more than 40 large companies filing for bankruptcy this year awarded bonuses to executives within a month of filing. Reuters analyzed financial documents and court records from 45 companies that filed for bankruptcy since March 11, the day COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. The companies reviewed either held publicly traded stock or debt or more than $50 million in liabilities. A total of fourteen companies issued bonuses within a month of filing and six cited challenges executives faced during the coronavirus pandemic to justify the handouts. Eight companies, including JCPenney and Hertz Global Holdings, dished out bonuses within as little as five days before filing for bankruptcy. Hi-Crush Inc., which supplies sand for fracking, did so two days before filing on July 12. A majority of the companies issued bonuses six months before their bankruptcies. Out of the 45 companies Reuters analyzed, 32 gave bonuses within a half year before filing. Almost half authorized bonuses within two months. JCPenney, which was forced to temporarily close 846 stores and furlough 78,000 out of 85,000 employees, issued almost $10 million in bonuses before its bankruptcy filing on May 15. On Wednesday, the company announced it would permanently close 242 stores. JCPenney claimed the exorbitant bonuses were aimed at retaining a “talented management team.” The annual pay of the company’s median employee, a part-time hourly worker, was $11,482 in 2019, Reuters noted. Neiman Marcus Group, which temporarily closed all of its 67 stores in March and furloughed more than 11,000 employees, paid out $4 million in bonuses to its Chairman and Chief Executive Geoffroy van Raemdonck in February, and an additional $4 million to other executives just weeks before it filed for bankruptcy. Meanwhile, Levi Strauss’s chief executive has issued a warning that the string of retail bankruptcies announced in the first half of 2020 is “just the tip of the iceberg.” Chip Bergh told the Financial Times “the list [of recent failures] is already pretty long and I expect it’s going to get longer.”

US Restaurant Recovery Stalls As Pandemic Reemerges -  The virus pandemic is now surging in 37 U.S. states with caseloads rapidly increasing, and the resulting factor is a terrified consumer unwilling to shop at malls or eat at restaurants. Before we dive into restaurant data via OpenTable, Axios published a fantastic visualization of where changes in new COVID-19 cases are occurring in the U.S. The map shows cases are exploding across much of the country, jeopardizing the recovery as governors in many states are either pausing or reversing reopenings.  Nationwide, new virus infections have increased 21% since last week — and before were up 24% from the prior week. The reemergence of the virus has had a profound impact on the recovery, due mainly to several factors: the first, governors pausing or reversing reopenings; second, the human psyche of a virus pandemic reemerging with no vaccine is forcing people to hunker down at home and consume less. OpenTable data of restaurants across the country shows the percentage of eateries taking reservations has plateaued in the last 20 days, coinciding with the latest virus surge.    OpenTable found Arizona, California, Washington, D.C., Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Louisana, Maryland, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennesee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin, were states with restaurant reservations stalling in late June, or in some cases reversing through the first half of July.

Nearly 16,000 restaurants have permanently closed since the pandemic started, and even more closures are on the horizon - -60% of restaurant closures since March 1 have been permanent, according to a report Yelp released on Wednesday. Of the roughly 26,000 total restaurants that have closed in the last five months, 16,000 have been permanent, according to the report. The restaurant industry has been the hardest-hit by permanent closures compared to other industries since the start of the pandemic.California has seen the highest number of permanent closures, accounting for about 14.4% of all restaurants that have gone out of business, followed by Texas at 8.5% and New York at 8.4%, Justin Norman, vice president of data science at Yelp, told Business Insider in an email."We anticipate states will roll back or delay reopening plans, which will inevitably impact the future success of businesses, possibly turning even more temporary closures into permanent ones," Norman said in the email. "That said, we are seeing temporary closures reduce, which is a promising signal for many businesses."But in general, the share of businesses that are closing their doors permanently is continuing to rise.Los Angeles and New York City have seen the highest total number of businesses permanently close — 5,700 and 4,400 businesses, respectively. However, both cities have a higher-than-average number of businesses overall, so that's not too bad. States like Hawaii, Nevada, and California, which usually benefit from year-round tourism, have seen the highest closure rates proportional to their total number of businesses.

More than 3,300 Arkansas meatpacking workers infected with coronavirus - With the United States COVID-19 case count standing at 3.68 million cases, the meat industry in particular is being ravaged by the pandemic. Nine percent of meatpacking workers in 14 states have been diagnosed with COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). For meatpackers in Arkansas, conditions are even worse. More than 3,300 throughout the state have been infected, according to the Arkansas Department of Health on Monday. At poultry giant Tyson, whose headquarters are located in Springdale, Arkansas, thirteen percent of the workforce has contracted the virus in northwestern Arkansas. Statewide, there were 158 poultry workers hospitalized as of last Friday, and 18 deaths. The overall total for the state is over 32,500 cases and 357 deaths. Although the largely rural state has barely 3 million inhabitants, it has the second-largest food processing workforce in the nation, according to the most recent figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In addition to Tyson, Arkansas also hosts the world headquarters of Walmart, the world’s largest grocer. The meatpacking workforce, traditionally highly-exploited, includes a large number of immigrants in Arkansas and throughout the country. This vulnerable section of the working class has been especially hard hit. As of mid-June, nearly half the adult cases in Arkansas meatpacking facilities were among Hispanic workers in Benton and Washington counties. Another 19 percent of adult cases were among people with Marshall Islands ancestry. Since a 1986 “Compact of Free Association” with the US government, Tyson has had a major presence in the former US colony in the central Pacific Ocean. Some 4,300 to 6,000 Marshallese currently live in Washington County, primarily in Springdale. In northwest Arkansas, 40 percent of Hispanic cases and 28 percent of Marshallese cases were connected to poultry processing facilities. In addition to Tyson, active cases of coronavirus have been confirmed at more than a dozen poultry facilities across the state, including George’s, Pilgrim’s Pride, Cargill, Butterball and Simmons.

 Small Businesses Brace for Prolonged Crisis, Short on Cash and Customers – WSJ  - Small businesses such as restaurants, dog-care centers and manufacturers brought back staff beginning in mid-April, believing they could get back to business. Now, many are shutting down or slashing jobs again as local officials and consumers pull back and the pandemic shows no signs of abating. Beyond merely depressing sales, the crisis has uprooted the ways people work, learn, relax and consume. More than 142,000 people in the U.S. have died, and the continued spread of the virus means people’s habits have mostly not reverted—and questions remain over whether or when they ever will. More government support may help in the short run, but many business owners are facing make-or-break challenges. Many may not last. Businesses are entering this phase just as many are exhausting their rescue funds from the federal Paycheck Protection Program, a $670 billion coronavirus stimulus measure launched in April to offer loans to small firms. Senate Republicans are in discussions about new economic bailout measures. Aid could include reimbursements to workplaces for purchasing personal protective equipment, administering coronavirus tests and cleaning or remodeling facilities, as well as modifications to the PPP lending program. An agreement is expected within weeks. An estimated 1.85 million U.S. businesses closed their doors or temporarily suspended operations in the second quarter, according to Oxxford Information Technology Ltd. in Saratoga, N.Y., which tracks roughly 32 million U.S. businesses of all sizes using data from credit bureaus, surveys and government sources. Raymond Greenhill, Oxxford’s president, forecasts that total losses this year will be greater than in the last recession, when 20%, or roughly 4.5 million businesses, disappeared in just over a year. He added that some of the losses will be offset by new business formation. Mr. Greenhill said small firms are especially vulnerable now and will account for most of the losses. He said most lack the working capital to survive the downturn or to meet customer needs when the economy recovers. He added that it’s more difficult for young businesses and for other businesses that entered the year in weak financial shape to tap funding from banks and other sources.

World's Largest Producer Of Small Gasoline Engines Files For Bankruptcy - Briggs & Stratton Corporation, the world's largest manufacturer of small gasoline engines with headquarters in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, filed petitions on Monday morning for a court-supervised voluntary reorganization under Chapter 11, along with plans to sell "all the company's assets" to KPS Capital Partners.  The Fortune 1000 manufacturer of gasoline engines was able to secure a $677.5 million in Debtor-In-Possession (DIP) financing to support operations through reorganization efforts. The Company also said it "entered into a definitive stock and asset purchase agreement with KPS." To facilitate the sale process and address its debt obligations, the Company has filed petitions for a court-supervised voluntary reorganization under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. The Company has also obtained $677.5 million in DIP financing, with $265 million committed by KPS and the remaining $412.5 from the Company's existing group of ABL lenders. Following court approval, the DIP facility will ensure that the Company has sufficient liquidity to continue normal operations and to meet its financial obligations during the Chapter 11 process, including the timely payment of employee wages and health benefits, continued servicing of customer orders and shipments, and other obligations.This process will allow the Company to ensure the viability of its business while providing sufficient liquidity to fully support operations through the closing of the transaction. Briggs & Stratton believes this process will benefit its employees, customers, channel partners, and suppliers, and best positions the Company for long-term success. This filing does not include any of Briggs & Stratton's international subsidiaries. - Briggs & Stratton's press release states  Todd Teske, Briggs & Stratton's CEO, stated the Company faced "challenges" during the virus pandemic that made reorganization "necessary and appropriate" for the survivability of the Company.   Briggs & Stratton is the world's top engine designer and manufacturer for outdoor power equipment, with 85% of the small engines produced in the U.S. The pandemic and resulting virus-induced recession have been brutal for the Company, with declining engine sales, resulting in a reduction in the US workforce.   Financial Times noted, in June, the Company had difficulty refinancing a $175 million bond that matured in September. Sources told FT the Company's deteriorating position made it impossible to obtain refinancing funds in the bond market.  Add Briggs & Stratton to the list of bankrupted companies as an avalanche of bankruptcies is expected in the second half of the year.

Tesla picks Texas site for second US vehicle assembly plant -- Electric car maker Tesla Inc. has picked the Austin, Texas, area as the site for its largest auto assembly plant employing at least 5,000 workers. The new factory will build Tesla’s upcoming Cybertruck pickup and will be a second U.S. manufacturing site for the Model Y small SUV, largely for distribution to the East Coast. Tesla will build on a 2,100-acre (85-hectacre) site in Travis County near Austin and will get more than $60 million in tax breaks from the county and a local school district over the next decade. Work on the plant, which will be over 4 million square feet, is already underway, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said. He did not put a number on how many vehicles the facility would produce. “Long term, a lot,” Musk said. The company has pledged to invest $1.1 billion and said it will pay a minimum wage of $15 per hour to employees and provide health insurance, paid leave and other benefits. The area that’s home to the University of Texas at Austin and tech companies such as Dell Inc. was a candidate for the plant all along, but Tulsa, Oklahoma, emerged in mid-May as another possibility. Tesla doesn’t have a lot of time to get the factory running if it wants to meet target production dates. The company says on its website that the Cybertruck will be available starting late next year. Tesla has often missed promised production dates in the past. The new factory will be Tesla’s biggest so far, although it may not employ as many workers as the 10,000 at its factory in Fremont, California. The electric car maker has said it wants the new factory to be in the center of the country and closer to eastern markets.

 iPhone Sales Stumble, Consumers Flock To Low-Cost Phones, Says Counterpoint - New estimates from Counterpoint Research published Monday (seen by Apple Insider) show US smartphone sales volume tumbled 25% YoY in 2Q20. Counterpoint said Apple iPhone sales in the US plunged 23% in the period, but volumes increased through the quarter, due mostly to the low-cost iPhone SE.  Sales of iPhone SE were propelled through the quarter because of the reopening of retail stores and promotional deals at Walmart, Metro by T-Mobile, and Boost."Apple volumes grew through the quarter and were especially helped by iPhone SE volumes. The device has been successful and selling above expectations in both postpaid and prepaid channels," said Jeff Fieldhack, Counterpoint's North American Research Director.We outlined in May, credit and debit card data showed some folks were using their stimulus checks to buy iPhones. Counterpoint doesn't believe increasing iPhone SE sales volume would deter customers from purchasing new iPhones with 5G technology later this year. "Our checks show that iPhone SE sales are unlikely to be cannibalizing fall 5G iPhone sales. iPhone SE buyers are more pragmatic about price, less concerned with 5G, and the smaller display is not considered a hindrance," Fieldhack stated.Fieldhack also said the low-cost iPhone is attracting Android users, and estimates at least 26% of iPhone SE users have switched from an Android device.  As consumers gravitate to cheaper iPhones during the virus-induced recession, this doesn't bode well for demand for +$1,000 iPhone with 5G network capabilities, expected to be debut in the coming months.

U.S. Airlines Face End of Business Travel as They Knew It - U.S. airlines hammered by the catastrophic loss of passengers during the pandemic are confronting a once-unthinkable scenario: that this crisis will obliterate much of the corporate flying they’ve relied on for decades to prop up profits. “It is likely that business travel will never return to pre-Covid levels,” said Adam Pilarski, senior vice president at Avitas, an aviation consultant. “It is one of those unfortunate cases where the industry will be permanently impaired and what we lost now is gone, never to come back.” At stake is the most lucrative part of the airline industry, driven by businesses that accepted -- however grudgingly -- the need to plop down a few thousand dollars for a last-minute ticket across the U.S. or over an ocean. While millions of customers fly rarely, road warriors are constantly in the air to close a deal, depose a witness or impress a client. Business travel makes up 60% to 70% of industry sales, according to estimates by the trade group Airlines for America. That’s under threat in the wake of an unprecedented collapse in passengers that started four months ago. Half the respondents in a survey of Fortune 500 CEOs said trips at their companies would never return to what they were before Covid-19, according to Fortune magazine. Even industry leaders such as Delta Air Lines Inc. Chief Executive Officer Ed Bastian are bowing to the inevitable. “I don’t think we’ll ever get back entirely to where we were in 2019 on the volume of business traffic,” Bastian said July 14 after the company reported an adjusted quarterly loss of $2.8 billion, a record. United Airlines Holdings Inc. discloses results Tuesday, followed by Southwest Airlines Co. and American Airlines Group Inc. on Thursday. Even after 18 to 24 months, business travel will remain at least 25% below pre-pandemic levels and may stay down by as much as half, said Bruno Despujol, a partner at consultant Oliver Wyman. Trips for internal purposes, which account for as much as 40% of business demand, is most likely to decline.

Boeing Is Running Out Of Space To Park Its Newly-Built 787 Dreamliners Which Nobody Wants To Buy - According to Bloomberg, Boeing is now also running out of space to stash newly-built 787 Dreamliners, as unsold jetliners are now crammed onto "every available patch of pavement on airfields near its factories in Washington and South Carolina." Citing people familiar with the situation, Bloomberg writes that "dozens of the planes are sitting on the company’s premises" with Uresh Sheth, a closely followed blogger who meticulously tracks the Dreamliners rolling through Boeing’s factories, putting the total somewhere above 50. That’s more than double the number of jets typically awaiting customers along Boeing’s flight lines. According to Sheth, brand-new widebodies are lined up on a closed off runway at the airport that abuts Boeing’s hulking plant north of Seattle. In North Charleston, 787s are tucked around the delivery center and a paint hangar. The U.S. planemaker has even started sending aircraft to be stored in a desert lot in Victorville, California. Commercial aircraft storage at Mojave Airport. Boeing's troubles with parked jets are nothing new: last year Boeing had so many 737 Maxes after their global ground when it emerged that Boeing had drastically cut corners to save on costs even if it meant risking people's lives, that it commandeered an employee parking lot to store surplus aircraft. Now, as it finally starts to emerge from that crisis, another critical source of cash - the company's marquee jet, the 787 Dreamliner - is under pressure but not do to airworthiness concerns but simply due to the global depression that commercial air traffic has found itself in. As Bloomberg notes, Boeing has relied on the wide-body jet, produced in record numbers, to help bankroll the $20 billion in costs it has rung up since the Max was banned from commercial flight in March 2019 following two fatal crashes. But as Covid-19 sapped consumer interest in long-range travel this year, "the tally of undelivered Dreamliners has stacked up and created a new financial drag as regulators move closer to clearing the 737’s return." Boeing also faces a “capacity hangover” after pushing Dreamliner production to a 14-jet monthly pace last year -- a record for wide-body aircraft -- in a market that was already glutted with aircraft.

Recovery of Collapsed Airline Traffic in the US Backtracks - TSA checkpoint screenings, which track how many people enter into the security zones at US airports on a daily basis, were down -72.6% yesterday (Sunday) compared to Sunday in the same week last year, according to TSA data released this morning. This was a notch worse than Sunday last week (-71.7%). And this reversal has been playing out since early July. The seven-day moving average, which irons out the day-to-day volatility particularly around the Independence Day weekend, has edged down to -74.5%, right back where it was on July 2. The peak, so to speak – the smallest decline from the same period last year – was on July 8: The miserably slow recovery for airlines in terms of ticket sales, from near-zero in late March and early April to some level above near-zero started backtracking in late June. United Airlines andDelta Airlines both issued early warnings about this industry-wide phenomenon that was not supposed to happen in this recovery, but is now happening.Ticket sales today result in passenger traffic some days, weeks, or months later when these customers are actually walking into an airport to get on the plane. And those declining ticket sales that United had warned about with charts, using industry-wide data for all airlines and sales channels, is now translating gradually into declining passenger traffic into the security zones of US airports.Sure, this is summer travel season, when traffic is always up seasonally compared to lower-traffic seasons. This year too, there has been a seasonal uptick. But these are year-over-year comparisons that eliminate the seasonality of air travel.Both United and Delta cited the renewed outbreaks of Covid-19 as the primary cause for this reversal in the recovery – people not wanting to be in an airport with all the exposure this produces and not wanting to sit on a plane near people who might potentially be contagious. This is in addition to travel restrictions globally.Airlines, which are in an existential crisis given this collapse in revenues – Delta’s passenger revenues collapsed 94% in Q2 – have been promoting the theme that they’re working hard to make flying as safe as possible. That may be true, except that, after having slashed capacity to match the collapsed demand, they’re packing people like sardines into the few planes that are flying, which is not reassuring to everyone on these flights or to people contemplating to fly.

United Airlines Defers Plane Deliveries To Beyond 2022 As Air Travel Remains Muted - United Airlines Holdings Inc. said Wednesday morning, all new aircraft deliveries due in 2022 have been deferred as air travel for the next several years will remain depressed. The Chicago-based company also said 32,000 employees have volunteered for a temporary leave of absence. Earlier in the morning, United Airlines' CEO Scott Kirby told CNBC that estimated sales would not recover in a V-shaped formation until there's a proven vaccine for COVID-19. "Our guess is that revenue will get to about 50% of what it was in 2019 in a pre-vaccine world," Kirby told CNBC. Once we get past a vaccine and it is widely distributed, we will quickly recover towards 100%, but our guess is we are going to plateau at 50% until we get to a vaccine." On Tuesday, the airliner reported revenues of $1.48 billion in 2Q20, an 87% crash from $11.4 billion during the same time last year. It said capacity in 3Q would be down 65% compared with the same quarter a year ago.

Class 8 Orders 'Dead Cat Bounce' 2 Months After Hitting Their Lowest Level In 25 Years - Class 8 trucking orders - often seen as a gauge of how the U.S. production economy is faring, have been brutalized for almost all of 2020 so far due to the ongoing pandemic. But June's data appears to suggest a slight respite in orders, despite crashing retail sales, even though we're not quite certain that it's going to carry into the second half of the year. Regardless, June is traditionally a tough month for Class 8 orders and the industry (and its analysts) are optimistic. Final Class 8 truck data for June has been released and retail sales were down 41% YoY to 17,055 units. Orders were up 23.2% for the month, marking a small bounce back for the industry. This comes after two incredible poor months that we highlighted (ZH Class 8 report April, ZH Class 8 report May) where orders hit their lowest level in 25 years. In May, new orders "recovered" slightly to a dismal 6,687 number before taking off this June. Regardless, Class 8 orders remain down 24.7% YTD, mostly as a result of a continued lagging economy and pressured supply chain due to the coronavirus pandemic. In the first half of 2020, 65,814 trucks were ordered, compared with 87,466 in the first half of 2019. Retail sales are also lagging YTD, still down 39%, according to data from JP Morgan. Builds have appears to make somewhat of a V-shape recovery, but were down 39% YoY in June and have fallen 70% in Q2. Builds remain down 52% year to date.

 FreightWaves 3PL Summit: Why you should be worried about freight markets (with video) –   There’s likely more coronavirus fallout to come in the freight markets. That was the takeaway from Jason Miller, associate professor at the Michigan State University Eli Broad College of Business, who spoke with FreightWaves founder Craig Fuller during the FreightWaves 3PL Summit. “From a carrier standpoint, it really comes down to what type of freight you’re hauling,” said Miller. “On the retail side I’m neutral to somewhat bullish in the near term — but that’s consumer retail. For industrial, I’m on the bearish side. If you’re a flatbed operator out in the Permian Basin, it’s not a good time right now. If you’re hauling for Home Depot or Kroger, it’s pretty smooth sailing at the moment.”“I’m of the belief that we have a lot of artificial stimulus on the consumer side in the form of the $1,200 checks and the expanded unemployment benefits,” said Miller. “That’s going to be expiring soon.  “Come August, if we’re not starting to see a lot more folks back onto the payrolls, do we start to see that consumer engine die down? “If we don’t start seeing unemployment numbers start to tick down very rapidly, I have a hard time seeing where the retail demand comes from.”  On the industrial side, he warned, “We’re seeing a true global recession right now. I worry about what this is going to do to capital investment. For making companies want to hire back a large number of workers.  “I’m concerned with railroads from a secular-trend standpoint,” explained Miller. “The big one is declining coal volumes. We’ve seen that over the past several years as we’ve switched to more and more natural gas.Coal used to be the bread and butter — where the railroads made a lot of their profit.“Also, on the industrial side, a lot of rail movements relate to oil and gas. That’s not helping [given weakness in oil and gas].“There has also been a switch with fracking sand. A decade ago, most of the fracking sand came from Missouri and Wisconsin and was trained to the Bakken and Permian Basin. That was obviously very expensive. So, oil companies switched over to more locally sourced fracking sand and we’ve seen rail get [negatively] affected.”

 Kansas City Fed Survey: Continued Growth in July - The Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Survey business conditions indicator measures activity in the following states: Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Wyoming, western Missouri, and northern New Mexico.Quarterly data for this indicator dates back to 1995, but monthly data is only available from 2001.Here is an excerpt from the latest report:. – The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City released the July Manufacturing Survey today. According to Chad Wilkerson, vice president and economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, the survey revealed that Tenth District manufacturing activity continued to grow slightly after sharply decreasing in the spring. Activity still remained well below year-ago levels, while expectations for future activity continued to improve slightly.“Regional factory activity continued to expand slightly in July, but was still well below year-ago levels,” said Wilkerson. “Of those surveyed, 44% of firms said that their business costs have increased in the past 6 months, but expectations for future activity and employment continued to improve.” [Full report here] Here is a snapshot of the complete Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Survey.

US Postal Service takes major step toward privatization - Management at the United States Postal Service (USPS) has taken a big step toward privatization with the July 10 release of an internal memo stating that mail deliveries would be delayed due to cost cutting and a subsequent directive prohibiting overtime and promising “more to come.” The first memo, titled “Pivoting to the Future,” declared, “Right now, we are at a critical juncture in our organization and must make immediate, lasting, and impactful changes in our operations and in our culture. This operational pivot is long overdue and today, we are talking about the first step in a journey we must take together, for the health and stability of the Postal Service. “The initial step in our pivot is targeted on transportation and the soaring costs we incur, due to late trips and extra trips, which costs the organization somewhere around $200 million in added expenses. “One aspect of these changes that may be difficult for employees is that—temporarily—we may see mail left behind or mail on the workroom floor or docks (in P&DCs), which is not typical.” COVID-19 and the economic devastation it sparked has further accelerated the crisis of USPS, with former CEO Megan J. Brennan telling Congress in late May that without support it would run out of cash to pay its over 600,000 employees by September. Brennan requested $75 billion in financial assistance from Congress. No assistance was given, however, and the USPS is surviving off of its remaining cash reserves and a $3 billion loan from the US Treasury, placing it further in debt. While the Postal Service decays, it is also under increased pressure from its competitors, namely Amazon and United Parcel Service (UPS), which have recorded record revenue and are under the process of expanding their logistics networks after increases in shipments have left them with surplus revenue. Just one example of Amazon’s growth has been the acquisition of 2,300 trucks to expand its delivery network. UPS has announced a $138 million expansion of its Atlanta facility. The move to cut workers’ overtime is part of the US capitalist class’s decades-long drive to dismantle USPS, a public entity that occupies a valuable portion of the logistics industry. According to its website, the USPS handles 48 percent of the world’s mail volume, generated $71.1 billion in revenue in 2019 and—if it was fully privatized—would be number 44 in the Fortune 500 list of the world’s largest companies. This is a massive source of profit that the financial oligarchy is attempting to take over completely. This was outlined clearly by President Donald Trump’s 2018 plan calling for the privatization of USPS either through the launch of an Initial Public Offering on the stock market, or sale to an existing company.

Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims increase to 1,416,000 - The DOL reported: In the week ending July 18, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 1,416,000, an increase of 109,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised up by 7,000 from 1,300,000 to 1,307,000. The 4-week moving average was 1,360,250, a decrease of 16,500 from the previous week's revised average. The previous week's average was revised up by 1,750 from 1,375,000 to 1,376,750.  The previous week was revised up. This does not include the 974,999 initial claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA). The following graph shows the 4-week moving average of weekly claims since 1971.

 U.S. Jobless Claims Rose Last Week for First Time Since March -U.S. jobless claims rose last week for the first time since March, the clearest sign yet of a pause in the economic recovery as coronavirus cases surge in much of the country and force businesses to close their doors once again. Initial claims through regular state programs increased to 1.42 million in the week ended July 18, up 109,000 from the prior week, a Labor Department report showed Thursday; on a non-seasonally adjusted basis, claims declined. There were 16.2 million who filed for ongoing benefits through those programs in the period ended July 11, down from the prior week and less than forecast. Economists in a Bloomberg survey had forecast 1.3 million initial claims, little changed from the prior week, with projections as high as 1.55 million. The four-week average, a less-volatile figure, fell by the least since April. The jobless claims figures may reflect both renewed closings of businesses such as restaurants, as well as layoffs at other firms that have seen a sustained dropoff in revenue.

Comments on Weekly Unemployment Claims – Mcbride - On a monthly basis, most analysts focus on initial unemployment claims for the BLS reference week of the employment report.  For July, the BLS reference week was July 12th through the 18th, and initial claims for that week were released today. Note that a couple of states have not released Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) claims this week, so the number of PUA claims is too low. However, there may also be processing delays that are impacting the numbers. Continued claimsdecreased last week to 16,197,000 (SA) from 17,304,000 (SA) the previous week. Continued claims are down 8.7 million from the peak, suggesting a large number of people have returned to their jobs (as the employment report showed).  However, continued claims NSA increased to 17,188,772 from 16,410,059 the previous week - and the seasonal adjustment may be off this year due to the pandemic.Continued claims are released with a one week lag, so continued claims for the reference week will be released next week.   The decrease in continued claims does not suggest a sharp drop in July employment.The following graph shows regular initial unemployment claims (blue) and PUA claims (red) since early February. This was the 18th consecutive week with extraordinarily high initial claims. It is possible that we are starting to see some layoffs associated with the end of some early Payroll Protection Plan (PPP) participants. We are probably seeing some layoffs in states with more COVID cases. Note that these states don't have to lockdown to see a decline in economic activity. As Merrill Lynch economists noted: "Most of the slowdown occurred due to voluntary social distancing rather than lockdown policies."

Jobs Recovery Shows Signs of Slowing as Coronavirus Surges – WSJ -The U.S. labor-market recovery is losing momentum as a surge in coronavirus cases triggers heightened employer uncertainty and consumer caution.Job openings in July are down from last month across the U.S., and Google searches for “file for unemployment” are creeping up. Growth in worker hours is waning at small businesses after several weeks of gains. The labor-market slowdown is widespread across industries and states, showing the economic turmoil isn’t limited to states in the South and West that are seeing the greatest increases in illnesses.It also comes as Congress considers whether to extend $600 a week federal unemployment benefits that around 25 million workers are receiving through the end of July as part of a coronavirus relief package. Many economists say the benefits—totaling about $15 billion a week—have helped offset the impact of the pandemic on the economy. Critics say the funds, which pay many lower-wage workers more than if they were on the job, are discouraging people from returning to work.“This recent slowdown in the economy is being driven by the economic uncertainty associated with the growing outbreaks rather than just the direct impact of the outbreaks themselves,” said Daniel Zhao, economist at job site Glassdoor, adding that “uncertainty is hitting all players in the economy including businesses, workers and consumers.”Job postings declined in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., in the past two weeks, according to Glassdoor. Job-opening decreases were less steep in states with sharp rises in virus infections, including Florida, Texas and Arizona, possibly reflecting broader reopenings in those states.  Growth in the number of employees working at small businesses has slowed in Sun Belt states, which saw the swiftest rise in virus cases in June, according to investment bank Jefferies LLC. Small-business hiring has also recently stalled in the Midwest and Northeast, where infections have been more contained, Jefferies added. Businesses were reopening and recalling workers in May and June, helping the U.S. economy recover 7.5 million jobs and consumer spending to rebound in those months, in part due to a rebound in hospitality and retail hiring. Economists expect growth to continue in July, but at a slower pace because of increased infections. Still, June employment was down by about 15 million jobs compared with February, the month before the pandemic hit, Labor Department data show. It isn’t clear how many of the job losses during the pandemic will become permanent. Economists say consumers need to feel confident the virus is contained before economic activity can return to levels seen before the pandemic. Business owners and industry representatives say the longer the shutdowns drag on, the harder it will be for companies to survive.

Joblessness remains at historic levels and there is no evidence UI is disincentivizing work: Congress must extend the extra $600 in UI benefits - EPI Blog by Heidi Shierholz - Last week 2.3 million workers applied for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits. This is the 18th week in a row that unemployment claims have been more than twice the worst week of the Great Recession. Many headlines this morning are saying there were 1.4 million UI claims last week, but that’s not the right number to use. For one, it ignores Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), the federal program for workers who are not eligible for regular UI, like the self-employed. It also uses seasonally adjusted data for regular state UI, which is distorted right now because of the way the Department of Labor (DOL) does seasonal adjustments.Of the 2.3 million workers who applied for UI last week, 1.37 million applied for regular state unemployment insurance (not seasonally adjusted), and 975,000 applied for PUA.A disaster of Congress’s making is looming for those who have lost their livelihoods during the global pandemic and are now depending on UI to provide for their families. If Congress doesn’t act immediately, the across-the-board $600 increase in weekly unemployment benefits will expire at the end of this week. That would not just be cruel, it would be terrible economics. These benefits are supporting a huge amount of spending by people who would otherwise have to cut back dramatically. That spending is supporting more than 5 million jobs. If Congress kills the $600, they kill those jobs. This chart shows the number of jobs that will be lost in each state if the $600 is allowed to expire.

Census: Household Pulse Survey shows 26.4% Missed or Expect to Miss Rent or Mortgage Payment --First, from @ernietedeschi Employment in the @uscensusbureau Household Pulse Survey fell by -4.1 million last week alone.That's a cumulative loss of -6.7 million jobs between the reference weeks used for the June & July monthly jobs report.Seasonality and survey noise may be factors here -- the HPS is a new, experimental survey with limited history.However it also did an admirable job of predicting the strong employment growth in June.This graph is from Ernie Tedeschi (former US Treasury economist). CR Note on above graph: The Pulse Survey doesn't align exactly with the BLS reference week. The release today is for July 9th - July 14th, and the release next week will be for the period July 16th - July 21th. The BLS reference week is the 12th - 18th.Also note on the question below on lost income is always since March 13, 2020 - so this percentage will not decline - but might increase.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 recent 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. The data was collected between July 9 and July 14, 2020. Definitions:
Loss in employment income: "Percentage of adults in households where someone had a loss in employment income since March 13, 2020." This number is since March 13, and has increased to 50.1% from 47% in the initial survey.
"Percentage of adults who expect someone in their household to have a loss in employment income in the next 4 weeks."
35.1% of households expect a loss in income over the next 4 weeks.   This is down from 38.8% in late April, but up from 31% four weeks ago..
Food Scarcity: Percentage of adults in households where there was either sometimes or often not enough to eat in the last 7 days.
10.8% of households report food scarcity.  This has increased slightly since March.
Delayed Medical Care: "Percentage of adults who delayed getting medical care because of the COVID-19 pandemic in the last 4 weeks." 40.6% of households report they delayed medical care over the last 4 weeks. This increased slightly from last week.
Housing Insecurity: 26.4% of households reported they missed last month's rent or mortgage payment (or little confidence in making this month's payment).  This has increased from a low of 22.1% in the survey of June 4th - June 9th.
K-12 Educational Changes: Essentially all households with children are reporting were not being taught in a normal format.

 Visitors from 31 states now required to quarantine when visiting New York, New Jersey, Connecticut --New York, New Jersey and Connecticut are now requiring visitors from 31 states to quarantine for 14 days in an effort to combat the growing number of coronavirus cases in the country.The metro area announced Tuesday that 10 additional states would be added to the travel advisory that mandates the quarantine: Alaska, Delaware, Indiana, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Virginia and Washington. Minnesota was removed from last week’s list.New York's travel advisory has been expanded to 31 states. If you're traveling to NY from the following states you must self-quarantine for 14 days: AK, AL, AR, AZ, CA, DE, FL, GA, IA, ID, IN, KS, LA, MD, MO, MS, MT, NC, ND, NE, NM, NV, OH, OK, SC, TN, TX, UT, VA, WA, WI.— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) July 21, 2020The travel advisory list includes states that have more than 10 per 100,000 residents testing positive for the virus or more than 10 percent of tests coming back positive, on aseven-day rolling average. Last week, 22 states made the list.New York, New Jersey and Connecticut announced the travel advisory late last month, initially adding Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Washington, Utah and Texas. Certain states, like Delaware and Washington, were removed and then re-added to the list as their numbers evolved over the weeks.  The new travel restrictions come as New York attempts to protect itself from further serious outbreaks across the country after the tri-state area was the U.S.’s initial epicenter for COVID-19 earlier this year. 

PSC extends utility shutoff moratorium; more than 71,000 households had faced disconnection - Citing public health concerns amid a rising number of coronavirus infections, Wisconsin regulators reinstated a moratorium on utility shutoffs Thursday, granting a temporary reprieve to tens of thousands of households.With a 2-1 vote Thursday, the Public Service Commission suspended disconnection of services for residential customers until Sept. 1. A previous shutoff moratorium had been scheduled to expire Friday. Chairwoman Rebecca Valcq cited the 44,847 confirmed cases of COVID-19reported by the Department of Health Services on Wednesday — more than double the number on June 11 when the commission voted to lift a moratorium put in place at the outset of the pandemic. “What I’m concerned about is when we disconnect people in the summer months one of the first things we advise them is go seek shelter somewhere else,” Valcq said. “That flies in the face of all direction we’re getting from public health officials.” According to data compiled by the PSC, more than 71,000 households were at risk of losing electricity, gas or water service beginning Saturday. Of those households, about 17,500 faced loss of water service.

‘No mask, no entry. Is that clear enough? That seems pretty clear, right?’ WaPo. We tried our best to be polite about it. I’d frame it to customers like they were doing us this big favor: “Would you please consider wearing a mask?” “May we offer you a free mask?” “We sure do appreciate your cooperation.”  I’ll never understand what’s so hard about putting on a mask for a few minutes. It’s common sense. It’s a requirement now in North Carolina. But this is a conservative place, and there are only 900 people in this town. We try hard to get along. We’re a small general store, and we didn’t want to end up in one of those viral videos with people spitting or screaming about their civil rights. We put a sign outside — an appeal to kindness. “If you wear a mask, it shows how much you care about us.”  We found out how much they cared. It became clear real quick.  I’m 63. I’m a lifetime asthmatic. I’d watch customers pull into the parking lot without their faces covered, and my whole body would start to tense up. Our store is on the Intracoastal Waterway, and people from all over the world dock in the harbor and come in here for supplies. It’s a big petri dish. I put a shield up over my register, and a few hours into my shift it was covered with spittle. We’d have 20 or 30 people walk by the sign and come in without a mask. I’d try to get their attention and point to the sign. It was a lot of: “You’re infringing on my rights. This is a free country, and I’m here to shop, so who’s going to stop me?”  Then the local sheriff went on Facebook and said he wasn’t going to enforce the state requirement because he didn’t want to be the “mask police.” So now what? I have customers who are breaking the law and putting my life at risk, and what am I supposed to do? I’m a freaking retail clerk. I ring up beer and boat supplies for 10 bucks an hour. I don’t want to deal with this. If I didn’t need the money, I’d be home working in my garden or visiting my grandkids. I don’t come into the store every morning looking to make some big moral stand, but when I see something that’s wrong, I can’t let it slide. I cannot shut up. I get stuck on things. That’s my biggest downfall or my biggest asset. So, fine. I’ll be your mask police. What choice do I have? I talked to my co-worker, and we decided to hang another sign on the wall. “Thanks for wearing a mask. It’s the most patriotic thing you can do.”That didn’t stop them, so we kept adding more. “Please be kind to us.” “We’re here for you seven days a week, and we didn’t create this situation.” “Masks are required for anyone entering the store.” Maybe some people took it as a challenge. I don’t know. But it kept on escalating. Most of our customers are supportive and respectful about it — maybe 90, 95 percent. But on weekends, we get dozens of people from Charlotte or Raleigh who come to visit their boats. Those places are virus hot spots, and they come here to have a good time and maybe they’re drinking. Some of them would see our signs, open the front door, and just yell: “F--- masks. F--- you.” Or they would walk in, refuse to wear a mask and then dump their merchandise all over the counter. I had a guy come in with no mask and a pistol on his hip and stare me down.

The “Strike for Black Lives” protest stunt -  - On Monday, various US trade unions, including the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), the Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), organized what they called a “Strike for Black Lives.” According to the event’s website, it demanded “justice for Black communities, that elected officials use their authority to rewrite the rules so that Black people can thrive [and] that corporations dismantle racism, white supremacy and economic exploitation.” Several Democratic Party-aligned groups also took part in organizing the event. The so-called strike was a political fraud. Its purpose was to promote the Democratic Party’s attempt to divert and disorient popular opposition by injecting racial communalism into the broad multi-racial movement against police brutality. It was also aimed at covering for the role of the unions and the Democrats in endangering the lives of workers by forcing them to remain on the job during the coronavirus pandemic. The “Strike for Black Lives” was not a real strike. It consisted for the most part in brief demonstrations held outside normal working hours, or, in some cases, during lunch breaks. Despite the nationwide character of the event, which involved the participation of unions that collectively have millions of members, only a few thousand people took part, according to the unions. The event was fully supported by big business. Short-term rental giant Airbnb even offered its employees time off to participate. It was promoted by the corporate press. All of the major national newspapers provided significant coverage. These same outlets, led by the New York Times, have spent months attempting to condition public opinion to accept a premature return to work under conditions where the COVID-19 pandemic has not been contained and no serious measures have been taken by corporations to protect their workers from the deadly disease. All of these media outlets are complicit in the explosive rise in infections and deaths that have resulted—and were certain to result—from the back-to-work campaign dictated by big business and carried out by Democratic governors and mayors as well as the Trump White House. Unsurprisingly, these same publications have ignored genuine strikes that have broken out in recent months in auto, meatpacking and other industries in defiance of joint union-management attempts to keep workers on the line during the pandemic. The demonstrations that did take place served as a backdrop for speeches by Democratic Party politicians. In New York City, at a protest of a few hundred people, the unions turned over the microphone to Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, known as the “senator from Wall Street,” who played a leading role in the passage of the CARES Act. That piece of legislation authorized a multitrillion-dollar bailout of the banks and corporations and sent stock prices soaring. Former presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren tweeted their support. 

 Cisco Fires Employees That Question Black Lives Matter During Company-Wide Racism Discussion - In early June, dutifully doing its part to virtue signal along with the rest of the world, Cisco Systems hosted an "all hands on deck" meeting on race, hosted via videoconference. In the comments of the online forum, visible to everyone, some workers questioned the Black Lives Matter movement and were subsequently fired from their jobs, proving once again that you can have an opinion, as long as it's the right opinion. Chief Executive Officer Chuck Robbins talked with Ford Foundation President Darren Walker, who is Black, and Bryan Stevenson, a Black lawyer and author who founded the Equal Justice Initiative, during the company's June 1 meeting in front of 30,000 employees, according to Bloomberg.. Several people spoke out online against Black Lives Matter during these online forums. For example, one employee wrote: “Black lives don’t matter. All lives matter,” while another wrote that BLM "reinforces racism". A third employee commented: “People who complain about racism probably have been a racist somewhere else to people from another race or part of systematic oppression in their own community!” Cisco says it fired a "handful" of workers for "inappropriate conduct" because it won't tolerate racism. It also, apparently, won't tolerate its employees opinions. The "incident" at Cisco (read: people expressing well reasoned opinions) has been a microcosm of similar situations at other silicon valley companies, who are left to try and figure out how to posture to the public they are concerned about racism, while at the same time not laying off their entire staff. Some believe that protests at companies could be next if employees aren't "trained" to think the right way.

Protesters deface 'Black Lives Matter' mural in front of Trump Tower four times in past week --Protesters have defaced the “Black Lives Matter” mural in front of President Trump’s namesake tower in New York City four times in the past week, police told The Hill Sunday.Two incidents involving alleged vandalism of the mural on Fifth Avenue outside of Trump Tower occurred on Saturday afternoon, resulting in arrests, a New York Police Department spokesperson said. Two women were arrested and charged with criminal mischief after pouring black paint on the mural at about 3 p.m. Bystander video showed police attempting to detain one of the women spreading black paint on the mural, while she shouted “refund the police.” The clip also shows an officer slipping on the paint and receiving head and arm injuries, police told The Associated Press reported.At about 5:45 p.m., another person threw black paint on the mural and was arrested and charged with criminal mischief, the spokesperson said.These arrests came a day after three people were arrested for throwing blue paint on the street, police said. Surveillance video caught the people spilling the blue paint while a woman threw flyers that discussed the shooting death of a 1-year-old in Brooklyn, the AP reported. The three were found with blue paint on their hands and clothing, police told the AP. Video of the incident showed one of the protesters wearing an “All Lives Matter” shirt and pro-Trump merchandise.

 Chicago violence: Fourteen mourners shot outside funeral home - At least 14 people have been shot outside a funeral home in Chicago - one of the worst mass shootings in a city already grappling with rising violence. Mourners were shot at by the occupants of a passing vehicle as they left the home in Gresham, on Chicago's South Side, on Tuesday evening, police said. The injuries were reported to range from serious to critical. The shooting comes amid reports that federal agents are to be deployed to the city to help tackle rising crime. Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she had been assured that the agents would work "collaboratively" with Chicago's police force, local media report. She had previously threatened to sue US President Donald Trump if he sent in troops without her permission. The president has sent federal agents to Portland, Oregon, and threatened to do the same with other major US cities, blaming their Democrat leaders for allowing protests over the death of George Floyd to descend into violence. Responding to the shooting at the funeral home in a series of tweets, Ms Lightfoot urged anyone with information relating to the incident to "please come forward or submit a tip anonymously". Police say they believe the shooting was gang-related.

GOP discusses tying K-12 funding to in-person classes -Senate Republicans are proposing tying half of K-12 funds in the next coronavirus package to schools holding in-person classes. Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who has been among a group of key negotiators on the education provisions in the forthcoming GOP bill, said Republicans are proposing $70 billion for K-12 schools. "I think on K-12 we're moving forward with half of the money available to all schools, and the other half available to schools that are having more of an in-person effort because they're going to have more expenses," Blunt said. Asked if the administration was supportive of that, Blunt added "that's what we've proposed to them. ... We had a good discussion on it." Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said earlier Tuesday that the forthcoming Republican bill will provide $105 billion for schools. "This country wants its kids back in the classroom this fall learning, exploring, making friends. Their education depends on it. ... This majority is preparing legislation that will send $105 billion so that educators have the resources they need to safely reopen," McConnell said from the Senate floor. Blunt, speaking to reporters after a closed-door caucus lunch, broke that down as $70 billion for K-12, $30 billion for higher education and another $5 billion that governors could spend on either. How to fund schools, and what restrictions to place on the money, has been a running point of debate as Congress prepares to negotiate the next coronavirus aid package.

Pence 'wouldn't hesitate' to send his kids back to school despite coronavirus |- Vice President Pence said Tuesday that, if they were still school-aged, he "wouldn't hesitate" to send his kids back to in-person classes despite rising numbers of coronavirus cases. "We know to open up America again we need to open up America's schools, but it's also right on the facts," Pence said during a press briefing in South Carolina. The vice president said the overall risk for children contracting COVID-19 is low, adding there are "real costs" to students not being in schools this fall. The second lady, Karen Pence, is a part-time teacher at a Christian elementary school in Virginia and was present during Tuesday's meeting to bring her perspective on how teaching might work when some classrooms resume sessions this fall. Instead of teaching in her own class, the second lady, who specializes in art therapy, said she would wheel a cart "from room to room" to keep children separated and safer. "They have their own supplies. I don't set out supplies this year," Karen Pence said. "So there are ways that we can make it safe for our kids."

Missouri governor says children infected with COVID-19 will “get over it” -- The campaign to reopen schools across the US, spearheaded by the Trump administration and supported by the entire political establishment, is provoking widespread opposition among educators, parents and young people. Missouri Governor Mike Parson, a Republican and ally of Donald Trump, declared in a radio interview on Friday, “These kids have got to get back to school. They’re at the lowest risk possible. And if they do get COVID-19, which they will, and they will when they go to school, they’re not going to the hospitals. They’re not going to have to sit in doctors’ offices. They’re going to go home and they’re going to get over it.” This statement expresses the callous indifference of the entire ruling class to the suffering that the pandemic has inflicted on the working class. The ruling elite is engaged in a homicidal class war whose central focus is forcing workers back on the job under conditions of an out-of-control pandemic and no protection for workers against COVID-19. The reopening of the schools, which the corporate elite and the politicians know will lead to mass infections and deaths, is central to the back-to-work drive. The pandemic is rapidly spreading in Missouri, with a daily average of 854 new confirmed cases over the past week, up from 238 only a month ago. Across the US, cases and deaths are rising rapidly, with over 60,000 new cases and nearly 1,000 deaths each day for the past week. Contrary to Parson’s claims, the most recent data (July 15) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) documents 188 deaths of youth under 25 attributable to COVID-19, including 31 deaths of children under the age of 15. While children have the lowest infection and death rates for any age group, this is in part due to the global wave of school closures that began in mid-March, as well as a lack of testing for this age group. The families that have lost children under the horrific circumstances of the pandemic will never be the same. Prior data from CDC indicates that the case fatality rate for children is roughly 0.02 percent, meaning that with a full reopening of schools, potentially thousands of children could die. Parson said nothing about the dangers posed to children’s parents when they come home infected, or the potential for orphaning hundreds of thousands of children across the country. He also ignored the dangers posed to teachers forced to be in the classroom, roughly a quarter of whom fall under the categories most at-risk of dying from COVID-19.

Trump and DeVos’s Plan to Reopen Schools Hides a Sinister Agenda --Parents of 51 million school-age children in the U.S. are facing an agonizing choice — whether to risk exposing their children to the coronavirus in public school classrooms this fall, or to sacrifice their children’s intellectual, social and emotional development by keeping them home for “online learning” via the web, which even before the pandemic was judged not very effective.To make the choice even more difficult, President Trump and his education secretary, billionaire Betsy DeVos, have threatened towithhold federal funds from any school that does not open its classrooms fully in the fall. Both Trump and DeVos insist face-to-face teaching is perfectly safe, which health scientists say is not true.Trump and DeVos are adamant. On “Fox News Sunday” on July 12, DeVos said, “There’s nothing in the data that suggests that kids being in school is in any way dangerous.” Trump’s spokesperson, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, said on July 16 that “science should not stand in the way” of school reopening because “science is on our side,” showing it is “perfectly safe” to fully open all classrooms in the fall. Science does not support claims of perfect safety. Schools are likelyhigh-contact zones. Most schools cannot presently afford regular disinfection; many students and their parents may object to mandatory masks (38 percent of U.S. adults don’t wear masks when they leave the house); certainly not all kids will remain six feet apart. COVID-19 candefinitely infect some children, some of whom can pass it on to their families, teachers, school staff and other children.  Bloomberg Newsreports that, in Florida, about a third of all children tested have been positive for COVID-19; in California it’s 8.4 percent; Mississippi, 9.4 percent; Arizona and Washington state, 11 percent. According to theKaiser Family Foundation, 3.3 million seniors age 65 and older — prime candidates for serious illness — live with a school-age child. Furthermore, another Kaiser study concluded that one-quarter of all teachers (1.47 million people) are in danger of developing serious illness if infected with coronavirus. Almost everyone agrees that children sorely need the many benefits of school attendance — food and friendships, books and basketball courts, time away from family, and a safe place to spend it, plus stimulating interactions as they learn reading, writing and arithmetic. Furthermore, 27 million working parents need their children cared for safely during the week.  To reopen safely, schools need more money and more space. Doubling the distance between students will require twice the space. Part-time online learning will require access to broadband, and laptops or tablets for everyone. According to a recent survey, only 24 percent of teachers report that all their students have access to a tablet or laptop for school work. In addition, everyone will need masks, and schools will require frequent, thorough cleaning. The Washington Post reports that Congress is currently negotiating a bill that might give schools another $50 billion to $100 billion — still far below the amount needed to make schools safe. Plus, the Post says, Trump and DeVos are angling to give the money only to schools that open fully. They want to punish schools that open only part-time.

Florida teachers union files lawsuit against state over school reopening order - - The Florida Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, said Monday it’s filing a lawsuit against Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state over their push to reopen Florida’s schools as COVID-19 cases rise. The FEA lawsuit is one of at least two to have been filed against the state’s plans to reopen schools. Both are asking a judge to intervene and stop schools from reopening in just a few weeks. The union is calling on DeSantis, Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran, the Florida State Board of Education, and Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez to “stop the reckless and unsafe reopening of public school campuses as coronavirus infections surge statewide.” DOWNLOAD: FEA lawsuit (pdf)  The FEA also launched a petition that says the state’s students must not return to school until steps are taken to reduce the rate of community spread of COVID-19. “We cannot be reckless with children’s lives,” said Fedrick Ingram, FEA president. His attorney did not mince words. “The first 21 pages of our lawsuit are a chronicle of horrors,” said Kendall Coffey. Coffey’s goal is to stop schools from reopening in August, and teachers say it’s the only safe thing to do. “I, of course, want to go back to teaching but it needs to be safe. There’s no way children can sit in their seat for six hours and wear a mask,” said Stefani Brown Miller, a teacher in Broward County. The FEA lawsuit argues the state’s directive that schools reopen five days a week is unconstitutional, putting students, teachers and their families at risk of contracting COVID-19.

Until Teachers Feel Safe, Widespread In-Person K-12 Schooling May Prove Impossible in U.S. --Safely resuming in-person instruction at U.S. public schools is important for theacademic, physical, emotional and social well-being of children and their families. It's also a key factor for the nation's economic recovery.But in mid-July, despite considerable pressure from the Trump administration, many school systems around the nation had announced that they didn't yet believe that anything close to resembling a traditional schedule would be feasible before the 2020-21 school year starts. Many school districts, including those in Los Angeles, San Diego and Houston, three of the nation's largest, were planning to be fully online.Others, such as those serving New York City and Clinton, Mississippi, currently plan to follow hybrid approaches that combine distance learning and in-person learning. The goal in those cases is to reduce the spread of coronavirus by keeping students several feet apart from each other at all times and the only way to do that is to have fewer children in school at any given time.Some states, including Florida, are trying to demand that local school systems at least offer families a chance for in-person daily instruction. But it's unlikely that all schools schools in those states will have on-site instruction, especially in COVID-19 hotspots.Pressure from teachers has contributed to decisions to refrain from holding classes in person everywhere from Southern California to Northern Virginia. In June, a survey of the members of the American Federation of Teachers, a union with 1.6 million members, found that only 21% of K-12 teachers preferred to resume school on a traditional schedule. Another 42% supported a hybrid approach combining in-person and distance learning and 29% wanted to continue with distance learning exclusively and the rest didn't express a preference.Fully 62% of the teachers responding to the survey expressed concerns over school safety tied to the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 1 in 4 of the nation's 3.7 million public school teachers are 50 years old or older. That means they have a high risk of getting severe symptoms if they contract COVID-19.  Countless other teachers live with someone who is in a high-risk category due to their age or have underlying conditions that put them at a greater risk should they get sick.

TIME: What the U.S. Can Learn from 3 Countries About Reopening – Diane Ravitch - TIME Magazine just published a story about school reopening in Denmark, South Korea, and Israel, with lessons for the U.S.

• Lesson #1 from Denmark: Get the virus under control before reopening schools. Unlike Denmark, the United States is bungling that, and the virus is spreading in the south and west. Perhaps states that have taken the necessary steps and flattened the curve can begin to reopen, with caution.
• Lesson #2 from South Korea: Prepare to delay reopening if cases spike. Older students returned to school fumirst.
• Lesson #3 from Israel: Infections increase when schools don’t take every safety precaution. Expect to close down again if you don’t follow the protocols of masks, social distancing and other precautions.

The necessary health and safety protocols require extra funding. No extra funding is available. Trump threatened to cut federal funds from schools that don’t open fully even without the small classes, masks, PPE, extra nurses, etc. He wants the schools open without regard to the health or safety of teachers and students.

• So rule 1: take the measures necessary to contain the pandemic. The United States is not doing that.
• Rule 2: if schools open, fund the steps necessary to make them safe. The United States is not doing that.
• Rule 3: prepare for a new surge in infections if public officials ignore rules 1 and 2.

 Virginia's largest school district reverses on reopening to in-person classes -- Scott Braband, superintendent for Fairfax Public Schools, has recommended that Virginia's largest school district start the school year with virtual classes, as school districts around the country feel mounting pressure from the Trump administration to return to in-person instruction in the fall. Braband's recommendations came Tuesday afternoon as district's school board convened to discuss how to approach the new school year amid the coronavirus pandemic.“The COVID-19 pandemic looks much different than it did even three weeks ago,” Brabrand said, according to The Washington Post. “Now we are experiencing a surge of COVID-19 across the country, and it will impact us here in Fairfax County. The numbers do not lie.”BREAKING: Fairfax County Schools superintendent will recommend beginning the school year with all-virtual learning. Had previously planned to have some students in school two days a week. pic.twitter.com/Ek7Uku7bZ8   The new recommendations are a change of heart for Braband who had initially planned on having students in the classroom at least twice a week while using virtual learning the rest of the time. This kind of hybrid system has been floated by schools districts across the country, but has drawn pushback from Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who has said that such proposals were unacceptable and that school districts should have in-person instruction full-time.President Trump and his administration have taken a hardline stance on the issue, with Trump recently threatening to withhold funding from school districts that don't commit to in-person learning this fall. Trump has also knocked guidance for schools released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, saying that the suggested measures were too costly and extreme.Loudoun County Superintendent Eric Williams was slated to make similar recommendations for his Northern Virginia district Tuesday afternoon, according to the Post. Also on Tuesday, Montgomery County Public Schools announced that it would be exclusively using virtual learning for the first semester.

Maskless protesters pack Utah County Commission meeting set to discuss masks in schools -- A crowd of maskless protesters packed into a Utah County Commission meeting on Wednesday to speak out against a state requirement for students to wear masks when school returns. Dozens of demonstrators came out in Provo, Utah, to protest Gov. Gary Herbert’s (R) mandate on masks in schools, arguing that they should have the right to decide whether their children or students wear face coverings in the three school districts in the county. Tanner Ainge, the chair of the all-Republican commission, delayed the meeting shortly after it started, citing that the crowd was not following public health guidelines, according to a video. “This is the exact opposite of what we need to be doing,” Ainge said, prompting the protesters to boo. “We are supposed to be physically distancing, wearing masks.” Ainge left the meeting, but the two other members of the commission stayed to listen to more than 30 people who lined up to talk, The Salt Lake Tribune reported. Several parents expressed worries about children with disabilities being required to wear masks and the difficulty of enforcing the rule on playgrounds and in lunchrooms, The Washington Post reported. Ahead of the meeting, commissioner Bill Lee had voiced his opposition to the state rules and added a proposal to request state officials implement a “compassionate exemption” for the mandate, allowing parents and teachers the authority to decide whether they were necessary, the Tribune reported. Lee encouraged people to meet to “peacefully express their concerns” about the mask requirement outside the county government center before the official meeting. About 150 people came out, according to the Tribune. Ainge told the Post that the matter of mask mandates in schools “has no business being on agenda.” “The county has nothing to do with this,” he said. “It would be like the school board deciding how much money to give to the sheriff’s department.”

Michigan judge denies release of teenage girl who was jailed after not doing homework - A 15-year-old Black girl who has been incarcerated in Michigan since mid-May after she failed to do her online schoolwork won't be returning home, a judge decided Monday, in a case that has stoked outrage that it is emblematic of systemic racism and the criminalization of Black children. Oakland County Judge Mary Ellen Brennan determined that the girl has been benefiting from a residential treatment program at a juvenile detention center, but is not yet ready to be with her mother. Brennan, the presiding judge of the court's Family Division, scheduled another hearing for September, NBC affiliate WDIV reported. The girl, who is being identified only by her middle name, Grace, was the subject of a report published last week by ProPublica Illinois, with politicians and community activists expressing outrage over her incarceration. During a three-hour proceeding, Brennan told Grace that it was in her best interest to stay in the program after all of the progress she had been making. "Give yourself a chance to follow through and finish something," Brennan said, according to the Detroit News. "The right thing is for you and your mom to be separated for right now." Grace, however, told the judge that she wanted to go home: "I miss my mom. I can control myself. I can be obedient." After the hearing, an attorney for the family, Jonathan Biernat, confirmed that Grace had been making strides, but the "fight for her release" is ongoing. He was unavailable for further comment later Monday.

Concussions associated with cognitive, behavioral, and emotional consequences for students Concussions can have a compounding effect on children, leading to long-term cognitive, behavioral, and emotional health consequences, according to researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth), who published their findings in the American Journal of Sports Medicine. In 2017, approximately 2.5 million high school students in the United States reported suffering at least one concussion related to sports or physical activity in the last 12 months, according to information from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The study revealed that 14.5% of female high school athletes and 18.1% of male high school athletes reported experiencing at least one concussion the previous year. These students also reported at least one factor associated to their behavioral, cognitive, and emotional health. The questions covered topics such as difficulty concentrating, poor grades, drinking and driving, carrying a weapon, getting into a physical altercation, using tobacco or marijuana, binge drinking, feeling depressed, and having suicidal thoughts or actions. Of the male participants who suffered at least one concussion, 33.8% reported they drank and drove in the last 30 days. For the female athletes who reported suffering more than one concussion, 19% stated they had used marijuana at least once in the last 30 days. Both male and female participants who answered that they had been in at least one physical fight in the last year were significantly more likely to have reported having at least one concussion in that same timeframe. Other associated factors that were significantly more likely in male students who reported a prior concussion included difficulty concentrating, tobacco/e-cigarette use, and binge drinking. Female students who reported prior concussions were more likely to ride in a car with a driver who had been drinking, and have suicidal thoughts or actions.

CPS could lose $10M to private schools, district says in lawsuit against Betsy DeVos over coronavirus funding - - Chicago Public Schools has joined a federal lawsuit with 12 other states, cities and districts against U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos over her insistence that public school districts share more of their federal coronavirus relief funding with private schools. The complaint centers around more than $13 billion earmarked for schools in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, known as the CARES Act, which Congress passed in late March. The legislation calls for states and school districts to receive money based on how much Title I funding they’re allotted to serve low-income students, the lawsuit says. But DeVos, the complaint argues, has instructed funding to be distributed based on a school’s total number of students, which would divert money from public schools serving children from low-income families to wealthier private schools. CPS’ CARES Act allotment is $205 million of the $569.5 million earmarked for Illinois. Officials estimate CPS would lose about $10 million if DeVos’ distribution guidelines stand. The district said in a statement Monday that shifting millions to private schools would be a misallocation of taxpayer dollars at a time when public school students need it most. “The devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted low-income students of color and the Trump Administration is turning its back on these students in favor of wealthy private institutions by siphoning public funds away from the students who Congress intended to support,” the district said. Department of Education Press Secretary Angela Morabito said in a statement that “this pandemic affected all students, and the CARES Act requires that funding should be used to help all students.”

 Kick The Culture War Off Campus - Colleges and universities have been a bastion of liberalism and progressivism for so long it’s a cliché. But that cliché has led to complacency. Conservatives don’t like that college campuses have always been hotbeds of bad ideas – from communism to anti-Semitism to the so-called “critical theory” behind woke-ism. But the campus left has rarely been more than an irritant. Conservatives on the whole haven’t taken radical professors, brainwashed students and cowardly university administrators seriously because they were unserious people spouting unserious ideas.Indeed, serious people on the left usually treated the academic left with the same kind of head-patting indulgence as everyone else. Since the 1960s, campus progressives had stopped bombing buildings, and instead spent their time making up words to show off their virtue, like “womyn,” “Latinx,” and “cis-gender.” The scholarship produced by woke academics in nonsense fields like anti-racism, critical gender theory, and ecofeminism never spilled out into broader political or cultural debates. Colleges were dismissed as sandboxes where children played and occasionally fought, but never did any real damage. The expectation was that, however outrageous college woke-ness was getting, no one would ever take it seriously in the real world, so there was no need to pay much attention. That turned out to be a mistake. Now we know that at least some of the children and adults steeped in the anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-truth narrative behind the “Awokening” do indeed take it seriously. Some have taken it so seriously they have launched a nationwide crime wave. After all, if everything they’ve been taught is true – that America is racist and evil, that the Constitution is a weapon of oppression, that conservative speech is violent while progressive violence is just speech – then it was only a matter of time before some Chads and Emilys broke out the Molotov cocktails. The wanna-be woke media covers up both their thuggish violence and their historical illiteracy (because mainstream media elites are among the most privileged people on planet Earth and would never survive if the mob ever turned on them). Democratic Party leaders look the other way – while rising left-wing stars like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez praise the mob – for the same reason. If Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer stood up to the mob, they’d lose. And so it’s up to Republican politicians to fight back. Luckily, for the first time in a long time, the Republican leader is a fighter. And the fight Donald Trump should pick is defunding colleges that promote this insanity. 

After Cruise Ships and Nursing Homes, Will Universities Be the Next COVID-19 Tinderboxes?  -The fall semester has yet to begin, but student athletes training for the season can already be found on college campuses across the U.S. And so can COVID-19.Since the start of July there have been at least two outbreaks among student athletes, coaches, and staff—with 37 infected at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Chapel Hill and 22 at Boise State. Clusters of infection have been traced to college town bars popular with students.A common misconception is that young people with COVID-19 don’t die and therefore college re-openings pose little risk. Sadly, this isn’t the case. COVID-19 deaths in the young are rare, but they happen. Universities across the U.S. are mourning the loss of students in the lead-up to the school year, includingJoshua Bush, a 30-year old nursing student at the University of South Carolina,Trevor Syphus Lee, a 27-year old senior at Utah Valley University, and Juan Garcia, a 21-year old Penn State undergraduate.One might imagine that the rapid, uncontained spread of a serious and poorly understood disease which is already killing students would cause universities all across America to put their re-opening plans on hold. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.The Chronicle of Higher Education compiled a database of the fall reopening plans of over 1,000 colleges and universities and found that 60% are “going to open for business and bring all of their students back.” Given how much is still unknown about the virus and especially its long-term effects on those infected, this could be the largest-scale uncontrolled public health experiment America has ever undertaken, with students, staff, faculty, parents, and communities as the unwitting test subjects. No other nation has reopened schools and universities with the level of rampant community transmission we see in the U.S. today, or with so little coordination or guidance as to protective measures.The rush to re-open is driven by the very reasonable conviction that universities and colleges ought to provide their students face-to-face classroom teaching and a residential “campus experience.” There is more to college than the transmission of knowledge, and online learning has significant disadvantages. But during a pandemic, both classrooms and presumably campus residential settings present risks universities are not equipped to handle.

University of Akron announces plan to eliminate 178 professors, staff and contract professionals - The University of Akron’s Board of Trustees unanimously voted last Wednesday to eliminate 178 positions from the university, which is based in Northeast Ohio, in response to an expected decline in enrollment and continued budget shortfall. Out of the planned layoffs, 96 are full-time professors and members of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and 82 are staff and contract professionals. The AAUP agreed to the layoffs as part of new labor agreement with the university. Management and the union are putting pressure on professors and other staff to accept the job-cutting deal in a vote, which must be completed by August 3. In a statement released Friday night, University of Akron President Gary Miller threatened that failure to ratify the agreement would result in “legal battles” and “cause many, many more faculty to lose their jobs than were achieved through the recent board action.” The planned layoffs are the most recent attempt by the university to overcome its ongoing budget shortfall, which has worsened due to uncertainties caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In 2018, the trustees voted to terminate 19 percent of the university’s degree tracks, roughly 80 programs, in a cost cutting measure. Between 2010 and 2019, the number of faculty positions was cut by 18 percent. In May, the university announced plans to eliminate six out of its 11 colleges. In late May, the AAUP announced that the university administration was attempting to invoke two clauses in their contract dealing with “unforeseen, uncontrolled and catastrophic circumstances” and “exigent circumstances.” In a statement, the AAUP explained that the administration was claiming that these clauses allow the university to suddenly fire faculty “without regard to tenure status, rank or the other criteria” and could seek to change agreements in the contract such as faculty pay, increase healthcare premiums, and eliminate healthcare benefits for dependents of retirees and furloughs. If the union is successful in pushing through the plan to lay off professors, it would amount to giving the administration what it was asking for in May. The cuts would result in a 23 percent decline in the number of full-time unionized faculty since the start of the pandemic. Prior to the trustees vote on Wednesday, 21 full-time faculty resigned or retired. AAUP officials have also clarified that the recent names slated for layoffs were selected without protections for tenured or high-ranking faculty. The university currently employs about 570 full-time professors.

 Despite withdrawal of ICE ruling, international students in the US remain at risk - On July 14, the Trump administration withdrew a July 6 ruling by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) requiring 900,000 international students to take at least one in-person class this fall—even as many universities move fully online in response to coronavirus pandemic—putting tens of thousands at risk of detention and deportation. The ruling was revoked before initial arguments were set to be heard in a lawsuit brought against the Trump administration by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which was supported by tens of other colleges. Separate lawsuits had also been filed against the ruling by a number of California universities and a coalition of seventeen states. Despite the Trump administration’s withdrawal of the order that would have threatened the residency status of 900,000 F-1 visa holders, international students’ right to study in the US remains precarious. The revocation was little more than a tactical retreat in the ongoing war against all immigrants waged by the Trump administration with the crucial support of the Democratic Party. Far from representing any principled recognition of the rights of students, the revocation of the order is only the latest in a string of increasingly unstable vacillations from a ruling class wracked by crisis. In contrast, the Socialist Equality Party, which fights for the interests of the international working class and young people, insists on the right of every individual, regardless of the circumstances of their birth, to high quality education and to work, to study and live in any country they please with full citizenship rights. The extent to which the Democratic Party has responded to the ruling has been limited by what they perceive to be the interests of US imperialism. Rather than asserting the democratic rights of the students themselves, the Democrats cited the contribution made by international students to the US economy, their role in critical American research projects and the ties this education fosters to the foreign government officials, many of whom attended college in the US. Unless students break decisively with the Democratic Party and its pseudo-left agents, they will become pawns in the factional disputes amongst the American ruling class. As soon as the Democrats determine international students no longer suit American imperialism’s geopolitical interests, any pretense of their defense will be dropped forthwith.

Tech’s Increasing Dependence on Foreign Students, in Six Charts – On July 6, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced a rule change that would have barred international students from staying in the country if their classes moved entirely online due to the coronavirus. Shortly later, MIT and Harvard University sued the agency and the Department of Homeland Security in federal court, seeking to prevent the government from enforcing the policy.Tech companies joined the fight a few days later. In an amicus brief supporting MIT and Harvard’s case, 19 tech organizations and companies, including Google, Facebook, and Twitter, argued that they would be “harmed substantially” if international students were forced to leave the United States. The rule change was ultimately rescinded. A closer look at Big Tech’s reliance on foreign workers and the demographics of STEM students in the U.S. reveals why tech companies were quick to oppose the change. Not only do foreign workers continuously support tech companies, but the number of international students in master’s and doctorate STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) programs has grown so much in recent years that they now earn more than half of all degrees conferred.Sponsoring international technical workers has been integral to the growth of top tech companies. The most well-known way companies hire foreign workers is the H1-B visa, a three-year work visa for a “specialty occupation” that requires a minimum of a bachelor’s degree. Since 2006, the cap for the available number of H1-B visas has been set to 85,000: 65,000 for those with at least a bachelor’s degree and an additional 20,000 reserved for applicants with at least a master’s degree from an American university. While there are various exceptions, such as employees at universities or nonprofit organizations, private companies are subject to the cap. This cap has made the H1-B visa petition process increasingly competitive; the quota has been filled within four days for the past six years. Although the number of available H1-B visas has remained fixed and competitive, the top tech companies have managed to win more and more each year. In 2019, five top tech companies — Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google — were collectively granted nearly 27,000 H1-B visas, over 30% of the total visas available to private companies.Amazon has seen the most explosive growth in H1-B visas (from 523 in 2010 to 8,585 in 2019), although this is likely due to their meteoric growth in overall workforce size. While Microsoft held nearly seven times as many H1-B visas as its peers a decade ago, they now rest in the middle of the pack.

  Are American Colleges and Universities the Next Covid Casualties? - Long before Donald Trump or Covid 19, the eerie resemblance of American higher education to the old Habsburg Empire was hard to miss. At the top a handful of vintage institutions continued to glitter. They exercised a magnetic attraction on the rest of the world that even intellectual disasters on the scale of the economics discipline before the 2008 financial crisis hardly dented. But most every institution below the royals was at least fraying around the edges. Long before the pandemic hit, many showed clear signs of distress.The root of that distress is not hard to identify: It is the pressures arising from the decline of the American middle class and the soaring income inequalities of the New Gilded Age. While a few US colleges have lineages stretching back centuries, they and their less venerable competitors dramatically reconfigured themselves during the long boom that followed World War II. Historically rapid economic growth along with major government funding initiatives, such as the GI Bill, post-Sputnik spending on defense and R&D; and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society fueled a vast expansion of the whole system.  With college degrees the passport to well-paid, stable employment, going to college became the default expectation of middle-class students and parents and the aspiration of many less affluent households. State supported institutions bulked up, but so did most private colleges and universities. Research institutions, private liberal arts colleges, professional schools, state colleges and universities, and junior colleges nearly all added students and faculty. Many also transformed themselves into conglomerates, branching out into wholly new lines of activity and adding layers of administrators.  The fateful fork in the road came in the nineteen seventies, as economic growth slowed and became far more variable. The declines, along with major campaigns for lower taxes, squeezed both federal and state finances. With direct aid from governments constrained, and advances in biotechnology promising high returns, both Democrats and Republicans encouraged colleges and universities to privatize research performed on their campuses and to spin off products to private industry.[i]

How Shady 'Shadow Lenders' Are Helping Fuel The $1.6 Trillion Student-Loan Crisis -Discerning between which colleges are outright scams, and which are venerable American institutions isn't always easy. After all, if we're going solely by the advantage that a degree confers in the labor market, one could argue that a degree in art history from Wesleyan probably isn't worth the paper it's printed on, let alone the $250,000+ sticker price.But in a world where 'non-profit' institutions have accrued endowments worth hundreds of millions (and in some cases, billions) solely from 'alumni fundraising', yet still charge teenagers unimaginable sums for degrees that they don't necessarily want or need (but have been brainwashed by society to believe they most possess), the standard for what constitutes abusive and predatory behavior is probably unjustifiably high.  In a recent study by the Student Borrower Protection Center, an advocacy group that purports to protect students from predatory lenders, researchers described a $5 billion "shadow lending" network that they said charged exorbitant interest rates - sometimes as high as 35% annually - to lend to students at for-profit colleges which often have poor track records of guiding students to the jobs market.Of course, Americans have $1.6 trillion in student loans outstanding. Compared to this, $5 billion over a decade is a drop in the bucket. But like most lenders who specialize in extending credit to the desperately poor, the lenders who partner with these schools engage in all kinds of deceptive and shady practices, often with the explicit aid of the schools they work with.Over the past decade, students have borrowed more than $5 billion through an opaque web of companies to pay for training at for-profit schools, the Student Borrower Protection Center, an advocacy group, found. These products, which aren’t traditional federal or private student loans, often carry high interest rates and other risks for borrowers, according to the SBPC. In addition, by providing financing to students, this shadow credit system, as the SBPC dubs it, helps to keep programs training students for careers in fields like trucking and cosmetology in business — even when they’re prohibitively expensive for many and don’t provide graduates with a credential that’s valuable in the labor market.  What's more, as private lenders have largely abandoned the student lending business since the financial crisis, leaving it mostly to government-sponsored enterprises, these shady enterprises have flourished.Though typically out of the public and regulatory eye, these products have taken on a more prominent role in the student finance landscape since the Great Recession, according to the SBPC’s report. In the past, for-profit colleges relied on traditional, private lenders to provide loans to students, which were bundled together and sold to investors. Often these loans were made to students with little regard for whether they would be able to repay them.

 Betsy Devos' refusal to honor student loan forgiveness shows her disrespect for the law - Alexis Goldstein -Even in a government full of people without the integrity, will or courage to do the right thing, most of the agencies stand down — or at least pretend to — when ordered by the courts. But not the Department of Education under Secretary Betsy DeVos, who seems to have been only further animated by her losses in court over her efforts to deny the rightful debt cancellations owed to people who attended predatory, for-profit colleges, borrowers who are disproportionately women and people of color, and often now working in front-line jobs. First, DeVos tried to delay an Obama-era update to Borrower Defense to Repayment rules — a 1990s-era regulation that says that, if a school violates state law, borrowers are entitled to cancellation of their federal student loans. The Obama administration’s update included new protections like forbidding schools from preventing students from suing in class-action lawsuits. A judge found DeVos’ delay to this rule “unlawful” and “arbitrary and capricious.”   She has also failed to cancel the debts of tens of thousands of borrowers the government already deemed entitled to relief. Another lawsuit challenged this failure, and the court ordered DeVos to halt debt collection for any borrowers covered by the lawsuit; 16,000 students and parents were collected from anyway. So DeVos was held in contempt of court and the department was fined $100,000.  In a stunning display of their ongoing lawlessness, the department then found yet another 17,258 borrowers it had illegally collected on after the ruling. DeVos’ legal troubles didn’t stop there. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey had previously applied to the department on behalf of 7,200 former students of Corinthian Colleges in the state, saying their debts were unlawful and therefore uncollectable. In 2018, a court found DeVos had illegally seized the tax refund of two Massachusetts borrowers, given that they had open applications for debt cancellation. But DeVos kept on illegally seizing other Massachusetts borrowers' tax refunds even after this ruling, leading to yet another lawsuit. This June, the same judge who found DeVos’ actions illegal in 2018 ordered her to cancel the debts of all 7,200 former Corinthian Colleges students in Massachusetts. A string of legal defeats like this might give a department head pause. Instead, it’s been full speed ahead for DeVos.She rewrote the Borrower Defense regulations so dramatically that almost no borrower will ever qualify for debt cancellation again; the department itself estimated that only about 3 cents of every dollar borrowed will be forgiven under the DeVos rule. Her rewrite was so drastic that 10 Republican senators joined the Democrats to vote to overturn her rewrite this March and Trump’s veto kept DeVos’ rewrite in place.

Patients Aren’t Being Told About the AI Systems Advising Their Care - Since February of last year, tens of thousands of patients hospitalized at one of Minnesota’s largest health systems have had their discharge planning decisions informed with help from an artificial intelligence model. But few if any of those patients has any idea about the AI involved in their care. That’s because frontline clinicians at M Health Fairview generally don’t mention the AI whirring behind the scenes in their conversations with patients. At a growing number of prominent hospitals and clinics around the country, clinicians are turning to AI-powered decision support tools — many of them unproven — to help predict whether hospitalized patients are likely to develop complications or deteriorate, whether they’re at risk of readmission, and whether they’re likely to die soon. But these patients and their family members are often not informed about or asked to consent to the use of these tools in their care, a STAT examination has found. The result: Machines that are completely invisible to patients are increasingly guiding decision-making in the clinic. Hospitals and clinicians “are operating under the assumption that you do not disclose, and that’s not really something that has been defended or really thought about,” Harvard Law School professor Glenn Cohen said. Cohen is the author of one of only a few articles examining the issue, which has received surprisingly scant attention in the medical literature even as research about AI and machine learning proliferates. In some cases, there’s little room for harm: Patients may not need to know about an AI system that’s nudging their doctor to move up an MRI scan by a day, like the one deployed by M Health Fairview, or to be more thoughtful, such as with algorithms meant to encourage clinicians to broach end-of-life conversations. But in other cases, lack of disclosure means that patients may never know what happened if an AI model makes a faulty recommendation that is part of the reason they are denied needed care or undergo an unnecessary, costly, or even harmful intervention. That’s a real risk, because some of these AI models are fraught with bias, and even those that have been demonstrated to be accurate largely haven’t yet been shown to improve patient outcomes. Some hospitals don’t share data on how well the systems work, justifying the decision on the grounds that they are not conducting research. But that means that patients are not only being denied information about whether the tools are being used in their care, but also about whether the tools are actually helping them.

The American Way of Death  - LAST WEEK, inside a small, green-tiled room in Terre Haute, Indiana, the federal government executed Daniel Lee, Wesley Purkey, and Dustin Honken. Lee spent his final four hours alive strapped to the death gurney, while lawyers from the Department of Justice labored through the night to guarantee his execution. When he was killed on Tuesday morning, it was with an expired death warrant. Two days later, the government followed with the killing of Purkey, who has Alzheimer’s. It used another expired death warrant, and withheld brain scans indicating the severity of his cognitive decline (Purkey’s lawyers claimed he could not remember the name of his loved ones and believed his counsel was part of a government conspiracy seeking to silence him). And on Friday afternoon, federal officials capped off their killing spree with Honken, whose final words were a poem by a Jesuit priest asking to go “where the green swell is in the havens dumb / and out of the swing of the sea.”These executions, the first undertaken by the federal government in seventeen years, were administered using a lethal dose of pentobarbital, a sedative that can provoke sensations of suffocation and drowning. One medical expert concluded that the drug would leave the men in “excruciating suffering” during their final moments alive. Their lawyers sued, and proposed alterations to the execution protocol. A federal judge ruled in their favor, noting that even an “execution by firing squad would significantly reduce the risk of severe pain” when compared to the method proposed by the Justice Department. Their petition was eventually denied. The choice to rekindle the federal death penalty, a practice that virtually every other democratic country has forsworn, is a dismal one, if not quite as significant a deviation as it appears on first glance. After all, the last seventeen years have seen plenty of other cruel and barbarous acts carried out by dutiful civil servants: police officers have gunned down hundreds of unarmed citizens and brutalized countless more; politicians have poisoned their constituents, closed public schools, and savaged the social safety net without a second thought; and prosecutors have directed tens of thousands of vulnerable people into cages—and then touted their progressive credentials in reelection campaigns.

New psychedelic research sheds light on why psilocybin-containing mushrooms have been consumed for centuries - A new study from the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine provides insight into the psychoactive effects that distinguish psilocybin from other hallucinogenic substances. The findings suggest that feelings of spiritual and/or psychological insight play an important role in the drug’s popularity. The new study has been published in the journal Psychopharmacology. “Recently there has been a renewal of interest in research with psychedelic drugs,” explained Roland R. Griffiths, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences who is the corresponding author of the new study. “Studies from the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research and elsewhere suggest that psilocybin, a classic psychedelic drug, has significant potential for treating various psychiatric conditions such as depression and drug dependence disorders. This study sought to address a simple but somewhat perplexing question: Why do people use psilocybin?” “Psilocybin, in the form of hallucinogenic mushrooms, has been used for centuries for the psychoactive effects. Recent US survey studies show that lifetime psilocybin use is relatively modest and quite stable over a period of decades,” Griffiths explained. “However, the National Institute on Drug Abuse does not consider psilocybin to be addictive because it does not cause uncontrollable drug seeking behavior, does not produce classic euphoria, does not produce a withdrawal syndrome, and does not activate brain mechanisms associated with classic drugs of abuse.”

 New Blood Test Can Detect Cancer 4 Years Before Symptoms --Cancer survival rates dramatically increase when the disease is caught early, but there has not been an effective, non-invasive test that will detect most types of cancer early.Now, an international team of researchers has developed a blood test that can diagnose certain cancers years before symptoms occur."What we showed is: up to four years before these people walk into the hospital, there are already signatures in their blood that show they have cancer," study coauthor and University of California bioengineer Kun Zhangtold Scientific American. "That's never been done before."The test is part of a larger effort to create a "liquid biopsy" for early cancer detection, The Guardian explained. While other studies have reported positive results for blood tests that detect cancer relatively early, few can detect it before any symptoms develop.But the new test, called PanSeer, detected cancer in 95 percent of asymptomatic patients who went on to receive a diagnosis.The study, published in Nature Communications Tuesday, is also unique because of how the test was developed, Scientific American explained.

Coronavirus can live for four days on animal skin: US military study - The novel coronavirus can live for days on animal skin, according to researchers from the biggest US military bioweapons laboratory. In Fort Detrick, Maryland, army researchers tested the virus on the surface of various substances, including uncirculated paper currency supplied by the US Secret Service and unused cotton-polyester fabric, according to a non-peer-reviewed paper posted on the preprint site medRxiv.org on Friday. They found that of the samples, the virus could survive the longest at room temperature on pig skin – up to four days. And it remained stable on the skin in refrigerated temperatures throughout the two-week experiment. The researchers with the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases said they were concerned that meat plants could help the coronavirus spread. “Without an extensive testing and contract tracing programme, transmission around meatpacking plants will likely continue to be an issue,” said the team led by David Harbourt from the base’s biosafety division. The US study followed a surprise outbreak of the coronavirus in Beijing last month. Most of the 300-plus cases of Covid-19, the disease caused by the pathogen, were linked to a food market selling meat and vegetable products from home and abroad. The outbreak led to a partial lockdown of China’s capital and virus testing for more than 10 million residents.

Australian researches detect SARS-CoV-2 virus in wastewater from planes and cruise ships  --Previous reports have shown that the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), has been found in untreated wastewater. While the data is limited, there are no reported cases of a person becoming infected with the virus due to exposure to contaminated water. Now, a team of researchers from Australia's national science agency, the CSIRO, and the University of Queensland have found genetic fragments of SARS-CoV-2 after testing aircraft and cruise ship wastewater once they reached their destinations.Published in the Journal of Travel Medicine, the study highlights the importance of using wastewater as a means to determine if infected passengers are coming into a country via ship or airplane.The researchers said testing the wastewater could be an additional data source for testing and managing passengers after disembarkation. The viral fragments are not infectious but may determine that there are infected people on board the ship or plane, which can narrow down the testing of passengers.Many people infected with the coronavirus are asymptomatic, which means that they are unaware that they harbor the virus. Testing can help determine those who may be exposed and infected with the potentially deadly virus. "The study indicates that surveillance of wastewater from large transport vessels with their sanitation systems has potential as a complementary data source to prioritize clinical testing and contact tracing among disembarking passengers," the researchers concluded.

Smartphones and COVID-19 transmission: What we know so far  -As uncertainty around COVID-19 transmission continues, experts say it's unlikely you'll be infected by your smartphone -- but you should probably sanitize it anyway.Although there haven't been any documented cases of transmission through a smartphone, experts say that sanitizing your phone is just good hygiene, akin to washing your hands.The World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention both say it's theoretically possible for the virus that causes COVID-19 to live on surfaces and infect people, although it has not been proven. The WHO cites prior studies that found the virus can survive on surfaces like plastic, glass and metals for periods ranging from hours to days, depending on the environment, the type of surface and even the location, such as health care facilities where COVID-19 patients are being treated. Despite evidence of the survival of the virus on certain surfaces, there are no specific studies that have directly demonstrated transmission by touching surfaces."This is not the primary source of transmission of the virus, but we have to minimize all possible sources," said Dr. Simone Wildes, an infectious diseases physician at South Shore Health in New York and contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit. "Just like we recommend washing your hands, we can tell people to clean their phones."

 Double-Shot Covid Vaccines Multiply Immunization Challenges -  When it comes to protecting the world from the coronavirus, two doses of a vaccine may be better than one. But doubling the number of jabs each person needs could complicate efforts to immunize billions of people.The latest results from front-runners in the sprint to come up with a vaccine, including the University of Oxford-AstraZeneca Plc partnership and Moderna Inc., highlight that prospect. Both efforts are conducting final-stage testing with two doses.Producing vaccines and deploying them to the world’s population in the midst of a pandemic would be a massive feat even if researchers are able to deliver single-dose inoculations. A need for two would make manufacturing and logistics even more complex.Those challenges would get even tougher if -- as some experts think is possible -- a vaccine’s efficacy wanes over time and repeat doses are needed, potentially every year.“A one-shot vaccine would be ideal, but the first vaccines are highly unlikely to meet this very high threshold,” said Michael Kinch, a vaccine specialist and associate vice chancellor at Washington University in St. Louis. “As we hopefully move from whether there will be a vaccine to how to apply this, logistics are going to become the absolute most important topic.”  The two-shot approach is also looking increasingly likely for a fast-moving vaccine co-developed by CanSino Biologics Inc. and the Chinese military. It doesn’t seem to elicit a strong response in people with pre-existing immunity to the virus used as the vector, and researchers are exploring using a booster shot three to six months later.The early study of more than 1,000 participants receiving the Oxford vaccine achieved the strongest immune response in 10 who received two doses, according to research published Monday in The Lancet medical journal, indicating that it might be the surest approach. The university’s researchers noted that some recipients may get protection from just one dose, and that ultimately the data may show that the majority of people are protected by a single shot.

Covid-19 Vaccines With ‘Minor Side Effects’ Could Still Be Pretty Bad - MORE GOOD NEWS on progress toward an escape route from this pandemic: On Monday, vaccine researchers from Oxford University and the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca announced results from a “Phase I/II trial,” suggesting their product might be able to generate immunity without causing serious harm. Similar, but smaller-scale results, were posted just last week for another candidate vaccine produced by the biotech firm Moderna, in collaboration with the US National Institutes of Health. As both these groups and others push ahead into the final phase of testing, it’s vital that the public has a clear and balanced understanding of this work—one that cuts through all the marketing and hype. But we’re not off to a good start. The evidence so far suggests that we’re getting blinkered by these groups’ PR, and so seduced by stories of their amazing speed that we’re losing track of everything else. In particular, neither the mainstream media nor the medical press has given much attention to the two vaccines’ potential downsides—in particular, their risk of nasty adverse effects, even if they’re not life-threatening. This sort of puffery doesn’t only help to build a false impression; it may also dry the tinder for the future spread of vaccine fearmongering. If journalists don’t start asking tougher questions, this will become the perfect setup for anti-vaccine messaging: Here’s what they forgot to tell you about the risks … Back in May, a CNN report described the Oxford group as being “the most aggressive in painting the rosiest picture” of its product, so let’s start with them. Just how rosy is the Oxford picture really? It’s certainly true that this week’s news shows the vaccine has the potential to provide protection from Covid-19. But there are flies in the ointment. After the first clinical trial for this vaccine began in April, for example, the researchers added new study arms in which people got acetaminophen every six hours for 24 hours after the injection. That’s not featured in their marketing, of course, and I saw no discussion of this unusual step in media coverage in early summer. Newspapers only said the vaccine had been proven “safe with rhesus monkeys,” and did not cause any adverse effects in those animal tests. It was a worrying signal though: How rough a ride were people having with this vaccine? Was the acetaminophen meant to keep down fever, headaches, malaise—or all of the above?

Teens and Tweens Are Fastest COVID-19 Spreaders, New Study Finds - In the debate over how to safely reopen schools and effective strategies to keep kids, teachers, school staff and extended family members safe, a new study from South Korea sheds light on the possible consequences of hastily reopening schools. The large study found that older children, mainly teens and tweens, are more likely to spread the virus than young children or adults, as Bloomberg reported. That means that kids going to high school and middle school are likely to pass the virus amongst each other and then bring it home, even if they do not have any symptoms. The findings suggest that as schools reopen, communities will start to see clusters of infection take root that include children of all ages, several experts told The New York Times.  "I fear that there has been this sense that kids just won't get infected or don't get infected in the same way as adults and that, therefore, they're almost like a bubbled population," said Michael Osterholm, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Minnesota. To conduct the study, researchers from the South Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied contact tracing reports from 59,073 contacts of 5,706 COVID-19 patients, as The New York Post reported. The scientists found that that kids nine years old and younger had much lower rates of transmitting the virus in their households. For people who lived with patients between the ages of 10 and 19, 18.6 percent tested positive for the virus within about 10 days after the initial case was detected. That was the highest rate of transmission among the groups studied, according to Bloomberg. Children younger than 10 spread the virus at the lowest rate, clocking in at a 5.3 percent transmission rate, though researchers warned that could change when schools reopen.

 As Covid-19 Patients Skew Younger, Tracing Task Seems All But Impossible - Younger people are less likely to be hospitalized or die of COVID-19 than their elders, but they circulate more freely while carrying the disease, and their cases are harder to trace. Together, these facts terrify California hospital officials. People under 50 make up 73% of those testing positive for the disease in the state since the beginning of June, compared with 52% before April 30. That shift isn’t comforting to Dr. Alan Williamson, chief medical officer of Eisenhower Health in Riverside County’s Coachella Valley. As the virus spreads throughout the United States, figuring out how patients were exposed becomes increasingly difficult, which makes it nearly impossible to stop viral transmission. Younger people with COVID-19 are also less likely to pick up the phone when a contact tracer calls, health officials say. And hospitals are seeing case numbers rise among staffers, who are getting infected in their communities, not necessarily at work. The massive wave of new infections has caused deaths among people ages 18 to 40 to slowly mount, from six in the first 10 days of May in Los Angeles County, for example, to 22 in the same period of July. Hospitalizations have soared among the younger age group, which made up about 10% of people hospitalized in April but account for more than 25% now. Los Angeles County reported Wednesday that 2,193 people were hospitalized with the virus, the highest number since the pandemic started. It gave no detailed age breakdown. The first wave of patients in March and April at Eisenhower Medical Center, Eisenhower Health’s 463-bed flagship hospital, were mostly nursing home residents and retirees who lived in the area part time. Most were white. But in June, as the virus spread through the rest of the Coachella Valley — famous for producing dates, citrus and other crops — it also sickened people from the region’s year-round Latino agricultural workforce. While these patients are younger and usually don’t need hospitalization, Williamson has noticed a new trend among those who do. “Quite frequently, there would be in their history that there are two or three or more other family members that are home and COVID-positive,” he said. “I didn’t see that before.” In the eastern part of the valley, where multigenerational or multifamily households are common, COVID-positive patients don’t always have the space or resources to live in strict isolation as they recover. “These are young people living in a household with little kids, teenagers and 70-year-old grandparents,” he said. “That’s not a good formula.”

COVID-19 is quietly ravaging the LGBTQ community  -A growing body of research is showing that Black people are being hit disproportionately hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, but a lack of LGBTQ-inclusive data designed to capture the experiences of people who are both racial and sexual minorities renders many of us invisible — and puts us at even greater risk of harm. There’s growing reason to worry that the pandemic is also particularly dangerous for diverse members of the LGTBQ and same gender loving (SGL), the affirming term some members of the Black community use to define themselves, particularly if they’re older. Unfortunately, there’s no way to know for sure because the government isn’t yet collecting the kind of detailed data that would show the extent of the problem — or provide a roadmap for mitigating the risks the disease poses to LGBTQ Americans who are already marginalized, discriminated against, and otherwise punished simply for being who they are. Compounding the challenge of data collection is the Trump Administration’s call to force hospitals to report data to an HHS contractor instead of the Center for Disease Control, creating further opaqueness around COVID-19 data collection. The limited data that we do have on the LGBTQ community offers a disturbing snapshot of the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has on our communities. For one, there’s the economic toll. Two in five LGBTQ people work in the five industries most impacted by the pandemic — food service, hospitals, K-12 education, colleges, and retail — compared to just one in five non-LGBTQ people, according to a survey from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation. All told, more than 5 million LGBTQ workers in these industries could be significantly affected by the pandemic. The numbers are even worse for LGBTQ/SGL people of color. Among this group, 38 percent have had their work hours reduced, compared to 34 percent of the general population, according to the HRC. And 22 percent have become unemployed during the pandemic, versus 13 percent of the general population. These job losses are even more dangerous in light of how many LGBTQ people already lived in poverty before COVID-19 struck. One 2019 analysis from the Williams Institute found that 22 percent of LGBTQ adults — including an alarming 29 percent of transgender adults — live in poverty, compared to 16 percent of straight and cisgender peers. LGBTQ Americans also frequently lack reliable access to health care — a literal life-and-death danger in the midst of a pandemic. A national survey conducted by the Center for American Progress found that 29 percent of transgender adults had been refused care. Nine percent of LGBTQ people reported that a physician had used harsh or abusive language while treating them.

Why COVID-19 is killing U.S. diabetes patients at alarming rates -(Reuters) - Darrell Cager Sr., 64, had diabetes. So his youngest daughter urged him to seek care. The next day, he collapsed and died in his New Orleans home. The daughter soon learned the cause: acute respiratory distress from COVID-19. His death certificate noted diabetes as an underlying condition. Brumfield, who lives in Texas and also has type 2 diabetes, is “terrified” she could be next. She has good reason to fear. As U.S. outbreaks surge, a new government study shows that nearly 40% of people who have died with COVID-19 had diabetes. Among deaths of those under 65, half had the chronic condition. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed more than 10,000 deaths in 15 states and New York City from February to May. Jonathan Wortham, a CDC epidemiologist who led the study, called the findings “extremely striking,” with serious implications for those with diabetes and their loved ones. A separate Reuters survey of states found a similarly high rate of diabetes among people dying from COVID-19 in 12 states and the District of Columbia. Ten states, including California, Arizona and Michigan, said they weren’t yet reporting diabetes and other underlying conditions, and the rest did not respond - rendering an incomplete picture for policymakers and clinicians struggling to protect those most at-risk. America’s mortality rates from diabetes have been climbing since 2009 and exceed most other industrialized nations. Blacks and Latinos suffer from diabetes at higher rates than whites and have disproportionately suffered from COVID-19. “Diabetes was already a slow-moving pandemic. Now COVID-19 has crashed through like a fast-moving wave,” … Keeping diabetes under control - among the best defenses against COVID-19 - has become difficult as the pandemic disrupts medical care, exercise and healthy eating routines. The high price of insulin has also forced some people to keep working - risking virus exposure - to afford the essential medicine. And as the country grapples with an economic crisis, millions of Americans have lost their jobs and their employer-sponsored health insurance.

Lab Rats - WHEN A NURSE DRAWS BLOOD FROM YOUR ARM, when a resident asks you for a sputum sample, when a hazmat-suited doctor takes back the nasal swab you’d been handed at a Covid testing site, what happens to that little alienated bit of you after it has traveled from body to vial? Perhaps it will be processed in a lab on hospital premises; perhaps it will be sent for analysis at a nearby university or a state-run public health lab. Or perhaps, as with so many medical tests in the United States, it will be packed in dry ice and shipped to one of the country’s ever-growing private clinical labs. In the United States, it is precisely these private players––and particularly the twin behemoths of Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp, which together constitute what is essentially a duopoly––that have been put at the helm of the country’s push to process coronavirus tests as the number of cases continues to explode. Trump administration officials met with industry representatives in early March to discuss coronavirus testing; shortly thereafter, a number of these executives stood behind the president during an address at the White House Rose Garden, lauding the role that big business was playing in the effort to defeat the pandemic. Pence painted a Norman Rockwell-worthy image of Target, CVS, and Walmart as “companies that are synonymous with communities large and small, where people come together”; Fauci told the audience that it was imperative to “embrace the private sector”; and White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx thanked LabCorp and Quest by name. The phrase “public-private partnership” was brandished like a nazar bead by Pence at regular intervals, as though those words alone contained enough apotropaic power to keep the virus at bay. Today, private labs processing both diagnostic and public health-related tests form a major part of America’s private health care landscape, but one that is often overlooked. It is easy to focus on points of contact in the health care system––the interactions that occur when we are given an exam, when we receive the results, and when we are presented with the bill. What happens in between––screening and re-screening by unseen laboratory technicians––is liable to dip below the horizon of our attention.

New COVID-19 mutation helps outbreaks spread quicker: expert --A new coronavirus mutation has become the most dominant strain of the virus — and is causing outbreaks to spread more quickly across the world, an expert said. Professor Nick Loman, of the University of Birmingham, who is part of the COVID-19 Genomics Consortium, told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” program that the mutation, known as D614G, is forming clusters more quickly in the UK than the original virus from Wuhan. “It exists in the spike protein, which is a very important way that the coronavirus can enter human cells, and we have been noticing in the UK and worldwide that this mutation has been increasing in frequency,” Loman said. “This mutation was predicted first by computer modeling to have some impact on the structure of that protein and the ability of the virus to bind and enter cells and then quite recently was shown in laboratory experiments to increase the infectivity of cells.” Scientists came to the conclusion after analyzing more than 40,000 genomes in the UK, according to Loman. The new mutation, however, is not believed to cause a greater risk of death or lengthier hospital stays, the Telegraph reported. Loman called the mutation “the most dominant mutation — it’s about 75 percent of cases.” “This increase in this mutation is a worldwide phenomenon,” he added. “The original virus out of Wuhan had the D-type, but the G-type has become much more dominant across the world, including the UK.” However, the strain is not expected to impact the process of finding a vaccine for COVID-19, he added. He also attempted to alleviate any concerns that the mutation might signal a deadly new phase for the coronavirus. “It’s a small impact, we think, and we’re not completely confident about that, but we found by testing what happened in the UK that the viruses that contained the G-type of mutation seemed to form clusters of cases faster, which ended up being bigger than viruses with the D-mutation,” the professor said. “We didn’t see any significant association with survival and the length of hospital stays with this mutation — we don’t think this mutation is important in changing virulence. The effect seems to be on transmissibility.”

81 million Americans lacking space or bathrooms to follow COVID quarantine recommendations - An article published today in the Annals of Internal Medicine reports that 25 million dwellings that house 81 million Americans lack adequate space or plumbing to allow compliance with recommendations that a person who may have COVID-19 maintain physical separation from others in their household. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advise those who are infected with or have been exposed to COVID-19 stay at home, confining themselves to a separate bedroom and bathroom if possible. Researchers from Case Western Reserve University and the City University of New York at Hunter College used data from the American Housing Survey to determine the feasibility of providing separate bedrooms and bathrooms in U.S. dwellings. They found that more than 1 in 5 homes -- housing about one quarter of all Americans -- lack sufficient space and plumbing facilities to comply with the WHO and CDC recommendations. The proportion of homes unsuitable for isolation or quarantine is particularly high among minority and low-income households, which have experienced high rates of COVID-19 illness and death. About 46% of Latinx people, 43% of Native Americans, and 32% of Black Americans live in dwellings where separation is not feasible, compared to less than 20% of non-Hispanic whites. Crowding is worst for apartment dwellers, particularly in the Northeast.

Eighty-five infants infected with COVID-19 in Corpus Christi, Texas - Eight-five infants under the age of one have tested positive for the coronavirus in Nueces County, Texas. The county, which includes Corpus Christi, has seen the number of new cases skyrocket in July after seeing a slight flattening trend. The virus has infected dozens of babies, including the death on July 6 of a baby of less than six months old. The director of public health for Nueces County, Annette Rodriguez, told CNN on Saturday, “We currently have 85 babies under the age of one year in Nueces County that all have tested positive for COVID-19” and “these babies have not even had their first birthday yet.” She urged, “Please help us stop the spread of this disease.” Nueces County, on the Gulf of Mexico, has seen a rise in cases and deaths in July in the wake of the reopening, with 2,416 cases and 9 deaths at the beginning of the month, compared to 8,407 cases and 90 deaths as of Saturday, an increase in cases of over 300 percent and deaths by 1,000 percent. This is in a county with a total population of approximately 326,000, meaning that about 2.6 percent of the total population has been infected, twice the infection rate of the United States, which stands at 1.2 percent. In Corpus Christi, as of Saturday a total of 90 people had died from COVID-19, although this is most likely an undercount due to shortages in testing. According to city numbers, the 7-day averaged daily case was 26 a month ago. As of Saturday, it stood at 236, for a 14-fold increase in daily cases. The total number of people who have died in Texas stood at 3,865 as of Saturday, far surpassing the 2,977 deaths from 9/11 terrorist attacks, with a new grim record of 174 deaths on Friday alone. Out of the 254 counties in the state, only 5 have reported no COVID-19 cases.

13 Michigan nuns die of Covid-19 at a convent outside Detroit – CNN - Coronavirus spread so quickly through a convent in Michigan that it claimed the lives of 12 nuns in one month, beginning on Good Friday. They were all members of the Felician Sisters convent in Livonia, outside of Detroit, ranging in ages from 69 to 99, the executive director for mission advancement, Suzanne English, confirmed to CNN on Tuesday. A 13th sister initially survived the virus but passed away from its effects in June. The women were long-time members of the convent and leave behind a legacy of service, according to their obituaries supplied by English. The women all lived and worked on the 360-acre campus that was once home to 800 sisters, according to the Global Sisters Report, an independent, non-profit Catholic news publisher. Now, only around 50 reside there, according to English. English said the Livonia convent is one of 60 convents in the US and Canada, plus a mission in Haiti, where the 469 Felician Sisters of North America reside. The Global Sisters Report said the death of the 13 nuns in Livonia may be the worst loss of life to a community of religious women in the US since the 1918 influenza pandemic.

Ohio governor warns state 'could become Florida' -Gov. Mike DeWine (R) warned on Sunday that Ohio “could become Florida” as COVID-19 cases surged to new highs in the state. The governor told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that his state is at a “crucial stage” as Ohio is “headed in the wrong direction” toward Florida’s status as a U.S. epicenter of the pandemic. “We are at the point where we could become Florida, you know,” DeWine said. “Where you look at our numbers today versus where Florida was a month ago, we have very similar numbers. So we're very, very concerned.” “While we did a great job early on in Ohio, we're now headed in the wrong direction, and frankly, I'm very, very concerned about that,” he added. “So we're going to move ahead with more orders from us this week.” “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd pressed DeWine on why he hasn’t issued a mask mandate. “I don't think anybody in Ohio who's watched what I've done over the last four months doubts that, you know, I'll do what we need to do to protect Ohioans,” the governor responded. DeWine added that officials “certainly would not rule out” a statewide mandate. The governor said that the spread is “not just about masks,” adding that gatherings in bars and churches and casual get-togethers are contributing to the spread. He emphasized that this means “it’s not all about orders.” “Orders are important, but it's also about getting people to understand, ‘Hey, this is, this is very, very serious,’” DeWine said.

Connecticut State Lab Finds 90 False Positives Out Of 144 Coronavirus Tests Administered In Mid-June  - 90 people in the state of Connecticut were found to actually have been negative for coronavirus after receiving positive tests, MSN reported on Tuesday. The state's Department of Public Health said that its state laboratory found a "flaw" in one of its testing systems and that 90 of 144 people who were tested for the virus between June 15 and June 17 received false positive tests. 161 specimens were collected and a total of 91 of those showed false positives. Many of those who received the false tests were nursing home residents. The state said that it reported the flaw to the test manufacturer and the FDA. It has taken "immediate steps" to make sure patients have been notified - hopefully more than just forwarding them a copy of this article. Even more alarming, the State Department of Health said the flawed numbers came “from a widely-used laboratory testing platform that the state laboratory started using on June 15.” Acting Commissioner Deidre S. Gifford said: “We have notified the healthcare facilities for everyone who received a false positive test result from our state laboratory. Accurate and timely testing for the novel coronavirus is one of the pillars supporting effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic.” Adjustments have been made to ensure the accuracy of future tests, she said. Additionally, she said all positive tests will be further reviewed by "multiple laboratory scientists" and retested using another method..

Random Testing in Indiana Shows COVID-19 is 6 Times Deadlier Than Flu, and 2.8% of the State Has Been Infected --  Short of testing every person in the U.S., the best way to get accurate data on who and how many people have been infected with the coronavirus is to test randomly.I am a professor of health policy and management at Indiana University, and random testing is exactly what we did in my state. From April 25 to May 1, our team randomly selected and tested thousands of Indiana residents, no matter if they’d been sick or not. From this testing we were able to get some of the first truly representative data on coronavirus infection rates at a state level. We found that 2.8% of the state’s population had been infected with SARS–CoV–2. We also found that minority communities – especially Hispanic communities – have been hit much harder by the virus. With this representative data, we were also able to calculate out just how deadly the virus really is.The goal of our study was to learn how many Indiana residents, in total, were currently or had been previously been infected by the coronavirus. To do this, the people our team tested needed to be an accurate representation of Indiana’s population as a whole and we needed to use two tests on every person.With the help of the Indiana State Department of Health, numerous state agencies and community leaders, we set up 70 testing stations in cities and towns across Indiana. We then randomly selected people from a list created using state tax records and invited them to get tested, free of charge. Some groups showed up more readily than others and we adjusted the numbers to represent the demographics of the state accordingly.Once a person showed up to our mobile testing sites, they were given both a PCR swab test that looks for current infections and an antibody blood test that looks for evidence of past infection. By testing randomly and looking for both current and past infections, we could extrapolate our results to the entire state of Indiana and get information about real infection rates of this virus.Because our random sample was designed to be representative of the population of the state, we can assume with almost certainty that the entire state numbers are the same. That would mean that approximately 188,000 Indiana residents had been infected by late April. At that point, the official confirmed cases – not including deaths – were about 17,000.

Coronavirus Infections Could Be 13x Higher Than Reported, New Study Says --A new study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that the number of people infected with the coronavirus could range anywhere from two to 13 times higher than the number of cases that have been reported, as The New York Times reported.The new data, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, shows that asymptomatic carriers are spreading the disease at much higher rates in certain regions than previously thought. Since January, the CDC has asked states to report all confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus. However, many people have positive antibodies, signaling that they had the infection, even though they never had any symptoms. Those people unwittingly spread the virus, as ABC News reported.The information about antibodies was gleaned from blood samples drawn from 10 different regions of the country, including New York, Utah, Washington state and South Florida, according to The Washington Post. The samples were collected in different periods in two rounds. The first was in early spring as the virus was taking root in the U.S., and the other several weeks later, ending in early June.The analysis, based on antibody tests, is the largest of its kind so far, building upon local studies in a subset of cities."These data continue to show that the number of people who have been infected with the virus that causes Covid-19 far exceeds the number of reported cases," said Dr. Fiona Havers, the CDC researcher who led the study, as The New York Times reported. "Many of these people likely had no symptoms or mild illness and may have had no idea that they were infected."The data shows that New York City has the highest proportion of antibodies with 24 percent, still a long way from herd immunity. Epidemiologists believe 60 to 70 percent of the population needs to contract a virus and build up antibodies to achieve herd immunity, as The Hill reported.While New York City had the highest rate of infection and antibodies, other parts of the country are far behind. The May and June data showed that only 2.8 percent of the people in Missouri have antibodies, while only 3.6 percent of the people in Philadelphia do, as The Hill reported. In Missouri, the prevalence of infections is 13 times the reported rate, which suggests the state missed most people with the virus, as The New York Times noted.The results indicate that in large areas of the country, the coronavirus still has only affected a small fraction of the population. In Utah, for example, just over one percent of people had been exposed to the virus by early June. The rate was 2.2 percent for Minneapolis-St. Paul as of the first week of June, and only 1 percent for the San Francisco Bay Area at the end of April, according to The New York Times.

Coronavirus updates: Florida has 53 hospitals with no ICU beds - Florida health officials say their hospitals are reaching capacity in their ICUs as the number of COVID-19 cases continues to climb, with the statewide total now over 360,000. Roughly 18% of the state's adult ICU beds are available and 53 medical facilities in the state have maxed out their ICU bed load, according to Florida's Agency for Healthcare Administration.There were 292 people were hospitalized in the last 24 hours, the Florida Health Department reported Monday morning, bringing the state's total COVID-19 hospitalizations to 21,263. There are currently 9,397 active coronavirus hospitalizations, according to the health department.The state recorded 10,347 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, bringing Florida's total to 360,394, the Health Department said. The seven-day average of new cases has been over 10,000 for the last week, according to Health Department data. There were 92 additional deaths recorded during that timeframe, bringing the state's total casualty count to 5,183, according to the Health Department.

COVID-19 Update: July 20th Edition - As of Friday, July 17, data from the Covid Tracking Project showed that the 7-day average (smoothed) number of new U.S. daily cases rose to 65,557, a 20% increase relative to 54,561 the previous Friday. The smoothed percent of cases testing positive rose to 8.7% from 8.3% one week earlier. The smoothed number of deaths in the U.S. rose 11%, from 854 a week earlier to 951 last Friday. Here in Texas, the growth in the number of smoothed daily cases rose 16% between July 10 and July 17, and the smoothed number of daily deaths increased from 63 to 103. The smoothed percent of people testing positive rose from 12.9% on July 10th to 14.8% last Friday.  The number of daily coronavirus tests being conducted in the United States is only 35 percent of the level considered necessary to mitigate the spread of the virus. Harvard researchers say that at minimum there should be enough daily capacity to test anyone who has flu-like symptoms and an additional 10 people for any symptomatic person who tests positive for the virus.  A report by a distinguished panel of experts assembled by the Rockefeller Foundation, which included former FDA commissioners, recommends an additional $75 billion in federal funds to cover the additional costs of testing and tracing as well as to incentivize test development and production. The report contains detailed strategies for boosting testing to get the economy back on track. An editorial in the New York Times promotes the adoption of faster, cheaper, though less accurate coronavirus testing based on saliva and paper-based test strips. The strategy is explained in more detail on a TWIV podcast and involves widespread daily testing for workers and school children using these $1 tests that provide results within minutes.  A Wall Street Journal article on the risks of flying cites an analysis by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Arnold Barnett based on current Covid-19 prevalence in the U.S. When all coach seats are full on a US jet aircraft, the risk of contracting Covid-19 from a nearby passenger is about 1 in 4,300 as of early July 2020. Under the “middle seat empty” policy, that risk falls to about 1 in 7,700.

Coronavirus dashboard for July 20: decisive evidence that deaths have increased since the beginning of July - I have been waiting to see if the death rate remained elevated once the 4th of July week was completely out of the 7 day average (because there was an additional “slow” day caused by the holiday, followed by 4 “compressed” weekdays rather than 5. Those last 4 days continued to affect the 7 day average for, well, another 7 days. That period is over as of this past weekend, and here is the result: There were 2.32 deaths per million Saturday and 2.31 deaths per million yesterday, the highest (excluding the NJ data dump several weeks ago) since June 11. Regionally, in terms of cases, the South continues to be the worst, followed by the West, with the Midwest having a significant increase as well, and the Northeast a very slight increase: In terms of deaths, the Midwest and Northeast continue at their low levels, but only the Northeast has recently improved: Turning to the States, in terms of cases, Florida has made an all-time high per capita, even exceeding NY’s old record, with Arizona, Louisiana, and Alabama close behind: In terms of deaths, however, even Arizona, at 10 per million on average for the last 7 days is nowhere near the levels of NY, NJ, and several other States early in the pandemic: This is most likely demographics at work. Remember that 1/3 to 1/2 of all deaths in the first several months were at nursing homes and other assisted living centers, full of elderly people in poor health, together 24/7 with recirculated air. The pandemic went through them like dry tinder. More recently it has been younger people, with lower death rates, at bars, restaurants, gyms, and private parties who have been spreading the disease. But the bottom line is that the evidence is now overwhelming that the increased infections that began at Memorial Day weekend have finally flowed through into deaths since the beginning of July.

US records over 1,000 daily coronavirus deaths for first time in July - The U.S. on Tuesday reported more than 1,000 new daily deaths from COVID-19 for the first time in July as the virus continues to surge across the country. While not close to the high of 2,752 set on April 15 during the peak of the pandemic in New York state and the Northeast, the 1,029 deaths reported on Tuesday underscores the challenge the pandemic still presents for states. Nevada, Oregon and Tennessee all reported a new record for single-day deaths, according to The New York Times database. The spike of the virus around the country has caused the seven-day average of daily new deaths to rise from 475 in early July to 786 on Monday. Other than two times in late June when New York state and New Jersey reported a large number of deaths from unknown dates, Tuesday marked the first time that the U.S. had surpassed 1,000 deaths in a day since June 9, according to data from the Times. Also on Tuesday, nearly 60,000 new COVID-19 cases were reported, below the seven-day average of 66,432. The record for new daily cases was set last Thursday, when over 75,000 new cases were documented. President Trump warned Tuesday amid surges in cases in parts of the country that the outbreak in the U.S. would "get worse before it gets better." “It will probably, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better,” Trump told reporters while reading from prepared remarks at the White House in his first coronavirus-focused briefing in nearly three months. “Something I don’t like saying about things, but that’s the way it is.” The president urged Americans to wear face masks, practice social distancing and wash their hands while also urging young people to avoid bars to help stem the spread of the disease.

California reports record high number of coronavirus cases, weekly deaths --California reported a record number of COVID-19 infections in a single day Monday, with 11,554 new cases, according to the Los Angeles Times's roundup of all 58 counties in the state. The report entered on Monday surpasses the single-day record broken just last week, when the state saw 11,142 COVID-19 cases, according to The Los Angeles Times. California has also reported increased death tolls ranging between 91 and 99 fatalities each day since July 10, which ranks as the worst seven-day average since the pandemic started earlier this year. The weeklong period that ended Monday marked the highest weekly total to date, with 674 deaths in the state. The new record indicates a 5 percent increase in fatalities since the previous seven-day period, which saw 640 deaths. For the past three weeks, government-mandated shutdowns of businesses and services, including bars and restaurants, have been underway and could contribute to lowering hospitalization rates across the state. Hospitalizations grew by 7 percent Sunday, but were lower than the previous weekend of July 12, when admissions increased by 12 percent. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced Monday the positivity rate from coronavirus tests had dropped from 7.7 percent to 7.2 percent compared to the previous seven-day rate. However, it is likely too early to know whether the trend will continue to fall, according to Mark Ghaly, secretary of California's Health and Human Services Agency. "As soon as we feel confident in that trend and we see other numbers start to stabilize, we'll credit some of the moves we made over the last few weeks," Ghaly said. "It's been about three, four weeks since we ... first started to make moves ... so we're right in that time period where we may see some of the ... benefits of those [policy changes]."

Another California Death Row Inmate Succumbs To COVID-19- California's state prison system has just suffered the second death of a death row inmate via coronavirus. The rash of deaths come as the federal government is moving ahead with executions after a lengthy delay. A local TV station reported that the inmate, Troy Ashmus, was the 7th death row prisoner and 12th prisoner overall to die from the virus at California's infamous San Quentin prison.A death row inmate arrested in Sacramento County in the 1980s has died of complications believed to have stemmed from COVID-19, officials said Monday.Troy Ashmus, 58, was the seventh death row prisoner and the 12th overall at San Quentin to die from confirmed or suspected COVID-19 infections.Ashmus was sent to death row in 1986. He was convicted of raping 7-year-old Marcella Davis, who had biked to a Sacramento park in May 1984. The girl also was sodomized before plastic bags, cellophane and the girl’s own shorts were shoved down her throat, prosecutors said.The coroner has yet to determine an exact cause of death.There are currently 718 people on California's death row. There have been nearly 7,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases among inmates in the state prison system, including more than 2,000 active cases and 39 confirmed deaths, according to state figures.Dozens of inmates are hospitalized, some of them in intensive care.More than 800 employees also have active cases of COVID-19, according to corrections officials.We imagine the families of these inmates will have a case when this is all over.

 California reports record daily increase in coronavirus cases as it becomes worst-hit state in the U.S., Newsom says - California reported more than 12,800 coronavirus cases on Tuesday, the highest reported daily tally the state has recorded so far, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday. California has now surpassed New York in total confirmed Covid-19 cases — more than 409,500 cases as of Wednesday — making it the state with the most cases in the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins University data. However, New York has reported more than four times the number of deaths, according to Johns Hopkins. "We're a state, again, size of 21 states combined, so it's not surprising now in some respects as we've begun to reopen key sectors of our economy," Newsom said at a news briefing Wednesday. "People continue to mix and people continue to come in close contact with others that may have contracted this disease that our numbers would start to go up in total now." Newsom said the state has average 9,420 additional cases based on a seven-day average, a trend line that is "certainly" continuing to increase. California also reported 115 new deaths on Tuesday but that figure has fluctuated daily, he said. While the state has increased its testing, the positivity rate, or the number of positive cases to total tests performed, now stands at around 7.4% over the last 14 days, a number that "continues to go up modestly." The state has been adding more health-care personnel, contact tracers and personal protective equipment for months to help battle a potential outbreak, he said. Newsom has already made sweeping rollbacks to California's reopening plan, ordering all bars and all dine-in restaurants, movie theaters, museums and other indoor businesses across the state to close. In addition to the statewide order, Newsom also ordered the closure of indoor operations for fitness centers, worship services, personal care services, malls, offices, hair salons and barbershops for all counties that have been on California's monitoring list for three or more consecutive days.

California coronavirus deaths top 8,000 after record-high day - California recorded the most coronavirus-related deaths in a single day amid a spike in infections that has pushed the state’s cumulative case count to the highest in the nation.Wednesday’s 157 fatalities — the state’s highest one-day toll yet, according to The Times’ coronavirus tracker — pushed California’s fatalities above 8,000.The sobering death toll continues what’s been an unprecedented week in California in terms of the COVID-19 outbreak.Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday afternoon that 12,807 new coronavirus infections had been reported statewide in the past 24 hours, a record high.More than 421,000 COVID-19 cases have been reported statewide over the course of the pandemic. That means roughly 1 in every 94 Californians has had a confirmed infection at some point.Statewide, 7,170 confirmed COVID-19 patients were hospitalized as of Tuesday — also a new high and an increase of 18% from two weeks ago — with 2,058 people in intensive care, according to the state Department of Public Health.However, both those numbers fell markedly in the latest available state data released Thursday, which showed that 6,825 COVID-19 patients were hospitalized and 1,978 were in intensive care as of Wednesday.Los Angeles County continues to bear the brunt of the statewide surge, with more than 165,000 total cases and 4,200 deaths confirmed as of Thursday morning.Later in the afternoon, county health officials announced 49 additional deaths and 2,014 new cases.  So severe is the outbreak that health officials said COVID-19 is on track to be the second-leading cause of death in the county. From January to June, COVID-19 killed roughly 3,400 people, according to the county Department of Public Health. Over the same period last year, only coronary heart disease was attributed as the cause of more deaths, with nearly 5,800.

COVID-19, flu could create new hospital surge in Ventura County -As Ventura County's COVID-19 hospitalizations dipped from record highs, doctors and hospital leaders worried about a coming phenomenon that could cause a new surge. The flu season. "I’ve been here in Ventura County for 19 years and this is the busiest summer we’ve had," said Oxnard pulmonologist and critical care physician Dr. Raj Bhatia. He and other doctors envision COVID-19 and the flu sending people to hospitals and intensive care units in a confusing blur of similar symptoms in a season that could pick up speed as soon as October. "If the summer is like this, God help us in winter," Bhatia said. Last week, Ventura County's COVID-19 hospitalization numbers climbed to record marks on several days, topping at 101 people with confirmed cases of the virus receiving hospital care on Wednesday and Thursday. Over the weekend, the numbers fell. On Monday, 89 people who tested positive for the virus received hospital care across the county with 24 of them in intensive care units — down from 31 on Friday. On Tuesday, 94 people with the virus received hospital care in the county with 24 in the intensive care unit. The numbers are still worrisome but the system still has space with plans to add more as needed, said Steve Carroll, administrator of Ventura County Emergency Medical Services Agency.  One area hospital that did launch surge beds two weeks ago when admissions climbed — Ventura County Medical Center — has seen its numbers stabilize though they're still high. The eight staffed beds in the intensive care unit at Ventura County Medical Center were full Monday with a caseload that included five ICU patients with confirmed cases of COVID-19. More staffing and beds could be added if necessary, said Dr. Todd Flosi, chief medical director for the Ventura hospital. Count Flosi among those who worry about the jarring potential of a one-two punch when the flu season emerges. "I think if we have a particularly bad flu season and the COVID cases increase that would challenge our capacity," he said, noting the flu season alone can potentially cause patients to be held in the emergency room until beds are available.  Doctors worry about the many flu symptoms that mimic COVID and wonder about how to best and most safely test patients. They worry increased testing needs could tax supplies and possible delays in learning results.

Texas sets single-day record July 22 with 197 COVID-19 deaths  — Texas reported 197 new COVID-19 deaths on Wednesday, setting a record for the most deaths the state has reported in a single day. The last time Texas posted a single-day record for number of deaths was on July 17 with 174.The Department of State Health Services also reported 9,879 new cases Wednesday, the 12th time so far in July that the state has reported more than 9,000 new cases in a single day. DSHS reported a seven-day average positivity rate of 14.18 percent as of Tuesday, which includes five days of decrease from the state's peak of 17.43 percent on July 16. Positivity rate shows the percentage of people who test positive for the virus out of all the people tested. As more people are tested, an increasing positivity rate would indicate a rapid spread of the virus. A decreasing positivity rate would indicate that as more people get tested, fewer are testing positive. In the city of Houston, the Health Department reported 773 new cases, and eight new deaths.Municipal employees in the public works department, human resources department, as well as civilian employees for the Houston Police Department, and Houston Fire Captain Leroy Lucio have all died in the last week due to COVID-19.Houston Health Authority Dr. David Persse noted that new daily reported cases are showing a downward trend compared to last week, and while there is a slight dip in hospitalizations, he warned Houston still has a long way to go before the virus is under control.Data from the Harris County Public Health and Houston Health Department's joint dashboard show:

• 7/1 - 7/7: City of Houston averaged 729 cases per day
• 7/8 - 7/14: City of Houston averaged 912 cases per day
• 7/15 - 7/21: City of Houston averaged 721 cases per day

One possible factor in the declining cases could be Governor Greg Abbott's mask order, which went into effect July 3. Two weeks later, on July 17, data from Houston Health Department and Harris County Public Health show a slight decline in the number of new cases.

Texas county stores bodies in trucks as state sets one-day record for COVID-19 deaths - (Reuters) - Texas on Wednesday set one-day records for increases in COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations in the state, forcing one county to store bodies in refrigerated trucks and prompting a top health official there to call for new stay-at-home orders. Contact tracers with the Houston Health Department monitor the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Houston, Texas, U.S., July 22, 2020. REUTERS/Adrees Latif Texas, which reported 197 deaths and 10,893 hospitalizations, has been one of the states hardest hit by the resurgent coronavirus. Hidalgo County, at the southern tip of the state on the U.S. border with Mexico, has seen cases rise 60 percent in the last week, according to a Reuters tally, with deaths doubling to more than 360. “We’ve got to lasso this virus, this stallion, bring the numbers back down and get control of this thing,” Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez said. “Because our hospitals – they’re war zones, they are really struggling right now.” Cortez, a Democrat who serves as the top county official, issued a shelter-in-place order for residents. That mandate put him at odds with Republican Governor Greg Abbott, who maintains that local officials do not have the authority to make residents stay home.Crematoriums in the Hidalgo area have a wait list of two weeks, Cortez said, forcing the county to use five refrigerated trucks that can hold 50 bodies each. Hidalgo’s top medical official, Dr. Ivan Melendez, partly blamed Abbott’s move to override local officials for the spike in coronavirus infections, which he said has jammed the local medical system at every level. “Do I think that a stay-at-home order is medically indicated at this point? Absolutely,” Melendez said.

A Texas hospital is so overrun with coronavirus cases that officials say it will send the patients least likely to survive home to die - A hospital in Starr County, Texas, is so overrun with coronavirus cases that officials there said it would choose which patients to use its resources on and send those most likely to die back home to their families.The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that Dr. Jose Vasquez — the health authority for Starr County — said the county was creating guidelines to help health workers decide how to use resources on patients with the best chance of survival.Vasquez added that a committee would decide which patients were most likely to die at Starr County Memorial Hospital — the only hospital in the county — and would send them home."The situation is desperate," he said Tuesday. "We cannot continue functioning in the Starr County Memorial Hospital nor in our county in the way that things are going. The numbers are staggering." Vasquez said the county sends coronavirus patients daily to other parts of Texas and to other states, but that hospitals in both Texas and nearby states were now overwhelmed.   "There is nowhere to put these patients. The whole state of Texas and neighboring states have no ICU beds to spare for us," he said,Border Report reported. The decision is reminiscent of the decisions made by doctors in Italy in March, when that country was being ravaged by the virus. Theysaid they had to choose who to save because of limited resources. Texas has become a coronavirus hotspot in recent weeks, with more than 331,000 cases and 4,700 deaths recorded.

 Kemp urges Georgia residents to 'commit to wearing a mask' for four weeks - Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) asked his state’s residents to “commit” to wearing a mask for four weeks, despite his ongoing lawsuit against Atlanta officials for mandating a face covering be worn. "Today, I am encouraging all Georgians – from every corner of our great state – to do four things for four weeks to stop the spread of COVID-19," Kemp said in a statement. "If Georgians commit to wearing a mask, socially distancing, washing their hands regularly, and following the guidance in our Executive Order and from public health officials, we can make incredible progress in the fight against COVID-19. Together, we can protect our loved ones, revive our economy, and continue to take measured steps forward." Kemp, who was narrowly elected governor in 2018, has cast himself as a staunch conservative and railed against government-imposed regulations. However, he’s positioned himself to the right of other conservative governors, including those of Alabama and Arkansas, who have issued mask mandates. Kemp took his opposition to a mask requirement a step further last week when he filed a lawsuit against Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D) and city council members in an attempt to scrap the city’s mask ordinance and other health measures that go beyond executive orders he’s signed. The governor has defended the suit as an effort to “put Georgians first,” though he has recognized the use of masks can help blunt the spread of the coronavirus, which has infected more than 145,000 people in Georgia. “They worked for us before and they will work again,” Kemp said Tuesday on “Fox & Friends.” Besides wearing masks, Kemp and Kathleen Toomey, the commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Health, are urging Georgians to practice social distancing and wash their hands for 20 seconds “several times throughout the day.”

 Surge in Coronavirus Cases Leaves Labs Overwhelmed, Tests Delayed - Five months into the pandemic after over 140,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, the nation still faces a serious delay in testing as cases surge across the country. That delay, as labs are overwhelmed and hard-hit areas face shortages of tests, could cover up a persistent rises in case numbers and could muddy strategies to combat the coronavirus, as health officials continue to find themselves one step behind the virus's rapid and often silent spread, experts said, as The New York Times reported.Labs across the country are now facing what seems like an almost "infinite" demand, one expert says."We really do need to improve our turnaround times, primarily in areas and counties of outbreaks," Adm. Brett Giroir, a White House coronavirus task force member, said, as CNN reported.Diagnostic labs are feeling the effects of the spike in cases, with a leading commercial lab saying testing results can now take up to two weeks for some patients, leaving doctors and patients feeling anxious about their results."The average test delay is too long," Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, said Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press, as CNN reported "And that really undercuts the value of the testing, because you do the testing to find out who's carrying the virus and then quickly get them isolated so they don't spread it around."As USA TODAY noted, labs are performing more COVID-19 tests than ever. Lab workers are strained and states are bidding against one another for the same, limited supplies. "It's the Wild, Wild West," said Blair Holladay, CEO of American Society for Clinical Pathology, to USA TODAY. "There's been no national testing strategy ... so states are duking it out for supply chains. That's a problem." Last week, labs reached an all-time high of more than 831,900 COVID tests, according to the COVID Tracking Project. Yet, that expansion in tests has created bottlenecks and slowed results for many Americans. Quest Diagnostics said in a news release that average turnaround time for non-priority patients was seven days or more, according to USA TODAY. However, patients in hospitals, people preparing for acute surgery, and health care workers with symptoms are able to get results within a day. Most patient samples must still be routed through laboratories for processing, and the growing demand is once again straining supplies, equipment, and trained technicians, which all causes shortages and delayed results, according to The New York Times.

 Florida Sets Yet Another Coronavirus Record: 173 Deaths In A Day  - Florida reported its largest number of deaths in a single day from the coronavirus: 173 on Thursday. The state says 10,249 people tested positive for the virus. Florida is behind only California and New York in total cases. Other states, including Texas and California, also posted record deaths this week as the nation's total number of COVID-19 cases topped 4 million.Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis met with hospital leaders and administrators Thursday at Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne. He said hospitals are stressed statewide, but that there is adequate capacity."We've had between 20[%] and 25% of our beds available pretty consistently over the last month and a half, even as we've seen the census for COVID patients increase," DeSantis said. Despite the record number of deaths Thursday, DeSantis stood by earlier statements that he sees signs that coronavirus cases are plateauing in Florida. "People are not coming to the ED [emergency department] in as big a numbers as they were two weeks ago," he said. "The last few days have been less than half than what it was the first week of July. That is a positive trend."  The epicenter for the pandemic in Florida is in Miami-Dade County, where 2,720 new cases were reported Thursday with a positivity rate near 20%.But in the city of Miami, Mayor Francis Suarez said orders limiting gatherings and requiring face coverings are working and cases are beginning to decline. "The curve is flattening," he said.Suarez said much of the spread now is happening among families who live in multigenerational households. He's asking people, especially those who work outside the home, to consider wearing face masks and to stay socially distant at home, to avoid infecting others in the family.

The World Health Organization reported back-to-back record-high daily increases in new coronavirus cases - The World Health Organization is again posting a single-day record of new confirmed coronavirus cases. It announced 259,848 new cases on Saturday.The WHO on Friday posted more than 237,000 confirmed cases around the world. The back-to-back records come as many nations struggle with new waves of infections after loosening lockdown restrictions. Data compiled by Johns Hopkins University show more than 14 million cases worldwide since the start of the pandemic, with nearly 600,000 deaths.The US currently leads the world in number of new cases, comprising a total of more than 3.6 million cases. A database by The New York Times said the country shattered its single-day record for new cases on July 16 with more than 75,600.The Times also reported that one day later, India surpassed a million confirmed infections and 25,000 deaths, making it third for newest cases and overall. The country is recording about 30,000 new cases a day, according to The Times, which is triple the cases identified around three months ago. Brazil is still second in the world for total in fections in the pandemic, per Johns Hopkins data, counting more than 2 million cases.

 Texas Suffers Record Jump In COVID-19 Deaths, Brazil Reports Record 67k New Cases: Live Updates - The biggest news is out of Texas, where the state just reported a new record daily death tally of 197. The state also reported 9,879 new cases, below 10k, but still in line with recent 7-day and 14-day averages. The statewide positivity rate for Wednesday's numbers is 14.18%. Meanwhile, Brazil reported 67,860 new cases and 1,284 new deaths in just 24 hours, a new record for the country with the world's fastest growing outbreak. That's more than today's total from the US (so far at least). In a series of back-to-back COVID-19 headlines, California reported its largest daily jump yet with 12,807 new cases, while Ohio Gov Mike DeWine issued an executive order requiring masks to be work in all public places indoors and outside when social distancing isn't possible. The record jump comes just days after Newsom loosened some restrictions on Monday (after forcing hundreds of thousands of businesses to close down or cut back again). 35 of California's 58 counties have been added to the state's watchlist. All counties on the watchlist must keep schools closed. The 7-day positivity rate of tests in California is 7.6% roughly even with last week. California now has 413,576 confirmed cases of COVID-19, and 7,870 deaths. The number of COVID-related deaths increased by 1.5% from Monday’s total of 7,755. The number of COVID-19 diagnostic tests hit 6,664,419, up 127,487 from Monday. The rate of positive tests over the last 14 days is 7.4%. California’s hospitalizations due to COVID-19 increased by 79.

U.S. Passes 4 Million Coronavirus Cases - The U.S. surpassed four million coronavirus cases on Thursday, a little more than two weeks after it hit three million confirmed cases.The number of hospitalizations is also on the rise. Around 59,600 people were hospitalized with the virus on Wednesday, according to COVID Tracking Project data reported by CNN. That's only around 300 fewer than during the previous peak in mid-April."We've rolled back essentially two months' worth of progress with what we're seeing in number of cases ... in the United States," Dr. Ali Khan, dean of the University of Nebraska Medical Center's College of Public Health, told CNN on Thursday.It took more than three months for the U.S. to move from its first reported case to one million cases April 28,The New York Times reported. It took another 43 days for the country to hit two million cases June 10, 27 days to hit three million July 7 and just 16 days to reach four million Thursday. (Johns Hopkins figures put the time between three and four million cases at 15 days, according to CNN). Cases are now rising by an average of more than 2,600 per hour, according to Reuters, the highest rate in the world. Deaths are also increasing. The country reported more than 1,100 deaths for the third day in a row Thursday. However, that number falls below the 2,000 or so deaths a day reported in April. Still, the U.S. has now confirmed 144,305 deaths from the virus, according to Johns Hopkins University data as of Friday morning. That's nearly double the next-highest death toll in Brazil.It's also much higher than initial expert projections."Nationwide, a total of 82,141 COVID-19 deaths (range of 39,174 to 141,995) are currently projected through the epidemic's first wave. US COVID-19 deaths are estimated to rise through April 15, the country's projected peak of deaths per day," a model from the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation predicted in late March, as NPR reported.The U.S. has now passed the upper end of that projected death toll and the first wave is not yet over. Cases are currently rising in 39 states, as well as Washington, DC, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, according to The New York Times. Especially hard-hit states include California, Florida and Texas, which have all reported high case counts, according to NPR. Arizona and Louisiana have also reported high numbers of cases relative to their populations.

 COVID-19 cases reach 15 million worldwide with 4 million in the US alone - The number of COVID-19 infections worldwide surpassed 15 million yesterday. In less than five days, another million cases have been added. More than 618,000 people have died in little more than seven months since the virus took its first victim. There are also six million active cases globally, which provides only a very indirect measure of the burden being carried by health care workers facing shortages of PPE, medical supplies and stamina. Ten percent of all cases occur among health care workers. COVID-19 tests in the parking lot of H-E-B Park soccer stadium in Edinburg, Hidalgo County, Texas [Credit: Billy Calzada] More than 25 countries have posted over 1,000 new daily cases. These include some of the poorest nations such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan and Ecuador. The poorest and most vulnerable people are at risk. Lack of political representation and economic access make indigenous people, numbering 500 million on the planet, among the most vulnerable populations. Specifically, the World Health Organization has raised concerns about the impact of COVID-19 on indigenous people of the Americas, such as in the Peruvian Amazon. In the Americas, 70,000 indigenous people have been infected and more than 2,000 have died. However, one of the wealthiest nations on the planet, with the highest number of ultra-high net worth individuals, those with more than $50 million, continues to lead every other country in cases of COVID-19. Yesterday, the United States registered another million-case milestone, with the total number of infections passing four million. There were another 67,140 cases of COVID-19 and 1,122 new fatalities in one day, the highest number of deaths since June 9. The rise in fatality figures comes on the heels of rising infections over the past month, as states such as Florida, Texas, Arizona and California moved quickly to reopen. California, with 10,278 new cases Tuesday, registered 120 fatalities. With 410,176 total COVID-19 cases, it is poised to pass New York state by week’s end. Hispanic communities, with many workers deemed essential and frequently living in impoverished multigenerational households, have been hit the hardest. Texas has seen 357,127 cases of COVID-19, half of these just during July. Yesterday, the state reported 118 new fatalities, pushing the total to 4,299. Statewide, on Tuesday hospitalizations rose to the highest level since the pandemic, with 10,848 patients admitted to overcrowded hospitals. According to the Houston Chronicle, this marked 12 straight days with more than 10,000 hospitalized patients. The Texas-Mexico border area has been ravaged. Hispanics make up 90 percent of the population and suffer from significant chronic morbidities. Hidalgo County, with a population of 870,000, has reached a death rate of 33 per 100,000. Public health officials believe the reported number of deaths is lagging and expect that the worst has yet to come. Funeral homes and crematories are running out of space. Arizona logged 3,500 new cases and 134 deaths, with bed occupancy and ventilator use staying steady, which the health department attributes to increased use of face masks. Florida, with 9,440 new cases, logged 132 fatalities. It also saw 517 new hospitalizations on Tuesday, a one-day high for the state. The health department stated that positive test rates stand at 17.4 percent.

The Bahamas to ban most international flights as coronavirus cases surge The prime minister of the Bahamas announced a series of coronavirus-related restrictions Sunday, including a ban on most international flights, as the number of cases in the Caribbean nation surges. "Our current situation demands decisive action if we are to avoid being overrun and defeated by this virus," Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said in a national address. "We cannot allow our hospitals to be overrun." Minnis said the number of cases had almost tripled since the Bahamas began reopening its borders July 1. The total number of cases had risen to 153, he said, with most of the new cases appearing on one of the country's largest islands, Grand Bahama. Many of the new cases were traced to residents returning to the Bahamas, he said. Canada, the United Kingdom and the European Union will be allowed to send commercial flights without passengers to the country of nearly 400,000 to pick up visitors and return them to their home countries, he said. The measure will go into effect Wednesday. Private yachts and flights will still be allowed to enter, although the Bahamas' airline, Bahamasair, will be banned from flying to the United States, Minnis said.

Coronavirus may cause 3,500 deaths in England from four main cancers - About 3,500 people in England may die within the next five years of one of the four main cancers – breast, lung, oesophageal or bowel – as a result of delays in being diagnosed because of Covid-19, research shows.Many of these will be young or middle-aged people, say the researchers in the Lancet Oncology journal.“Our findings demonstrate the impact of the national Covid-19 response, which may cut short the lives of thousands of people with cancer in England over the next five years,” said Dr Ajay Aggarwal from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, who led the research.Routine cancer screening was suspended during the lockdown, the authors said. So was the routine referral to hospital outpatient departments of people with symptoms that could be something else but also might possibly be cancer. Only those deemed to need emergency care by the GP or those who go to A&E are being picked up. Inevitably, those are people with more advanced cancers. If cancer is picked up at an earlier stage, successful treatment and survival are much more likely.“Whilst currently attention is being focused on diagnostic pathways where cancer is suspected, the issue is that a significant number of cancers are diagnosed in patients awaiting investigation for symptoms not considered related to be cancer. Therefore we need a whole system approach to avoid the predicted excess deaths,” said Aggarwal.On average, those who die would have lived for 20 more years if their cancers had been identified promptly, without the delay caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the paper shows.“These estimates paint a sobering picture and reflect the many young people who are affected by cancer in the prime of life during their most productive years,”

Ireland heading for second COVID-19 wave - Ireland’s National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) has warned of a second wave of COVID-19 infection, reaching 150 new cases a day in three weeks’ time, and of hospitals being overwhelmed in the winter. The team’s modeling chair, Professor Philip Nolan, warned that the “R number” (infection reproduction rate) was already likely between 1.4 and 1.8. Nolan told Nphet’s regular press briefing Thursday, “We are in a position of high uncertainty at the moment.” The country’s acting chief medical officer, Dr Ronan Glynn, warned that such a scenario should have a “very very negative impact on the government’s plans to get our children back to school.” The Irish Times reported Friday that Health Service Executive (HSE) officials will tell the government that winter flu surges frequently overwhelm emergency units. Patients spending hours and days on trolleys awaiting treatment has been a scandalous feature of Irish hospitals for years. Dr Colm Henry, HSE’s chief clinical officer, said of a second wave during winter flu season, “I can’t see any healthcare service managing that scenario, I couldn’t put it more starkly than that.” Thus far, 25,698 people have been confirmed as having contracted COVID-19 in the Republic of Ireland (RoI), of whom 1,749 have died. An additional 5,815 infections have been reported in Northern Ireland, of whom 556 died. Lockdown measures, now rapidly being unwound, have reduced weekly deaths to low single figures. The warnings expose the recklessness of the drive by the Irish government, egged on by business interests, to reopen the economy as soon as possible. “Phase 3” of the government’s “roadmap” out of lockdown, introduced June 29, re-opened most of the economy, with only requirements for facemasks and some limits on pubs, hotels and large gatherings remaining. Newly installed coalition Taoiseach, Fianna Fáil’s Micheál Martin, was forced last Wednesday into a token delay of “Phase 4”—due next Monday—until August 10, requiring a few weeks delay in hotels and pubs re-opening. July’s Central Bank of Ireland’s Quarterly Bulletin outlined the shattering impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the economy and laid bare the profit interests behind the premature return to work.

UK to quarantine travelers from Spain - Sunday Times -  (Reuters) - Britain’s government will soon announce that all travellers from Spain arriving after midnight (2300 GMT) on Saturday will need to spend two weeks in quarantine in case they are infected with coronavirus, the Sunday Times newspaper reported. “Second wave of Covid-19 there has prompted decision to kick Spain off the safe country list,” the newspaper’s political editor, Tim Shipman, said on Twitter. Britain’s health ministry had no immediate comment on the report.

Quarantine hotel sex scandal linked to coronavirus outbreak in Australian city of Melbourne - CNN  Australian officials have launched a judicial inquiry amid allegations a fresh coronavirus outbreak in the state of Victoria was sparked by some contracted workers not following protocols at a hotel used to quarantine international arrivals -- including reportedly having sex with people under lockdown.Premier Daniel Andrews announced Thursday that the state government would provide $3 million to support the inquiry. He has previously said a number of cases in late May and early June could be linked to "an infection control breach in the hotel quarantine program."Authorities have commandeered a number of hotels across the country as part of its strict border controls to control the spread of the coronavirus. Anyone who arrives in Australia must undertake a 14-day mandatory quarantine at the facilities, which are managed by the government.Only Australian citizens and permanent residents are allowed into the country, with a few exceptions.National broadcaster ABC reported 31 cases have been linked to Melbourne's Stamford Plaza hotel, while other infections have been linked to the Rydges on Swanston hotel, which is also in the state capital. CNN has reached out to both hotels for comment."It is abundantly clear that what has gone on here is completely unacceptable and we need to know exactly what has happened," Andrews said in the statement.According to CNN affiliate 9 News, the alleged breaches include claims some workers had sex with guests in isolation, and a lack of training for the guards. A contracted security guard told the broadcaster's Today show that he received just five minutes of training before starting the job.

 Australian coronavirus surge hits workplaces, factories - The surge in coronavirus infections in the Australian state of Victoria has affected multiple workplaces, including meatworks, warehouses, factories, and retail outlets, in addition to schools, aged care facilities and hospitals. Yesterday, Victorian state Labor premier Daniel Andrews reported that some 80 percent of all COVID-19 transmissions in the last two months have taken place within workplaces. Today and yesterday, the state registered four more coronavirus deaths and another 638 new cases, with the vast majority of these classified as “under investigation,” meaning that authorities have no idea how and where people became infected. More than 1,500 coronavirus infections are under investigation in Victoria, indicating community transmission rates that are spiralling out of control. The workplace transmission figures further expose the federal and state governments’ response to the pandemic. Like their counterparts in the US and internationally, Labor and Liberal political leaders have prioritised the demands of big business and finance capital over public health and safety. The so-called national cabinet of federal and state ministers rejected in April a strategy aimed at eradicating coronavirus through strict lockdown measures, instead opting to allow a supposedly “safe” level of viral infection in order to open up the economy as quickly as possible. Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared that everyone with a job was an “essential worker.” Likewise in Victoria, as infections surged this month, the Labor government instituted lockdown measures that limited individuals’ movements and prohibited family and social gatherings, but did nothing to restrict the operations of non-essential business activities. Schools have been kept open, with thousands of teachers forced to continue working there even when their students are remote learning from their homes.

COVID-19 Outbreaks In US, Russia & India Show Promising Slowdown As China Imposes New Restrictions On Air Travel: Live Updates   As we begin our COVID-19 news rundown for Tuesday, the Australian state of Victoria reported 374 new cases of coronavirus and three deaths on Tuesday as mask wearing will become mandatory in the state, a large swath of which (the city of Melbourne) is already under lockdown. Yesterday, BBG reported that many Russian elites have  been injected with an experimental COVID-19 vaccine as early as April, a story that, if accurate, would appear to undermine the UK's claims that Russia-backed hackers stole British vaccine research.On Tuesday, Russia reported 5,842 new cases of the novel coronavirus, pushing its total infection tally to 783,328, still the fourth largest tally in the world, although the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 countries - the US, Brazil and India - are pulling further and further ahead.Russia's coronavirus response center said 153 people had died in the past 24 hours, pushing Russia's death toll to 12,580. In the first sign that India's outbreak may have finally peaked after the country reported a record 40k+ new cases in  one day, the Indian Union territory of Delhi has registered fewer than 1,000 new cases in a day for the first time in 6 weeks. The chief minister of the region reported Monday night that the region reported just 954 cases the prior day.Though markets seesawed briefly after the news was released, the Lancet's publication of the results from the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine candidate's Phase 1/2 trial predictably sent stocks ripping higher.In China, after moving to reopen international air travel more quickly than the US had anticipated, officials imposed new rules on Tuesday for foreign passengers arriving in the country: All will now be required to provide negative COVID-19 test results before they board any China-bound flights. The tests must be from 5 days before the flight, the Civil Aviation Administration of China said in a statement.Beijing has also announced plans to provide free COVID-19 tests to residents of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang which is experiencing an outbreak.The EU has reportedly managed to reach a deal to boost the bloc's post-pandemic economies after Charles Michel, president of the European Council and chair of the summit, offered compromises over the €750 billion ($860 billion) recovery fund that will be the first fiscal vehicle jointly funded by the EU27 members. The "Frugal Four" have apparently shown a willingness to accept the following adjustments: Outright non-repayable grants will account for just €390 billion ($446 billion) compared with the €500 billion originally proposed. Disbursements will also be linked to governments observing the rule of law.Around the world, more than 14.7 million people have been diagnosed with the virus. Nearly 610,000 of these have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The US has recorded nearly 141,000 deaths, the most in the world.

 COVID-19 cases surging again in Japan - COVID-19 cases have spiked in Japan in recent weeks, particularly in the densely-populated capital of Tokyo, demonstrating the danger the pandemic continues to pose. Last Saturday’s national one-day tally of 659 cases was the fourth highest since the pandemic began, with similarly high totals in April when the government declared a state of emergency. On July 15, Tokyo raised its city alert system to level four, the highest. The next two days each set new record highs for the city with 286 and 293 cases respectively. As of Monday, that number had fallen to 168. However, the average number of untraceable cases has doubled, potentially leading to an explosion in life-threatening illnesses. Furthermore, given the government’s reporting time, the number of cases announced daily is on a three-day delay, meaning the public does not have up-to-date information. Despite the fact that the pandemic has been intensifying around the world, the government has taken no steps to safeguard against a surge. Yoshihiro Yamaguchi, the head of the Trauma and Critical Care Center at Kyorin University Hospital, drew attention to the danger Tokyo faces during a meeting with local officials on July 15. “The pace of increase in the number of new COVID-19 cases has exceeded the pace of securing empty beds to take in patients,” he warned. “The current strategy needs to be changed. Otherwise the (health care system) will collapse.” There are inadequate facilities for quarantining patients with mild symptoms, forcing hundreds, just within Tokyo, to self-isolate at home. If their symptoms worsen they will have no immediate access to medical care. Yet, the shortfall is not new. In April, as the pandemic developed, hospitals were already at or beyond capacity, forcing sick individuals to travel around the city looking for a medical facility that would admit them.

Russian Elite Given Experimental Covid-19 Vaccine Since April - Scores of Russia’s business and political elite have been given early access to an experimental vaccine against Covid-19, according to people familiar with the effort, as the country races to be among the first to develop an inoculation. Top executives at companies including aluminum giant United Co. Rusal, as well as billionaire tycoons and government officials began getting shots developed by the state-run Gamaleya Institute in Moscow as early as April, the people said. They declined to be identified as the information isn’t public. The Gamaleya vaccine, financed by the state-run Russian Direct Investment Fund and backed by the Defense Ministry, last week completed a phase 1 trial involving military personnel. The institute hasn’t published results for the study, which involved about 40 people, but has begun the next stage of testing with a larger group. Gamaleya’s press office couldn’t be reached immediately for comment. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who recovered from Covid-19 after being hospitalized with the virus in May, said he doesn’t know the names of anyone who’s received the institute’s vaccine.  Asked on a conference call with reporters on Monday if President Vladimir Putin had taken it, Peskov said: “It probably wouldn’t be a good idea to use an uncertified vaccine on the head of state,” adding that he wasn’t aware of other officials trying it.

 Why Rwanda Is Doing Better Than Ohio When It Comes To Controlling COVID-19 - In some places in the world right now, getting tested for COVID-19 remains difficult or nearly impossible. In Rwanda, you might just get tested randomly as you're going down the street. "So whenever someone is driving a vehicle, bicycle, motorcycle or even walking, everyone is asked if you wish to get tested," says Sabin Nsanzimana, director general of the Rwanda Biomedical Center, which is the arm of the ministry of health that's in charge of tackling COVID-19. Health officials in personal protective equipment administer the test. Nsanzimana says the testing is voluntary, although some others say refusal is frowned upon. The sample collection — from a swab up the nose — and filling out the contact information paperwork takes about five minutes. "All these samples are sent that day to the lab," Nsanzimana says. "We have a big lab here in Kigali. We have also six other labs in the other provinces." Despite being classified by the World Bank as a low-income country, and despite its limited resources, Rwanda has vowed to identify every coronavirus case. Anyone who tests positive is immediately quarantined at a dedicated COVID-19 clinic. Any contacts of that case who are deemed at high risk are also quarantined, either at a clinic or at home, until they can be tested. Sign Up For The New Normal Newsletter Daily news on the coronavirus crisis and help getting through whatever comes next. We’re in this together. Nsanzimana says health workers call or visit every potential contact of someone who tests positive. "We really believe that doing so is important to make sure we detect and trace where the virus could be," he says. Comprehensive contact tracing is a task that has overwhelmed countries with far more resources than Rwanda. Rwanda's per capita income is roughly $2,000 per year. Yet all testing and treatment for the virus is provided for free. .

New coronavirus cases globally rocket past a quarter million - A record 279,769 new cases of COVID-19 were reported yesterday, bringing the total number of known cases globally to nearly 15.4 million. There were also 7,113 confirmed deaths, a fatality count not seen since April, bringing the number of confirmed deaths caused by the coronavirus to 629,343. Brazil, India, South Africa and the United States accounted for the vast majority of the new cases, with Brazil and the United States accounting for almost half by themselves. Similarly, the deaths in Brazil, India, Mexico and the US made up more than half of yesterday’s confirmed coronavirus fatalities. Twenty other countries recorded more than 1,000 new cases of the virus yesterday, and eleven posted more than 50 new deaths. India posted a record day of both new cases, at 45,599, and new deaths, at 1,120, and the rate of increase of both indicates that the pandemic is continuing to spiral out of control in the world’s second most populous country. Its total case count and death tally stand at 1.24 million and 29,890, respectively. Brazil reported the most deaths of any country yesterday, at 1,293, bringing its number of dead to nearly 83,000. The largest economy in Latin America also saw another 65,000 infections, a new daily record, sending its current case count above 2.2 million. South Africa also suffered a record number of new deaths, 572, double the previous record, bringing the total to 5,940, and a near record of new cases, 13,150, bringing confirmed infections to just under 395,000. As the country was recording these grim figures, the South African newspaper the Sowetan noted that the number of excess deaths in the country from natural causes had rose to 17,090 from May 6–July 14, four times the official COVID-19 death toll over the same period. This suggests that the pandemic has claimed, directly or indirectly, more than 23,000 human lives in the country. Nearly 7,000 new cases were recorded in Mexico, a figure which has been steadily climbing over the past month and a half from less than 3,200 per day at the beginning of June. During that same period, deaths have increased from an average of more than 350 per day to now more than 580 a day. The country currently has more than 362,000 known cases, ranking seventh in the world, and 41,190 reported deaths. At this rate, Mexico is on track to exceed the number of deaths in the United Kingdom (currently at 45,501) by the end of the month.

 Record numbers of coronavirus cases in every global region: Reuters tally - (Reuters) - Almost 40 countries have reported record single-day increases in coronavirus infections over the past week, around double the number that did so the previous week, according to a Reuters tally showing a pick-up in the pandemic in every region of the world. The rate of cases has been increasing not only in countries like the United States, Brazil and India, which have dominated global headlines with large outbreaks, but in Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, Bolivia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Bulgaria, Belgium, Uzbekistan and Israel, among others. Many countries, especially those where officials eased earlier social distancing lockdowns, are experiencing a second peak more than a month after recording their first. “We will not be going back to the ‘old normal’. The pandemic has already changed the way we live our lives,” World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said this week. “We’re asking everyone to treat the decisions about where they go, what they do and who they meet with as life-and-death decisions – because they are.” The Reuters data, compiled from official reports, shows a steady rise in the number of countries reporting record daily increases in the virus that causes COVID-19 over the past month. At least seven countries recorded such increases three weeks ago, rising to at least 13 countries two weeks ago to at least 20 countries last week and to 37 countries this week. The true numbers of both cases and deaths are almost certainly underreported, particularly in countries with poorer health care systems, health experts and officials say. For this report, the Reuters data was restricted to countries that provide regular daily numbers. The data reveals a growing number of resurgent cases in countries across all regions. In Australia, officials enforced a six-week partial lockdown and made face masks mandatory for residents in the country’s second-largest city, Melbourne, after a fresh outbreak. Australia and Japan, which also posted a daily case record this week, both warned of a rise in infections among young people, many of whom celebrated the end of social restrictions at bars and parties. In Mexico, which also posted a daily record this week and has the fourth-highest death toll of any country, officials warned that a downward trend in case numbers that began in mid-June - about the time the city began relaxing social distancing measures - could reverse.

FDA recalls more hand sanitizers due to toxic chemical - The Food and Drug Administration has expanded the list of hand sanitizers — some sold at Walmart, Costco and other national chains — being recalled to at least 75 recently, saying toxic levels of wood alcohol in them can cause injury or death.The FDA said that there has been an increase in hand sanitizers that are labeled to contain ethyl alcohol, or ethanol, but have tested positive for methanol, or wood alcohol. If methanol is absorbed through the skin, it can cause blindness and hospitalizations, or death if ingested.Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, health officials have continuously urged Americans to wash their hands for 20 seconds at a time or to use hand sanitizer to protect against exposure to SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes the respiratory disease. The demand for hand sanitizer has surged and questionable new brands have made their way to store shelves across the United States, most imported from Mexico. Ten deaths and dozens of hospitalizations in Arizona and New Mexico are believed to be linked to methanol in hand sanitizers. The cases are also associated with alcohol use disorder.

 Bacteria that eats metal accidentally discovered by scientists in the US - Scientists have discovered a type of bacteria that eats and gets its calories from metal, after suspecting they exist for more than a hundred years but never proving it. Microbiologists from the California Institute of Technology (or Caltech) accidentally discovered the bacteria after performing unrelated experiments using a chalk-like type of manganese, a commonly found chemical element. Dr Jared Leadbetter, professor of environmental microbiology at Caltech in Pasadena, left a glass jar covered with manganese to soak in tap water in his office sink. The vessel was left for several months when he went to work off-campus. When he returned, Leadbetter found the jar coated with a dark material. “I thought, ‘What is that?’ “I started to wonder if long-sought-after microbes might be responsible, so we systematically performed tests to figure that out.” Researchers discovered that the black coating found on the jar was oxidized manganese, generated by newly discovered bacteria most likely found in the tap water. “There is evidence that relatives of these creatures reside in groundwater, and a portion of Pasadena’s drinking water is pumped from local aquifers,” he said. In new research published in Nature journal on Tuesday, scientists note that these are the first bacteria to use manganese as an energy source.

Lyme disease cases rise in parts of Michigan— Lyme disease hasn't been in West Michigan for long, but it is on the rise. "It actually started in 2002, that was the first case," says Marisa Faraldo, an expert on environmental health and safety for the Kent County Health Department. "We've seen a decent number of cases here in the last ten years." In Northern Michigan, the Benzie-Leelanau District Health Department has already reported 12 cases since June 1. By comparison, the department only reported 16 total over the last five years combined. Faraldo says this can likely be attributed to a larger number of deer ticks that spread the disease. "It was a mild winter as far as Michigan goes," explains Faraldo. "So it didn't really freeze that hard. We think that a lot of ticks survived the winter that don't typically." Faraldo says in Kent County, there were 17 confirmed cases in 2019 and expects the number to be similar this year. Lyme disease usually causes symptoms such as a rash, fever, headache and fatigue. "And it gets more severe if left untreated," warns Faraldo. "It would be more like facial palsy, half of your face going numb, stiffness, arthritis, that kind of stuff."

 Pa. sees 1st West Nile case of the year in Potter County--Pennsylvania recorded its first probable human case of West Nile Virus this year, according to state health officials. A resident of Potter County was tested for the virus, with samples sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for confirmation. The state recorded seven cases of West Nile in 2019, according to the CDC. None were fatal. “While we encourage Pennsylvanians to enjoy the outdoors, especially during the covid-19 pandemic, we also want them to take proper precautions from mosquitoes while outside,” Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine said. “With the first human case of West Nile Virus detected, we want people to protect themselves. Several simple steps can help protect yourself and loved ones from mosquito-related diseases.” Although mosquitoes can bite at any time of the day or night, the mosquitoes that transmit West Nile are most active at dawn and dusk. DEP officials monitor mosquito populations across the state for the presence of West Nile. Only one in 150 people infected with West Nile will develop severe illness, health officials said. Associated symptoms include disorientation, convulsions, headache, high fever, muscle weakness, blindness, numbness, coma, paralysis and tremors. Roughly 80% of infected people will not show any symptoms, according to health officials. West Nile was traditionally only seen in Africa, West Asia and the Middle East throughout most of the 20th century. In the summer of 1999, it was detected in New York City and, over the next four years, spread throughout North America. Since 2004, West Nile epidemics flare up in summer and fall as infected mosquitoes spread the virus from birds to horses, humans and other animals.

An Ickier Outbreak: Trench Fever Spread by Lice Is Found in Denver — Dr. Michelle Barron, medical director of infection prevention and control at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital, received an unusual call last month from the microbiology lab: confirmation of the third case this year of trench fever, a rare condition transmitted by body lice that plagued soldiers during World War I. Barron’s epidemiological training kicked in. “Two is always an outbreak, and then when we found a third — OK, we clearly have something going on,” Barron recalled thinking. Barron, who said she’d never before seen a case in her 20 years here, contacted state public health officials, who issued an advisory Thursday and said a fourth person with a suspected case had been identified. They asked physicians to be on the lookout for additional cases. Trench fever is characterized by relapsing fever, bone pain (particularly in the shins), headache, nausea, vomiting and malaise. Some of those infected can develop skin lesions or a life-threatening infection of their heart valves.The condition is caused by the bacterium Bartonella quintana, a close relative of the bug that causes cat scratch fever. Colonies of it live in the digestive systems of body lice and are excreted in their feces. The bugs can enter the body through a scratch in the skin or through the eyes or nose. Dried lice feces can be infectious for up to 12 months. Trench fever is most commonly diagnosed among people experiencing homelessness or living in conditions where good hygiene is difficult. Those with compromised immune systems are particularly at risk. Public health officials are trying to find a common thread among the four cases identified so far in Colorado. They occurred months apart, and the patients appear to have no connection other than having been homeless in the Denver area. Other cases of the disease may have been overlooked. Patients often have other health problems that could explain their symptoms, and doctors will try to rule out the more common causes before considering a rare one.

 Swarm of flying ants so large that it can be seen from space arrives in Ireland - Satellite images from the United Kingdom's Met Office have revealed that Ireland can expect plenty of flying ants over the coming days. The swarm, which was moving from west to east on Friday, was originally mistaken for rain on the Met Office's radar. But now the meteorological service has confirmed that it's actually winged ants. Because it's not like we had enough to be dealing with already. In a tweet, the Met Office wrote: "During the summer ants can take to the skies in a mass emergence usually on warm, humid and windless days." We're also pretty sure that Satan has something to do with it. There is a misconception that flying ants show up just one day a year, but we should be so lucky. Flying ants tend to show up in the kind of weather conditions that we're currently experiencing, so we could be looking at several flying ant days over the coming weeks. Enjoy.

AIR POLLUTION: Study of emissions and virus deaths implicates EPA policy --  - A new study offers fresh evidence of a connection between dirty air and COVID-19 deaths, while suggesting that a 4-month-old EPA civil enforcement freeze has made the situation worse. The working paper by American University researchers found concentrations of soot and ozone rose in counties with more industrial facilities that report emissions to an EPA pollution database since the agency relaxed enforcement in late March.Overall, those counties had a 19% increase in daily death rates from COVID-19 from late March through most of May, compared to counties with fewer such facilities, the paper says. That increase was accompanied by an almost 39% jump in total cases of the disease caused by the coronavirus, with stronger results in areas with larger numbers of Black and unemployed residents, according to the research."Not only was there an increase in pollution, but this increase in pollution contributed to a worsening of the pandemic," Claudia Persico, the study's lead author and an assistant public policy professor at American University, said during a Wednesday webinar.What the findings suggest, Persico added, "is that polluters respond to the absence of regulatory enforcement by potentially increasing their pollution on average." For the counties in question, ozone concentrations climbed 5%, while levels of soot, also known as fine particles or PM2.5, rose 13%. Both pollutants are associated with an array of respiratory ailments. The paper is now undergoing the independent assessment known as peer review prior to publication in a journal, Persico said in a follow-up email.More controversial was Wheeler opting to keep the status quo for fine particle standards, overruling the conclusions of agency career staff that the existing thresholds need strengthening to prevent thousands of premature deaths each year.In response to a question, he again criticized a Harvard University study that linked a slight increase in long-term fine particle exposure to a higher death rate from COVID-19. That study, released in early April, still has not been peer-reviewed, Wheeler said, adding that it was "politicized" because the authors also took aim at the enforcement freeze. As Wheeler also noted, the researchers later revised their findings to lower the increased death rate from 15% to 8%, citing more data (E&E News PM, April 28).

Rich Americans spew more carbon pollution at home than poor -Rich Americans produce nearly 25% more heat-trapping gases than poorer people at home, according to a comprehensive study of U.S. residential carbon footprints. Scientists studied 93 million housing units in the nation to analyze how much greenhouse gases are being spewed in different locations and by income, according to a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Residential carbon emissions comprise close to one-fifth of global warming gases emitted by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.Using federal definitions of income level, the study found that energy use by the average higher income person’s home puts out 6,482 pounds of greenhouse gases a year. For a person in the lower income level, the amount is 5,225 pounds, the study calculated.“The numbers don’t lie. They show that (with) people who are wealthier generally, there’s a tendency for their houses to be bigger and their greenhouse gas emissions tend to be higher,” said study lead author Benjamin Goldstein, an environmental scientist at the University of Michigan. “There seems to be a small group of people that are inflicting most of the damage to be honest.” In Beverly Hills, the average person puts four times as much heat-trapping gases into the air as someone living in South Central Los Angeles, where incomes are only a small fraction as much. Similarly, in Massachusetts, the average person in wealthy Sudbury spews 9,700 pounds of greenhouse gases into the air each year, while the average person in the much poorer Dorchester neighborhood in Boston puts out 2,227 pounds a year.

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: 'America is still segregated, and so is pollution' -- Monday, July 20, 2020 -- Major landowners, the Meahers leased tracts to their former slaves, but the family over generations found it more profitable to lease to businesses. In 1928, a major paper mill was built on what was once Meaher land on the edge of Africatown. Joe Womack, executive director of the advocacy group Africatown-CHESS, said paper production filled air, waterways and people's lungs with "ash." A retired Marine Corps officer who traces his lineage in Africatown back to 1880 but is unsure whether his forebears came over on the Clotilda, Womack said his father worked for the mills. "Nobody ever told him that the stuff that they were using was harmful to your health," he said. "Nobody mentioned that to anybody." As a child, Womack said, the thrice-daily ash dumps were a "nuisance." He remembers running home to help his mother pull laundry off clotheslines before it got dirty. But the pollution took its toll on Africatown, Womack said. Residents born after 1945, when the mills expanded, have tended to die younger, he said. Cancer cases were common, and pollution and industrialization led to the community's decline, he said. The paper companies pulled up stakes in Africatown in the 1990s, around the time federal environmental laws began to take effect. In 2017, a group of 1,200 residents sued the now-shuttered paper mill's owner, International Paper Co., claiming its operations had damaged their health. A spokesman for International Paper said, "Neither plaintiffs nor their lawyers have produced any evidence to support their claims." Africatown is unique for its founding story, and the fact that African languages were spoken there until the mid-20th century. But the town's struggle with pollution is not unusual. "I imagine that's probably the same thing in a lot of areas where Blacks live," Womack said. "Others don't want these businesses located in their areas near their homes, bringing down the values and polluting the air. So they move to the place of least resistance. And a lot of times, that's in the Black neighborhoods."

  BREAKING: Dominion Energy Leaks Poison Into Pennsylvania Water Supplies - Dominion Energy Transmission is providing water to at least five households after leaking ethylene glycol from an underground pipeline into drinking water wells in Genesee Township, Potter County, Pennsylvania. The leak was first noticed by residents and reported to Dominion Energy in June 2020. Ethylene glycol is used as a coolant at one of Dominion Energy’s compressor stations in Genesee Township, and is poisonous if swallowed.* It’s commonly found in products such as antifreeze.  According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), “Ethylene glycol has a sweet taste and is often accidentally or intentionally ingested.” After rapidly being absorbed in the stomach, the CDC states “80% or more of ethylene glycol is chemically converted by the body into toxic compounds. It and its toxic byproducts first affect the central nervous system (CNS), then the heart, and finally the kidneys. Ingestion of sufficient amounts [approximately 4 fluid ounces] can be fatal.”  On June 9th, the fish in a local pond off French/Rooney Road turned up dead prompting locals to immediately report the incident to the Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission (PAFBC). Captain Alan Robinson of the PAFBC Bureau of Law Enforcement told Public Herald that the Commission “has initiated an active investigation of criminal activity” involving a “substantial fish kill.” Residents stated 251 fish were killed and that a spring on the same property is also contaminated. Currently, the tainted springwater is being diverted into a “frack tank” by Dominion for offsite disposal.

Monsoon floods in India, Nepal displace 4 million -  About 4 million people have been displaced in South Asia due to flooding caused by heavy monsoon rains. At least 189 people have died and dozens are missing in India, Nepal and Bangladesh, officials said. In the northeastern Indian state of Assam, over 2.75 million people have been displaced by three waves of floods since May, according to a state government official. "The flood situation remains critical with most of the rivers flowing menacingly above the danger mark," Assam water resources Minister Keshab Mahanta told Reuters. Some 79 people have died in the state. Authorities said the floods have also killed more than 100 animals in Assam's Kaziranga National Park, home to an estimated 2,500 rare one-horned rhinos. Heavy rainfall has flooded roads and left low-lying areas under waterIn Bangladesh, at least 2.6 million people have been affected by overflowing rivers, with at least 67 people killed over the last two weeks. Authorities said up to 40% of the low-lying country could be inundated.Nepal has reported nearly 110 deaths since June from landslides and flash floods, which are affecting 26 of the country's 77 districts. A government official said the death toll is expected to rise as 48 people are still missing in the Himalayan nation.Authorities in both Bangladesh and Nepal have cautioned that rising waters could lead to further flooding.The annual monsoon season between June and September often triggers flooding and landslides,causing hundreds of deaths in the region each year.

Flooding in Assam and Nepal kills hundreds and displaces millions  - Severe flooding in India’s tea-growing state of Assam and neighbouring Nepal has killed at least 200 people and displaced millions, severely hampering efforts to stop the spread of coronavirus. In Assam, heavy monsoon rains burst the banks of the Brahmaputra River, causing more than 2,000 villages to be enveloped in floods and mudslides and displacing 2.75 million people in the past two weeks. There have been 85 deaths reported in the state. Keshab Mahanta, Assam’s water resources minister, said: “The flood situation remains critical with most of the rivers flowing menacingly above the danger mark.” Officials voiced concern that the flooding and hurried evacuation of millions of Assam residents would cause a significant rise in cases of coronavirus in the north-eastern state, known for its tea plantations. At the moment, 50,000 people are sheltered in cramped relief camps but because of the scale and urgency of the evacuations, officials admitted that no physical distancing measures were being enforced. Sanghamitra Sanyal, a member of Assam’s flood management force, told Reuters: “It’s hard to enforce social distancing when people are being ordered to move away from the rising waters. “We’re urging people to at least cover their mouth and nose with a piece of clean cloth.” The number of Covid-19 cases is still increasing rapidly in Assam, with more than 1,000 new infections reported daily, pushing the state’s total to almost 25,000 cases. Last week the total cases in India surpassed a million, making it the third worst affected country in the world. Officials from the Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA) urged authorities to deal with complaints that mismanaged and contaminated coronavirus waste, including used masks and other personal protective equipment, was washing up in the floodwaters in areas of Guwahati, the largest city in Assam. Authorities confirmed that hundreds of animals had drowned in the flooding, including nine endangered rhinos living in Kaziranga national park, a Unesco world heritage site. Kaziranga national park and tiger reserve, which is home to 2,400 of the one-horned rhinos – the largest concentration of them in the world – has been severely affected by the flooding, with 85% of the 407 sq mile (1,055 sq km) park underwater. Officials said that 59 of the 223 anti-poaching camps had been inundated and as well as the rhinos, among the dead animals were deer, porcupines and Asiatic water buffalo.

China blasts dam to release floodwaters as death toll rises — Authorities in central China blasted a dam Sunday to release surging waters behind it amid widespread flooding across the country that has claimed scores of lives. State broadcaster CCTV reported the dam on the Chuhe River in Anhui province was destroyed with explosives early Sunday morning, after which the water level was expected to drop by 70 centimeters (more than 2 feet). Water levels on many rivers, including the mighty Yangtze, have been unusually high this year because of torrential rains. Blasting dams and embankments to discharge water was an extreme response employed during China’s worst floods in recent years in 1998, when more than 2,000 people died and almost 3 million homes were destroyed. Last week, the gargantuan Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze opened three floodgates as the water level behind the massive dam rose more than 15 meters (50 feet) above flood level. Another flood crest is expected to arrive at the dam on Tuesday. Elsewhere, soldiers and workers have been testing the strength of embankments and shoring them up with sandbags and rocks. On Saturday, firefighters and others finished filling in a 188-meter (620-foot) break on Poyang Lake, China’s largest freshwater lake, that had caused widespread flooding across 15 villages and agricultural fields in Jiangxi province. More than 14,000 people were evacuated. Seasonal flooding strikes large parts of China annually, especially in its central and southern regions, but has been especially severe this summer. More than 150 people have died or are missing in flooding and landslides brought on by the torrential rains — 23 of them since Thursday alone. About 1.8 million people have been evacuated and direct losses attributed to flooding are estimated at more than 49 billion yuan ($7 billion), according to the Ministry of Emergency Management.

Red alerts in China as floods maroon equipment to fight coronavirus - (Reuters) - Large parts of China were reeling on Friday from the worst floods in decades, as disruption mounted for supply chains, including for personal protective equipment (PPE), vital in the fight against the novel coronavirus. The central city of Wuhan and the provinces of Anhui, Jiangxi and Zhejiang declared red alerts as heavy rain swelled rivers and lakes. Wuhan, on the banks of the Yangtze river where the novel coronavirus emerged late last year, warned residents to take precautions as water levels fast approached their maximum guaranteed safety level. The summer rainy season brings floods to China almost every year but the impact of the disruption they cause is being felt further afield as Chinese goods become more important in global supply chains for various items, including PPE. “It’s just creating another major roadblock here in terms of PPE getting into the United States - it is the worst of times for it to happen but that’s what we’re dealing with right now,” said Michael Einhorn, president of Dealmed, a U.S. medical supply distributor, which sources disposable lab coats and other products from Wuhan and nearby regions. “We cannot get product out for over a week, which is a very long time in our business,” he said, adding that the delays could last up to three weeks. Xiantao, just west of Wuhan, is China’s biggest manufacturer of nonwoven fabrics used in PPE production. A third of China’s total exports of nonwoven fabric products are from the city. With the relentless rain, more misery seems inevitable. The giant Three Gorges reservoir, which has been holding back more water to try to ease downstream flood risks, is more than 10 metres higher than its warning level, with inflows now at more than 50,000 cubic metres a second. The Poyang lake in Jiangxi province, which is formed from the overspill of the Yangtze, is 2.5 metres higher than its warning level. It has expanded by more than 2,000 square kilometres during thus flood season, and parts of the surrounding town have been inundated.Further east, the Tai lake near Shanghai has also declared a red alert after its water level rose to nearly a metre higher than its safe level.

Three Gorges Dam deformed but safe, say operators - In a rare revelation, Beijing has admitted that its 2.4-kilometer Three Gorges Dam spanning the Yangtze River in Hubei province “deformed slightly” after record flooding. The official Xinhua News Agency quoted the operator of the the world’s largest hydroelectric gravity dam as saying that some nonstructural, peripheral parts of the dam had buckled. The dam was a pet project of the late Premier Li Peng and a monumental pride of the nation when it blocked and diverted Asia’s largest river in 1997. The deformation occurred last Saturday when the flood from western provinces including Sichuan and Chongqing along the upper reaches of the Yangtze River peaked at a record-setting 61,000 cubic meters per second, according to China Three Gorges Corporation, a state-owned enterprise that manages the dam and the sprawling power plant underneath it. The company noted that parts of the dam had “deformed slightly,” displacing some external structures, and seepage into the main outlet walls had also been reported throughout the 18 hours on Saturday and Sunday when water was discharged though its outlets.But the problem of water seeping out did not last long, as the dam reportedly deployed floodgates to hold as much water as possible in its 39.3 billion-cubic-meter reservoir to shield the cities downstream from the biggest Yangtze deluge so far this year. It is believed that the dam’s operator must protect the central megacity of Wuhan, whose 10 million residents are still reeling from the coronavirus pandemic that erupted there in December.

Largest Floods in Chinese History Wiped Out the Country’s Food & Grain Supply (video news report)

China's Mighty Yangtze Is Heaving From Rain and the Three Gorges Dam Will Be Tested -  Heavy rain has battered central and southern China over the past few weeks, causing widespread flooding—the worst in decades.China has a long history of deadly floods, including one in 1931 that killed two million people and another in 1998, when, according to government estimates, one-fifth of the country’s population was affected, resulting in the deaths of more than 3,000 people and causing economic damage of more than $20 billion. Since the beginning of June this year, the floods have impacted more than 45 million people in 27 of China’s provinces, exacting an economic cost of more than 116 billion yuan ($16.5 billion). According to the Ministry of Emergency Management, 142 people were dead or missing and 35,000 houses had collapsed as of July 23.In recent years, China has increased government spending on building up flood defense, creating a network of dams all over the country, especially on the Yangtze River, the longest river in Asia and the third longest in the world. China has been pouring money into water conservation projects on major rivers and lakes, but for decades it has neglected smaller bodies of water. Roughly 96% of the 94,000 dams dotting China’s rivers are smaller dikes constructed in the 1950s and 1960s. Poor management of these small dams and streams weakens their ability to divert flood waters from the upper and middle reaches of their respective rivers, creating hidden dangers. China began building the controversial Three Gorges Dam in 1994, causing more than one million people to relocate and damaging the surrounding environment. The constant rain has also raised concerns about integrity of the dam, prompting officials in recent weeks to directly rebut assertions that the dam was in danger of collapsing. Heavy rains on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River are raising the water level there and sparking new flooding that is expected to hit the Three Gorges Dam soon. The giant reservoir is currently releasing water to set aside more space for the coming floodwaters, Yangtze River authorities said Friday.The giant dam is capable of handling inflows of as much as 22.1 million gallons (83.7 million liters) per second to protect the lower reaches. The last flood hit the dam with a peak inflow of 16 million gallons a second last week, raising concerns about the dam’s strength and safety.

Could Leaving ‘Room for the River’ Help Protect Communities from Floods? - Living near the Mississippi River means keeping an eye trained on the water level.  Across the Midwest, river flooding is controlled primarily by dams and levees. But rainstorms in the region are growing more intense as the climate changes, while aging infrastructure is cracking and crumbling. That could require communities along the river banks to try new approaches to flood control – or even to relinquish it.  Many dams and levees across the U.S. are outdated and at risk of failing. According to a 2017 infrastructure report card published by the American Society of Civil engineers, seven out of 10 dams will be older than 50 years by 2025. An estimated 30% of dams were found to have a hazard potential that was either “significant,” meaning there was a risk of damage, or “high” – a risk of loss of life. Many levees are privately owned, which makes their status more difficult to study. But according to the report card, of the 1,200 levees assessed by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, 20% were found to be moderate to high risk. Investment in updating aging and broken river flood control is limited. In its Infrastructure Report Card, the American Society of Civil Engineers reported that $45 billion is needed to rehabilitate the country’s dams but that only $5.4 billion in funding was available in 2017. Along Midwestern riverways, some infrastructure damaged by flooding in 2019 remains in disrepair. “High river levels persisted in some areas almost the entire year in 2019, preventing access to even evaluate what damage had been sustained, which is the first step in the repair process,” said John Osterhage, chief of emergency management for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ St. Louis District. But even if failing river infrastructure is repaired, climate change could soon undo that progress. Designing dams and levees for effective flood control is not an easy task, as precipitation and the consequent river flow can be unpredictable. In the U.S., the average lifetime expectancy of a dam is 50 years. But five decades from now, the climate may be quite different from how it has been, kicking unpredictability up a notch.Scientists expect that climate change will continue to increase the number and severity of heavy rainstorms in some U.S. regions, but they’re still uncertain about the specific details like how much and how often.   According to the Fourth National Climate Assessment, the amount of rain falling in the heaviest storms in the Midwest is expected to increase by 40% by 2070-2099 relative to recent decades. According to Don Duncan, chief of the hydraulics and hydrology branch of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ St. Louis District, for the past several years the Mississippi River has experienced higher stream flows during every season. “This primes the river to more easily rise to levels not commonly seen in the past, even with normal rainfall,” Duncan said. “Heavy storms will result in even more extreme flooding.”

 Fires in Pantanal, South America, world's largest tropical wetlands, 'triple' in 2020 - The number of forest fires in the Pantanal, the world's largest tropical wetlands, has tripled in 2020 compared to last year, according to Brazil's national space agency Inpe. Inpe identified 3,682 fires from 1 January to 23 July in the region, an increase of 201% compared to 2019.  Thousands of species including jaguars, anteaters and migratory birds live in the 140,000-160,000 sq km area. Last month was the worst June for fires in the neighbouring Amazon in 13 years.The wetlands are located across Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia and are one of the most biodiverse areas in the world. Members of environmental network the Pantanal Observatory called the fires "a social danger since, in addition to the economic damage and the loss of biodiversity, fires cause respiratory problems, eye irritation and allergies," according to Brazilian newspaper O Globo. The organisation said that in two days, around 7,000 hectares were burnt as the result of both "criminal activity" and "climactic factors".

What’s Really Behind Dwindling Numbers of Woodland Caribou? - A logged forest is a changed forest, and for woodland caribou that could mean the difference between life and death.A recent study in the Journal of Wildlife Management tracked the survival rates and population growth of woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) across two areas of northern Ontario, Canada. In one area about a third of the forest had been logged 30 to 50 years ago. In the other, the only disturbances were from natural events.The research found "substantial differences" in the survival of adult caribou between the two areas.The animals, it turned out, fared considerably worse in the previously logged landscape — so badly that the researchers, led by John Fryxell, a professor at the University of Guelph and executive director of theBiodiversity Institute of Ontario, concluded it would lead to a dwindling population. The unlogged habitat, however, they found "should be considerably more capable of sustaining caribou."The high mortality rates for the caribou in the logged forest are mostly due to wolf predation, but human changes to the landscape help make that possible. Development has been a driving force behind declining caribou numbers throughout their range. As a result of these human disturbances, the caribou population in North America is in a precarious position. Woodland caribou once ranged across half of Canada and the northern reaches of the contiguous United States. But they're now gone from their southern range. In Canada's boreal forests, the animals are listed as threatened under the federal Species at Risk Act, Canada's version of the Endangered Species Act.

Louisiana officials complain National Parks bill ‘siphons money’ from Louisiana coast  -Billions of dollars will flow to America’s national parks and forests under a bi-partisan plan congress has approved. However, passage of the Great American Outdoors Act came over the objections of members of Louisiana's congressional delegation, who caution it will make coastal restoration dollars more difficult to obtain. The bill passed by the House and Senate will solid majorities now heads to President Donald Trump’s desk, where he is certain to sign it. See more of John Snell’s stories on coastal restoration here. For all their splendor, America's national parks and forests could use some sprucing up, according to advocates. The bill sets $900 million in mandatory funding for some of America’s most pristine lands, a major victory for conservationists and Colorado Republican Senator Cory Gardner, the bill’s sponsor. “By fixing and repairing our public lands and national parks, we have the chance to improve the roads, hiking trails, campsites and visitor centers for generations to enjoy,” Gardner said in a statement after the House vote Wednesday.

Ocean Plastic Could Triple by 2040, Report Finds - One of the most detailed studies of the plastic pollution crisis was released Thursday, and the picture it paints is not pretty. There are currently about 11 million metric tons of plastic entering the world's oceans every year, the report calculated. That's higher than the often-cited eight million figure, The Guardian pointed out. But that number will nearly triple to 29 million metric tons a year by 2040 if nothing is done to stem the flow of plastic. What's more, existing commitments from governments and businesses will only reduce that flow by seven percent by 2040."The biggest takeaway from our work is that if we don't do anything, the plastic pollution problem is going to become unmanageable. Doing nothing is not an option," Dr. Winnie Lau, study coauthor and senior manager for Pew's Preventing Ocean Plastics campaign, told CNN. The study is the result of a two-year research project led by the Pew Charitable Trusts and environmental think thank SYSTEMIQ, Ltd, as National Geographic reported. Its findings were released Thursday in both a peer-reviewed Science article and a report called "Breaking the Plastic Wave." The findings are not all doom and gloom. The researchers created a first-of-its-kind model of the global plastic system in order to determine the most effective means of solving the crisis. They found that a combination of already existing strategies and technologies could cut the amount of plastic entering the ocean by almost 80 percent by 2040.   One reason that current policies have done so little to reduce the overall amount of plastics entering the environment is that they tend to focus on single items, like straws or bags. Instead, the researchers recommended a set of solutions that target the entire plastics life cycle, from production to recycling. "All the initiatives to date make very little difference," Pew Charitable Trusts international environment director Simon Reddy told The Guardian. "There is no silver bullet, there is no solution that can simply be applied — lots of policies are wanted. You need innovation and systems change."

Sharks Are Vanishing From Many of the World’s Reefs -- A landmark study by Global FinPrint reveals sharks are absent on many of the world's coral reefs, indicating they are functionally extinct — too rare to fulfill their normal role in the ecosystem.Of the 371 reefs surveyed in 58 countries, sharks were not observed on nearly 20 percent, indicating a widespread decline that has gone undocumented on this scale until now. The Global FinPrint team, led by researchers at Florida International University (FIU), also identified conservation measures that could lead to recovery of these iconic predators.Essentially no sharks were detected on any of the reefs in the Dominican Republic, the French West Indies, Kenya, Vietnam, the Windward Dutch Antilles and Qatar. Among these, a total of only three sharks were observed during more than 800 survey hours, according to the study published today in Nature.  "While Global FinPrint results exposed a tragic loss of sharks from many of the world's reefs, it also shows us signs of hope," said Jody Allen, co-founder and chair of the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. "The data collected from the first-ever worldwide survey of sharks on coral reefs can guide meaningful, long-term conservation plans for protecting the reef sharks that remain."  This benchmark for the status of reef sharks around the world reveals an alarming global loss of these iconic species that are important food resources, tourism attractions, and top predators on coral reefs. Their loss is due in large part to overfishing of sharks, with the single largest contributor being destructive fishing practices, such as the use of longlines and gillnets.

Tropical Storm Gonzalo sets a record as it churns toward the Caribbean - Tropical Depression Seven strengthened into Tropical Storm Gonzalo on Wednesday, according to the National Hurricane Center. This is the earliest that a storm has received a name starting with the letter "G" since the United States began using a named-storm system in 1953. On average, the seventh named storm in a season is on September 16. The previous record for the earliest seventh named storm formation in the Atlantic was Gert on July 24 during the busiest hurricane season on record, 2005. "While 2020 may beat 2005 to the 7th named storm, 2005 had already had 3 hurricanes and 2 (of those were) major hurricanes (Dennis and Emily) by July 21. 2020 has yet to have a named storm reach hurricane strength," tweeted Philip Klotzbach, a research scientist at Colorado State University. 

Hurricane Hanna threatens coronavirus-stricken South Texas with surge and winds -  (Reuters) - Storm Hanna, the first hurricane of the 2020 Atlantic season, was forecast to make landfall on the Texas coast on Saturday, threatening one of the nation’s COVID-19 hot spots with storm surge and flooding. Hanna was about 75 miles (120 km) east-northeast of Port Mansfield, Texas, packing maximum sustained winds of 80 miles per hour, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said on Saturday morning. “Additional strengthening is forecast before Hanna makes landfall later today,” the Miami-based forecaster said, adding that the hurricane will rapidly weaken after it moves inland. Video footage on Twitter of Port Aransas in Nueces County, Texas showed gray skies and lashing waves that had already engulfed a beach ahead of the storm’s landfall. The storm was projected to hit the coast between Corpus Christi and Brownsville, a region that has struggled to contain outbreaks of COVID-19 in recent weeks. Cases along the state’s coast have soared into the tens of thousands, and more than 400 people in Corpus Christi’s city of 325,000 were hospitalized with the novel coronavirus on Friday, according to city data. On Friday, residents in several Texas communities in Kleberg County, south of Corpus Christi, were urged to evacuate their homes ahead of Hanna’s arrival. Corpus Christi Mayor Joe McComb warned residents who live in flood-prone areas to heed coronavirus precautions when deciding to evacuate, the Texas Tribune reported. “Take several masks with you because you might be there a couple days if you’re in a flood area,” McComb said, according to the Tribune. “We don’t want to expose anyone during this storm. ... Even when you’re in the house, I recommend wearing a mask if you’re in crowded conditions.”

7.8 Earthquake Strikes off Alaska --Alaskans were rattled by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake Tuesday night that sent people fleeing for higher ground in case of a possible tsunami, before the warning was canceled.The quake struck offshore at 10:12 p.m. local time and was located around 500 miles southwest of Anchorage and around 60 miles southeast of Perryville, Alaska, CBS News reported."This is a very significant earthquake in size," Alaska Earthquake Center seismologist Michael West told theAnchorage Daily News.M 7.8 earthquake strikes 105 km SSE of Perryville, Alaska. Tsunami warning canceled. https://t.co/bUwKvi65Lg Le… https://t.co/DlORAa8a2I— USGS (@USGS)1595413807.0The earthquake initially triggered a tsunami warning for South Alaska, the Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutian Islands, CBS News reported."Based on the preliminary earthquake parameters... hazardous tsunami waves are possible for coasts located within 300 kilometers of the earthquake epicenter," the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said, according to CBS News.The warning prompted evacuations in towns and cities including Kodiak, Sand Point, Unalaska and Homer, the Anchorage Daily News reported."We were in a (city) council meeting and started feeling it rocking, and by the time I got home from the council meeting then the warnings were going and had to turn back around," Unalaska City Manager Erin Reinders told the Anchorage Daily News.Meanwhile, in Kodiak, residents sheltered in Kodiak High School and the local Catholic school while also trying to protect themselves from the coronavirus. "We've got a high school full of people. I've been passing out masks since the first siren sounded," Kodiak School District superintendent Larry LeDoux told the Anchorage Daily News. "Everything's as calm as can be. We've got probably 300, 400 people all wearing masks."

Animals Sense Earthquakes Before They Happen. Can They Help Us Predict Disasters?  When the earthquake hit central Italy on Oct. 26, 2016, Martin Wikelski and his colleagues descended on the site in less than 24 hours. Wikelski, an ecologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany, wanted to test a hunch that has been around for millennia — that animals portend earthquakes.  Wikelski and his colleagues rushed to a farmland in the affected area to tag farm animals, hoping to understand how the animals were reacting to the quake’s aftershocks. They tagged a number of animals — six cows, five sheep, two dogs, a couple of chickens, turkeys and a rabbit — with sensors that measured the animal’s movement in three-dimensional space, like a Fitbit. Two days later, another major earthquake struck, giving Wikelski’s team a rare chance to monitor animals before, during and after an earthquake. After this initial episode, the researchers returned to the farm in January 2017, to tag the same animals again for an extended period until April 2017.  Equipped with a timeline of data on the behavior of cows, sheep and dogs from October 2016 and January-April 2017, the researchers compared the timeline of animal activity with a timeline of earthquakes that were occurring in the same period. Their results show a consistent pattern of animal behavior that occurs before each earthquake. The animals anticipated eight out of nine earthquakes with magnitudes higher than 4.0 that occurred between January and April 2017. However, the anticipatory behavior was only seen when the animals were housed in a stable, and not when they were free to roam on pastures. “We don’t know why,” says Wikelski. The team also found that the farther the animals were from the quake’s epicenter, the longer it took for their behavior to change, hinting at some slow diffusive signal that the animals detect.

Earth's protective magnetic field may change direction 10 times faster than scientists previously thought, a new study shows - The Earth's magnetic field, generated 1,860 miles (3,000 kilometers) below our feet in the liquid iron core, is crucially important to life on our planet. It extends out into space, wrapping us in an electromagnetic blanket that shields the atmosphere and satellites from solar radiation.Yet the magnetic field is constantly changing in both its strength and direction and has undergone some dramatic shifts in the past. This includes enigmatic reversals of the magnetic poles, with the south pole becoming the north pole and vice versa.A long-standing question has been how fast the field can change. A new study, published in Nature Communications, has uncovered some answers.  Rapid changes of the magnetic field are of great interest because they represent the most extreme behaviour of the ocean of molten iron in the liquid core. By tying the observed changes to core processes, we can learn important information about an otherwise inaccessible region of our planet.Historically, the fastest changes in Earth's magnetic field have been associated with reversals, which occur at irregular intervals a few times every million years. But scientists discovered field changes that are much faster and more recent than any of the data associated with actual reversals.To track the ancient field, scientists analyze the magnetism recorded by sediments, lava flows, and human-made artifacts. That's because these materials contain microscopic magnetic grains that record the signature of Earth's field at the time they cooled (for lavas) or were added to the landmass (for sediments). Sediment records from central Italy around the time of the last polarity reversal almost 800,000 years ago suggest relatively rapid field changes reaching one degree per year.

Great American Outdoors Act Passes House With Bipartisan Support -  It's a rare bill that garners sweeping bipartisan support these days. Lawmakers, however, agree that one of the country's treasures, the U.S. national parks, is worth preserving.On Wednesday, the House passed the Great American Outdoors Act, a sweeping and historic conservationand public lands bill that President Donald Trump has pledged to sign into law, as CNN reported.As EcoWatch reported, the Senate approved the bill in June in a 73-25 vote. The bill, which is being hailed as one of the most important environmental bills to pass in decades, secures permanent funding for the Land Water Conservation Fund (LCWF). It passed the house in a 310-107 vote and now moves to Trump's desk.The Land Water Conservation Fund, which was established in the 1960s, is a little-known bill that produces substantial public benefit. It uses revenue from the oil and gas industry to finance national parks and federal historic sites. A major portion of the fund is also allocated to local and state parks and playgrounds, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB)."This is a historic victory over 50 years in the making for communities across the country that benefit from the economic, cultural and recreational value of America's public lands and close-to-home recreation," said the LWCF coalition, an organization that advocates for the fund, in a statement, as OPB reported.The LWCF has been chronically underfunded, but the Great American Outdoors Act will require mandatory funding of $900 million annually, without using a penny of taxpayer dollars, as CNN reported. "It's clear that national parks have united Americans of all kinds of backgrounds, not just those who are actively involved in the political process," wrote Sen. Steven Daines (R-MT) and Benji Backer, founder of the American Conservation Coalition, in The Hill. "In 2018, a Pew poll demonstrated that 94 percent of Americans thought it was important to preserve historic buildings and landmarks. That's why this bill is so unique. Not only is it a landmark piece of legislation, but the broad coalitions who support it are just as impressive."

Democrats call for expedited hearing for Trump's public lands nominee --A group of Democratic senators from Western states are pushing for an expedited hearing for a public lands nominee that they strongly oppose, saying that this will more quickly expose his record. The letter, spearheaded by Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), urged leaders of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee to examine William Perry Pendley’s nomination as soon as possible. President Trump nominated Pendley to formally lead the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) last month, though Pendley has already been at the agency’s helm in an acting capacity for about a year. His nomination was met with a torrent of opposition from conservationists, who argue that his past advocacy for selling all federal lands and significant ties to industry should disqualify him for the role. In the Tuesday letter, nine senators wrote to committee leaders asking them to “expedite a hearing and subsequent business meeting on the nomination of William Pendley.” “After nearly a year as Acting Director, Mr. Pendley’s formal nomination is long overdue, and the public deserves the opportunity to hold him accountable for his record of undermining our public lands, clean water, and jobs that rely on both,” they wrote. “ We respectfully ask that you work with Mr. Pendley to hold a hearing as soon as you receive his paperwork so his record can be vetted before the American public.” Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chair Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) disagreed, arguing there was no need to "rush" a hearing. “Why rush a hearing when we already have two non-controversial nominees from ENR – Lanny Erdos and Mark Menezes – being held up on the Senate floor?" Murkowski told The Hill in a statement. "As with all nominees, the committee will conduct its due diligence, ensure we have received and vetted all relevant paperwork, and allow time for member meetings to take place before deciding when to hold a hearing," she said. The senator didn't say when a hearing will take place, instead saying that committee members will be the first to know about the plans.

World’s Largest Iceberg Drifting Toward South America, Picking up Speed - Videos from The Weather Channel - A giant iceberg that broke off the Larsen C ice shelf in July 2017 is now 650 miles from its birthplace.

First active leak of sea-bed methane discovered in Antarctica - The first active leak of methane from the sea floor in Antarctica has been revealed by scientists. The researchers also found microbes that normally consume the potent greenhouse gas before it reaches the atmosphere had only arrived in small numbers after five years, allowing the gas to escape. Vast quantities of methane are thought to be stored under the sea floor around Antarctica. The gas could start to leak as the climate crisis warms the oceans, a prospect the researchers said was “incredibly concerning”. The reason for the emergence of the new seep remains a mystery, but it is probably not global heating, as the Ross Sea where it was found has yet to warm significantly. The research also has significance for climate models, which currently do not account for a delay in the microbial consumption of escaping methane. The active seep was first spotted by chance by divers in 2011, but it took scientists until 2016 to return to the site and study it in detail, before beginning laboratory work. “The delay [in methane consumption] is the most important finding,” said Andrew Thurber, from Oregon State University in the US, who led the research. “It is not good news. It took more than five years for the microbes to begin to show up and even then there was still methane rapidly escaping from the sea floor.” The release of methane from frozen underwater stores or permafrost regions is one of the key tipping points that scientists are concerned about, which occur when a particular impact of global heating becomes unstoppable. “The methane cycle is absolutely something that we as a society need to be concerned about,” said Thurber. “I find it incredibly concerning.”

Australia Wants to Build a Huge Concrete Runway in Antarctica. Here’s Why That’s a Bad Idea  --Australia wants to build a 2.7-kilometre concrete runway in Antarctica, the world's biggest natural reserve. The plan, if approved, would have the largest footprint of any project in the continent's history. The runway is part of an aerodrome to be constructed near Davis Station, one of Australia's three permanent bases in Antarctica. It would be the first concrete runway on the continent. The plan is subject to federal environmental approval. It coincides with new research published this week showing Antarctica's wild places need better protection. Human activity across Antarctica has been extensive in the past 200 years – particularly in the coastal, ice-free areas where most biodiversity is found. The area around Davis Station is possibly Antarctica's most significant coastal, ice-free area. It featuresunique lakes, fjords, fossil sites and wildlife.  Australia has traditionally been considered an environmental leader in Antarctica. For example, Australia's 20 Year Action Plan promotes "leadership in environmental stewardship in Antarctica", pledging to "minimise the environmental impact of Australia's activities". But the aerodrome proposal appears at odds with that goal. It would cover 2.2 square kilometres, increasing the total "disturbance footprint" of all nations on the continent by 40%. It would also mean Australia has the biggest footprint of any nation, overtaking the United States. Within this footprint, environmental effects will also be intense. Construction will require more than three million cubic metres of earthworks - levelling 60 vertical metres of hills and valleys along the length of the runway. This will inevitably cause dust emissions – on the windiest continent on Earth - and the effect of this on plants and animals in Antarctica is poorly understood.Wilson's storm petrels that nest at the site will be displaced. Native lichens, fungi and algae will be destroyed, and irreparable damage is expected at adjacent lakes.Weddell seals breed within 500 metres of the proposed runway site. Federal environment officials recognisethe dust from construction and subsequent noise from low flying aircraft have the potential to disturb these breeding colonies.The proposed area is also important breeding habitat for Adélie penguins. Eight breeding sites in the region are listed as "important bird areas". Federal environment officials state the penguins are likely to be impacted by human disturbance, dust, and noise from construction of the runway, with particular concern for oil spills and aircraft operations.

Sierra Club Disowns John Muir Over Friendship With Eugenicists, 'Perpetuating White Supremacy' - He may have devoted most of his life to the preservation of America's wilderness and had a direct hand in the establishment of Yosemite National Park, but legendary environmentalist John Muir was friends with eugenicists - and so, he must be canceled. The Sierra Club - which Muir founded and served as its first president - has condemned the iconic naturalist for his associations, along with racist comments in what Executive Director Michael Brune described as part of the organization's "substantial role in perpetuating white supremacy."  In a Wednesday post on their website, Brune pointed to Muir's close friendship with paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn and other eugenicists - whose movement sought to improve the genetic quality of the human race through selective breeding and sterilization of those deemed 'unfit to reproduce.' The list of 'undesirables'  included those with mental or physical disabilities, low IQs, criminals, deviants, and various minority groups. The Sierra Club's distancing from Muir comes just one day after Planned Parenthood of Greater New York announced that they would remove the name of Margaret Sanger, the organization's founder, from their Manhattan clinic in order to disavow her ties to the eugenics movement. However, it may come as a surprise that as recently as 2009 eugenics was OK - that's when Hillary Clinton said she was "really in awe" of Sanger, whose work "in the United States and certainly across our globe is not done." Muir was further denigrated in Wednesday's Washington Post,  which called him racist for having described native Americans 'dirty' - which Johnmuir.org points out was taken out of context.  He also referred to African Americans as lazy "Sambos," according to the Post, writing in A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf "One energetic white man, working with a will, would easily pick as much cotton as half a dozen Sambos and Sallies."

Greta Thunberg wins 1 million euro prize, says she will donate it to environmental groups - Climate activist Greta Thunberg plans to donate a 1 million euro ($1.14 million) prize to organizations focused on the environment and climate change. The 17 year old Swede was named winner of the inaugural Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity on Monday. In a video, she described herself as being "incredibly honored and extremely grateful … this means a lot to me and I hope that it will help me do more good in the world." "All the prize money will be donated through my foundation to different organizations and projects who are working to help people on the front lines affected by the climate crisis and ecological crisis, especially in the Global South," she went on to say. She added that the money would also "help organizations and projects who are fighting for a sustainable world and who are fighting to defend nature and the natural world." Breaking the initial donations down, Thunberg tweeted that 100,000 euros would be donated to the "SOS Amazonia Campaign led by Fridays For Future Brazil to tackle Covid-19 in the Amazon." A further 100,000 euros will go to the Stop Ecocide Foundation. The Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity says it "aims to recognise people, groups of people and/or organisations from all over the world whose contributions to mitigation and adaptation to climate change stand out for its novelty, innovation and impact." The Portugal-based Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation was set up in the 1950s following the death of Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian, a wealthy businessman and philanthropist with interests in oil. 

Major new climate study rules out less-severe global warming scenarios --The current pace of human-caused carbon emissions is increasingly likely to trigger irreversible damage to the planet, according to a comprehensive international study released Wednesday. Researchers studying one of the most important and vexing topics in climate science — how sensitive the Earth’s climate is to a doubling of the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — found that warming is extremely unlikely to be on the low end of estimates. These scientists now say it is likely that if human activities — such as burning oil, gas and coal along with deforestation — push carbon dioxide to such levels, the Earth’s global average temperature will most likely increase between 4.1 to 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit (2.3 and 4.5 degrees Celsius). The previous and long-standing estimated range of climate sensitivity, as first laid out in a 1979 report, was 2.7 to 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 to 4.5 Celsius). If the warming reaches the midpoint of this new range, it would be extremely damaging, said Kate Marvel, a physicist at NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies and Columbia University, who called it the equivalent of a “five-alarm fire” for the planet. The new range is narrower than previous studies, but shows at least a 95% chance that a doubling of carbon dioxide, which the world is on course to reach within the next five decades or so, would result in warming greater than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) relative to preindustrial temperatures. That is the threshold beyond which scientists say the Earth will suffer dangerous effects — disruptive sea level rise, intolerable heat waves and other extreme weather and permanent damage to ecosystems. Staying below that is still possible. If steep emissions cuts are made in the near-term, a doubling of carbon dioxide levels could be avoided. But if a doubling does occur, there would be a 6 to 18 percent chance of exceeding the upper bound defined by the study of 8.1 Fahrenheit (4.5 Celsius).

Large U.S. Homes Create Bigger Carbon Footprint, New Study Shows - Dreaming of a white-picket-fence home in an affluent suburb? Chances are your carbon footprint will be 15 times larger than your less-well-off neighbor.A new study finds that wealthy Americans living in spacious houses in upscale neighborhoods are responsible for 25% more emissions on average than those living in smaller houses in poorer areas.Rich people live in bigger houses and consume more energy, generating greater climate-warming emissions, according to the research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."Although houses are becoming more energy-efficient, U.S. household energy use and related greenhouse gas emissions are not shrinking," lead author Benjamin Goldstein, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan, said in a statement, adding that "this lack of progress undermines the substantial emissions reductions needed to mitigate climate change."The U.S. has the highest per capita emissions of any country and has historically pumped the largest amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. About a quarter of U.S. emissions are produced by households, which is more than Germany's total emissions.Goldstein and his team tracked energy consumption patterns of nearly 100 million households by reviewing their 2015 tax records. They looked at incomes, building types, the climate, and the kind of power grid supplying homes to generate the first-ever national carbon emissions rankings of states down to the zip code.House acreage plays an outsized role in determining a household's carbon footprint, and lower-income people generally live in smaller spaces. Carbon emissions linked to residences are a result of everything from the use of dishwashers and lights, to heating and cooling.

Inefficient Air Conditioning Drives Global Warming, UN Report Finds - Air conditioning systems are a significant contributor to global warming pollution that can and should be made more efficient, a new UN report shows."If we deal with cooling wrong, we essentially cook ourselves," Gabrielle Dreyfus, the cool efficiency program manager at the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, said on a press call.As climate change drives up global temperatures, demand for air conditioning is expected to quadruple by 2050. To provide cooling units to everybody who needs them — not just those who can afford them— the world would need up to 14 billion units by 2050, according to the report.However, cheap, inefficient devices — especially when powered by coal- or gas-fired power plants — create a vicious cycle that further drives global warming, while improving cooling efficiency could bring multifold benefits.Completely banning hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs – a group of potent but short-lived greenhouse gases that are still used in many cooling devices – could trim global warming by up to 0.4°C by the end of the century.A switch to more efficient air conditioning units could cut global energy consumption by the equivalent of all the 2018 coal-fired generation in China and India combined.The report also calls for low-tech efficiency improvements, which will especially benefit low-income communities and communities of color.For a deeper dive: AP, Gizmodo, Thomson Reuters Foundation, The Guardian, CNBC

Morgan Stanley commits to tallying its climate impact - Morgan Stanley will become the first major U.S. bank to publicly disclose the how much its loans and investments contribute to climate change, the latest sign that Wall Street giants are beginning to reckon with their role in heating the planet.The move comes as financial regulators in many countries are considering whether to require greater disclosure from companies about the risks they face from climate change — and as a growing number of shareholders and investors worry about their exposure to fossil fuels that could suffer from future government policies to rein in greenhouse gas emissions.“This is a journey, and I think that this is an incredibly important piece of it, because as we all know it's harder to make people respond to something when there's no data, it's hard to have data when you don't have measurement,” Audrey Choi, chief sustainability officer for Morgan Stanley and CEO of its Institute for Sustainable Investing, told POLITICO. “This is an important step towards getting more clarity.” The bank is joining the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials, a global body with 66 financial company members managing $5.3 trillion of assets, that will count the greenhouse gas emissions from projects and investments that are financed by asset managers, banks and other institutions. Morgan Stanley will sit on the group’s steering committee to help deliver a final methodology for financial institutions to follow this fall.

 Despite the talk, Shell and Total are still investing much more in fossil fuels than renewables - While Shell and Total are shifting towards renewable energy technologies, around 90% of their capital continues to be spent on fossil fuels, finds a new report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). To reach their own stated targets, IEEFA estimates that Shell and Total each needs to shift at least $10bn per annum (or 50% of total capital expenditure) from oil and gas exploration and invest into accelerating their renewable strategies. Ranking among the most significant contributors to the build-up of greenhouse gases, report author Clark Butler says both Shell and Total are well short of their publicised sustainable energy targets without a major shift of investment from fossil fuel assets to renewable energy. “Total is unlikely to meet its 2025 goal of 25 gigawatts of installed renewable energy on its current trajectory,” says Butler. “And Shell’s immediate plan to spend $6bn on renewable energy generation by the end of 2020 will also fail.” Total, the world’s fourth largest oil and gas company, has pledged to be net-zero in Europe (only) by 2050, and to reduce its carbon emissions intensity by 60% or more by 2050. Similarly, Shell plans to reduce its net carbon footprint by 65% by 2050. “It is difficult to see how either company will achieve the massive transformation in carbon intensity they aim for without a fundamental shift away from oil and gas investment,” says Butler. “Shell and Total together are responsible for more carbon emissions than Germany, the world’s sixth largest emitter. It is impossible for them to be net zero unless they invest more in zero emissions energy and less in fossil fuels.

Chevron Uses Solar Panels to Produce Oil More Cheaply – In California’s sun-drenched Kern Valley, Chevron Corp. has found a way to use one of the state’s clean-energy programs to cut the cost of pumping oil, to the chagrin of some environmentalists.Since April, solar panels have been powering oil pumps at Chevron’s Lost Hills 7,981 barrel-a-day oil field, according to the company. The 29-megawatt site, owned by Goldman Sachs Renewable Power Llc.-controlled Solar Star Lost Hills Llc., is designed to provide the field with 80% of its electricity, equal to taking more than 4,000 cars off the road. In exchange, Chevron will earn so-called low-carbon fuel standard credits worth about $4 million a year at current prices.“Electricity is one of Lost Hills field’s largest operating expenses, so having solar will be an important factor to help keep those costs down and maintain the planned oil field life,” Veronica Flores-Paniagua, a Chevron spokeswoman, said in an email.Renewable energy costs have fallen “substantially” over time, making its application to oil fields more economic, Telisa Toliver, Chevron Pipeline & Power’s general manager for renewable power, said in an interview. “We see this business model for us as something we hope to replicate,” she said. The Lost Hills project, Chevron’s largest solar-powered oil field, marks an unusual twist in the fate of the state’s decade-old Low Carbon Fuel Standard Program. The carbon-trading plan, designed to cut emissions 20% by 2030, has mostly been used to supplant gasoline and diesel with ethanol and biodiesel in vehicles. But it’s starting to benefit local oil companies as well, a development that environmentalists say may subvert the program’s intent of ushering in more renewable fuels.. The Chevron project is one of three oil-field solar projects approved for LCFS credits by the California Air Resources Board since early June. The companies, including Grade Water and Power LLC.,E&B Natural Resources Management Corp. andRotterdam Ventures Inc., are benefiting from a provision that was added to the program in its early years allowing oil drillers to qualify for credits through so-called “innovative crude oil production methods” such as solar or carbon-capture-and-storage.

Southwest Power Pool could add more than 5 GW of wind generation capacity by end-2020 - — Southwest Power Pool could add more than 5 GW of wind generation capacity by the end of 2020, on top of the nearly 650 MW already added to the grid this year, according to grid operator data. Wind-powered generation has been the lead fuel source for the last six months across the SPP footprint, after first surpassing coal-fired generation during two months in 2019 and consistently since January. SPP set a new wind peak record of 18.343 GW on July 17. The rise in wind generation as part of a national energy transition toward renewable sources has pulled down wholesale power prices. "The impact of high wind generation is quite clear in SPP where we see lot of congestion and negative power price clears," said Manan Ahuja, S&P Global Platts Analytics North American power manager. SPP South Hub on-peak day-ahead locational marginal prices have averaged about $18.75/MWh for the first half of 2020, 34% lower than the average for the same period in 2015, according to SPP data. Likewise, North Hub on-peak day-ahead LMP averaged roughly $18.50/MWh for the first half of 2020, 21% below the 2015 average during the same months. The SPP generation interconnection report includes more than 5.7 GW of generation capacity from all fuel sources listed as "on schedule" with fully executed interconnection agreements and commercial operation dates in 2020 dates, according to the latest data S&P Global Platts pulled. The majority of new capacity, 2.5 GW, is expected to be added in Oklahoma, followed by 975 MW in Texas, 822 MW in Kansas, 522 MW in New Mexico and about 300 in each Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Missouri, according to SPP data. Of the 5.7 GW with 2020 dates, nearly 550 MW of generation have dates listed in the first half of the 2020 but are not yet operational, according to the report. Those include 486 MW of wind generation, 20 MW of solar, 20 MW of battery and 20 MW from combustion turbines. "This may mean the project is experiencing a delay in construction or is under evaluation for a generation modification," SPP spokeswoman Meghan Sever said July 21. Of the nearly 5.2 GW listed as "on schedule" with commercial operation dates through the end of the year, all are wind generation with the exception of 17 MW of gas capacity, according to the report. In addition, a 370-MW wind project was expected to come online in December 2021, but is currently listed as operational, according to the report.

RENEWABLE ENERGY: N.Y. eyes Great Lakes offshore wind as foes blast 'assault' -- Thursday, July 23, 2020 --  New York may seek to resurrect a long-abandoned plan to build offshore wind turbines in the Great Lakes, even as critics call for state officials to stop an "assault" of renewable energy projects in rural areas.

Renewables topped fossil fuels in EU electricity generation for first time through June 2020 - Europe’s long goodbye to coal is speeding up, in a transition smoothed by the rise of wind and solar power and energy policy that has priced the fossil fuel out of many markets, according to data released on Wednesday. Renewable sources of power have taken over for the first time in 2020, generating 40% of European Union electricity, while fossil fuels generated 34%, independent think-tank Ember said in a half-yearly report. In Spain, coal generation fell 58% in the first six months of the year, even before half its remaining plants closed in June as they no longer complied with EU emissions rules. The pace of plant closures in Spain, with 69% of the entire fleet to be shuttered between 2020 and 2021, has no precedent, Global Energy Monitor program director Christine Shearer said. In Portugal, coal generation fell 95% in the first half of 2020, Ember said. Last week major utility EDP brought forward its Iberian plant closures to 2021, after writing down their value last year. The Netherlands, Austria and France all saw reductions of more than 50%. Sweden and Austria closed their last plants in March. In Germany coal generation fell 39%, taking it for the first time below Poland, which now generates as much electricity from coal as the EU’s remaining 25 countries put together.

NY utilities signal that they will consider electrification to offset gas demand - Future natural gas supply planning in New York will take into account the potential for building electrification and fossil fuel alternatives to displace gas distribution, state multi-utilities said. The utilities addressed the issue in their initial response to a statewide regulatory proceeding that seeks to align gas planning with New York climate policies (N.Y. PSC case 20-G-0131). These policies, along with barriers to new interstate gas pipelines, are having a "profound impact" on long-term gas system planning and creating a need to evolve, the utilities said in a July 17 filing. Moving forward, stakeholders should design the planning process to meet anticipated gas demand through "all viable supply-side and demand-side resources, such as electrification, energy efficiency, and demand response initiatives." The utilities that jointly filed the report included Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp.; Consolidated Edison Inc. subsidiaries Consolidated Edison Co. of New York Inc. and Orange and Rockland Utilities Inc.; National Fuel Gas Distribution Corp.; Avangrid Inc. subsidiaries New York State Electric & Gas Corp. and Rochester Gas & Electric Corp.; and National Grid USA subsidiaries Brooklyn Union Gas Co., KeySpan Gas East Corp. and Niagara Mohawk Power Corp. The filing addressed a concern raised by the New York Public Service Commission, or PSC: the rising dependence on peaking services to meet gas demand. These include contracting for compressed natural gas, or CNG, delivered by truck to fill the supply gap left by a lack of firm gas transportation service. Underscoring the concerns was a recent decision by Williams Cos. Inc. to cancel a gas pipeline project into New York City after the state denied the developer a critical water permit. An earlier permit rejection prompted National Grid to implement a moratorium on new gas hookups in 2019, precipitating a months-long standoff with the state that ended in a $36 million settlement. During the dispute, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed into law the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which codified New York's goal of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

More than 60% of energy used for electricity generation is lost in conversion  --In 2019, U.S. utility-scale generation facilities consumed 38 quadrillion British thermal units (quads) of energy to provide 14 quads of electricity. Most of the difference between these values was lost as an inherent result of the energy conversion process. The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) U.S. electricity flow diagram visualizes U.S. electricity flow from energy sources consumed to generate electricity and electricity net imports to disposition (conversion and other losses, plant use, and end-use consumption). Electricity is a secondary energy source that is produced when primary energy sources (for example, natural gas, coal, wind) are converted into electric power. When energy is transformed from one form to another and moved from one place to another, some of the input energy is lost in the process. Some input energy is lost during electricity generation as well as other processes such as when vehicles burn gasoline.The technology and the type of fuel used to generate electricity affect the efficiency of power plants. For example, in 2019, of the 11.9 quads of natural gas consumed for electricity generation, natural gas plants converted 45% (5.4 quads) into net generation of electricity. By contrast, of the 10.2 quads of coal consumption, coal plants converted 32% (3.3 quads) into net generation.The difference in conversion rates is because coal-fired generation plants in the United States are often older andless efficient than many natural gas-fired plants. In U.S. power plants, generating a kilowatthour of electricity from coal requires on average about one-third more energy than producing a kilowatthour from natural gas. Although more electricity was generated by natural gas than by coal in 2016, it was not until 2019 that more natural gas was used to generate electricity than coal.In recent decades, the U.S. electric power grid’s fuel mix has shifted from mostly coal to a more diverse selection of fuels, including natural gas and renewable energy. In particular, the shift toward newer, more efficient natural gas-fired power plants with combined-cycle generators has resulted in an increase in the average efficiency of fossil fuel-fired electric power plants and in lower levels of overall conversion losses. EIA calculates total primary energy consumption for noncombustible renewable electricity sources, such as hydroelectricity, wind, and solar, by applying a fossil fuel equivalency factor. In terms of end use, nearly all (96%) of the 13.3 quads of electricity used in the United States during 2019 was delivered as retail sales to four end-use sectors (residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation). The remaining 4% was used directly by facilities in the commercial and industrial sectors. The residential and commercial sectors accounted for nearly 75% of electricity retail sales in 2019.

Grid operators agree on short-term gas benefits, but say it shouldn't limit renewables growth - Five wholesale electric power market executives agreed that natural gas will continue to play an essential role on the electric power grid, though some caution against an overemphasis on blackstart capabilities amid efforts for higher renewable energy penetrations. "We have some very, very plentiful hydro assets, some good performing nuclear assets, but very frequently, natural gas is what's on the margin and what is the balancing resource for most of the renewables that have been added over the system," Richard Dewey, president and CEO of the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO), said Tuesday during the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners' (NARUC) Summer Policy Summit. But despite the grid operators' unanimous consensus on the resource's short-term benefits, PJM Interconnection President and CEO Manu Asthana warned against prescribing too many issues to renewables so early in the game. "If we get to 100%, we're gonna have to solve some of these really, really challenging problems, but I think that compared to where we are today, we shouldn't let the great be the enemy of the good," he said. For many regions of the U.S., the electric power grid has undergone a rapid transition from majority coal-fired power to majority natural gas. Meanwhile, states across the U.S. have begun to set increasingly ambitious clean energy goals for their power systems, sometimes coming into conflict with grid operator policies they see as a hindrance to bringing on high levels of renewable energy at once. And unlike the California and New York ISOs, some grid operators have more than one legislature to keep in mind, noted Asthana. Though policy directives in those states are "clear," they're not necessarily easy, he said. But for a grid operator like PJM that includes states with ambitious clean energy goals such as Maryland, New Jersey and Illinois, as well as states like West Virginia and Pennsylvania that have historically benefited from coal and natural gas, respectively. "We're not trying to … favor particular fuel, but the policy discussions that we're seeing are significantly trending in the direction of decarbonization ... and so it's interesting to think about what is the art of the possible?" Asthana said. For PJM, even with more piecemeal policy directives, ultimately it's been the coal-to-gas transition that has led to significant emissions reductions within its market. "So imagine what is going to happen with increased renewable penetration over time," he said. "I think gas will continue to be an important part of the mix, particularly in the near term, because the dispatchable generation is essential to ensure reliability. But in the longer term, you know, a lot of it depends on the penetration of renewables and the penetration of batteries."

Feds file criminal case against ComEd, implicate House Speaker Mike Madigan - Chicago Sun-Times --Early last year, when federal investigations into public corruption dominated the headlines, a longtime ally of House Speaker Michael Madigan gave a little advice to a ComEd vice president, according to an explosive court document filed Friday. Lobbyist Mike McClain allegedly told the utility executive that, “I would say to you don’t put anything in writing.” The two then discussed a “favor” for Madigan that federal prosecutors now say was part of a brazen, years-long Chicago-style bribery scheme that sent $1.3 million to Madigan’s associates for doing little or no work for the utility, all while ComEd hoped to land Madigan’s support for legislation in Springfield worth more than $150 million. ComEd has now been charged in federal court with bribery and is expected to pay a $200 million fine — believed to be the largest criminal fine ever in Chicago’s federal court. Several politicians, including Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker, said Madigan should resign if the allegations against one of the most powerful Democrats in the state are true.  While the bombshell case implicates several individuals in the alleged scheme, no one else has been criminally charged. And that includes Madigan.“Our investigation is ongoing,” U.S. Attorney John Lausch said repeatedly at a Friday news conference outside the Dirksen Federal Courthouse when asked about additional criminal charges.  In fact, the feds earlier on Friday hit Madigan with a fresh subpoena that appears to seriously expand the investigation, with inquiries about AT&T Services Inc., Walgreens and Rush University Medical Center. The document, obtained by the Sun-Times, also seeks records concerning a laundry list of Madigan’s top supporters, including former Aldermen Mike Zalewski and Frank OIivo, current 13th Ward Ald. Marty Quinn, ComEd and Exelon, McClain, properties in Chinatown, previously written about by the Sun-Times, and former Ald. Danny Solis. Walgreens had no comment. AT&T did not respond to a request for comment. Rush said in a statement only that it “has received and is cooperating with a subpoena for records reflecting work by, and communications with, certain government relations consultants for the period 2014 to the present.”  The Sun-Times first revealed in January 2019 that Solis has for years cooperated with federal prosecutors. It also reported that the FBI recorded Madigan during a meeting with Solis and a developer hoping to build a hotel also in the Chinatown neighborhood. The Sun-Times report about the feds’ Madigan recording, also in January 2019, landed nine days before McClain told the ComEd vice president on Feb. 7, 2019, not to put things in writing.

Tallying Up The High Cost of ComEd’s Springfield Scheme | WBEZ Chicago - Commonwealth Edison executives have admitted the huge power company bribed its way to lucrative legislative wins in Springfield — and millions of customers in Illinois can see the steep price they’re paying for it on every electric bill. During the eight-year bribery scheme, the amount of state-approved revenue Chicago-based ComEd collected for delivering power to its many customers across northern Illinois increased more than 30%, according to a WBEZ analysis of records from the state agency that oversees the electric company and other public utilities.Over the same period, ComEd’s net annual operating income swelled more than 50%, the documents from the Illinois Commerce Commission show.“It affected our electrical bills, yours and mine,” said Juliet Sorensen, a former federal prosecutor who investigated corruption cases. “It’s really a prime example of the fallacy that public corruption is a victimless crime.” About 4 million homes and businesses are feeling the financial pain from the sharp increase in rates because ComEd enjoys a near-monopoly in Chicago and far beyond, delivering power to roughly 70% of the people of Illinois. Last week, ComEd and federal prosecutors in Chicago announced that the company would pay a $200 million fine to the U.S. government to settle allegations it engaged in the long-running bribery scheme in state government.The company concedes it was all part of a push to curry and keep favor with “Public Official A,” a clear reference to longtime state House Speaker and Democratic Party of Illinois boss Michael Madigan. He has not been charged and has vehemently denied wrongdoing.  But in its agreement with the feds, the power company executives admitted ComEd secretly paid more than $1.3 million from 2011 through 2019 to Madigan-connected consultants for little or no work.Clout hiring to win influence also impacted ComEd’s internship program, which drew “primarily” from the students in Madigan’s 13th Ward, and even a seat in the corporate boardroom, according to court records.The politically connected “subcontractors” mentioned in court records included a former Chicago alderman and one of Madigan’s top three precinct captains from his ward organization, who trained others to work effectively on campaigns for the speaker’s vaunted political army.The payments to the politically blessed, ghost consultants and other clout hires have provided a big return on ComEd’s investment. The corrupt behavior won concessions in Springfield that have been worth exponentially more than the payments “indirectly” funneled to Madigan-connected consultants through a ComEd lobbyist and other third parties, according to court records.ComEd’s agreement with the feds pointedly notes how the speaker from Chicago’s Southwest Side and other Illinois lawmakers favored the company with two pieces of lucrative state legislation, in 2011 and 2016.“ComEd acknowledges that the reasonably foreseeable anticipated benefits to ComEd of such legislation exceeded $150,000,000,” according to the court records unsealed a week ago.

S&P: U.S. coal exports down 29% through May 2020 compared to 2019 - The U.S. coal sector is taking another beating as exports to two key markets, Asia and Europe, plunged in the first five months of this year.U.S. exports between January to May totaled 27.6 million tonnes, falling 29.0% from the amount shipped over the same months last year, S&P Global Market Intelligence data show. Of the total, the U.S. shipped 12.4 million tonnes to countries in Asia, down 11.5%, and 8.9 million tonnes to European countries, which also fell 36.3% from the prior year.About 80.2% of the coal exported for steelmaking from the U.S. during the first quarter went to countries in Asia and Europe, data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration shows. However, global steel production has been down about 5% this year through May with steep declines in North America, the European Union and South America, Moody’s analysts add.Among the 20 largest destinations for U.S. coal exports year-to-date, 15 showed year-over-year declines. Shipments to India, where the U.S. shipped the most tonnes through May, fell by 14.0% from the same period a year ago. Meanwhile, other countries such as South Korea, China, Turkey, Singapore, and the Dominican Republic saw year-on-year increases.The downturn in U.S. coal exports could stretch through the end of 2020. In its most recent “Short-Term Energy Outlook” released in early July, the EIA projected that coal exports will fall 32% to 63 million tons this year before recovering and growing by 7% in 2021. U.S. metallurgical coal exports for the calendar year 2020, for instance, are expected to drop by about 10 million tonnes from 2019 levels, according to Jim Truman, Wood Mackenzie’s director for global metallurgical coal markets. “Reductions shouldn’t be too surprising, as the U.S. is the classic swing supplier to the seaborne metallurgical coal markets and overall trade is down, as well as prices,” Truman told S&P Global Market Intelligence in a July 14 email, adding that China and India will be “the most important drivers to the recovery of total seaborne trade.”

Coal is in crisis. Can Virginia's pool bond system handle the collapse? -  As the COVID-19 pandemic accelerates King Coal’s decline, Virginia could be on the hook for millions in cleanup costs if an anticipated wave of bankruptcies destabilizes its bond pool system for managing the risks of company failures. One of six states, all in or near the Appalachian basin, that allow coal companies to post partial assurances that they will cover the costs of reclamation if they cease operations, Virginia has known there are vulnerabilities in its system for almost a decade. “The program has sufficient resources to withstand the forfeiture of one or two smaller permits,” wrote actuaries in a 2012 report commissioned by Virginia’s Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy. “The more significant risk to the Fund is from the exposure to companies with multiple permits and possibly from larger parent companies should they forfeit multiple permits simultaneously.” Eight years later, the situation has taken on an added urgency with the continued shrinkage of the coal industry. “Any state that has a bond pool is at enormous risk and is almost guaranteed to have to find other sources of funds to pay for the reclamation of abandoned coal mines,” said Peter Morgan, an attorney with the Sierra Club who has been tracking Virginia’s bonding program for more than a decade. Virginia’s DMME is “concerned” with the system’s stability given the ongoing industry contractions, said Division of Mine Land Reclamation Director Randy Casey in an email to the Mercury, pointing out that “major industry-wide forfeitures would strain any bonding system, not just those in Virginia.” Fixes, however, won’t be easy. In Virginia, any major alterations to the current system would need to be passed by the General Assembly, and many industry players disagree on the best way to proceed given the belief prevalent among regulators that if coal operators are pushed too far, they will walk away from their permits and leave the public to bear the burden of cleanup. Still, said Joe Pizarchik, who between 2009 and 2017 served as the longest-running director of the U.S. Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation, the longer state governments and regulators delay in grappling with the problem, “the more severe and dangerous it becomes.” “Eventually these bond pools are going to fail,” he said. “And when they fail, the state and federal government will probably be sued, and … then the state will have to come up with the money to complete reclamation.”

Coal operator Rhino Resource Partners files for bankruptcy protection — Rhino Resource Partners, one of the companies that purchased assets from bankrupt coal operator Blackjewel last year, has filed for bankruptcy protection. The company announced Wednesday that it, along with its subsidiaries, has filed for Chapter 11 and plans to sell all of its assets to a stalking horse bidder “in an effort to maximize value for all stakeholders and allow for the prospect of continued employment and business opportunities at its operating locations.” In court documents, company officials state they have around 547 employees at coal operations in several states, including Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia. Rhino Resource Partners purchased several of Blackjewel’s Virginia assets amid its 2019 bankruptcy, including three underground coal mines, a preparation plant, and a rail loadout facility. Those facilities are under a subsidiary named Jewell Valley Mining.  The Blackjewel bankruptcy grabbed national attention after miners blocked a coal train for weeks in protest of unpaid wages. In court documents, Rhino Resource Partners CEO Richard Boone said market forces have led to declining coal production and revenues within the company. The company temporarily idled many of its coal mining operations in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

For Fossil Fuel Companies, Bankruptcy Is a Bailout - Around this time last year, Jeff Hoops—CEO of Blackjewel LLC—filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, abruptly closing the company’s Bell Ayr and Eagle Butte mines in Wyoming and laying off 700 workers. Construction had by that point begun on a $30 million “first phase” of the new Grand Patrician Resort he was building in his hometown of Milton, West Virginia, set to include a 3,500-seat replica of the Roman Colosseum. Within days, hundreds of Blackjewel miners in the Powder River Basin and Appalachia reported money “disappearing” from their bank accounts after paychecks had been deposited. On July 3, a bankruptcy judge granted Blackjewel $5 million in relief funds in exchange for Hoops stepping down as CEO. Blackjewel workers filed a lawsuit over stolen wages shortly thereafter. In Harlan County, Kentucky, they held a two-month sit-in on train tracks to block coal from their former employer from getting to market. Eventually, a court ordered that Blackjewel cough up the back pay.  Many say Blackjewel still owes them, and Hoops is under investigation.  Similar stories could be coming soon to the notoriously overleveraged oil and gas industry, which has been struggling during the current pandemic but is already lavishing its executives with healthy payouts. In April, Diamond Offshore Drilling asked a bankruptcy judge to let it funnel $9.7 million in bonuses to its top executives, the same amount it had just gotten through a tax rebate created by the March stimulus package. Chesapeake Energy—the company that helped sell fracking to Wall Street—and California Natural Resources, the Golden State’s largest oil and gas company, have each filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy within the last month, amid the Covid-19-sparked downturn in demand and investors’ cooling attitude toward a sector that has always struggled to turn a profit;hundreds more could be coming, as investor patience continues to wane and debt obligations come due. As bankruptcy—often a new lease on life for struggling companies—becomes a ubiquitous feature of the fossil fuel industry, who’s looking out for the workers and pensions it’s leaving behind?

States try again to block coal sales that Trump revived (AP) — A coalition of states, environmentalists and American Indians on Monday renewed its push to stop the Trump administration from selling coal from public lands after a previous effort to halt the lease sales was dismissed by a federal judge. Joined by the Northern Cheyenne Tribe and several environmental groups, Democratic attorneys general from California, New York, New Mexico and Washington state filed a lawsuit challenging the administration’s coal program in U.S. District Court in Montana. They alleged the administration acted illegally when it resumed coal sales that had been halted under Obama due to climate change and other concerns.  The case is among scores of legal challenges that environmentalists and their political allies have launched to counter the Trump administration’s push for more domestic energy production and less stringent regulations. Interior Department spokesman Conner Swanson panned the lawsuit as a “laughable attempt” to revive an issue that the court already addressed. Under Trump, the Department of Interior lifted a 2016 moratorium on federal coal sales and concluded they have limited environmental impacts. “The Department is confident the court will agree that the analysis by our career experts is lawful and based on the best available science,” Swanson said. Attorneys for the states and other plaintiffs in the case argued that the administration’s environmental review was flawed, because it was based on just four leases that were sold under Trump and did not look at hundreds of existing leases and potential future sales. “The Trump administration has repeatedly thrown out the rule book in order to benefit super polluting coal companies. It’s not only immoral – it’s illegal, and we intend to prove it,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement. Federal coal sales account for about 40% of U.S. coal production, primarily from large strip mines in western states including Wyoming, Colorado, Montana and Utah. Coal mining companies saw demand for the fuel drop dramatically over the past decade due to competition from natural gas and renewable fuel sources. Trump has sought to prop the industry back up, but that’s done little to slow its downward spiral and the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the decline.

U.S. Senator Duckworth floats plan to rescue coal country - (Reuters) - Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth on Thursday unveiled a plan to rehabilitate communities hurt by the decline of the U.S. coal industry - an appeal to a political constituency seen as important in the November election.The bill would direct investment to communities reeling from closures of mines and coal-fired power plants in recent years, to create new jobs and help them grapple with issues like opiod addiction and black lung disease here she said.“We can’t just tell these communities to let go of coal because there is nothing else,” said Duckworth, who is one of several women vetted as a possible running mate for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, in an interview.The bill would expand Medicare to laid-off coal workers, guarantee free higher education for miners and their families, provide federal homebuying assistance and create a redevelopment office. Cost estimates for the bill were not immediately available.United Mineworkers of America President Cecil Roberts called on senators from both parties to adopt the legislation.Coal has struggled to compete against cheap natural gas and renewable energy despite efforts by the Trump administration to prop it up by rolling back Obama-era climate regulation. U.S. coal-fired power plants shut down here at the second-fastest pace on record in 2019, according to a Reuters review of federal data.

Neighbors question future of Bull Run Steam Plant - Tennessee Valley Authority planned a public meeting on the future of the Bull Run Steam Plant in Anderson County. However, due to safety concerns during the coronavirus pandemic, TVA moved the open house online. While the future of the plant may be up for grabs, some neighbors have concrete demands: “Please clean up that coal ash. Get it out of here.” John Todd Waterman has lived in Clinton for 16 years and is one neighbor with concerns. TVA discussed possible plans for a park, bike paths, and solar panels, all of which Waterman was in favor of. “I would love to see all that,” he said. “But they want to leave tons of coal ash. That’s toxic stuff.” TVA said it has not made any final decision on the future of the coal ash stored at Bull Run. Representatives said they are working with the Tennessee Department of Environmental Conservation to conduct an environmental investigation. From there, they will either cover up the ash on site or remove it. Some neighbors and public officials have also discussed putting an energy park in the area to drive in more business. TVA said it may develop another energy generation source.

EPA wants feedback on coal ash cleanup plan at former NIPSCO Bailly plant - Chicago Tribune -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wants public feedback for a cleanup plan at the eastern part of the former NIPSCO Bailly Generating Station. It believes buried coal ash is seeping via groundwater into the Indiana Dunes National Park threatening surrounding plants and wildlife. The deadline for comments is Aug. 19. Once comments are in, the agency will issue a Final Decision on its cleanup plan. The Bailly Generating Station in Chesterton closed in 2018. During the 1960s and 1970s, NIPSCO buried coal ash there about 25 feet underground, a byproduct of coal-fired electricity, the agency said. “Current law does not allow this type of disposal, but it was not illegal at the time,” it said. Coal ash was buried on-site between 1962 and 1979, the EPA said. Eventually, the utility started “recycling” or storing it off-site. Coal ash is known to contain various toxic metals — boron is the primary contaminant of concern there, the EPA said. It is believed the ash is seeping into underground water, which is “carrying the underground contamination into the park.” “Studies show the boron is harming plants, but the levels are too low to harm people,” it said. The entire Indiana Dunes’ 15,000 acres is considered one of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the U.S. with more than 1,200 plant species and around 400 wildlife species. Generally, parts of the Indiana Dunes border north and east of the Bailly site, documents state, including Cowles Bog Wetland Complex, located northeast, a popular forested hiking spot and “globally significant and ecologically sensitive feature”. The EPA split the “L-shaped” former Bailly site into Areas A, B, and C for designated environmental cleanup. Area C, is located east of the former coal plant, and includes a former wastewater treatment plant, landfills with buried coal ash and a portion of the Indiana Dunes National Park, it said. It also includes the Greenbelt, the Southeast Pond and the Eastern Wetlands. The biggest contamination source is a coal-ash fill called Solid Waste Management Unit 15, southeast of the Bailly plant, where coal-ash has gotten into groundwater flowing “off-site”, endangering nearby ecology, the EPA said.

U.S. uranium production fell to an all-time annual low in 2019 - Today in Energy - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)  - The United States produced 174,000 pounds of uranium concentrate (U3O8) in 2019, 89% less than in 2018 and the lowest amount produced since the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) data series began in 1949. Domestic U3O8 production has declined since its peak of 43.7 million pounds in 1980.   Other countries, such as Canada and Australia, have more accessible, high-quality uranium deposits, allowing them to produce U3O8 at a lower cost than the United States. Since 1990, purchased imports of U3O8 have exceeded domestic U3O8 production each year.Owners and operators of commercial nuclear power reactors buy uranium in the form of U3O8, uranium hexafluoride, or enriched uranium, or a combination of these forms. When the uranium is purchased earlier in the fuel cycle, such as in the form of U3O8, owners and operators pay for conversion, enrichment, and fabrication into fuel rods. In 2019, the fuel assemblies, or structured groups of fuel rods, loaded into U.S. commercial reactorscontained 43.2 million pounds of U3O8. About 9% of this amount was U.S.-origin, and 91% was foreign-origin.In 2019, U.S. commercial nuclear power reactor operators purchased a total of 48.3 million pounds of U3O8. Foreign imports of U3O8 supply the majority of fuel to U.S. commercial nuclear reactors, and 42.6 million pounds, or 88% of the total U3O8 purchased, were imported in 2019.  Canada, which has large, high-quality uranium reserves, has historically been the largest source of U.S. uranium imports. In 2019, Canada remained the largest source of imports of uranium supplied to U.S. civilian nuclear power plants, followed by Kazakhstan, Australia, and Russia. Subsidies for uranium producers in Kazakhstan have led to increases in the country’s uranium exports, including those to the United States.

Judge approves Santee Cooper ratepayer settlement over failed VC Summer nuclear project — Santee Cooper on Monday received final approval for a $520 million legal settlement with its customers over its failure to complete an expansion of the V.C. Summer nuclear plant in Fairfield County.The deal, approved by former S.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Jean Toal, ends a standoff over how much customers must pay for that unfinished power plant, a project abandoned by Santee Cooper in July 2017 after years of escalating costs and construction delays.The settlement also greatly diminishes the chance Santee Cooper could be sold by lawmakers after the $9 billion nuclear debacle — one of the greatest business failures in state history. It puts refunds into the pockets of customers who have paid higher power bills for the V.C. Summer project, as well as substantial fees for the attorneys who argued the case against the project’s owners.Toal said it was the most complex litigation she has handled in 52 years of practicing law.“We managed to take an extremely complex set of circumstances and form a settlement that I have been told many times represents something quite astounding and unique,” Toal said. BUSINESSSantee Cooper plans $520M settlement of customer lawsuit over failed SC nuclear projectBy Avery G. Wilks and Andrew Brown awilks@postandcourier.com abrown@postandcourier.comThe deal requires Santee Cooper freeze its electric rates for four years and pay $200 million to its ratepayers, including members of South Carolina’s 20 electric cooperatives who purchase the utility’s power indirectly.The rate freeze, the plaintiff attorneys argued, could be worth up to $510 million to Santee Cooper’s customers on its own. Another $320 million would be supplied by Dominion Energy, the Virginia-based company that last year purchased S.C. Electric & Gas — Santee Cooper’s partner on the nuclear project.

Former SCANA executive pleads guilty to fraud charges tied to failed SC nuclear project  — Federal prosecutors locked in a valuable witness Thursday who will give them insights and advantages as they continue to bring charges against the leaders of a failed $9 billion nuclear expansion project in South Carolina. Steve Byrne, the former vice president of Cayce-based SCANA Corp., pleaded guilty in federal court to defrauding electric customers and lying about construction progress as the company tried to build two nuclear reactors at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station in Fairfield County. The guilty plea requires Byrne, 60, to cooperate with federal prosecutors who have spent three years investigating the project’s sudden abandonment in July 2017. The construction failure cost South Carolina electric ratepayers billions of dollars in higher power bills. SCANA’s shareholders also suffered huge losses when the company’s stock value tanked. The company was ultimately sold at a bargain price to Virginia-based Dominion Energy.On Thursday, Byrne admitted to falsely telling regulators, investors and the public the project was on track in order to win rate hikes on customers and keep the venture going while failing to raise alarms about critical flaws that were dooming the expansion effort.By pleading guilty, Byrne is hoping to avoid a stiffer sentence. The fraud charges he pleaded to can still carry up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release afterward.He could also be required to forfeit up to $1 million in pay and bonuses tied to his performance when he oversaw the V.C. Summer venture. For now, Byrne will remain out of jail. A federal magistrate released him on $25,000 bail and required Byrne, who owns a home on the Isle of Palms, to surrender his passport. He will need permission from federal parole officials to leave the state for consulting work or special occasions.U.S. Magistrate Judge Shiva Hodges said she was providing leniency because it could take years for a judge to issue Byrne’s sentence, which will come at the end of a federal investigation targeting other SCANA officials.

Ohio House Speaker Arrested In $60M Bribery Scheme Which Added New Fee To Every Electricity Bill In State  - A massive corruption scandal being described as the "largest bribery, money-laundering scheme ever perpetrated against the people of the state of Ohio" — to the tune of $60 million, has just rocked the Buckeye state. On Tuesday the Republican Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder along with four others were arrested for being allegedly part of a scheme to pass legislation for a billion dollar bailout of two failed Ohio nuclear plants which were on the brink of permanent closure. Householder is widely looked upon as Ohio's third most powerful and influential lawmaker.   Federal agents raided his farm Tuesday morning and made the arrest. The AP has described the top Ohio lawmaker as a "driving force" behind the uphill battle to controversially bail out the state's two nuclear power plants at a significant expense to taxpayers.Householder's adviser Jeffrey Longstreth was also arrested, as well as lobbyist Neil Clark, and former Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matthew Borges and Juan Cespedes of Columbus-based consulting firm The Oxley Group.  It appears a classic pay-to-play scandal, but in this case so vast that it is sure to enrage every single Ohioan that pays an electricity bill, considering, according to Axios that— "Householder was one of the driving forces behind the nuclear plants' financial rescue, which added a new fee to every electricity bill in the state and directed over $150 million a year through 2026 to the plants near Cleveland and Toledo." Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has called on Householder to resign immediately given the enormity of the charges against him. The linchpin in the government's case against the five is incriminating statements made during a sting while meeting with undercover agents.  An 80-page criminal complain involving a large-scale FBI investigation details the schemers were engaged in an enterprise which shuffled millions into Householder's pockets to assist in his bid to secure his position as Ohio House speaker.  In turn he helped push through "House Bill 6, a billion-dollar bailout that saved two failed, Ohio nuclear power plants from closing," according to the criminal filing.  Tens of millions were funneled via the "dark money enterprise" over a total of at least three years, from March 2017 to March 2020. Given that much money and the significant length of time, it's clear it must have involved many more players; indeed, the FBI says more arrests are coming as part of the probe. The reality is this: Ohioans will not see this as somehow "remote" - given that not only through state taxes, but especially through the "added fee" to each electricity bill as a result of House Bill 6's passage, they'll be on the hook for this for years to come.

Ohio House Speaker Arrested in Alleged $60 Million Racketeering, Bribery, Money Laundering Scheme; A Window Into Politics in America --  Yves Smith - Lambert highlighted the arrest of Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, a Republican, and four associates in a Federal indictment on charges involving over $60 million in racketeering, bribery, and money laundering, making it the biggest political corruption prosecution in Ohio history. We’re highlighting this case as a window into the ugly side of American politics. It also offers stark proof of political scientist Tom Ferguson’s “Golden Rule” theory of politics, that it is moneyed interests that drive legislation and regulations. Needless to say, this is one of those rare occasions where powerful individuals engaged in bad conduct are being held to account. Each of the defendants could spend as long as 20 years in prison. We’ve embedded the filing below. The short version is that Householder and his four lobbyist/operative allies took payments from FirstEnergy Corp to get House Bill 6 passed and defend it against a ballot initiative. House Bill 6 provided for a $1.3 billion bailout of zero carbon energy producers…with nearly all the money going to keep two of FirstEnergy’s nuclear plants from going bankrupt. $60 million might seem an awful lot to get a bill passed. In fact, over $2 million was still left in the coffers of Generation Now, the main slush vehicle secretly controlled by Householder, set up as a not-for-profit so as to avoid pesky PAC disclosure requirements. $1 million went into the personal brokerage account of one of the defendants, political strategist Jeff Longstreth. Over $500,000 allegedly went to Householder, for campaign expenses, fix-ups to his Florida house, and to pay off credit card debt. And all those lobbying fees too!  Nevertheless, the filing describes a long campaign, first to fund Republican primary candidates for House seats who understood they were expected to back Householder as Speaker (Householder had lost to a termed-out departing Speaker who’d named a successor) and then to support their campaigns in the general election. For instance, the indictment describes how Householder’s team estimated that it would take $2.5 to $3 million to win the primary battles; FirstEnergy obligingly ponied up over $2 million by the date of the primary and Generation Now spent $1.8 million, including $90,000 on Householder’s bid. The day Householder was sworn in as Speaker, he vowed to establish a subcommittee on power generation. Three months later, junior representatives he’d helped get elected introduced HB6. Note that similar legislation had failed in 2017. More money was deployed, first to pass the bill in the House, then the Senate, then to beat back the ballot initiative seeking to overturn the legislation.  The indictment has lots of gory elements:

Did Householder use ’bribe money’ to fix his Florida house, pay overdue taxes? -  - The Columbus Dispatch - Larry Householder’s place in Naples, Florida, fell into disrepair last year.The Republican speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives also had another problem, according to records there. He had not paid two years’ worth of property taxes and penalties on his house totaling more than $9,000.But Householder, 61, of Glenford, in Perry County, came up with the money to pay both his long-overdue Florida taxes and fix his deteriorating $300,000 house — after being found guilty of violations by Collier County, Florida, officials,   An FBI agent alleges in an affidavit made public Tuesday that Householder spent more than $100,000 in “bribe money” on his southwest Florida house that authorities say he received in a racketeering scheme involving Ohio’s $1 billion nuclear power plant bailout.By early last year, the Collier County tax assessor was after Householder, threatening to seize and sell his house to pay off a tax lien. Householder had not paid property taxes and penalties on his home totaling $9,412 from the 2016 and 2017 tax years.On April 11, 2019, Householder paid off his overdue taxes, according to Collier County records, while also paying his 2018 tax bill of $4,356. That was a three-year total of $13,768 paid in taxes.Householder, though, is again being cited for delinquent taxes, this time for failing to pay his 2019 property taxes and penalties of $4,299 due June 1, records show.Householder bought the Florida property in 2009, after he departed his first go-around as House speaker and prior to his second stint beginning in 2019. He is now charged with using his legislative position to criminally enrich himself.The speaker’s Florida house, valued at $306,393 on Belville Boulevard, backs onto a man-made lake in Naples, a spot popular spot with many Ohioans, and is located five miles east of the Gulf of Mexico beaches.But Householder apparently did not keep up his Florida getaway.On Feb. 12, 2019, Collier County zoning code authorities cited Householder with violations involving a moldy roof that had missing or damaged tiles; broken and boarded-up windows; and a swimming pool that was not enclosed with an approved barrier. Householder appeared in person at a public hearing before a special magistrate in Naples on Oct. 4. He was found guilty of the violations and ordered to pay $112 in costs. He had agreed in a document the day before to correct the violations, county records show.Records show Householder hired a company to replace the tile roof of the house on Dec. 4 and hired another firm to replace a screened enclosure around his pool on Feb. 1.No county records were found concerning repairs to the broken and boarded-up windows. None of the repair records placed an estimate on costs. The federal affidavit in the case also alleges Householder used about $20,000 from the First Energy conspiracy to pay credit card debt and $300,000 to cover legal fees and a settlement in a defamation lawsuit he dropped after suing political opponents for ads questioning his ethics. Householder and four colleagues were arrested by federal officials Tuesday as part of a bribery investigation involving the state’s $1 billion nuclear plant bailout and Householder’s maneuverings to secure support to lead the legislative chamber.

An FBI investigation shows Ohio’s abysmal energy law was fueled by corruption --On Tuesday, the news broke that the FBI had arrested Ohio Speaker of the House of Representatives Larry Householder, the architect of HB 6, a law that passed in July 2019. That bill, widely recognized as the worst energy policy in the country, gutted Ohio’s renewables and energy efficiency laws while bailing out several coal and nuclear plants.As I wrote in my book, Short Circuiting Policy, the law was a multibillion-dollar gift to FirstEnergy, a private electric utility that has resisted climate policy for decades. It turns out it was a gift paid for with $61 million in bribes.Spending a few million to get more than a billion dollars? Not a bad return on investment.Unfortunately, this kind of corruption is not an aberration for the electric utility industry. Across the country, most private utilities are resisting the clean energy transition, and many are buying off politicians with campaign contributions to do it. What’s more, the industry celebrates it — the Edison Electric Institute, the national private utility association, gave FirstEnergy an award for its work to pass HB 6.  The 82-page, 250 paragraph FBI affidavit — a collage of colorful text messages and political ads — is stunning in its simplicity: This is bribery.The alleged participants in the scheme even used the term “pay to play” when describing what Householder and his associates were up to, saying that the funding from FirstEnergy for their political aims was “unlimited.”Before the FBI arrests, many journalists and watchdog groups suspected that Householder was corrupt. He was a controversial choice for speaker — his last time in the role, during the early 2000s, he found himself under federal investigation for money laundering. Householder was only elected speaker last year after a contentious fight. Somehow candidates supporting his leadership found themselves with well-funded campaigns.We now know, according to the affidavit, that FirstEnergy funneled millions of dollars to 21 candidates who pledged to support Householder’s rise to power. All of these politicians supported Householder’s speakership, and only one voted against the bailout.Per the FBI, Householder also benefited financially from the arrangement with FirstEnergy. According to the affidavit, at least $300,000 was used to settle a lawsuit against him, more than $100,000 went toward his Florida vacation home, and another $97,000 went directly to his campaign expenses. Householder also received personal favors from FirstEnergy, like a flight to President Trump’s inauguration on a corporate jet.The corruption allegedly did not end when HB 6 became law. When groups wanted to let the public decide whether to overturn this draconian policy through a petition for a ballot initiative, FirstEnergy wired $38 million in funds to Generation Now. This money funded adsthat falsely claimed the Chinese government would use your personal information if you signed the petition. It also paid for bribery, harassment, and even physical assault of people collecting signatures.It was an anti-democratic dark money campaign, and it worked. Facing this well-funded opposition, the advocates failed to get enough signatures. Ohio voters were never given a chance to overturn the bailout. HB 6 remains law.

Follow the money, and repeal FirstEnergy’s Ohio bailout - Institute for Energy Economics & Financial Analysis - FirstEnergy’s successful campaign last year to secure a $1 billion bailout of its Ohio nuclear plants is at the center of a pay-to-play scandal that is rocking Ohio. Yesterday, the Justice Department indicted Larry Householder, speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, and four close associates in a case U.S. Attorney David DeVillers called “likely the largest bribery, money-laundering scheme ever perpetrated against the people in the state of Ohio.”   Governor Mike DeWine and other top Ohio officeholders called on Householder to resign immediately but that is not enough.  The governor should convene the Ohio General Assembly now to repeal the law that bailed out the nuclear plants and begin a new legislative process.  The scheme, as laid out in a federal indictment, revolved around Householder’s control of a non-profit corporation called “Generation Now,” which was used to pool campaign contributions and to fund tactics used to prevent a citizens organization from placing a measure on the ballot last fall to repeal the referendum. The nuclear bailout law,  known as House Bill 6, passed the Ohio House of Representatives in July 2019  with only one more vote than the minimum required, and DeWine quickly signed it into law.    The indictments make clear that the bill’s passage was the tainted result of corruption. Householder’s own “yes” vote was necessary for passage. And the U.S. attorney showed that the scheme deprived the citizens of Ohio of their right to place a repeal referendum on the ballot.  The complaint describes a web of complicity around “Company A,” which funneled some $60 million to Generation Now and an additional $890,000 to other entities. As Villers said, “Everyone in this room knows who Company A is. I will not be mentioning the name today because of our regulations and rules.” The case has prompted a Twitter storm, including this popular comment: “Will the Browns now be playing in Company A Stadium?”The stock market knows who Company A is. FirstEnergy’s stock was down 17% at the close of trading yesterday ad as of 2 p.m. today is down an additional 18%. And less than an hour after the arrests were announced, the stock of FirstEnergy’s former subsidiary, Energy Harbor (formerly FirstEnergy Solutions), dropped by 20% so quickly that trading was automatically halted. Energy Harbor stock is down by an additional 16% today. The 81-page complaint spells out details of a web of influence-peddling, as shown here (click on the image to enlarge the chart):

House Bill 6 repeal bills are being drafted by Ohio lawmakers from both parties - cleveland.com —Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers in the Ohio House are preparing to introduce legislation to repeal House Bill 6, the $1.3 billion nuclear bailout law at the center of House Speaker Larry Householder’s arrest on Tuesday.Republican state Reps. Mark Romanchuk of Richland County and Laura Lanese of suburban Columbus are currently soliciting other co-sponsors for a repeal bill, Lanese confirmed via text message Wednesday morning.Separately, Democratic state Reps. Mike Skindell of Lakewood and Michael O’Brien of Warren announced in a release Wednesday they intend to file their own repeal bill.All four of those lawmakers voted against HB 6 when it passed the House in July of 2019.HB6 provides massive ratepayer subsidies for Ohio’s Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear power plants, owned and operated by Energy Harbor – formerly FirstEnergy Solutions, a subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corp., until it broke away earlier this year.Under the law, from 2021 until 2027, every Ohio electricity customer will have to pay a new monthly surcharge that ranges from 85 cents for residential customers to $2,400 for large industrial plants.The law also provides subsidies for coal plants in Ohio and Indiana, and it effectively guts the state’s green-energy mandates for utilities.Householder and four allies were charged Tuesday with conducting one of the largest bribery and money-laundering schemes in Ohio history, funneling more than $60 million in FirstEnergy donations through a “web” of dark-money groups and bank accounts to expand the speaker’s political power, thwart an anti-HB6 referendum effort, and enrich themselves by millions of dollars. “Corruption has no place in our government, regardless of political party. When corruption is revealed, it is important we act quickly to fix what has been broken,” said Skindell in a statement. “Ohio has been under a one-party rule for decades and what we are seeing are the consequences of that undemocratic arrangement. With deeply gerrymandered districts, Republican politicians feel invincible and are more beholden to special interest groups and corporations than they are to their own constituents. HB 6 was the manifestation of this alleged corruption.”It’s not clear yet whether there are the votes to repeal the law in either the House or the Senate, each of which are controlled by a Republican supermajority. House Bill 6 passed the House 51-38, with 10 Democrats giving 41 Republicans the “yes” votes needed to pass the bill.

DeWine shifts gears, seeks repeal of 'tainted' nuclear bailout  — Gov. Mike DeWine on Thursday shifted gears and called on the Ohio General Assembly to repeal the law that would provide a $1 billion bailout of two nuclear power plants on Lake Erie, given revelations about the alleged $60 million bribery scheme that led to its passage. He said the process behind the bill's passage “stinks” and has tainted what he has said is still the good policy behind saving the Davis-Besse nuclear plant near Oak Harbor and the Perry plant east of Cleveland. “It is also clear, as I think about it, that no matter how good this policy is, the process by which this bill passed is simply not acceptable,” he said during a Thursday news conference about the coronavirus pandemic. “That process, I believe, has forever tainted the bill and now the law itself. While the policy in my opinion is good, the process by which it was created stinks. It's terrible. It's not acceptable.” He called on lawmakers to repeal and replace House Bill 6 through an open process “that the public can have full confidence in.” “Reasonable people can disagree about what that policy should be,” he said. “I've made it very clear for a long time that I think our energy policy in the state of Ohio must include nuclear energy, that plants that are here that are functioning should continue to function.”

HB 6 repeal would address only part of Ohio lawmakers’ recent actions to slow renewables - But a complete repeal is needed as a minimum to undo the bill’s gutting of the clean energy standards, advocates say. Both Republican and Democratic Ohio lawmakers are pushing to repeal the state’s nuclear bailout bill after this week’s release of a federal criminal complaint against House Speaker Larry Householder and others. Clean energy advocates say that would be a start, but more is needed to address eight years of lawmakers’ actions to slow the growth of renewables in the state.The complaint alleges a $60 million bribery and conspiracy scheme that led to the passage of House Bill 6 last summer, followed by the defeat of a referendum effort to give voters a say on the bill. Amounts involved are about 20 times more than amounts that could be tracked through public documents.HB 6 is primarily known as a “nuclear bailout” for providing six years of subsidies for the FirstEnergy Solutions/Energy Harbor nuclear power plants in Ohio totaling roughly a billion dollars, but it also gutted the state’s renewable energy and energy efficiency standards, and provided bailouts for two 1950s-era coal plants in Ohio and Indiana.And while Gov. Mike DeWine has recently shifted his position from defending HB 6 to saying he wants to “repeal and replace” it, legislators from both parties say the whole thing should be thrown out. DeWine has said his office had no involvement in the alleged scheme. Yet he signed the law within hours after Householder secured its passage last summer.Whether due to actual or perceived corruption, HB 6 “is a corrupt piece of legislation. All of it — not just part of it,” said Rep. Mike Skindell, D-Lakewood. “Therefore, the entire thing needs to be repealed. … That is one step in restoring the confidence of the citizens which was broken because of this corrupt process.”“Those of us who are free-market conservatives are against the bill. Those of us who care about consumers and predatory pricing are against the bill. And it’s why those of us who want more renewable energy, not less, are against the bill,” said Rep. Laura Lanese, R-Grove City. “Ohioans deserve an immediate and full repeal of House Bill 6 in order to restore the public’s trust in the legislative process, and also to get Ohio’s clean energy future restarted,” said Miranda Leppla, vice president of energy policy for the Ohio Environmental Council Action Fund. “There is simply no room to consider anything less than a full repeal of this bill, as it is corrupt to the very core. Ohio lawmakers should consider what policies are best for Ohioans, without the corrupt influence of pay-to-play politicians and lobbyists working to influence their decisions.”

Investigate everyone involved - Allegations against Ohio House of Representatives Speaker Larry Householder and others should make Buckeye State residents sick to their stomachs. If true, they mean higher utility bills throughout the state will be due to bought-and-paid-for legislation. Householder, a Republican from a district just east of Columbus, was arrested Tuesday, along with four alleged accomplices. All are accused by federal authorities of participating in a $60 million bribery scheme. U.S. Attorney David DeVillers called it “likely the largest bribery scheme ever perpetrated against the state of Ohio.” Investigators say Generation Now, a group controlled by Householder, received the $60 million from a company that has not been identified.In exchange, Householder and his cronies allegedly worked to enact a bill that adds a surcharge to every Ohio electric bill. Most of the proceeds from that, about $150 million a year through 2026, are to go to two nuclear power plants near Cleveland and Toledo. About $20 million a year goes to the solar power industry.It is known that Householder pushed hard for the bill. If charges he was bribed to do so are accurate, Ohio lawmakers — and law enforcement authorities — need to investigate whether some of the $60 million was spent to buy the votes of others in the General Assembly. If so, they, too, should be arrested. No one involved in the scheme should be permitted to escape justice.

Analysts expect some economic fallout for Akron companies implicated in public corruption case - Akron Beacon Journal - -- With FirstEnergy Corp. and its former subsidiaries implicated in a public corruption scandal, market analysts are sharing varying degrees of concern for the economic toll two of Akron’s biggest employers could pay. Racketeering charges filed Tuesday against a lawmaker and four associates, who allegedly took donations in exchange for a $1 billion energy bailout bill, all but named FirstEnergy and its former power-generation subsidiary FirstEnergy Solutions as the source of the cash.  FirstEnergy Solutions is now Energy Harbor after emerging in February from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Now two companies with headquarters in Akron and thousands of employees in multiple states, FirstEnergy Corp. and Energy Harbor say they’re reviewing the criminal complaint and cooperating with federal investigators. Neither will talk about the potential impact on business or investor confidence.  Stock prices for both companies are off by a third since the scandal broke. Subpoenas announced Tuesday evening for FirstEnergy followed the morning arrests of Ohio Speaker of the House Larry Householder, former GOP Chairman Matt Borges and three top statehouse lobbyists. The men and Generation Now, a dark money group that investigators believe Householder used to conceal FirstEnergy donations, are being charged with racketeering.  “FirstEnergy is an integral part of our local economy, employing thousands of hard-working residents,” said Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan, who was “shocked” Tuesday by allegations that lawmakers illegally enriched themselves through a “criminal conspiracy.” . “The men and women who rely on FirstEnergy for employment are our neighbors — working to provide for their families, even through these tumultuous times.”  Political backlash could be especially costly for Energy Harbor, which is depending on the controversial state bailout signed into law last year. Two Republicans and several Democrats said Wednesday morning that they intend to claw back the subsidy. “When I spoke in support of H.B. 6, it was with the hope of keeping many good paying jobs in our community,” said Summit County Executive Ilene Shapiro. “Maintaining jobs is important, but not at the cost of the alleged activities that appear to have put H.B. 6 into action. The news out of Columbus yesterday was both shocking and disappointing.”The repeal of House Bill 6, which Gov. Mike DeWine said Wednesday he would not support, could rewind the clock for Energy Harbor to March 29, 2018, when — then operating as FirstEnergy Solutions — the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant was scheduled for decommission in May 2020 followed by the Perry Nuclear Power Plant in 2021. FirstEnergy Solutions filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy two days later on March 31, 2018. That July, FirstEnergy Solutions arranged but did not follow through with the sale of its retail and wholesale electricity business to Constellation, a subsidiary of Chicago-based energy giant Exelon.

FirstEnergy CEO says company “acted ethically” in efforts to pass House Bill 6 - cleveland.com -- In a quarterly earnings report released Thursday afternoon, FirstEnergy CEO Charles Jones said his company “acted ethically” in connection with efforts to pass House Bill 6 that federal prosecutors say were fueled by bribery.“We intend to cooperate fully with the Department of Justice investigation involving the Ohio Speaker of the House, and we will ensure our company’s involvement in supporting HB 6 is understood as accurately as possible,” Jones said. “I believe that FirstEnergy acted ethically in this matter. At no time did our support for Ohio’s nuclear plants interfere with or supersede our ethical obligations to conduct our business properly. I believe the facts will become clear as the investigation progresses.”A criminal complaint filed Tuesday accuses Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and four others of taking $60 million in bribes from FirstEnergy in order to secure legislation that would bail out the utility’s two nuclear plants in Ohio.Neither the company nor Jones have been charged with a crime.The Akron-based company had previously declined to substantively comment on the investigation, issuing a statement Tuesday that only said the company had received subpoenas and intended to fully cooperate.FirstEnergy’s second-quarter earnings, which amounted to $309 million, compared to $308 million in second-quarter 2019. The company’s stock dropped this week after the announcement of the arrests.

Wisconsin law firm announces investigation of possible securities fraud by FirstEnergy | wkyc.com — A Milwaukee-based law firm specializing in securities fraud and shareholder litigation has announced an investigation into FirstEnergy in the aftermath of Tuesday's arrest of Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder. Ademi & O'Reilly, LLP is looking into the connection between FirstEnergy and Householder,who was arrested on racketeering charges along with four others.In a release from the firm, the investigation will focus on whether FirstEnergy issued false and misleading statements regarding its business practices, internal controls and prospects. FirstEnergy allegedly spent approximately $2.9 million on Larry Householder’s 2017 campaign. Householder became Ohio House Speaker in 2019 and allegedly returned the favor by enacting laws to support FirstEnergy's two nuclear plants as well as a pair of coal plants.  In total, political donations and bribes by FirstEnergy and other parties involved may have totaled as much as $60 million. U.S. Attorney David DeVillers called the conspiracy "probably the largest bribery case ever in Ohio."Householder pushed hard for the passage of the roughly $1 billion financial rescue andoffered praise when it narrowly cleared the General Assembly last July over the objections of even several of his Republican colleagues. The legislation added a new fee to every electricity bill in the state and directed over $150 million a year through 2026 to the nuclear plants near Cleveland and Toledo. The investigation found that the money was paid from March 2017 to March 2020 to Householder and his associates from what prosecutors referred to as "Company A," identified as a nuclear energy company and subsidiaries in the complaint.  Householder received quarterly $250,000 payments from the related-energy companies into the bank account of a non-profit called Generation Now. The defendants allegedly spent millions of the company’s dollars to support Householder’s political bid to become Speaker, to support House candidates they believed would back Householder, and for their own personal benefit.

Here’s when Ohio utilities will resume service shutoffs for unpaid bills - cleveland.com —Since the coronavirus crisis hit Ohio in March, water, electric, and natural gas utilities, at the direction of the state, have halted service disconnections to customers with overdue bills.But those moratoriums are ending, as utilities around the state are planning to resume shutoffs within the next couple of months, even though critics say it’s still too soon for them to do so.In late March, following the DeWine administration’s “stay-at-home” and business-closure orders, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency directed municipal water systems to stop customer shutoffs and reconnect water service for everyone who was disconnected dating back to Jan. 1. The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio secured similar pledges from gas and electric utilities it regulates in the state.But the Ohio EPA’s order expired July 10. And many utilities are beginning to roll out plans to once again stop service for delinquent customers.Utilities that have already made arrangements to resume shutoffs say they will first attempt to make arrangements with customers to get caught up on their bills before moving to disconnect service.“We know that customers are facing economic hardships right now. We want to work with them,” said Jennifer Young, a spokeswoman for FirstEnergy Corp., who said company subsidiaries – including The Illuminating Company and Ohio Edison – won’t restart shutoffs until Sept. 15 at the earliest.Even so, utilities are moving too quickly to cut service while their customers are still hurting from the pandemic and the subsequent financial crisis, according to Ohio Consumers’ Counsel Bruce Weston, a state official who advocates on behalf of residential utility customers.“With minorities disproportionately represented in poverty, unemployment is higher, coronavirus cases are surging in places, and now loss of essential utility services could make people’s plight more desperate,” Weston said in a statement. “Ohio should lead with its heart and keep Ohioans connected to utility services for the time being.”

FirstEnergy scandal is latest example of utility corruption, deceit - Energy and Policy Institute - Federal agents arrested Ohio Speaker of the House Larry Householder, along with several lobbyists, on July 21 on charges that the group used $60 million of funds provided by the monopoly utility FirstEnergy Corp. in exchange for passing a law that bailed out that company’s nuclear and coal plants. The scandal is the latest example of monopoly utility companies deceiving lawmakers, regulators, and the public to enrich executives and shareholders, and occasionally being criminally investigated or prosecuted for their actions. Many instances of utility corruption center around attempts to change policies or regulations in ways that would increase electric bills – often to cover costs at expensive power plants, win approval to construct controversial power plants, or restrict the growth of rooftop solar power.  While the government’s criminal complaint refers to FirstEnergy Corp. only as “Company A Corp.,” it makes clear that the company both provided the funding and was intimately involved in the scheme that Householder ran.  Householder used the $60 million provided by FirstEnergy to finance a takeover of the Ohio House of Representatives by legislative candidates who would be loyal to him. Those legislators then elected him as House Speaker in January 2019 after a fierce leadership battle. The bill – which cost electric customers in Ohio billions of dollars – also undid Ohio’s standards requiring utilities to use renewable energy for a modest portion of their generation, and to help customers save electricity via energy efficiency measures. On July 17, ComEd agreed to pay $200 million to resolve a federal criminal investigation into a years-long bribery scheme, as part of a three-year deferred prosecution agreement. According to the agreement with the Department of Justice, ComEd admitted that it arranged jobs, vendor subcontracts, and payments associated with those jobs and subcontracts for various associates of a high-level elected official for the state of Illinois – reported to be Speaker Michael Madigan – to influence and reward the official for his efforts to pass legislation favorable to ComEd. n February, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a civil fraud lawsuit against two top former SCANA electric utility executives. The lawsuit alleges that senior SCANA executives, CEO Kevin Marsh and executive vice president Stephen Byrne, lied and deceived shareholders, regulators, and the public regarding the construction of two new nuclear units at the V.C. Summer site, which the company abandoned amid massive cost overruns in July 2017. Byrne entered a guilty plea on federal criminal charges of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud last month, and The Post & Courier reported today that, as a condition of his plea, Byrne will cooperate with federal prosecutors, giving them “insights and advantages as they continue to bring charges against the people involved in a failed $9 billion nuclear expansion project in South Carolina.”

PTTGC, Mountaineer agree on Ohio NGL storage project -- PTT Global Chemical (PTTGC; Bangkok, Thailand) has entered into a precedent agreement with Mountaineer NGL Storage to develop storage and pipeline infrastructure that would support PTTGC’s proposed petrochemical complex in Belmont County, Ohio. Under the agreement, Mountaineer, a subsidiary of Energy Storage Ventures, will develop multiple 500,000 bbl salt caverns capable of storing natural gas liquids (NGLs) or ethylene on a 200-acre site in Monroe County, Ohio. The $250-million storage project will come in two phases of around 1.5 million bbl of capacity each. Mountaineer says it has the necessary permits to begin construction on the first phase, which is slated for completion by 2022–23. PTTGC America is working with Mountaineer on 1 million bbl of ethane storage and a pipeline that will link the storage facility to the project 8 miles away. If realized, this would represent the first underground NGL storage site in the Marcellus and Utica shale formations in the US Northeast. Mountaineer first floated the project in 2016 following a successful open season and, according to local news reports, has been courting PTTGC America as a potential customer since at least 2019. "Ethane storage and transportation will be a crucial element of a world-scale petrochemical complex," PTTGC America president and CEO Toasaporn Boonyapipat says in a statement. "Mountaineer NGL Storage will provide essential infrastructure and capabilities to our project. Our impending partnership with this first-rate organization brings us one step closer to a final investment decision." The agreement comes after PTTGC America announced on 14 July that it was searching for a new partner in its 1.5-million metric tons/year ethane cracker and associated derivatives units following the withdrawal of South Korea's Daelim Chemical USA as an equity partner. In June, PTTGC America announced it would delay its final investment decision on the project until late 2020 or early 2021 due to oil price volatility and the COVID-19 pandemic. PTTGC America has completed the first stage of preparation, engineering, and design work for the petrochemical complex and has invested around $200 million into front-end engineering design. The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency has also issued air and water permits for the project following an environmental review. The project would take four to five years to construct once the company makes a final investment decision. It would be the second major petrochemical development in the US Northeast. Shell's 1.5-million metric tons/year ethane cracker and polyethylene complex is under construction in Monaca, Pennsylvania, about 60 miles north of the PTTGC site. A Shell presentation earlier this year put the target completion date for the Monaca plant in 2022.

PTTGC signs deal to develop NGL storage in northeast US --PTTGC America signed a precedent agreement that outlines the terms and conditions to develop underground natural gas liquids (NGL) storage in northeastern US. This is a critical piece of infrastructure for a proposed polyethylene (PE) complex that the company could develop in the region, it said on Wednesday. It would be the first underground site to store ethane and other NGLs in the Marcellus and Utica shale formations of the northeast US, PTTGC said. Under the agreement, Mountaineer NGL Storage will develop the underground salt caverns on a 200-acre (81 ha) site in Monroe county, Ohio, eight miles (13 km) south of PPTGC's proposed petrochemical complex in Belmont county, Ohio. Mountaineer will own and operate the storage facility. The storage facility is valued at $250m, and it will be developed in two phases by creating multiple caverns in an existing underground salt formation. Each cavern can store 500,000 bbl of material, including ethane, propane, butane and ethylene. PTTGC did not specify how many caverns will be built. A pipeline will connect the proposed PTTGC complex to 1m bbl of ethane storage. The first phase could store as much as 1.5m bbl of NGLs. PTTGC did not specify if this would be a mix of NGLs. Mountaineer already has all the permits needed to start construction on the first phase, which will take two to three years to complete. Phase two could hold another 1.5m bbl of NGLs, PTTGC said. The facility could also be further expanded in order to meet market demand. It is unclear whether the first phase alone would include 1m bbl of ethane storage, or whether the two phases would combine to reach that level. The storage facility could serve other prospective customers in addition to PTTGC, said David Hooker, president of Mountaineer. Mountaineer is a subsidiary of Energy Storage Ventures LLC. The storage deal brings PPTGC one step closer to making a final investment decision (FID) on the project, said CEO Toasaporn Boonyapipat, CEO of PTTGC America.

PTT Global/Mountaineer agreement a good thing for proposed cracker plant - — The Belmont and Monroe County commissioners see good signs in the future of PTT Global Chemical’s operations in the area now that a storage hub is being proposed to support an ethane cracker plant many are hoping to see built in Dillies Bottom.On Wednesday morning, the Belmont County commissioners referred to a press release just issued from PTT, announcing PTT’s agreement with Mountaineer NGL Storage to provide infrastructure for the proposed cracker plant. The NGL facility would provide storage and transportation services for the proposed plant. The facility will be the first underground NGL storage site in the heart of the Marcellus and Utica shale formations. Mountaineer will develop the underground salt caverns for NGL storage on a 200-acre site in Monroe County. The site, owned and operated by Mountaineer, is located approximately eight miles south of Dilles Bottom. PTT is working with Mountaineer on one million barrels of ethane storage and a pipeline that will link the storage facility to the project. “Ethane storage and transportation will be a crucial element of a world-scale petrochemical complex,” PTT President and CEO Toasaporn Boonyapipat said. “Mountaineer NGL Storage will provide essential infrastructure and capabilities to our project. Our impending partnership with this first-rate organization brings us one step closer to a final investment decision. We deeply appreciate all the support we have received from our federal, state and local partners, including Belmont and Monroe counties, which have brought us to this point.”“We are pleased to partner with PTTGCA as it works toward the development of the second petrochemical plant to be located in the Ohio River Valley,” said David Hooker, president of Mountaineer NGL Storage. “Our storage facility will have an important role in managing the plant’s supply portfolio, along with offering PTTGCA and other prospective customers an option to manage seasonal and operational demand with competitive locally priced production. The PTTGCA team has been great to work with, and we look forward to a long and successful relationship.”

Thailand's PTT moves closer to decision on Ohio petrochemical plant with storage deal - State-owned Thai oil and gas company PTT Pcl said its U.S. unit took a step forward on its proposed chemical plant in Ohio that will turn ethane into plastics with an agreement to develop a natural gas liquids storage facility. PTT Global Chemical America (PTTGCA) signed an agreement with Energy Storage Ventures LLC to build a facility to store and transport natural gas liquids (NGL) for PTTGCA's proposed complex."Our impending partnership ... brings us one step closer to a final investment decision," PTTGCA President and Chief Executive Toasaporn Boonyapipat said in a statement on Wednesday.In June, PTTGCA said it delayed making a final investment decision to build the ethane cracker, which analysts estimate will cost $5.7 billion, from the first half of 2020 to the first half of 2021 due to the coronavirus.   Analysts said the pandemic reduced expected growth in global demand for plastics. Energy Storage Ventures' Mountaineer NGL Storage subsidiary will develop the underground salt caverns on a 200-acre (80-hectare) site in Ohio's Monroe County about 8 miles (13 kilometers) from the PTTGCA site.PTTGCA said it is working with Mountaineer on 1 million barrels of ethane storage and a pipeline linking the storage facility to the project. PTTGCA said Mountaineer will develop the $250 million storage facility in two phases by creating multiple caverns in the existing underground salt formation. Each phase will be able to hold about 1.5 million barrels. PTTGCA said it is seeking new partners for its ethane cracker project after South Korea's Daelim Industrial Co Ltd pulled out earlier this month.

Pa. Consumer Advocate: FirstEnergy can’t recover $60 million alleged bribe from customers -FirstEnergy Corp. would not be able to raise electric rates on its 720,000 West Penn Power Co. customers in an attempt to recoup what federal prosecutors say was $60 million in bribes allegedly paid to Ohio power brokers. Prosecutors allege the bribes were paid in an effort to secure a $1.3 billion bailout of two failing nuclear power plants a FirstEnergy subsidiary owned in Ohio. “ ‘Lobbying’ expenses (by a utility) are not recoverable from the ratepayers. It would be disallowed,” Tanya McCloskey, acting Pennsylvania Consumer Advocate, said Wednesday. “We do a very detailed review of their expenditures and their expenses,” when a utility asks the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission for a rate hike, McCloskey said. The state PUC constantly is “closely monitoring recent cases in Ohio and Illinois involving companies that also operate affiliates in Pennsylvania to safeguard consumers in our state,” said Nils Hagen-Frederiksen, a PUC spokesman. The commission tracks utility-related developments in other states to evaluate their potential impact, Frederiksen noted. The PUC also conducts a “rigorous management audit” that reviews all expenses of utilities in Pennsylvania, and those audits are available to the Consumer Advocate whenever a utility seeks a rate hike, McCloskey said. FirstEnergy serves two million customers in the state through Greensburg-based West Penn Power, as well as Met-Ed, Penelec and Penn Power. Todd Meyers, a spokesman for Greensburg-based West Penn Power, could not be reached for comment. The FBI on Tuesday arrested Ohio Speaker of the House Larry Householder and four others in an elaborate scheme in which a nonprofit, Generation Now, allegedly received payments from FirstEnergy in its efforts to win the bailout in 2019 and defeat an attempt to put a referendum regarding the bailout on the Ohio ballot. FirstEnergy Solutions, which had been a subsidiary of FirstEnergy, was in bankruptcy at the time and operating the nuclear power plants. The company emerged from bankruptcy in February 2020.

Pennsylvania Governor Signs $667 Million Fracking Tax Credit -A bipartisan bill giving tax breaks to Pennsylvania manufacturers that use dry natural gas to make petrochemicals and fertilizers was signed into law Thursday by Gov. Tom Wolf. The measure (HB 732), a compromised version passed last week after the Democratic governor vetoed a similar measure in March, allows for approval of tax credits for four projects a year, adding up to nearly $667 million over the 25-year span of the economic development incentive program. The annual cap will be $26.7 million. Applicants must invest at least $400 million in a project facility using dry natural gas...

More sinkholes develop alongside Mariner East construction in Chester County -Sinkholes and land subsidence have developed alongside Sunoco’s Mariner East pipeline construction in West Whiteland Township, Chester County. About half a dozen sinkholes along the pipeline’s path began appearing June 13, close to active pipelines carrying natural gas liquids, a pipeline valve station and a public hiking trail, according to local officials. The most recent subsidence occurred Friday afternoon, with growing cracks on the busy Route 30, near a sinkhole that had developed last week, according to the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission. The PUC’s Safety Division of the Bureau of Investigation & Enforcement is on-site and conducting an investigation. “No active pipelines were exposed as a result of the subsidences and engineers from the Safety Division continue to closely monitor the situation,” according to a statement released Friday afternoon by the PUC. The PUC says it is in contact with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and PennDot. All of the sinkholes have been filled with cement, according to Township manager Mimi Gleason. Gleason says pipeline builder Energy Transfer, formerly known as Sunoco Logistics, continues to conduct testing and has an employee walking the area around the clock to check for any newly formed sinkholes or subsidence. The PUC says the company is using ground penetrating radar three times a day near the roadway and the hiking trail to detect any new subsidence. “The Township is very concerned,” said Gleason. “We’re glad the PUC is requiring additional testing to make sure the infrastructure is safe going forward.” Gleason says Energy Transfer finished the underground drilling needed to install the pipeline, and reported the drill went through “very hard rock.” The area around Exton is known for its limestone, or karst, geology, which is soft and porous. The state issued permits for the pipeline in 2017, despite warnings by Department of Environmental Protection employees that the area’s geology could trigger sinkholes. Gleason says Energy Transfer also discovered a void 30 feet below the surface, which it filled with cement. It’s unclear whether that void existed before construction, or was caused by it, she said. The Township says it is now safe to use the Chester Valley Trail, which had been closed.

‘Dark money’ groups spent $517,000 against two Philly-area candidates who oppose the Mariner East pipeline --Conservative nonprofit groups that have advocated for the natural gas industry funded hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of attack ads in last month’s primary election in two state House races in the Philadelphia suburbs. Outside political groups spent at least $517,000 on Democratic primary races in Chester County, according to newly disclosed campaign records and data compiled by the ad tracking firm Advertising Analytics. The targets of the attack ads were first-term state Rep. Danielle Friel Otten and Ginny Kerslake, both Democrats and outspoken opponents of Sunoco’s Mariner East pipeline project, which carries natural gas liquids from the Marcellus and Utica shale formations to the company’s terminal in Marcus Hook. Otten won her primary. Kerslake lost to incumbent Democratic Rep. Kristine Howard. That much spending in state House races is unusual — and it came so late in the campaign that one of the political groups involved didn’t have to disclose its donors until a month after the June 2 election. Tracing the funding is almost impossible, as the nonprofits behind it are not required to disclose donors. The spending underscores the influence of “dark money” in seemingly low-profile races, as well as the stakes associated with the controversial pipeline project, a political and legal flash-point in the debate over energy and the environment.

AG charges two pipeline companies over spills in Washington County - Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro charged two pipeline companies with polluting groundwater and streams in a series of spills in 2015 along a pipeline project in Washington County. Shapiro said grand jury evidence obtained in the case showed that the pipeline builders chose to ignore a spill along the pipeline, failing to report it on a daily log. The charges stem from a construction project for a 24-inch natural gas pipeline in Robinson Township, about 30 miles west of Pittsburgh. The attorney general is charging two companies, New York-based National Fuel Gas Supply, and its subcontractor, Arizona-based Southeast Directional Drilling, for violating the state’s Clean Streams Law. “I made a commitment to Pennsylvanians that I would protect their constitutional right to clean air and pure water,” Shapiro said, in a statement. “These companies turned a blind eye to that right and will be held accountable.” According to court documents, the crews building the pipeline lost control of fluids used to bore underground tunnels for the pipeline, and the fluid surfaced in a nearby stream. The fluid commonly contains water, a form of clay called bentonite, as well as other chemicals and additives to assist in lubricating the drill and returning the drill cuttings to the surface. Neighbors also began noticing their private drinking water became cloudy and discolored, and tests later confirmed contaminants in the drinking water. A nearby stream that was normally clear became milky. One of the neighbors reporting problems with his water was former township supervisor Brian Coppola. Coppola, who is suing the companies in Washington County court, still can’t use his drinking water, according to the court documents. Pennsylvania Attorney General's office A grand jury presentment charging two pipeline companies with environmental crimes related to a drilling fluid spill included this photo of a Washington County stream affected by the spill. The documents say that even though the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection tested Coppola’s drinking water, Coppola “never received anything other than the lab results” from the DEP. A subsequent test performed by a private lab found elevated levels of solids and chemicals in Coppola’s water. Other neighbors reported problems. One found “cloudy, white-colored water” when he began filling his pool with a garden hose. Another, Brenda Vance, told the grand jury her water supply had turned white, but when a DEP water quality specialist came to her house, he tested it for contaminants associated with fracking and gas drilling, not pipeline drilling. The DEP later told her that even though “common pollutants associated with oil and gas fluids” were found in her water, it was “not adversely affected by the drilling, alteration, or operation of an oil and gas well.”

West Liberty man indicted, accused of dumping waste –   A federal grand jury has indicted a West Liberty man accused of illegally importing radioactive sludge produced by a fracking site in north central West Virginia. The jury sitting in Ashland indicted Cory David Hoskins, the former owner of Advanced TENORM Services LLC on five counts of mail fraud and 22 counts of violating the Hazardous Materials Transportation Act. The federal government has charged Hoskins in connection with a series of shipments and payments between July 2015 and December 2015 for waste dumped in Estill County. The indictment is just the latest in a case that has played out since West Virginia authorities alerted the Commonwealth about the dumping of TENORM waste in January 2016. TENFORM (Technologically Enhanced Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material) is a by-product of fracking. According to the EPA, most oil and gas found inside the earth are actually on the sites of ancient oceans. The actual petroleum products are the remains of sea life that died millions of years ago. The wastewater produced by a fracking operation may contain harmful materials like uranium, thorium, radium and lead, according to the EPA. According to the federal indictment, Hoskins approached Fairmont Brine Processing in West Virginia in July 2015 about trucking the sludge to Kentucky. The feds allege Hoskins lied to Fairmont Brine about having U.S. DOT compliant trucks — those need special placards and certified drivers — and also having engineers, physicists and nuclear experts on staff. He then told federal regulators and the trucking companies he hired out to run the radioactive rubbish that the waste wasn’t hazardous and therefore was exempt from any special regulations, according to the federal indictment. Federal authorities even accuse Hoskins of intentionally approaching trucking outfits, including one in Ashland, that didn’t have the hazardous certifications in order to get a cheaper rate. When the waste made it to a landfill in Irvine, the indictment sates Hoskins provided fudged paperwork showing the radioactive waste to be non-hazardous. The 22 counts of violation of the hazardous materials act are for runs identified by federal authorities. The five fraud counts reflect payments that changed hands between Fairmont Brine and Advanced TENFORM. 

State Legislature closes hazardous waste loophole - The State Legislature passed A.2655/S.3392, a statute that closes a loophole that allowed hazardous hydrofracking waste to be dumped in New York even while hydrofracking itself was banned. The legislation passed the Assembly on Monday and the Senate on Wednesday. It must be signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to become a law. Shale fracking has polluted drinking water sources throughout the country—in Pennsylvania’s Monongahela River, for example—and Cuomo’s ban defended both public health and the environment. However, the fracking ban still allowed shale oil and gas waste—which can be highly flammable, toxic, and occasionally radioactive—to be imported. Formerly, the loophole let such waste avoid the label of “hazardous,” so it was regularly accepted to be spread on roads, or to be disposed of improperly at dumpsites and landfills throughout the state. A June 2019 report showed that New York had accepted over 638,000 tons and about 23,000 barrels of fracking waste from Pennsylvania fracking operators since 2011.

Plugging abandoned oil and gas wells could be a jobs boon for the U.S. - There's a lot of jobs potential if the federal government gets serious about plugging what could be as many as 3 million abandoned oil-and-gas wells nationwide, a new report from Resources for the Future and a Columbia University energy think tank concludes. Abandoned wells can leak methane — a very potent planet-warming gas — and other pollutants. If it tackles 500,000 of those, this could mean up to 120,000 more jobs.The idea comes as oil-and-gas industry workers are reeling from layoffs due to the price and demand collapse.Estimates for the number of abandoned wells nationwide range from hundreds of thousands to 3 million, "depending on the definition of such wells needing attention," the report notes."A significant federal program to plug orphan wells could create tens of thousands of jobs, potentially as many as 120,000 if 500,000 wells were plugged," it finds. It points out that the oil industry has equipment and labor available for the job, given that the sector shed more than 76,000 jobs (and counting) this year. They estimate that the costs of plugging the "known inventory" of roughly 57,000 wells could range from $1.4 billion to $2.7 billion, while identifying and plugging 500,000 wells could plausibly cost $12 billion to $24 billion.

US Marcellus and Utica Shales Market Report- Size, Trends, Drivers, Restraints, Opportunities, and Challenges - The US Appalachian Basin located in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and New York continues to be the driver in natural gas production within the United States. During May 2019, it produced around 31 billion cubic feet per day (Bcfd) and is forecast to reach a rate of approximately 35 Bcfd by the end of 2019. The basin comprises the two main formations – the Marcellus, and the Utica. The majority of the activity in the Marcellus continues to take place in north east and south west Pennsylvania while the hotspot for the Utica is in eastern Ohio. Fracking activity in the Marcellus and Utica formations is driven by the large demand for natural gas from the nearby populated areas and although natural gas prices have experienced some volatility during recent years, Appalachian producers are generally able to sell their natural gas at a premium in trading hubs located in the North East. The competitive landscape of the Marcellus play is largely dominated by EQT Corp., the largest natural gas producer in the US, whereas, Ascent Resources LLC and Gulfport Energy Corp. lead the natural gas production in the Utica play. The report analyzes the natural gas appraisal and production activities in the Marcellus and Utica shale plays. The scope of the report includes –
– Comprehensive analysis of natural gas production across major counties in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, and New York during 2013-2018, as well as production outlook from 2019 to 2023
– In-depth information of well permits issued in the Pennsylvania region of the Marcellus and Utica shale, by county and by company from January 2018 to March 2019
– Detailed understanding of IP rates and type well profiles in Marcellus and Utica formations
– Exhaustive analysis of competitive landscape in the Marcellus and Utica shale in terms of net acreage, gross production, cost trends and planned investments.
– Comparison of type well economic metrics of major players were also analyzed
– Up-to-date information on major mergers and acquisitions in the Marcellus and Utica shales between 2013 and 2019
– Overview of existing and upcoming pipelines and LNG terminals in the Marcellus and Utica.

FERC approves Leidy South gas pipeline project to fuel power in Atlantic states - Natural gas infrastructure firm Williams gained federal regulatory approval for a pipeline project bringing gas for home heating and power generation in the Atlantic Seaboard region. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission gave permission to proceed with the Leidy South Project which will deliver 582,400 dekatherms per day—enough to serve more than two million homes—of additional pipeline takeaway from the gas-rich Marcellus and Utica shale regions of Pennsylvania. Tulsa-based Williams says the project will help utilities convert from coal-fired power capacity to natural gas, which has half the carbon emissions. “As the United States switches to clean power to energize our electric grids, Williams is excited and proud to be the backbone that connects the best supplies of dry gas with our country’s largest demand centers,” said Alan Armstrong, president and CEO of Williams. “This project represents one of many opportunities to further reduce greenhouse gas emissions with right here, right now available solutions as coal-fired electric generation plants are replaced with natural gas units to reliably balance the intermittency of new renewable resources.” The Leidy South would basically use the same corridor as the company’s interstate Transco pipeline system in that area, so it would reduce the amount of new infrastructure and land use needed. Transco is the nation’s largest-volume interstate natural gas pipeline system, delivering natural gas through a 10,000-mile pipeline network whose mainline extends nearly 1,800 miles between South Texas and New York City. Williams added that there are still more than 80 coal-fired power plants in the states served by the Transco pipeline system. Natural gas fuels more than 35 percent of the nation’s electricity generation mix, while coal has dropped from its once preeminent position to about 25 percent amidst a growing number of plant retirements. Cabot Oil & Gas and Seneca Resources will be producing the natural gas connecting to the Leidy South expansion. Atlantic Seaboard states form one of the fastest growing gas generation regions in the U.S., according to BTU Analytics. Environmental challengers, however, have forced the cancellation of Duke and Dominion’s planned Atlantic Coast Pipeline which would have crossed the Appalachian Trail. The two utilities said the cost of legal challenges make the already multi-billion-dollar project uneconomical for them. Williams says the construction phase will create more than 600 jobs, while operations will support $4.2 million in annual economic impact for origin state Pennsylvania.

Transco Expansion Approved to Connect Marcellus, Utica Natural Gas to Eastern Markets - FERC last Friday approved the Williams Leidy South natural gas pipeline project that would connect Marcellus/Utica shale supply to demand markets along the Atlantic Seaboard ahead of the 2021-2022 winter. The 582,400 Dth/d pipeline, an extension of the massive Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line system, aka Transco, would source gas produced by Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. and Seneca Resources Co. LLC. The project is to include six miles of large-diameter pipeline loop, two compressor stations and associated facilities in Pennsylvania’s Clinton, Columbia, Lycoming, Luzerne, Schuylkill and Wyoming counties. Williams CEO Alan Armstrong said the project represents one of many opportunities to further reduce greenhouse gas emissions, noting that “there remain more than 80 coal plants in the states Transco serves that can potentially be displaced” by gas. By maximizing the use of the existing Transco transmission corridor and expanding existing facilities in Pennsylvania, Leidy South would “substantially reduce” the amount of new infrastructure and land use required to meet these needs, minimizing community and environmental impact, Armstrong said. “With the growing urgency to transition to a low-carbon fuel future, Williams and its natural gas-focused strategy provide a practical and immediate path to reduce industry emissions, support the viability of renewables and grow a clean energy economy,” the CEO said.Approval by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for Leidy South comes at an uncertain time for oil and gas pipelines across the country. Earlier this month, Dominion Energy Inc. and Duke Energy Corp. canceled the proposed Atlantic Coast gas pipeline project, citing ongoing delays and increasing cost uncertainty. Meanwhile, the future of the Dakota Access crude pipeline, three years after entering service, is increasingly unclear amid an ongoing legal battle over key water-crossing permits. 

 'People Need to Fight It for Everything They're Worth' – Battles over Pipelines Are Far from Over - Theresa “Red” Terry and her daughter spent 34 days living in the treetops trying to block construction of a 42-inch-wide gas pipeline through her family’s property in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. They were eventually forced down by a court order, and the minute Red’s feet touched the ground, chainsaw crews emerged to cut down her oak and maple trees. They were thwarted by an angry crowd of Red’s supporters and police who intervened to prevent violence, but early the next morning, the crews returned to finish the job.That was more than two years ago. The trees remain on the ground today, piled the way they fell in May of 2018.“Every time I go out there, I feel like someone stomped my heart,” said Terry in mid-July. “I feel like the whole mountain has been given cancer.”The Terry property, which has been in the family for seven generations, contains family residences, an orchard, a multitude of wildlife, and the upper reaches of Bottom Creek, a pristine mountain stream that forms the headwaters of the Roanoke River. The land also falls in the path of the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), a planned 303-mile natural gas pipeline running from the fracking fields of the Marcellus and Utica shale formations in northern West Virginia to a terminal in southern Virginia that feeds into the East Coast pipeline network.  MVP was announced in 2014 as part of a wave of similar projects, including the 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) from West Virginia through Virginia to North Carolina, and the Western Marcellus Pipeline, planned to run along a similar path as MVP.   Western Marcellus never got off the drawing board, and the ACP was canceled in early July after six years of regulatory and legal battles, which caused the project’s cost to balloon from roughly $5 billion in 2014 to $8 billion in 2020. The day after the ACP was canceled, a federal court ordered the Dakota Access oil pipeline to shut down.  Anti-pipeline activists celebrated the double shot of good news and enjoyed renewed hope that other pipelines like the MVP might be stopped.  But since the wins in early July, a series of twists suggest the fight against natural gas infrastructure will continue for some time. A U.S. Appeals Court granted DAPL an administrative stay so it can continue to operate while the court deliberates. Additionally, the U.S. Supreme Court dramatically reduced the scope of a U.S. District Court ruling that factored into the ACP’s cancellation.  In a case involving the Keystone XL pipeline, the lower court had ruled in April that the Army Corps of Engineers failed to adequately consider endangered species when it issued what’s known as Nationwide Permit 12. That particular permit was used by dozens of pipelines because it allowed them to win approval to cross multiple waterways through a single process, instead of applying for individual permits for each stream and river. The U.S. District Court not only halted the use of Nationwide Permit 12 for Keystone XL but applied the ruling nationwide. The Supreme Court restored the use of the permit everywhere except with regard to Keystone XL. These developments are only the current hotspots in a long-running legal, political and regulatory battle that’s playing out around the construction of natural gas infrastructure throughout rural America.

Columbia Gas seeks more time to build pipeline --Columbia Gas Transmission Corp. is asking for more time to finish a pipeline that would cross part of Washington County. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a notice of the request on Wednesday. The company states that, “due to unforeseen delays in acquiring an easement from the government of Maryland across the Western Maryland Rail Trail, additional time is now required in order to complete the construction of the authorized project facilities,” according to the notice. Columbia is asking for an extension, until July 18, 2023, to complete the pipeline. Columbia Gas Transmission, a subsidiary of TC Energy, has proposed running the pipeline from existing facilities in Pennsylvania to a new Mountaineer Gas Co. pipeline in West Virginia. Proponents have said the new pipeline is critical to economic development in West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle. Opponents have said the pipeline, which would burrow more than 100 feet under the Potomac River, would threaten the environment and drinking water while bringing little benefit to the state. The pipeline would go under the Cheasapeake and Ohio Canal Historical Park, which is owned by the National Park Service, and the Western Maryland Rail Trail, which is owned by the state. The project received green lights from state and federal regulators. But the Maryland Board of Public Works has denied the company’s request for a right-of-way permit to bore under the Western Maryland Rail Trail. In August, a federal court in August upheld that denial. This week’s notice from FERC establishes a 15-calendar day intervention and comment period deadline. Comments are due before 5 p.m. Eastern Time on July 30, according to the notice.

Completion of regional natural gas pipeline project may be delayed — The underground TransCanada natural gas pipeline from Pennsylvania through Maryland into West Virginia may take longer to complete.Columbia Gas, the TransCanada subsidiary building the project, has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to have until the summer of 2023, a decision which must be approved by FERC. For regional industry here, however, officials say the pipeline is important to attract business.“It’s very important that we have another source of natural gas into Berkeley County and our region,” says Sandy Hamilton, head of the Berkeley County Development Authority. “We are at capacity. We have new customers that are looking to come to our area and if they’re a heavy natural gas user I have to give them a ‘no’ or, at least, we have to find them an alternative.”The public is invited to submit public comment to FERC by the end of this month.\Pipeline firms scale back plans amid legal protests - - A decade ago, when the shale boom was still in its infancy, developers lined up to build long-distance natural gas pipelines to supply distant markets with low-cost energy to replace aging, dirty coal and oil-burning power plants.But after years of legal fights with environmental groups trying to eradicate carbon-emitting fossil fuels, pipeline companies are backing off large-scale pipeline projects. The decision by its developers earlier this month to cancel the 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline project is just the beginning, experts say. “There’s so much uncertainty on the project timeline and the cost you are unlikely to see another major natural gas pipeline built (that crosses state lines),” said Sam Andrus, executive director of North American gas at the consulting firm IHS Markit. “These environmental groups have made it their explicit goal to delay these projects and raise the costs. And they’re getting better at it as time goes on.” If more pipelines go the way of the Atlantic Coast, it would limit markets for natural gas producers in states such as Texas, which produces more gas than any state and has watched its economy thrive under oil and gas boom brought on by hydraulic fracturing. A recent study by the American Petroleum Institute predicts that demand from oil and gas producers would support the construction of more than 17,000 miles pipelines during the next five years. But between legal fights with environmentalists and Democratic state politicians such as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo moving to block pipelines from their states to address climate change, it looks unlikely that anywhere close to that amount will be built. “We need infrastructure to get our production out to areas with the most demand,” said Frank Macchiarola, senior vice president at API. “It’s essential we get these projects up and running.”

PIPELINES: Federal court hands FERC more time to use delay tactic -- Friday, July 24, 2020 --  A federal court yesterday granted the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission extra time to comply with a recent ruling barring the commission from using a procedural stalling tactic in legal challenges. FERC now has until Oct. 5 to comply.

Environmental justice concerns stall Va. power project -- Thursday, July 23, 2020 --A $350 million gas project spanning much of eastern Virginia has been put on hold, in part due to environmental justice concerns. Virginia's State Corporation Commission (SCC) recently deferred action on the proposal by Southern Co. subsidiary Virginia Natural Gas (VNG). The agency told the company to come back by the end of the year with more details on financing and environmental justice issues. The project, a series of pipelines, compressor stations and other infrastructure stretching from the exurbs of Washington to Hampton Roads in southern Virginia, has come under fire from environmental groups for potentially locking in years of natural gas use. They've been joined by a group of residents of Charles City County, a poor, majority-minority county east of Richmond. The project is designed to supply a natural gas power plant in the county, and another plant has been proposed. While supporters say the facilities would bring economic development, opponents say developers are pushing big polluters on a vulnerable population. "We were an easy target. They knew exactly what they were doing," said La'Veesha Rollins, a Charles City County native who is part of the group fighting the project. "We get nothing out of this deal." Officials at VNG say they remain committed to the project. Spokesman Rick DelaHaya said the company intends to work with the SCC and other agencies "to develop a model project that meets all regulations." At the center of the project is a proposed 1,060-MW combined-cycle natural gas power plant known as C4GT, a merchant plant that would sell electricity to the wholesale market through grid operator PJM Interconnection. Another plant, called the Chickahominy Power Station, was announced in 2018 and is to be located within a mile of C4GT. Called the Header Improvement Project (HIP), VNG's plan involves 6 miles of new pipeline for an interconnection to the Transco line in Prince William County, Va. The plan would also add 18 miles of pipelines in existing corridors and three new or expanded compressor stations. One of the compressor stations would be built in an existing metering location in a minority neighborhood of Chesapeake, Va., south of Norfolk. VNG officials say the project would bring jobs, development and tax revenue to Charles City County and beyond, along with gas and electric reliability, noting that gas burns cleaner than coal. They call C4GT among the most efficient natural gas-fueled power plants to be built in Virginia. Environmental groups say the project moves Virginia toward continuing dependence on natural gas, when the Democrats who now run the state have been trying to put it on track for more renewable energy.

Developers: With pipeline canceled, big factories will reject Eastern North Carolina - They say high energy users want natural gas; opponents of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline reject that argument. While environmentalists and private property advocates celebrated the cancellation of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline this month, economic developers said the state literally lost fuel that North Carolina needs to attract large employers to lower-income areas in the eastern part of the state. Over the past three years, Cumberland County and the Fayetteville area were considered for more than $1 billion worth of industrial projects “that either won’t be coming or could not come because we did not have the natural gas structure that they needed,” “Some of them located in other parts of the state and other parts of the Southeast. But once it came down to profiling their energy load, we just weren’t able to accommodate it,” Van Geons said, declining to name the companies.The Atlantic Coast Pipeline would have run about 600 miles and carried natural gas from West Virginia to central and eastern Virginia and Eastern North Carolina. Construction was underway, and it was supposed to be completed this year. But the project was stalled by lawsuits and other efforts by its opponents. The estimated construction price rose from $5 billion in 2015 to $8 billion this year.Duke and Dominion announced the end of the project on July 5. They said ongoing delays and “increasing cost uncertainty” threatened the project’s economic viability.The opposition included a variety of critics.Some were property owners who were angry at being forced to give up land for the pipeline. Others were residents along the route who worried about natural gas leaks, fires and explosions near their homes.And many were environmental activists. They oppose the use of fracking techniques to extract natural gas and they want the world to move away from fossil fuels that exacerbate climate change by adding to the amount of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere.

U.S. natgas futures drop over 4% to 3-week low as output rises - (Reuters) - U.S. natural gas futures dropped more than 4% on Monday to a three-week low as output increases and stockpiles remain about 16% over the five-year average. Some analysts said the market was starting to write off the rest of the summer after prices dropped about 5% last week even though this is the hottest time of year and the weather is expected to remain hotter-than-normal through at least early August. Front-month gas futures fell 7.7 cents, or 4.5%, to settle at $1.641 per million British thermal units, their lowest close since June 26. Refinitiv said production in the Lower 48 U.S. states averaged 88.4 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) so far in July, up from a 20-month low of 87.0 bcfd in June but still well below the all-time monthly high of 95.4 bcfd in November. Traders noted output was rising as EQT Corp boosted production in Appalachia. Refinitiv forecast U.S. demand, including exports, will rise from 92.5 bcfd this week to 94.1 bcfd next week. That is higher than Refinitiv's outlook on Friday. Pipeline gas flowing to U.S. LNG export plants averaged 3.3 bcfd (34% utilization) so far in July, down from a 20-month low of 4.1 bcfd in June and a record 8.7 bcfd in February. Utilization was about 90% in 2019. U.S. pipeline exports, meanwhile, rose as consumers in neighboring countries cranked up their air conditioners. Refinitiv said pipeline exports to Canada averaged 2.4 bcfd so far in July, up from 2.3 bcfd in June, but still below the all-time monthly high of 3.5 bcfd in December. Pipeline exports to Mexico averaged 5.56 bcfd so far this month, up from 5.44 bcfd in June and on track to top the record 5.55 bcfd in March.

UPDATE 1-U.S. natgas futures rises as consumers crank up air conditioners -  (Reuters) - U.S. natural gas futures rose 2% on Tuesday as power generators burned record amounts of gas this week to keep air conditioners humming during the hottest part of a heat wave blanketing much of the country. That increase, however, came after prices fell over 4% to a three-week low on Monday on forecasts for less hot weather next week. Front-month gas futures rose 3.4 cents, or 2.1%, to settle at $1.675 per million British thermal units. On Monday, the contract closed at its lowest since June 26. As the weather turns hotter, data provider Refinitiv forecast U.S. demand, including exports, will rise from 92.3 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) this week to 93.6 bcfd next week. The power industry consumed more than half of that gas, gobbling up a one-day record of 47.5 bcfd on Monday. Pipeline gas flowing to U.S. LNG export plants averaged 3.4 bcfd (35% utilization) so far in July, down from a 20-month low of 4.1 bcfd in June and a record 8.7 bcfd in February. Utilization was about 90% in 2019. U.S. pipeline exports, meanwhile, rose as consumers in neighboring countries cranked up their air conditioners. Refinitiv said pipeline exports to Canada averaged 2.4 bcfd so far in July, up from 2.3 bcfd in June, but still below the all-time monthly high of 3.5 bcfd in December. Pipeline exports to Mexico averaged 5.58 bcfd so far this month, up from 5.44 bcfd in June and on track to top the record 5.55 bcfd in March. Refinitiv said production in the Lower 48 U.S. states averaged 88.3 bcfd so far in July, up from a 20-month low of 87.0 bcfd in June but still well below the all-time monthly high of 95.4 bcfd in November.

US working natural gas volumes in underground storage rise 37 Bcf: EIA | S&P Global Platts - US natural gas in storage inventories ticked up slightly more than expected last week, prompting slight gains to the NYMEX Henry Hub balance-of-summer prices, which remained nearly 10 cents lower than the week prior. The amount of natural gas in US underground storage facilities increased 37 Bcf to 3.215 Tcf in the week that ended July 17, according to US Energy Information Administration data released July 23. The injection was above consensus expectations of analysts S&P Global Platts surveyed, which called for a 33 Bcf build. The injection was 8 Bcf below the 45 Bcf build reported for the same week in 2020, but matched the five-year average injection, according to EIA data. Storage volumes now stand 656 Bcf, or 25.6%, above the year-ago level of 2.559 Tcf and 436 Bcf, or 16%, above the five-year average of 2.779 Tcf. The build was less than the 45 Bcf injection reported the week prior as total supplies averaged 91.4 Bcf/d, up only 100 MMcf/d from a week earlier, as nominal changes in production were boosted slightly higher by net Canadian imports, according to S&P Global Platts Analytics. Downstream, total demand averaged 85.6 Bcf/d, with gains mostly centered on the power generation and residential-commercial markets, but widespread gains were limited across downstream sectors. The NYMEX Henry Hub balance-of-summer contract — August through October — rose 2 cents to $1.76/MMBtu in trading following the release of the weekly storage report, although that was 8 cents below the week-ago close. The gains have not extended into next winter, though, with the November-March contract strip holding flat at about $2.65/MMBtu as spreads between the two seasons are holding steady around 90 cents/MMBtu. Platts Analytics' supply-and-demand model currently forecasts a 20 Bcf injection for the week ending July 24, which would be 13 Bcf below the five-year average.

U.S. natgas jumps over 6% as heat keeps air conditioners cranked up - (Reuters) - U.S. natural gas futures jumped over 6% on Thursday, with a couple of storms brewing in the Gulf of Mexico and on forecasts for high air conditioning demand during a heat wave expected to blanket much of the country through at least early August. Prices rose despite a federal report showing an expected near-normal storage build. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said U.S. utilities injected a near-normal 37 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas into storage in the week ended July 17. Front-month gas futures rose 10.4 cents, or 6.2%, to settle at $1.785 per million British thermal units, their highest close since July 10. Tropical Depression 8 is expected to strengthen into a Tropical Storm in the Gulf of Mexico over the next day or two as it moves toward the Texas coast. Refinitiv said production in the Lower 48 U.S. states averaged 88.4 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) in July, up from a 20-month low of 87.0 bcfd in June but still well below the all-time monthly high of 95.4 bcfd in November. With the weather expected to remain hot, Refinitiv projected U.S. demand, including exports, will hold around 92.7 bcfd this week and next. The outlook for next week was a little lower than Refinitiv's forecast on Wednesday. "Gas has been the fuel of choice for power generators looking to meet peak demand this month, and this fuel switching has helped absorb excess gas left by (coronavirus demand) destruction in the LNG and industrial sectors,"

August Natural Gas Futures Extend Rally as Demand Picture Brightens - Natural Gas Intelligence - August natural gas futures on Friday continued a rally ignited a day earlier as storage capacity concerns eased and robust power burns pointed to continued strong summer demand. The August Nymex contract gained 2.3 cents day/day and settled at $1.808/MMBtu Friday. That followed a double-digit advance on Thursday, which pushed futures to a two-week high. September climbed 3.2 cents to $1.867. NGI’s Spot Gas National Avg. rose 4.5 cents to $1.655. The pricing momentum gathered after signs of an improving liquefied natural gas (LNG) export environment and the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) latest storage assessment, released Thursday, which showed an injection of 37 Bcf for the week ending July 17. It extended to four weeks a run of sub-100 Bcf additions to gas stockpiles. Shipbroker Fearnleys AS noted news reports of fewer U.S. LNG export cancellations heading into the fall and said the trend signals a potential recovery in the making. “After a very weak summer, expectations of an improving LNG trading environment appear to be bearing fruit as early estimates suggest September U.S. Gulf cargo cancellations are down considerably,” Fearnleys said. Traders surveyed by Bloomberg estimated that between 20 and 30 U.S. LNG export cargoes would not get loaded in September, but that would represent notable and continuing improvement. There were an estimated 50 cancellations for July and between 35-40 for August. U.S. LNG demand from leading consumers in Asia and Europe is gradually recovering with prices on both continents recently trading at a premium to the U.S. benchmark.The latest storage figure, meanwhile, amplified market sentiment on the intensity and broad geographic reach of this summer’s heat. Scorching temperatures are driving strong cooling demand and allaying worries about fall containment challenges. “We see the probability of hitting storage capacity becoming increasingly unlikely,” analysts at Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. (TPH) said. TPH estimated that storage would crest at 4.08 Tcf this year. With supply running 1 Bcf/d below its forecasts, however, analysts expect to see an additional 100 Bcf buffer against containment. “Additionally, record power burn” is “lining up for a tight print” with the next EIA storage report, the TPH analysts said. Their early modeling points to a build “in the 20 Bcf range, about half of normal levels.”

Natural Gas Forwards Slide Shows Sweltering Heat No Match for Weak Export Demand, Covid-19 - In an ominous sign of what may evolve to the end of the year, scorching heat across most of the country failed to spark a rally in natural gas forward prices for the July 16-22 period, according to NGI’s Forward Look. Instead, persistently weak global exports and continued uncertainty over the level of economic recovery amid Covid-19 drove prices about a nickel lower through the balance of summer (August-October) and the upcoming winter (November-March), Forward Look data show. Smaller shifts were seen for next summer and beyond.  Dismal liquefied natural gas (LNG) demand and robust salt storage inventories stood ready to quell any uptick in prices, according to EBW Analytics. Meanwhile, the pandemic and ongoing economic weakness “took the edge off” strong power burn figures, effectively thwarting any attempt to move higher.  The front of the Nymex futures curve held steady in the low $1.70/MMBtu range to end last week. However, on Monday, the August contract slumped to around $1.64 as weather models continued to lower the intensity of heat for the remainder of the month. Prices recovered a few cents by midweek, with the August contract at $1.681, the balance of summer at $1.745 and the winter at $2.662.The latest weather data continued to be less supportive than advertised earlier in the month, while still showing a hotter-than-normal pattern for the next 15 days. The largest errors in the modeling were in the Midwest, where, outside of a few days here and there, the big heat has mostly been a “no-show,” a trend that looked to continue at least for the next couple of weeks, according to Bespoke Weather Services.The cooler medium-range shift, around the end of the month into the opening of August, fits with what Bespoke expects to be a “temporary relaxation of the La Niña base state.” The firm still sees August winding up another hotter-than normal month, but tropical activity could dampen the outlook as a system brewing in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) was set to bring rain to Texas through the weekend, limiting demand. On Thursday, the market appeared to breathe a sigh of relief after the Energy Information Administration (EIA)’s latest storage injection figure reflected what Bespoke said were “decently tight” supply/demand balances.The EIA said inventories for the week ending July 20 rose by 37 Bcf, which compares with a 44 Bcf storage build in the same week last year and a five-year average increase of 37 Bcf. Prior to the report, a Bloomberg survey found injection estimates ranging from 28 Bcf to 46 Bcf, with a median of 36 Bcf. The average of a Wall Street Journal poll was 35 Bcf, with a low estimate of 28 Bcf and a high of 41 Bcf. A Reuters poll found estimates ranging from 28 Bcf to 46 Bcf with an average injection of 36 Bcf. NGI estimated a build of 35 Bcf.

Will Buffett's $10 Billion Bet On Natural Gas Go Bust? - On the day on which Dominion Energy and Duke Energy canceled the Atlantic Coast natural gas pipeline, Dominion Energy said it would be selling substantially all of its gas transmission and storage assets to an affiliate of Berkshire Hathaway.  For Dominion Energy, the nearly US$10-billion deal, including debt assumption, is part of the company’s push to zero-carbon electric generation by 2050.     For Warren Buffett’s conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, it was the first major acquisition since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, and the biggest acquisition in four years.  While there are growing calls from environmentalists that natural gas should follow coal’s fate and start being dumped from power generation because it’s not as clean as the ‘cleaner-than-coal bridge fuel toward renewables’ narrative would like us to think, Warren Buffett is unfazed.  Buffett is looking at the asset the way he has always done with his investments – buy cheap assets that very few others are willing to buy. And betting that these assets will deliver returns. Buffett’s bet on natural gas comes at a time when U.S. natural gas prices slumped to a 25-year-low, while natural gas is set to continue to dominate utility-scale electricity generation for years to come.  In 2019, natural gas accounted for 38 percent of utility-scale electricity generation in the United States, followed by coal with 23 percent, nuclear with 20 percent, and renewables including hydroelectric with 17 percent, according to EIA data.   Natural gas continues to displace coal-fired electricity generation, and so do wind and solar, but still, natural gas is expected to be the biggest source of power generation over the next few years.  Buffett’s US$10-billion bet on natural gas infrastructure shows that the billionaire investor believes that natural gas hasn’t run its course, regardless of what environmentalists and climate-conscious investors think.  Berkshire Hathaway Energy is buying Dominion Energy’s assets that include over 7,700 miles of natural gas transmission lines, 900 billion cubic feet of operated natural gas storage with 364 billion cubic feet of company-owned working storage capacity, and 25 percent in the Cove Point LNG export, import, and storage facility in Maryland.  Berkshire Hathaway Energy will thus own 18 percent of all interstate natural gas transmission in the United States, up from 8 percent now, according to CNBC.    The fact that this acquisition was the first one that Buffett saw as attractive after the pandemic sent markets into turmoil in March suggests that the Omaha investor believes in the future of natural gas.   “a bet that the future doesn’t come as fast as some people think,” Jim Shanahan, an analyst who covers Berkshire Hathaway at Edward Jones, told Bloomberg.

BOEM proposes Gulf of Mexico oil and gas lease for November 2020 --The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is proposing to offer approximately 78.8 million acres for a region-wide lease sale scheduled for November 2020. Lease Sale 256, scheduled to be livestreamed from New Orleans, Louisiana, will be the seventh offshore sale under the 2017-2022 Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program. Lease Sale 256 will include approximately 14 755 unleased blocks – all of the available unleased areas in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico.“The Gulf of Mexico provides a fundamental role for our nation’s energy portfolio,” said Mike Celata, Director of BOEM’s Gulf of Mexico Region. “As one of the most productive basins in the world, the development of its resources is essential to our nation’s energy security.”The Gulf of Mexico Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), covering about 160 million acres, is estimated to contain about 48 billion bbl of undiscovered technically recoverable oil and 141 trillion ft³ of undiscovered technically recoverable gas.Revenues received from OCS leases (including high bids, rental payments and royalty payments) are directed to the US Treasury, certain Gulf Coast states (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama), the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and the Historic Preservation Fund.Leases resulting from this proposed sale would include stipulations to protect biologically sensitive resources, mitigate potential adverse effects on protected species, and avoid potential conflicts associated with oil and gas development in the region. In addition, the following areas are unavailable and excluded from the lease sale: blocks subject to the congressional moratorium established by the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006, blocks adjacent to or beyond the US Exclusive Economic Zone in the area known as the northern portion of the Eastern Gap, and whole blocks and partial blocks within the current boundaries of the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary.

June spill at New Orleans East oil terminal still being cleaned up - Workers continue to clean up the remains of more than 2,000 barrels of crude oil that leaked out of a storage tank at the Gulf Gateway Terminal on Terminal Road in New Orleans East on June 22, according to company officials and the state Department of Environmental Quality. Oil was still visible from the air on July 12 in a small area adjacent to the tank that is surrounded by an earthen containment dam, according to a photo taken by representatives of the Healthy Gulf environmental group. The terminal is the interim destination for dozens of tank cars moved by rail by the New Orleans Public Belt railroad and by BNSF Railway. More than 100,000 barrels of crude a day can be transferred from the cars to barges and ships docking at the terminal. Many of the railcars travel through the French Quarter on their way to the terminal. In an email sent to DEQ soon after the spill, terminal manager Stephen Champagne said 2,032 barrels of light sweet crude leaked from the storage tank, and that company officials immediately pumped the remaining 73,746 barrels of crude oil out of the leaking tank and into barges on the waterway. The company also transferred oil from several railcars at its site to barges "to create space for storage of the collected product as well as the remaining product sucked off the tank bottom." The oil that spilled was being collected and stored in either small temporary holding tanks or railcars at the site, he said. "The collected product will be sampled to determine if it can be processed by refineries," Champagne said in the note. If not, it would be properly disposed offsite, he said. The company also reported the spill to the U.S. Coast Guard National Response Center and the Louisiana State Police. DEQ inspectors who visited the site said in an initial report that a contractor was hired by the company to collect a combination of oil and rainwater from inside the earthen containment area. Air monitoring by the inspectors found 20 parts per million of volatile organic compounds in the air on the day of the spill and 10 parts per million of benzene the next day.

Oil & gas company BJ Services to lay off 273 in Shreveport following bankruptcy filing -– Another Northwest Louisiana employer in the oil and gas industry has filed for bankruptcy and announced layoffs.According to the latest Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notice updated by the Louisiana Workforce Commission, BJ Services plans to lay off 273 employees in Shreveport on August 2.Under federal law, employers are required to provide advance notice of plant closures or mass layoffs.The Texas-based company provides hydraulic fracturing and cementing services to upstream oil and gas companies and has operations in every major basin throughout the U.S. and Canada. The company filed the WARN notice with the LWC on Sunday and filed for voluntary Chapter 11 bankrupcty on Monday.  According to a statement released by the company, the plan is to sell its assets and is in active discussions with bidders regarding both the cementing business and portions of the fracturing business. The statement said the company believes the sales would reduce the number of jobs impacted by this process. “The industry continues to face unprecedented uncertainty caused by volatile commodity markets and significantly reduced demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite maintaining a leading market position and strong client support, the severe downturn in activity and subsequent lack of liquidity resulted in an unmanageable capital structure. After exhausting every possible alternative to address these issues and improve our liquidity, we have made the very difficult decision to proceed with a Chapter 11 process,”

'A win-win': Plugging Louisiana's 4,300 'orphaned' wells could boost industry, cut emissions --A federally funded stimulus program aimed at plugging the growing number of “orphan” oil and gas wells could greatly reduce pollution while giving a much-needed boost to the state’s ailing oil industry, a new report says. As Congress considers a new stimulus package of several trillion dollars to assist with the economic impacts from the coronavirus pandemic, a group of energy policy experts has published a report making the case that a fraction of the money should go toward plugging the millions of wells that have been abandoned by their owners and are now the responsibility of state governments. Louisiana has documented nearly 4,300 such wells, and the number is expected to rise as more companies shut down wells due to low oil prices and a faltering economy.“Plugging wells is a win-win opportunity that would provide good work for people negatively affected by the downturn in the economy and provide environmental benefits,” said Daniel Raimi, a public policy researcher and co-author of a report by Columbia University and Resources for the Future, a Washington D.C. environmental policy think tank.Plugging all of Louisiana’s orphan wells could employ just over 1,000 oil workers full-time for one year. It would also cut methane emissions by 558 metric tons per year, according to the report’s metrics. That’s the equivalent of the annual greenhouse gas emissions from more than 3,000 cars.Gifford Briggs, president of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association, supports a federal stimulus for well plugging. He said many unemployed oil workers and struggling companies in Louisiana have the skills and equipment to begin doing such work today.“There are multiple layers of benefits,” he said. “It gives the opportunity to put people back to work and money back in our communities … and it continues to improve our environment.”

Tellurian evaluates changes to Driftwood LNG project, plans shares issue -(Reuters) - Tellurian Inc is considering changes to its Driftwood LNG export project in Louisiana that could significantly reduce the overall Phase 1 costs, the U.S. liquefied natural gas producer said on Wednesday. The company also disclosed plans to issue 35 million shares at $1 each, a 37% discount to Tuesday’s close, sending its stock plunging 27%. Shares surged more than 50% on Tuesday after sources said India’s Petronet LNG renewed a deal to give the parties more time to finalize an investment in the project. LNG developers have delayed numerous projects as the COVID-19 pandemic sapped overall fuel demand and hammered gas prices. Natural gas was trading at $1.65 per million British thermal units, about 30% lower than a year earlier. Tellurian has said the Driftwood project, designed to produce 27.6 million tonnes per annum of LNG, is expected to cost $27.5 billion, including pipelines. About $15.4 billion of the estimate is for a contract with Bechtel Oil, Gas and Chemicals Inc to build the export plant. Tellurian did not provide details on the cost cuts, but Scotiabank analysts said the reduction could mean the potential removal of the Permian pipeline, which could lead to savings of $4.2 billion. The equity offering will boost Tellurian’s liquidity to about $123 million on a pro forma basis, and Scotiabank analysts estimated could provide the company “sufficient runway until July 2021” based on a $6 million monthly cash burn.

INVESTIGATION: Lethal fog smothers Texas oil sites as inspections lag -- Tuesday, July 21, 2020 --  ODESSA, Texas — Permits are rising for handling hydrogen sulfide — a toxic byproduct of oil production that has killed workers. But an E&E News investigation shows little attention is being paid to making sites safer.

Oil-and-gas money flows to Railroad Commission nominee who pledged to recuse himself -  Back in March, when Jim Wright, with little money in his campaign account, was an obscure Republican primary challenger to a sitting state oil and gas regulator, he pledged to recuse himself from matters involving campaign contributors. But Wright is now qualifying his pledge as recent campaign finance reports show hundreds of thousands of dollars from oil and gas interests flowed his way after his out-of-nowhere upset primary victory in March. In an interview Wednesday, Wright told the American-Statesman that should he be elected in November to the Railroad Commission, the state agency that regulates the oil and gas industry, he would recuse himself only on matters that involved contributors who give money directly ahead of a commission vote. Environmentalists and watchdog groups have long referred to the Railroad Commission as a “captured agency” — its three elected commissioners, all Republicans, receive the bulk of their campaign contributions from the industry they regulate and have historically been sympathetic to its interests. The close relationship — coziness, say critics — between industry and its chief regulators runs through to the Legislature. In 2016, the staff of the Sunset Advisory Commission, which reviews agency functions, recommended the commission, which no longer has anything to do with railroads, change its name to the Texas Energy Resources Commission to make its work more transparent. The move was opposed by oil and gas interests, and state Rep. Tom Craddick, R-Midland, the long-serving influential member representing the oil-rich Permian Basin — and father of Christi Craddick, one of the three current railroad commissioners — successfully led the effort to quash it.

Watchdog group sues Railroad Commission over oil storage crisis orders - The Austin office of watchdog group Public Citizen has sued the Texas Railroad Commission, the state's oil and gas regulator, over emergency orders in May that waived fees and relaxed regulations for the storage of crude. In response to a glut of crude and rapidly dwindling room to store it, the agency's three commissioners voted May 5 to enact orders that waived fees and charges for construction of new oil storage projects through the end of the year. Commissioners also gave oil companies more time to store waste in open pits and to plug abandoned wells. Public Citizen filed its suit Wednesday in state district court alleging that commissioners used the coronavirus pandemic to give handouts to industry — and that they did so without public input, skirting laws such as the Texas Public Meetings Act. Record low oil prices have caused a drop in demand for oil and natural gas and an uptick in bankruptcy filings, which Public Citizen argues will mean that more tax dollars will be spent on cleaning up abandoned wells. The Railroad Commission does comment on litigation but the agency contends that all the action taken during its May 5 meeting complied with state and federal laws. “These legal, emergency actions protect the Texas Miracle while ensuring the environment is protected," Railroad Commission Chairman Wayne Christian said in a statement. "This complaint is no more than a proxy for fringe extremists to advance their goal of eliminating the domestic production of fossil fuels, a move that would kill 3.2 million jobs, increase energy and gasoline costs by $2,500 a year for American families, and cost Texas $1.5 trillion in GDP between 2021-2025.”

Permian Gains Give Oomph to US Drilling Permits in June, but Recovery to 2019 Levels Not in Sight - Requests for U.S. drilling permits improved in June following a brutal April and May, with the Permian Basin still the top region for operators, according to Evercore ISI. The analyst firm each month compiles permitting statistics for the Lower 48 and offshore using federal and state data. Covid-19 and low commodity prices had crushed permit requests in April, with May possibly the bottom, analyst James West said. According to Evercore, 1,238 permits were approved in June, up by 166 month/month (m/m). However, permitting was off by 66% year-to-date and 77% from June 2019. Most of the new permitting activity in June was focused on the Permian, with 109 more m/m, and in the Bakken Shale, which had 11 more requests than in May.“Permian operators received approval for 381 wells with 70% generated by public companies, 2% by equity sponsored operators, and the remainder originated from private ones,” West noted. The Bakken permit count improved in June to 67, 11 higher m/m. Public E&Ps requested 94% of all the permits, Evercore noted. Operators also increased their permit requests in the Mississippian Lime, up by 11 from May, and in Oklahoma’s Woodford formation, with nine more permits requested.The year-to-date oil permit count at mid-year stood at slightly under 10,000, with more than one-third (36%) for the Permian, Evercore noted. However, Permian permitting remained sharply lower, off by around 32% year/year at 3,618 to date. While the permit count is down from 2019, there has been a “steep fall” in the Powder River Basin, off by 97% year/year, and in the Denver-Julesburg (DJ)/Niobrara formation, which has seen permitting decline by 80%, Evercore analysts noted.Natural gas permitting also has slumped sharply, with the mid-year total at 1,128 in June, down by 48% year/year. The decline was blamed primarily on a deceleration in the Marcellus Shale, which had seen permits decrease by 54%.Meanwhile, in the other big dry gas play, the Haynesville Shale, private operators drove an uptick in permits during June, with 25 more requests m/m. Gas permits in the play stood at 142 in June, up by 40 m/m.Meanwhile,  Ohio regulators, who oversee permitting in the Utica Shale, authorized 16 wells to be drilled, up by 15 m/m, with 36% for plugging and abandonment (P&A), according to Evercore.

Texas regulator proactively inspects Permian Highway Pipeline construction - Inspectors with the Railroad Commission of Texas are continuing critical inspections of the Permian Highway Pipeline (PHP), one of the largest pipeline projects under construction in Texas in 2020. Stretching more than 400 miles from the Permian Basin to the Houston area, the pipeline will bring West Texas’ natural gas to the world market. Given the sheer scale of the PHP and its route through the sensitive Texas Hill Country, RRC has engaged in a comprehensive response to ensure that the pipeline is constructed safely in a manner protective of public health and the environment. Since March inspectors from two key RRC divisions, Oil and Gas and Pipeline Safety, have conducted more than 75 inspections and investigated close to 20 complaints related to the pipeline. Currently RRC inspectors are on-site near the Pedernales River in Gillespie County as the pipeline operator, Kinder Morgan, works to excavate a pathway for the pipeline beneath the river. “Our inspectors have been hard at work, even during the COVID-19 pandemic, to ensure Kinder Morgan is compliant with Commission rules that are in place to protect public safety and natural resources,” said RRC Executive Director Wei Wang. “In addition to the all-hands efforts within the agency, we are also in contact with resident groups and the company as construction progresses. When it is complete, this pipeline will add vital capacity to convey natural gas, which in turn will also help ongoing efforts to further reduce flaring in West Texas.” New pipelines are important to efficiently and safely transport large amounts of natural gas and oil. The Texas Pipeline Association estimates that a 20-inch pipeline running 50 miles can replace 1,650 tanker trucks carrying oil on the road. Pipelines also help reduce flaring by alleviating potential backing up of supply at the point of production.

Kinder Morgan posts $637 million loss in second quarter - Houston pipeline operator Kinder Morgan saw its second-quarter bottom line take a billion dollar swing from a profit to a loss as it wrote down $1 billion in assets.The company lost $637 million in the three months ended in June compared with a profit of $518 million in the same period a year earlier. The company’s results translated into a loss per share of 28 cents, compared with an earnings per share of 23 cents one year earlier. Facing a significant reduction in energy demand during the second quarter, Kinder Morgan’s second quarter revenue declined by 20 percent to nearly $2.6 billion from $3.2 billion in the same period a year earlier. Kinder Morgan wrote down the value of $1 billion worth of intrastate and gathering pipelines that move natural gas in states such as North Dakota, Oklahoma and Texas. Without that non-cash impairment, the company would have made a $363 million profit in the second quarter.The write down follows first quarter move where the company marked down the value of equipment from its carbon dioxide business and its oil production operations in the Permian Basin of West Texas by $950 million. Despite the second quarter loss, the company is keeping its dividend for stockholders at 26.5 cents per share. As part of a plan to maintain that dividend, the company is cutting $660 million of a $2.4 billion budget that was marked for expansion projects this year.

Oil and gas experts believe more layoffs could happen soon due to pandemic - (KTRK) -- Industry experts said with the recent spike in COVID-19 cases, and as the pandemic continues to ravage the oil and gas industry, there will be more job cuts. Ramanan Krishnamoorti is a professor at the University of Houston Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. He said with people traveling less, the demand for fuel took an immediate hit as soon as the lockdowns started. Demand picked up some when the reopening phases began, but with the resurgence of the virus in many states, the tide has turned again. "The industry is in big trouble," Krishnamoorti said. "You're going to see a lot of bankruptcies, a lot of furloughs, more than furloughs. You're going to see layoffs. You're going to see people leave this entire industry because there aren't going to be jobs." Along with even more job losses on the horizon, Krishnamoorti said to expect consolidation from big companies taking over smaller ones, like Chevron's buyout of Noble Energy. In a call with the Texas Oil and Gas Association, Chevron CEO Michael Wirth spoke about the acquisition of Noble Energy, saying the companies are a good fit. He also addressed the grim situation the industry's facing. "Gasoline demand has come back significantly, and aviation fuel not so much, because there's still a reluctance on the part of many people to get on airplanes," Wirth said. Wirth remained more optimistic about the longer term outlook. "The demand for energy is going to grow," he said.

New Emails Show How Energy Industry Moved Fast to Undo Curbs - The New York Times — Not long after President Trump’s inauguration, the head of a fossil fuels industry group requested a call with the president’s transition team. The subject: Barack Obama’s requirement that oil and gas companies begin collecting data on their releases of methane.That outreach, by Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, appeared to quickly yield the desired results.“Looks like this will be easier than we thought,” David Kreutzer, an economist who was helping to organize the new president’s Environmental Protection Agency, wrote of canceling the methane reporting requirement in an email to another member of the transition team on Feb. 10, 2017.Three weeks after that email, the E.P.A. officially withdrew the reporting requirement — and effectively blocked the compilation of data that would allow for new regulations to control methane, a powerful climate-warming gas. The emails are included in hundreds of pages of E.P.A. staff correspondence and interviews recently made public in a lawsuit that 15 states have brought against the agency over the regulation of methane. Led by Massachusetts and New York, the states say the documents prove that fossil fuel industry players, working with allies in the early days of Mr. Trump’s E.P.A., engineered the repeal of the methane reporting requirements with no internal analysis, then created the rationale for the decision after the fact.That repeal, the states assert, illegally delayed the development of additional regulations to reduce methane emissions that the administration did not want.If the states succeed, a judge could, as early as this summer, order the federal government to impose restrictions on thousands of oil and gas wells, storage facilities and pipelines across the United States. Just last week, a federal court, restoring an Obama-era regulation, struck down a Bureau of Land Management effort to weaken restrictions on methane gas releases from drilling on public lands.In that case, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that the Trump administration, in its “haste” and “zeal,” failed to properly justify its rollback.“In the early days they did very little justification,” said Richard Revesz, a professor of environmental law at New York University and director of the Institute for Policy Integrity, the university’s nonpartisan think tank. So far, only about 10 percent of the Trump administration’s deregulatory efforts have held up in court, according to the institute, compared to an average of 70 percent for other administrations, both Republican and Democratic.“They justify their policies on analytically flimsy or sometimes nonexistent grounds, thinking, I guess, that they will get away with it,” Mr. Revesz said. “But time and again, the courts say no.”Methane, which leaks from oil and gas wells, accounts for about 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity in the United States, according to E.P.A. data. But it is about 30 times more potent over the course of a century than carbon dioxide in altering the Earth’s climate and is responsible for about a quarter of man-made global warming..”

Now that half of Oklahoma is officially Indian land, oil industry could face new costs and environmental hurdles - On top of all the turmoil Oklahoma oil producers have had to deal with since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the Supreme Court has added another item to that list: a landmark decision declaring nearly half of eastern Oklahoma to be Native American land.With the high court’s ruling, oil and gas drillers in the nation’s fourth largest oil-producing state suddenly find themselves operating within the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and four other tribal reservations.About a quarter of Oklahoma’s recent oil and gas wells and around 60 percent of its refinery capacity now lie within the territory of five tribes — the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole. Perhaps more importantly, the network of pipelines pumping crude to and from Cushing, Okla. — a crucial oil terminal for the Keystone XL — spider-web across the redrawn reservation borders. Instead of dealing with business-friendly regulators from the state of Oklahoma, oil producers may soon have to contend with both tribes and the federal government, which often manages land for Native Americans. “The reality is that there’s something potentially that could be very detrimental to the oil and gas industry,”  With Americans driving and flying less during the viral outbreak, U.S. oil prices have dropped by a third since the start of the year. Oklahoma’s shale fields, where extraction costs are relatively high, are among the hardest hit during the pandemic. One of the state’s biggest energy firms, the fracking pioneer Chesapeake Energy, has already declared bankruptcy.  The 5-to-4 decision, written by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch and joined by the court’s liberals, ostensibly deals with criminal law for the ancestors of those forced to march the 19th century Trail of Tears into present-day Oklahoma. But the majority opinion writers acknowledge the ruling raises big questions over taxation and the enforcement of environmental rules across those 3 million acres — ones that may take years to settle.

 What factors influence the likelihood of fracking-related seismicity in Oklahoma? -  The depth of a hydraulic fracturing well in Oklahoma, among other factors, increases the probability that fracking will lead to earthquake activity, according to a new report in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.The researchers hope their findings, published as part of an upcoming BSSA special issue on observations, mechanisms and hazards of induced seismicity, will help oil and gas operators and regulators in the state refine drilling strategies to avoid damaging earthquakes.During hydraulic fracturing, well operators inject a pressurized liquid into a rock layer after drilling vertically and often horizontally through the rock. The liquid breaks apart—fractures—the rock layer and allows natural gas or petroleum to flow more freely. A growing number of studies suggest that this process can induce seismic activity large enough for people to feel, possibly by increasing fluid pressures within the rock that relieve stress on faults and allow them to slip.In one rock layer examined in the BSSA study, the likelihood that hydraulic fracturing triggered seismic activity increased from 5 to 50 percent as well operations moved from 1.5 to 5.5 kilometers (0.9 to 3.4 miles) deep, the researchers found.Although the exact mechanisms linking well depth and seismic probability are still being examined, Michael Brudzinski and colleagues suggest that the overpressure of fluids trapped inside the rock may be important."The deeper the rock layers are, the more rock that is sitting on top of a well, and that is going to potentially increase the fluid pressures at depth," said Brudzinski, the study's corresponding author from Miami University in Ohio.Oklahoma has been at the center of a dramatic increase in earthquake activity over the past decade, mostly caused by oil and gas companies injecting wastewater produced by drilling back into deeper rock layers. However, a 2018 study identified places in the state where significant amounts of seismic activity were linked to nearly 300 hydraulic fracture wells.Hydraulic fracturing is associated with a magnitude 4.6earthquake in Canada and a magnitude 5.7 earthquake in China, although fracking-induced earthquakes tend to be smaller in magnitude than those caused by wastewater disposal. As a result, oil and gas operators and regulators would like to know more about why some wells trigger seismic activity, and how to adjust their operations to prevent damaging earthquakes.

Treaty rights at center of tribal opposition to Line 5 pipeline, tunnel --An oil spill in the Straits of Mackinac would not only be an environmental disaster, but also it would threaten the economic livelihoods of tribes who fish the area while devastating a vital cultural site.The five tribes composing the Chippewa Ottawa Resource Authority (CORA) say the the threat of a pipeline spill from Line 5 endangers their rights to hunt and fish in the area included under the 1836 Treaty of Washington, which effectively gives them property rights across a wide swath of the Lower Peninsula and the eastern half of the Upper Peninsula — all of which Line 5 runs through. While tribes say a plan finalized under the administration of former Gov. Rick Snyder to build a tunnel under the Great Lakes bottomlands also jeopardizes their treaty rights, CORA’s goal is to decommission the pipeline as it exists today.“The pipeline itself and any future tunnel project still present risk to the natural resources in the Straits,” said Whitney Gravelle, tribal attorney for the Brimley-based Bay Mills Indian Community. “Though the focus has been on the Straits of Mackinac … we feel Enbridge is specifically painting this picture of just a couple miles of pipeline. But if there was a rupture anywhere along the pipeline, it would threaten and diminish those treaty rights of the five tribes.” The CORA member tribes are the Bay Mills Indian Community, Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, Little River Band of Ottawa Indians, Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indiansand the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians.Until now, the tribes haven’t been formally involved in Attorney General Dana Nessel’s two lawsuits challenging Enbridge Energy and the tunnel plan. However, they are seeking to formally intervene in proceedings before the Michigan Public Service Commission involving tunnel construction. The CORA tribes — along with environmental groups — also submitted written comments to the Army Corps of Engineers this month requesting a public hearing on the tunnel proposal.

Enbridge-contracted vessels among those suspected in Line 5 damage - Enbridge-contracted vessels may be to blame for recent damage to the east leg of the Line 5 pipeline in the Straits of Mackinac, according to a report written by the Canadian pipeline giant. Based on vessel tracking and marine experts, Enbridge narrowed down to five the list of "small to moderately-sized" vessels that could have dragged a cable in a north and south direction over Line 5. The cable scraped the east leg and damaging an anchor support holding up the segment. Four of the five boats are Enbridge-contracted vessels. Enbridge interviewed the operators of its contracted vessels, which were in the water to perform maintenance and activities related to the Great Lakes Tunnel Project, and obtained their logs, procedures and plans, according to a report submitted Wednesday to the state and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. In interviews, the vessel operators weren't aware of an incident that would have created the damage, according to the report. "As of now we can’t rule out their involvement," Enbridge spokesman Ryan Duffy said Thursday. "Enbridge will continue to investigate, but it may not be possible to definitively identify the specific vessel that caused the incident." Line 5, which transports up to 540,000 barrels a day of light crude oil, light synthetic crude and natural gas liquids, has been the subject of a years-long dispute over a possible rupture of the 67-year-old pipeline in the Great Lakes. Enbridge is in the process of constructing a tunnel to hold the pipeline, but has encountered headwinds from state regulators and leaders worried about the line's continued presence in the Straits. The state still is reviewing the 45-page report that summarizes the company's investigation into four separate areas of potential impact found in May and June inspections, all of which the company believes to have been caused by at least two "small to moderately-sized" ships dragging some sort of cable. The company maintains the damage done to the pipeline was not enough to threaten the safe operation of either segment. Under court order, Enbridge currently is only able to operate the west segment until federal regulators deem the east leg safe.

State calls for Enbridge to prove it can cover costs of potential Line 5 pipeline spill - The director of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources wants the owner of a controversial pipeline to promise to cover any losses related to the line.The Line 5 pipeline carries crude oil and natural gas liquids under the Straits of Mackinac.“As recent events have reminded us, we must get these pipelines that transport crude oil out of the Great Lakes as soon as possible,” said DNR Director Dan Eichinger in a statement. “In the meantime, Enbridge must provide full financial assurance to the people of Michigan that the company will meet its obligations in the event there is a spill or some other disastrous damage to the Great Lakes.”Eichinger said the state currently has a deal with Enbridge Inc., a subsidiary of Enbridge Energy Company Inc. to compensate the state for any damages and losses that come from the operation of Line 5, like a spill. But he said the subsidiary does not have the resources to cover the cost of a spill. The state wants the following, in writing, from the parent company, Enbridge Inc.:

• Enbridge Inc., the parent company, agrees to assume the indemnity obligations of Enbridge Energy Company, Inc.
• Enbridge Inc. agrees to a minimum of $900 million in liability insurance.
• Enbridge Inc. names the State of Michigan as an additional insured party on the identified policies so that Michigan’s right of recovery is not derivative.
• Enbridge Inc. will directly pledge its own assets for the remainder of the financial assurance requirements (to meet or exceed $1.878 billion, annually adjusted for inflation).

Whitmer: Enbridge dodging responsibility for potential spill — Gov. Gretchen Whitmer criticized Enbridge Inc. on Wednesday for what she described as the company's refusal to make an airtight pledge to pay for damages caused by a potential oil spill from its pipeline beneath a Great Lakes channel.The Democratic governor's administration is pressuring the Canadian pipeline company for an explicit acknowledgment of financial responsibility for any release from its Line 5 into the Straits of Mackinac. Enbridge insists it already made such an assurance under a 2018 agreement with former Republican Gov. Rick Snyder to construct an underground pipeline tunnel beneath the straits.“I’m shocked at Enbridge Inc.’s refusal so far to sign a written agreement promising to cover the costs of an oil spill in the Great Lakes if this unthinkable event were to happen,” Whitmer said in a statement.“When I was a kid, my parents taught me: ‘You break it, you pay for it.’ It seems that’s the bare minimum Enbridge owes every Michigander so long as the company continues to pump crude oil through the Straits of Mackinac.Line 5 carries oil and liquids used in propane from Superior, Wisconsin, to Sarnia, Ontario. A nearly 4-mile-long (6.4-kilometers-long) segment, laid in 1953 beneath the Straits of Mackinac, is divided into two pipes.The straits connects Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. It is a popular tourist draw and has cultural and economic importance to native tribes that operate commercial fishing vessels in the area.The state is asking Enbridge to carry $900 million of liability insurance and have about $1.88 billion in additional assets available for a worst-case rupture in the straits. Enbridge says it's doing so under the 2018 tunnel agreement with Snyder.

 20 states sue over Trump rule limiting states from blocking pipeline projects  - A coalition of 20 states is suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over a rule that weakens states’ ability to block pipelines and other controversial projects that cross their waterways. The Clean Water Act previously allowed states to halt projects that risk hurting their water quality, but that power was scaled back by the EPA, a move Administrator Andrew Wheeler said would “curb abuses of the Clean Water Act that have held our nation’s energy infrastructure projects hostage.” The suit from California and others asks the courts to throw out the rule, which was finalized in June. “Let's be clear, this Trump administration rule is not about water quality. This is about pushing forward fossil fuel energy infrastructure,” said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D), calling the Clean Water Act “the only way to prove that these projects comply with state law.” The Clean Water Act essentially gave states veto authority over projects by requiring projects to gain state certification under Section 401 of the law. It applies to a wide variety of projects that could range from power plants to waste water treatment plants to industrial development. But that portion of the law has been eyed by the Trump administration after 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 EPA would not comment on the litigation directly but said that “prior to issuing this final rule, EPA’s water quality certification regulations were nearly 50 years old.” “The agency’s recent action reflects the first comprehensive analysis of the text, structure and legislative history of Clean Water Act Section 401. As a result, the agency’s final rule increases the transparency and efficiency of the Section 401 certification process in order to promote the timely review of infrastructure projects while continuing to ensure that Americans have clean water for drinking and recreation," the agency said. The new policy from the Trump administration accelerates timelines under the law, limiting what it sees as state power to keep a project in harmful limbo. The need for a Section 401 certification from the state will be waived if states do not respond within a year. But states argue the new rule won’t give them the time necessary to conduct thorough environmental reviews of massive projects. Read more about the lawsuit here. 

Standing Rock seeks to keep Dakota Access shutdown order in place  - The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is asking a panel of federal judges to keep in place a lower court’s ruling ordering the Dakota Access Pipeline to shut down while the decision is appealed, saying the pipeline’s continued operation exposes the tribe to “catastrophic risks.” Standing Rock, along with other Sioux tribes that are part of the lawsuit over the pipeline, filed a brief Monday in response to a plea by developer Energy Transfer and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to put the shutdown order on hold while they seek to overturn the ruling.  “The operation of the pipeline, on unceded lands yards upstream of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, compounds historical trauma and subjects the Tribes and their members to the stress of living under an existential catastrophe,” the tribes said in the brief.  The Standing Rock Sioux Reservation lies just south of the pipeline’s Missouri River crossing. Tribal members fear an oil spill at that site could devastate their water supply and affect their hunting, fishing and spiritual practices.  U.S. District Judge James Boasberg earlier this month revoked a key permit for the pipeline and ordered that the line be shut down and emptied of oil by Aug. 5. The pipeline would have to remain unused for the duration of a lengthy environmental review that he ordered this past spring. The study is expected to take at least 13 months. Energy Transfer and the Corps, which permitted the pipeline’s water crossings, are appealing his recent rulings to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where a panel of three judges last week immediately put a temporary “administrative” hold on the shutdown order until they could hear arguments from both sides. The tribes say the risks imposed by the pipeline “have never been properly examined as the law requires, and compounds a history of government-sponsored dispossession of Tribal lands and resources.” A formal response from Energy Transfer and the Corps is expected later this week. Energy Transfer has said it anticipates taking a revenue hit of at least $2.8 million every day the line sits idle during a shutdown. It expects additional costs associated with emptying the pipeline of oil and filling it with a gas such as nitrogen to prevent it from corroding.

Second Bakken pipeline shutdown further threatens shale recovery  --Earlier this month, a federal judge stunned the U.S. energy sector with an order to shut down the Dakota Access pipeline. Environmentalists hailed it as the first time a fully operating system had been forced to close by a legal challenge. As it turns out, it was actually the second time an oil pipeline was ordered shut in a matter of four days. On July 2, a lesser-known conduit called Tesoro High Plains was ordered shut for the first time in its 67 years of operation. Together, the two pipelines ship more than one-third of crude from America’s prolific Bakken shale formation to market. Their travails signal the ebbing of the oil industry’s sway in the U.S. heartland and underscore the growing heft and savvy of challengers who’ve become emboldened to demand higher compensation and safeguards. “In the past, it was a shotgun approach of challenging pipelines,” said Brandon Barnes, an analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. “Now, the resources are more plentiful and the challengers are far more nuanced and sophisticated in their approach.” The stakes are high. If the shutdown of both pipelines proceeds, it would force the region’s drillers to turn to more expensive options to ship their oil -- or shut in production altogether, just as the entire oil industry is reeling from depressed prices that have pushed a steady stream of producers into bankruptcy. The outlook for the U.S. pipeline industry has perhaps never been more uncertain. Earlier this month, Dominion Energy Inc. and its partner Duke Energy Corp. announced they were no longer moving forward with their $8 billion Atlantic Coast natural gas pipeline after years of delays and ballooning costs. In the ensuing 24 hours, the Supreme Court left in force a lower court order blocking the start of construction on TC Energy Corp’s Keystone XL pipeline, while a district court ordered the shutdown of Dakota Access (although that project scored temporary relief last week). In the case of High Plains, which delivers oil to Marathon Petroleum Corp.’s 74,000 barrel-a-day Mandan refinery, the U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs ordered it shut after determining the pipeline was trespassing on Native American land. The ruling also found the company responsible for $187 million in damages and gave it 30 days to appeal.

Uncertainty, concerns surround potential oil train resurgence - While lawyers fight over a federal judge’s order to temporarily shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline, the oil industry is grappling with uncertainty as it ponders how to keep shipping Bakken crude to market. The questions on everyone’s mind: Will the pipeline actually be forced to halt operations, and when? Many observers anticipate a shutdown could result in a resurgence of trains carrying Bakken crude, a prospect that has rail safety advocates and farmers concerned. Whether more oil trains hit the tracks depends on the outcome of the latest legal maneuvering over the pipeline. At the moment, the order to shut down the line is on an “administrative” hold as the case moves to a panel of judges on a federal appeals court. The shutdown order came July 6 from U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who for four years has overseen a lawsuit launched by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The tribe’s reservation lies just south of the pipeline’s Missouri River crossing in North Dakota, and tribal members worry a potential oil spill could devastate their water supply. Boasberg ordered pipeline developer Energy Transfer to idle the line for the duration of a lengthy environmental review expected to last at least 13 months, and for the company to drain it of oil by Aug. 5. In the days ahead, the appellate judges will consider arguments on whether the pipeline must halt operations while the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Energy Transfer appeal Boasberg’s shutdown order and his earlier ruling requiring the environmental study. The short-term hold buys the oil industry a little more time to prepare for a potential shutdown of Dakota Access, which has been operating for three years and can transport up to 570,000 barrels per day of oil from North Dakota to Illinois. That amount equaled 40% of North Dakota’s daily oil output before the coronavirus pandemic hit, sending oil demand, prices and production plummeting.Several experts anticipate that a shutdown of Dakota Access would eventually prompt oil companies to ship another 200,000 barrels per day of Bakken crude via rail, the equivalent of about three more oil trains leaving the region each day. The shift would not happen overnight but likely would occur gradually over the course of the next year, assuming oil production slowly ticks back up as prices rise,

North Dakota has ample rail capacity for oil -A judge ordered the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) to shut down because permitting laws were not followed. The reactionary response from our elected officials and oil barons is that if the pipeline shuts down “the sky will fall.”Wayne Stenehjem, our attorney general, and some guy from Douglas named Real Mercier both plied for farmer support by claiming that shutting down the pipeline could hurt farmers because added oil trains will crowd out grain that needs to be shipped to market.The opposite is true.Shutting down the pipeline would add only eight oil trains a day to our state’s rail system. I was a locomotive engineer for 30 years in North Dakota and there were times when we had 125 trains a day passing through Fargo. Now that city has only about 50 trains a day and hundreds of North Dakota railroad workers have been laid off because of this drop in traffic.In the 1960s and 70s North Dakota’s rail lines were in shambles because of the building of the interstate highway system and the diversion of freight from the rails to the highways. Then along came Powder River Basin coal and container trains from Asia. This pass through freight rebuilt our rail lines to the tremendous benefit of North Dakota farmers. Shipping oil by rail doesn’t just benefit rail workers and our state’s railroads, revenue from shipping oil helps pay for the maintenance of our entire rail system and that benefits other shippers like farmers who depend on good rail lines to get their crops to market. The Dakota Access Pipeline … well it ships oil.In the last dozen years, 21 oil train loading facilities were built in our state with the capacity to load 100 oil trains a day. Those facilities cost almost $1 billion to construct, BNSF alone spent more than $1 billion upgrading track in North Dakota to accommodate the new oil traffic and old unsafe tank cars were replaced with newer safer cars. Building the DAPL created hundreds of millions of dollars in stranded assets and lost opportunities for our state. Shutting down the DAPL will not cause the “sky to fall.” We have ample rail capacity to haul all of North Dakota’s crude oil safely by rail with newer and safer rail cars. It will put a bunch of railroad workers back to work and provide needed revenue to help maintain our rail infrastructure.

Radioactive oil waste study recommends uniform permitting; slurry wells a hot topic - Oil patch counties, state officials and others should work together toward a uniform permitting process for radioactive oilfield waste disposal facilities, concluded the author of a new study commissioned by the Western Dakota Energy Association. No landfills in North Dakota have received the necessary permits to accept radioactive material from the oil fields despite a change in state rules several years ago raising the acceptable radiation level. As a result, the waste is trucked to disposal sites in other states. Many proposals to establish facilities in North Dakota have received pushback from local landowners concerned about their safety and traffic, and county leaders often have numerous questions themselves.The waste is known as Technologically Enhanced Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material or TENORM. Low levels of radiation occur naturally in soil, water and rocks. When those materials are removed from the ground, like in oil and gas production, they become known as TENORM. It’s found in drill cuttings and wastewater, but it can be more concentrated in tank sludge, pipe scale and filter socks used to strain oilfield fluids, according to Bogar.“We are, as far as I was able to find, the only oil-producing state that does not have TENORM disposal within it,” he said.  Bogar envisions consistent zoning rules for the landfills across the Bakken or a single permitting process at the state level that relies heavily on county input, instead of separate permits needed from the county and the North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality.Environmental Quality has an extensive permitting process already, requiring that landfills receive both a solid waste permit and radioactive materials license to dispose of the material. Bogar suggests that a group of legislators, county commissioners, state officials and other stakeholders form to discuss how the permitting process ought to look.

  $1.6 million settlement reached in 2016 Ventura oil spill - An oil pipeline company and associated contractor will pay a $1.6 million settlement regarding a 2016 crude oil spill in Ventura, the Ventura County District Attorney's Office said Tuesday.The owner of the pipeline, Crimson Pipeline L.P., agreed to pay $1.3 million in civil penalties, costs and natural resources damages as part of the settlement. The contractor working on the pipeline, identified as CD Lyon Construction Inc., has agreed to pay $300,000 in civil penalties and outstanding costs.The spill was reported on June 23, 2016, in the Hall Canyon area of Ventura. It was caused by a pipeline owned by Crimson after a faulty valve-replacement operation. When the pipeline began to operate after the replacement, it began to leak because new valve flanges had not been properly tightened by CD Lyon workers. In total, more than 44,000 gallons of crude oil were released into the Hall Canyon area, officials said. The spill was stopped by first responders and pipeline personnel before reaching the Pacific Ocean, but the spill area required months of cleanup. Some nearby residents left their homes because of the overwhelming odor of petroleum after the spill. Thomas Cullen, administrator of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife's Office of Spill Prevention and Response, noted the significance of the settlement in a statement.“With this settlement, Crimson and their contractor will pay a significant penalty, improve its oil spill preparedness and response operations, and compensate the public for natural resource damages,” Cullen said. “The public should know that when an oil spill happens in California, we will hold those responsible accountable and require a thorough and rapid cleanup and restoration."The disbursement of the settlement includes $900,000 in civil penalties from Crimson, with $600,000 being paid to the District Attorney's Office and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. The penalties also include $387,700 for reimbursement of investigation and attorney costs; $20,000 to pay for damages to natural resources; and required compliance with the Lempert-Keene-Seastrand Oil Spill Prevention and Response Act, as well as improved oil spill prevention and response measures. CD Lyon's settlement will require reimbursing the District Attorney's Office with $115,000 in investigation and attorney costs, in addition to $185,000 to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

EIA forecasts U.S. petroleum demand will remain below 2019 levels for several more months -- Consumption of U.S. liquid fuels fell in March and April 2020 as a result of reduced travel related to COVID-19 and its mitigation measures. The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) July Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) forecasts that U.S. consumption of total petroleum and other liquid fuels will continue increasing in the second half of 2020 as economic activity increases, but levels will remain lower than the 2019 average until August 2021.In April, consumption of liquid fuels in the United States (as measured by product supplied) reached its all-time monthly low since the early 1980s at an average of 14.7 million barrels per day (b/d). Weekly data show consumption of petroleum products has increased as states have relaxed restrictions. Volumetrically, almost half of the decrease in U.S. consumption of liquid fuels in 2020 has come from reduced motor gasoline use. EIA expects motor gasoline consumption will average 8.3 million b/d in 2020, down 1.0 million b/d (10%) from 2019. In the second half of 2020, a forecast increase in employment leads to an increase in gasoline consumption. EIA assumes employment levels will continue to grow in 2021, and gasoline consumption will increase to 9.1 million b/d, or to about 2% less than its 2019 average. EIA expects U.S. jet fuel consumption in 2020 to be 31% lower than its 2019 average, a much larger percentage change than gasoline (down 10%) and distillate (also down 10%). U.S. jet fuel consumption fell to an estimated 660,000 b/d in the second quarter of 2020, and EIA expects it to rise to 1.4 million b/d in the fourth quarter of this year. EIA expects jet fuel consumption to continue rising in 2021 and average 1.5 million b/d, or about 12% lower than its 2019 average.  During peak stay-at-home orders, distillate consumption was relatively less affected by COVID-19 mitigation efforts than gasoline or jet fuel consumption. Distillate consumption in the United States is driven by economic activity and is more likely affected by slowing economic growth than by travel restrictions. Distillate fuel is also used in activities that are not as directly affected by restrictions, such as by diesel engines in heavy construction equipment and as heating oil both for space heating in buildings and industrial heating.

 INSIGHT-Bounceback in U.S. shale oil output is unlikely to last the summer – (Reuters) - A reopening of some majoreconomies locked down due to the coronavirus has lifted global oil prices and encouraged U.S. shale producers to return at least a third of the 2 million barrels per day (bpd) curtailed since April.  But that bump in output is unlikely to be sustained as shale wells lose up to half their initial output after the first year, and require constant drilling to maintain and increase production.With most new drilling halted and OPEC relaxing curbs that have underpinned the oil-price recovery, shale output will slide again in autumn, said oil executives and analysts.Shale output falls off faster than at conventional oil wells, a factor that will lead to output declining by September.Average U.S. daily oil output will fall below 2019's record 12.2 million barrels per day (bpd) for the next two to three years, analysts said.The decline means further economic damage from an industry that contributed nearly 1 percentage point to U.S. GDP early last decade. U.S. pipeline and oil export-terminal projects have been delayed or canceled as shale production forecasts have been cut."You shut down like this, reduce activity like this, and it is going to be felt for a while," David Dell'Osso, chief operating officer of shale producer Parsley Energy PE.N said in an interview.  Parsley Energy's plans mirror that of many shale rivals that have begun reopening existing wells but tightly restricting new activity. It had planned to operate 15 drilling rigs this year, but halted work in the spring as oil demand shrank on pandemic-related business closings.This month, the company restarted drilling with two rigs, not enough to maintain existing production levels. Diamondback Energy FANG.O, one of the top U.S. shale producers, reopened most of its curtailed wells this month. It expects to pump about 180,000 bpd this year, down from 188,000 bpd last year. The reason: its rig count fell from 20 at the end of March to just seven by mid July, and is expected to be six by the end of the month.Much of the shale production curtailments came from shale wells that were choked back but not shut-in completely, several shale company executives said.

Top Shale Boss Warns US Production Won't Revisit 2019 Levels "In My Lifetime" - America's energy dominance could be coming to an end as the country's shale industry is experiencing steep production declines. Rarely do we hear President Trump these days touting shale jobs and production output, mostly because the industry has entered a bust cycle. Matt Gallagher, CEO of Parsley Energy, a top 20 producer in Texas, spoke recently with the Financial Times and said crude output of 12 or 13 million barrels per day is over:  "I don't think I'll see 13m [barrels a day] again in my lifetime.   "It is really dejecting, because drilling our first well in 2009 we saw the wave of energy independence at our fingertips for the US, and it was very rewarding . . . to be a part of it," Gallagher,37, said.    The shale bust of 2020 is an ominous sign of America's energy dominance is over. Crude output will continue to wane this year and likely into next. The lack of shale profitability, mainly due to West Texas Intermediate (WTI) prices sub-$40 per barrel won't be enough for highly indebted shale companies to survive.  We've pointed out the shale industry could be on the verge of destruction due to the sharp decline in demand and plummeting energy prices brought on by coronavirus pandemic. So far, bankruptcies in the shale patch are accelerating to levels not seen since the first half of 2016. Another significant driver of lower production levels is a halving of rig counts due to collapsing price and demand; rigs dropped from 539 in mid-March to 258 last week."Tight oil production will decline by 50% by this time next year. As a result, US oil production will fall from to less than eight mmb/d by mid-2021," we noted via Arthur Berman via OilPrice.com.The combination of the Saudi-Russia oil price war and the virus pandemic has been nothing but disastrous for shale companies. These two factors forced Gallagher earlier this year to shut down wells and slash spending. He said the recent oil-price crash was "hands down" the worst ever. In April, WTI prices dove below the zero mark for the first time in history due to oversupplied conditions triggered by virus-related lockdowns.

Halliburton's $1.7B loss paves way for more bruising results - With a massive second-quarter loss, Halliburton, one of the world’s largest oil-field services companies, on Monday set the stage for a string of brutal energy company earnings reports. The company lost $1.7 billion in the second quarter compared with a $75 million profit during the second quarter of 2019. Revenue for the quarter declined 46 percent to $3.2 billion from $5.9 billion in the same period a year ago. The bulk of Halliburton’s loss was attributed to a $2.1 billion write down on the value of its assets as the price of oil collapsed during the quarter, including a dive to negative territory in April. Halliburton took a $1.1 billion write-down in the first quarter. The second quarter was the first full three-month period affected by shutdown orders across the country that wiped out demand, forced industrywide production cuts, and reduced drilling and well-completion activity. Halliburton’s rivals also post second-quarter results this week. Baker Hughes, which lost $10.2 billion in the first quarter, reports Wednesday, and Schlumberger, which lost $7.4 billion in the first quarter, is to report results Friday. Minus the write-downs and other charges, Halliburton reported $456 million of free cash flow compared with $12 million during the first quarter. “Halliburton’s second-quarter performance in a tough market shows we can execute quickly and aggressively to deliver solid financial results and free cash flow despite a severe drop in global activity,” Halliburton CEO Jeff Miller said. “Our results demonstrate a significant and sustainable reset to the power of our business to generate positive earnings and free cash flow.”

Frackers Are in Crisis, Endangering America’s Energy Renaissance - Twenty years ago brothers Dan and Farris Wilks started Frac Tech Services LLC in tiny Cisco, Texas. The company provided equipment for hydraulic fracturing, aka fracking, the breaking up of tight sedimentary rock by blasting water, sand, and assorted chemicals through horizontal bores at fantastically high pressure. Frac Tech grew into one of the most successful pressure pumpers as the U.S. experienced a boom first in shale gas, then in shale oil. The Wilks brothers became billionaires when they sold Frac Tech in 2011, just as shale oil was transforming the U.S. into one of the world’s biggest producers of crude.  The big oil explorers and producers are household names: Chevron and BP, Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell. But the U.S. oil renaissance has ridden heavily on the backs of little-known pressure pumpers that figured out how to extract oil from the stubborn shale of Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming. Today the Wilks brothers’ former company, now publicly traded and named FTS International Inc., is fighting to stay alive. Since early March, FTS has slashed executive pay, idled almost its entire fleet of pumping gear, and laid off two-thirds of its employees. It has more debt than cash. Its stock fell to about 30¢ a share before a 20-for-1 reverse stock split in May. Other pressure pumpers are suffering, too, with thousands of workers laid off.  With pressure to move away from fossil fuels rising, the bigger question may be whether the shale phenomenon itself can endure. Already this year, more than three dozen North American explorers, fracking service companies, and pipeline operators—including shale pioneer Chesapeake Energy Corp.—have sought bankruptcy protection. Production is down about 2 million barrels a day from a peak of almost 13 million early this year, and Morgan Stanley says prices must go higher than the current $40 a barrel to prevent further production declines in 2021. Shale’s woes are connected to pandemic shutdowns eviscerating demand and the Saudi-Russia price war that briefly pushed oil prices below zero. But the shale industry’s own shortcomings had gotten it into trouble before Covid-19, as a look at FTS’s winding journey through twin booms and busts makes clear. Now a crucial link in the U.S. oil supply chain is facing mass extinction.

Marathon Petroleum Takes Bailout Tax Breaks During Pandemic -- Fossil fuel companies have reaped millions of dollars in benefits from a stimulus package intended to help struggling Americans and the economy. Among these is Marathon Petroleum, the largest oil refiner in the country, which has a history of air pollution violations impacting low-income and Black and Brown communities. The CARES Act included several provisions to support businesses, one of which allowed companies to claim an immediate tax refund by deducting current operating losses from income taxes paid in the past five years. As a result of changes to allow the "carryback" of net operating losses, Marathon received $411 million in tax benefits, a sum even greater than their recent $334 million penalty for environmental violations. The Federal Reserve also included Marathon Petroleum in its recent purchase of energy bonds.Oil and gas companies, like Marathon, are not violating any rules by claiming this tax benefit, but there are significant downsides to using public resources to prop up dirty companies with a history of air pollution violations in the midst of a pandemic that targets the respiratory system. As part of the paycheck protection program, a separate program under the CARES Act, at least $3 billion in taxpayer dollars intended for small businesses have gone to over 5,600 U.S. fossil fuel companies and are being used to save an antiquated industry, rather than investing in a sustainable future that will benefit all Americans. Democratic lawmakers have warned that this oil bailout is not only taking the funds meant for smaller businesses, but is also forcing taxpayers to pay for the industry's past mistakes. Senators Brian Schatz and Sheldon Whitehouse wrote that the pandemic "was not the source of the oil and gas industry's dire financial condition," and that this bailout "poses both a credit risk and a more profound climate transition risk to taxpayers." Marathon Petroleum is just one example of an oil company that was already struggling prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, partly due to their expensive 2018 acquisition of rival refiner Andeavor. Oil companies have been pursuing suchmergers in an attempt to generate investor excitement and make up for the structural weaknesses of the oil sector. More specifically, upstream companies have spent billions more on drilling than they receive from selling the produced oil and gas, which creates a condition known as negative free cash flow. Investing in oil stock has had a similarly negative trajectory, as the average U.S. oil producer over the past three years has produced a total return of negative 17%.

Chevron Deal for Oil and Gas Fields May Set Off New Wave of Mergers - The New York Times— In the first big deal since oil prices crashed four months ago, Chevron agreed on Monday to buy Noble Energy for roughly $5 billion in what many experts consider the beginning of a sweeping consolidation in the U.S. oil industry.The coronavirus pandemic has caused a sharp decline in oil demand, putting intense pressure on oil companies with large debts. This includes Noble, which is based in Houston and has operations in Colorado, Texas, the eastern Mediterranean and West Africa.But it has also created an opportunity for oil giants to gobble up smaller fish and extend their acreage in places like the Permian Basin, which straddles Texas and New Mexico. Chevron, for one, already has a large presence in the basin and easy access to large pipeline networks, which should help the company put Noble’s assets to good use. “In a downturn like this, the strong get stronger and the weaker players try to survive as best they can, and some will be bought,”  . “There will be some bankruptcies and mergers and acquisitions like you saw today and I would expect that will continue and potentially pick up speed.” Like all oil companies, Noble has struggled to make a profit with oil prices at around $40 a barrel. The price has recovered somewhat in recent months, but the pandemic’s persistence and the recent surge of infections and hospitalizations in Texas and other states have led some executives to conclude that the price of oil may not climb much more anytime soon.  Even before the pandemic, the shale drilling boom helped produce so much oil that a growing number of wells were unprofitable. More than 20 North American producers have filed for bankruptcy this year, including Chesapeake Energy. The oil service giant Halliburton on Monday reported a $1.7 billion loss for the second quarter and said it had written down its assets by $2.1 billion.  This is the first major acquisition by Chevron since the company was outbid by Occidental Petroleum for Anadarko Petroleum last year. That $38 billion deal has left Occidental heavily in debt, while Chevron walked away with a $1 billion termination fee.  If the deal goes through, Chevron would pick up 92,000 acres of shale oil near or adjacent to its own fields. While that is far less than it would have picked up from Anadarko, Chevron is getting these fields at a far better price per acre. It will also acquire assets in the Eagle Ford field of South Texas, the DJ Basin in Colorado, and Equatorial Guinea. The deal will also give Chevron a presence in Israeli waters where Noble has discovered large natural gas deposits in recent years.

Trans Mountain Pipeline’s Lead Insurer Zurich Drops Coverage -A spokesperson for the Trans Mountain pipeline, which is planning a controversial expansion opposed by environmental groups and some Indigenous communities, said that Zurich would not renew its insurance coverage, Reuters reported Wednesday. Zurich's decision comes as environmental groups have put pressure on insurers to abandon the pipeline and other fossil fuel projects over their contribution to the climate crisis."This project is never getting built," advocacy group Stand.earth tweeted in response to the news. Stand.earth is one of 32 environmental groups behind a petition urging Trans Mountain's 26 insurers to cease covering the project by Aug. 31, according to Burnaby Now. Zurich is the third insurer to do so in the last two months, Stand.earth said.  The Trans Mountain pipeline expansion would nearly triple the oil flowing along its 715-mile route from Alberta's tar sands to the coast of British Columbia from 300,000 barrels a day to 890,000. Its opponents have faced legal setbacks in recent months. In February, the Canadian Federal Court of Appeals ruled that the government had adequately consulted with First Nations groups when approving the project. Then, in July, the Supreme Court of Canada opted not to hear an appeal of that decision from the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, the Squamish Nation and the Coldwater Indian Band, according to Burnaby Now.Indigenous groups oppose the pipeline expansion over concerns it will spill oil in their communities and erode their sovereignty."What is happening is about more than just a risky pipeline and tanker project. We see this as a major setback for reconciliation," Chief Leah George-Wilson of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation told CBC News following the Supreme Court's decision not to hear the appeal.  Pressuring the project's financial backers is another means of blocking it.Trans Mountain's current insurance contract runs out in August of this year, according to Reuters. For now, the company says it still has enough insurers to cover its regular operations and the expansion."There remains adequate capacity in the market to meet Trans Mountain's insurance needs and our renewal," a pipeline spokesperson told Reuters in an email.Zurich did not comment on its reasons for abandoning the project.Other insurers who covered the project this year include Munich Re, Lloyd's of London, Liberty Mutual and Chubb. Munich Re said it would review the contract based on its new policies on covering oil sands. The others declined to comment.  One insurer who dropped out in July, Talanx, based its decision on climate concerns.

Shell’s big bet on floating LNG may not pan out - It was the last of the large LNG projects that put Australia in the lead for global LNG exports. It was the biggest jewel in Shell’s LNG crown. But this jewel hasn’t produced any LNG since February, and its future is unclear. The Prelude floating liquefied natural gas project, with an annual capacity of 3.6 million tons, began shipping LNG last June. The first cargo shipped more than eight years after the final investment decision was made, and two years after the FLNG vessel arrived at the site, one Wood Mac analyst pointed out at the time. In February this year, production was stopped following a technical problem. Production at the world’s largest FLNG installation still hasn’t been restored, and it remains unclear when this will happen. Building it and putting it into operation cost between $12 and $17 billion, according to external estimates. Now, there are concerns that it may flop. The gas market situation is difficult enough. Just like in oil, there is a substantial glut in natural gas, and demand is lagging far behind. According to Rystad Energy, global natural gas output is set for a 2.6-percent decline this year because of the coronavirus pandemic. Next year, demand should begin to improve, driven by the low prices currently plaguing the sector. But that’s only if the pandemic goes away for good and without a fight, which at the moment is not happening. In this situation, it may not be that bad that Prelude is not operating at the moment. There is an oversupply of LNG, prices are low, and Shell said in a recent update that it will take a hit because its 2019 term sales contracts for LNG were tied to oil prices. That hit may be nothing compared to what Prelude may need to break even, at least according to analysts from Goldman Sachs quoted by Tim Treadgold in an article for Forbes. According to them, the commercial breakeven price for gas produced at Prelude is as much as $20 per thousand cubic feet. This compares with prices between $2 and $3 per thousand cubic feet in April in the United States. The difference is impressive, and it certainly would explain why, as Treadgold notes, Shell is in no hurry to restart operations at Prelude. Prelude is an impressive achievement, regardless of its problems. As the largest floating LNG facility in the world, it has a total capacity of 5.3 million tons of hydrocarbon liquids annually, including, besides the LNG, 1.3 million tons of gas condensate and 400,000 tons of liquefied petroleum gas. Floating LNG was to be a game-changer: boosting the efficiency of gas production by adding the processing to the place of extraction. But now it has to prove it is cost-competitive with other, more traditional approaches to LNG production.

Brazil boosts oil exports to Asia as global rivals make record cuts - (Reuters) - Brazil increased crude exports to Asia in the first half of the year, stealing a slice of a coveted developing market from global rivals who made record cuts to shipments to match the unprecedented fall in demand caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The rise reflects Brazil’s growing clout among global oil producers as its massive offshore projects come online. Brazil is expected to deliver one of the biggest increases to global supply in the next five years from nations outside of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, according to the International Energy Agency. State oil firm Petrobras (PETR4.SA) offered Asian refiners competitive deals on relatively high-quality oil just as China and other countries in the region reopened their economies and as Western nations went into lockdowns to curb the spread of coronavirus, traders said. China also took advantage of the lowest oil prices in decades to fill up strategic storage.”If we had more oil available, China would buy it,” Petrobras Chief Executive Roberto Castello Branco told Reuters in a written response to questions. Castello Branco said there was no more to sell to further boost exports, because demand in Brazil has been recovering. China is now the destination for 70% of the country’s exports, Petrobras said in a statement to Reuters. Asia imported an average of 1.07 million barrels per day of oil from Brazil in the first half of the year, 30% year-on-year hike, according to Refinitiv Eikon’s trade flows data. A record 1.62 million bpd of Brazilian crude arrived in Asian ports in June, almost triple the volume in June 2019, according to the data. (Graphic showing Asia's oil imports from Latin America: here) Asian refiners were keen for the low-sulfur oil that Brazil sells, as they sought to comply with new maritime regulations to supply ships with cleaner fuel. The oil is from Brazil’s prolific offshore deposits known as pre-salt fields, which Petrobras and oil majors are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to develop.

PetroChina to sell major pipeline assets to PipeChina for $38 bln (Reuters) - PetroChina, China's state-owned oil and gas firm, said on Thursday it would sell its major oil and gas pipelines and storage facilities to the newly launched China Oil and Gas Pipeline Network (PipeChina) for 268.7 billion yuan ($38.36 billion). The sale excludes the assets of Kunlun Energy 0135.HK, in which PetroChina 601857.SS, 0857.HK has a 54.4% stake, it said in a statement. Separately, China Petroleum & Chemical Corp 600028.SS, 0386.HK (Sinopec) on Thursday announced plans to sell some of its oil and gas pipeline assets for 47.11 billion yuan to PipeChina, of which 22.89 billion yuan will be injected into PipeChina for an equity interest. Launched in December last year as part of a sector-wide reform, PipeChina had not been allocated any asset until this week, despite signing agreements with the national oil majors. The deals come as a part of Beijing's plans to boost investment in oil and gas production and provide a fair market access to small, non-state owned oil and gas producers and distributors. The deal will give PetroChina a stake of about 30% in PipeChina. The stake is worth 149.5 billion yuan, PetroChina said. The remainder will be paid in cash. Upon completion of the transactions, PipeChina will become an associate company of PetroChina, a listed arm of CNPC. PetroChina expects to book a gain of 45.82 billion yuan from the disposal of its assets, which it will use to pay dividend and for capital expenditure, it said in a statement.

 Aging oil tanker in Yemen raises concern about catastrophe in the Red Sea - The FSO Safer, an oil tanker moored in the Red Sea near Yemen’s port city of Hodeida, holds more than 1 million barrels of oil. The ship was operated by Yemen’s government-run oil company until 2015, when Houthi rebels seized control of Hodeida and limited access to the FSO Safer. The ship’s condition is deteriorating, and volatile gases are building up inside. Experts say it could soon spring a leak or explode. An oil spill would worsen war-racked Yemen’s humanitarian disaster by poisoning fisheries and possibly releasing toxic gas. Drinking water is also a concern. Neighboring countries would have to shutter desalination plants if there was a spill. Yemen’s government has asked the United Nations to remove the ship’s oil. The Houthis say they would allow access to the ship only as part of a broader agreement, which appears unlikely to happen soon.

Iran Could Flood Oil Markets If Biden Becomes US President -  If presumptive Democratic candidate Joe Biden wins the presidential election in November, Iran could suddenly turn from a bullish driver for oil prices into a bearish factor if it resumes up to 2 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil exports.   Currently, there is a consensus among analysts and international agencies that the oil market is tightening and will continue to tighten, lifting oil prices through next year.    Oil demand is expected to rise next year by between 5 million bpd and 7 million bpd compared to this year’s lows, according to OPEC and the International Energy Agency (IEA)—in the absence of a mass return to lockdowns. The OPEC+ group is set to further ease its collective production cuts. In theory, the current expectations of supply and demand in 2021 are bullish for oil prices.  Yet, the market shouldn’t discount one political and geopolitical factor that could upend current oil price forecasts for next year. The U.S. presidential election in November could install a new administration in the White House – of a President Biden – that would be inclined to renegotiate the Iran nuclear deal and potentially ease the current sanctions on Tehran’s oil exports. The return of 1-2 million bpd of Iranian oil on the global market would cap oil price gains next year, a leading oil analyst said last week.“If you have Joe Biden as president he could basically take the US back into the [Iranian] Nuclear deal and you could see a million plus Iranian barrels hit the market. These are the kind of things I think will be very important into the trajectory of oil into 2021,” Helima Croft, head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, told Business Insider in an interview last week.  If Biden wins the November election, he could be inclined to revisit and renegotiate the Iran nuclear deal, potentially easing some sanctions in exchange for Tehran returning to compliance under some revised form of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).  Iran’s oil will not return overnight to the market if Biden becomes president. But the prospect of renegotiation of the nuclear deal will likely keep oil prices depressed, making Iran a bearish factor for the market. This would be in contrast with the bullish factor that Iran has been for oil prices during the Trump Administration so far, with the renewed sanctions on its oil and the occasional flare-up of Iran-U.S. and Iran-Saudi tensions in the most important oil shipping lane in the world, the Strait of Hormuz.

Oil falls as worsening pandemic threatens recovery - Oil prices dipped on Monday, weighed down by the prospect that a rise in the pace of coronavirus infections could derail a recovery in fuel demand. Brent crude was down 10 cents, or 0.2%, at $43.04 a barrel by 0047 GMT, after dropping slightly last week. U.S. oil was off by 6 cents, or 0.2%, at $40.53 a barrel, after gaining 4 cents last week. "With global daily COVID-19 case counts still rising and the U.S. Sunbelt most populous states showing little success in bending and containing the (epidemic's) curve, concerns about the post-COVID recovery pace are limiting the upside for oil," said Stephen Innes, chief global markets strategist at Axicorp. More than 14 million people have been infected by the novel coronavirus globally and nearly 602,000 have died, according to a Reuters tally. While fuel demand has recovered from a 30% drop in April after countries around the world imposed strict lockdowns, usage is still below pre-pandemic levels. U.S. retail gasoline demand is falling again as infections rise. Japan's oil imports fell 14.7 percent in June from the same month a year earlier, official figures showed on Monday. The drop was not as pronounced as in May when they fell 25%, year on year. Still, exports from the world's third-largest economy slumped by a double-digit decline for the fourth month in a row as the coronavirus pandemic took a heavy toll on global demand. In the U.S., energy drillers cut the number of oil and natural gas rigs operating to a record for an 11th week in a row, data showed on Friday.

Oil Rebounds on Covid Vaccine Hopes, But Anchored at $40 --Oil prices recouped Monday’s early losses to trade a notch higher, after talk of safe human clinical trials for a Covid-19 vaccine licensed to AstraZeneca (NYSE:AZN). But fear of coronavirus cases raging anew in the United States kept the crude market anchored at just above $40 per barrel. The AZD1222, a vaccine developed by Oxford university and licensed to AstraZeneca, was put into large-scale, late-stage trials that included 1,077 healthy adults aged 18 to 55 years with no history of Covid-19. The vaccine’s marketers have already signed deals to produce and supply over 2 billion doses, once the shot proves successful. News on the AZD1222’s progress came as 31 of the 50 U.S. states saw more new cases of the virus this past week, with some cities overwhelmed by new hospitalizations or deaths. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said he was on the "brink" of making another stay-at-home order, saying things "reopened too quickly" in the most economically-vibrant city in California, which had a record daily hospitalization of 2,216 people as of Sunday. In Florida, at least 49 hospitals had no more ICU space available while Arizona reported its highest number of Covid-19 deaths in one day -- 147. Crude prices, which fell more than 1% earlier on Monday during the Asian and European sessions, returned to positive territory by the lunch hour in New York. The rebound came as traders went with the progress on the vaccine development despite indications that it could take at least until the year-end or longer for a successful shot to reach the market. Meanwhile, immediate risk from the virus to both people and the economy is real and needs to be contained. New York-traded West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark for U.S. crude futures, was up 2 cents at $40.77 per barrel by 12:40 PM ET (1640 GMT). It dipped to a session low of $39.98 earlier. 

 Oil jumps nearly 3% to highest level since March on vaccine hopes, EU deal - Oil rose on Tuesday, helped by positive news about vaccine trials and an EU stimulus deal, taking prices to levels last seen when an oil price war erupted in early March between Russia and Saudi Arabia. Benchmark Brent crude was up $1.37, or 3.17%, at $44.65, on track for its biggest daily rise since mid-June. West Texas Intermediate crude gained 2.82%, or $1.15, to settle at $41.96 per barrel, the highest level since March. Prices were buoyed by an agreement among European Union leaders on a 750 billion euro ($859 billion) fund to prop up their coronavirus-hit economies, lifting prospects for fuel demand. In other financial markets, world shares and the euro also hit their highest in several months on Tuesday. The dollar, in which most oil contracts are priced, fell to its lowest since March against a basket of currencies. The EU deal allows the European Commission to raise billions of euros on capital markets on behalf of all 27 states, an unprecedented act of solidarity in almost seven decades of European integration. Oil prices were also supported by promising coronavirus vaccine data released on Monday, raising confidence that a vaccine may be created even if a global rollout will take time. In China, some cinemas reopened on Monday after a six-month closure, another sign of recovery in the world's second-largest economy. Countries from the United States to India are reporting record numbers of coronavirus infections, while others such as Spain and Australia are battling new outbreaks. In the first big energy deal since the coronavirus crushed fuel demand, Chevron Corp said it would buy Noble Energy Inc for about $5 billion in stock. U.S. crude oil stockpiles were seen falling last week, while inventories of refined products are also likely to have dropped, a preliminary Reuters poll showed on Monday.

WTI Holds Losses As US Distillates Stocks Reach 38-Year Highs  -Oil prices are lower overnight after a surprisingly large crude inventory build reported by API. The energy complex was not helped by comments by President Trump that the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S. will probably worsen before improving.“Everything seemed to rise in the commodity world yesterday as part of the reflation trade,” said Giovanni Staunovo, an analyst at UBS Group AG in Zurich.“But today oil fundamentals are taking control again, and a likely crude inventory build in the U.S. doesn’t fit in the story of an undersupplied market.”And so all eyes are on the official data for signs of this reversal in recovery...API

• Crude +7.54mm (-2.1mm exp)
• Cushing +716k (+800k exp)
• Gasoline -2.019mm (-1.4mm exp)
• Distillates -1.357mm (-600k exp)

After API reported a 7.54mm build in US crude stocks, oil bulls are focused intently on the official data expecting a 2.1mm draw still. However, while not as large as the API build, DOE reports a 4.892mm build in crude, another build at Cushing, a surprise build in distillates, and a slowing drawin gasoline...  Additionally, as Bloomberg's Sheela Tobben reports, U.S. crude oil exports may be under downward pressure as China is now facing new troubles that might curb its interest for American. The Asian nation was struggling with bulging inventories and port jams after a recent crude binge, while battling a new wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. This month, heavy rains have resulted in severe floods, threatening run cuts at the country’s top refiner. Total US distillates inventory has soared to its highest since 1982...

Oil declines slightly after surprise build in U.S. inventories - Oil prices moved lower on Wednesday as U.S. government data showed a surprise rise in U.S. crude inventories, and as tensions escalated between the United States and China. Brent crude fell 3 cents to settle at $44.29 per barrel. West Texas Intermediate crude settled 2 cents lower at $41.90 per barrel. U.S. crude and distillate inventories rose unexpectedly and fuel demand slipped in the most recent week, the Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday, as the sharp outbreak in coronavirus cases has started to hit U.S. consumption. Crude inventories rose by 4.9 million barrels in the week to July 17 to 536.6 million barrels, compared with expectations in a Reuters poll for a 2.1 million-barrel drop. Production rose to 11.1 million bpd, up 100,000 bpd. "Overall this would suggest that the demand recovery we've seen from the bottom seems to be stalling," said Phil Flynn, senior analyst at Price Futures group in Chicago. U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the outbreak would probably worsen before it got better, a shift from his previously robust emphasis on reopening the economy. Bjornar Tonhaugen, Rystad Energy's head of oil markets, said Trump's comments might be welcomed by investors because they are among the most measured by him or his administration so far. "This could be a positive for oil demand prospects. Instead of an uncontrolled, disruptive second wave of lockdowns, maybe chances have now increased that the United States will eventually get the spread under control," Tonhaugen said. However, a fresh dispute between Washington and Beijing put pressure on prices after the United States told the Chinese consulate in Houston to shut and a source said China was considering closing the U.S. consulate in Wuhan. Adding to pressure were signs that Iraq, the second-largest producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, was still not meeting its target under an OPEC-led pact to cut supplies.

Oil settles lower as worries remain over rising U.S. inventories and coronavirus cases -  Oil futures settled lower Thursday, extending a decline seen the previous session after data showed an unexpected rise in U.S. crude inventories, as alarming growth in the number of U.S. cases of coronavirus point to the potential for further business shutdowns, dulling the prospects for energy demand. “Virtually all demand categories” showed a week-on-week decline in the report from the Energy Information Administration Wednesday, said Robbie Fraser, senior commodity analyst at Schneider Electric. The report showed a weekly fall of 98,000 barrels per day in implied demand for finished motor gasoline to 8.55 million barrels a day. Implied demand for distillate fuel oil fell 470,000 barrels per day to 3.22 million barrels a day. “That fall will tie into broader concerns around a rise in COVID cases in the U.S. and the potential economic headwinds that could bring moving forward,” Fraser said in a daily note. West Texas Intermediate crude for September delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange fell 83 cents, or 2%, to settle at $41.07 a barrel, while September Brent crude BRN.1, +0.18% lost 98 cents, or 2.2%, at $43.31 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe. Crude prices finished slightly lower Wednesday, pulling back a day after settling at their highest since March, pressured by an unexpected weekly climb in U.S. crude stockpiles. The EIA reported Wednesday that U.S. crude inventories rose by 4.9 million barrels for the week ended July 17. That compared with an average forecast by analysts polled by S&P Global Platts for a decline of 1.9 million barrels.Natural-gas futures, meanwhile, rallied as traders eyed storm activity in the Gulf of Mexico. “Aa tropical depression is building off the coast of Texas and may develop into Tropical Storm Hanna before reaching land” said Christin Redmond, commodity analyst at Schneider Electric, in a note. “The storm is likely to hit an area with offshore oil and gas production assets, which may temporarily reduce gas production in the near-term.”

Oil falls on coronavirus demand concerns, weak U.S. jobs numbers (Reuters) – Oil prices fell 2% on Thursday as investors worried the U.S. Congress may not agree on a stimulus package and as jobless numbers rose, while analysts prepared to cut energy demand forecasts as the number of coronavirus cases surges higher. That price decline came despite the benefit of a drop in the dollar to a near 22-month low. Brent LCOc1 futures fell 98 cents, or 2.2%, to settle at $43.31 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude CLc1 fell 83 cents, or 2.0%, to settle at $41.07. The U.S. dollar was trading at its lowest against a basket of currencies .DXY since September 2018. A weaker dollar usually spurs buying of dollar-priced commodities, like oil, because they become cheaper for holders of other currencies. But weak U.S. jobless numbers and a surge in coronavirus cases weighed on oil prices and stock markets. The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week for the first time in nearly four months. U.S. Senate Republican leaders and White House officials tried to hammer out a proposal for a fresh round of coronavirus aid on Thursday. Democratic leaders, meanwhile, rejected the idea of passing a piecemeal bill. U.S. coronavirus cases approached 4 million on Thursday, with more than 2,600 new cases every hour on average – the highest rate in the world, a Reuters tally showed. “The trend for COVID-19 cases will likely result in downwards revisions in demand growth forecast from key market observers soon, including ourselves and the agencies, especially for the fourth quarter,” Adding to the market uncertainty, U.S.-China relations deteriorated as Washington gave Beijing 72 hours to close its consulate in Houston after spying allegations. The Chinese foreign ministry said the U.S. move had “severely harmed” relations and that China would be forced to respond.

Oil up on strong economic data, U.S.-China tensions cap gains - (Reuters) - Oil prices rose on Friday, lifted by some supportive economic data, but tensions between the United States and China limited gains. Brent crude futures LCOc1 rose 3 cents to settle at $43.34 a barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude CLc1 futures rose 22 cents to settle at $41.29 a barrel. For the week, Brent rose 0.5%, while U.S. crude rose 1.7%. Ahead of the weekend, market participants had their eye on Tropical Storm Hanna, forecast to cross to Baffin Bay, 46 miles (74 km) south of Corpus Christi, Texas, on Saturday afternoon or evening. So far, energy companies said there have been no evacuations of workers or shutdowns of production from offshore platforms in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Lifting market sentiment, Euro zone business activity grew in July for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic hit, according to IHS Markit’s flash Composite Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI). The index is seen as a good indicator of the bloc’s economic health. “The economic data in Europe was much better than anticipated, which would suggest that demand destruction in recent months because of COVID-19 may not have been as bad as people thought,” said Phil Flynn, senior analyst at Price Futures group in Chicago. Meanwhile, U.S. business activity increased to a six-month high in July. U.S. companies, however, reported a drop in new orders as new COVID-19 cases spiked. The resurgent pandemic has darkened the U.S. economic outlook. Some states have reinstated restrictions, which should reduce fuel consumption. The U.S. oil and gas rig count, a indicator of future output, fell by two to an all-time low of 251 in the week to July 24, according to data from energy services firm Baker Hughes Co (BKR.N). However, energy firms added one oil rig in the first weekly increase since March. Meanwhile, money managers raised their net long U.S. crude futures and options positions in the week to July 21 by 5,430 contracts to 375,193, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said on Friday..

Oil posts third positive week in four on demand recovery hopes - Oil prices moved slightly higher on Friday supported by economic data from Europe, but gains were limited as tensions between the United States and China flared. Brent crude futures settled 3 cents higher at $43.34 per barrel. West Texas Intermediate crude futures gained 22 cents to settle at $41.29 a barrel. China ordered the United States to close its consulate in the city of Chengdu on Friday, responding to a U.S. demand this week that China close its Houston consulate. The renewed tensions between the world's top two oil consumers stoked worries about oil demand, which already faces headwinds including rising coronavirus cases in the United States. The resurgent pandemic has darkened the U.S. economic outlook. Some states have reinstated restrictions to curb the latest outbreak, which is expected to decrease fuel consumption. The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits hit 1.416 million last week, unexpectedly rising for the first time in nearly four months. Oil prices could see a near-term correction if a recovery in fuel demand slows further, especially in the United States, Barclays Commodities Research said. Still, the bank lowered its oil market surplus forecast for 2020 to an average of 2.5 million barrels per day (bpd) from 3.5 million bpd previously. In the United States, the oil and gas rig count, an early indicator of future output, fell by two to an all-time low of 251 in the week to July 24, according to data on Friday from energy services firm Baker Hughes Co. However, energy firms added one oil rig in the first weekly increase since March. Softening Friday's market losses, Euro zone business activity grew in July for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic hit, according to IHS Markit's flash Composite Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI). The index is seen as a good indicator of the bloc's economic health. "The economic data in Europe was much better than anticipated, which would suggest that demand destruction in recent months because of COVID-19 may not have been as bad as people thought," 

Saudis Stuck Home for Summer Burn More Oil for Air Conditioners -- As the Middle East enters the hottest days of summer, Saudi Arabia is set to burn potentially record amounts of crude oil to run its power plants and keep its citizens comfortably air-conditioned. Electricity consumption always soars around July and August, when temperatures in the kingdom can rise above 122 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees celsius). That compels the government to use crude or fuel oil in addition to the much cleaner natural gas that normally fires the plants. But this year the urge to drain oil is even stronger because of higher demand, with the coronavirus pandemic forcing many Saudis to cancel their summer holidays abroad. Another difference is that record cuts to Saudi Arabia’s oil production since April -- part of a push by OPEC members to prop up prices in the face of the virus -- have reduced its supplies of gas, most of which come from the same wells as crude. The extra oil going toward power may limit the price impact of OPEC’s plan to taper output restrictions from next month. The kingdom pumped 7.5 million barrels a day in June, the fewest since 2002, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Of those, it exported 5.7 million barrels daily, while keeping most of the rest for domestic refineries. “They can simply import more gas or burn more crude in power generation,” said Carole Nakhle, chief executive officer of London-based consulting firm Crystol Energy. “The second option is more likely and easier since the region has been doing this for years and decades and there is plenty of oil around today.” Each August, Saudi Arabia uses 726,000 barrels of crude daily for power generation, according to average numbers over the past decade from the Riyadh-based Joint Organisations Data Initiative, which collates statistics among energy producers. That’s more than double the amount for the cooler months of January and February. The record came in July 2014, when the Saudis burned 899,000 barrels a day. Saudi Arabia has already unwound some crude-production curbs. At the end of June, it ended voluntary cuts of 1 million barrels a day below its OPEC quota, saying it would need most of the additional oil for domestic use. “Our consumption is going to increase,” Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said in early June. “A good chunk of what we will produce in July will go to domestic consumption -- crude burning or fuel oil, not refining.” Nearing 1 million barrels a day for power generation would be a setback for Saudi Arabia’s plans to reduce its own use of the dirtiest fossil fuels. Before the virus stuck, the government looked on track to achieve that, especially after increasing capacity at local gas-processing plants,

Egypt's Parliament Approves Ground Troop Deployment To Back Haftar In Libya  --Libya's proxy war just grew hotter, with outside powers supporting opposite sides of the conflict finding themselves more directly intervening on Libyan soil.Though Turkey, which supports Tripoli's UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) has sent troops and weapons since last year to help fend off Haftar's (now failed) advance on the capital, Egypt just made a huge and unprecedented move.On Monday Egypt's parliament voted to approve sending its armed forces to fight “criminal militias” and “foreign terrorist groups” on a “Western front”. Previously Egypt has only flown sorties over neighboring Libya, however, this would mark the first ever direct ground intervention.Though the parliamentary vote didn't name Libya directly, it's widely known that "Western front" is a clear reference to the growing chaos along Egypt's border with Libya. Cairo continues to see Haftar as a necessary 'stabilizer' for the country which has remained in a state of chaos and bloodshet since the US-NATO toppling of Gaddafi in 2011.The parliament unanimously voted for "the deployment of members of the Egyptian armed forces on combat missions outside Egypt's borders to defend Egyptian national security... against criminal armed militias and foreign terrorist elements," according to a statement.Reuters underscores that the vote is a big deal and somewhat unprecedented:Egyptian state TV later ran banners on the screen saying: “Egypt and Libya, one people, one fate.”The last time Egypt sent ground troops abroad  for combat was in 1991 in Kuwait as part of a U.S.-led coalition to drive out Iraqi troops.

Southeast Asia budget airline boom turns sour for planemakers, lessors - (Reuters) - Southeast Asian low-cost carriers, a key growth engine for planemakers and leasing companies for a decade before the pandemic, are faltering financially as demand plunges, raising questions over whether they can replace and double their fleets. Auditors for Malaysia’s AirAsia Group Bhd (AIRA.KL) and Vietnam’s VietJet Aviation JSC VJC.HM are concerned about cashflows and funding, while Indonesia’s Lion Air has put the brakes on a planned flotation. Even before the pandemic, bankers and leasing bosses were worried about whether aircraft ordered during a decade-long buying frenzy by Southeast Asian carriers would end up being delivered. The carriers, which have offshoots in multiple countries, have 938 planes on order and lease most of their existing fleets of 476 planes, according to Aviation Week data. To be sure, budget airlines with large domestic operations are well-placed for a post-pandemic recovery, despite having less financial support than state-owned rivals. Their lower cost structure helps reduce the rate at which they burn cash and gives them the flexibility to benefit first from any recovery, analysts say. But with borders shut and economic growth stunted, a return to the low-cost international travel needed for them to afford all of the planes they have on order looks increasingly doubtful - a worrying sign for the companies that make and lease aircraft. “One area that I’m concerned about generally is just those low-cost carriers who ordered too many aircraft,” “I think there will still be work to be done on those during the third quarter,” he said, referring to negotiations over current lease contracts.

To battle Covid-19, India needs to be transparent about its mortality data  - Even as coronavirus cases in India surged past the one-million mark, another key metric is showing a surprising downward trend. On Monday, India’s case fatality ratio – the proportion of deaths to Covid-19 cases – dipped below 2.5%. At 2.49%, India’s CFR is significantly below the global average of 4.2%. It is also lower than the corresponding figure for the United States (3.88%) and Brazil (3.81%), the only two other countries in the world to have a higher coronavirus caseload than India. Taken at face value, this might point to some conditions that, luckily, favour India. Speaking toThe Hindu, virologist Dr Shahid Jameel points to India’s young population as well as the possibility that South Asians have higher innate immunity than Western populations due to possible factors such as exposure to other infections. However, at the moment, these are only theories: experts caution that we are still to know the exact medical reason for this low CFR is (if there is one at all). And, as a result, India’s policies cannot be based on it. To add to this, before simply accepting these fatality numbers in the first place, a number of factors engender caution. For one, even in normal times, data collection on mortality is abysmal in India: only about 77% of deaths are registered and only 22% of those are medically certified, data from the Registrar General of India shows. As Covid-19 overwhelms health systems in India, and lockdowns disrupt public services and transport, there are fears that many deaths are not being counted. Then, there are specific concerns about Covid-19 deaths. Several cities have seen funerals with Covid-19 protocols outstrip the number of confirmed coronavirus deaths, raising concerns that suspected Covid-19 cases not being counted in the official data. Many public health experts fear local governments may have intentionally suppressed numbers of Covid-19 cases to protect their images. The BMJ reported that the city of Vadodara had attributed the deaths of nearly three-fourths of people who had the coronavirus to co-morbidities – or other underlying health conditions – ignoring World Health Organisation guidelines on the matter. To make things worse, India’s local governments are not publishing the overall mortality data they collect. This is bad at all times – but especially given that there are strong indicators that coronavirus-specific mortality is not being captured well. With poor recording of coronavirus-specific mortality, even developed countries are tracking trends in overall mortality to watch for excess deaths, which might lead them to detect coronavirus outbreaks.

 Indian Farmers Are Staring at Suicide as Modi Government Looks the Other Way  --I am Shankar Darekar, a 47-year-old farmer from Vimchur, a remote rural village in India’s Maharashtra province. The coronavirus pandemic, which erupted in India in early March, has spelled doom for us. It was the harvest season. I cultivate grapes on five acres of land bequeathed to me by my forefathers. Grapes are an expensive cash crop, requiring a whopping investment of up to $3,000 per acre of cultivation. There are no yields for the first three years. Every year in March, I sell part of the crop to merchants in Kolkata, in India’s eastern province of West Bengal, from where it is sent to Bangladesh. The remainder is sent to Delhi and Punjab, for export to our western neighbours. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the lockdown from midnight of 24 March, he gave India’s 1.3 billion citizens barely four hours’ notice. It was a cruel joke that had a huge effect on millions of farmers.By that time, I had dispatched 100 quintals [10 tonnes] of grapes to Bangladesh, but 350 quintals were still on vines in the fields. I thought of the debt I had incurred. If the grapes rotted, my life would be ruined. Some of us got together, called farmers’ bodies and made hurried representations to the government. To our dismay, our appeals fell on deaf ears.The Modi government, which had arranged special jets to fly back the rich who were stranded abroad, was unwilling to run the railways for a few more days to transport our crops. We tried to organise trucks on our own, but provincial borders were sealed. Permits were not granted despite pleas to the government.Over a week was wasted in this flustering uncertainty. By the time we zeroed in on some local merchants, the sugar level of the grapes had risen. The buyers fixed abysmally low rates, but we could not negotiate. I sold 225 quintals of grapes for one-fifth of the price I would usually get.But more than 125 quintals of grapes had ripened and could not be sold. Someone suggested that raisin makers might be interested in buying it. The buyer gave us 23 rupees per kilogram of raisins. The maths was numbing. I sold the grapes at a measly four rupees [0.05 US cents] per kilogram. This was looting. It coincided with fervent displays of nationalism at the whim of the prime minister. One evening, Modi asked people to gather on their balconies or nearby open spaces and cheer healthcare workers by banging pots. On another occasion, he wanted them to switch off their lights at 9pm and light diyas [earthen pots] and candles. The rich obeyed merrily, and they even set off firecrackers. They said they were patriots. Their self-applauding made for pulsating prime-time TV, while our livelihoods were squeezed out of us and we had to save every penny.

Mexican Cartel Displays Show Of Force In 'Shocking' New Video --A shocking video surfaced onto social media Friday, showing a convoy of armored vehicles with dozens of combat-uniformed gunmen who expressed their support for Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes ("El Menccho"), the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), reported Mexican newspaper El Universal.  All of the trucks appear American made and many seem to be outfitted with different levels of armor, along with stationary turrets on top. These types of vehicles are common to warzones in the Middle East.  Commenting on the video, Alfonso Durazo, Secretary of Public and Citizen Security, said the government is investigating the video:  "The propaganda video attributed to a criminal gang is being analyzed in order to confirm its eventual authenticity and temporality," Durazo said.  "Regardless of this, we state that there is no criminal group with the capacity to successfully challenge the federal security forces, much less from that evident assembly," he added.  El Universal journalist Gabriel Guerra tweeted, "This video is truly troubling. Although its authenticity must be established, it speaks of an armed capacity comparable to or greater than that of many guerrilla groups. Each one will read different things, what I see is an enemy of the Mexican State and of all of us."

Global Hunger Is Increasing, New UN Report Finds - According to a new United Nations report, global rates of hunger and malnutrition are on the rise. The report estimates that in 2019, 690 million people – 8.9% of the world's population – were undernourished. It predicts that this number will exceed 840 million by 2030. If you also include the number of people who the U.N. describes as food insecure, meaning that they have trouble getting access to food, over 2 billion people worldwide are in trouble. This includes people in wealthy, middle-income and low-income countries.The report further confirms that women are more likely to face moderate to severe food insecurity than men, and that little progress has been achieved on this front in the past several years. Overall, its findings warn that eradicating hunger by 2030 – one of the U.N.'s main Sustainable Development Goals – looks increasingly unlikely.COVID-19 has only made matters worse: The report estimates that the unfolding pandemic and its accompanying economic recession will push an additional 83 million to 132 million people into undernourishment. But based on our work serving as independent experts to the U.N. on hunger, access to food and malnutrition, under the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, it's clear to us that the virus is only accelerating existing trends. It is not driving the rising numbers of hungry and food-insecure people.Experts have debated for years how best to measure hunger and malnutrition. In the past, the U.N. focused almost exclusively on calories – an approach that researchers and advocacy groups criticized as too narrow.This year's report takes a more thoughtful approach that focuses on access to healthy diets. One thing it found is that when governments primarily focused on making sure people had enough calories, they did so by supporting large transnational corporations and by making fatty, sweet and highly-processed foods cheap and accessible. This perspective raises some important issues about the global political economy of food. As the new report points out, people who live at the current global poverty level of US$1.90 per day cannot feasibly secure access to a healthy diet, even under the most optimistic scenarios.

When the U.S. sneezes, the world catches a cold. What happens when it has severe COVID-19? (Reuters) - During a blue-sky moment in 2018 near the end of a decade-long economic expansion, it was the United States that helped pull the world along as the extra cash from tax cuts and government spending flowed through domestic and global markets. But if it was U.S. policy that pushed the world higher then, it is U.S. policy that threatens to pull the world under now as the country’s troubled response to the coronavirus pandemic emerges as a chief risk to any sustained global recovery. Officials from Mexico to Japan are already on edge. Exports have taken a hit in Germany, and Canada looks south warily knowing that any further hit to U.S. growth will undoubtedly spill over. “Globally there will be difficult months and years ahead and it is of particular concern that the number of COVID-19 cases is still rising,” the International Monetary Fund said in a review of the U.S. economy that cited “social unrest” due to rising poverty as one of the risks to economic growth. “The risk ahead is that a large share of the U.S. population will have to contend with an important deterioration of living standards and significant economic hardship for several years. This, in turn, can further weaken demand and exacerbate longer-term headwinds to growth.” It was a clinical description of a grim set of facts: After the U.S. government committed roughly $3 trillion to support the economy through a round of restrictions on activity imposed to curb the virus in April and May, the disease is surging in the United States to record levels just as those support programs are due to expire. More than 3.6 million people have been infected and 140,000 killed. Daily growth in cases has tripled to more than 70,000 since mid-May, and the 7-day moving average of deaths, after falling steadily from April to July, has turned higher. Meanwhile the country has fractured over issues like mask-wearing that in other parts of the world were adopted readily as a matter of common courtesy. With some key states like Texas and California now reimposing restrictions, analysts have already noted a possible plateau to the U.S. recovery with the country still 13.3 million jobs shy of the number in February.

Economic Recovery Is Under Way but Fighting Flare-Ups Is Key – WSJ - The global economy suffered a severe contraction in the three months through June, and it is becoming clear that the strength of its recovery will depend on authorities’ success in dousing continued pandemic flare-ups. Countries’ freshest economic-growth figures, to be released in coming weeks, are likely to show the global economy entered a recession in the first half of this year and shrank in the second quarter at the fastest peacetime rate since modern records began after the Great Depression. The global economic recovery has begun, but there are mixed signals about its health and staying power. Some sectors have sprung back to life more decisively than expected, and they include retailing and manufacturing. The flip side is it appears that, until a vaccine becomes widely available, surges in coronavirus infections will repeatedly have a damping effect on activity.   The European Commission estimates the eurozone’s gross domestic product in the three months through June was 13.6% lower than in the first three months of the year, when output dropped 3.6%—then the largest decline since records began in 1995. In the U.S., the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta on July 9 estimated that U.S. GDP declined 10.3% in the second quarter compared with the first quarter. If that were to prove accurate, the drop would be four times larger than that seen in the worst quarter for the economy after the 2008 financial crisis.  Recent figures from other parts of the world also point to large declines in GDP during the second quarter. Singapore this past Tuesday said its economy shrank by 12% in the second quarter. However, recent figures indicate that the global decline in activity largely ended in April, with May and June seeing pickups. In the U.K., which is one of a handful of countries to release monthly figures for GDP, the economy grew by 1.8% in May from April.   China is two months ahead of most other major economies, having initiated its lockdown in late January and lifted many of those restrictions in April. The country Thursday reported that its economy grew in the second quarter and at a faster pace than expected, an outcome that other countries would be happy to see in the third quarter.  Other measures point in the same direction. The eurozone has recorded increases of 17.8% in retail sales and 12.4% in industrial production for May. U.S. retail sales rose 18.2% in May and 7.5% in June, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. But recent weeks have raised fresh questions about the strength of the rebound. In particular, signs abound of a loss of economic momentum in the U.S. as rising infections across several U.S. states prompt authorities to impose new restrictions, businesses to scale back and consumers to turn more cautious in some parts of the country.

World Recovery Running On Fumes As Virus Pandemic Reemerges - The resurgence of the virus pandemic is at risk of derailing the global economic recovery.  Goldman Sach's latest Coronavirus Global Activity Tracker, published each Wednesday to track the impact of the virus outbreak on economic activity on a per-country basis, shows mobility, industrial activity, consumer activity, labor market, and travel trends are stalling in major economies. The note first points out mobility data in Croatia, Israel, Australia, Japan, and Hong Kong, has likely peaked after surging for a couple of months due to, in some of these countries, surging virus cases. On a weekly percentage change basis, all countries, except for Croatia, have seen mobility trends in late June turn lower.  Goldman's industrial activity trackers were stable in China and the US, at 4% YoY and -11% YoY, respectively. China's industrial revival post-pandemic lockdowns has been more robust than the US.   ​There is no V-shaped recovery here. Goldman's industrial activity trackers also show activity levels around 90% of pre-corona levels in June across G4 countries. Rebounds in BRICs have been much softer than developed economies.

Never waste a crisis – COVID-19, climate change and monetary policy - by Isabel Schnabel, Bank of International Settlements. - The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic constitutes an unprecedented shock across many dimensions. The lockdown has led to the temporary closing-down of many production sites. Global air and road travel have come to a virtual standstill. The effects have been so large and so disruptive that total carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2020 will be about 4 to 7% lower than estimated before the crisis. In the past 120 years, there has never been an event that had such a dramatic impact on global CO2 emissions. Yet, studies show that even the substantial restrictions in production and mobility that were necessary to contain the spread of the virus would not be sufficient to limit the global temperature increase to the 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, as aspired under the 2015 Paris Agreement. In order to meet that goal, according to the United Nations, global emissions would need to drop by 7.6% each year between 2020 and 2030. Given the economic and social hardship associated with this year's reduction, such a drop is hardly feasible by simply reducing economic activity. The pandemic is therefore a stark reminder that preventing climate change from inflicting permanent harm on the global economy requires a fundamental structural change to our economy, inducing systematic changes in the way energy is generated and consumed.

Even If Joe Biden Wins in a Blowout, the ‘Global Economy’ Is Not Coming Back - Marshall Auerback - COVID-19 has not only presented the global economy with its greatest public health challenge in over a century, but also likely killed off the notion of America’s “unipolar moment” for good. That doesn’t mean full-on autarky or isolationism but, rather, enlightened selfishness, which allows for some limited cooperation. Donald Trump’s ongoing threats to impose additional tariffs on a range of EU exports are exacerbating this trend as the old post-World War II ties between the two regions continue to fray. Even the possibility of a Biden administration is unlikely to presage a reversion to the status quo ante. Regionalization and multipolarity will be the order of the day going forward. Many will regard these developments as chiefly driven by geopolitical prerogatives. But over time, the driving engine of the process will be a combination of maturing technologies that are rewriting the laws of profitability in manufacturing and production for advanced economies. The various capacities that enabled a far-flung global supply chain and sent the economies of Asia into hyperdrive over the past 40 years have continued to mature. The rise of China, South Korea and Japan in this period is just a phase of a larger series of advances that are now likely to become more distributed and at the same time reshuffle the geopolitical trend lines we currently experience.  The reshuffling is coming in large part because America’s historic military dominance has less relevance in a world where the new forms of competition place greater weight on access to advanced research and technologies, rather than the projection of brute military force (especially given the increasing proliferation of nuclear technologies and the rise of asymmetric warfare). Furthermore, the lack of American manufacturing capacity has left it open to a significant loss of influence to the benefit of other regions, notably China (in Asia), and Germany (in the European Union). China in particular will likely remain both a geopolitical and economic rival to the United States for the foreseeable future, especially as it already supersedes the United States in some areas of technology (such as 5G), and is increasingly becoming the locus of economic activity in Asia. As yet, Asia is by no means a cohesive economic or strategic bloc (such as the European Union), especially given the ongoing American influence in countries such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. But longer term, it is hard to believe that an independent democratic Japan would embrace a foreign policy stance that risks antagonizing a country of almost 1.4 billion people with nukes. According to some projections, by 2050 Japan will likely constitute about one-eighth of China’s GDP, South Korea much less. On the basis of that size disparity, strategic triangulation is a non-starter. Japan will no more be able to “balance” China than Canada today can “contain” the United States. It is likewise difficult to envisage Seoul continuing to have its own relations with the North being continuously subject to the vagaries of Pentagon politics in D.C. Heightening instability on the Korean peninsula is hardly in the long-term interests of either Seoul or Pyongyang.

Russia, hit by coronavirus crisis, considers military spending cuts - (Reuters) - Russia is considering cutting spending on the military as low oil prices and the coronavirus crisis have pummeled its economy, a document published by the finance ministry shows. The ministry has proposed the government cut state spending on the military by 5% between 2021 and 2023. The proposal, published on Monday, also includes budget spending cuts of 10% for the court system, the servicing of Russia’s debt and wages for civil servants. Russia, which flexed its military muscle with its 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and intervention in the Syrian conflict, dropped out of the list of the top five biggest military spenders in 2018 after its spending fell 3.5%. Last year it returned as the world’s fourth largest military spender and increased its military expenditures by 4.5% to $65.1 billion, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. That amount corresponded to 3.9% of its gross domestic product, it said. President Vladimir Putin has called for better living standards and investment in healthcare and education. Some government officials have called for lower military spending to free up funds for such initiatives. Military expenditures have increased under Putin, but the Kremlin said in 2018 that Russia would cut its defence budget to less than 3% of GDP within the next five years. Exact figures for military funding are considered a state secret in Russia, but in 2018 the defence ministry said 20 trillion roubles ($282 billion) had been earmarked for the construction of military infrastructure under a new armament programme for 2018-2027.

EU leaders reach deal on recovery package - EU leaders agreed early Tuesday to an unprecedented €1.8 trillion ($2 trillion) aid and budget deal aimed at helping hard-hit bloc members recover from the economic fallout of the novel coronavirus pandemic. The package includes a €750-billion fund to be sent as loans and grants, as well as a seven-year €1 trillion EU budget. European Council President Charles Michel tweeted a brief message minutes after leaders adopted the plan: "Deal!" "We did it. Europe is strong, Europe is united. This is a good deal, this is a strong deal and most importantly this is the right deal for Europe right now," Michel said. "I believe this agreement will be seen as a pivotal moment for Europe's journey." The breakthrough comes after more than four days of wrangling, with talks often stretching into the early hours. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen thanked German Chancellor Angela Merkel for "steering" negotiations towards a European solution. "Europe as a whole has now a big chance to come out stronger from the crisis. Today we have taken a historic step that we can all be proud of," said von der Leyen. "Tonight is a big step toward recovery." Merkel described the agreement as an "important signal," and said she was "very relieved" that EU leaders were able to cooperate. It was good "that we pulled ourselves together in the end," she said. That sentiment was echoed by French President Emmanuel Macron, who called it a "historic day for Europe." "There is no such thing as a perfect world, but we have made progress," said Macron. However, the European Parliament will still have to agree to the package.

EU reaches historic deal on pandemic recovery after fractious summit - (Reuters) - European Union leaders clinched an historic deal on a massive stimulus plan for their coronavirus-throttled economies in the early hours of Tuesday, after a fractious summit lasting almost five days. The agreement paves the way for the European Commission, the EU’s executive, to raise billions of euros on capital markets on behalf of all 27 states, an unprecedented act of solidarity in almost seven decades of European integration. Summit chairman Charles Michel called the accord, reached at a 5.15 a.m. (0315 GMT), a pivotal moment for Europe. Many had warned that a failed summit amid the coronavirus pandemic would have put the bloc’s viability in serious doubt after years of economic crisis and Britain’s recent departure. World shares climbed to their highest since February and the euro briefly hit its strongest since March on news of the deal. “This agreement sends a concrete signal that Europe is a force for action,” a jubilant Michel told reporters. French President Emmanuel Macron, who spearheaded a push for the deal with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, hailed it as truly historic. Leaders hope the 750 billion euro ($857.33 billion) recovery fund and its related 1.1 trillion euro 2021-2027 budget will help repair the continent’s deepest recession since World War Two after the coronavirus outbreak shut down economies. Germany Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said that, with the agreement, the chances of “a cautious, slow recovery” in the second half of this year had increased enormously. While strong in symbolism, the deal came at the cost of cuts to proposed investment in climate-friendly funds and did not set conditions for disbursements to countries, such as Hungary and Poland, seen as breaching democratic values. European Council President   In an unwieldy club of 27, each with veto power, the summit also exposed faultlines across the bloc that are likely to hinder future decision-making on money as richer northern countries resisted helping out the poorer south. The Netherlands led a group of so-called frugal states with Austria, Sweden, Denmark and Finland, insisting that aid to Italy, Spain and other Mediterranean countries that took the brunt of the pandemic should be mainly in loans, not in non-repayable grants. “There were a few clashes, but that’s all part of the game,” said Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, describing a warm relationship with his Italian counterpart, Giuseppe Conte. But Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said the frugals’ negotiating power was here to stay, suggesting Europe’s traditional Franco-German engine will be challenged.