Month: October 2020

Locked down or just staying close to home, people have been driving much less in the United States during the coronavirus pandemic. But while this may be six months of good news for the environment, businesses like hotels, service stations and tourist destinations are hurting.According to the Federal Highway Administration, (FHA) compared to the same time last year, total driving decreased by 40% in April soon after the pandemic emerged.Recently, as more people have been getting back into their vehicles, the group said driving increased so that as of July, total kilometers are down only 11% compared to 2019.Ruth Cody, who lives in Alexandria, Virginia, is among the millions of Americans who have cut down on their driving. Cody said she and her husband have been doing “much less driving” because they can work from home. They also refrain from driving to stores and other businesses to help protect themselves from the coronavirus.“We’re spending more time in our neighborhood and taking walks with our children instead of using our cars,” Cody said.Rabi Abonour, a transportation researcher at the The full moon sets as morning traffic travels on a freeway Thursday, Oct. 1, 2020, in Leawood, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)Abonour is working with a program that encourages officials of U.S. cities to promote various types of emissions-free transportation.Carbon dioxide and other emissions from passenger vehicles are a major source of air pollution.With fewer cars on the road, the air has been cleaner in many U.S. cities including notoriously smoggy Los Angeles, said Abonour.He thinks the cleaner air won’t last long “because we already see levels of driving increasing across the country.”“A pandemic is the worst possible way to reduce the emissions and improve the environment,” said climate and energy expert Constantine Samaras.But the Carnegie Mellon University associate professor said he is hopeful about “the small impact” less driving is making on carbon dioxide levels.“A lot of folks are saying, why can’t we have this all the time, we don’t need a pandemic to make this a reality,” Constantine said.However, the decline in driving during the pandemic doesn’t just reflect more people working from home. It’s also the result of widespread unemployment, shuttered businesses, and other devastating economic consequences.“Restaurants, hotels and other establishments are being impacted by people’s driving habits,” points out Adie Tomer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who focuses on infrastructure.Because people aren’t driving for business travel and are holding back on taking vacations, “the hotel industry is really struggling,” said Mark Muro, another Brookings fellow.Many restaurants have not rebounded from the loss of diners, and people aren’t visiting some tourist attractions due to fears of getting the coronavirus from the crowds, said Tomer.However, driving has picked up en route to destinations such as national parks and beaches, where visitors feel comfortable because they can social distance more easily, said Tori Emerson Barnes, executive vice president of public affairs and policy at the U.S. Travel Association.And, with fewer vehicles on the road, the energy industry is suffering because drivers aren’t filling up their gas tanks as often as they did before the pandemic.Due to the lack of demand, “Gasoline refineries around the country have been running at very reduced capacity rates,” said Marty Durbin, senior vice president of policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.Also feeling the lack of demand is the Highway Trust Fund, which allocates the fuel taxes collected at gas pumps to maintain U.S. highways and road infrastructure.“The pandemic is, for sure, going to affect the amount of fuel taxes that the federal government and states are going to collect,” said Samaras.And since “the need for fixing and deploying infrastructure is not going away,” he said, road maintenance is being put off and highway projects are not getting off the ground. 
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U.S. President Donald Trump has announced he and first lady Melania Trump have tested positive for the coronavirus.President Trump tweeted at 12:54 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Friday (04:54 UTC): “Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!”Eleven minutes later, the White House released a memorandum from the 74-year-old president’s physician, Dr. Sean Conley, confirming the positive tests for the Trumps.“The President and First Lady are both well at this time, and they plan to remain at home within the White House during their convalescence,” Conley said.He added that he expects the president “to continue carrying out his duties without disruption while recovering, and I will keep you posted on any future developments.”Melania Trump tweeted at 1:27 a.m.: “As too many Americans have done this year, @potus & I are quarantining at home after testing positive for COVID-19. We are feeling good & I have postponed all upcoming engagements. Please be sure you are staying safe & we will all get through this together.”All of Trump’s political events for the near future were quickly ordered canceled, according to a White House official.The news immediately caused U.S. stock futures to plunge and potentially puts Trump’s presidential campaign into hiatus, barely a month before the election against former Vice President Joe Biden, who leads in the national polls.Trump, who for months has played down the seriousness of the coronavirus, on Thursday evening confirmed during a telephone interview on the Fox News Channel that he and the first lady had been tested after one of his closest aides, Hope Hicks, was confirmed to be infected.Hicks, counselor to the president, traveled with Trump to Pennsylvania for a campaign rally on Saturday, then to Cleveland for the presidential debate on Tuesday and to Minnesota for campaign events the following day.Hicks was showing symptoms at a political rally Wednesday evening in Duluth, Minnesota, and tested positive Thursday morning, according to officials who spoke on condition of not being named.Trump on Thursday, however, along with some top officials flew to New Jersey for a political fundraising event where he was in close contact with dozens of other people.During the telephone interview with Fox News show host Sean Hannity, the president suggested Hicks could have contracted the virus from members of the military or law enforcement.“It is very, very hard when you are with people from the military, or from law enforcement, and they come over to you, and they want to hug you, and they want to kiss you because we really have done a good job for them,” said Trump. “You get close, and things happen. I was surprised to hear with Hope, but she is a very warm person with them. She knows there’s a risk, but she is young.”The president, however, in the eighth decade of his life, is in a high-risk category for the coronavirus, but is otherwise believed to be in good health.Nearly 7.3 million people in the United States have been infected with COVID-19 and more than 207,000 have died – the most reported by any country.  
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A Roman Catholic diocese in the New York City suburbs on Thursday became the largest in the nation to declare bankruptcy in the face of more than 200 lawsuits over sexual abuse allegations. Bishop John O. Barres of the Diocese of Rockville Centre on Long Island posted a video message saying the church was unable “to carry out its spiritual, charitable and education missions” because of “the increasing burden of litigation expenses,” after New York lawmakers passed the Child Victims Act, which lifted the statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse accusations.In its filing, the diocese listed up to $500 million in estimated liabilities from the lawsuits. FILE – Bishop John Barres of the Diocese of Rockville Centre speaks to reporters in East Patchogue, N.Y., April 19, 2017.The diocese, which encompasses much of Long Island’s approximately 1.4 million Catholic residents, is the eighth largest in the United States by population. By filing for Chapter 11 protections, the church said it would ask a bankruptcy court to put all pending cases on hold so that they can be settled together. According to diocese leadership, this method will be more equitable. However, survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of priests in the Catholic Church say that the move will limit their ability to get the truth. Jeff Anderson, a lawyer representing people who say they were abused by clergy in the Rockville Centre Diocese, criticized the filing as “strategic, cowardly and wholly self-serving.” Previous payoutsThe Rockville Centre Diocese started a compensation program in 2017 for victims of sexual assault and said it had paid more than $62 million to approximately 350 individuals. The New York law gives people until next August to sue over long-ago allegations. Three other dioceses in the state filed for bankruptcy within the last 13 months: Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo. At least 20 Catholic dioceses have filed for bankruptcy since 2004, according to BishopAccountability.org, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit that tracks sex-abuse allegations within the church. Since the 1980s, Catholic dioceses across the U.S. have paid out approximately $4 billion over claims of sexual abuse. The Associated Press estimates that new lookback laws like the Child Victims Act could result in at least an additional $4 billion in payouts by the church. According to Barres, most of Rockville Centre’s operations will continue in the face of the bankruptcy filing, and employees and vendors will be paid for their services. Parishes and schools, Barres said, are considered separate legal entities and are not covered in the bankruptcy filing. This report includes information from The Associated Press. 
 
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More than 19,800 of Amazon’s U.S. front-line workers tested positive for the coronavirus this year, or 1.44% of its workforce, the company announced Thursday.The world’s largest online retailer’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has been criticized by some of its staff, elected officials and unions, who said Amazon put employees at risk when it kept warehouses open during the pandemic.However, Amazon says its employee infection rate is 42% lower than expected, given the virus’ spread in the general population.The company kept its facilities open as demand skyrocketed from shoppers staying home during pandemic lockdowns. It added temperature checks, social distancing software and other safety procedures for its workers.According to Amazon, of its 1,372,000 Amazon and Whole Foods Market front-line workers, 19,816 tested positive for the coronavirus or were presumed to have COVID-19 between March 1 and September 19.However, had Amazon’s rate of infection been equal to that of the general population, 33,952 workers would have gotten the virus, when taking employee age and geography into account, the company said.Airline layoffs beginMeanwhile, two of the world’s biggest airlines, U.S. carriers American and United, began laying off a combined 32,000 workers Thursday because of a lack of more emergency aid from the federal government. The U.S. airline industry received $25 billion in payroll support in March during the first days of the pandemic, as domestic and international travel ground to a halt.The furloughs by American and United came the same week U.S. entertainment giant Disney announced it would lay off 28,000 workers, the majority of them at the company’s theme parks in Florida and California.In a related matter, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Wednesday that it was extending its ban, which began in March, on passenger cruise travel until October 31. The CDC said that between March 1 and September 29, there were 3,689 cases of COVID-19 infections on cruise ships sailing in U.S. waters, including 41 deaths.News outlets said the Trump administration overruled a recommendation by CDC Director Robert Redfield to extend the ban until February.Madrid lockdownSpain’s government issued limited lockdown orders Wednesday on Madrid as the country experiences a new surge of coronavirus cases.The capital’s 3 million residents will not be allowed to venture from their homes except to go to work, school, shopping or for medical care. All bars and restaurants will be forced to close earlier than normal and reduce their seating capacity by 50%.Health Minister Salvador Illa told reporters the restrictions would apply to municipalities with at least 100,000 inhabitants each, which would also affect nine municipalities surrounding the Spanish capital.Europe is experiencing a steady rise of new COVID-19 infections, with Spain leading the way with about 300 infections per 100,000 inhabitants. But the rate is more than double in the Madrid region, which stands at more than 780 infections per 100,000.The new restrictions have been denounced by Madrid’s right-wing regional government, with regional health minister Enrique Ruiz Escudero accusing the national Socialist-led government of interfering in the region’s handling of the pandemic. Madrid’s regional government, along with Catalonia and three other conservative-ruled regions, rejected the new restrictions.Spain has more than 31,000 COVID-19 deaths, the fourth-highest tally in Europe behind Britain, Italy and France.New Israeli restrictionsIn Israel, lawmakers Wednesday approved a bill that limits Israelis from holding demonstrations more than 1 kilometer from their homes. Supporters of the bill said it was aimed at curbing the country’s growing number of COVID-19 infections, which prompted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to impose a second nationwide lockdown last week.But others said the measure was an attempt to end the mass weekly protests staged near Netanyahu’s official residence in Jerusalem for the past several months.The protesters have demanded the prime minister’s resignation over his handling of the pandemic and allegations of corruption. Netanyahu is currently on trial in three separate cases for bribery, fraud and other official misconduct charges. 
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The U.S. Health and Human Services Department announced a new funding opportunity Thursday for providers on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic Thursday.  
 
The $20 billion relief fund will be provided through the Health Resources and Services Administration and will allow providers who previously have received Provider Relief Fund payments to apply for additional funding.  
 
Under the Phase 3 General Distribution allocation program, financial losses and changes in operating expenses caused by the coronavirus that previously were not covered now will be considered.
 
Those who were previously ineligible, such as providers who began practicing in 2020, also will be able to apply. In addition, an expanded group of behavioral health providers confronting the mental health and substance abuse issues exacerbated by the pandemic will be able to receive relief benefits.  
 
A recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that cases involving symptoms of anxiety disorders were triple the amount they were during the same period a year ago. The same report showed the prevalence of a depressive disorder has increased by four times since the second quarter of 2019.  
 
To support mental health providers, the HHS partnered with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to increase their funding eligibility. As a result, addiction counseling centers, mental health counselors, and psychiatrists will be able to apply for benefits.  
 
The package comes after HHS issued more than $100 billion in relief funding to providers. Many are still struggling financially, however, because of the impacts of COVID-19.  
 
The new distribution program will include an equitable payment of 2% of annual revenue from patient care for all applicants, in addition to payments accounting for revenue losses and expenses related to the pandemic.  
 
Providers can begin applying for funds Monday, October 5, 2020. 
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The two largest school districts in the U.S. are rolling out ambitious and costly plans to test students and staff for the coronavirus, bidding to help keep school buildings open amid a rise in infections among the nation’s school-age children.New York City is set to begin testing 10% to 20% of students and staff in every building monthly beginning Thursday, the same day the final wave of the district’s more than 1 million students began returning to brick-and-mortar classrooms for the first time in six months.”Every single school will have testing. It will be done every single month. It will be rigorous,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said in announcing the plan as part of an agreement with the teachers union to avert a strike. At least 79 Department of Education employees have died from the virus.With an estimated 100,000-120,000 tests expected each month, each costing between $78 and $90, New York City’s school-based testing plan goes well beyond safety protocols seen in most other districts.Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Unified School District, has launched a similarly comprehensive, $150 million, testing program to help determine when it will be safe to resume in-person instruction. The district began the school year remotely in August for all 600,000 students. The New York and Los Angeles systems are respectively the nation’s largest and 2nd-largest school districts.Leaders in both cities say regular testing is needed in districts of their size and in areas of the country that previously witnessed unnerving surges of the virus.The coronavirus struck hard at the elderly early in the pandemic and is now increasingly infecting American children and teens in a trend authorities say appears to be fueled by school reopenings and other activities. Children of all ages now make up 10% of all U.S cases, up from 2% in April, the American Academy of Pediatrics reported Tuesday.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this week that the incidence of COVID-19 in school-age children began rising in early September as many returned to classrooms. Its recommendations emphasize distancing, cleaning and face coverings for most reopening plans — though no requirement for universal testing of students and staff.New York City elementary school students began returning to school buildings Tuesday after starting the year remote. Middle and high school students started going back Thursday.As part of the LAUSD plan announced this month, all students and staff will get an initial baseline test in coming weeks to ensure the incidence of COVID-19 is low, and then another test immediately before returning to school, Superintendent Austin Beutner said Monday.Periodic testing will continue throughout the school year under a collaboration chaired by Beutner and former U.S. Education Arne Duncan that also includes the University of California, Los Angeles, Johns Hopkins and Stanford universities, Microsoft and several health providers.”Pulling off something like this is almost a miraculous undertaking in and of itself because there are so many things that could go wrong,” said Arlene Inouye, secretary of United Teachers Los Angeles, which negotiated conditions for school nurses tasked with testing, “but what’s really encouraging is that there are a lot of partners in this venture.”The number of districts relying on some level of testing to keep the virus in check is likely to increase after President Donald Trump this week encouraged governors to prioritize schools when distributing millions of rapid coronavirus tests provided by the federal government.In western New York, the Niagara Falls City School District did not initially include school-based testing in its reopening plans, reasoning that was the job of hospitals and doctors. But on Wednesday, Superintendent Mark Laurrie was in the process of buying five rapid testing machines for his district, each about $2,500, after shutting down a middle school where three staff members tested positive.”When you see the impact that has on academics — that’s what we’re here for — then I think there’s a higher calling to do more testing,” Laurrie said. “That way we don’t have to rely on anybody else. We can rely on ourselves.”There is little if any available data to show how many districts nationwide have adopted in-school virus testing, said Gigi Gronvall, an immunologist and senior scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security.Boston Public Schools will offer random virus testing to 5% of teachers weekly, under an agreement with the teachers union. In Rhode Island, a K-12 testing hotline has been set up to field calls and arrange rapid testing for staff and students showing symptoms. In Florida, the Pasco County school district and health department announced three school sites to test people referred by school nurses.”There’s so many patchwork plans,” said Gronvall, noting there has been no national model for districts to follow.Gronvall praised the plans to test even those people in school who don’t appear to be sick.As many as 40% of people infected with COVID-19 exhibit no symptoms.Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer cautioned that testing alone does not control infection unless conducted almost daily.”Testing has a role but testing is not a substitute for the infection control and the distancing and the mask wearing requirements that have to happen at every school building,” Ferrer said.Positive cases found in New York City schools will trigger set responses, beginning with tracing teams dispatched to the school to figure out who else may have been exposed. A single case will push that student or teacher’s entire class to remote learning until contact tracing is complete. More than one case will mean an entire school will temporarily halt in-person instruction.”The response might seem really severe to people and it might seem like an extreme response,” said epidemiologist Nadia Abuelezam, an assistant professor at Boston College. “But based on what we’ve seen at other types of schools and specifically colleges and universities now, we know that there is the potential for very rapid transmission in student clusters.” 
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The U.S. Labor Department reported Thursday that 837,000 workers filed for unemployment compensation last week, an improvement from the week before but still a sign the coronavirus pandemic continues to wreak havoc on the American labor market.Millions of workers remain unemployed in the United States, with the jobless rate at 8.1% in mid-September, and economists saying the figure could remain elevated for months. Only about half of the 22 million U.S. jobs lost in the coronavirus pandemic have been recovered.Weekly initial claims for jobless benefits seemed to have stabilized below 900,000 in recent weeks, but they are fluctuating from week to week. Last week’s 837,000 figure was down 36,000 from the revised level of the week before.The recent weekly claims figures are well below the 6.9 million record number of claims filed in late March as the coronavirus swept into the United States but remain above the highest pre-pandemic level before this year in records going back to the 1960s.U.S. employers have called back millions of workers who were laid off during mandatory business shutdowns earlier this year, yet some hard-hit businesses have been slow to ramp up their operations again or have closed permanently, leaving workers idled or searching for new employment.Two air carriers, American Airlines and United Airlines, have announced that 32,000 will be furloughed unless the U.S. government agrees to more financial support.During the worst of the pandemic, the U.S. unemployment rate topped out at 14.7% in April.With less than five weeks to go before the November 3 presidential and congressional elections, President Donald Trump and Republican and Democratic lawmakers in politically fractious Washington have been unable to reach an agreement on extending federal unemployment benefits and how much should be paid.COVID relief package
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have been negotiating this week over a coronavirus relief package, but it is uncertain whether they will reach an accord before Congress adjourns so lawmakers can return to their home states to campaign for re-election.Until the end of July, the national government sent an extra $600 a week to unemployed workers on top of less generous state jobless benefits. The Republican-controlled Senate in September tried to win approval of $300-a-week payments through the end of the year, but Democrats blocked the proposal as too small and continued to call for resumption of the $600 weekly payments.The rejected Republican coronavirus relief package would have cost between $500 billion and $700 billion, on top of the $3 trillion approved months ago at the height of the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. Now, Pelosi wants another $2.2 trillion, while the White House has upped its proposal to $1.5 trillion.White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said any package that “starts with a two” would cause a “real problem” for Republicans.Expired benefits
As the first round of unemployment payments expired in July, Trump signed an executive order calling for $400 a week in extra payments for a few weeks. But not all states delivered the reduced payments to jobless workers, and now that money is running out.While the U.S. has been adding more jobs in recent months, the pace of the recovery has seemed to slow. The 1.4 million jobs added in August included the Census Bureau’s temporary hiring of about 240,000 workers to help conduct the once-a-decade count of the U.S. population. 
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A Kentucky judge has delayed until Friday the release of secret grand jury proceedings in Breonna Taylor’s killing by police, so that prosecutors can edit out witnesses’ names and personal information.
Audio recordings of the proceedings were originally supposed to be made public Wednesday, but Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s office asked a Louisville court for a week’s delay to remove details such as witnesses’ addresses and phone numbers.
On Wednesday, Judge Ann Bailey Smith granted a shorter delay, giving the attorney general until noon on Friday.
Cameron’s office sought the delay “in the interest of protection of witnesses, and in particular private citizens named in the recordings,” according to its legal motion Wednesday. The recordings are 20 hours long.
Taylor was shot and killed in her Louisville home by police who were executing a narcotics warrant in March. The grand jury decided this month not to charge any of the police officers involved with her death; instead, one officer was charged with shooting into a neighboring home.
That decision angered many, and protesters took to the streets in Louisville and around the country to demand accountability for her killing, as frustrations spilled over after months of waiting for Cameron’s announcement. Activists and Taylor’s family called for the grand jury file to be released.People march for the third day since the release of the grand jury report on the death of Breonna Taylor on Sept. 26, 2020 in Louisville, Kentucky.One of two Louisville police officers shot during protests last week called for law enforcement, protesters and other city residents to work together to move forward.
Maj. Aubrey Gregory, who was shot in the hip, returned to light duty earlier this week. He said fellow officer Robinson Desroches, who was shot in the abdomen, is still “in a lot of pain” and faces a longer recovery. Gregory said he doesn’t blame all protesters for the actions of the gunman.
“If we can’t come together to find solutions, then we’re not going anywhere,” Gregory said. “Violence has never been the answer and never will be.”
Authorities arrested 26-year-old Larynzo Johnson in the officer shootings, charging him with two counts of first-degree assault on a police officer and 14 counts of wanton endangerment. Johnson has pleaded not guilty.
Facing questions about the grand jury this week, Cameron acknowledged that he did not recommend homicide charges for the officers involved. Instead, he only recommended one of the officers be indicted, for the wanton endangerment of Taylor’s neighbors.
Cameron, a Republican protégé of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the state’s first African American attorney general, said the other two officers who fired their guns were justified because Taylor’s boyfriend had fired at them first.
Cameron said the record will show that his team “presented a thorough and complete case to the grand jury.”
Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical worker, was shot five times in her Louisville apartment on March 13 by officers carrying a narcotics warrant. Taylor and her boyfriend were watching a movie in her bedroom when police came to her door and eventually knocked it down. The warrant was related to an investigation of a drug suspect who didn’t live with her, and police found no drugs at her apartment.
Former officer Brett Hankison, who was fired from the force for his actions during the raid, pleaded not guilty to three counts of wanton endangerment on Monday.
Officers Jonathan Mattingly, who was shot in the leg by Taylor’s boyfriend, and Myles Cosgrove, who Cameron said appeared to have fired the fatal shot at Taylor, according to ballistics tests, remain on the force.
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The Trump administration said late Wednesday it wants to cut the number of refugees admitting into the United States to 15,000 in fiscal year 2021, which begins Thursday.The figure represents the latest in a series of annual cuts since President Donald Trump took office in 2017.In 2020, the administration put the cap at 18,000, and the United States allowed 10,892 refugees into the country before putting the program on hold because of the coronavirus pandemic.That was the fewest since the modern refugee program was approved by Congress in 1980.  The annual cap during the administration of President Barack Obama was between 70,000 and 85,000.The State Department said Trump’s 2021 proposal “reaffirms America’s enduring commitment to assist the world’s most vulnerable people while fulfilling our first duty to protect and serve the American people.”Krish Vignarajah, president of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, a federally funded agency charged with resettling refugees in the United States, said the decision to further limit the number of refugee admissions “is a complete abdication of our moral duty and all that we stand for as a nation.” 
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U.S. lawmakers are sounding alarms about the threat from China, warning Washington has so far failed to keep up with Beijing as it emerges as a global power.The concerns, voiced in two separate reports Wednesday, criticize U.S. intelligence agencies and policymakers for clinging too long to the notion that increased trade and interaction with China would push Beijing to eventually align itself with Western values.Instead, the reports argue, the United States is struggling to push back as it faces a real danger of being replaced by China on the world stage.“The stakes are high,” according to a redacted report released by Democrats on the FILE – In this June 30, 2020 file photo, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill, after a meeting at the White House in Washington.The House Intelligence Committee report, based on hundreds of hours of interviews with intelligence officials and reviews of thousands of assessments, criticized U.S. intelligence agencies for becoming overly focused on their counterterrorism mission and for failing to adapt to the threats of a changing world.“While the United States was busy engaging al-Qaida, ISIS [Islamic State] and their affiliates, offshoots and acolytes, Washington’s unchallenged dominance over the global system slipped away,” the report said.To better counter China and other emerging threats, the report said, U.S. intelligence agencies need to make better use of information commonly available on the internet, social media and elsewhere.The report also said U.S. intelligence officials need to pay more attention to nonimmediate, nonmilitary threats “such as global health, economic security and climate change.”And the report called for a greater focus on recruiting and mentoring what it described as “the next generation of China analysts.”“The good news is that we still have time to adapt,” said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff in a statement. “It’s my hope that the intelligence community will work hand in hand with the congressional oversight committees to make these necessary changes quickly.”Ranking Member Michael McCaul, R-Tex., questions witnesses during a House Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing, Sept. 16, 2020 on Capitol Hill in Washington.A second report released Wednesday, by Republican lawmakers, was no less damning, recommending more than 400 changes to Washington’s China strategy.”To preserve democracy and freedom around the world, the U.S. must act decisively with our allies to regain the initiative,” the China Task Force report warned.Chinese Communist Party ideology “is undermining the core principles of the international system and putting Americans’ safety and prosperity at risk,” it said. “Leniency and accommodation of the CCP and its oppressive agenda is no longer an option.”The report calls on policymakers to boost counterintelligence operations against China and to make sure that the U.S. medical and national security supply chains no longer need to reply on Chinese-made goods.It also recommends increased spending on defense to better counter Chinese nuclear capabilities as well as China’s growing conventional forces.“For more than 40 years, we have tried to bring them into the family of nations as a responsible partner, but they have refused to behave responsibly,” China Task Force Chairman Michael McCaul said in a statement.
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Democrats on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee said Republicans are rushing the Supreme Court confirmation process for Judge Amy Coney Barrett and reiterated calls for postponing the review of her nomination until after the presidential inauguration in January.In a letter to Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham released late Wednesday, Democrats said the timeline Graham has set does not allow for a thorough FBI background investigation, review of her entire judicial record or for Barrett to answer senators’ questions.“This timeline is a sharp departure from past practice,” the Democrats wrote. “Even more, it undercuts the Senate’s ability to fulfill its advice and consent role and deprives the American people of a meaningful opportunity to gauge the nominee and her record for themselves.”Graham, a South Carolina Republican, met with Barrett on Tuesday. He described her as highly qualified and has said he is “committed to ensuring that the nominee gets a challenging, fair, and respectful hearing.”President Donald Trump nominated Barrett, a conservative jurist he previously tapped for the federal bench in 2017, to fill the seat of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the court’s best-known liberal who died September 18 at the age of 87.Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate, and it appears Barrett has enough Republican support to be confirmed, despite fierce opposition from Democrats.The Judiciary Committee is scheduled to begin three to four days of formal confirmation hearings on October 12. A vote in the full Senate could come by the end of the month.Democrats have argued the next justice should be named by the winner of the November presidential election, a view Republicans championed when there was a Supreme Court vacancy in 2016. In that year, former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, put forth a nominee to replace the late justice Antonin Scalia, an arch conservative.A public opinion poll by The New York Times and Siena College released Sunday showed 56% of voters indicated the seat should not be filled until after the election, while 41% said Trump should make the choice.Barrett has been meeting with other Republican senators, including talks Wednesday with Senators Mitt Romney of Utah and Todd Young of Indiana. She is scheduled to meet Thursday with Senators Josh Hawley of Missouri and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. So far, no Democrat has agreed to meet with her.Democrats have also argued that if Barrett joins the court, she should recuse herself from any potential cases that may arise from the November election due to potential conflicts of interest.Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rejected that view Wednesday, calling it “ridiculous” and saying Democrats “are grasping at straws.” 
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U.S. lawmakers convened a hearing Wednesday in Washington on what they said was an erosion of democratic institutions in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and its impact on the region’s economic growth as well as access to health and education resources.Several countries in sub-Saharan Africa are retreating from core democratic principles, said Representative Karen Bass, chair of the House subcommittee on Africa, global health, global human rights and international organizations.“Democratic backsliding includes but is not limited to the degradation of free and fair elections, infringement of freedom of speech, impairment of political opposition to challenge the government or hold it accountable [and] the weakening of the rule of law.”Bass said flawed elections remained an issue in most of Africa, with leaders manipulating laws, freedoms and elections to retain power.FILE – U.S. Representative Karen Bass, D-Calif., is pictured after meeting with refugees, July 1, 2019. (Moki Kindzeka/VOA)“Most concerning is the situation in Tanzania, which I recently addressed in House Resolution 1120, where current leadership is repressing the opposition in basic freedoms of expression and assembly in a blatant attempt to retain power,” she said. “We see similar patterns in Cote D’Ivoire as the executive branch legalizes the deviation in democratic institutions to codify nondemocratic actions.”Violence in Côte d’Ivoire has left at least a dozen people dead since last month, when President Alassane Ouattara, 78, broke a promise made this year not to seek reelection. Ouattara reversed his stance and accepted the nomination of his ruling party after his handpicked successor died suddenly of a heart attack in July.ReversalExperts testifying on Capitol Hill noted a backward trend.Christopher Fomunyoh from the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs told lawmakers that Africa went from having only two countries classified as free in 1989 to two-thirds of the countries classified as either free or partially free 20 years later.But now, he said, those democratic gains have been reversed.  Former Defense Minister Bah N’Daw waits to be sworn into the office of transitional president at a ceremony in Bamako, Mali, Sept. 25, 2020. Mali’s transitional president and vice president were sworn into office more than a month after a coup in the West African nation.“Notably, west Africa, previously commended as a trailblazer region, has seen serious backsliding,” he said. “Mali has experienced a major coup, and serious controversies have risen about candidacies of incumbent presidents in Guinea Conakry and Cote D’Ivoire. The central African region remains stuck with the highest concentration of autocratic regimes, with the three longest-serving presidents in the world.”Fomunyoh listed some of the longest-serving leaders: in Equatorial Guinea (41 years), Cameroon (58 years) and Congo-Brazzaville (nearly 40 years).Freedom and democratic governance is enjoyed by far too few Africans, with only 9% of people in sub-Saharan Africa living in countries that Freedom House categorizes as free, said Jon Temin, the Africa Program director at Freedom House.’Citizens bear the brunt’The organization’s most recent report on freedom in the world noted that of the 12 countries with the largest declines, seven were in sub-Saharan Africa.“Citizens bear the brunt of backsliding,” Temin said. “They are attacked when they peacefully protest in opposition of the government, as in Guinea and Cameroon. They are unable to use the internet when the government restricts access, as in Ethiopia and Chad. Civil society groups face excessive limitations on their activity, as in Tanzania and Burundi, and journalists are threatened and detained, as in Nigeria and Zimbabwe.”As for elections, there have been some encouraging signs, said another witness, Dorina Bekoe of the Institute for Defense Analyses.“Kenyan civil society has pioneered platforms where citizens can record incidents of fraud and harassment, and that’s been replicated in many places around the continent,” Bekoe said. “There are election situation rooms where information is conveyed to a central location and steps are taken to mitigate tension. Parallel vote tabulation is also widely practiced as a check on official results.”She also noted positive trends taking place in Ghana, Senegal, Mauritius, Bostwana and South Africa.
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The United States has held off on joining Britain and Canada in imposing sanctions on Belarus in hopes the European Union can overcome an internal dispute, paving the way to coordinated U.S. and EU sanctions, four sources said on Wednesday.The EU had vowed in August to impose sanctions on Belarus for alleged fraud in its August 9 election and for human rights abuses since, but Cyprus, one of its smallest members, has prevented this.Cyprus has maintained it will not agree to the Belarusian sanctions unless the EU also puts sanctions on Turkey because of a separate dispute over Turkish drilling for oil and gas in the Eastern Mediterranean.Six sources told Reuters last week that Britain, Canada and the United States planned to impose sanctions on individual Belarusians in a coordinated move. Only London and Ottawa followed suit on Tuesday.Speaking on condition of anonymity, three sources on Wednesday said Washington refrained because it believed the EU might achieve consensus at this week’s European Council meeting.One source in Washington familiar with the matter told Reuters that a U.S. package, including human rights sanctions, was essentially ready, but the timing of any announcement was uncertain.The sanctions aim to impose consequences for the disputed election, which the opposition says was stolen, and for the treatment of protesters in Belarus, where President Alexander Lukashenko has ruled for 26 years.More than 12,000 people have been arrested since Lukashenko, who denies electoral fraud, was named the election’s landslide winner. Major opposition figures are either in jail or in exile.A Cyprus source said there was a “political agreement” on Turkish sanctions at an informal EU foreign ministers’ meeting in Berlin in August and Cyprus remained ready to implement it though it was not clear precisely what the source meant.”It’s not a question of softening or hardening of [Cyprus’] position,” the source said.After the meeting, Germany’s foreign ministry said ministers agreed on their “solidarity with Greece and Cyprus” but stressed that constructive dialog with Turkey was vital to resolve “contentious issues in the eastern Mediterranean.”The embassy of Cyprus in Washington, the White House and the State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 
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Federal Aviation Administration Chief Steve Dickson completed a two-hour evaluation flight at the controls of a Boeing 737 Max on Wednesday as part of the final stages of a recertification process after two fatal crashes. The 737 Max was grounded in March 2019 after deadly crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia killed 346 people over a five-month period. In both crashes, a flawed control system known as MCAS, triggered by faulty data from a single airflow sensor, repeatedly and forcefully pushed down the jets’ nose as pilots struggled to intervene. Since then, Dickson made known he wouldn’t approve the airplane until he flew it himself and was convinced of its safety. A Boeing 737 Max lands at Boeing Field in Seattle, Sept. 30, 2020.On Wednesday, Dickson, a former military and commercial pilot, flew together with other FAA and Boeing pilots from King County International Airport — also known as Boeing Field — in the Seattle area. During the flight, he tested a number of Boeing design and operations upgrades intended to prevent similar disasters. If all goes well, the 737 Max could be back in U.S. skies before the end of the year.   Meanwhile, the U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure on Wednesday unanimously approved bipartisan legislation to reform the FAA’s aircraft certification process in the wake of the 737 Max crashes. 
 
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