Reopen Schools? Here’s What You Had to Say

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Reopen Schools? Here’s What You Had to Say

Here’s some of what you told us. (Emails have been edited and condensed.)

Seeing the demands school districts are putting on teachers is heartbreaking and unjust. Class sizes are not reduced, but teachers are expected to keep students socially distant. Students are not required to wear masks, but will spend most of their day inside a single classroom. There is, of course, no hazard pay. So we add to the load of already overworked and underpaid teachers.

— Amanda Deal, a retired teacher in Winston-Salem, N.C.

My personal worries about online school are relatively minor: I have Wi-Fi and a functioning computer, but I find it to be very unpleasant to sit in front of a laptop all day. Interesting classroom discussions are lost and it is hard to concentrate and be productive. But for the hundreds of kids in our district with disabilities, families with siblings and not enough electronics to go around, and any unmotivated students, the prospect of online school seems like it will create a lot of problems.

— Rosa Fabian, a high school sophomore in Larimer County, Colo.

My days are typically spent in clients’ homes and offices — eclipsing the entire school day. That leaves my wife having to figure out how to teach her 180 high school students from home (let’s not forget grading time, planning time, and meeting time), while simultaneously helping our own kids with their schoolwork. Any parent who is working from home with school-age children can tell you how impossible it is, but there’s no imagination big enough that can begin to grasp the truly impossible nature of being employed from home as a public teacher with school-age children.

— Shane Oakes, a self-employed handyman in Laguna Hills, Calif.

Yes, children seem to have milder symptoms, but they still do get sick. Some still die. And no one knows what the long-term effects of the virus are going to be for these children five or 10 years down the road. I am not willing to take that chance with my children. It is my No. 1 responsibility as a parent to ensure my children’s safety. Sending them back to in-person school without having confidence in the government response to this pandemic does not meet my criteria of that responsibility.

— Kristin Vosburgh, a health care worker and mother of two young children in Englewood, Fla.

Going back to school at the start of my third trimester does make me nervous, but doesn’t deter me. I feel vulnerable, but here’s how I see it: Front-line workers, from doctors to grocery store cashiers to auto repair folks, have been working direct service jobs this entire time. Teachers are front-line workers. We are so used to kids getting us teachers sick that we are more hesitant than we may need to be in this case. But kids have lost socializing and learning opportunities and, in too many cases, they’ve lost the safe space that is school when their houses do not provide that.

— Rachel VanScoy, a high school science teacher in Colorado Springs who is expecting her first child this fall

For my 5- and 6-year-olds, kindergarten is a time when they learn how to “do school.” They learn how to listen, take turns, share toys, play together and learn together in a group. They learn how to learn and they begin to understand how their actions affect others. Unfortunately, those aren’t things they can learn online or from a workbook.

— Holly Kanz, a kindergarten teacher in Portland, Ore.

I am a single mother of a first-grade child with Down syndrome. I am extremely concerned with the opening of schools in my area. We only locked down for three weeks with limited closings. The school opened for summer school in June but I refused to send my daughter. When August comes, I will be forced to choose between my child’s health and our survival.

— Melissa Wakefield, a humanities teacher in Springfield, Mo.

I am afraid to send my child to school in fall. I’m afraid of the cognitive and emotional consequences of not sending my child to school in the fall. I am seriously concerned with how I will be able to maintain employment and continue to provide for my child if I also need to provide intensive at-home learning. Kids with special needs, and the families that care for them, already slip through the cracks in the system.

— Lorissa Hughes, a mother of a special-needs child in Eugene, Ore.

Seeing that I am a science teacher, not a math teacher, I have a challenge for you. My classroom is 30 feet wide by 24 feet deep. Drop one student into that room and social distance six feet on all sides. How many students can you fit in that room? When it comes to protecting our kids and our communities, is there anyone willing to speak the truth about how opening schools with no realistic plans to protect kids and adults is just a recipe for more infection?

— Sergio Diana, a high school science teacher in Colonie, N.Y.

I am a rising high school senior who commutes on public transit to school in Philadelphia. I am also immunosuppressed and thus at increased risk. I am worried for the next school year that both the city and state governments won’t take students’ needs into account. How can I know that the subway pole I am holding onto is safe? Once I arrive at school, will the other students take this seriously?

— Joe Massaua, a high school senior in Villanova, Pa.

I am leaning toward staying home this fall. I am uncertain if the experience I would have at school would be worth going through the complications of traveling. Returning to campus means going through two sets of 14-day quarantine. After 28 days of isolation, if all I could do on campus would be studying for my classes, it looks like studying at home could achieve the same effect.

— Alice Liu, an international college student from Beijing

I’m concerned for my own health. As a bus driver, we’re the first ones to see the students. In normal times, many of the kids are sent to school with runny noses and stomachaches because the parents have to go to work. It will be a challenge for all of us.

— Mike Pal, a school bus driver outside Chicago

I must admit, I’m exhausted. This balancing act is getting old, my nerves are often frayed, and I’m worried every day that someone in the household will get sick. I understand that my children are extremely low risk for contracting a severe form of Covid-19. But how can I consider sending my children back to school when it means risking Covid-19 for us all? My parents have many pre-existing conditions including diabetes and kidney disease. My mother is especially prone to viral lung conditions.

I worry for my children’s well-being, too. My son misses having playmates. My daughter is still young enough that she doesn’t seem bothered, but I see how her education is lagging. She’s not where her brother was at her age because I had to pull her out of preschool. So now I have the daunting task of learning how to be a teacher this fall while also running my business, taking care of the house, feeding everyone, and caring for anyone who gets sick.

— Xochi Kao, a self-employed mother in Sacramento

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Money and speed for COVID-19 tests needed to combat ‘impending disaster’

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Money and speed for COVID-19 tests needed to combat ‘impending disaster’

It has been 14 days since Aaron Weeks was tested for COVID-19, and he still doesn’t have his test results.

“What’s the point?” asked Weeks, 31, of Brooklyn, New York.

Full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak

He got tested after a close contact was diagnosed with COVID-19. Even though Weeks never felt sick, people without symptoms can spread the coronavirus to others.

If people have to wait at least two weeks for results, it increases the risk that they’ll unknowingly infect others before they know for sure whether they’re infectious.

“It’s very difficult for people to be responsible — especially younger people — when it takes 14 days-plus to get their test results,” Weeks said.

He isn’t alone in his frustration over the lag in COVID-19 test results, which has been a problem in the U.S. since the beginning of the pandemic.

Elliot Truslow, 30, of Tucson, Arizona, waited nearly a month for test results, which ultimately were negative.

“No one wants to wait 26 days for a test result for a highly infectious deadly disease. No one wants to experience that,” Truslow said.

Dr. Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary of health and human services for health, who is overseeing COVID-19 testing, said during a call with reporters Thursday: “We want results back as fast as possible.”

He acknowledged that some people have waited at least 12 days for results. “We can’t deny that that happens,” he said. He called such cases “outliers,” however.

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Giroir said a “reasonable turnaround time” for test results — from the time tests are ordered to the time the results are in — would be three days.

A study published Thursday in The Lancet Public Health, however, suggested that a delay of just three days makes it nearly impossible to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

The study was based on computer models of how the virus spreads.

“In our model, minimizing testing delays had the largest impact on reducing transmission of the virus,” said a co-author of the study, Dr. Marc Bonten, a professor at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands.

That’s in the best-case scenario, when public health officials are able to conduct appropriate contact tracing of suspected and confirmed cases of COVID-19.

Contact tracing involves tracking down every single person a patient has been in contact with to make sure they get tested and self-isolate until they get test results. Ramping up contact tracing efforts in the U.S., however, has been difficult.

But without quick testing, contact tracing becomes ineffective. In the six months since the first known case of COVID-19 was reported in the U.S., experts still blame a lack of diagnostic tests for the failure to stop the pandemic, which is increasing in this country.

“We don’t have nearly enough tests,” said Dr. Rajiv Shah, president of the Rockefeller Foundation. “The delays in the current testing system render much of the testing we’re doing right now relatively ineffective for actually controlling the pandemic.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 45 million tests have been completed since the U.S. outbreak began. But Thursday, the Rockefeller Foundation reported that the country will need to ramp up testing dramatically, to 30 million tests a week.

The foundation, a bipartisan group of experts, said the U.S. faces an “impending disaster” and should allocate at least $75 billion more for COVID-19 testing to ensure that tests are “free and accessible to all who need them.” That includes low-income and minority communities hit hard by COVID-19.

The foundation said it’s critical to speed testing in advance of a looming flu season.

“There will be 100 million cases of the sniffles,” Shah said. “If everybody believes that that’s COVID-19, it’s going to strangle our economy, shut down our critical institutions and introduce so much fear and crisis into the American system of government, education, health services and food services that it will be a disaster that looks much worse than what we experienced in the spring.”

The foundation also said it’s committing $100 million to the cause.

Hospitalized patients suspected of having the coronavirus generally have faster turnaround times for test results. One of the largest testing labs in the country, Quest Diagnostics, said it takes about a day to return results for people sick enough to be in the hospital.

“However, our average turnaround time for all other populations is seven or more days,” Kim Gorode, a spokesperson for Quest Diagnostics, wrote in an email. The company blames the lag time on recent dramatic increases in demand for testing across the country.

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The Rockefeller Foundation’s report said the U.S. may need to expand investments in a type of diagnostic test called antigen testing. It’s slightly less accurate but also less expensive, and it could be useful for those, like Weeks, who aren’t experiencing symptoms.

“These new antigen tests can give the results within 15 or 20 minutes,” Shah said. They’re “fast, low-cost, somewhat less sensitive but much more practical to use very broadly.”

“America needs to have nearly 30 million tests a week by the fall in order to avert a catastrophe,” he added.

As the U.S. continues to try to ramp up testing, Giroir pleaded with Americans to do their part.

“Please wear a mask in public. Avoid public gatherings of greater than 10 or 25,” he said. “The way to fix the testing problem is by fixing the virus problem.”

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Trump Will Keep Tweeting Despite Massive Twitter Hack, White House Says

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Trump Will Keep Tweeting Despite Massive Twitter Hack, White House Says

President Donald Trump will remain on Twitter, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Thursday, a day after a massive hacking attack hit the platform, compromising the accounts of several prominent figures and companies.

Former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, were among the targets of the hack. The accounts of Tesla’s Elon Musk, Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos were also affected; as were the accounts of Kanye West, Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffett, Apple, Uber and others.

The accounts posted messages asking followers to send money in bitcoin to anonymous cryptocurrency addresses. The messages promised senders that their money would be doubled and returned. 

Twitter later said the hack appeared to have been a “coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.” 

The FBI said on Thursday that it was investigating the attack. 

The large-scale hack has heightened concerns among cybersecurity experts about how easily social media platforms like Twitter can be manipulated ― and potentially used for nefarious purposes during elections, including the presidential vote in November.

Despite these concerns, the White House said Trump ― whose account did not appear to have been compromised in Wednesday’s attack ― would continue to use Twitter. 

McEnany told reporters that Dan Scavino, director of social media at the White House, had been in “constant contact” with Twitter as the attack was unfolding to ensure that Trump’s account wasn’t affected.



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‘Devastated’ conference organisers change tack

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‘Devastated’ conference organisers change tack

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Virtual reality is likely to play a bigger role in future conferences

“I’m devastated,” says Mike Walker, managing director of MGN Events.

The company went from generating millions of pounds in revenue to near zero in just weeks, because of lockdowns.

“Over 10 years of hard work building the company up from nothing, reinvesting each year for growth, taken away cruelly in the space of a couple of weeks, with no clarity on when the industry can resume,” Mr Walker says.

Thousands of others in the events industry will be facing the same uncertainty. The pandemic has completely shattered a huge sector, and many businesses are struggling to survive. According to a 2018 report, business events alone are a $1.5 trillion (£1.2tn) industry globally.

That’s without considering the huge number of consumer events, exhibitions, experiences and weddings.

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Mike Walker saw the income of his events firm wiped out due to coronavirus

All of these events rely on people turning up in person, and that is not currently possible with some venues closed or at a reduced capacity, and with travel restrictions in place – not to mention various other safety precautions required at the venue itself.

“Even if you hold an event in a larger venue, if you have delegates flying in and staying in the hotel, and one person tests positive for Covid-19, then you’re going to get a call from the hotel telling you they’re going to have to give the venue a deep clean and shut it down,” says Steve Parrott, co-founder of Alternative Events.

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Media caption‘We need a date to restart so we can save our staff’

That kind of scenario is why companies are being forced to look at technology as the alternative, with virtual events becoming the norm throughout lockdown.

Most businesses have turned to technology that has become familiar for many people – video conferencing software from Zoom or MS Teams.

However, these technologies were around before the pandemic, and while they offer an alternative, they do not provide the same level of engagement as physical events.

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Paddy Cosgrave says networking opportunities need to be built into new conference technology

“Most of the platforms for virtual conferences are built by third-party providers that don’t organise events,” says Paddy Cosgrave, co-founder of Web Summit, one of the biggest tech conferences in the world.

As video conferencing tools have been built for the mass market, rather than for specific industries, event organisers and sponsors are scrambling around for an alternative.

One option, taken up by The Moodie Davitt Report and retail marketing and design company FILTR, has been to bring together existing products into one system.

“We looked at the software that exists in the industry and we didn’t think any of them would be sufficient to attract the brands we needed to attract,” says Martin Moodie, founder of The Moodie Davitt Report, a publication that focuses on travel retailing.

Using existing software it creates a virtual version of a physical event – enabling people to walk around and view the different stands and communicate with brands by speaking to people in a chat format, all from their laptop.

The company integrates this with web-conferencing capabilities and meeting scheduling software.

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CES attracted around 170,000 visitors this year

But for some of the larger conferences, even integrating these products isn’t necessarily enough. The Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which welcomes 170,000 delegates to Las Vegas every year, is going ahead with its 2021 event in January.

Jean Foster, senior vice president of marketing and communications at the Consumer Trade Association, which runs the event, says that the organisation is creating its own digital platform for CES as it expects that turnout will be lower as a result of the virus, and it is therefore switching to a hybrid offering.

“We’re working on what that platform is going to look like… there’s nothing off-the-shelf of the scale and capabilities we need,” Ms Foster says.

Web Summit has also created a platform from scratch. Mr Cosgrave says that for most business events, networking is the key reason that people attend. It is also critical to the success of an event, as sponsors can communicate directly with their target audience.

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Crowded stands are on hold

Mr Cosgrave’s team had already worked on trying to engineer serendipity into the physical Web Summit event, by seating people next to others who may have mutual interests. Now that the event, held in Lisbon in December, will be at least partly online, his team have been working on allowing that serendipity to also flow into an online environment.

The company takes information, with consent, from social media and delegates’ phone books to create an algorithm that matches people with others that they would likely find interesting or want to talk to.

“Delegates will see the people that are recommended to them, while other people are seeing them in a very personalised way,” he says.

“On the platform, they can do one-to-one video calls with one another, they could do group calls with each other, or you could start a group video chat and invite people, or join Q&As with speakers, for example.”

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With Box Bear technology users get their own avatar

Some technology companies see a gap in the market to help enable attendees to have more control during an event.

Box Bear Digital supplies virtual reality (VR) headsets to clients who can then distribute them among delegates. The headsets have to be returned after the conference is finished.

During the VR conference, attendees are represented by their own real-life avatars. Users can take notes on slides, get certain quotes transcribed and sent to email, zoom in, change their viewpoint, and interact with virtual elements.

“The key difference is being fully immersed and engaged, there’s no escape as soon as you put the headset on,” says Graham Addison, global marketing director of pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, which has tested out the technology.

The added value provided to the organisers, according to Box Bear Digital, is that they have a better idea of what the audience is doing, as the technology can track whether the person is shaking their head, or raising their hand to ask a question.

Generally, event organisers don’t stand to make the same amount of revenue in a virtual alternative. However, there are numerous benefits to holding virtual events.

More Technology of Business

Virtual events are far cheaper to run, and at a time when companies are more conscious about the environment, they offer a sustainable alternative to flying people in from across the world. In addition, they give the organisers the ability to get viewers from across the world, on different timezones, to tune in, and potentially attract better speakers for the event too, as they don’t need to travel.

There is also more scope to measure outcomes.

“We can constantly tell those people putting on the event how many people were engaged, how many visitors they had, how many people downloaded their content – you can’t measure this in the same way for a physical event,” says Mr Walker.

Despite this, many event organisers can only see the use of these virtual events as a stop gap, or as part of an overall hybrid event in the future. Perhaps this is why the likes of Microsoft and Zoom haven’t moved quickly to provide new features for their platforms.

“Four months into lockdown, why is there nothing new on the market? Perhaps digital [events] aren’t worth investing in because although they will be a part of the mix, they won’t be the main part of the event, because people think we’ll be returning to normal soon,” says Mr Parrott.

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Extending Cruise Ban, C.D.C. Says Ships Helped Spread Coronavirus

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Extending Cruise Ban, C.D.C. Says Ships Helped Spread Coronavirus

One company, Norwegian Cruise Lines, said it felt it had exceeded recommended C.D.C. guidance, because crew members were not just asked but “encouraged” to wear face coverings, the order said. Disney acknowledged that some of its asymptomatic-infected crew members had not quarantined until after the results of shipwide testing came in.

The companies created a task force to come up with recommendations on how to safely sail, but according to the C.D.C., the group will not produce its findings for several months.

If unrestricted cruise-ship passenger operations were permitted to resume, it would put “substantial unnecessary risk” on communities, health care workers, port personnel and federal employees, the order said, as well as placing passengers and crew members at increased risk.

The agency’s previous no-sail order was set to expire July 24.

Disney said only one of its four ships, the Disney Wonder, had an outbreak on board —but only after passengers had disembarked. The company tested every crew member on board and isolated non-essential crew to their cabins for three weeks in April. Half the 174 crew who tested positive had no symptoms, the company said.

The ship has not had a positive case since May 8, Disney said.

Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line, whose failures were specifically cited in the C.D.C. document, released statements in response to the order that did not specifically address the allegations.

Norwegian said it canceled trips through September, as well as cruises embarking from or calling on ports in Canada in October. “We continue to partner with the C.D.C. and other authorities to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 by prioritizing the health and safety of our passengers and crew,” the company said.

Royal Caribbean said it would suspend operations through September to comply with the order. “The health and safety of our guests, crew and the communities we visit is our top priority,” the company said.

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Facebook court ‘must avoid half-baked judgements’

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Facebook court ‘must avoid half-baked judgements’

A member of Facebook’s new oversight board has warned that it should avoid launching too quickly.

Alan Rusbridger told BBC Click that it would be “great to be up and running” in time for November’s US elections.

But in an exclusive interview, he said it would be damaging to “come out with half-baked recommendations now before we are ready”.

He did not yet know whether it would be ready to make “key decisions on the hot potatoes” of the Presidential election.

Mr Rusbridger also acknowledged calls for existing members of the board to weigh in on whether Facebook should follow Twitter in labelling and hiding some of President Donald Trump’s posts.

But he said that without having studied the matter in a “sophisticated way”, it would be “a bad way to proceed”.

‘Huge mistake’

Facebook has said the panel is supposed to act as a kind of supreme court, with the power to override decisions made by the social network’s own moderators and influence policy.

Its eventual 40 members will be paid by Facebook but are intended to act as an independent body.

But not everyone is convinced of the scheme.

“Mark (Zuckerberg) controls the organisation,” claimed Rashad Robinson of the Stop Hate for Profit campaign, which has urged firms to pull ads from the platform.

“I think it’s a huge mistake for these individuals because unless they are going to change the infrastructure and change the incentives, then you are not actually going to change how things roll out.

“It’s like saying you’re a member of Congress but not actually having a vote on the floor.”

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Mark Zuckerberg first floated the idea of a “supreme court” of “independent folks” in 2018

Mr Rusbridger, a former editor-in-chief of the Guardian, acknowledged that many people were sceptical about the initiative but said it was “worth a try” to see whether the board could help Facebook’s “engineers think through the moral, legal, editorial and ethical considerations that they have to wrestle with”.

“If after two-to-three years we found out we are not having much of an impact, I guess a number of the board members would think: is this really worth it?” he said.

But he acknowledged: “We’re going to be criticised whatever we do.”

The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Are you happy with the mix of people on the board?

I gather, they spoke to about 2,000 people – it certainly took them a long time. And it’s a very interesting mix, in terms of geographical location, diversity and diversity of ethnicity. It’s so you’ve got a sort of interesting bunch of lawyers, human rights activists, academics, journalists, troublemakers. If you wanted a quiet life, I don’t think you would have chosen this board.

What made you take the job?

This issue of how the internet is regulated, or regulates itself, is one of the most important issues imaginable. We’re facing a crisis of trust of knowing what’s true and what’s not true. And as somebody who passionately believed in the dream, the opportunity that the internet offered, it’s been very sad to see it get into some degree of trouble. So, if we can pull this off, that would be an incredibly valuable thing to do.

Being paid by Facebook is going to be a challenge when it comes to convincing people about this.

What Facebook has done is to set up something like a trust. And although for the first few meetings there were Facebook people in the room, there are not now. It feels as though we are now an independent entity. So although the real money was provided by Facebook, I don’t think we’re going to have much to do with them in future.

How will this work in practice?

Facebook will come to us and say: here’s a particularly thorny problem. And I expect there will be a big demand from users, saying: please get a grip on X, Y and Z, or here’s a case where I feel aggrieved because I was ruled against and I want you to reconsider it. And we can choose for ourselves to say we want to look at a particular case.

Aren’t you going to be swamped?

No, We can’t possibly deal with the millions of issues that are contested on Facebook. So it comes back to trying to choose cases that seem to be typical of bigger, more wide-scale problems.

Will you publish your recommendations before Facebook has decided whether to listen to them or not?

We will certainly publish them independently of Facebook. We’re in control of what we publish or not. Any suggestion that we were not publishing our opinions because Facebook didn’t like them would be deadly to the project.

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In May, Twitter hid one of President Trump’s tweets on the basis that it glorified violence

Do you have an eye on the other social media platforms? Twitter has taken a different approach to labelling Donald Trump’s posts, for example, to Facebook.

We all have noticed the difference between the Twitter response and the Facebook response. I don’t know enough about the culture of the few companies to explain why they came to different decisions. But I can see why a company would have got itself into a position of saying the First Amendment [to freedom of speech] is going to be our guiding star. Whether that is a tenable or right position, I don’t know. That’s one of the jobs that we’re going to have to start thinking about. I can see why you would start there but maybe that’s not a tenable, desirable position to end up with.

Do you feel that you’re putting your reputation on the line here?

It’s an interesting, valuable thing to attempt. If Facebook ignore it, or if it doesn’t look as though it’s working, then there’s no incentive to stay.

BBC Click will broadcast the interview on Saturday 18 July on the News Channel or iPlayer in the UK, and BBC World News internationally

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Barr condemns Disney and Hollywood for ‘kowtowing’ to China

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Barr condemns Disney and Hollywood for ‘kowtowing’ to China

The US attorney general, William Barr, has assailed the Walt Disney Company and Hollywood studios, accusing them of “kowtowing” to the Chinese Communist party.

Barr’s allegations are part of a sustained diplomatic and public relations offensive by the Trump administration against Beijing, which the attorney general accused of engaging in “economic blitzkrieg – an aggressive, orchestrated, whole-of-government (indeed, whole-of-society) campaign to seize the commanding heights of the global economy and to surpass the United States as the world’s pre-eminent superpower”.

In a speech in Michigan, Barr railed against US corporate leaders whom he accused of abetting China’s hegemonic aims, particularly in the film industry. He said Disney had initially resisted Chinese pressure not to make the 1997 film Kundun, about the Dalai Lama and the Beijing’s annexation of Tibet.

“But that moment of courage wouldn’t last long,” Barr noted. China banned Disney films, leading to an apology from the company for making Kundun. The management then lobbied China to build a Disneyland in Shanghai, allowing Chinese officials to have a role in running the theme park.

Barr alleged the officials “display hammer-and-sickle insignia at their desks and attend party lectures during business hours”.

“If Disney and other American corporations continue to bow to Beijing, they risk undermining both their own future competitiveness and prosperity, as well as the classical liberal order that has allowed them to thrive,” Barr said.

The Disney company did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegations.

The attorney general also criticised Hollywood studios for bowing to Chinese pressure to tweak scripts in return for Chinese distribution, citing two cases in which the nationalities of characters were allegedly changed so as not to irritate Beijing.

Beijing objected to a virus in a zombie apocalypse film, World War Z, being shown as originating in China, and a mystic character, the “Ancient One” in the fantasy film, Dr Strange, was changed from being Tibetan to Celtic, to avoid upsetting China, Barr said.

The attorney general also lashed out at US technology companies including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple and Cisco, calling them “pawns of Chinese influence”.

“All too often, for the sake of short-term profits, American companies have succumbed to that influence – even at the expense of freedom and openness in the United States,” he said.

Cisco rejected Barr’s allegation it had helped the Communist party build “the Great Firewall of China”, which Barr referred to as the world’s “most sophisticated system for Internet surveillance and censorship”.

In an emailed statement to the Guardian, Cisco said it “builds its products to global standards, and Cisco does not supply equipment to China that is customized in any way to facilitate blocking of access or surveillance of users”.

“The products we supply to China are the same we provide worldwide, and we comply fully with all export control rules applicable to China including those related to human rights,” the company statement said.

Apple also responded to Barr’s criticism of its decision to transfer a portion of its iCloud data to servers in China, on the grounds that it would make it easier for Beijing to conduct electronic surveillance.

Apple told CNBC it was committed to cybersecurity and “strong encryption across our devices and servers”.

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Australia To Spend $400 Million To Lure Hollywood Blockbusters

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Australia To Spend $400 Million To Lure Hollywood Blockbusters

Australia will spend $400 million over the next seven years to lure film and television productions, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday, as Canberra seeks to capitalise on its low levels of coronavirus.

Global film and television production has ground to a halt amid the spread of coronavirus.

While Australia has seen a surge in new cases in recent weeks, its near 11,000 cases and 113 deaths remain well below other countries.

Morrison said Canberra will expand an existing fund that offers film and television producers a tax break for bringing productions to Australia.

Attracting film and television production will boost local jobs, Morrison said, with unemployment in Australia pegged at a 22-year high this week.

“Behind these projects are thousands of workers that build and light the stages, that feed, house and cater for the huge cast and crew and that bring the productions to life,” Morrison said in an emailed statement.

Australia believes the $400 million funding will attract about A$3 billion in foreign expenditure and will create 8,000 new jobs over the seven years of the programme.

Reporting by Colin Packham.



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Thousands More Myanmar Villagers Flee Armed Conflict in Rakhine State

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Thousands More Myanmar Villagers Flee Armed Conflict in Rakhine State

More than 3,000 civilians have fled villages in the far north of Myanmar’s conflict-ridden Rakhine state after three days of heavy fighting between government forces and the rebel Arakan Army that killed one villager and injured three others, a relief worker said Thursday.

The refugees from Rathedaung and Maungdaw townships join a tide of around 200,000 civilians living in Buddhist monasteries and crowded camps after being displaced by the armed conflict in Rakhine state since late 2018, according to the Rakhine Ethnics Congress, a Myanmar NGO.

Fresh fighting between the two armies began on July 12 near Rathedaung’s Koe Tan Kauk village and Chain Khar Lain village, and in Maungdaw’s Sar Ngan Chaung village. Combat raged until July 14, the day on which the civilians were killed and injured, local relief workers said.

“Some people fled to Maungdaw, and some villagers fled to Rathedaung and Buthidaung. Some fled all the way to Sittwe. In total, there were around 3,000 people,” said Kyaw Min Khaing, a volunteer who is assisting the displaced civilians in Sittwe.

“More people are arriving today. Some will arrive tomorrow. Many local villagers who have been dispersed during the fighting are now gathering inside IDP [internally displaced persons] camps,” he said.

On July 13 alone, more than 2,000 civilians from four Rathedaung communities and over 80 people from Maungdaw’s Aung Thukha village fled to Rakhine’s capital Sittwe, volunteers helping the displaced villagers said.

Rathedaung and Maungdaw, coastal districts on the Bay of Bengal, have been torn by conflict since nearly three years ago, when the Myanmar Army responded to an attack on border guard posts by a militant group with a scorched-earth campaign that drove 740,000 Rohingya Muslims across the nearby border to Bangladesh.

The Myanmar military’s information team said in a Facebook post on Thursday that AA soldiers stationed around three villages in Rathedaung township were “using villagers as human shields” to commit terrorist acts and to block the lines of communication in the area.

“Today, military columns start launching a ‘counter-terrorism operation’ against the AA insurgents around that area to reopen the communication lines and to rescue the villagers,” it said.

AA spokesman Khine Thukha said shooting by the Myanmar military during fighting killed a civilian in Chain Khar Lain village, and that the hostilities continued into Thursday with government soldiers using heavy artillery near Kyauktan village.

The AA seeks autonomy for ethnic Rakhines in the state. Formed in 2009 with an estimated 8,000 fighters last year, the AA was declared an illegal association and terrorist organization by the government in March.

The IDPs who fled to Sittwe, the Rakhine state capital, are being housed at Buddhist monasteries and must rely on donors for food.

The map shows the location of Sittwe, capital of western Myanmar’s Rakhine state.
RFA graphic

Fleeing ‘very inhumane’ soldiers

Aye Hlaing Chey, who left her home in Aung Thukha village, said Myanmar troops pass near her village every two or three days.

“They are very inhumane,” she told RFA. “When they entered the village, they fired their guns, and we didn’t have any weapons to resist them.”

“We could barely find a meal to support ourselves, so in the end, we decided to flee our homes,” she added.

Residents said some people left Aung Thukha village because border police had threatened to burn the houses of those who tried to return after fleeing.

Villager Khine Win, who has an adolescent son and daughter, said she left her home because she feared that soldiers would torture civilians who live there.

“I don’t care about what they are fighting for, but I was concerned that they would have caused trouble for us or tortured us if they had entered the village,” she told RFA. “We have fled on account of these fears.”

Khine Than Aye, who is now in Sittwe after leaving the same village, said she fears for the safety of her husband who was left behind.

“The officers in the village told my husband over the phone that he should not leave,” she said. “If he does, our house will be seized, and we can never return home.”

Fighting continues to rage despite a temporary unilateral cease-fire that the AA set until the end of August because Myanmar forces had launched the offensives, he added.

In southern Rakhine state, meanwhile, as many as 3,000 displaced villagers who have sought refuge in urban Ann township have been forced to rent houses there because camps are full, and they are not receiving any humanitarian assistance since they are not in camps, people assisting the villagers said Thursday.

About 1,500 other IDPs are staying temporarily in two now full IDP camps sent up by the government to handle the influx of civilians who fled their homes

Villagers who fled their communities amid armed conflict in Maungdaw township sit on the floor of a Buddhist monastery in which they took shelter in Sittwe, capital of western Myanmar's Rakhine state, July 15, 2020.

Villagers who fled their communities amid armed conflict in Maungdaw township sit on the floor of a Buddhist monastery in which they took shelter in Sittwe, capital of western Myanmar’s Rakhine state, July 15, 2020.
Credit: RFA

Scramble for food outside camps

Myo Lwin, a volunteer helping IDPs in Ann, said people who live outside official refugee camps are not receiving any aid and have been left on their own to find food and lodging.

“Many of them don’t get any assistance,” he told RFA. “Some IDPs must rent land plots to build makeshift shelters. Not all of them have safe access to a latrine. Many of them have fled with nothing but their clothes.”

“In government-run IDP camps, people will get regular meal at least,” said Soe Thein, the administrator of IDP camp No. 2 in Ann town.

“Those outside are living without any donors who will give them cash and food,” he added.

Win Zaw, who fled with his family from Chaung Wa village to Ann town, said that IDPs face shortages of both food and materials to build temporary shelters.

“Even at the inflated price of 60,000 kyats (U.S. $43) per bag of rice, we still cannot find any rice,” he said.

“We are trying to build a makeshift home, but there is a shortage of materials such as bamboo and thatch roofing,” he added.

The Myanmar Army has restricted the transport of rice — Myanmar’s staple food — in more than 40 villages into Rakhine’s Ann township township since January in an effort to cut off vital supplies to AA.

Residents of at least 18 of the 48 communities in Ann township’s Dalat Chaung village tract had fled their homes due to the fighting and food shortages, aid workers said.

Win Myint, Rakhine state’s spokesman and minister of municipal affairs, said it is very challenging for the government to provide assistance for IDPs who do not live in camps.

But he added: “We may able to provide some assistance depending on their needs. We could build makeshift shelters for them.”

According to the Rakhine Ethnics Congress, 194 civilians have been killed during the 19-month conflict.

Reported by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.



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Exclusive: CDC Won’t Release School Guidance This Week As Anticipated

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Exclusive: CDC Won’t Release School Guidance This Week As Anticipated

A locker sits open in April at Kent Middle School in Kentfield, Calif. Schools and parents are grappling with whether — and how — to reopen in the fall.

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A locker sits open in April at Kent Middle School in Kentfield, Calif. Schools and parents are grappling with whether — and how — to reopen in the fall.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will not release a set of documents this week aimed at giving schools advice on how to reopen to students after coronavirus shutdowns, NPR has learned. Instead, the full set will be published before the end of the month, a CDC spokesperson says.

“These science and evidence-based resources and tools will provide additional information for administrators, teachers and staff, parents, caregivers and guardians, as together we work towards the public health-oriented goal of safely opening schools this fall,” the spokesperson said.

President Trump has emphasized that he wants to see schools reopen their classrooms in the fall, but many teachers and parents have balked, concerned that children would spread the virus and get sick themselves. Trump complained on Twitter that the CDC’s existing guidance was “too tough.”

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp Sues Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms Over Face Mask Order

Vice President Pence had said as recently as Tuesday he anticipated guidance would be released later this week to help parents and schools grapple with whether — and how — to open this fall. Pence had said the CDC would release five new documents, including recommendations on screening for COVID-19 symptoms. The guidance was aimed at augmenting advice the agency released in March about social distancing and preventive measures in schools.

But Pence, who heads the White House Coronavirus Task Force, and CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield have also stressed they don’t want the guidance to be used as a reason for keeping schools closed.

“To be very clear,” Pence said Tuesday, “we don’t want CDC guidance to be a reason why people don’t reopen their schools. We’re going to respect whatever decisions are made.”

Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have sought to tie potential new funding for education in an upcoming coronavirus aid package to reopening schools, though the mechanics of such a move have not been made clear.

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