FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks about police reform before signing an executive order on the issue in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, U.S., June 16, 2020. REUTERS/Leah Millis
(Reuters) – Facebook Inc (FB.O) said on Thursday it took down posts and ads run by the re-election campaign of U.S. President Donald Trump for violating its policy against organized hate.
The ads showed a red inverted triangle with text asking Facebook users to sign a petition against antifa, a loosely organized anti-fascist movement.
In a tweet on Thursday, the Anti-Defamation League’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, said of the symbol: “The Nazis used red triangles to identify their political victims in concentration camps. Using it to attack political opponents is highly offensive.â€
The Facebook ads were run on pages belonging to Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, and also appeared in ads and organic posts on the “Team Trump†page.
“Our policy prohibits using a banned hate group’s symbol to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol,†said a Facebook company spokesperson.
“The inverted red triangle is a symbol used by Antifa, so it was included in an ad about Antifa,†Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, said in an email.
“We would note that Facebook still has an inverted red triangle emoji in use, which looks exactly the same, so it’s curious that they would target only this ad. The image is also not included in the Anti-Defamation League’s database of symbols of hate.â€
A spokesman for the ADL said its database was not one of historical Nazi symbols but of those “commonly used by modern extremists and white supremacists in the United States.â€
He also said that there have been some antifa who have used the red triangle, but that it was not a particularly common symbol used by the group.
Reporting by Ayanti Bera and Elizabeth Culliford; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Dan Grebler
As states lift lockdowns, workers called back to their jobs have little recourse if they think their workplace is unsafe.Â
The Trump administration has encouraged states to terminate unemployment benefits for people who refuse to go back to work. And if workers are worried their employer is creating an unsafe work environment ― by not requiring mask use or enforcing social distancing, for example ― the administration has said those individuals should file a complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.Â
That’s what Brian Bevan, who worked at a store that sells gas fireplaces and grills near Philadelphia, did after his boss asked him to return to work last month after furloughing staff in March. Bevan installed fireplaces and did routine maintenance inside people’s homes, which he felt was a bad idea amid an ongoing pandemic. He filed a complaint with OSHA saying his employer was risking its employees’ health by continuing the home visits.
“They had the mayor, they had all kinds of people going on TV telling people to stay home,†he said.
When the lockdowns started, it was typical for firms that didn’t seem so essential ― think closet installers and used car dealers ― to deem themselves exempt from government restrictions on commerce that were meant to slow the spread of the coronavirus. It’s not hard to understand why, as the pandemic has devastated small businesses across the country.Â
Now every state has begun reopening, forcing many workers back to their jobs even though there’s still no national strategy for testing.
I was very worried about bringing [the coronavirus] home and being the cause of my wife dying. Brian Bevan
Pennsylvania relaxed restrictions in most counties that had been on the strictest lockdown protocol earlier this month. Bevan’s employer, Salter’s Fireplace Patio Grill, does not appear on the list of businesses exempt from the state’s closure order. (Several fireplace shops that do similar work, however, appeared on a separate list of firms told they did not need to ask for an exemption.)
TheOSHA guidance for in-home repair work states that if the work is routine or preventative, rather than an emergency, then businesses should “consider postponing the work and not entering the dwelling until the COVID-19 pandemic ends.â€
But like so much else coming from OSHA during the pandemic, it was little more than a friendly recommendation: “This guidance is not a standard or regulation, and it creates no new legal obligations.â€Â
Bevan provided emails indicating he’d talked to an OSHA compliance officer about filing the complaint, but said he doesn’t know its status. “When I spoke to OSHA initially they said a fireplace shop was the farthest thing from essential that he ever heard of,†he said.Â
The owners of Salter’s did not respond to HuffPost’s requests for comment. They were not oblivious to the risk facing their employees, telling them in an April guidance document that if they’re entering a residence they should ask if anyone is sick and for people to vacate the room where work is happening.
Bevan, 42, said his wife is immunocompromised and that one of their children has respiratory problems. He didn’t think it would be wise to enter people’s homes at all, especially since he’s usually doing new, elective installations rather than repairs that help people heat their homes.
“I was very worried about bringing [the coronavirus] home and being the cause of my wife dying,†he said. “She was told by her doctor she was not allowed to leave the house.â€
A few weeks after he filed his complaint, Bevan said, his manager told him in an email that the company was letting him go. The company has apparently not challenged his unemployment claim, however, and he has kept his unemployment benefits. He said he’s starting a new job in July that won’t involve going into people’s homes.Â
Alex Wong via Getty Images
OSHA’s lax enforcement amid the coronavirus has frustrated workplace safety experts. Attrition at the agency during the Trump years has only made its work more difficult.
U.S. Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia testified to Congress on June 9 that as a result of “several thousand†workplace safety complaints, OHSA had issued one citation related to coronavirus, for a recordkeeping violation at a Georgia nursing home. But he noted that the agency has six months from the date of an alleged violation to investigate and reach a decision.
“It’s been less than six months since the virus came here, so we have a number of cases that we are investigating and if we find violations, we will certainly not hesitate to bring a case,†Scalia said.Â
An OSHA spokesperson confirmed to HuffPost that there is still only one citation related to the coronavirus as of this week. “OSHA is continuing to enforce its guidance related to worker safety and health during the pandemic,†the spokesperson said in an email.
Debbie Berkowitz, a workplace safety expert at the National Employment Law Project, said OSHA has “abandoned its responsibility†to make sure employers are taking proper precautions.
“They have refused to issue enforceable requirements ― and instead issued guidance, which is not required. Employers can choose to implement the guidelines or ignore it,†Berkowitz said in an email. Â
On Thursday, OSHA put out new guidance reemphasizing its previous encouragement that employers try to keep their workers safe, also saying that employers should not retaliate against workers who raise safety concerns.
Workers all around the country have been put in a bind similar to Bevan’s. Many employers ignored stay-home orders or crafted dubious legal arguments claiming they were exempt from closure. Frustrated workers turned to their local health departments, state agencies and sometimes OSHA ― often finding little recourse as they were pressured to clock back in.
The OSHA guidance on in-home repair work suggests Bevan should have been entitled to stay home during the pandemic while his job waited for him. But an inspector would not have obvious grounds to shut down a fireplace shop since the guidance is not legally enforceable.Â
OSHA’s lax enforcement amid the coronavirus has frustrated workplace safety experts. The agency has declined to enact an emergency safety standard for health care facilities. There’s no evidence yet that it has used an enforcement tool already at its disposal: the â€general dutyâ€Â clause, which states that employers must provide a workplace free from hazards likely to cause harm or death ― although it’s possible that citations are coming.
The Labor Department, the agency that includes OSHA, has defended its performance during the pandemic, saying it has carried out an “unprecedented response.â€Â
Even in normal times, it can be hard to get OSHA to cite an employer. The agency is not adequately staffed and funded to carry out its mission of enforcing safety standards in workplaces across the country. An analysis from union federation AFL-CIO last year found that it would take 165 years for OSHA to inspect every worksite even once, given its current resources.Â
Attrition at the agency during the Trump years has only made OSHA’s work more difficult: The 862 inspectors OSHA had at the start of this year was the lowest number on record since 1975, according to one analysis.Â
Berkowitz said that the massive COVID-19 outbreaks in meatpacking plants and nursing homes were “clear evidence that voluntary guidelines don’t work to protect workers.â€
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(WASHINGTON) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday she is ordering the removal from the Capitol of portraits honoring four previous House speakers who served in the Confederacy.
In a letter to the House clerk, Pelosi requested the immediate removal of portraits depicting former speakers Robert Hunter of Virginia, James Orr of South Carolina and Howell Cobb and Charles Crisp, both of Georgia.
Calling the halls of Congress “the very heart of our democracy,″ Pelosi said, “There is no room in the hallowed halls of Congress or in any place of honor for memorializing men who embody the violent bigotry and grotesque racism of the Confederacy.″
Pelosi noted that Friday is Juneteenth, honoring the day in 1865 when many African Americans learned of the end of slavery after the Civil War. She called Juneteenth “a beautiful and proud celebration of freedom for African Americans†and noted that this year’s celebration comes “during a moment of extraordinary national anguish, as we grieve for the hundreds of Black Americans killed by racial injustice and police brutality, including George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and so many others.â€
Orr, who served as speaker from 1857-59, swore on the House floor to “preserve and perpetuate†slavery in order to “enjoy our property in peace, quiet and security,†Pelosi said in her letter. Hunter, who served at nearly every level of the Confederacy, including as Confederate secretary of state, served as speaker from 1839-41.
Cobb served as speaker from 1849-51, while Crisp served after the Civil War, from 1891-95.
Earlier this month, Pelosi urged the removal of Confederate statues from the Capitol and the renaming of U.S. military bases that honor Confederate Army officers.
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Lynn, who lived in Ditchling, East Sussex, England, died Thursday morning “surrounded by her close family,” the statement posted on the charity’s website said.
Lynn’s two most famous songs, “We’ll Meet Again,” released in 1939 at the start of the war and “The White Cliffs of Dover,” recorded in 1942, created a patriotic image of a courageous and phlegmatic Britain that resonates with people in the UK even today. She was also the first English singer to make it to number one in the American music charts.
Her daughter, Virginia Lewis-Jones, said in the statement: “My mother first became involved in raising awareness of cerebral palsy in the 50s when there was very little understanding of the condition and children who suffered from motor learning difficulties were often referred to rather pejoratively as ‘spastic.’
“Along with celebrity chums including David Jacobs and Wilfred Pickles, she set out to change people’s attitudes towards the disability and help children reach their full potential. There was no one else raising funds to help at that time, so it was groundbreaking work.
“Although my mother was closely associated with other charities, not least those supporting veterans, the Dame Vera Lynn Children’s Charity always held a very special place in her heart — the children loved her as much as she loved them and I’m extremely proud of what it has achieved and the difference it has made to so many families’ lives.”
Britain’s PA Media news agency also reports her family confirmed her death in a statement. The family said they were “deeply saddened to announce the passing of one of Britain’s best-loved entertainers.”
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson paid tribute to Lynn in a tweet: “Dame Vera Lynn’s charm and magical voice entranced and uplifted our country in some of our darkest hours. Her voice will live on to lift the hearts of generations to come.”
Captain Tom Moore, the 100-year-old war veteran who raised millions for the UK’s National Health Service, also paid tribute to Lynn, calling her death “a real shame” in a message posted on Twitter. During World War II, Moore fought in Myanmar, then known as Burma, where Lynn visited to perform for the troops.
“I really thought Vera Lynn would live longer she’s been speaking so well on TV recently. She had a huge impact on me in Burma and remained important to me throughout my life,” he said.
In 2009, Lynn became the oldest artist to have a number one album in England with “We’ll Meet Again: The Very Best of Vera Lynn.” Moore recently became the oldest artist to have a number one single in the UK charts with his rendition of “You”ll Never Walk Alone,” which was released a week before his 100th birthday.
In 2017, Lynn became the oldest artist to have an album in the top ten on the British charts with “100,” which was released in honor of her 100th birthday. To celebrate that milestone birthday, her image was projected onto the White Cliffs of Dover on March 20, 2017.
Welsh singer Katherine Jenkins, who performed a virtual duet with Lynn for the VE Day anniversary last month, said in a tweet: “I simply cannot find the words to explain just how much I adored this wonderful lady.”
During her coronavirus address to the nation on April 5, Queen Elizabeth quoted Lynn’s famous wartime song, saying the UK should take comfort in the fact “better days will return, we will be with our friends again, we will be with our families again, we will meet again.”
Forces’ sweetheart
Vera Margaret Welch was born in 1917 to a working class family in East Ham, now a London suburb. She began her career singing in working men’s clubs at the age of just seven. She took her grandmother’s maiden name — Lynn — as a stage name at the age of 11.
She left school when she was 14 and was spotted by a booking agent who arranged work for her at parties and events. She later started performing on the radio and released her first solo recording “Up the Wooden Hill to Bedfordshire” in 1936.
In November 1941, Lynn was given her own radio show on the BBC, “Sincerely Yours, Vera Lynn.” She later appeared in the film “We’ll Meet Again,” in which she portrayed a character based on herself.
The “Forces’ Sweetheart” spent the spring and summer of 1944 performing for troops stationed in Egypt, India, and Burma (Myanmar).
The Royal British Legion said in a tweet on Thursday that Lynn was an “unforgettable British icon” and a “symbol of hope” for the armed forces.
Once the war ended, Lynn toured Europe and continued to broadcast her radio program. When Decca Records released her next hit, “Auf Wiederseh’n Sweetheart” in the United States in 1952, Lynn became the first English artist to hit number one on the American record charts.
Ill health dogged her later years. She developed emphysema in the latter part of the 1960s and performed less frequently. So rooted is she in the collective English psyche that the rock band Pink Floyd wrote a song about her called “Vera” on their seminal 1979 album “The Wall.”
In 1941, Lynn married a musician named Harry Lewis and the couple had one daughter together, Virginia Penelope Anne Lewis. Lynn’s husband passed away in 1998.
Lynn received many honors in her lifetime. She was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1969 and was made a Dame in the Queen’s 1975 birthday honors because of her contribution to charity.
In 2001, the Dame Vera Lynn Children’s Charity was created to help children with cerebral palsy and other motor learning impairments.
This breaking story has been updated with additional reporting.
Ahmed Divela was one of Ghana’s most fearless investigative journalists. This edited excerpt about his killing is from Faces of Assassination, a new book published by the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime. The book assembles 50 profiles of people who have been assassinated by criminal groups since the start of the millennium
With the exception of the public execution of corrupt state administrators by the military government of Jerry Rawlings in 1979, no other killing in Ghana has had as deafening a ricochet as that of journalist Ahmed Hussein-Suale Divela. Grabbing media headlines and dominating public discourse in cities and far-flung villages alike, everyone is talking about the man who lived and worked in the shadows, but whose death transformed him into a public hero.
On the night of January 16 2019, two men on a motor bike trailed a blue BMW, zipping through the streets and roads of Madina, a suburb of the Ghanaian capital, Accra. As the motorbike levelled with the car, a gun was fired at the driver, for-cing him to swerve and crash the car into a roadside store. One of the men then calmly walked up to the BMW and fired two more shots at the man behind the wheel. Then, turning to face the motley crowd watching from a distance, he smiled and raised a finger to his lips.
Because the gunmen did not appear to be in a hurry to make a getaway, many of the people in the crowd concluded that what they had just witnessed was the shooting of a midnight film scene by some quirky director from Ghana’s movie industry. But there was no camera crew and no lighting technician directing his floodlight at the dimly lit scene. The gunmen disappeared, and the crowd inched closer to the car, with its shattered left window. The man behind the wheel was dead. This was no movie; the blood was real.
Jonas Nyabor, a journalist with Ghana’s Citi FM, said that Divela’s killers were without a doubt paid assassins. “Obviously, they were trained marksmen, who shot with military precision. They did not waste any bullets. All three shots hit their targets: one to the neck, the others to the chest. And they did not take any valuables from the victim to suggest robbery. They left no one in doubt about who they were, or what their mission was. Honestly, I cringe every time knowing that the victim was a journalist, like me. He did not deserve such a gruesome end,†Nyabor said.
Divela, 31 years old when he was killed, was a native of Wulensi, a village about 400km north of Accra. After graduating with a degree in political science from the University of Ghana in 2012, he chose the tough and dangerous turf of investigating organised-crime groups as a career path. This he pursued in the manner of a supercop. Divela’s biggest influence was Anas Aremeyaw Anas, an internationally acclaimed Ghanaian undercover reporter whose work has been acknowledged by the likes of United States president Barack Obama.
Divela was a determined apprentice, quickly learning the ropes at Anas’s undercover outfit, Tiger Eye, which had achieved renown for its exposure of human-trafficking syndicates, corruption and abuses in a state-owned psychiatric hospital. Divela was part of the team behind Tiger Eye’s Spirit Child, an investigative documentary that exposed a ring of voodoo priests who made a living branding disabled children as evil spirits to be cast out of society.
MP Kennedy Anyapong had threatened assassinated journalist Ahmed Hussein-Suale Divela (top) in 2018
Unfazed by high-risk conditions, Divela was known for never allowing anything to stand between him and a big story. In a pained remark following the killing, Anas acknowledged Divela’s position as second-in-command of the team that pulled off two of Tiger Eye’s most successful assignments — Ghana in the Eyes of God and Number 12.
Ghana in the Eyes of God, a 2015 undercover investigation of the country’s criminal-justice system, caught on camera 30 judges and dozens of judicial officials accepting bribes for helping to subvert the course of justice. Seven high-court judges were exposed and suspended as a result.
Number 12 blew the whistle on corrupt football referees across Africa, who had taken bribes to fix matches. A number of Ghanaian referees and Kwesi Nyantakyi, head of the Ghanaian Football Association, were caught accepting money from Tiger Eye journalists posing as intermediaries. In addition to Nyantakyi, who was banned from football for life, the sting implicated 77 referees and 14 officials.
Buoyed by their success in Ghana, the undercover team took their cameras into several other African countries, including Kenya, the Gambia and Nigeria, where investigations revealed a similar situation of endemic bribery. In the wake of Divela’s assassination, fingers are being pointed by and at different enemy camps.
Some suspect that the assassination was arranged by the African football community; organised-crime groups are fast taking over the sports-betting business. Match-fixing, the influencing of sponsorship deals and the bribing of officials are just some of the rackets accompanying an industry marred by fake football academies and fake agents, who steal fortunes from rich and poor families alike for the promise of getting their sons a place in the European leagues.
People watch a documentary called “Number 12†by investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas about former Ghanian Football Association (GFA) president Kwesi Nyantakyi, at Trade Fair Centre in Accra on June 10, 2018. – Ghanian Football Association (GFA) president Kwesi Nyantakyi resigned on Friday just hours after world football governing body FIFA hit him with a 90-day suspension over corruption claims. Nyantakyi was accused in an explosive documentary called ‘Number 12’, aired on Wednesday by investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas, of soliciting bribes amounting to several million dollars. (Photo by CRISTINA ALDEHUELA / AFP)
Four months earlier, Agyapong had made another angry television appearance, this time on Adom TV, during which, in the course of his outbursts, he drew his forefinger across his neck in a throat-slitting gesture. It is clear that despite being neither a football referee nor a high-court judge, Agyapong harboured much anger towards Divela. And the police said that they have invited the MP for “informal questioningâ€, despite his having made public statements distancing himself from the murder.
In response to an email inquiry about the state of the investigation into Divela’s death, Samuel Appiah Darko, a lawyer representing Tiger Eye, said: “Police investigations can best be described as slow. Nothing tangible has come up so far.â€
At the time of writing, the Ghana Police Service was yet to find the smoking gun. In February 2019, assistant commissioner of police David Eklu disclosed that six people had been arrested in connection with Divela’s murder. According to police, the suspects, who remain unnamed, were interrogated and their statements taken before they were released on bail.
Eklu said that, in addition to the six suspects, the police had given statement forms to Agyapong, Nyantakyi and Anas, “all suspects in the caseâ€. No progress report on the investigation has been provided by the police since.
Due to the social distancing measures in place, Macron, a man known for his firm grip and tactile nature, was unable to shake hands with any of those he met, including the Prime Minister, Prince Charles, or his wife Camilla. This led to scenes of dignitaries bowing at one another from a distance, unusual for such an event as the visit of a foreign leader.
Their official reason for meeting was to mark the 80th anniversary of Charles de Gaulle’s broadcast from London to an occupied France during the Second World War. The BBC radio address, known as L’Appel, was a key moment in the French resistance to Nazi occupation.
“The British monarchy became the refuge of the French Republic” when de Gaulle was exiled from France, and he was treated as “the legitimate Minister of France, the real ambassador of French values” by Winston Churchill, Macron said Thursday.
Nodding to the impact of de Gaulle’s address, Macron said the UK had given France “its first weapon: a BBC microphone.”
Macron marked the anniversary by awarding the Legion d’Honneur, France’s highest order of merit, to the city of London for providing refuge to de Gaulle during the war. Prince Charles accepted the honor in the name of his mother, Queen Elizabeth, and on behalf of London.
The French President was not subjected to the UK’s 14-day quarantine for people traveling into the country, due to the rules allowing for diplomatic exemption.
During a meeting in the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street, the two leaders discussed the pandemic and a number of other ongoing situations, a spokeperson for Johnson said.
“On UK-EU negotiations, the Prime Minister welcomed the agreement to intensify talks in July and underlined that the UK does not believe it makes sense for there to be prolonged negotiations into the autumn,” the spokeperson said.
On Libya, the two leaders “agreed on the need for a UN-led political process which brings together all parties to end the conflict.”
Johnson and Macron also “agreed to continue to work closely on other international issues, including the proposed Chinese national security law in Hong Kong which would be a breach of the Joint Declaration, and to bring about a two state solution in the Middle East Peace Process,” the spokesperson added.
Following their meeting, Macron and Johnson viewed artifacts from de Gaulle’s time in London, including gifts that he gave to Winston Churchill and Lady Churchill to thank them for their support in 1940.
The leaders then watched a flyover of French and British planes, hours after British jets flew over Paris to mark the anniversary.
DoorDash, the largest food delivery company in the United States, said on Thursday that it had raised another $400 million in a new round of funding, valuing the company at $16 billion.
The cash infusion comes after months of growing demand for DoorDash’s services while restaurants are closed and people are staying home during the coronavirus pandemic.
The company was expected to go public this year after filing registration documents in February. But initial public offerings slowed as the markets became volatile, and DoorDash has focused on responding to the flood of demand.
The company faces challenges as it prepares to go public. It is not profitable and food delivery remains competitive. Its largest rivals, Grubhub and Uber Eats, held merger discussions, with Grubhub eventually agreeing to sell to Just Eat Takeaway, a European food delivery service, for $7.3 billion in June.
Restaurants are struggling to make ends meet on delivery apps, which charge fees for their services and sometimes list restaurants that have not signed up. In April, DoorDash cut its primary fees for independent restaurants during the pandemic, which it said cost it around $120 million.
The company also faces pushback from regulators and workers. California has required “on-demand†tech companies to classify their armies of gig workers as employees. This week, San Francisco’s district attorney sued DoorDash for unfair business practices, seeking an injunction requiring the company to comply with California’s worker classification law.
Fidelity and Durable Capital Partners led the $400 million round. DoorDash, based in San Francisco, has raised $2.3 billion since it was founded in 2013.
Unemployment claims top one million for the 13th straight week.
Businesses are reopening, but the layoffs won’t quit.
Another 1.5 million people applied for state unemployment benefits last week, the Labor Department said Thursday.
It was the 13th straight week that state filings topped one million. Until the coronavirus crisis, the most new claims in a single week had been 695,000, in 1982.
Claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federal program for self-employed workers, independent contractors and others ineligible for standard benefits, added 760,000 to the total.
“It’s a sustained hemorrhaging of jobs unlike anything we’ve seen,†said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank.
Economists said recent layoffs, though smaller than the wave in March and early April, suggested that the crisis was reaching deeper into the economy.
Hilton Worldwide, the hotel operator, said this week that it was eliminating 2,100 corporate jobs globally and would extend previous furloughs and cuts in hours and wages for 90 days. AT&T disclosed plans to shed 3,400 technician and clerical jobs nationwide and permanently close more than 250 stores, according to one of its unions. The gym chain 24 Hour Fitness said it was filing for bankruptcy protection and would permanently close more than 100 locations.
More than 40 percent of black business owners reported they were not working in April, when businesses were feeling the worst of the pandemic’s economic consequences. Only 17 percent of white small-business owners said the same, according to an analysis of government data by Robert Fairlie of the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Many small businesses are struggling during the pandemic because they lack easy access to loans and cannot easily move their businesses online. Black-owned businesses tend to have fewer employees than other small businesses. They are also more likely to be in industries like restaurants or retail that lockdowns have hit especially hard, said Ken Harris, president of the National Business League, an organization founded by Booker T. Washington in 1900.
“Most lack the capacity, scale and technical assistance needed to survive a pandemic,†Mr. Harris said.
Black-owned businesses also appear to be benefiting less from federal stimulus programs. Only 12 percent of black and Hispanic business owners polled from April 30 to May 12 received the funding they had requested. About one quarter received some funding. By contrast, half of all small businesses reported receiving from a single part of the stimulus packages — the Paycheck Protection Program — according to a census survey.
“Black businesses often don’t have a traditional banking partner,†Mr. Harris said. Without such a partner, many had trouble applying for assistance.
How some hedge funds may have contributed to market ruptures in March.
When financial markets were melting down in March, one theory for the disruption was that some hedge funds were dumping government debt and making the collapse worse.
It turns out, that theory could be right. On Thursday, the Federal Reserve released a quarterly survey of Wall Street firms that included questions about what happened in March.
Severalrelative-value hedge funds had reportedly been using a trading strategy called a basis trade when market turmoil struck. The approach involved holding portfolios of Treasuries, and when the market for government debt turned dicey, the volatility made them riskier. The funds were said to have closed out their positions — dumping bonds into an already-saturated market.
About a third of respondents said that they offered such hedge funds less funding collateralized by Treasuries in mid-March, either because they had reassessed the hedge funds’ financial strength, they had less room on their own balance sheets, or as a result of changes in Treasury market functioning and uncertainty.
About half said that the hedge funds had shown “somewhat†or “significantly†higher demand for funding collateralized by Treasury securities, the survey found. The hedge funds attributed that to increased trading opportunities and changes in Treasury market liquidity and functioning.
The Fed also asked about reports that dislocations in the market for mortgage-backed securities from agencies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac came amid margin calls and forced selling by mortgage real estate investment trusts, which allow investors to earn interest off real estate-tied debt. Credit officers almost uniformly reported that lending to such REITs dropped off in mid-March, and about half said that came as the availability of such lending decreased.
As small businesses reopen, owners are figuring it out as they go.
With no revenue for months, small businesses must find ways to pay for the new sanitation regimens, thermometers, plexiglass, masks and other items necessary to open, without knowing whether customers will return.
“None of the relief packages have included specific funding for safety retrofitting, purchasing of safety equipment or even helping business getting a handle on uniform P.P.E. for employees and customers,†said Amanda Ballantyne, executive director of the Main Street Alliance, an advocacy group for small business.
Some businesses are taking a slow approach. At first, Chris Lynch and Michael Samer weren’t sure what to do about their ocean adventure tours business, Everyday California, when they got the go-ahead in late April.
Mr. Lynch and Mr. Samer decided to reopen with curbside kayak and surf rentals only, keeping their retail shop and tour business closed. Then, as they felt more comfortable, they reintroduced tours at a 50 percent capacity with everyone wearing a mask. They also invested in their neglected online shop.
The bet paid off: They increased what had been a small number of online merchandise sales by 750 percent in May, allowing them to bring back about 20 employees to help with shipping and marketing.
Wall Street faced another day of unsteady trading on Thursday, with stocks drifting between negative and positive territory as investors considered new data on unemployment claims and the latest reports on fresh coronavirus outbreaks.
The S&P 500 was flat, after having started the day with a decline. European stocks were slightly lower.
Concerns about a rise in new coronavirus cases around the world have collided with expectations for a quick economic recovery in recent days, and markets have become somewhat directionless as a result. It’s a consolidation that many Wall Street analysts have described as long overdue, after the S&P 500 ripped higher with a string of gains from late March to early June.
But it also reflects growing uncertainty about the economic picture going forward.
Another 1.5 million U.S. workers applied for state unemployment benefits last week, a report released Thursday by the Labor Department showed. Not all the unemployment claims necessarily reflect new layoffs. Some states are still working through backlogs of claims filed earlier in the crisis; in other cases, people filing under multiple programs may be counted twice.
But three months into the crisis, there is little doubt that layoffs remain elevated. Economists warn that job losses could worsen if government support that has helped prop up the economy is allowed to lapse too soon.
Many people are in the position of needing help they never imagined would be necessary. Ron Lieber and Tara Siegel Bernard created a guide to connect you with information about government benefits, free services and financial strategies to get you through this crisis.
If you need temporary relief on your credit card or auto loan payments, many lenders are offering at least some help. Start with the website for your lenders and read what they have posted. Some have made their policies more stingy since Ron first reported on changes in March.
If you call for help via phone, record the conversation if you can or at least get written documentation of any changes the lender agrees to. This column from Ron explains how and why. And be sure to ask how any change might affect your credit score.
Financial losses often come with emotional strain, at the very point when people may be least likely to spend money on care for themselves. If you are in severe distress, the number for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. Or text HELLO to 741741.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness maintains a help line that can provide referrals to local resources as well. Its number is 1-800-950-6264.
China aims to speed up an infusion of credit into its economy this year as it tries to restart growth after coronavirus the outbreak.
The authorities saw total social financing — a broad measure of credit in the Chinese economy — rising to more than 30 trillion renminbi, about $4.24 trillion, this year, Yi Gang, the governor of the People’s Bank of China, said Thursday the annual Lujiazui Forum in Shanghai. That would be more than $600 billion above the 2019 level.
The Chinese economy has rebounded by some measures since the lockdowns in the first part of the year, but officials have acknowledged that joblessness remains a big problem.
Yet China’s moves show caution. In the United States, the Federal Reserve said in April that it would free up more than $2 trillion. Chinese officials have been wary about a big lending splurge after their response to the 2008 global financial crisis layered the economy with debt. Mr. Yi said officials would “moderate the total amount and consider the timely withdrawal of policy tools in advance.â€
The Fed played an unofficial role as the world’s central bank and would put the U.S. dollar and financial system at risk if it unleashed too much credit, Guo Shuqing, the chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, said in a speech.
He warned that quickly rising stock markets might be harmful and unsustainable without real economic recovery. He did not specify the market, but global stocks have risen sharply from their earlier lows in part because many governments have rolled out big plans to spend money to get the economy humming again.
All countries and regions need to examine whether stimulus policies might be going too far, Mr. Guo said, noting the problems that can be created with too much credit. When stimulus efforts begin, “everyone rejoices,†he said. “When exiting, it may be very painful.â€
Taubman Centers, the shopping mall owner that agreed to be acquired by Simon Property Group for $3.6 billion this year, is pushing back on Simon Property’s attempt to terminate the deal based on the pandemic.
Simon Property was experiencing “a classic case of buyer’s remorse†and the companies had “contracted to allocate the risk of global pandemics to the Simon parties, knowing full well that there was a pandemic raging in the world,†Taubman said in court filings on Wednesday. Taubman, which owns 24 high-end malls including the Mall at Short Hills in New Jersey, said that Simon Property had already negotiated a lower purchase price for the company based on an uncertain retail environment, which was shaky in part because of the coronavirus.
Simon Property, the biggest mall operator in the United States, said last week that the pandemic “had a uniquely material and disproportionate effect on Taubman†compared to other retail real estate companies, pointing to its high proportion of indoor malls versus open-air strip centers. It also faulted Taubman for failing to mitigate the impact of the pandemic by “not making essential cuts in operating expenses and capital expenditures.â€
Taubman said on Wednesday that Simon Property’s comparison was flawed, noting that its malls were “hardly in the same industry†as strip centers, and that they did not have grocery stores or anchors like Home Depot or Target. The company also said that Simon Property was kept informed about its actions in response to the pandemic.
Catch up: Here’s what else is happening.
McDonald’s said it was expecting to hire about 260,000 restaurant employees this summer as states reopen their economies and the company welcomes customers back to its dining rooms. To protect workers and customers, the company said that it put into place nearly 50 new safety procedures, including temperature checks for employees, protective barriers for ordering and social-distancing stickers on the floor. “We want candidates and their families to know we have one goal — to keep our people safe,†said Joe Erlinger, president of McDonald’s USA.
The Bank of England said Thursday that it would hold interest rates steady at 0.1 percent but increase its purchases of British government bonds by 100 billion pounds, or about $125 billion, as it tries to help shore up the economy.
Kroger, the grocer with about 2,800 stores in 35 states, said Thursday that its sales increased to $42 billion in the quarter that ended May 23, up from $37 billion in the same period last year. Digital sales jumped 92 percent during the period marked by pandemic shutdowns. The company, which has about 500,000 employees, said it had hired 100,000 workers.
Carnival Corporation, the giant cruise company, reported Thursday that it lost $2.4 billion in the three months that ended on May 31. Carnival, which offered refunds or credits for future cruises to passengers whose voyages were canceled by the pandemic, said that about half asked for their money back. Customer demand for 2021 was increasing, it said, with about two-thirds of bookings in a recent six-week period coming fresh and one-third from customers using credits. Carnival said it could not say when it would return to normal operations.
Chanel said it expected a “significant†reduction in sales and profitability for 2020, the latest luxury business to warn on the serious hit to the sector caused by the coronavirus pandemic. On Thursday, Chanel’s global chief financial officer, Philippe Blondiaux, said the company had reopened 85 percent of its global boutiques and recorded a “double or even triple digit recovery in sales†in markets like China and India.
Reporting and research were contributed by Ben Casselman, Tiffany Hsu, Coral Yang, Sapna Maheshwari, Mohammed Hadi, Amy Haimerl, Jeanna Smialek, Lauren Leatherby, Ron Lieber, Tara Siegel Bernard, Elizabeth Paton, Stacy Cowley, Jeff Sommer, Stanley Reed, Carlos Tejada and Gregory Schmidt.
The Morrison government is offering universities more places for expected soaring numbers of undergraduates, but at a cost to students.
It wants to steer young Australians into degrees that lead to jobs and will more than double the cost of humanities studies to do so.
Universities are anticipating record numbers of applications for study in 2021 as the reality of the coronavirus-driven recession bites young people worst of all.
Youth unemployment has soared to 16.1 per cent, with young people’s jobs making up 45 per cent of those lost in May.
Education Minister Dan Tehan will outline the coalition’s latest plan for rejigging university funding in a speech to the National Press Club on Friday.
He is offering to increase the number of university places by 39,000 over the next three years, rising to 100,000 more by 2030.
A student at the University of New South Wales, on January 31, 2020. (Yianni Aspradakis/AFR)
The coalition had effectively capped places over the past couple of years by freezing its funding at 2018 levels.
The trade-off in the new deal is changing what students and taxpayers pay.
A three-year humanities degree would more than double in cost for students, from about $20,000 now to $43,500.
The government’s contribution would drop to $3300.
Fees for law degrees, typically four years, would jump from $44,620 now to $58,000.
Conversely, the government would pay more and charge students less for courses it says are more likely to lead to jobs.
Agriculture and maths fees would drop from nearly $28,600 over three years to $11,100.
Fees would also be cut for teaching, nursing, clinical psychology, science, health, architecture, IT, engineering and English courses.
Those doing the more expensive degrees will be able to cut their costs by taking up courses in the cheaper, more “useful” areas.
“We are encouraging students to embrace diversity and not think about their education as a siloed degree,” Mr Tehan will say.
“So if you want to study history, also think about studying English. If you want to study philosophy, also think about studying a language. If you want to study law, also think about studying IT.”
Mr Tehan will seek to head off scare campaigns like those seen when his predecessor Christopher Pyne sought to deregulate university fees by promising there will be no $100,000 degrees under the plan.
No existing student will pay more.
He is putting pressure on universities to back the plan, which he says was designed in consultation with leaders from the sector.
The National Union of Students condemned the government’s plan, saying universities were not “job factories”.
“While the lowering of fees in specific degrees is a positive opportunity for some students, this move is at the expense of hundreds of thousands of young people who have chosen to study a degree that the government doesn’t deem worthy enough,” the union said in a statement.
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In a poll by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, based at Oxford University, the Mail & Guardian emerged as the most trusted weekly publication in South Africa.
The report is based on a poll held in January with more than 80 000 respondents in 40 countries — and 76% said they trusted the M&G.
Globally, the poll found that less than four in 10 people trust the news.
Although it was done before Covid-19 hit the media industry and closed many media houses, with others retrenching staff or cutting salaries, the report noted that the pandemic highlighted the need for journalism.
“The seriousness of this [coronavirus] crisis has reinforced the need for reliable, accurate journalism that can inform and educate populations, but it has also reminded us how open we have become to conspiracies and misinformation,†the report reads.
Although South African media has built a strong reputation for independence, political and business interference “is an increasing concernâ€, the report notes.
South Africa was among the countries — after the United States, Brazil and the Philippines — where politicians were seen as being responsible for online misinformation.
Earlier this month, the South African National Editors’ Forum looked at the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on local media organisations. Researcher Reg Rumney found that traffic to news websites increased 72% in March, just before the lockdown, and that these sites saw a 44% growth in unique browsers. Many news websites saw double-digit growth in their audience numbers in the same month.
Rumney estimated that up to 400 job could be lost at small print-media companies because of the economic pinch exacerbated by the pandemic, and said bigger news organisations have cut salaries to survive.
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Several activist groups in Cape Town have threatened to dismantle statues of colonial figures if the South African government does not act to remove them. This follows a wave of protest in the United States and Europe in recent weeks, during which statues memorialising figures involved in slavery and colonialism have been removed.
This week, the Black People’s National Crisis Committee (BPNCC) said it would intensify protest if activists are not listened to. On Youth Day, the group held a protest in front of Parliament, calling for the Louis Botha statue to be taken down.Â
“There is a cognitive battle around the monuments in South Africa, which continue to demonstrate the power relations between the master and the slave, the exploiter and the exploited, the oppressor and the oppressed. South African iconography to us is not only colonial, but it reinforces the idea that a foreign invader can continue having a conquered society represented in their own image,†the group said.Â
Several statues and public memorials are in activists’ crosshairs, including the figure of Botha, a statue of Cecil John Rhodes in Cape Town’s Company Gardens, Rhodes Memorial, and a statue of Jan van Riebeek and his wife Maria in Cape Town’s Adderley Street.Â
BPNCC member Wandile Kasibe, who was part of the Rhodes Must Fall movement, said the campaign to remove the figures, which was lit in 2015, has now been reignited.Â
“These symbols inflict psychological violence on the minds of people whose ancestors were murdered by people who are being glorified by statues,†said Kasibe, who is a PhD candidate in history and museum curatorship.
He questions whether there is political will to remove colonial statues, claiming their demands have not been acknowledged by the government in the past five years.Â
In 2015, activist Sulyman Stellenboom campaigned to draw awareness to colonial and apartheid-era statues around the Cape Town central business district. The same year students at the University of Cape Town (UCT) successfully lobbied for the statue of one of the institution’s major benefactors — Cecil John Rhodes — to be removed from campus.
The 57-year-old was among those arrested during the Rhodes Must Fall protests in the weeks before the removal of the statue from the heart of the university’s upper campus.Â
Stellenboom — who tied placards and chains to statues of the prime minister of the Union of South Africa Botha, his successor Jan Smuts, and Van Riebeeck — hopes the government will act more decisively on the role of the relics in post-apartheid South Africa. Since then, the Van Riebeeck and Botha statues have been defaced numerous times.Â
“I still want those things removed. It’s a curse on our nation. Even the way Rhodes is sitting at Rhodes memorial, he’s looking out over the Western Cape, laughing. He and Jan van Riebeeck were not good people,†Stellenboom said.Â
The South African government, meanwhile, denies it has not been responsive to issues about statues.Â
At the time of the Rhodes Must Fall movement, Arts and Culture Minister Nathi Mthethwa said his department would embark on “consultative community engagements†to find answers to the role of colonial statues and memorials.Â
Replying to questions from the Mail & Guardian, the department of sports, arts, and culture said one of the recommendations made during consultations was that statues, monuments and symbols “not aligned to the values of the Constitution should not occupy public spaces and should be moved to theme parksâ€.
In a statement this week, Mthethwa said that, since 1994, several statues and memorials had already been removed or placed in less prominent public spaces.Â
Also this week, Oriel College at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom voted to remove a statue of Cecil John Rhodes.
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