Volume 79, No. 10B ©SS 2020 CONTINGENCY EDITION S , M … · 2020. 5. 2. · Volume 79, No. 10B...

stripes.com Free to Deployed Areas Volume 79, No. 10B ©SS 2020 CONTINGENCY EDITION SUNDAY, MAY 3, 2020

SPORTS US women’s national soccer team dealt rare loss as judge tosses unequal pay claim Back page

MUSIC From ‘Amy’ to ‘ZZ Top’:Must-watch (and listen)music documentariesPage 16

WORLD Factory visit quiets health rumors about N. Korean leaderPage 10

Online: Get the latest news on the virus outbreak » stripes.com/coronavirus

BY ROSE L. THAYERStars and Stripes

AUSTIN, Texas — Stateside commissary shoppers will face limitations on the amount of fresh meat that they can buy because of an anticipated shortage in the supply chain, the Defense Com-missary Agency announced.

As of Friday, customers in the United States, including Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, can only

purchase two packages of fresh beef, chicken, pork and turkey, according to the news release from the DCA, which manages a

worldwide chain of grocery stores on military bases to provide mili-tary personnel, retirees, select veterans and their families food

and household products.The limits on meat purchases

stem from a rash of processing plant closures related to the coro-navirus pandemic.

More than 20 meatpacking plants have closed temporarily, because of outbreaks of the coro-navirus among workers, The As-sociated Press reported. Others have slowed production as work-ers have fallen ill or stayed home to avoid getting sick.

“There may be some short-ages of fresh protein products in the coming weeks,” retired RearAdm. Robert J. Bianchi, DefenseDepartment special assistant forcommissary operations, said in astatement. “Enacting this policynow will help ensure that all of our customers have an opportu-nity to purchase these productson an equitable basis.”

SEE LIMIT ON PAGE 4

Hope ina bottle

CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK

US regulators approve use of 1st drugshown to assist in virus recovery

BY MATTHEW PERRONE AND MARILYNN MARCHIONEAssociated Press

WASHINGTON — U.S. regulators on Friday allowed emer-gency use of the first drug that appears to help some COVID-19 patients recover faster, a milestone in the global search for ef-fective therapies against the coronavirus.

The Food and Drug Administration cleared Gilead Science’s intravenous drug for hospitalized patients with “severe

disease,” such as those experiencing breathing prob-lems requiring supplemental oxygen or ventilators.

President Donald Trump announced the news at the White House alongside Gilead CEO

Daniel O’Day and Food and Drug

SEE HOPE ON PAGE 4

Intravenous drug remdesivir was clearedFriday for emergency use on hospitalized

patients suffering from COVID-19.

Gilead Sciences / AP

Supply chain shortages force limit on commissary meat sales‘ Enacting this policy now will help ensure thatall of our customers have an opportunity topurchase these products on an equitable basis. ’

Robert J. BianchiDefense Department special assistant for commissary operations

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Sunday, May 3, 2020

T O D A YIN STRIPES

American Roundup ..... 18Books ....................... 12Comics/Crossword ...... 14Lifestyle ...............11, 13Music ....................16-17 Opinion ..................... 19 Sports ...................21-24

BUSINESS/WEATHER

Associated Press

Stocks closed broadly lower on Wall Street on Fri-day after Amazon and other big companies reported disappointing results, the latest evidence of how the coronavirus pandemic is hobbling the economy and hurting corporate earnings.

A day after closing out its best month since 1987, the S&P 500 fell 2.8%. The slide gave the benchmark index its second-straight weekly loss.

The selling accelerated as the day went on, with energy stocks taking the biggest losses. Technology stocks and companies that rely on consumer spend-ing accounted for a big slice of the decline.

Amazon sank 7.6% after it reported profit for the

latest quarter that fell short of Wall Street’s fore-casts. A sharp increase in costs related to providing deliveries safely during the pandemic outweighed a big increase in revenue. The retail giant’s move-ments have an outsized sway on the S&P 500 be-cause it’s the third-largest company in the index.

“We all had these great expectations for Ama-zon,” said J.J. Kinahan, chief strategist with TD Ameritrade. “The stock ran up amazingly because we were expecting their earnings to be good.”

The S&P 500 gave up 81.72 points to close at 2,830.71. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 622.03 points, or 2.6%, at 23,723.69. The Nasdaq, which is heavily weighed with technology stocks, slid 284.60 points, or 3.2%, to 8,604.95.

WEATHER OUTLOOK

Bahrain81/78

Baghdad90/64

Doha95/75

KuwaitCity

93/73

Riyadh96/71

Djibouti93/82

Kandahar91/59

Kabul68/51

SUNDAY IN THE MIDDLE EAST MONDAY IN THE PACIFIC

Misawa61/53

Guam83/78

Tokyo68/59

Okinawa73/62

Sasebo67/63

Iwakuni63/59

Seoul69/60

Osan67/60 Busan

69/60

The weather is provided by the American Forces Network Weather Center,

2nd Weather Squadron at Offutt Air Force Base, Neb.

Mildenhall/Lakenheath

55/43

Ramstein58/41

Stuttgart58/39

Lajes,Azores59/56

Rota81/55

Morón95/61 Sigonella

76/53

Naples67/58

Aviano/Vicenza59/49

Pápa59/50

Souda Bay66/60

SUNDAY IN EUROPE

Brussels61/42

Zagan54/45

Drawsko Pomorskie

54/44

Stocks slide as companies detail virus fallout Military ratesEuro costs (May 4) ................................ $1.06Dollar buys (May 4) .......................... €0.8961British pound (May 4) .......................... $1.22Japanese yen (May 4) ........................105.00South Korean won (May 4) ........... 1,188.00

Commercial ratesBahrain (Dinar) ....................................0.3781British pound .....................................$1.2520Canada (Dollar) ...................................1.4035China (Yuan) ........................................ 7.0623Denmark (Krone) ............................... 6.7959Egypt (Pound) ....................................15.7552Euro .........................................$1.0975/0.9111Hong Kong (Dollar) ............................ 7.7522Hungary (Forint) .................................321.44Israel (Shekel) .....................................3.5041 Japan (Yen) ...........................................106.91Kuwait (Dinar) .....................................0.3094Norway (Krone) .................................10.3182Philippines (Peso).................................50.28Poland (Zloty) ......................................... 4.15Saudi Arabia (Riyal) ...........................3.7585Singapore (Dollar) .............................. 1.4147South Korea (Won) .......................... 1223.96

Switzerland (Franc)............................0.9615Thailand (Baht) .....................................32.50Turkey (Lira) ......................................... 7.0291(Military exchange rates are those available to customers at military banking facilities in the country of issuance for Japan, South Korea, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. For nonlocal currency exchange rates (i.e., purchasing British pounds in Germany), check with your local military banking facility. Commercial rates are interbank rates provided for reference when buying currency. All figures are foreign currencies to one dollar, except for the British pound, which is represented in dollars-to-pound, and the euro, which is dollars-to-euro.)

EXCHANGE RATES

INTEREST RATESPrime rate ................................................ 3.25Discount rate .......................................... 0.25Federal funds market rate ................... 0.043-month bill ............................................. 0.1030-year bond ........................................... 1.27

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 3Sunday, May 3, 2020

BY WYATT OLSONStars and Stripes

Four B-1B bombers and about 200 airmen from Texas arrived in Guam on Friday to conduct train-ing and operations with allies and partners, the Air Force said.

The Lancers and airmen flew in from the 9th Bomb Squadron, 7th Bomb Wing, at Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, the service said in a statement Friday.

They were deployed to support Pacific Air Forces in training al-lies and partners and to reinforce the “rules-based international order” in the Indo-Pacific region through strategic deterrence mis-sions, the statement said.

The Air Force did not disclose the length of the deployment.

Three of the bombers flew directly to Andersen Air Force Base on Guam, while the fourth flew east of Japan to train with the U.S. Navy before joining the others, the statement said.

“Deployments like this allow our Airmen to enhance the readi-ness and training necessary to respond to any potential crisis or challenge across the globe,” wing commander Col. Ed. Sumangil said in the statement. “It also provides a valuable opportunity to better integrate with our al-lies and partners through joint and combined operations and

exercises.”Two weeks ago, the Air Force

abruptly ended its longtime prac-tice of rotating bombers throughAndersen for six-month intervals, opting instead for a less predict-able means of deploying the air-craft throughout the globe.

The Air Force had used thoseGuam-based bomber missions topatrol over the East and South China Seas as a means of project-ing U.S. airpower and resolve toNorth Korea, China and Russia.

B-1s were last deployed to theIndo-Pacific region in 2017, theAir Force said.

The B-1 is valued for its capa-bility to carry a larger conven-tional payload of both guided and unguided weapons than the B-52.

“The B-1 is able to carry a larg-er payload of Joint Air-to-SurfaceStandoff Missiles and a largerpayload of 2,000-pound class Joint Direct Attack Munitions,” Lt. Col.Frank Welton, Pacific Air Forces’ chief of operations force manage-ment, said in the statement. “Ad-ditionally, the B-1 is able to carrythe [anti-ship cruise missile],giving it an advanced stand-off,counter-ship capability. It alsohas an advanced self-protectionsuite and is able to transit at su-personic speeds to enhance offen-sive and defensive capabilities.”[email protected]: @WyattWOlson

BY CAITLIN M. KENNEY Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — Pfc. Tyrell J. Audain was in the midst of a physical fitness test more than two weeks ago at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, Calif., when he collapsed.

The Marine, a 19-year-old former high school athlete, was rushed to a hospital where he was later pronounced dead, Brig. Gen. Roger Turner, the commanding gen-eral at Twentynine Palms, wrote at the time in a statement on the base Facebook

page, without naming Audain.On Friday, the Marine Corps confirmed

Audain was the Marine who died April 15 at Twentynine Palms after his death was listed in the Naval Safety Center’s mishap summaries report. His death is under in-vestigation, but it was not related to the coronavirus, according to Capt. Samuel Stephenson, a Marine spokesman.

Audain was attending the Marine Corps communications-electronics school at the time of his death, according to his service record. On his Facebook page are photos of him racing for the track team at Minisink

Valley High School in Middletown, N.Y., which he graduated from in 2019.

Audain’s death in the latest in a string of Navy Department personnel who have collapsed during a physical fitness test and later died.

In February, Midshipman 3rd Class Duke Carrillo, 21, of Flower Mound, Texas, collapsed during the mile and a half run of his physical readiness test at the U.S. Naval Academy. The sophomore was taken to a nearby medical center where he was pronounced dead, according to the school. The cause of his death was under review.

In November, a petty officer first classdied after collapsing while running on atreadmill during a physical fitness test atFort Meade, Md., according to the NavalSafety Center. News reports identified the sailor as Trent Fraser, 24, a cryptologictechnician-interpretive and his death wasunder investigation.

In February and April 2019, two Navy recruits died during their final physicalassessments before the end of their train-ing at Naval Station Great Lakes, [email protected]@caitlinmkenney

BY JAMES BOLINGERStars and Stripes

The Air Force said pilot error is to blame for a collision that killed two T-38C Talon pilots in Oklahoma on Nov. 21, according to an accident investigation re-port released Friday.

The morning crash happened when two Talons — one of which was flown by instructor pilot Lt. Col. John “Matt” Kincade, 47, and student pilot 2nd Lt. Travis B. Wilkie, 23 — attempted a for-mation landing while training at Vance Air Force Base.

Immediately after touchdown, the leading aircraft piloted by Wilkie and Kincade “became briefly airborne, rolled rapidly to the right, then touched down once more in a right bank,” the report said. It then skidded across the runway’s centerline from left to right toward the other aircraft, which was trailing.

The leading aircraft lifted off the runway once again and then struck the trailing aircraft with its right main landing gear, ac-cording to the report. The colli-sion caused the leading jet to roll

over the top of the other, “then impact the ground in a nearly in-verted attitude, fatally injuring [Kincade] and [Wilkie].”

The T-38C flown by Kincade and Wilkie then slid approximate-ly 700 feet before coming to a stop in a grassy area, the report said. The trailing jet remained upright as it departed the runway surface and came to a stop in the grass, where its pilots safely exited the aircraft.

The accident board found that the leading aircraft, under the control of Wilkie, “prematurely initiated an aerodynamic brak-ing maneuver immediately after touchdown,” according to the re-port. The maneuver involves the pilot raising the aircraft’s nose to block airflow and slow the jet to speed at which mechanical brakes can be applied.

The premature aerobrake caused the T-38C to become briefly airborne, the report said. Wilkie then simultaneously ap-plied and held the right rudder to steer the aircraft away from the left edge of the runway.

“[Wilkie’s] use of rudder under these conditions — airborne, con-

figured for landing and at an in-creased angle of attack — caused [the leading T-38C) to roll and yaw to the right and placed [it] on a collision course with [the trail-ing aircraft],” the report said.

Though Kincade could not have prevented the collision after Wilkie used the rudder, he should have intervened beforehand, ac-cording to the report.

Brig. Gen. Evan Pettus, the ac-cident board’s president, found that Kincade failed to take control of the jet “as a precarious situa-tion developed” and that Wilkie subsequently made “an inappro-priate flight control input,” the report said.

Pettus also found that Wilkie was overly focused on his wing-man and did not adequately cross-check his runway alignment before touching down, according to the report.

Kincade was assigned to Vance’s 5th Flying Squadron. Wilkie was with the base’s 25th Flying Wing.

[email protected]: @bolingerj2004

MILITARY

200 airmen and 4 B-1 bombers deploy to Guam

Air Force: Pilots at fault for fatal Oklahoma T-38C training collision

Marine recruit from New York dies during military fitness test

TAYLOR CRUL/U.S. Air Force

Pilots from the 25th Flying Training Squadron and the 5th Flying Training Squadron soar over Oklahoma in T-38C Talons, July 25, 2019.

RIVER BRUCE/U.S. Air Force

A B-1B Lancer bomber sits on the flight line at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, on Friday .

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •

Associated Press

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — Signs Friday that several big meatpack-ing plants will soon reopen might appear to support President Don-ald Trump’s assertion that he had “solved their problems” in keeping grocery stores’ coolers stocked during the coronavirus crisis. But the reality isn’t likely to be so easy.

Though meatpackers have been moving to shift operations to make employees less vulnerable to coronavirus infection, they still have a workforce depleted by ill-ness, with at least 4,900 employ-ees nationwide infected. Many others may be unwilling to risk entering plants that have been rife with infections. Even plants that keep the production lines moving will have to do so more slowly, renewing concerns about whether Americans can count on seeing as much meat as they’re used to.

A Smithfield Foods pork pro-cessing plant in South Dakota where more than 850 workers tested positive will partially re-open Monday after shuttering for more than two weeks, a union that represents plant workers said Friday. And Arkansas-based Tyson Foods said its Logansport, Ind. , pork processing plant where nearly 900 employees tested posi-tive will also resume “limited production” on Monday.

“We toured the plant and feel the additional measures imple-mented will allow employees to work safely, while continuing to follow (Centers for Disease Con-trol and Prevention) guidelines and recommendations,” Dori Ditty, the health officer for the county where the Tyson plant is located, said in a statement.

As Trump touted his executive order on Wednesday that requires meat plants to stay open, he sug-gested it would solve the break-down in the food supply chain that threatens the availability of meat in grocery stores while farmers face the prospect of euthanizing hundreds of thousands of healthy pigs.

“We solved their problems,” the

president said Wednesday after getting off a call with meatpack-ing executives. “We unblocked some of the bottlenecks.”

But the clearing of those “bot-tlenecks” depends on thousands of people who work physically-demanding jobs that must be

performed by hand and can take weeks to learn. In the latest sign of the strain on workers, Mis-souri health officials said Friday

that nearly 300 employees at a Triumph Foods pork plant in St.Joseph have tested positive forthe virus.

“I think it’s ridiculous that (Ag-riculture Secretary) Sonny Per-due can think all of a sudden hecan wave a magic wand and all of a sudden these plants are going tooperate at capacity,” said MarkLauritsen, who directs the meat-packers division at the United Food and Commercial Workers union.

According to a CDC report re-leased Friday, more than 4,900 workers at meat and poultry processing facilities have beendiagnosed with the coronavirus,including 20 who died. The ill-nesses occurred among 130,000 workers at 115 facilities in 19states, according to the CDC. Some states didn’t provide data,so the actual count is believed tobe higher.

The researchers said plantworkers may be at risk for a num-ber of reasons, including difficul-ties with physical distancing and hygiene and crowded living and transportation conditions. Theysuggested that disinfection be enhanced and that workers getregular screening for the virus,more space from co-workers and training materials in their native languages.

The United Food and Commer-cial Workers union, which rep-resents roughly 80% of beef andpork workers and 33% of poultryworkers nationwide, has appealedto governors for help enforcingworker safety rules. They also want to get rid of waivers thatallow some plants to operate atfaster speeds.

With so many employees stay-ing home because they are sick or worried about getting sick, manyplants are operating only at half capacity, according to Lauritsen.

Smithfield Foods asked about250 employees to report to its Sioux Falls plant on Monday to staff two departments — groundseasoned pork and night cleanup,according to the United Foodand Commercial Workers unionlocal.

Sunday, May 3, 2020

FROM FRONT PAGE

Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn.

“This was lightning speed in terms of getting something ap-proved” said Hahn, calling the drug “an important clinical advance.”

The FDA acted after prelimi-nary results from a government-sponsored study showed that the drug, remdesivir, shortened the time to recovery by 31%, or about four days on average, for hospital-ized COVID-19 patients.

Those given the drug were able to leave the hospital in 11 days on average vs. 15 days for the com-parison group. The drug may also help avert deaths, but that effect

is not yet large enough for scien-tists to know for sure.

Dr. Sameer Khanijo, a critical care specialist, said he wants to see additional studies to clarify the drug’s benefit.

“I don’t think this is a cure yet, but I think it’s starting to point us in the right direction,” said Khanijo of North Shore Univer-sity Hospital in New York. “As a society it’s nice to have something that will help stem the tide of this disease.”

The FDA said preliminary re-sults from the government study warranted Friday’s decision, though regulators acknowledged “there is limited information known about the safety and effec-

tiveness of using remdesivir.”The drug’s side effects include

potential inflammation of the liver and problems related to its infusion, which could lead to nausea, vomiting, sweating and low blood pressure. Information about dosing and potential safety issues will be provided to physi-cians and patients, the FDA said.

The National Institutes of Health’s Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday the drug would be-come a new standard of care for severely ill COVID-19 patients. Remdesivir, which blocks an en-zyme the virus uses to copy its ge-netic material, has not been tested on people with milder illness.

The FDA authorized the drug

under its emergency powers to quickly speed the availability of experimental drugs, tests and other medical products during public health crises.

In normal times the FDA re-quires “substantial evidence” of a drug’s safety and effectiveness, usually through one or more large, rigorously controlled pa-tient studies. But during public health emergencies the agency can waive those standards and require only that an experimen-tal treatment’s potential benefits outweigh its risks.

Gilead has said it will donate its currently available stock of the drug and is ramping up pro-duction to make more. It said the

U.S. government would coordi-nate distribution of remdesivirto parts of the country that needit most. No drugs are currentlyFDA-approved for treating thecoronavirus, and remdesivir will still need formal approval.

The FDA can convert the drug’s status to full approval if Gilead orother researchers provide addi-tional data of remdesivir’s safetyand effectiveness.

“This is a very, very early stage so you wouldn’t expect to have any sort of full approval at thispoint,” said Cathy Burgess, anattorney specializing in FDA is-sues. “But obviously they want to get this out to patients as quicklyas possible.”

VIRUS OUTBREAK

Hope: FDA uses emergency powers to authorize use of experimental drug

Reopened meat plants may not be cure-all

FROM FRONT PAGE

Depending on supply, each store can increase or decrease as needed, according to the news release. Each affected store will post quantity limits to inform customers, similar to signs indicating limits for toilet paper, sanitizers, canned food items and other items in high demand because of the pan-demic. Limits on those items began March 14 and vary based on location.

Placing shopping limits on fresh meat will particularly keep commissaries that don’t receive daily meat deliveries from having their meat inven-tory wiped out because of panic buying, Bianchi said. These

limits will be removed once supply chain operations return to normal.

“We always recommend to our customers that they pur-chase what they need and avoid any panic buying to ensure products are available for oth-ers in their communities,” Bi-anchi said.

Overseas commissaries are not impacted because the agen-cy has enough supply on hand to avoid limits in stores, accord-ing to the release.

“Our overseas supply chain remains strong,” Bianchi said. “In addition, we continue to pri-oritize quantities for our over-seas shipments, so we should be able to support the demand. If

we experience any unexpected major hiccups in the pipeline, we will look at expanding shop-ping limits to other locations.”

From the start of the corona-virus outbreak, commissaries overseas – starting with stores in Italy, South Korea and Japan – instituted shopping limits on items such as hand sanitizers, disinfectants and toilet paper.

“We know this is a poten-tially stressful time for all concerned,” Bianchi said. “But together we will meet these challenges and support our ser-vice members and their fami-lies throughout the duration of this crisis wherever [email protected]: @Rose_Lori

Limit: Quantities to be posted for customers

KEMBERLY GROUE/U.S. Air Force

Keesler personnel select limited meat items for purchase inside the Commissary at Keesler Air Force Base, Mississippi, in March.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 5

Associated Press

GRETNA, La. — More than a dozen states let restaurants, stores or other businesses reopen Friday in the biggest one-day push yet to get their economies up and run-ning again, acting at their own speed and with their own quirks and restrictions to make sure the coronavirus doesn’t come storm-ing back.

People in Louisiana could eat at restaurants again but had to sit outside at tables 10 feet apart with no waiter service. Maine residents could attend church services as long as they stayed in their cars. And a Nebraska mall reopened with plexiglass barriers and hand-sanitizing stations but few shoppers.

“I feel like I just got out of jail!” accountant Joy Palermo exclaimed as she sat down with a bacon-garnished bloody mary at the Gretna Depot Cafe outside New Orleans.

President Donald Trump said Friday that he’s hoping the total number of COVID-19 deaths in the United States will be below 100,000, which he acknowledged is a “horrible number.” Trump’s predictions of the expected U.S. death toll have changed over time, with his earlier 60,000 projection now being eclipsed. But he said at a White House event that “maybe millions of lives” have been saved by shutting down the economy.

With the crisis stabilizing in many places in the U.S., states are gradually easing their re-strictions amid warnings from

health experts that a second wave of infections could hit unless testing for the virus is expanded dramatically.

In much of Colorado, people could get their hair cut and shop at stores again, though stay-at-home orders remained in place in Denver and surrounding coun-

ties. Wyoming let barbershops, nail salons, gyms and day care-centers reopen. In Maine, golf courses, hairdressers and den-tists opened.

Hotels near South Carolina beaches opened, and state parks unlocked their gates for the first time in more than a month. But

in Myrtle Beach, the state’s most popular tourist destination, hotel elevators will be restricted to one person or one family — a poten-tial inconvenience at the area’s 15- and 20-story resorts.

Texas’ reopening got underway with sparse crowds at shopping malls and restaurants allowing

customers to dine in, though only at 25% capacity in most places.A video posted on social media showed a city park ranger in Aus-tin getting shoved into the waterThursday while asking people ina crowd to keep 6 feet apart from each other. Police charged a 25-year-old man with attemptedassault.

At Gattuso’s Restaurant inGretna, La., Kent and Doris Al-imia and their daughters, Mollyand Emily, celebrated Molly’s 22nd birthday at one of the out-door tables, which were screened by plants in wooden planters 5 feet high.

“It’s a nice change of scenery to actually get out of the house,”Molly Alimia said.

Outside Omaha, Neb., JasmineRamos was among a half-dozen shoppers wandering the open-airNebraska Crossing mall. Most wore masks.

“I do think it’s a little soon, but it’s kind of slow and there aren’t a lot of people here, so I’m not tooworried,” Ramos said.

Restrictions were still in place in Arizona, but warnings from po-lice and health officials didn’t stopDebbie Thompson from servingfood Friday inside her HorseshoeCafe in Wickenburg, a town of 6,300 people about 65 miles west of Phoenix. Cheered on by a fewcustomers, Thompson was not arrested, but she later receiveda call from the state Departmentof Health Services telling her tostop violating Gov. Doug Ducey’sstay-at-home order.

Sunday, May 3, 2020

BY JOYCE M. ROSENBERGAssociated Press

NEW YORK — Before the coronavirus outbreak, furniture deliveries at Sunnyland Outdoor Living meant two employees sit-ting side-by-side in a truck. Now, one will be driving the truck while the second follows in a car.

And when Sunnyland’s workers reach a customer’s home, “we’ll deliver outside — we won’t go in-side people’s houses,” says Brad Schweig, the Texas retailer’s vice president for operations.

Employee safety is a priority as small and midsize businesses rehire laid-off employees and get back to work, and many owners realize that supplying masks and gloves won’t be enough.

Many staffers are anxious about increased contact with others that could make them more vulnerable to catching the virus — feelings owners under-stand that they need to consider. They’re staggering work hours and shifts to cut the number of people on-site. They’re also redo-ing floor plans and operations to minimize contact — a step that also helps keep customers safe.

Georgia has already allowed businesses like hair and nail sa-lons, restaurants and gyms to

open with social distancing re-strictions. Alabama has allowed some limited openings, and Texas and Colorado permitted many companies to reopen on Friday. Around the country own-ers are recalling laid-off workers although they can’t resume full operations yet; with government loan money arriving, companies can pay their workers again.

The steps that businesses are taking are in line with recent guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Some of it is common sense that we should have been doing long before this,” says Louise McCullough, who hopes to soon reopen her dog care company, Paws Chateau in Huntington Beach, Calif.

Before the virus struck, clients would walk their dogs into Paws Chateau and hand the leashes over to staffers. Now McCullough is creating a safe space where dogs will be unleashed by own-ers outside the building, and then staffers will wipe the dogs down with pet-safe antiseptic soap and take them inside.

Wolf’s Ridge Brewing, a restau-rant and bar in Columbus, Ohio, is a large establishment, with three kitchens. Co-owner Bob Szuter is using all three even though his business right now is limited to takeout and delivery. On a busy Friday or Saturday night, this al-lows for just four to five staffers in each kitchen instead of the usual 15 or 20.

Szuter recalled about 25 staff-ers after the company received government loan money, bring-ing the work force to about 50. As he plans for how Wolf’s Ridge will operate safely when the state al-lows restaurants to resume table service, Szuter is including staff-ers in the process.

“It’s going to be a negotiation with them. We’re asking them, ‘hey, what do you guys feel com-fortable doing?’” Szuter says.

Atrend, an audio equipment manufacturer that’s now produc-

ing protective gear for health workers, has spread its 22 em-ployees across its 50,000-footwarehouse in Chicago — they’re no longer working side by side.And while they used to take cof-fee and lunch breaks together, those traditions are on hold.

“They’re in the break room bythemselves — their breaks are allstaggered,” CEO Kevin Hundalsays.

Staffers are also now getting more than a “good morning” asthey arrive. Hundal is taking staffers’ temperatures, and ifsomeone has a reading of 100.4 degrees or higher, he’ll send themhome.

Monitoring employees’ symp-toms, which can include taking temperatures, is something the CDC is encouraging employersto do. But as owners take on that new routine, they may find them-selves dealing with confidential-ity issues, says Hagood Tighe, alabor law attorney with Fisher Phillips in Columbia, S.C.

“If employers are doing that,they need to be doing it in such a way that an employee’s privacyis protected,” Tighe said. Thatmeans testing in a private area, something that may be difficult ina business with close quarters.

LM OTERO/AP

Brad Schweig looks over paperwork after unloading products as he prepares his family-owned retail store, Sunnyland Outdoor Living, for a limited reopening in Dallas, Texas.

Stabilizing states begin to restart economies

Priority for reopening businesses is employee safety, comfort

VIRUS OUTBREAK

MARK J. TERRILL/AP

Linda White poses with a sign as she celebrates graduating with a Bachelor of Science in elementary education and special education from Grand Canyon University on Friday in Simi Valley, Calif. White could not go to the graduation ceremony in Arizona because of pandemic restrictions.


Associated Press

BARCELONA, Spain — Span-iards filled the streets Saturday to exercise outside in gorgeous spring weather for the first time in seven weeks, while German children rushed to playgrounds as countries in Western Europe moved ahead with the gradual re-laxation of coronavirus lockdown restrictions.

Russia and Pakistan, however, reported their biggest one-day spikes in new infections, in a sign the pandemic is far from over.

Concern was growing in Mos-cow about the possibility that hospitals might become over-whelmed after Russia recorded a new one-day high of 9,633 new infections, a 20% increase over Friday’s count which, itself, was a new daily record.

Russia has now reported 124,054 total cases, with 15,013 recoveries and 1,222 fatalities. True numbers are believed to be higher because not everyone is tested and Russian tests are reported to be only 70% to 80% accurate.

Moscow’s mayor said this week that officials are considering es-tablishing temporary hospitals at sports complexes and shop-ping malls to deal with the in-flux of patients. Infection cases have reached the highest levels of government, with both the prime minister and the construction

minister reporting they had con-tracted the virus.

At the same time, Spain, one of the worst-hit countries in the world with 24,543 deaths and more than 213,000 cases of COVID-19, was rolling back such emergency measures that helped bring the outbreak under control and save hospitals from collapse. A huge field hospital the military helped set up at a Madrid conven-tion center was closed on Friday, and the capital has already closed a makeshift morgue the army had established at an ice rink in a shopping mall.

Since Spain’s lockdown started March 14, only adults have been able to leave home, for shopping for food, medicine and other es-sential goods, and to walk dogs close to home. The lockdown is credited with succeeding in re-ducing daily increases of infec-tions from more than 20% to less than 1%.

As restrictions were relaxed Saturday, people ran, walked, or rode bicycles under a brilliant sunny sky in Barcelona, where many flocked to the maritime promenade to get as close as pos-sible to the still-off-limits beach.

“I feel good, but tired. You sure notice that it has been a month and I am not in shape,” 36-year-old Cristina Palomeque said in Barcelona. “Some people think it may be too early, as I do, but it is

also important to do exercise for health reasons.”

The government has set up time slots for age groups and activities, and social-distancing measures are still in place.

Spain has detailed a complex rollback plan that will vary by province. Those with the fewest cases and with health care re-sources in place to handle a re-bound of the virus will be the first to enjoy a further loosening of the measures.

The virus has killed more than 238,000 people worldwide, including more than 65,000 in the United States and more than 20,000 each in Italy, Britain, France and Spain, according to

a count kept by Johns Hopkins University. Health experts warn a second wave of infections could hit unless testing is expanded dramatically.

In Italy, which has seen 28,000 deaths, people looked enviously on at Spain as they awaited their own relaxation of restrictions now that the number of new cases has leveled out. On Monday, peo-ple will be allowed out to walk or jog, though most stores need to remain closed.

Germany, which has registered more than 164,000 cases but seen only about 6,700 deaths, has strict social distancing guidelines but never restricted people going out-side for exercise. Smaller shops

have already been opened andthis is the first weekend in whichplaygrounds, museums and zooshave been permitted to open aswell.

Elsewhere, China, where the pandemic began in December, re-ported a single new infection Sat-urday, extending a steady declinein confirmed cases. South Koreareported six new cases on Satur-day, none of them in the hard-hit city of Daegu in the southeast.Both countries are easing anti-virus controls and reviving eco-nomic activity.

But Pakistan on Saturday an-nounced 1,297 new cases, rais-ing the total in the country of 220million people to 18,114.

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — A spokesman for a key House panel said Friday that the White House has blocked Dr. Anthony Fauci from testifying next week at a hearing on the coronavirus outbreak.

House Appropriations Commit-tee spokesman Evan Hollander said the panel sought Fauci — the highly respected director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious

Diseases — as a witness for a sub-committee hearing on the govern-ment’s response to the pandemic, but was denied. Hollander said the panel was informed by an administration official that Fauci’s testimony was blocked by the White House.

The White House said Fauci is busy dealing with the pandemic and will appear before Congress later. In fact, Fauci is set to appear the week after next at a Senate hearing, a spokesperson for the Health, Educa-

tion, Labor and Pensions committee said. The Senate is held by Trump’s Republican allies while the House is controlled by Democrats.

“While the Trump Administration continues its whole-of-government response to COVID-19, including safely opening up America again and expediting vaccine development, it is counter-productive to have the very individuals involved in those efforts appearing at Congressional hear-ings,” said White House spokesman

Judd Deere. “We are committed to working with Congress to offer testi-mony at the appropriate time.”

Fauci is the top scientist on Presi-dent Donald Trump’s coronavirustask force and is no stranger to tes-tifying before Congress. He hassometimes contradicted Trump’s optimistic misstatements about the virus and how much it is under con-trol after claiming more than 64,000 lives in the U.S.

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The Senate is set to convene Monday but the health risks from the coronavirus are being laid bare as the Capitol physician says there is no way to quickly test the 100 senators and staff.

It’s a high-profile snapshot of the nation-al testing shortfall as the Trump adminis-tration strives to resume business as usual to kick-start the economy.

“The sooner we can have testing, the safer we’ll be,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Thursday on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

As Congress prepares to partially re-turn this week, the legislative branch will

be a changed place, after all but shutter-ing for more than a month amid the virus outbreak.

Senators are being advised to wear masks, stay six feet apart and keep most of their staff working from home, according to official guidance provided to top staff.

Republicans will resume their private lunches, but it will be just three senators to a table. Democrats will have lunch by conference call.

Testing though, and the stark lack of it, is sounding alarms.

On a conference call Thursday, the Capi-tol physician said his office does not have a testing system available for instant virus checks, as happens at the White House, ac-

cording to a Republican familiar with the call with GOP chiefs of staff.

Instead, the physician said the office only checks those lawmakers who are showing symptoms. Test results can take up to seven days, he told them.

The U.S. Capitol remains closed to visi-tors, a shutdown extended to mid-May, and the Washington, D.C., region remains under stay-home orders.

“This is a dangerous moment in our region,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., whose district includes the surrounding suburbs that are home to many federal workers.

While the Senate has scheduled key public hearings, guidance from the Sen-

ate Rules Committee says people can view the proceedings online. Several Housecommittees are also expected to hold hearings.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McCo-nnell’s office is expected to send out ad-ditional guidance ahead of Monday’sscheduled reopening, officials said.

The House declined last week to bringits 400-plus members back into session after the Capitol physician warned it wasnot worth the health risks.

McConnell has declined to say if he con-sulted with the physician in deciding to re-sume Senate operations.

“I think we can conduct our business safely,” McConnell said this week on Fox.

White House blocking Fauci testimony to House panel

Fauci

Senate to convene with risks because of lack of quick testing

VIRUS OUTBREAK

Parts of Europe ease restrictions

ALVARO BARRIENTOS/AP

A woman wearing a face mask to protect against coronavirus goes for a walk with her pet in Vuelta del Castillo park in Pamplona, northern Spain, on Saturday .


BY CRAIG TIMBERG, ELIZABETH DWOSKIN

AND MORIAH BALINGITThe Washington Post

Protests against covid-related government restrictions contin-ued to spread on Friday as a co-alition of gun activists, vaccine opponents and anxious business owners used the organizing power of social media to build increas-ingly visible and vocal opposition movements in several states.

Crowds waving signs, honking horns, and demanding an im-mediate relaxation of measures imposed to slow the pandemic gathered in Chicago, Raleigh, N.C. , Los Angeles and Sacra-mento, Calif. , on Friday. More protests were planned for the weekend, including in the state capitals of Kentucky, Oregon and New Hampshire, despite polling consistently showing that most Americans support public-health restrictions by governors and mayors even as the economic toll mounts.

The protests at first were mostly small and scattered, often organized by a few ardent gun-rights activists, but the events drew mainstream attention and support this week, and dozens more are planned for the coming days. Hundreds of protesters in Michigan — many of them car-rying guns and wearing mili-tary gear and some shouting at officers wearing protective face masks — entered the state Capitol in Lansing on Thursday.

“What an incredibly beautiful and freedom-invoking vision,” said Karen Kirkpatrick Hoop, 49, a consultant in the insurance industry who drove two hours to attend the protest in Lansing with her two children, demonstrat-ing alongside members of militia groups dressed in army fatigues and carrying rifles. “This is an international movement of people that are fed up with an increase in government control.”

Images of that protest and oth-ers — some of them doctored to make the crowd appear bigger or alter the messages of the protest-ers — spread around the world through news reports, as well as links on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, underscoring the so-cial media savvy of the protesters and their potential to create simi-larly vivid new scenes around the nation.

The growing political stakes were heightened overnight as Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whit-mer, a Democrat, hours after the protest, extended stay-at-home restrictions until May 28, prompt-ing President Donald Trump to tweet Friday morning that she should “give a little, and put out the fire.”

Many of the protesters are mo-tivated by the deepening econom-ic crisis caused by the pandemic and frustration with the stay-at-home orders issued by governors and mayors across the country. In Washington, truckers parked near the White House on Friday, honking their horns, to protest

low rates for freight during the pandemic.

“We’re compassionate people, and we care about lives. Our whole movement is because we care about lives. Not only people directly affected by covid, but for the millions of people who have filed for unemployment and are lining up a food banks, and the business owners who have worked for years to build their business,” said Jeremy Wood, a home supply business owner who is a spokesman for the “The Great 48!,” a private Facebook group of Arizona business owners that has more than 25,000 members and is organizing a protest for Sunday.

Others active in the burgeoning movement question the legality of the restrictions and whether they are an overreaction to a pandemic that has killed more than 64,000 Americans since the end of Feb-ruary and infected more than 1.1 million.

“If this was as bad as every-body says, the employees at Kroger and Walmart should be dropping like flies, and they’re not,” said Lee Watts, a Kentucky chaplain organizing a protest that was planned for the state Capitol steps Saturday. Kentucky has had 240 covid deaths, and dozens of grocery workers have died from coronavirus across the U.S., ac-cording to the United Food and Commercial Workers, the union that represents them.

In many cases the protests, which have been supported by conservative megadonors, have ties to a host of darker Internet subcultures — people who oppose vaccination, white supremacists such as the Proud Boys, anti-government conspiracy theorists known as QAnon, and people touting a coming civil war.

These groups see the corona-

virus crisis as a vehicle to spread their beliefs, said Devin Burghart, president of the Institute for Re-search and Education on Human Rights, a nonprofit group that monitors far-right activity and has been tallying the protests. More than 100 such events in 32 states are planned for the coming days, Burghart said. But he added that it was unclear how many were actual events or merely the work of local and far-flung activ-ists throwing up a Facebook page to try to build more momentum for their causes.

“By organizing on Facebook, these groups are harnessing the coordinated power of the Internet to stage flash protests in public places — strategies that were once tactics used by left-wing move-ments like Black Lives Matter,” said Joan Donovan, Research Di-rector of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Pol-icy at Harvard University. “Now though, it threatens the health of the protesters and the police who must enforce stay-at-home orders.”

The protests also are fueled by an Internet echo chamber of medical misinformation that has been amplified by conservative news personalities, some busi-ness leaders and by President Trump.

A debunked viral video by two California doctors, for example, claiming that covid-19 is no dead-lier than the flu was touted on Twitter by Tesla CEO Elon Musk. YouTube’s removal of the video landed the doctors an appear-ance on the Tucker Carlson show on Fox, adding to its legitimacy and its reach.

Erica Pettinaro, 28, who works part-time as a medical assistant and doula near Flint, Mich. , said she is suspicious of the death

toll reported from covid-19 and does not believe that the govern-ment should be counting people who contract the virus and die of pneumonia, even though the term describes any infection that in-vades the lungs

Pettinaro, a mother of five, co-founded Michigan United for Liberty, a group that has sued Whitmer over the restrictions im-posed during the pandemic and urged businesses to open Friday in defiance of the state order. The group organized Thursday’s pro-test at the state capitol.

She thinks states are “fluffing” their numbers because they have a perverse incentive: “The more deaths and cases that you have, the more federal funding you get,” said Pettinaro.

The group’s members have at-tended and organized protests that have rattled the state capitol in recent weeks, drawing heav-ily armed militia members and creating a spectacle that made international news.” Its Facebook page has more than 6,700 fol-lowers, and it now has a website. It has offered legal assistance to business owners who face pros-ecution for opening in defiance of the governor’s shutdown orders.

Some of the more visible pro-tests include elements that ap-pear designed to become Internet memes and make the protests appear bigger than they are or change the messages on signs. In one instance, a sign carried by a protester in California that said “Give me liberty or Give me Death” was changed to one that appeared to blame former president Barack Obama for the coronavirus.

Earlier this month, a video of an Idaho mother who was arrest-ed after letting her kids play on a playground that was surrounded

by police tape went viral in far-right circles, pushed out by theconspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

The mother, Sara WaltonBrady, is an anti-vaccine activistwith connections to a number ofconservative groups, said Dono-van. The video was live-streamedon Facebook by supporters, and the incident followed an earlier anti-quarantine demonstration inIdaho organized by anti-vaccineactivists, the gun rights groupSecond Amendment Alliance,and the Idaho Freedom Founda-tion, a politically prominent con-servative group in the state.

Brady did not reply to calls andtexts seeking comment.

Shortly after Brady’s arrest,far-right anti-government activ-ist Ammon Bundy staged a pro-test outside the home of the Idahopolice officer that arrested her,prompting several copycat stand-offs against police, said Burghart,of the Institute for Research andEducation on Human Rights.

“Creating spectacles for media isn’t new, but now organizers are working to ensure that the protestis optimized to be live-streamed, tailored to become a meme,” saidRenee DiResta, technical re-search manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory. “The audi-ence for a local protest is muchbigger than the local community. It’s the ideological community online.”

Even though the hate groupProud Boys were not early pro-test organizers, they have shownup at protests to spread their ideas. Members have appearedor spoken at rallies and demon-strations in Michigan, Colorado,Nevada, and Florida, according to the Southern Poverty Law Cen-ter. Group members have spread xenophobic messages, including blaming China and Chinese peo-ple for the virus.

In Michigan, the protests come as Whitmer, the first Demo-crat to lead the state in nearly adecade, continues to draw theire of Trump, whose responseto the pandemic she has called inadequate.

Whitmer’s own national pro-file, meanwhile, has risen, spur-ring speculation that the Bidencampaign is considering asking her to join his ticket.

But this has not helped her standing with Republican law-makers, who dominate the state-house. The governor remains in a tense standoff with Republicanlawmakers, who say she does nothave the authority to extend theemergency declaration and laid the groundwork to sue her Thurs-day. Friday, after extending theemergency declaration over the objections of Republicans, she reflected on the demonstrationsthat had drawn heavily armedprotesters to the capitol.

“Yesterday’s scene at the capi-tol was disturbing, to be quitehonest,” she said. “Swastikas and Confederate flags, nooses andautomatic rifles do not represent who we are as Michiganders. Thisstate has a history of people com-ing together in times of crisis.”

VIRUS OUTBREAK

Economic anxiety fuels spreading protests

RICH PEDRONCELLI/AP

A protester is detained by California Highway Patrol officers during a demonstration against stay-at-home orders due to the coronavirus pandemic at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif., on Friday .

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •

Associated Press

NEW YORK — A New York City nursing home on Friday re-ported the deaths of 98 residents believed to have had the corona-virus — a staggering death toll that shocked public officials.

“It’s absolutely horrifying,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said. “It’s an inestimable loss, and it’s just impossible to imagine so many people lost in one place.”

It is hard to say whether the spate of deaths at the Isabella Ge-riatric Center, in Manhattan, is the worst nursing home outbreak yet in the U.S. because even within the city facilities have chosen to report fatalities in dif-ferent ways. A state tally of nurs-ing home deaths released Friday listed only 13 at the home.

But officials at the 705-bed center confirmed that through Wednesday 46 residents who tested positive for COVID-19 had died as well as an additional 52 people “suspected” to have the virus. Some died at the nursing home and some died after being treated at hospitals.

The number of bodies became so overwhelming the home or-dered a refrigerator truck to store them because funeral homes have been taking days to pick up the deceased.

“Isabella, like all other nursing homes in New York City, initially had limited access to widespread and consistent in-house testing to quickly diagnose our resi-dents and staff,” Audrey Waters, a spokeswoman for the nursing home, wrote in an email. “This hampered our ability to identify those who were infected and as-ymptomatic, despite our efforts to swiftly separate anyone who pre-sented symptoms.”

Alabama MONTGOMERY — A lawsuit

filed Friday challenges Alabama’s election procedures by argu-ing that restrictions on absentee ballots and a lack of other voting methods jeopardize the health of voters — especially older voters, black voters, and voters with dis-abilities — during the coronavi-rus outbreak.

The lawsuit filed by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Alabama Disabili-ties Advocacy Program alleges that Alabama’s rules will require people to choose between voting and protecting their health.

Alabama absentee voters are currently required to submit pho-tocopies of their photo identifica-tion as well as sign the absentee ballot before a notary or two wit-nesses. The lawsuit asks a federal judge to waive those mandates and also force the state to offer curbside voting.

The lawsuit notes that many people do not have a way to photocopy their ID or lack ID completely. The existing require-ments create a particular barrier

for older voters, black voters and disabled voters who are also the groups most at risk for COVID-19 complications, the plaintiffs said.

“No one should have to choose between their life or their vote,” LDF Senior Counsel Deuel Ross said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.

California LOS ANGELES — A week

after Californians weary of stay-at-home orders packed beaches, authorities pleaded for weekend visitors to follow social distancing rules: no bunching, keep walking or swimming, and leave the um-brellas at home.

Lifeguards and police will be out in force Saturday even in cit-ies that are battling Gov. Gavin Newsom’s new order that took effect Friday and singled out Or-ange County beaches for closure.

In Huntington Beach, Police Chief Robert Handy said officers would start with warning people who hit the sands and move on to citations but would end with “ar-rests if we have to.”

In neighboring Newport Beach, the city put out barricades and spoke with surfers to advise them of the closure, and said people were quick to comply.

In San Diego, where people can exercise on the beach but not linger, Mayor Kevin L. Faul-coner praised residents for heeding safety restrictions that public health officials have cred-ited at slowing the spread of the coronavirus.

Indiana INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana

Gov. Eric Holcomb announced Friday the steps toward relaxing business and activity restrictions imposed to slow the coronavirus spread for much of the state, al-lowing more manufacturers, retailers and shopping malls to open their doors, starting Mon-day, under health and social dis-tancing guidelines.

The Republican governor’s plan aims to gradually ease rules with the goal of allowing nearly all activities to resume on July 4, potentially opening the way for major summer events such as the rescheduled Indianapolis 500 on Aug. 23.

The new directive lifts travel restrictions under the statewide stay-at-home order that took ef-fect March 25 but doesn’t allow restaurants to resume in-person dining or hair salon reopenings for another week. Fitness cen-ters, movie theaters, bars and ca-sinos are among businesses that will remain closed until at least late May. A decision on whether schools will reopen in the fall won’t be made until later.

Kansas TOPEKA — Kansas began re-

leasing inmates this week as a way to check the spread of coro-

navirus in its prison system but stopped when an outbreak mush-roomed and created a danger of returning infected offenders to their communities, Gov. Laura Kelly said Friday.

Kelly said during an Associated Press interview that the Depart-ment of Corrections released only six inmates and put them under house arrest for the rest of their sentences. But confirmed coro-navirus cases at the Lansing Cor-rectional Facility outside Kansas City have skyrocketed among in-mates and staff, and the prison is under quarantine.

“We got the testing results at Lansing and realized that we had some other work to do before we could let anybody else go,” Kelly said. The Department of Correc-tions said none of the six released were from Lansing.

Minnesota MINNEAPOLIS — Staffing

has become such a challenge at some Minnesota care facilities due to the coronavirus outbreak that a few aren’t sure how they’re going to get through the weekend, the head of an industry group said Friday.

Minnesota’s congregate-care facilities were already strug-gling to hire enough staff before the pandemic hit, said Patti Cul-len, president of Care Providers of Minnesota, which represents about half of the state’s senior care communities. But now, when a staffer or resident tests positive, employees who’ve been exposed to them have to isolate them-selves. So, a facility can start the day thinking it’s in good shape but suddenly find itself in trouble, she said.

“We are familiar with two or three that are really straining for this weekend, but it could happen to any facility if you have to send staff home,” Cullen said in an in-terview but declined to identify them.

It’s hard for a lot of long-term care facilities to pay competitive

wages, she said. Evening and nighttime shifts are particularly hard to fill, and some employees might stay home because they don’t want to risk infecting fam-ily members.

NevadaCARSON CITY — A newly

formed state Department of Edu-cation committee has been tasked with helping develop a plan and guidelines for Nevada’s school districts and charter schools to reopen for the 2020-2021 aca-demic year.

State Superintendent Jhone Ebert said the committee in-cludes school district superinten-dents, health officials and safety experts.

Gov. Steve Sisolak directed that schools continue operations during the current school year by providing distance learning to students. Ebert said that has raised challenges that include access to technology, training teachers and quality instruction-al materials.

A newly formed educational collaborative will use federal as-sistance to bolster distance learn-ing capabilities, Ebert said.

New Mexico SANTA FE — A modern-day

trading post on the southern outskirts of the Navajo Nation was on lockdown over the week-end under the watch of National Guard troops and state police to discourage nonessential travel and commerce as local coronavi-rus infections soar.

Invoking provisions of the state Riot Control Act, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham ordered residents of Gallup to re-main home except for emergen-cies and blocked roads leading in and out of town to nonessential travel and any vehicles carrying more than two people.

The restrictions were wel-comed by local and state officials who have watched COVID-19 in-fections spread to nursing homes

and homeless populations as well as overwhelm hospital intensivecare units, leading coronavi-rus patients to be transferred to Albuquerque.

Some visitors were caught off guard as they traveled from theNavajo Nation to stock up on sup-plies, only to find entire sectionsof the Gallup Walmart cordonedoff as sales were restricted to foodand other essential commodities.

Washington SEATTLE — Hispanic, Pacific

Islander and black residents inthe Seattle area are being dispro-portionately sickened by COVID-19, and Hispanic residents are more than twice as likely to diefrom the disease as whites, public health officials said Friday.

The county’s top health of-ficer, Dr. Jeff Duchin, said thedata echo findings from otherparts of the country that minori-ties are being hit harder by thenovel coronavirus. It reflects long-standing discrepancies withhousing, work, language barriers, access to healthcare and environ-mental problems that can lead toworse health outcomes for minor-ities, he said.

“No one should be surprised we’re seeing these disparities inCOVID-19 disease,” Duchin told amedia briefing. “It’s been an ongo-ing national tragedy and a shamethat we have had communities ofcolor throughout our country suf-fering disproportionate adversehealth impact from a wide vari-ety of health conditions. ”

King County, which sufferedthe nation’s first severe outbreakat a Kirkland nursing home, had 6,348 confirmed COVID-19 cases as of Friday, or 285 per 100,000 residents. Among minor-ity groups, Hawaiian natives andPacific Islanders had the high-est rate of cases, about 666 per100,000 residents, followed byHispanic or Latino residents at628 and blacks at 328, the county said. There were about 149 casesper 100,000 white residents.

Sunday, May 3, 2020

New York nursing home reports 98 new deaths

VIRUS OUTBREAK ROUNDUP

PETER MORGAN/AP

Shoppers wait on one of several lines to make purchases at the farmer’s market at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn on Saturday . As warmer temperatures tempted New Yorkers to come out of quarantine


BY LAURIE KELLMAN AND BILL BARROW

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — “Believe women” was never a call to be-lieve all women automatically.

That’s what leading Democrats, including the prominent figures of the #MeToo movement, are suggesting as they stand behind former Vice President Joe Biden and his bid to unseat President

Donald Trump. From House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the fe-

male senators who ran for presi-dent and prominent Hollywood activists, they’re not backing down after Biden on Friday pub-licly denied a former aide’s ac-cusation that he assaulted her in 1993.

“It never happened,” Biden said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “Believing women means tak-ing the woman’s claim seriously when she steps forward, and then vet it, look into it. That’s true in this case as well. ... But in the end, the truth is what matters, and in this case, the truth is the claims are false.”

It was largely the denial Demo-crats were hoping for.

Even so, there was a clear dis-comfort and perhaps resentment with being on defense on the issue while campaigning against a president accused by more than two dozen women of sexual mis-conduct. (Trump has denied the allegations.) Especially galling to some is the charge by Repub-licans that Democrats are giving Biden a pass they didn’t afford

Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he denied Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation of sexual assault when they were teenagers.

Pelosi, the nation’s highest-ranking Democrat, recognized the maw and curtly stepped around it.

“I don’t need a lecture or a speech,” she said at her weekly news conference as she cut into a reporter’s question about a double standard. “With all the respect in the world for any woman who comes forward, I have the highest regard for Joe Biden. And that’s what I have to say about that.”

Others have been less succinct. Actress and leading #MeToo ac-tivist Alyssa Milano sat behind Kavanaugh during his televised confirmation hearings, a position she sought as a way to stand in “solidarity” with Blasey Ford.

But as the Tara Reade allega-tions swirled around Biden and

a party finally uniting around him, Milano penned an essay for Deadline.com in which she ac-knowledged “shades of gray” and reiterated her support for the for-mer vice president.

“Believing women was never about ‘Believe all women no mat-ter what they say,’ it was about changing the culture of NOT be-lieving women by default,” Mi-lano wrote.

Karen Finney, a prominent Democratic strategist and mes-sage-maker who worked for Hill-ary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, rejected the Kavanaugh compari-son outright.

In the context of sexual assault allegations, Finney said “believe women” doesn’t mean accepting as fact any assertion, but instead means affording women the de-fault credibility to take claims seriously.

“If you start from the prem-

ise that this person is telling the truth, then you do the investiga-tion and look at the facts,” she said, “and if the facts tell a differ-ent story, then that’s an important conversation to have.”

Biden’s supporters in the Sen-ate, too, have stood by him, in-cluding some who challenged him for the nomination and are now said to be on his short list for a running mate.

But a few hours after his ap-pearance on MSNBC, Trump’s campaign posted a video fea-turing many of them — Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Kamala Harris of California and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii — saying in the past that female accusers should be believed.

The reel begins and ends with Biden and Clinton, the 2016 Dem-ocratic nominee whose husband, Bill Clinton, was impeached in connection with his extramarital affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The Senate acquitted him, but the episode re-mains one of the party’s fraught chapters in its advocacy for women.

Biden appeared Friday to rec-ognize the need to reinforce his commitment.

During an evening virtual fundraiser with hundreds of vet-erans from the Obama adminis-tration, he addressed the matter again, repeating his assertions that Reade’s account “didn’t happen,” but explaining that his reaction doesn’t amount to hypoc-risy because of how Democrats have approached the #MeToo movement.

“My knowledge that it isn’t true

does nothing to shake my beliefthat women have to be able to beheard and that all the claims betaken seriously,” Biden said. “It isn’t enough just to simply takemy word for it and dismiss it outof hand. Frankly, that shouldn’tbe enough for anyone because weknow that sort of approach is how the culture of abuse has been al-lowed to fester for so long.”

Unreleased document troves —Biden’s at the University of Dela-ware and other Senate files at theNational Archives — have raisedquestions about what might befound in them. Reade says shefiled a complaint about Bidenwith the Senate. Biden says sucha document, if it exists, would bestored in the archives.

A dozen times on MSNBC,Biden said he knew of no com-plaint Reade had filed against him and got somewhat mired inthe details of where such a docu-ment might be stored.

Biden was asked if he is “ab-solutely certain” and “absolutely positive, that there is no record of any complaint by Tara Reade”against him.

His answer was highly quali-fied: “I’m absolutely positive thatno one that I’m aware of ever has been made aware of any com-plaint, a formal complaint, made by or a complaint by Tara Readeagainst me at the time this alleg-edly happened, 27 years ago,”until he announced his campaignfor president.

Then Biden tried again:“I know of no one who’s aware

that any complaint was made.”

NATION

BY MICHAEL BALSAMO AND BEN FOXAssociated Press

WASHINGTON — A Cuban man who sought asylum in the U.S. opened fire with an AK-47 at the Cuban Embassy in Wash-ington, spraying the front of the building with nearly three dozen rounds because he wanted to “get them before they could get him,” according to court papers.

Alexander Alazo, 42, of Aubrey, Texas, was taken into custody shortly after the shooting early Thursday morning in northwest Washington.

Rounds from the gunman pierced the bronze statue of Jose Marti, the Cuban writer and na-tional hero, as well as the col-

umns and facade of the building on a busy street in the Adams-Morgan section of the city. There were several bullet holes in the glass around the door, which cause spider webs of cracks in the panes and scattered glass and wood from the door from along the marble-floored interior of the entryway.

Cuban Ambassador Jose Ca-banas said there were seven peo-ple inside the embassy, mainly security personnel, at the time of the shooting. He noted that around 50 people would be there on a typical day and that rounds came close to where the recep-tionist sits and where foreign dig-nitaries and other visitors gather in the foyer.

“If this had happened in the

middle of the day there would have been carnage,” Cabanas said Friday, as he showed the damage to journalists from The Associated Press.

Alazo, who told investigators he was born in Cuba and served in the Cuban Army, had moved to Mexico in 2003 before claiming

political asylum in the U.S. a few years later. He went back to Cuba in 2014 to preach at a church and began receiving threats from or-ganized crime groups there, he told police.

Alazo, who had been living in his car and moving from state to state for several months, drove

to Washington on Wednesday totarget the Cuban Embassy “be-cause he wanted to get them be-fore they got him, referring to theCuban government, for the con-stant threats from the organizedCuban criminal organization,”according to court papers.

Gunman attacks Cuban embassy

Dems say women should be believed, but vet their claims

MSNBC’S MORNING JOE/AP

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaking to co-host Mika Brzezinski, Friday .

ANDREW HARNIK/AP

Secret Service officers investigate after police say a person with an assault rifle opened fire at the Cuban Embassy, on Thursday, in Washington.

ANALYSIS

The Cuban-born shooter said he feared organized crime groups threatening him


BY KIM TONG-HYUNGAssociated Press

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made his first public appearance in 20 days as he celebrated the completion of a fertilizer factory near Pyongyang, state media said Saturday, ending an absence that had triggered global rumors that he may be seriously ill.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency reported that Kim attended the ceremony Friday in Sunchon with other se-nior officials, including his sister

Kim Yo Jong, who many ana-lysts predict would take over if her brother is suddenly unable to rule.

State media showed videos and photos of Kim wearing a black Mao suit and constantly smiling, walking around facilities, ap-plauding, cutting a huge red rib-bon with a scissor handed by his sister, and smoking inside and outside of buildings while talking with other officials.

Seemingly thousands of work-ers, many of them masked, stood in lines at the massive complex, roaring in celebration and releas-

ing balloons into the air. A sign in-stalled on a stage where Kim sat with other senior officials read: “Sunchon Phosphatic Fertilizer Factory : Completion Ceremony : May 1, 2020.”

There were no clear signs that Kim was in discomfort. He was shown moving without a walk-ing stick, like the one he used in 2014 when he was recovering from a presumed ankle surgery. However, he was also seen rid-ing a green electric cart, which appeared similar to a vehicle he used in 2014.

It was Kim’s first public ap-

pearance since April 11, when he presided over a ruling Work-ers’ Party meeting to discuss the coronavirus and reappoint his sister as an alternate member of the powerful decision-making Political Bureau of the party’s Central Committee. That move confirmed her substantial role in the government.

Speculation about his health swirled after he missed the April 15 birthday celebration for his late grandfather Kim Il Sung, the country’s most important holiday, for the first time since taking power in 2011.

The possibility of high-level instability raised troubling ques-tions about the future of the se-cretive, nuclear-armed state that has been steadily building an ar-senal meant to threaten the U.S.mainland while diplomacy be-tween Kim and President Donald Trump has stalled.

Some experts say South Korea,as well as its regional neighbors and ally Washington, must beginpreparing for the possible chaosthat could come if Kim is side-lined by health problems or evendies.

BY JOSHUA GOODMANAssociated Press

MIAMI — The plan was sim-ple but perilous. Some 300 heav-ily armed volunteers planned to sneak into Venezuela from the northern tip of South America and ignite a popular rebellion that would end in President Nico-las Maduro’s arrest.

Instead, the ringleader of the plot is now jailed in the U.S. on narcotics charges. Authorities in Colombia are asking questions about the role of his former U.S. Green Beret adviser. And dozens of combatants who flocked to se-cret training camps in Colombia have been left to fend for them-selves amid a global pandemic.

This bizarre, never-told story of a call to arms that crashed before it launched is drawn from inter-views with more than 30 Maduro opponents and aspiring freedom fighters directly involved in or familiar with its planning. Most spoke on condition of anonymity fearing retaliation.

The poorly-planned operation stood little chance of beating the Venezuelan army, said Ephraim Mattos, a former U.S. Navy SEAL who trained some of the would-be combatants in basic first aid.

“You’re not going to take out Maduro with 300 hungry, un-trained men,” Mattos said.

When hints of the conspiracy surfaced last month, the Maduro-controlled state media portrayed it as a CIA plot. An Associated Press investigation found no evi-dence of U.S. government involve-ment in the plot. Nevertheless, interviews revealed that lead-ers of Venezuela’s U.S.-backed opposition knew of the covert force, even if they dismissed its prospects.

Opposition leader Juan Guaido was also told about it but was not involved and showed little inter-est, according to Hernan Aleman, a Venezuelan lawmaker and one of a few politicians to openly em-brace the clandestine mission to remove Maduro.

“Lots of people knew about it, but they didn’t support us,” he said. “They were too afraid.”

Planning for the incursion began in the aftermath of an April 30, 2019 barracks revolt by a cadre of soldiers who swore

loyalty to Guaido, recognized by the U.S. as Venezuela’s rightful leader.

A few weeks later, some in-volved in the failed rebellion retreated to Bogota, Colombia. That’s where they met Jordan Goudreau, an American citizen and three-time Bronze Star re-cipient who served as a medic in the U.S. Army Special Forces, according to five people who met with the former soldier.

Goudreau, 43, declined to be interviewed but said in a written statement that he would not “con-firm nor deny any activities in any operational realm.”

Venezuelans that he interacted with described him alternately as a freedom-loving patriot, a mer-cenary and a gifted warrior in way over his head.

After retiring from the Army in 2016, he set up Silvercorp USA, a private security firm, near his home in Melbourne, Fla. The company’s website features vid-eos of Goudreau firing machine guns in battle, running shirtless up a pyramid and flying in a pri-vate jet.

Goudreau’s focus on Venezuela started in February 2019, when he worked private security at a concert on the Venezuelan-Co-lombian border in support of Guaido.

“He was always chasing the golden BB,” said Drew White, a former business partner at Silvercorp, who broke with his Special Forces soulmate last fall when Goudreau asked for help raising money to fund his regime change initiative. Golden BB is military slang for a one-in-a-mil-lion shot that, if it hits in the right place, can bring down an aircraft. “As supportive as you want to be as a friend, his head wasn’t in the world of reality.”

According to White, Goudreau was looking to capitalize on the Trump administration’s grow-ing interest in toppling Maduro. In May, he attended a meeting in Miami with representatives of Guaido to hear how he could con-tribute to Venezuela’s rebuilding.

In Bogota, Lester Toledo, Guai-do’s coordinator for international humanitarian aid, introduced Goudreau to a rebellious former

Venezuelan military officer — Cliver Alcala.

Alcala, a retired major general, seemed an unlikely hero to re-store his homeland’s democracy. In 2011, he was sanctioned by the U.S. for allegedly supplying guer-rillas in Colombia with weapons in exchange for cocaine. And last month, Alcala was indicted by U.S. prosecutors alongside Madu-ro on narcoterrorist charges.

Over two days of meetings with Goudreau and Toledo, Alcala ex-plained how he was housing doz-ens of combatants selected from among the throngs of soldiers who had fled to Colombia, according to three people who participated in the meeting.

Goudreau told Alcala he could prepare the men for battle, ac-cording to the three people. He also claimed that he had high-level contacts in the Trump ad-ministration that could assist the effort.

Guaido’s envoys ended contact with Goudreau after the Bogota meeting, believing it was a sui-cide mission, according to three people close to the opposition

leader. Undeterred, Goudreaureturned to Colombia and began working with Alcala.

Alcala and Goudreau revealedlittle about their military plans.But they told the volunteers that— once challenged in battle — Maduro’s demoralized troopswould collapse like dominoes,several of the soldiers said.

Many saw the plan as foolhardy and there appears to have beenno serious attempt to seek U.S.military support.

“There was no chance theywere going to succeed without direct U.S. military interven-tion,” said Mattos, who trainedthe volunteers in basic first aid on behalf of his

nonprofit.Mattos said he was surprised

to find men skipping meals andtraining with sawed-off broom-sticks. He grew wary as the men recalled how Goudreauhad boasted to them that he was readying a shipment of weapons and arranging aerial support foran eventual assault.

The volunteers also sharedwith Mattos a document listing wished-for supplies for a three-week operation. Items included 320 M4 assault rifles, $1 millionin cash and night vision goggles.

The plot to oust Maduro cameto an end in late March when Co-lombian police stopped a trucktransporting a cache of brand-new weapons, including 26 Amer-ican-made assault rifles with the serial numbers rubbed off.

Alcala claimed ownership of the weapons shortly before sur-rendering to face the U.S. drugcharges, saying they belonged tothe “Venezuelan people.” He alsolashed out against Guaido, accus-ing him of betraying a contractwith his “American advisers.”

Guaido, through a spokesman, said he doesn’t know Alcala.

After the would-be insurrec-tion collapsed, Maduro’s alliescelebrated. Socialist party boss Diosdado Cabello said the gov-ernment was aware of the plotfor at least six months. He outed Goudreau on state TV, showingsnapshots of the “mercenary .”

“We knew everything,” saidCabello. “Some of their meetingswe had to pay for. That’s how in-filtrated they were.”

WORLD

Ex-Green Beret led failed bid to oust Venezuelan leader

AP

An anti-government protester sits by ammunition being used by rebel troops rising against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in April 2019 outside La Carlota air base, where the rebels planned to confront loyalist troops in Caracas .

Kim’s fertilizer factory visit quiets health rumors


BY ANDREW SELSKYAssociated Press

O March 14, the day after the COVID-19 outbreak was declared a national emergency in the United States, I decided to take up an activity that I had abandoned decades ago.I brewed some beer.I became part of a trend. While states imposed stay-

at-home orders, brewpubs closed, and people lost jobs and tried to economize, homebrewing in America has exploded in popularity.

“Our industry in a recession does well because not as many people are working, people are more cost-con-scious and they have time on their hands,” said David Stuart, national sales manager for Ohio-based LD Carlson, a wholesale distributor of beer- and winemaking supplies.

Homebrewing also provides an escape from dwelling on the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s so easy to get wrapped up in the news, constantly feel-ing like you need to be updat-ed,” said Gary Glass, director of the American Homebrew-ers Association. “So it’s a way to get away from what’s going on out there in the world and do something that’s fun, and later drink that beer that you brewed.”

May 2 is National Home-brew Day. Normally, home-brewers come together to make the same offi cial recipes for side-by-side competition. This year, it will be a “virtual big brew,” in which people brew at home with a suggested recipe (Pangea Proxima Polar IPA) and do a toast on social media. More than 1,700 people from around the world have pledged to join.

Northern Brewer, a major supplier of home-brewing and winemaking equipment in America, says business has shot up by 40% to 50%. But not all shops are seeing an upturn. Gina Fox’s Salem Brew Supply, in Salem, Ore., has had a slight dip in sales since they moved from in-store sales to home deliveries. But she’s optimis-tic.

“I think with the tight community that we have, the homebrewing community, and with the fact that once people start homebrewing they usu-ally continue down the road, I feel like we could survive this,” she said.

Hazy IPAs are trendy these days, but many customers are asking for “classic hops” — like cascade, centennial, chinook — that were popular years ago, said Mike Bren-nan, sales manager in the western U.S. for the homebrew division of BSG HandCraft, a wholesaler of brewing supplies.

“They’re dusting off their old equipment, the fermen-ters, and they’re going back and brewing some of those classic-style IPAs, those more bitter IPAs, like we used to do,” he said.

I myself brewed long before Inda Pale Ales became the rage in

America.Back in the early 1990s,

my fi rst attempt, a brown ale, was a failure : I had added too much water. My third and last attempt back then, an Anchor Steam Beer style, turned out fi ne. It was a lot of work, including sterilizing all the equipment and bottles in the confi nes of our small apartment in Brooklyn. I had other things to do, though hon-estly I should chalk up my lack of persistence to laziness.

Over the next 30-odd years, my wife and I moved frequent-ly, with the brew kit accompa-nying our household goods each time. Finally, she suggested I dump the barrels, along with the tubes, rods, gauges and other paraphernalia that look like they could have come from

the workshop of a scientist, or sorcerer.

Then last December, a big card-board box with Northern Brewer’s

logo arrived at my doorstep. This must be a mistake, I thought. I didn’t

order this. I called our son Sam, who lives in Washington, D.C., and is a

homebrewer, thinking he ordered it for himself. Turns out it was his and our

other son, Blaine’s, Christmas present to me.

I was delighted to get such a thoughtful gift.

It remained in a closet for almost three months until, on an idle Saturday, I brought

it to the kitchen and began brewing a batch of German-style hefeweizen.It did take my mind off the pandemic. I put

some music on, made sure the brewing kettle didn’t boil over, poured in hops and malt extract

and, using a timer, followed the other steps.One month later, it was time to pop the cap off

a bottle and sample the fruits of my labor. It was delicious.

LIFESTYLE

Learn how to brew the Pangea Proxima Polar IP at homebrewersassociation.org

Homebrewed ESCAPISMCOVID-19 closed bars, but it hasn’t stopped kitchen counter hops

ANDREW SELKY/AP

Homebrewed beer is bottled March 28 by the author, Andrew Selsky, in Salem, Ore.

ZOE SELSKY/AP

The author holds a bag of hops for his homebrewed German-style hefeweizen March 14. He poured it into a glass (left) and tasted it April 11.


BOOKS

BY BILL SHEEHANSpecial to The Washington Post

Stephen King’s affi nity for the novella form goes back to the early stages of his long, prolifi c career. In 1982, King published “Different Seasons,” a quartet of long stories that contained some of his fi nest work, and eventually led to some memo-rable fi lm adaptations, among them “The Shawshank Redemption” and “Stand by Me.” Since then, at roughly 10-year in-tervals, King has produced three similar volumes that have allowed him to play with a wide variety of themes, scenes and settings. The latest of these, “If It Bleeds,” contains four new, exception-ally compelling novellas that reaffi rm his mastery of the form.

King, of course, has made good use of virtually every mode of storytell-ing: short stories, screenplays, novels, multivolume epics and what he referred to as his “novel for television,” the miniseries “Storm of the Century.” But the mid-length narrative suits his talents p

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