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Tag: COVID-19 pandemic

  • Now that mpox is a global health emergency, will it trigger another pandemic?

    Now that mpox is a global health emergency, will it trigger another pandemic?

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    LONDON — The World Health Organization has declared the ongoing outbreaks of mpox in Congo and elsewhere in Africa to be a global emergency, requiring urgent action to curb the virus’ transmission.

    Sweden has since announced it had found the first case of a new form of mpox previously only seen in Africa in a traveler, while other European health authorities warned more imported cases were likely.

    Here’s a look at mpox and how likely it is to spread further:

    That seems highly unlikely. Pandemics, including the most recent ones of swine flu and COVID-19, are typically sparked by airborne viruses that spread quickly, including by people who may not be showing symptoms.

    Mpox, also known as monkeypox, is spread primarily through close skin-to-skin contact with infected people or their soiled clothes or bedsheets. It often causes visible skin lesions that could make people less likely to be in close contact with others.

    To stay safe, experts advise avoiding close physical contact with someone who has lesions resembling mpox, not sharing their utensils, clothing or bedsheets and maintaining good hygiene like regular hand-washing.

    On Friday, Europe’s Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said that more imported cases of mpox from Africa were “highly likely,” but the chances of local outbreaks in Europe were very low.

    Scientists say the risk to the general population in countries without ongoing mpox outbreaks is low.

    Mpox spreads very slowly unlike the coronavirus. Shortly after the coronavirus was identified in China, the number of cases jumped exponentially from several hundred to several thousand; in a single week in January, the case count increased more than tenfold.

    By March 2020, when WHO described COVID-19 as a pandemic, there were more than 126,000 infections and 4,600 deaths — about three months after the coronavirus was first identified.

    In contrast, it’s taken since 2022 for mpox cases to hit nearly 100,000 infections globally, with about 200 deaths, according to WHO.

    There are vaccines and treatments available for mpox unlike in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

    “We have what we need to stop mpox,” said Dr. Chris Beyrer, director of Duke University’s Global Health Institute. “This is not the same situation we faced during COVID when there was no vaccine and no antivirals.”

    It’s unclear. The 2022 mpox outbreak in more than 70 countries was slowed within months, thanks largely to vaccination programs and drugs being made available to at-risk populations in rich countries.

    At the moment, the majority of mpox cases are in Africa — and 96% of those cases and deaths are in Congo, one of the world’s poorest countries whose health system has mostly collapsed from the strain of malnutrition, cholera and measles. Although Congolese officials requested 4 million vaccines from donors, it has yet to receive any.

    Despite WHO declaring mpox a global emergency in 2022, Africa got barely any vaccines or treatments.

    Beyrer of Duke University said it was in the world’s interest to invest now in squashing the outbreaks in Africa.

    “We are actually in a good place to get control of this pandemic, but we have to make the decision to prioritize Africa,” he said.

    ___

    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • New York City’s freewheeling era of outdoor dining has come to end

    New York City’s freewheeling era of outdoor dining has come to end

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    NEW YORK (AP) — Outdoor tables saved thousands of New York City restaurants from ruin when they were forced to close their dining rooms during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    But four years into an experiment that transformed New York’s streetscape — briefly giving it a sidewalk cafe scene as vibrant as Paris or Buenos Aires — the freewheeling era of outdoor dining has come to an end.

    Over the weekend, restaurants hit a deadline to choose between abiding by a strict set of regulations for their alfresco setups or dismantling them entirely — and thousands chose to tear down the plywood dining structures that sprouted on roadways in the pandemic’s early days.

    Fewer than 3,000 restaurants have applied for roadway or sidewalk seats under the new system, a fraction of the 13,000 establishments that participated in the temporary Open Restaurants program since 2020, according to city data.

    Mayor Eric Adams said the new guidelines address complaints that the sheds had become magnets for rats and disorder, while creating a straightforward application process that will expand access to permanent outdoor dining.

    But many restaurant owners say the rules will have the opposite effect, dooming a vestige of the pandemic that gave them unusual freedom to turn parking spaces into rent-free extensions of their dining rooms with minimal red-tape.

    “They’ve found a middle ground to do one thing while saying another thing,” said Patrick Cournot, the co-founder of Ruffian, a Manhattan wine bar. “They’ve managed us out, essentially.”

    Ramshackle plywood dining structures seemed to sprout from New York City’s streets almost overnight in the early days of the COVID pandemic.

    With its crowded sidewalks and traffic-choked streets, the city had never really been known previously for an outdoor dining scene. But with customers banned from congregating indoors for months, the city gave restaurants a green light to expand dining areas onto public sidewalks and roadways.

    Simple sheds for outdoor seating were soon replaced or expanded into more elaborate constructions, which have remained standing long after the days of social distancing and disinfected groceries. Restaurants added planters, twinkling lights, flowers and heating lamps so people could dine outdoors well into the cold weather. Other outside dining spaces appeared inside heated igloos, or with open fire places and under tiered rooftops.

    Now, these structures must conform to uniform design standards, with licensing and square footage fees that could total thousands of dollars a year, depending on size and location.

    But the most significant change, according to many restaurants, is a requirement that the roadside sheds be taken down between December and April each year.

    That’s a deal-breaker for Blend, a Latin Fusion restaurant in Queens that once won an Alfresco Award for its “exemplary” outdoor set-up.

    “I understand they want to keep it consistent and whatever else, but it’s just too much work to have to take it down every winter,” said manager Nicholas Hyde. “We’re not architects. We’re restaurant managers.”

    Blend’s 60 outdoor seats “kept us alive” during the pandemic and remained well-used with diners who “since COVID just want to be able to enjoy themselves outside,” Hyde said. But after looking over the application, they decided to remove the curbside structure, opting instead to apply for sidewalk seating that can remain year-round.

    Of the 2,592 restaurants that have applied for the new program, roughly half will forgo roadway set-ups in favor of sidewalk-only seating, according to the city.

    Karen Jackson, a teacher, was going to lunch indoors Tuesday at Gee Whiz diner in Tribeca, one of the restaurants that took its outdoor shed down ahead of the deadline.

    Jackson said she has mixed feelings, recalling how having coffee outside in a shed was one of the few entertainment options available early in the pandemic.

    “Some of them were really cute,” but others were unattractive and rat-infested, Jackson said.

    “Unfortunately I think the places with more money were able to build the cute sheds and the places that were struggling couldn’t,” she said.

    Andrew Riggie, the executive director of the NYC Hospitality Alliance, said the city should examine why so few eligible restaurants have applied, and consider how costly it will be to take down, store and rebuild the structures each year.

    Applications for roadway dining structures must also undergo a review from local community boards, where some of the fiercest debates over outdoor dining have played out. Opponents have complained that the sheds eliminate parking, contribute to excessive noise and attract vermin.

    On the Lower East Side, a row of sheds owned by a sushi counter, a coffee shop, a Mexican eatery and a Filipino restaurant stand side-by-side.

    Paola Martinez, a manager at Barrio Chino, the Mexican restaurant, acknowledged the trash headaches and neighborhood conflict — on one particularly busy night, an angry neighbor hurled glass at the structure from an upstairs window, she said. But her restaurant has applied to stay in the roadway.

    “It attracts a lot more people to the area,” she said. “It’s been great for business.”

    City officials say restaurants who missed the deadline are welcome to apply in the future, while those that haven’t will soon be fined $1,000 each day their set-ups remain.

    Watching contractors take a crowbar to his once-vibrant dining shed, Cournot described a sense of relief. He said the sheds had come to symbolize an incredibly challenging period when a coworker died from the virus and a drop in sales nearly ended his East Village wine bar.

    “When people say it’s the end of an era, I think it’s the end of a uniquely awful era for restaurants in New York,” Cournet said. “Like going through any kind of extended group trauma, the positives that we feel collectively are a little bit of a mirage.”

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  • Bank of England lowers its main interest rate by 0.25%, to 5%, its first cut since for over 4 years

    Bank of England lowers its main interest rate by 0.25%, to 5%, its first cut since for over 4 years

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    LONDON — The Bank of England has cut interest rates for the first time since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020.

    In a statement Thursday, the bank said that by a 5-4 margin, its nine-member policymaking panel backed a quarter-point reduction in its main interest rate to 5%, from the 16-year of 5.25%.

    Economists were divided as to whether the bank, which is independent of government, would cut rates given persistent price pressures in the services sector, which accounts for around 80% of the British economy.

    Yet inflation in the U.K overall has already hit the bank’s target of 2%.

    Interest rates in the U.K. have been unchanged for a year after a dramatic series of hikes but it’s been clear for a few months that the Monetary Policy Committee had been moving towards a cut.

    “Inflationary pressures have eased enough that we’ve been able to cut interest rates today,” said Bank Gov. Andrew Bailey. “But we need to make sure inflation stays low, and be careful not to cut interest rates too quickly or by too much. Ensuring low and stable inflation is the best thing we can do to support economic growth and the prosperity of the country.”

    Central banks around the world dramatically increased borrowing costs from the lows seen during the coronavirus pandemic when prices started to shoot up, first as a result of supply chain issues built up during the pandemic and then because of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine which pushed up energy costs.

    Higher interest rates — which cool the economy by making it more expensive to borrow — have helped ease inflation, but they’ve also weighed on the British economy, which has barely grown since the pandemic rebound.

    Critics of the Bank of England say it is being overly cautious about inflation and that keeping interest rates too high for too long will unnecessarily weigh on the economy. It is a charge that’s also been leveled against the U.S. Federal Reserve, which has also kept rates unchanged in recent months, but like the Bank of England is mulling over when to start cutting.

    Some central banks, including the European Central Bank, have started reducing rates but are doing so cautiously.

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  • Wisconsin Republicans ask voters to take away governor’s power to spend federal money

    Wisconsin Republicans ask voters to take away governor’s power to spend federal money

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    Wisconsin Republicans are asking voters to take away the governor’s power to unilaterally spend federal money, a reaction to the billions of dollars that flowed into the state during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Democratic Gov. Tony Evers was free to spend most of that money as he pleased, directing most of it toward small businesses and economic development, angering Republicans who argued the Legislature should have oversight.

    That’s what would happen under a pair of related constitutional amendments up for voter approval in the Aug. 13 primary election. The changes would apply to Evers and all future governors and cover any federal money to the state that comes without specific spending requirements, often in response to disasters or other emergencies.

    Democrats and other opponents are mobilizing against the amendments, calling them a legislative power grab that would hamstring governors’ ability to quickly respond to a future natural disaster, economic crisis or health emergency.

    If the amendments pass, Wisconsin’s government “will become even more dysfunctional,” said Julie Keown-Bomar, executive director of Wisconsin Farmers Union.

    “Wisconsinites are so weary of riding the partisan crazy train, but it is crucial that we show up at the polls and vote ‘no’ on these changes as they will only make us go further off the rails,” she said in a statement.

    But Republicans and other backers say it’s a necessary check on the governor’s current power, which they say is too broad.

    The changes increase “accountability, efficiency, and transparency,” Republican state Sen. Howard Marklein, a co-sponsor of the initiative, said at a legislative hearing.

    The two questions, which were proposed as a single amendment and then separated on the ballot, passed the GOP-controlled Legislature twice as required by law. Voter approval is needed before they would be added to the state constitution. The governor has no veto power over constitutional amendments.

    Early, in-person absentee voting for the Aug. 13 election begins Tuesday across the state and goes through Aug. 11. Locations and times for early voting vary.

    Wisconsin Republicans have increasingly turned to voters to approve constitutional amendments as a way to get around Evers’ vetoes. Midway through his second term, Evers has vetoed more bills than any governor in Wisconsin history.

    In April, voters approved amendments to bar the use of private money to run elections and reaffirm that only election officials can work the polls. In November, an amendment on the ballot seeks to clarify that only U.S. citizens can vote in local elections.

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    Republicans put this question on the August primary ballot, the first time a constitutional amendment has been placed in that election where turnout is much lower than in November.

    The effort to curb the governor’s spending power also comes amid ongoing fights between Republicans and Evers over the extent of legislative authority. Evers in July won a case in the Wisconsin Supreme Court that challenged the power the GOP-controlled Legislature’s budget committee had over conservation program spending.

    Wisconsin governors were given the power to decide how to spend federal money by the Legislature in 1931, during the Great Depression, according to a report from the Legislative Reference Bureau.

    “Times have changed and the influx of federal dollars calls for a different approach,” Republican Rep. Robert Wittke, who sponsored the amendment, said at a public hearing.

    It was a power that was questioned during the Great Recession in 2008, another time when the state received a large influx of federal aid.

    But calls for change intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic when the federal government handed Wisconsin $5.7 billion in aid between March 2020 and June 2022 in federal coronavirus relief. Only $1.1 billion came with restrictions on how it could be spent.

    Most of the money was used for small business and local government recovery grants, buying emergency health supplies and paying health care providers to offset the costs of the pandemic.

    Republicans pushed for more oversight, but Evers vetoed a GOP bill in 2021 that would have required the governor to submit a plan to the Legislature’s budget committee for approval.

    Republican increased the pressure for change following the release of a nonpartisan audit in 2022 that found Evers wasn’t transparent about how he decided where to direct the money.

    One amendment specifies the Legislature can’t delegate its power to decide how money is spent. The second prohibits the governor from spending federal money without legislative approval.

    If approved, the Legislature could pass rules governing how federal money would be handled. That would give them the ability to change the rules based on who is serving as governor or the purpose of the federal money.

    For example, the Legislature could allow governors to spend disaster relief money with no approval, but require that other money go before lawmakers first.

    Opposing the measures are voting rights groups, the Wisconsin Democratic Party and a host of other liberal organizations, including those who fought to overturn Republican-drawn legislative maps, the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin and Wisconsin Faith Voices for Justice.

    Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state’s largest business lobbying group, and the Badger Institute, a conservative think tank, were the only groups that registered in support in the Legislature.

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  • Celine Dion makes musical comeback at Paris Olympics with Eiffel Tower serenade

    Celine Dion makes musical comeback at Paris Olympics with Eiffel Tower serenade

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    PARIS (AP) — Celine Dion made a triumphant return Friday with a very public performance: closing out the Paris Olympics’ opening ceremony from the Eiffel Tower.

    Nearly two years after revealing her stiff person syndrome diagnosis, Dion belted Edith Piaf’s “Hymne à l’amour” (“Hymn to Love”) as the finale of the roughly four-hour spectacle. Her appearance had been teased for weeks, but organizers and Dion’s representatives had refused to confirm whether she was performing.

    On a page dedicated to Dior’s contributions to the opening ceremony, the media guide referred to “a world star, for a purely grandiose, superbly scintillating finale.”

    This photo released by the Olympic Broadcasting Services shows Canadian Singer Celine Dion performing at the Eiffel Tower during the opening ceremony for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France, Friday, July 26, 2024. (Olympic Broadcasting Services via AP)

    Dion had been absent from the stage since 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic forced the postponement of her tour to 2022. That tour was eventually suspended in the wake of her diagnosis.

    The rare neurological disorder causes rigid muscles and painful muscle spasms, which were affecting Dion’s ability to walk and sing. In June, at the premiere of the documentary “I Am: Celine Dion,” she told The Associated Press that returning required therapy, “physically, mentally, emotionally, vocally.”

    “So that’s why it takes a while. But absolutely why we’re doing this because I’m already a little bit back,” she said then.

    Even before the documentary’s release, Dion had taken steps toward a comeback. In February, she made another surprise appearance, at the Grammy Awards, where she presented the final award of the night to a standing ovation.

    For Friday’s performance, Dion’s pearl outfit was indeed designed by Dior. Speaking on French television, the Paris organizing committee’s director of design and costume for ceremonies, Daphné Bürki, recalled Dion’s enthusiasm for the opportunity.

    “When we called Celine Dion one year ago she said yes straight away,” Bürki said.

    Dion is not actually French — the French Canadian is from Quebec — but she has a strong connection to the country and the Olympics. Dion’s first language is French, and she has dominated the charts in France and other French-speaking countries. (She also won the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest with a French-language song … representing Switzerland.) And early in her English-language career — even before “My Heart Will Go On” from “Titanic” — she was tapped to perform “The Power of The Dream,” the theme song for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

    Dion’s song choice also evoked a sports connection: Piaf wrote it about her lover, boxer Marcel Cerdan. Cerdan died soon after she wrote the song, in a plane crash.

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    Associated Press reporters Sylvie Corbet, Jerome Pugmire and Samuel Petrequin contributed.

    ___

    For more coverage of the Paris Olympics, visit https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games.

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  • Air travel is getting worse. That’s what passengers are telling the US government

    Air travel is getting worse. That’s what passengers are telling the US government

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Air travel got more miserable last year, if the number of consumer complaints filed with the U.S. government is any measure.

    The Transportation Department said Friday that it received nearly 97,000 complaints in 2023, up from about 86,000 the year before. The department said there were so many complaints that it took until July to sort through the filings and compile the figures.

    That’s the highest number of consumer complaints about airlines since 2020, when airlines were slow to give customers refunds after the coronavirus pandemic shut down air travel.

    The increase in complaints came even as airlines canceled far fewer U.S. flights — 116,700, or 1.2% of the total, last year, compared with about 210,500, or 2.3%, in 2022, according to FlightAware data. However, delays remained stubbornly high last year, at around 21% of all flights.

    So far this year, cancellations remain relatively low — about 1.3% of all flights — but delays are still running around 21%.

    More than two-thirds of all complaints last year dealt with U.S. airlines, but a quarter covered foreign airlines. Most of the rest were about travel agents and tour operators.

    Complaints about treating passengers with disabilities rose by more than one-fourth compared with 2022. Complaints of discrimination, while small in number, also rose sharply. Most were about race or national origin.

    The Transportation Department said the increase in complaints was partly the result of more consumers knowing about their rights and the ability to file a complaint. The department said it helped Southwest Airlines customers get more than $600 million in refunds and reimbursements after the carrier canceled nearly 17,000 flights during December 2022. Southwest also paid a $35 million fine.

    Airlines receive many more complaints from travelers who don’t know how or don’t bother to complain to the government, but the carriers don’t release those numbers.

    The Transportation Department is modernizing its complaint-taking system, which the agency says will help it do a better job overseeing the airline industry. However, the department now releases complaint numbers many months late. It did not issue figures for the second half of 2023 until Friday.

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    The Transportation Department’s online complaint form is at https://secure.dot.gov/air-travel-complaint

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  • Air travel is getting worse. That’s what passengers are telling the US government

    Air travel is getting worse. That’s what passengers are telling the US government

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    WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — Air travel got more miserable last year, if the number of consumer complaints filed with the U.S. government is any measure.

    The Transportation Department said Friday that it received nearly 97,000 complaints in 2023, up from about 86,000 the year before. The department said there were so many complaints that it took until July to sort through the filings and compile the figures.

    That’s the highest number of consumer complaints about airlines since 2020, when airlines were slow to give customers refunds after the coronavirus pandemic shut down air travel.

    The increase in complaints came even as airlines canceled far fewer U.S. flights — 116,700, or 1.2% of the total, last year, compared with about 210,500, or 2.3%, in 2022, according to FlightAware data. However, delays remained stubbornly high last year, at around 21% of all flights.

    So far this year, cancellations remain relatively low — about 1.3% of all flights — but delays are still running around 21%.

    More than two-thirds of all complaints last year dealt with U.S. airlines, but a quarter covered foreign airlines. Most of the rest were about travel agents and tour operators.

    Complaints about treating passengers with disabilities rose by more than one-fourth compared with 2022. Complaints of discrimination, while small in number, also rose sharply. Most were about race or national origin.

    Airlines receive many more complaints from travelers who don’t know how or don’t bother to complain to the government, but the carriers don’t release those numbers.

    The Transportation Department is modernizing its complaint-taking system, which the agency says will help it do a better job overseeing the airline industry. However, the department now releases complaint numbers many months late. It did not issue figures for the second half of 2023 until Friday.

    ___

    The Transportation Department’s online complaint form is at https://secure.dot.gov/air-travel-complaint

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  • France’s Macron, African leaders push for vaccines for Africa after COVID-19 exposed inequalities

    France’s Macron, African leaders push for vaccines for Africa after COVID-19 exposed inequalities

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    PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron is joining several African leaders on Thursday to kick off a planned $1 billion project to accelerate the rollout of vaccines in Africa, after the coronavirus pandemic exposed gaping inequalities in access to them.

    The launch of the African Vaccine Manufacturing Accelerator, which will provide financial incentives to vaccine manufacturers, offered a momentary break for Macron from domestic political concerns as legislative elections loom on June 30 and July 7.

    Many African leaders and advocacy groups say Africa was unfairly locked out of access to COVID-19 treatment tools, vaccines and testing equipment — that many richer countries bought up in huge quantities — after the pandemic swept the world starting in 2020.

    WHO, advocacy groups and others want to help Africa get better prepared for the next pandemic, which many health experts say is inevitable. When the coronavirus pandemic began, South Africa was the only country in Africa with any ability to produce vaccines, officials say, and the continent produced a tiny fraction of all vaccines worldwide.

    WHO failed in its efforts to help countries agree to a “pandemic treaty” — to improve preparedness and response to pandemics — before its annual meeting last month. The project was shelved largely over disagreements about sharing of information about pathogens that cause epidemics and the high-tech tools used to fight them.

    Negotiators will resume work on the treaty in hopes of clinching a deal by the next WHO annual meeting in 2025.

    Thursday’s event in Paris also aims to give a funding shot-in-the-arm to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, a public-private partnership that helps get needed vaccines to developing countries around the world.

    Gavi says the project aims to make up to US$ 1 billion available over the next ten years help boost Africa’s manufacturing base, to improve global vaccines markets and improve preparedness and response to pandemics and outbreaks like HIV, malaria, TB and COVID-19.

    The Geneva-based alliance says the accelerator will inject funds into manufacturers in Africa once they hit supply and regulatory milestones, with an aim to use market forces to drive down prices and encourage investment upstream.

    Officials say the project will explore issues like technology transfer — which has been resisted by some Western countries with powerful pharmaceutical companies — as well as the possible creation of a African medicines agency and tackling regulatory hurdles faced in Africa’s patchwork of legal systems.

    ___

    AP journalist Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.

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  • Chinese premier focuses on critical minerals and clean energy on final day of Australian visit

    Chinese premier focuses on critical minerals and clean energy on final day of Australian visit

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    MELBOURNE, Australia — Chinese Premier Li Qiang has ended his Australian tour on Tuesday in the west coast city of Perth where he has focused on China’s investment in critical minerals, clean energy and business links.

    Perth is the capital of Western Australia state, which provided 39% of the world’s iron ore last year. Iron ore is one of Australia’s most lucrative exports. Analysts say the commodity was spared the type of trade bans Beijing imposed on other Australian exports as bilateral relations soured three years ago because the steel-making ingredient was crucial to Chinese industrial growth.

    Li last week became the first Chinese premier to visit New Zealand then Australia in seven years. He left Perth late Tuesday for Malaysia, where he’ll be China’s first premier to visit since 2015.

    While in Perth, China’s second-most powerful leader after President Xi Jinping inspected iron ore miner Fortescue’s clean energy research facility.

    Fortescue’s chairman Andrew Forrest said Li was interested in the company’s plans to produce iron ore without carbon emissions and potentially “green iron.”

    “I think China chose us because it’s not just the best technology to go green in Australia, it’s the best technology to go green in the world and we’ve got real examples of it in trains, ship engines, trucks,” Forrest told The Associated Press before the visit.

    The Perth facility is testing technology on hydrogen, ammonia and batter power for trains, ships, trucks and heavy mining equipment.

    Li also visited Chinese-controlled Tianqi Lithium Energy Australia’s processing plant south of Perth to underscore China’s interest in investing in critical minerals. The plant produces battery-grade lithium hydroxide for electric vehicles.

    Australia shares U.S. concerns over China’s global dominance in critical minerals and control over supply chains in the renewable energy sector.

    Citing Australia’s national interests, Treasurer Jim Chalmers recently ordered five Chinese-linked companies to divest their shares in the rare earth mining company Northern Minerals.

    Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wrote in an opinion piece published in Perth’s main newspaper, The West Australian, on Tuesday that his government was acting to ensure foreign investment “continues to serve our national interests.”

    “This includes reforming the foreign investment framework so that it’s more efficient, more transparent and more effective at managing risk,” Albanese wrote.

    Forrest said the national risk from Chinese investment in the critical minerals sector was overstated.

    “Australia should be producing all the critical minerals in the world because we’re a great mining country, so by all means let’s go in harder after critical minerals, but let’s not do it with panic because there is no reason for panic,” Forrest said.

    Qiang and Albanese flew to Perth in separate planes late Monday from the national capital Canberra where the two leaders held an official annual meeting with senior ministers in Parliament House.

    Both leaders attended a round table of business leaders in Perth representing resource companies including mining giants BHP and Rio Tinto.

    Business Council of Australia chief executive Bran Black said business dialogue was essential to the bilateral relations between the two free trading partners.

    “While there have been challenging times in the bilateral relationship between the two nations, I think it’s fair to say this is another positive point of progress,” Black told the meeting.

    “It shows that whilst the parameters of a bilateral relationship are set by governments, they will always be sustained by the quality of the personal relationships and especially those personal relationships that subsist on a business-to-business level,” Black added.

    Chinese premiers and Australian prime ministers met annually from 2013 until 2019, after which Beijing banned minister-to-minister contacts over the previous conservative government’s call for an independent investigation into the causes of and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Relations had already been strained by Australian legislation that banned covert foreign interference in Australian politics and the exclusion of Chinese-owned telecommunications giant Huawei from rolling out the national 5G network due to security concerns.

    Beijing initiated a reset in relations after Albanese’s center-left Labor Party was elected in 2022.

    The annual meetings resumed when Albanese visited Beijing in November last year.

    Albanese revealed that his office had complained to the Chinese Embassy about the behavior of two officials during a media event with the two leaders after Monday’s meeting.

    Australia had “concerns” about two Chinese officials who stood in the way of cameras taking images of well-known Australian journalist Cheng Lei sitting with other reporters as the leaders spoke, Albanese said.

    Cheng spent more than three years in detention in China for breaking an embargo with a broadcast on a state-run TV network while she was based in Beijing. She was released last year after interventions by the Australian government and now works for Sky News Australia.

    “When you look at the footage, it was a pretty clumsy attempt, frankly, by a couple of people to stand in between where the cameras were and where Cheng Lei was sitting,” Albanese said.

    “There should be no impediments to Australian journalists going about their job and we’ve made that clear to the Chinese Embassy,” Albanese added.

    Chinese-born Cheng told Sky News on Monday the officials “went to great lengths to block me from the cameras and to flank me.”

    “I’m only guessing that it’s to prevent me from saying something or doing something that they think would be a bad look. But that in itself was a bad look,” Cheng said.

    The embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Li and Albanese made statements during the press event but neither took questions from the assembled journalists.

    ___

    Follow AP’s coverage of Asia-Pacific news at https://apnews.com/hub/asia-pacific

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  • Why is the global supply chain so fragile and how can it be fixed?

    Why is the global supply chain so fragile and how can it be fixed?

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    Why is the global supply chain so fragile and how can it be fixed? – CBS News


    Watch CBS News



    The COVID-19 pandemic dislodged the global supply chain, but the vulnerabilities in the system had already been building up for decades. A new book titled “How the World Ran Out of Everything” examines how the health crisis exposed the fragility of a system that was always at risk of collapse. Author Peter Goodman joins to discuss.

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  • Legendary Clifton’s is reopening in a struggling downtown L.A. Its owner hopes crowds return.

    Legendary Clifton’s is reopening in a struggling downtown L.A. Its owner hopes crowds return.

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    Andrew Meieran is about to reopen the doors of one of L.A.’s legendary restaurants in a bid to once again make it an offbeat dining and entertainment destination.

    Meieran is the proprietor of Clifton’s Republic, the kitschy, forest-themed restaurant on Broadway in downtown’s Historic Core that for nearly a century served up comfort food such as pot roast, mashed potatoes and Jell-O. The five-story restaurant and bar complex has been closed for the last year after a burst water pipe caused a flood that destroyed the kitchen and collapsed the ceilings on three floors.

    Clifton’s is scheduled to reopen next month after extensive repairs and renovations. Among the changes patrons will find is a basement venue several years in the making that Meieran said is “dedicated to innovation and the magic of experiences” with “entertainment, cocktails and culinary offerings.”

    Meieran is keeping details under wraps for now, but he has demonstrated a knack for creating provocative entertainment and dining venues through an obsessive attention to offbeat details, as well as a willingness to spend more money than most real estate developers to realize his vision and preserve the historic integrity of his projects.

    A Bay Area transplant with a background in real estate development and filmmaking, Meieran emerged on the L.A. scene in 2007 when he opened the Edison, a subterranean nightclub he created in a former power plant deep under a century-old building on 2nd Street.

    In 2010 he took over Clifton’s from the family that had operated it since the 1930s, when founder Clifford Clinton purchased the lease of the former Boos Bros. cafeteria on Broadway and set out to create a space that would evoke the coastal redwoods of the Santa Cruz Mountains, where Clinton spent summers growing up. After taking over, Meieran closed the restaurant for nearly four years for renovations and upgrades and again during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The Times spoke with Meieran to discuss his plans for reviving Clifton’s after the current shutdown, as well as his thoughts about the evolving nature of the bar and restaurant business during a time of change downtown. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

    Since the pandemic began, the restaurant business has been battered and put through changes that have made it hard for owners to operate profitably. How do you intend to make a go of it?

    People need, and I emphasize “NEED” in capital letters, to be able to disengage from their devices and balance their life with physical and social interaction with people who are there and present around them. We are catering to people who are looking for a much more interactive lifestyle and are craving physical experiences to balance the ubiquitous online presence.

    A view of the interior of Clifton’s Republic.

    (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

    Clifton’s exists in L.A.’s collective memory as a vast cafeteria in a whimsical woodland setting, but we don’t see cafeterias much anymore. Why is that? Will we get back Clifton’s as we remember it?

    Cafeterias used to be the dominant form of food delivery and food service and now, with very few exceptions, it’s not. There are clear reasons for that that are understandable and reasonable — you need tons of people in a captive audience to make a cafeteria work. You need volume and you need stable, reasonable food prices that you can pass on to your guests. That’s completely absent in this era.

    So what will Clifton’s include when it reopens?

    It will be fully operating as a restaurant, lounge and nightlife destination that will include the Brookdale historic dining hall people remember as Forest Glen, Walt Disney’s original inspiration for Disneyland. We’ll also reopen the Monarch Bar on the second floor and the Pacific Seas “adventure bar” on the third floor. The basement will open in midsummer.

    Obviously downtown has changed a lot from Clifton’s heyday in the 20th century when Broadway was L.A.’s premier shopping and entertainment district. Occupancy in office buildings, which used to provide a steady source of lunchtime customers, has dwindled substantially since the COVID-19 lockdown. What are the prospects for downtown businesses like Clifton’s?

    It’s obviously a very different environment from what it was before the pandemic. People have altered their habits and patterns and businesses have responded accordingly, with some closing and others shifting their focuses. It’s a tectonic level shift, something that hasn’t happened in generations, and it’s happening very rapidly now. It was triggered initially by the pandemic but followed up by technological shifts that have altered the dining experience such as app-based ordering, touchscreens and the potentially revolutionary impact of artificial intelligence.

    It’s hard for people to really recognize what’s coming next and where this is all going. Obviously that makes it difficult for a business to respond and for other people to make investments and to determine where we’re going to be in 18 months, three years or five years down the road, which is what you need in business.

    Downtown, because of the level of the impact and its density, is slower to respond to change than some other, more nimble communities. It’s like turning a tanker ship that doesn’t turn on a dime. It’s taking a lot more effort and and concerted focus to shift its direction.

    What are the odds that the Historic Core can mount a comeback?

    Broadway, in particular, has all of the ingredients that make for extraordinary projects and extraordinary communities sitting here waiting for the right catalyst. It has density, historic infrastructure and buildings that have an intrinsic beauty and an intrinsic connection to guests, residents,and visitors. And it’s got the location in terms of accessibility with plenty of parking and service by transit.

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    Roger Vincent

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  • US job openings fall to 8.1 million, lowest since 2021

    US job openings fall to 8.1 million, lowest since 2021

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    WASHINGTON — U.S. job openings fell in April to the lowest level since 2021. But they remained at historically strong levels despite high interest rates and signs the economy is slowing.

    The Labor Department reported Tuesday that employers posted 8.1 million vacancies in April, down from a revised 8.4 million in March. The March figures had originally come in at 8.5 million.

    Still, layoffs fell, and the number of Americans quitting their jobs — a sign of confidence in their prospects — rose in April.

    Monthly job openings have come down steadily a peak of 12.2 million in March 2022 — as the economy’s recovery from COVID-19 lockdowns left companies desperate for workers — but they remain at a high level. Before 2021, they never topped 8 million — a threshold they have now reached for 38 straight months.

    The high level of job openings reflects a surprisingly strong U.S. labor market. When the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates in March 2022 to combat a resurgence in inflation, the higher borrowing costs were expected to tip the economy into recession and push up unemployment.

    Instead, the economy kept growing and employers continued to hire. The United States has averaged a solid 234,000 new jobs a month over the last year. On Friday, the Labor Department is expected to report that employers added another 180,000 jobs, according to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet.

    The unemployment rate is expected to come in at 3.9%, which would be the 28th straight month it’s been below 4%. That would be the longest such streak since a 35-month run from 1951 through 1953 during the Korean War.

    Still, high rates are taking a toll. The economy grew at an annual rate of just 1.3% from January through March, the slowest since spring 2022. Much of the first-quarter slowdown was caused volatile factors such as a surge in imports and a reduction in business inventories. Consumer spending, which accounts for 70% of U.S. economic activity, kept growing but at a slower annual pace — 2%, down from 3.3% in the last three months of 2023.

    The economy had been expected to get a lift from lower rates. The Fed signaled that it planned to cut its benchmark rate three times this year. But the start of the cuts keeps getting pushed back because inflation remains stubbornly above the central bank’s 2% target.

    Now Wall Street investors don’t expect the first cut until the Fed’s September meeting, according to the CME FedWatch tool.

    Fed policymakers likely welcome lower job openings — a relatively painless way to cool a hot job market and reduce pressure on companies to raise wages, which can feed inflation.

    “Overall, job openings are still elevated, signaling strong demand for workers,” said Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics. ”But they continue to move in the right direction, towards pre-pandemic readings, pointing to an ongoing normalization between supply and demand for labor.”

    ___

    AP Economics Writer Christopher Rugaber contributed to this story.

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  • Fauci faces partisan attacks at House hearing on COVID

    Fauci faces partisan attacks at House hearing on COVID

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    WASHINGTON — Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert until leaving the government in 2022, was back before Congress on Monday, calling “simply preposterous” Republican allegations that he tried to cover up origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

    A GOP-led subcommittee has spent over a year probing the nation’s response to the pandemic and whether U.S.-funded research in China may have played any role in how it started — yet found no evidence linking Fauci to wrongdoing.

    He’d already been grilled behind closed doors, for 14 hours over two days in January. But Monday, Fauci testified voluntarily in public and on camera at a hearing that quickly deteriorated into partisan attacks.

    Republicans repeated unproven accusations against the longtime National Institutes of Health scientist while Democrats apologized for Congress besmirching his name and bemoaned a missed opportunity to prepare for the next scary outbreak.

    “He is not a comic book super villain,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., saying the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic had failed to prove a list of damaging allegations.

    Fauci was the public face of the government’s early COVID-19 response under then-President Donald Trump and later as an adviser to President Joe Biden. A trusted voice to millions, he also was the target of partisan anger and choked up Monday as he recalled death threats and other harassment of himself and his family, threats he said still continue. Police later escorted hecklers out of the hearing room.

    The main issue: Many scientists believe the virus most likely emerged in nature and jumped from animals to people, probably at a wildlife market in Wuhan, the city in China where the outbreak began. There’s no new scientific information supporting that the virus might instead have leaked from a laboratory. A U.S. intelligence analysis says there’s insufficient evidence to prove either way — and a recent Associated Press investigation found the Chinese government froze critical efforts to trace the source of the virus in the first weeks of the outbreak.

    Fauci has long said publicly that he was open to both theories but that there’s more evidence supporting COVID-19’s natural origins, the way other deadly viruses including coronavirus cousins SARS and MERS jumped into people. It was a position he repeated Monday as Republican lawmakers questioned if he worked behind-the-scenes to squelch the lab-leak theory or even tried to influence intelligence agencies.

    “I have repeatedly stated that I have a completely open mind to either possibility and that if definitive evidence becomes available to validate or refute either theory, I will ready accept it,” Fauci said. He later invoked a fictional secret agent, decrying a conspiracy theory that “I was parachuting into the CIA like Jason Bourne and told the CIA that they should really not be talking about a lab leak.”

    Republicans also have accused Fauci of lying to Congress in denying that his agency funded “gain of function” research – the practicing of enhancing a virus in a lab to study its potential real-world impact – at a lab in Wuhan.

    NIH for years gave grants to a New York nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance that used some of the funds to work with a Chinese lab studying coronaviruses commonly carried by bats. Last month, the government suspended EcoHealth’s federal funding, citing its failure to properly monitor some of those experiments.

    The definition of “gain of function” covers both general research and especially risky experiments to “enhance” the ability of potentially pandemic pathogens to spread or cause severe disease in humans. Fauci stressed he was using the risky experiment definition, saying “it would be molecularly impossible” for the bat viruses studied with EcoHealth’s funds to be turned into the virus that caused the pandemic.

    In an exchange with Rep. H. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., Fauci acknowledged that the lab leak is still an open question since it’s impossible to know if some other lab, not funded by NIH money, was doing risky research with coronaviruses.

    Fauci did face a new set of questions about the credibility of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which he led for 38 years. Last month, the House panel revealed emails from an NIAID colleague about ways to evade public records laws, including by not discussing controversial pandemic issues in government email.

    Fauci denounced the actions of that colleague and insisted that “to the best of my knowledge I have never conducted official business via my personal email.”

    The pandemic’s origins weren’t the only hot topic. The House panel also blasted some public health measures taken to slow spread of the virus before COVID-19 vaccines, spurred by NIAID research, helped allow a return to normalcy. Ordering people to stay 6 feet apart meant many businesses, schools and churches couldn’t stay open, and subcommittee chairman Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, called it a “burdensome” and arbitrary rule, noting that in his prior closed-door testimony Fauci had acknowledged it wasn’t scientifically backed.

    Fauci responded Monday that the 6-feet distancing wasn’t his guideline but one created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before scientists had learned that the new virus was airborne, not spread simply by droplets emitted a certain distance.

    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

    Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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    By LAURAN NEERGAARD – AP Medical Writer

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  • Number of Americans applying for jobless benefits inches up, but layoffs remain low

    Number of Americans applying for jobless benefits inches up, but layoffs remain low

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    The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits ticked up last week, but layoffs remain historically low in the face of lingering inflation and high interest rates.

    Jobless claims for the week ending May 25 rose by 3,000 to 219,000, up from 216,000 the week before, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

    The four-week average of claims, which quiets some of the week-to-week noise, also rose modestly to 222,500. That’s an increase of 2,500 from the previous week.

    Weekly unemployment claims are broadly interpreted as a proxy for the number of U.S. layoffs in a given week and a sign of where the job market is headed. They have remained at historically low levels since millions of jobs were lost when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S. in the spring of 2020.

    The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark borrowing rate 11 times beginning in March of 2022 in a bid to stifle the four-decade high inflation that took hold after the economy rebounded from the COVID-19 recession of 2020. The Fed’s intention was to cool off a red-hot labor market and slow wage growth, which can fuel inflation.

    Many economists had expected the rapid rate hikes would trigger a recession, but that’s been avoided so far thanks to strong consumer demand and sturdier-than-expected labor market.

    In April, U.S. employers added just 175,000 jobs, the fewest in six months and a sign that the labor market may be finally cooling off. The unemployment rate inched back up to 3.9% from 3.8% and has now remained below 4% for 27 straight months, the longest such streak since the 1960s.

    The government also recently reported 8.5 million job openings in March, the lowest number of vacancies in three years.

    Moderation in the pace of hiring, along with a slowdown in wage growth, could give the Fed the data its been seeking to finally bring interest rates back down. A cooler reading on consumer inflation in April could also play into the Fed’s next rate decision.

    Though layoffs remain at low levels, companies have been announcing more job cuts recently, mostly across technology and media. Google parent company Alphabet, Apple and eBay have all recently announced layoffs.

    Outside of tech and media, Walmart, Peloton, Stellantis, Nike and Tesla have recently announced job cuts.

    In total, 1.79 million Americans were collecting jobless benefits during the week that ended May 18. That’s an increase of 4,000 from the previous week.

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  • World Health Assembly hopes to reinforce pandemic preparedness after bold treaty project stalls

    World Health Assembly hopes to reinforce pandemic preparedness after bold treaty project stalls

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    GENEVA — Member countries kicked off the World Health Organization’s annual assembly on Monday with hopes of improving global readiness for deadly outbreaks like COVID-19, after an ambitious “pandemic treaty” ran aground last week.

    Health officials are racing to get the world to agree to new ways to prepare for and fight an inevitable future pandemic. COVID-19 is fading into history as elections and crises like climate change and war compete for the public’s attention.

    A bold project to adopt a pandemic “treaty” at this week’s World Health Assembly was shelved on Friday as 2 1/2 years of work ran into disagreements over sharing information about pathogens that cause pandemics and the technology used to fight them.

    Experts say the best chance now to address pandemics at the assembly will be proposed changes to the WHO’s International Health Regulations, which were set up in 2004. Amendments would urge countries to boost alert, detection and containment capacities and cooperate internationally.

    One proposal would let the WHO director-general declare a “pandemic emergency.”

    Envoys say a deal is close, but similar disagreements between rich countries and developing ones that set back the pandemic treaty negotiations linger. Issues remain over proposed “transfer of technology” and the creation of a new fund under WHO in 2030 that would help boost pandemic-fighting capacities “particularly in developing countries.”

    WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus insists the stalled work on the pandemic treaty was not a failure, and acknowledged an “immense” task on a “very ambitious timeline” — alluding to the many years it usually takes for U.N. member countries to reach global treaties.

    “Of course, we all wish that we had been able to reach a consensus on the agreement in time for this health assembly and cross the finish line,” Tedros said in opening remarks. “But I remain confident that you still will — because where there is a will, there is a way.”

    “It’s now for this World Health Assembly to decide what that way is — meaning the solution is in your hands,” he added.

    The premise is that pathogens that have no regard for national borders require a united response from all countries. But decision-makers have struggled to balance national interest with the call from WHO officials to think more broadly in the interest of humanity.

    Health ministers now have to try to overcome deep-set differences, including how the world can share information on emerging pathogens and scarce resources like vaccines when demand skyrockets.

    “If nothing comes out of WHA (the assembly), it’s a huge missed opportunity,” said Yuanqiong Hu, a senior legal and policy adviser at Doctors Without Borders, “If they don’t come up with a clear road map, how are they going to finish this process?”

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  • Ex-top prosecutor for Baltimore to be sentenced for mortgage fraud and perjury convictions

    Ex-top prosecutor for Baltimore to be sentenced for mortgage fraud and perjury convictions

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    GREENBELT, Md. — A former top prosecutor for the city of Baltimore is to be sentenced this week for lying about her personal finances so she could improperly access retirement funds during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Sentencing for former Baltimore state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby is set to open Thursday at a federal courthouse in Greenbelt, a Maryland suburb of the nation’s capital. Two juries separately convicted Mosby of perjury and mortgage fraud charges after trials involving her personal finances.

    Mosby, 44, gained a national profile for charging six Baltimore police officers in the 2015 death of Freddie Gray, a Black man fatally injured in police custody. Gray’s death led to riots and protests in the city. After three officers were acquitted, Mosby’s office dropped charges against the other three officers.

    In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, Mosby withdrew $90,000 from Baltimore city’s deferred compensation plan. She used the money to make down payments on vacation homes in Kissimmee and Long Boat Key, Florida.

    Prosecutors argued that Mosby improperly accessed the funds under provisions of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act by falsely claiming that the pandemic had harmed her travel-oriented side business.

    Mosby’s lawyers argued that she was legally entitled to withdraw the money and spend it however she wanted.

    Federal prosecutors have recommended a 20-month prison sentence for Mosby, who served two terms as state’s attorney for Baltimore. She lost a reelection bid after her 2022 indictment.

    “Ms. Mosby was charged and convicted because she chose to repeatedly break the law, not because of her politics or policies,” prosecutors wrote.

    Mosby’s attorneys urged the judge to spare her from prison. They said she is the only public official who has been prosecuted in Maryland for federal offenses “that entail no victim, no financial loss, and no use of public funds.”

    “Jail is not justice for Marilyn Mosby,” her lawyers wrote.

    Mosby applied for a presidential pardon earlier this month. In a letter to President Joe Biden, the Congressional Black Caucus expressed support for her cause, the Baltimore Sun reported.

    U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby agreed to move Mosby’s trials from Baltimore to Greenbelt, a suburb of Washington, D.C. Mosby’s attorneys argued that she couldn’t get a fair trial in Baltimore after years of negative media coverage there.

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  • U.S. recovering from pandemic learning loss, but gaps remain

    U.S. recovering from pandemic learning loss, but gaps remain

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    U.S. recovering from pandemic learning loss, but gaps remain – CBS News


    Watch CBS News



    American students are starting to recover from pandemic learning losses, according to a Harvard University study. But test scores still lag behind 2019 levels, and schools will soon run out of federal pandemic-era funding. CBS News reporter Taurean Small examines how different states are addressing challenges in the classroom and on the balance books.

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  • State estimates California’s population grew in 2023, halting 3 years of decline

    State estimates California’s population grew in 2023, halting 3 years of decline

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    The nation’s most populous state is growing again, ending a trend of population decline that had dogged Gov. Gavin Newsom through much of his tenure.

    California gained just over 67,000 people last year, the first increase since 2019, according to an estimate released Tuesday by the state Department of Finance.

    After joining the United States in 1850 on the heels of a gold rush, California was a demographic marvel for its first 169 years — adding population every year as people flocked to the Golden State for its stunning terrain, weather and super-sized economy, which is larger than those of all but four countries.

    That streak ended in 2020, when California lost population for the first time during a pivotal census year that led to the state losing a congressional seat. Newsom’s partisan critics said the state’s high cost of living, uncertain power supply, a housing and homelessness crisis and concerns about crime were partly to blame. For a two-year period, Californians moving to Texas made up the largest state-to-state movement in the U.S., according to U.S. Census data — a fact often shared by Republicans eager to slam Newsom.

    But the Democratic governor, who is widely considered a future presidential candidate, had reason to celebrate Tuesday, as state estimates showed a return to the formula that has powered California’s growth in recent years: A strong influx of legal international immigration, fewer deaths following the coronavirus pandemic and a reduction in the number of people leaving California for other states.

    “People from across the nation and the globe are coming to the Golden State to pursue the California Dream and experience the success of the world’s 5th largest economy,” Newsom said in a news release.

    Tuesday’s estimate — representing a 0.17% growth rate — can hardly be called a surge. But state officials were confident that it signaled a return to more normal population patterns after years of pandemic disruption.

    Legal immigration to California from other countries stalled during and just before the coronavirus pandemic amid a spate of travel restrictions and tightened rules under then-President Donald Trump. It rebounded last year, though, with a net gain of 114,200 people, which was nearly its pre-pandemic level.

    State officials called it “a stable foundation for continued growth” — although that growth will likely be a lot smaller than it had been, said Eric McGhee, senior fellow for the Public Policy Institute of California.

    “It’s going to be better for the state in terms of its total population,” McGhee said. “It would still, at this rate, not be enough to probably avoid losing more congressional districts in the 2030 census.”

    More people still left California for other states in 2023 than moved to California from other states, but it was far less than previous years.

    In 2021 — when coronavirus cases were still surging and more people were working remotely — California lost a net 355,648 people because of domestic migration. In 2023, that was down to 91,189. That’s much closer to pre-pandemic trends, according to Walter Schwarm, chief demographer for the California Department of Finance.

    “The governor bragging about that is sort of like the guy who lost thousands of dollars at the casino last night bragging about being up 20 bucks at the blackjack table,” said James Gallagher, the Republican leader in the state Assembly. “I don’t understand why the governor and the Democratic supermajority just continue to turn a blind eye to it. They sort of act like nothing’s wrong when there is a lot wrong.”

    It’s still expensive to live in California, where gas prices, utility bills and housing costs are among the highest in the country. The state’s homelessness problem has only worsened despite billions of dollars that the Legislature has thrown at it. California is in the middle of consecutive multibillion-dollar budget deficits.

    Newsom has been taking steps to address the state’s cost of living. Last week, his administration voted to limit health care cost increases statewide by 3% each year to try and rein in the ever-increasing cost of medical expenses. On Monday, he announced a partnership to sell a generic version of Narcan — the drug that can save a person’s life during an opioid overdose — at a 40% discount of the market rate.

    Population estimates are tricky, as they rely on a range of statistics while trying to make a good guess of how many people are in one place at one time. An estimate released in Decembe r by the U.S. Census Bureau said California’s population fell by 75,000 residents in 2023.

    But those estimates were targeting different points in time. The U.S. Census Bureau’s estimate was for July 1, 2023. The California Department of Finance’s estimate was for Jan. 1, 2024.

    The state’s estimate was based on a number of factors, including births and deaths, driver’s license address changes, vehicle registration, and enrollment in the government-funded health insurance programs of Medicaid and Medicare.

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    CBS San Francisco

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  • California’s population increased last year for first time since 2020

    California’s population increased last year for first time since 2020

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    California’s population rose last year for the first time since 2020, according to new state data.

    The state’s population increased by 0.17% — or more than 67,000 people — between Jan. 1, 2023, and Jan. 1, 2024, when California was home to 39,128,162 people, according to new population estimates released Tuesday by the California Department of Finance.

    “The brief period of California’s population decline is over,” H.D. Palmer, a department spokesman, said in a phone interview. “We’re back, and we’re returning to a rate of steady, stable growth.”

    That resumption of growth, Palmer said, was driven by a number of factors: Deaths, which rose during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, have fallen nearly to pre-pandemic levels. Restrictive foreign immigration policies imposed during the Trump administration have been loosened under President Biden. Domestic migration patterns between states also have changed, boosting the state’s population.

    In 2021, as the pandemic raged, more than 319,000 people died in California and fewer than 420,000 were born, the data show. Last year, about 281,000 died in the state, while nearly 399,000 were born.

    And while California saw a net loss of nearly 3,900 people to international immigration in 2020 — when many countries’ borders were closed due to the pandemic — the state saw a net gain of more than 114,000 international immigrants last year, according to state data. That’s close to pre-pandemic levels. In 2019, California notched a net increase of about 119,000 international immigrants.

    Shifting domestic migration trends — which were the subject of the much-ballyhooed “California exodus” during the pandemic, when remote workers moved to other states where they could live for a fraction of the cost of cities like Los Angeles or San Francisco — also played a key role.

    In 2021, about 692,000 people left California for other states, while fewer than 337,000 moved into the Golden State from other states.

    Last year, about 414,000 people moved here from other states, while more than 505,000 left for other states. That means California saw a net loss of about 264,500 fewer people to other states last year than in 2021, according to the new state data.

    Los Angeles and Orange counties grew last year, though not by much; the former saw a population rise of just 0.05% — or nearly 4,800 people — while the latter notched up 0.31% — or nearly 9,800 people.

    For both jurisdictions, that’s a reversal from 2022, when L.A. County saw a net loss of nearly 42,200 residents and Orange County lost about 17,000 residents. The city of Los Angeles saw its population rise 0.3% last year, the data show.

    California also saw a net increase of about 116,000 housing units — including single-family homes, multi-family dwellings and accessory dwelling units, or ADUs — in 2023. Palmer described that growth as an “encouraging” sign amid the state’s housing crisis.

    That rise, which is a relative drop in the bucket compared with the state’s more than 14.8 million housing units, was led by the city of Los Angeles, which saw a gain of more than 21,000 housing units, followed by an increase of about 5,700 units in San Diego, according to the state data.

    While California’s resumption of population growth is a boon for boosters who reject the storyline of the state’s decline, there is no indication that the Golden State will be returning to the massive boom in residents it underwent generations ago.

    “For the foreseeable future, we’re looking at steady, more predictable growth that’s slower than those go-go years of the 1970s and 1980s,” Palmer said. “Obviously, there are things that we can’t forecast that could have an impact on our population. For instance, another pandemic.”

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    Connor Sheets

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  • 7 Minnesotans accused in massive scheme to defraud pandemic food program to stand trial

    7 Minnesotans accused in massive scheme to defraud pandemic food program to stand trial

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    Opening statements are expected Monday in the fraud trial of seven people charged in what federal prosecutors have called a massive scheme to exploit lax rules during the COVID-19 pandemic and steal from a program meant to provide meals to children in Minnesota.

    The seven will be the first of 70 defendants to go on trial in the alleged scam. Eighteen others have already pleaded guilty.

    Prosecutors have said the seven collectively stole over $40 million in a conspiracy that cost taxpayers $250 million — one of the largest pandemic-related fraud cases in the country. Federal authorities say they have recovered about $50 million.

    Prosecutors say just a fraction of the money went to feed low-income kids, and that the rest was spent on luxury cars, jewelry, travel and property.

    The food aid came from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and was administered by the state Department of Education. Nonprofits and other partners under the program were supposed to serve meals to kids.

    Two of the groups involved, Feeding Our Future and Partners in Nutrition, were small nonprofits before the pandemic, but in 2021 they disbursed around $200 million each. Prosecutors allege they produced invoices for meals that were never served, ran shell companies, laundered money, indulged in passport fraud, and accepted kickbacks.

    An Associated Press analysis published last June documented how thieves across the country plundered billions in federal COVID-19 relief dollars in the greatest grift in U.S. history. The money was meant to fight the worst pandemic in a century and stabilize an economy in freefall.

    But the AP found that fraudsters potentially stole more than $280 billion, while another $123 billion was wasted or misspent. Combined, the loss represented 10% of the $4.3 trillion the government disbursed in COVID relief by last fall. Nearly 3,200 defendants have been charged, according to the U.S. Justice Department. About $1.4 billion in stolen pandemic aid has been seized.

    The defendants going on trial Monday before U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel in Minneapolis are Abdiaziz Shafii Farah; Mohamed Jama Ismail; Abdimajid Mohamed Nur; Said Shafii Farah; Abdiwahab Maalim Aftin; Mukhtar Mohamed Shariff; and Hayat Mohamed Nur. They have all pleaded not guilty. Their trial is expected to last around six weeks.

    “The defendants’ fraud, like an aggressive cancer, spread and grew,” prosecutors wrote in a summary of their case.

    Prosecutors say many of the purported feeding sites were nothing more than parking lots and derelict commercial spaces. Others turned out to be city parks, apartment complexes and community centers.

    “By the time the defendants’ scheme was exposed in early 2022, they collectively claimed to have served over 18 million meals from 50 unique locations for which they fraudulently sought reimbursement of $49 million from the Federal Child Nutrition Program,” prosecutors wrote.

    Among the defendants awaiting trial is Aimee Bock, the founder of Feeding our Future. She’s one of 14 defendants expected to face trial together at a later date. Bock has maintained her innocence, saying she never stole and saw no evidence of fraud among her subcontractors.

    The scandal stirred up the 2022 legislative session and campaign in Minnesota.

    Republicans attacked Gov. Tim Walz, saying he should have stopped the fraud earlier. But Walz pushed back, saying the state’s hands were tied by a court order in a lawsuit by Feeding Our Future to resume payments despite its concerns. He said the FBI asked the state to continue the payments while the investigation continued.

    The Minnesota Department of Education now has an independent inspector general who is better empowered to investigate fraud and waste.

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    CBS Minnesota

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