India study suggests millions more may have caught coronavirus

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NEW DELHI (AFP) – More than a quarter of New Delhi’s 20 million residents may have caught the novel coronavirus without showing symptoms, a study released on Thursday (Aug 20) indicated, raising fresh doubts about India’s official case numbers.

Extrapolated, the antibody study on 15,000 residents means 5.8 million people in the bustling capital could have caught the virus – more than 37 times the official tally of 156,139 infections.

India is already officially the third worst-hit country after the US and Brazil, and the health ministry reported a record daily jump of 69,652 new infections on Wednesday – taking the total to 2.84 million.

On Thursday, Delhi health minister Satyendra Jain said blood tests on 15,000 residents conducted earlier this month found 29.1 per cent of them had virus antibodies.

Scientists say, however, that antibody tests should be treated with caution because they also pick up other coronaviruses, not just the latest Covid-19.

A similar survey in June-July said 23 per cent of people tested had been exposed to the virus in the city.

Surveys in other Indian cities have also suggested more infections than the official numbers suggest.

In the western city of Pune, 51.5 per cent of respondents in five badly affected pockets had antibodies in their blood, a recent survey showed.

Another in late July found 57 per cent of those tested in Mumbai’s slums had the infection – far more than official data suggests.

“Such studies are useful and necessary but it is important how it is interpreted,” said Dr Rajib Dasgupta, who heads the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University.

“It can’t be applied to the whole city,” he said, noting that the Pune study was done in a very densely populated area of the city.

Another survey released this week, testing sewage water in Hyderabad, estimated that some 6.6 per cent of the city of over nine million may have been infected – also far higher than the official data suggests.

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Kids Are Being Shoved Back to School in Iowa, and Teachers Aren’t Having It

Iowa’s largest teachers union and its fifth-largest school district are suing Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds over a mandate she issued in July requiring schools to open this fall with at least 50% in-person instruction. It’s one of the highest-profile standoffs yet between educators and state governments that want them to return to the classroom.

Source: Kids Are Being Shoved Back to School in Iowa, and Teachers Aren’t Having It

Kamala Harris’ mention of ‘chithis’ fans interest in India

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NEW DELHI – US Senator Kamala Harris further stoked interest in her Indian roots on Thursday (Aug 20) when she referred to her Tamil-born mother and “chithis” in her speech when she accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination for vice-president.

“Chithis” means “aunts” in Tamil.

Ms Harris spoke glowingly of her mother, Ms Shyamala Gopalan, who at 19 left her native Tamil Nadu in India for the United States to become a cancer researcher.

She said her mother, who died of cancer in 2009, was “looking down on me from above”.

In a reference to her Indian roots, Ms Harris thanked her family. “Family is my uncles, my aunts and my chithis.”

The US vice-presidential nominee’s Indian background has received blanket media coverage in India and Thursday was no exception.

“Kamala Harris mentions her ‘chithis’ in her Democratic Convention speech, Twitter can’t keep calm,” blared a Hindustan Times newspaper headline.

Some parts of Tamil Nadu saw banners in support of Ms Harris pop up, a traditional way of marking momentous occasions in the southern state.

The state’s deputy chief minister, Mr O. Panneerselvam, had earlier described her nomination as a “moment of pride for Tamil Nadu”.

“I think that there is a fair amount of interest and the fact that she used to visit Chennai in her younger days is known to everybody (here),” said Mr Sumanth Raman, a Tamil Nadu-based journalist and television anchor.

“There are people who are happy she has Indian roots but people are also saying that she should be judged by whatever she does and not just for being of Indian origin.”

The 55-year-old junior senator from California is of mixed heritage as her father, Mr Donald Harris, was a student from Jamaica who went on to teach economics at Stanford University.

She has been described in US media as the first black woman, and the first of Indian descent as well, to be nominated as a running mate in the presidential election.

In India, a debate has also been raging on what her nomination means for the South Asian country.

India-US ties have had bipartisan support through Democratic and Republican administrations over the years and analysts here noted that Ms Harris’s foreign policy direction would likely take its cue from Mr Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential candidate.

“There is bipartisan support. Even then, issues of human rights could be raised on the Kashmir front (if the Democrats win),” said Ms Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan. Distinguished Fellow at New Delhi-based think tank Observer Research Foundation.

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In Texas, USPS woes and state deadlines could leave voters without enough time to return mail-in ballots

Abbott’s office, which indicated the governor will be voting in person in the general election, did not respond to questions on whether he would consider using executive power to enable Texas counties to set up drop boxes or additional drop-off sites.

“Gov. Abbott has used emergency powers before,” said Lozano, with the Texas Civil Rights Project. “And I think this is an emergency.”

Mismatching timelines between state election law and the realities of the U.S. Postal Service may mislead voters into believing they have a larger window of time to vote by mail than actually exists.

Credit: Getty Images/iStock Photo

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In 9 of the 10 Texas counties with the most registered voters, almost 99% of nearly 199,000 votes cast by mail-in ballot during the July election were counted, and most that weren’t were rejected by election officials because they arrived too late, according to an analysis by The Texas Tribune.

As the state braces for a significant increase in mail-in voting this November — and Republicans nationwide foment unsubstantiated concerns about widespread fraud — the low rejection rate during the Texas primary runoffs offers reassurance to those pushing absentee voting as safe and reliable during the coronavirus pandemic.

But the small number of voters who missed the cutoff to submit mail-in ballots on time also highlighted longstanding disconnects between state election law and the realities of the U.S. Postal Service that may mislead voters into believing they have a larger window of time to vote by mail than actually exists.

Data gathered by the Tribune from nine major counties — Harris, Tarrant, Bexar, Travis, Collin, Denton, El Paso, Fort Bend and Hidalgo — showed that 2,598 of 198,906 votes cast by mail-in ballot went uncounted. (Dallas County did not provide data.) Some were derailed by mistakes, like returning ballots without a signature. But Harris County alone accounted for 2,034 ballots that weren’t counted based on tardiness. Overall, at least 2,114 ballots went uncounted because they arrived too late.

For most people voting absentee, Texas counties must receive completed ballots by Election Day. If they’re postmarked by 7 p.m. that day, they’ll be counted if they come in the next day by 5 p.m. The U.S. Postal Service recommends that Texans ask for mail-in ballots no later than 15 days out from that due date. But state law allows voters to request the ballots up until a week and a half before Election Day, so some may not receive their ballots until it’s too late to mail them back in time.

The misalignment between the state’s deadlines and USPS processes is hardly novel, but the ill-matched timelines will be newly tested this general election as more Texans are expected to try to vote by mail to avoid the health risks of voting in person. At the same time, a troubled U.S. Postal Service is facing cost-cutting measures and ensuing mail delivery delays.

Although they represent a small sample in a low-turnout election, the mailing woes that kept voters from being heard in the July runoffs are spurring local election officials and voting rights advocates to work to minimize similar problems come November.

“What we have been telling voters is that [voting by mail] is the safest and most secure way to vote, period, in a global pandemic,” said Ali Lozano, voting rights outreach coordinator with the Texas Civil Rights Project. But some local officials “are fully aware that they have to do something because there is just no possible way they can maintain the same infrastructure and handle the inevitable influx of ballots they’re going to get.”

During the runoffs, the state’s deadline for requesting mail-in ballots — 11 days out from Election Day — left a troop of Harris County election workers, including County Clerk Chris Hollins, working furiously on the Sunday of July Fourth weekend to send ballots to the last of the voters whose applications had come in.

The county had been told by the U.S. Postal Service that Texans hoping to have their votes counted should send back their completed ballots at least one week before the state’s deadline for accepting mail-in votes. On that timeline, the Harris County voters whose applications for ballots were being processed that Sunday would possibly end up receiving their ballots on the same day they were already supposed to be on their way back to the county. And that was under the best-case scenario.

“We were well ahead of the cutoff legally, but in a COVID scenario, meeting the legal deadline is not helpful to voters,” Hollins said. “It leaves them very much in a pinch.”

Texans seeking to vote absentee must navigate the state’s strict rules, the beleaguered postal system and, in November, a lightly used voting system that could be strained by a growing number of mail-in voters.

Texas is among the states that have not relaxed eligibility rules during the pandemic, fending off legal challenges by the state Democratic party and voting rights groups to allow all voters to apply for mail-in ballots during the pandemic. All voters 65 and older qualify for a ballot to fill out at home. Voters who are younger qualify if they will be out of the county during the election period, if they cite a disability or illness, or if they’re confined in jail but still eligible to vote.

Those voters must deliver their applications for an absentee ballot either in person at their local elections offices before the start of early voting or by mail. (Applications can be submitted by fax or email, but the county must receive a hard copy within four business days.) Mailed applications can be received through the 11th day before Election Day — four days after the 15 days USPS says voters should consider as a cutoff.

To help navigate that mismatch, Harris County’s to-do list for November includes purchasing more mail-sorting equipment and hiring hundreds of temporary workers who will be solely focused on processing voting-by-mail applications and ballots. Harris County posted voting-by-mail numbers in a typically small runoff election approaching general election figures, Hollins said, and the county will continue to encourage eligible voters to use the vote-by-mail option in the fall. With thousands of ballot styles to draw up for the general election, the complex endeavor requires ballot requests to be processed by hand.

The runoff election “was taxing on our system, so thinking about an election that’s going to be seven or eight times larger than that in the fall, our operation has to be seven or eight times larger,” said Hollins.

But not all Texas counties can attain that sort of exponential growth. In the mostly Republican county of Aransas — population 24,763 — the elections department is typically a two-person office. During the March primary, it took Election Administrator Michele Carew and her deputy eight days to get through mail-in ballot requests from Republican voters while still preparing for in-person voting.

Aided by the election funding her county received through the federal coronavirus relief package, Carew hired an election worker solely dedicated to mail-in ballots. But Aransas is facing a continuous stream of applications that will need to be fulfilled while the county prepares to manage six extra days of early voting that Gov. Greg Abbott ordered for the fall.

“Every day, we get up to a dozen requests,” Carew said. “Before, it used to be far and few between.”

Neither Abbott’s office nor the Texas secretary of state’s office responded to questions on what guidance the state is providing to local election officials on handling the dueling deadlines.

To bypass mailing issues, some other states rely on or are expanding the use of standalone ballot drop boxes that allow voters to hand-deliver their absentee ballots, but Texas law doesn’t allow for them. To return their ballots, voters can either rely on the postal service or drop them off in person at their county elections offices.

Harris County used the runoffs to pioneer expanded ballot drop-off sites, opening up 11 of the county clerk’s branch or annex locations for voters seeking to hand-deliver their ballots, and will be doing so again for the general.

But that option is seemingly unavailable in the large number of Texas counties where elections are overseen by an appointed administrator and not a county clerk with branch office locations. It’s why Jacque Callanen, the Bexar County elections administrator, is instead focusing on developing a campaign to “flatten the ballot-request curve” to convince voters to jump ahead of the state’s deadlines and apply for mail-in ballots earlier in the calendar.

With work ongoing to finalize the county ballot, Callanen, like other election administrators, says she is aiming to get mail-in ballots into voters’ hands at least 30 to 36 days out from Election Day.

“That is usually a race when we have these large elections because so many are involved, and right now with COVID, I’m literally hoping the right people will be working when we send the ballot proofs,” Callanen said.

But voting rights advocates are calling for more adjustments to the state’s voting practices during the pandemic, particularly increased options for dropping off ballots. Abbott has used executive power to delay the primary elections and extend early voting. Texas voters will also be able to drop off their completed ballots at county election offices.

Abbott’s office, which indicated the governor will be voting in person in the general election, did not respond to questions on whether he would consider using executive power to enable Texas counties to set up drop boxes or additional drop-off sites.

“Gov. Abbott has used emergency powers before,” said Lozano, with the Texas Civil Rights Project. “And I think this is an emergency.”

Disclosure: The Texas secretary of state has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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Belarus’ state-controlled media resumes broadcasts with Russian production crews

Strange days – hope for best but collusion with Putin may sell out countries reformers.

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State-television presenters in Belarus have gone on strike or quit their jobs, fed up with putting a positive spin on the country’s turmoil.

Belarus’ president Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, has led the country since 1994. He won a landslide victory in the August 9 election, triggering mass protests.

The vote was denounced by EU officials. The opposition says that Lukashenko’s main challenger, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, was the rightful winner and wants new elections.

Lukashenko has earlier said that Putin promised to send Russian military assistance if necessary to quell the ongoing unrest.

A director for a state television channel on Wednesday said that she and other striking workers were not allowed to continue doing their jobs, and that Russian specialists were brought in to take over.

A journalist has said that, as she and her colleagues went to the office building in the morning, an officer standing guard told them that they were on a “blacklist”, which she believes included the names of people who had complained about the election results.

The Belarus 3 director said that Russian crews had been flown in to take over for Belarussian journalists who have gone on strike or quit.

Earlier, Lukashenko gave distinguished service medals to riot police accused of torture and forced disappearances during the protests.

Greta Thunberg, Luisa Neubauer demand Merkel ′be brave′ on climate change | News | DW | 20.08.2020

German Chancellor Angela Merkel hosted Fridays for Future youth climate activists, including teenager Greta Thunberg, in Berlin on Thursday. The talks about climate issues marked the second anniversary of the founding of the movement.

Luisa Neubauer from Germany and Belgium’s Anuna de Wever and Adelaide Charlier joined the 17-year-old Thunberg for the hour-and-a-half meeting with the Chancellor.

“We asked her to treat the climate crisis like you treat any other crisis,” said Thunberg, following the meeting, repeating a key demand in an open letter sent to all EU leaders on July 16.

 

Source: Greta Thunberg, Luisa Neubauer demand Merkel ′be brave′ on climate change | News | DW | 20.08.2020

Are New Yorkers Wearing Face Masks? Here’s What We Found – The New York Times

By now, everyone knows the drill: Wear a mask. It saves lives.

And yet, not everyone does — especially men.

In New York City, those ignoring the mask rule are nearly twice as likely to be men as women…

Nearly one in three men were walking around unmasked, while only about one in six women were. (You’re so vain?)

 

Leaders Of ‘We Build The Wall’ Online Fundraising Campaign Charged With Defrauding Hundreds Of Thousands Of Donors | USAO-SDNY | Department of Justice

Acting U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said:  “As alleged, the defendants defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors, capitalizing on their interest in funding a border wall to raise millions of dollars, under the false pretense that all of that money would be spent on construction.  While repeatedly assuring donors that Brian Kolfage, the founder and public face of We Build the Wall, would not be paid a cent, the defendants secretly schemed to pass hundreds of thousands of dollars to Kolfage, which he used to fund his lavish lifestyle.  We thank the USPIS for their partnership in investigating this case, and we remain dedicated to rooting out and prosecuting fraud wherever we find it.”

Inspector-in-Charge Philip R. Bartlett said:  “The defendants allegedly engaged in fraud when they misrepresented the true use of donated funds.  As alleged, not only did they lie to donors, they schemed to hide their misappropriation of funds by creating sham invoices and accounts to launder donations and cover up their crimes, showing no regard for the law or the truth.   This case should serve as a warning to other fraudsters that no one is above the law, not even a disabled war veteran or a millionaire political strategist.”

 

Source: Leaders Of ‘We Build The Wall’ Online Fundraising Campaign Charged With Defrauding Hundreds Of Thousands Of Donors | USAO-SDNY | Department of Justice