wepon | Link Roundup May 2020

Republicans not sold on new round of relief checks

Lawmakers are also keeping a careful eye on the economy as some states begin lifting stay-at-home orders. “We’re at a point where it’s going to be a discussion point. Because in Wyoming, we’re opening again, many communities are. It’s just a matter of how long it takes to really get the economy open again. If it takes too long, then we’re likely to have to do that,” said Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.).

Mosques Face Backlash for Broadcasting Evening Prayers During Ramadan

A different open letter posted on Facebook by Hani Tawfilis, another prominent member of Mississauga’s Coptic community who owns two pharmacies, says the call to prayer will remind vets “who fought in Islamic countries as Afghanistan or Iraq, who are traumatized and suffering from PTSD” of their violent experiences. Tawfilis ran unsuccessfully as a Conservative Party candidate in the last federal election for Mississauga-Erin Mills.

3 McDonald’s Employees Were Shot After Telling a Woman She Couldn't Eat There Due to Coronavirus

The mayor of the city of Stillwater, Oklahoma, rescinded an order last week for businesses to tell patrons they have to wear masks on the premises, after city officials said that employees of some of those businesses were threatened with physical violence, including one threat of involving a gun.

‘We Are Not Essential. We Are Sacrificial.’

Finally, the M.T.A. agreed to supply us with personal protective equipment. When signing in, we get an N95 mask and three small packets of wipes the size of those used before a shot at the doctor’s office. This is meant to last three days. We also get a small container to fill with hand sanitizer from a bottle in the dispatcher’s office.

State no longer allowed to track processing plant data

Local health officials will no longer be able to report COVID-19 data from meat processing plants. Governor Pete Ricketts said Wednesday that the state won't be releasing specific numbers of cases at meatpacking plants, saying it's a matter of privacy.

Armed black citizens escort Michigan lawmaker to capitol after volatile rightwing protest

A black lawmaker came to Michigan’s capitol with an escort of armed black citizens on Wednesday, days after white protesters with guns staged a volatile protest inside the state house, comparing the Democratic governor’s public health orders to “tyranny”. The state representative Sarah Anthony, 36, said she wanted to highlight what she saw as the failure of the Michigan capitol police to provide legislators with adequate security during the protest, which saw demonstrators with rifles standing in the legislative chamber above lawmakers.

NYPD deploying 1K cops to remove homeless from subways

The 1 a.m.-to-5 a.m. closures, aimed to clear out stations for deep cleaning, will continue for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said.

Father and son charged with murder of unarmed black man Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia

Two prosecutors recused themselves from investigating Arbery's murder citing conflicts of interest since Gregory McMichaels is a retired Glynn County police officer and investigator with Brunswick's district attorney's office.

Trump administration buries detailed CDC advice on reopening

The 17-page report by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team, titled “Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework,” was researched and written to help faith leaders, business owners, educators and state and local officials as they begin to reopen. It was supposed to be published last Friday, but agency scientists were told the guidance “would never see the light of day,” according to a CDC official.

There Is Still No Plan

But it is worth looking even closer at that leaked report, because the much-talked-about headline numbers did not communicate all that well just how dire the near future depicted by the model really was. The median projection — 3,000 deaths a day, as soon as the end of this month — is quite horrific, a 50 percent increase above our current peak. But for the lifetime of the model’s projections, no single day of data came anywhere close to as low as the median prediction. For the last two weeks, with the country’s infection and death rates shaped profoundly by social distancing and shelter-at-home orders, the results have fallen at or above the model’s 75th-percentile projection. That percentile, on June 1, yields a projection of more than 7,500 deaths every day.

This Script Sends Junk Data to Ohio’s Website for Snitching on Workers

Unemployment benefits have been a critical lifeline to millions of Americans who have been laid off or furloughed during the COVID-19 pandemic. 33.5 million people have filed for unemployment since March, and many of those whose jobs have been deemed “essential” face unsanitary and dangerous working conditions which put them at elevated risk of contracting the virus. Despite these risks, many large companies have continued business as usual while failing to provide employees with masks, gloves, and other personal protective equipment. Meanwhile, several states including Georgia have begun prematurely reopening business against the advice of health experts, forcing more people to return to work or face termination. According to the Washington Post, about 600 companies have already reported around 1,200 employees in Ohio since the state's "fraud" website opened earlier this week.

Trump team moves to scrap protections for LGBTQ patients

The liberal-leaning Center for American Progress published findings that 8 percent of lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults and 29 percent of transgender adults said they had been turned away by a health care provider based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Study: 71 percent of jobless Americans did not receive their March unemployment benefits

The Pew Research Center has found that, although more than 11 million Americans filed first-time unemployment claims in March, the wide variety of methods states and territories use to administer their jobless programs have resulted in wide disparities in who has received their payments, and how much those payments were worth. As a result, only 29 percent of jobless Americans received benefits in March, according to Pew’s analysis of Labor Department statistics. The disbursement rate of unemployment payments was found to vary widely, with nearly 66 percent of unemployed Massachusetts residents receiving their benefits, compared to only 7.6 percent of unemployed Florida residents.

How a 'NULL' License Plate Landed One Hacker in Ticket Hell

The fines were all sent by a private company called the Citation Processing Center, which, well, processes parking citations. But calling them, Tartaro says, proved fruitless. “I reached out to this company, and they’re basically saying that I have to prove without a doubt that these hundreds of tickets aren’t mine. Trying to speak to a manager went nowhere. He’s like, you’ve got to mail all these back to us.” Tartaro declined, worried about potentially losing the paper record of the misallocated fines. But the next day, he says, he noticed something odd in the public online listing of citations maintained at the Citation Processing Center’s website. He had given them an example of a specific ticket he had gotten that implicated a Honda. Online, that record had been changed to an Infiniti with Taranto’s VIN. Taranto shared a side by side comparison of his paper copy and the apparently altered database version as part of his Defcon talk. “After I had the phone call, directly after the phone call, those same tickets where I still have the physical printouts in front of me right now that say their make and model were modified,” Tartaro says. A Citation Processing Center employee said that while she was aware of Tartaro’s situation, the company was unable to comment.

Amazon Reinstates Fired Warehouse Worker After Employees Strike

Following Sunday’s walkout, Shakopee workers say Amazon agreed to return the fired worker's badge and allow her to return to work later this week. Amazon would not confirm to Motherboard that Osman had been fired but confirmed on Monday that she is employed by Amazon. Motherboard has seen copies of her appeals paperwork that discusses her termination.

California Police Used Military Surveillance Tech at Grad Student Strike

After Bernie Sanders tweeted on February 19 in support of striking graduate students at UC Santa Cruz, a Cal OES officer emailed the California State Threat Assessment Center (STAC) commander Eli Owen to request assistance to “verify/validate Mr. Sanders schedule,” writing that “initial intel suggested that Mr. Sanders may appear on the UC Santa Cruz campus.” The Cal OES official claimed of Sanders’ tweet and the possibility of his visit to the campus, “Check this out. UCSC is vying to be ground zero for the 2020 election. This is the shot across the bow.”

What You Learn When You Read Obituaries

When you read about the coronavirus pandemic, there are the large questions about science, health, inequality, the dark statistics, and the way regular life abruptly ended. When you read the stories about those who have died during the pandemic, the stories become — at the same time — more individualized and expansively larger.

Current and ex-employees allege Google drastically rolled back diversity and inclusion programs

Seven current and former employees from across a range of teams and roles at the company said separately that they all believed the reason behind cutting Sojourn and taking employees off diversity projects to move them elsewhere at Google was to shield the company from backlash from conservatives. The current and former employees agreed to speak to NBC News on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal for speaking to the press. “One of the major motivations for cutting Sojourn is that the company doesn’t want to be seen as anti-conservative,” one Google employee familiar with the company’s diversity programming said in an interview. “It does not want to invite lawsuits or claims by right-wing white employees about Google discriminating against them.”

Georgia’s Experiment in Human Sacrifice

Some residents think pressure from the state’s most influential business owners—people who would be shielded from the dangers their employees would face—was a likely factor in the decision to reopen. Others have speculated that the move is intended to bolster the state’s budget, possibly by making thousands of people ineligible for unemployment benefits if their employers reopen. “Every indication thus far is that you as an employee can’t stay home and continue to collect unemployment simply because you fear infection,” Mayor Girtz told me. “You of your own volition have made that decision, in terms of how the system views you.”

Coronavirus: Treasury ‘considers public sector pay freeze and tax hikes’ to fix financial black hole left by Covid-19

While the measures during the crisis have maintained cross-party support, some backbench conservatives have expressed concern at the scale of the measures employed – while urging the chancellor to return to reducing the deficit, a staple of the Conservative party since it entered power in 2010.

Japanese aquarium urges public to video-chat eels who are forgetting humans exist

Concerned that the garden eels – so named because their grass-like appearance when, en masse, they poke their heads out of the seabed – could come to see visitors as a threat, the aquarium is asking people to get in touch in the form of a calming video calls.

The Coronavirus Is Rewriting Our Imaginations

As for government: it’s government that listens to science and responds by taking action to save us. Stop to ponder what is now obstructing the performance of that government. Who opposes it? Right now we’re hearing two statements being made. One, from the President and his circle: we have to save money even if it costs lives. The other, from the Centers for Disease Control and similar organizations: we have to save lives even if it costs money. Which is more important, money or lives? Money, of course! says capital and its spokespersons. Really? people reply, uncertainly. Seems like that’s maybe going too far? Even if it’s the common wisdom? Or was.

Minutes after pledging to not lie, the new White House press secretary lied a whole bunch

Asked to flesh out Trump’s thinking, McEnany characterized the Kavanaugh allegations as “verifiably false.” “I think it was a grave miscarriage of justice with what happened with Justice Brett Kavanaugh. There’s no need for me to bring up the salacious, awful, and verifiably false allegations that were made against Justice Kavanaugh,” she said. But that’s a lie. Instead of being “verifiably false,” multiple accusations against Kavanaugh were found to be credible during the course of an investigation conducted by the New York Times that was published last fall, roughly a year after his confirmation to the court.

Amazon, Whole Foods, Instacart Workers Organize a Historic Mass Strike

Workers at Amazon, Whole Foods, Instacart, Walmart, FedEx, Target, and Shipt say they will walk off the job on May 1 to protest their employers’ failure to provide basic protections for frontline workers who are risking and losing their lives at work. Meanwhile, these same companies are making record profits.

ReOpen NC official reports testing positive for coronavirus

ReOpen NC has held two protests in Raleigh against Cooper’s stay-at-home order and plans to hold demonstrations every Tuesday the order is still in effect. Whitlock posted that she would be at Tuesday’s protest.

Continuing the Political Revolution

Many of the organizations and groups who joined Bernie 2020 have been on the frontlines fighting for justice for decades. They are seasoned organizers, experts in their field, and some of the most powerful groups in the country. Bernie 2020 was never about one election, or one person, it’s always been about us. Our campaign knows that we stand on the shoulders of movements who have been fighting for working people for generations. And as the campaign comes to an end, we want to make sure that YOU know how to get involved in the critical movements of today.

Cases now at 1,282; tribe to sue Treasury

The Navajo Nation will join in a lawsuit with 10 other tribes against the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury over COVID-19 funding. The allocated $8 billion was intended to help tribal governments fight the COVID-19 pandemic under the Coronavirus Relief Fund. But it was reported the Secretary of the Treasury intends to fund over 230 Alaska Native Corporations using the funds. Alaska Native Corporations are for-profit corporations organized under state law and are owned by shareholders, including non-Indian shareholders. The 12 regional Alaska Native Corporations alone have over 138,000 shareholders, employ more than 43,000 people worldwide, and generated more than $10.5 billion in revenues in 2018, according to a news release.

FDA Announces Temporary Flexibility Policy Regarding Certain Labeling Requirements for Foods for Humans During COVID-19 Pandemic

Substitution of certain oils may temporarily be appropriate without a label change, such as canola oil for sunflower oil, because they contain similar types of fats.

Calif. Design Firm Working on Protective Suit for Concerts and Clubbing

With many concerts and big events being postponed or even canceled, a local design firm has set out to create a wearable, technology driven personal coronavirus protection suit. They hope this will get crowds back in clubs and venues so they can socialize without social distancing.

Wildflower meadows designated for rare bees in Somerset and Essex

Lytes Cary Manor in Somerset has been designated as one of two "exemplary" sites for the rare shrill carder bee - the other being the RSPB's Rainham Marshes in Essex. The Bumblebee Conservation Trust said the "champion sites" would help secure the long-term future of the species.

Coronavirus: As Florida re-opens, COVID-19 data chief gets sidelined and researchers cry foul

"I understand, appreciate, and even share your concern about all the dramatic changes that have occurred and those that are yet to come," she wrote. "As a word of caution, I would not expect the new team to continue the same level of accessibility and transparency that I made central to the process during the first two months. After all, my commitment to both is largely (arguably entirely) the reason I am no longer managing it."

Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle iPhone photos

Senior Dave Spencer took a demo test before his Calculus AB exam to make sure he understood the process for uploading photos. He Airdropped an iPhone image of his responses to his Mac and tried to convert it by renaming the HEIC file to PNG. Changing a file’s extension does not guarantee that it will be converted, but Spencer was still able to submit the demo test with no problem. Spencer used the same process on the real exam and thought it went through, but he received an email the next day saying the files were corrupted and that he needed to retake the test. The College Board’s tweet went out just a few hours before Spencer’s scheduled exam; he doesn’t have a Twitter account and didn’t see it.

Mass. worker safety group says state’s reopening plan fails to protect workers

“The reopening plan does require workers to wear face coverings, but does not require that employers provide or pay for them,” the group wrote. “While training is required in the Reopening Plan, it is focused on social distancing and hygiene protocols, and does not include important topics like basic rights on the job and proper fit-testing and donning and doffing for PPE. Training and training materials should be provided in workers’ preferred languages. Finally, in many places, the standards are only required ‘if feasible’ or ‘when possible’ giving employers plenty of opportunities to avoid compliance.”

Amy Klobuchar helped jail teen for life, but case was flawed

The getaway driver, Hans Williams, did identify a third man -- by his full name and in a photo lineup. Police initially said they didn’t want to “muddy up the case” with an unverified name, later that they didn’t believe him. They made no real effort to follow up. After getting a denial from the suspect in 2005, the chief homicide detective “permanently checked” out their recorded conversation and gave it to the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office. It has since gone missing.

Harris Teeter Won't Tell Employees What Their Temperature Is During New Health Screenings

In some instances, workers say managers cited the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) as a reason that they could not share the temperature reading, creating even more confusion. Other workers said they were told it would be "breaking the rules," though they said they were not told which "rules" and why hearing their own vitals would be an issue, given that the screenings are done in private.

These Moms Fought for a Home—And Started a Movement

After three weeks of living in the house, the moms received an eviction notice on behalf of Catamount Properties, a subsidiary of real estate investment firm Wedgewood, which bought the home last summer at a foreclosure auction for $501,078. The company bills itself as “a leading acquirer of distressed residential real estate.” Each year Wedgewood buys hundreds of Bay Area foreclosed homes, renovates them, and sells them for profit. It’s one of a number of speculative real estate companies operating in the area, and their practices at large are accelerating gentrification and driving up rent and home prices astronomically. According to census data, Oakland’s black population declined by 25 percent between 2000 and 2010, a period during which there was comparatively little real estate development. Between 2007 and 2011, investors bought 42% of all properties that went through foreclosure, and 93% of these homes were located in the flatlands, or the lower-income areas of the city, according to a 2012 report.

Jared Kushner claims ‘we have all the testing we need’ — actual experts say he's wrong

Meanwhile, medical experts have said there are nowhere near enough testing kits distributed throughout the country in order to begin reopening states. Harvard’s Global Health Institute placed the daily rate of testing needed to reopen the country at 500,000, while the US currently conducts about 150,000 tests each day. That’s a much lower estimate than others, which have suggested the US needs to conduct as much as 10 to 20 million tests daily in order to prevent a deadlier second wave from potentially sweeping over the country come the fall.

How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct

Try to hold your shot for at least 10 seconds before moving your phone. This might feel uncomfortable, but lawyers, advocates, and investigators will need to be able to actually see what’s happening in the footage to use it. We often hear from the lawyers we work with that footage is too shaky or moving around too quickly for them to make sense of it.

Witness Who Recorded Shooting Of Walter Scott Speaks Out: ‘Police Had Control’

Santana has reportedly said he waited to release the footage to see how Slager would report his actions. “He wanted to see what reports were coming from the North Charleston Police Department because of the fact that they may have told the truth,” Walter Scott’s brother told TIME on Wednesday. “And when they continued with the lies, he said, ‘I have to come forward.’”

NYC Bus Drivers Union Refuses to Transport Protesters for the NYPD

Motherboard has confirmed that this is the official position of the union that represents MTA bus drivers. “None of our bus ops should be used for that. We didn't do it during Zucotti Park/Occupy Wall St. went to court against this,” JP Patafio, vice president of Transit Workers Union Local 100, which represents the city’s bus drivers, told Motherboard when asked if the union would transport people who were arrested. “I told MTA our ops wont be used to drive cops around,” he added. "It is in solidarity" with Minneapolis' bus drivers.

Why I quit working on Boris Johnson's ‘world-beating' test-and-tracing system

The next day I was scheduled to work again. This time, I was invited to a chatroom. I recognised many of the names in the group from my training, so knew the other people were also new. Many people were writing, “Did anyone do anything yesterday?” “Do we just wait?” “What are we waiting for?” The questions quickly turned to complaint, and we were left unsupervised for hours. A message then appeared asking us to complete our online training – which was met with a chorus of “I did the training”. The day passed as we waited, re-attempted training, and wrote messages to supervisors and got no response.

Here Are The Minneapolis Police's Tools To Identify Protesters

A spokesperson for the St. Paul Police Department denied that it had used Clearview after they checked with several units, despite the data seen by BuzzFeed News. In the past, multiple police departments initially denied using Clearview before walking back their statements following full reviews or audits of their officers. The Minneapolis Police Department has not been forthcoming about its use of facial recognition. In July, a spokesperson for the department told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that the organization had no plans to deploy the technology, but at least one user associated with the organization created an account with Clearview AI that month, according to data seen by BuzzFeed News.

Customs and Border Protection Is Flying a Predator Drone Over Minneapolis

The drone was first spotted on a flight tracking tool by members of the ADS-B Exchange, a community of flight watchers who use open-source flight data to monitor America's skies. Presumably, the drone is surveilling protests there, though CBP did not respond to a request for comment about what the drone is doing there.

Shahmir Sanni: ‘Nobody was called to account. But I lost almost everything’

Sanni ran up against the combined forces of the British establishment. On the day we published his story, one of the directors of the campaign – Stephen Parkinson, the national organiser for Vote Leave, and now Theresa May’s top political adviser – issued a statement that Dominic Cummings, the campaign director for Vote Leave, published on his blog. The blog revealed that Parkinson had been in a personal relationship with Sanni and that Parkinson could understand “if the lines became blurred for him”. In the Observer’s office, we read it in horror. We knew that Sanni was gay and we’d talked to him, as had his lawyer, at length about the risks of talking to the press. He wasn’t out to his family and he said he couldn’t be. He had family in Pakistan, including his sister, where people are killed for being homosexual.

Breaking: CNN team arrested by Minnesota police on live television

CNN journalist Omar Jimenez has been taken into police custody during a live broadcast at the site of the protests in Minneapolis, after clearly identifying himself to officers. Jimenez's crew, including a producer and a camera operator, were also placed in handcuffs.

Trump accuses Twitter of 'stifling' free speech after fact check

President Trump on Tuesday evening accused Twitter of “stifling FREE SPEECH” and interfering in the 2020 election by fact-checking one of his tweets on the issue of voting by mail.

Charging the police: By the numbers

An on-duty police officer shoots and kills about 1,000 people each year in the United States, according to an analysis by Philip Stinson, an associate professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. That estimate is based on figures released by the Justice Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Police Erupt in Violence Nationwide

The ongoing protests following the killing of George Floyd were caught up in violence again on Saturday, as police all over the country tear-gassed protesters, drove vehicles through crowds, opened fire with nonlethal rounds on journalists or people on their own property, and in at least one instance, pushed over an elderly man who was walking away with a cane.

Indigenous deaths in custody worsen in year of tracking by Deaths Inside project

Guardian Australia’s new analysis, which includes deaths reported via coronial findings, official statements and other means in the past 12 months, shows: The proportion of Indigenous deaths where medical care was required but not given increased, from 35.4% to 38.6%.

'Mini Stonehenges': Hong Kong protesters take on police, one brick at a time

The latest strategy being deployed across the city involves protesters stacking bricks that resemble mini-temples across thoroughfares to function as roadblocks. Locally dubbed “brick battlegrounds” or “mini-Stonehenges”, they have been hailed by many supporters as creative installations to deter the advance of riot police and stop cars from driving over thoroughfares.

Exclusive: The US Military Is Monitoring Protests in 7 States

In addition to Minnesota, where a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd, the military is tracking uprisings in New York, Ohio, Colorado, Arizona, Tennessee, and Kentucky, according to a Defense Department situation report. Notably, only Minnesota has requested National Guard support. The documents were originally stored on an unclassified server but were subsequently elevated to a classified system

Louisville police and soldiers return fire, killing man; police chief fired

Louisville’s mayor said the police chief had been fired immediately after learning officers involved in the fatal shooting of a man did not have their body cameras turned on. Mayor Greg Fischer said Monday that Louisville Metro Police Chief Steve Conrad, who announced he would resign in May, has been fired.

Homan Square revealed: how Chicago police ‘disappeared’ 7,000 people

The narcotics, vice and anti-gang units operating out of Homan Square, on Chicago’s west side, take arrestees to the nondescript warehouse from all over the city: police data obtained by the Guardian and mapped against the city grid show that 53% of disclosed arrestees come from more than 2.5 miles away from the warehouse. No contemporaneous public record of someone’s presence at Homan Square is known to exist. Nor are any booking records generated at Homan Square, as confirmed by a sworn deposition of a police researcher in late September, further preventing relatives or attorneys from finding someone taken there.

The day Philadelphia bombed its own people

On the evening of May 13, 1985, longstanding tensions between MOVE, a black liberation group, and the Philadelphia Police Department erupted horrifically. That night, the city of Philadelphia dropped a satchel bomb, a demolition device typically used in combat, laced with Tovex and C-4 explosives on the MOVE organization, who were living in a West Philadelphia rowhome known to be occupied by men, women, and children. It went up in unextinguished flames. Eleven people were killed, including five children and the founder of the organization. Sixty-one homes were destroyed, and more than 250 citizens were left homeless.

Caught on camera, police explode in rage and violence across the US

Over the past 72 hours, people across the US have captured what may be the most comprehensive live picture of police brutality ever. Any one of the videos we’ve seen could have sparked a national discussion, with people picking apart their elements, searching for context to argue about, and digging through the pasts of everyone involved. But it’s not just one act of violence. It’s everywhere.

How to Support the Protesters Demanding Justice for George Floyd

If you’re planning to attend a protest, there are many ways to prepare in order to prioritize your safety — and the safety of those around you. But there are also ways to support protesters from your own home, primarily through donations to various bail fund organizations. The United States’s cash bail protocol is a broken system that leads to mass incarceration, which disproportionately affects people of color. There are many organizations throughout the country that are working hard to raise bail for people who cannot afford it in this moment of mass protest, part of their larger work to advocate fiercely for a fairer future.

Link Roundup May 2020

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