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Unemployment statistics during the pandemic have been inflated by backlogs, according to federal report (nationthailand.com)

Unemployment statistics during the pandemic have been inflated by backlogs, according to federal report

InternationalDec 01. 2020

By The Washington Post · Eli Rosenberg

The nation’s weekly unemployment statistics have been plagued by backlogs, fraud and inconsistent data reporting state by state, making them a seriously flawed measurement that has likely overstated the number of individuals claiming unemployment during the pandemic, according to a federal report released Monday.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO), the nonpartisan auditing agency that works for Congress, was unsparing about the problems with unemployment statistics, as part of a lengthy report that looked at the country’s response to the coronavirus.

In particular, unemployment numbers have likely been inflated due to issues with backlogs that have plagued many state unemployment systems, according to the GAO report.

The Labor Department doesn’t actually count each person who is claiming jobless benefits every week. Historically, the agency has used the states’ tally of ongoing continued claims as a stand-in for the number of people receiving unemployment benefits at any given time. And each week of unemployment is counted as a separate continued claim, the GAO noted.

Before the pandemic, this was a fine approximation. But due to the massive level of backlogs, as well as the ability for some workers to file claims retroactively, this has resulted in a significant number of inflated claims during the pandemic, the GAO said.

The data reporting problems are a symptom of the larger dysfunction that has coursed through badly swamped state unemployment agencies this year. Those issues have manifested in high levels of fraudulent claims, delays and denials for hundreds of thousands of legitimate claimants, and other problems that slowed the delivery financial aid for many people in need, particularly during the early months of the crisis.

And they are not without consequences: Unemployment claims have served as a weekly indicator for analysts and policymakers about the health of the labor market and the broader economy as a whole.

“We need to know what happened so we can shore up these systems and this doesn’t ever happen again,” said the Economic Policy Institute’s Heidi Shierholz, a former chief economist for the Department of Labor. “We have chosen to disinvest in these programs for decades and this is what you get from that.”

The weekly report on unemployment insurance has also relied on inconsistent reporting of data from states in the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program – the jobless benefit program Congress created for gig and self-employed workers, which has further complicated week-to-week comparisons of the data.

For example, in a sample of 20 states, the number of continued claims submitted in the PUA program through June 27 was nearly 20 million more than the total number of people who had submitted an initial claim, the GAO found.

Other quirks have complicated the process.

In California, due to the way the state’s unemployment system works in two week increments, the number of continued claims may be more than twice the number of actual people submitting claims, the GAO said, citing an analysis by the California Policy Lab.

“To understand the supportive role UI and PUA benefits are playing in the economy during the pandemic, reliable data are needed on both the number of new claimants each week and the number of continuing claimants who are relying on program benefits,” the GAO report said. “Without an accurate accounting of the number of individuals who are relying on these benefits in as close to real time as possible, policymakers may be challenged to respond to the crisis at hand.”

The GAO also found problems with the PUA program that went beyond statistics.

A majority of states paid PUA claimants the minimum allowable benefit instead of the full amount they were eligible for, meaning that many households fell below the poverty line after the supplemental $600 a week in unemployment insurance expired over the summer.

The GAO also noted that fraud, particularly in the PUA program, may also be inflating some states’ counts.

In a response to the GAO included in the report, the Department of Labor said it planned to clarify its future unemployment releases to note that the number of continual claims does not accurately estimate the number of people claiming benefits.

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Tougher battery standards sought by EU in shift to electric cars (nationthailand.com)

Tougher battery standards sought by EU in shift to electric cars

InternationalDec 01. 2020

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Ewa Krukowska

Europe plans to impose stricter environmental requirements for batteries as it begins a radical economic overhaul set to boost electric vehicles and clean energy.

The European Union will aim at setting a global standard in the fast-growing market when it proposes next month regulations to ensure all batteries marketed in the region are greener throughout their life cycle.

“In our assessment, the EU will become the second-biggest global market for batteries,” EU Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevicius said in an interview. “The number of batteries placed on the EU market and their importance will only grow in the coming years. Their sustainability should not lag behind.”

The EU has already invested billions in its Battery Alliance project to compete with Asia, currently Europe’s only provider of EV batteries. The region’s battery market value will reach 250 billion euros ($300 billion) by 2025, with production capacity able to meet auto industry demand, according to European Commission estimated.

Germany and France, home to major car manufacturers, are leading the push to roll out a European battery industry. Last year, the EU approved 3.2 billion euros in aid for a project spanning seven nations and including industrial giants such as BASF SE and carmakers BMW AG and PSA Group.

To make batteries greener, the EU will require more responsible sourcing of raw materials, using clean energy in production, cutting the share of hazardous substances, boosting energy efficiency and improving their durability, according to Sinkevicius. The new rules will affect batteries manufactured in the 27-nation bloc and brought from abroad, he said.

“The new framework should apply to all types of batteries and all kinds of battery chemistry, whether sold apart or contained in products,” Sinkevicius said. “It will ensure that various battery types are subject to similar but differentiated obligations.”

The increasingly electric future of the region is part of the Green Deal, a sweeping strategy that will affect each corner of the economy. To meets its goal of zeroing-out greenhouse gases by 2050, the EU needs to cut emissions from transport by 90%.

Europe’s growing EV market is starting to lure battery makers. China’s SVolt Energy Technology Co. said this month it will join Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd. in opening a factory in Germany, while Tesla Inc. supplier Panasonic Corp. may start up a battery business in Norway.

BMW said earlier this month that each of its German plants will produce at least one fully electric vehicle by the end of 2022.

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Air travel rises to post-pandemic high despite U.S. warning (nationthailand.com)

Air travel rises to post-pandemic high despite U.S. warning

InternationalDec 01. 2020

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Ryan Beene

U.S. air travelers rose to the most in more than eight months as fliers brushed aside the advice of public health officials to avoid trips around the Thanksgiving holiday.

Passengers at domestic airport checkpoints totaled 1,176,091 on Sunday, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration said Monday. That’s the most since March, when the coronavirus pandemic gutted travel demand.

The uptick in airline travel came even as public health officials and state leaders urged people to stay home and limit holiday gatherings to prevent a further surge in covid-19 cases. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, before the holiday said that people should “think twice” about traveling.

Despite the increase, Sunday’s passenger total was only 41% of last year’s level. Before the holiday week, travelers in November had been at about 35% of 2019 levels.

American Airlines Group Inc., United Airlines Holdings Inc. and Southwest Airlines Co. had warned before Thanksgiving that bookings were softening with news of growing infections, hospitalizations and deaths due to covid-19.

A Standard & Poor’s index of major U.S. airlines fell 1.8% at 11:21 a.m., paced by American’s 4.3% drop to $14.33.

Driving was also off last week, with U.S. gasoline demand falling more than 25% compared with year-earlier levels, according to GasBuddy.

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The record-shattering 2020 Atlantic hurricane season is over, but the scars it left remain (nationthailand.com)

The record-shattering 2020 Atlantic hurricane season is over, but the scars it left remain

InternationalDec 01. 2020

By The Washington Post · Matthew Cappucci

After six months of fury, tens of billions of dollars in damage, hundreds of fatalities and 30 named storms, the jam-packed and record-filled 2020 Atlantic hurricane season is, on paper at least, coming to an end. The season is defined as a stretch from June 1 to Nov. 30, and while Mother Nature doesn’t respect calendars, tropical activity has largely flatlined. Only one unnamed system is present near Madeira Island in the far northeast Atlantic, while the remainder of the ocean basin is virtually silent.

The season was the busiest on record in the Atlantic, with 30 named storms. At least half a dozen of them are expected to be billion-dollar disasters when the damage is finally tabulated, while hundreds died in the barrage of tempests, particularly in Central America.

Forecasters had been calling for an “extremely active” hurricane season as early as late July into August, when it became apparent that atmospheric and oceanic conditions would line up to crank out an assembly line of storms. But no one expected the season to be this hyperactive, with 2020 becoming the fifth consecutive above-average season in a row in terms of storm activity.

Here’s how the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season stacks up overall:

– 30 named storms. The average is 12; no prior season had produced more than 28. The Greek Alphabet was tapped into for storm naming for only the second time on record, and was utilized beginning more than seven weeks ahead of the previous record pace seen during 2005.

– Thirteen hurricanes, and six major hurricanes. More than a dozen of this year’s systems reached hurricane strength, with sustained winds of 74 mph or greater. A typical year sees closer to six hurricanes, with only one or two Category 3 or greater “major” hurricanes. Only 2005 had more hurricanes in a season, with 15 forming.

– Most U.S. landfalls on record. Twelve named storms made landfall on U.S. soil, including five in Louisiana. Two of those landfalls were within 15 miles of each other.

– Ten rapidly-intensifying storms. Rapid intensification describes a tropical storm or hurricane that strengthens by 35 mph or more in 24 hours. Ten storms did this, tying a record set in 1995. Several storms intensified at rates unprecedented for the time of year or location.

– Latest-forming Category 5 on record. Hurricane Iota became a Category 5 storm in the western Caribbean on November 16. Iota marked only the second time on record that a Category 5 had formed in the Atlantic in November, the only other occasion being the Cuba Hurricane of 1932.

– 73% more “active” than normal. A season’s activity isn’t measured by just the number of them that formed. There’s also a measure called ACE, or Accumulated Cyclone Energy, which incorporates the intensity and longevity of each of a season’s tropical storms and hurricanes. This season has racked nearly 180 ACE units to date, compared to an average of 104.

– The 2020 season also featured two double-whammies, one of which appears entirely unprecedented in roughly 150 years of Atlantic hurricane bookkeeping.

– Hurricanes Eta and Iota both struck near Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua only fifteen miles apart and within a span of two weeks, bringing Category 4 impacts to the coast and feet of rain to parts of Central America.

– Similarly, Category 4 Hurricane Laura ravaged Lake Charles, Louisiana in late August, while Delta then brought winds of near 100 mph barely six weeks later in early October.

Meteorologists across the industry were tasked with keeping track of frequent, simultaneous storms spinning across the ocean in rapid succession. Nowhere was this truer than at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, where forecasters issued hundreds of advisories covering every storm, all while working in a coronavirus-restricted environment.

“It was a remarkable season, certainly the busiest season in terms of impacts and number of storms since I’ve been there,” said Michael Brennan, branch chief of the Hurricane Center’s hurricane specialist unit, who started there in 2008. “Basically everybody along the entire East and Gulf coast got affected in some way. There were watches and warnings up from Texas to Maine,” he said in an interview.

He described the season as “relentless.”

Among the most challenging elements, he said, was the number of storms that developed and intensified as they neared shore. That, coupled with the high frequency of rapid intensification that characterized storms this season, made forecasting and warning vulnerable coastal residents difficult.

“Fourteen storms required watches and warnings on the first advisory we issued,” explained Brennan. “Right off the bat we had to tell people they could have hazardous conditions.”

He contrasted this season’s storms to Hurricane Irma, which spent more than a week in 2017 barreling westwards across the open Atlantic nearing peak strength before lashing the Windward Islands.

“We had a lot of [rapid intensification] near land in the watch/warning timeframe,” said Brennan. “You look at something like [Hurricane] Delta, those types of rapid fluctuations in intensity are difficult to even observe and make sense of in real time. Trying to forecast them is really tough.”

Hurricane intensity forecasts still lag behind track forecasts in their accuracy.

While the storms may have dissipated, the damage they left behind remain etched in the landscape in peoples’ lives. Steve Bowen, a meteorologist and the head of disaster insight at Aon, says that the damage could tally in the tens of billions of dollars.

“From an economic loss perspective, the 2020 Atlantic Hurricane Season was costly, very impactful, and will require a multi-year recovery effort in several hard-hit areas,” wrote Bowen in an email. “Preliminary estimates show $41 billion in tropical cyclone losses across the entire Atlantic basin; of which $37 billion occurred on the U.S. mainland.”

Despite the costly price tag, it could have been a lot worse.

“This [year’s damage cost is] much lower than peak years in 2017 ($307 billion) and 2005 ($238 billion),” Bowen wrote, alluding to seasons that included Harvey, Irma, Maria, Katrina, Rita and Wilma, for example.

“It’s hard for most of us to associate the 2020 Atlantic season with the word ‘lucky’, but given the record-setting volume of landfalls, most major coastal U.S. metro areas came away generally unscathed,” Bowen said.

Not everyone was so lucky though. In Lake Charles, Louisiana, piles of debris still line city streets, with blue tarps covering roofs pried from homes during the twin tempests. Ben Terry, a meteorologist at KPLC-TV, says his community is still working to heal.

“It was unbelievable,” said Terry, reminiscing on the season in an interview. “[Hurricane] Laura was something that you just really couldn’t imagine, and then Delta [hit] just six weeks later as we were getting into recovery.”

Terry’s home was destroyed by Hurricane Laura, while the 400-foot tower at his television station collapsed and crushed part of the studio. Following the storm, he was forced to stay with a friend and work out of an affiliated station and studio in Baton Rouge, returning home shortly before Delta struck the beleaguered community.

“It made it very tough,” said Terry. “It would have been very easy just to pack up and leave when you lose everything and your house. But when you’re a meteorologist, you’re on TV, you have to be strong and tell the public you’ll get through this. And at the end of the day, you have to deal with the same thing everyone else is dealing with.”

Encountering Delta just over a month after Laura was an unwelcome dose of déjà vu for Terry and Lake Charles. He found himself asking “is this real?”

“Delta was coming in as a stronger storm, and it was surreal to think this could possibly happen again,” recalled Terry. “It was like, “this can’t happen, the track’s going to change,” and ultimately it came ashore thirteen miles east of where Laura made landfall.”

The road to recovery for Lake Charles will be long and arduous, coming as parts of Central America are reeling from their back-to-back storms and several Caribbean Islands pick up the pieces of their communities as well.

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Four French police officers charged with brutal beating of Black music producer (nationthailand.com)

Four French police officers charged with brutal beating of Black music producer

InternationalDec 01. 2020

By The Washington Post
James McAuley

PARIS – Four French police officers were charged Monday with assaulting a Black music producer last week, an episode captured on video footage that has stunned the French public and shaken the government.

Michel Zecler, the 41-year-old music producer, claims that the officers repeatedly insulted him as they beat him and that they also used a clear racial epithet while they did so. The officers denied that charge during their interrogation, Paris prosecutor Rémy Heitz told reporters Sunday.

The footage of Zecler, first released Thursday by the French news outlet Loopsider, stunned a nation that was already debating a controversial provision in a new security law that would ban recording police on active duty. The release of the footage followed an earlier incident Thursday in which a Paris police officer was shown on camera beating Afghan refugees as authorities cleared out a migrant camp in central Paris.

President Emmanuel Macron said in a Facebook post Friday that the images of Zecler’s beating “shame us,” and he urged the French government to devise new protocols that would “reaffirm the link of confidence that should naturally exist between the French and those who protect them.”

“I want to understand why I have been assaulted by people who were wearing a police uniform. I want justice actually, because I believe in the justice of my country,” Zecler said in an interview with the Associated Press. He added that he suffered injuries to his head, legs and forearms.

Three of the officers involved in the incident have been charged with “intentional violence by a person in public authority,” as well with falsifying statements that documented the incident. The fourth officer has been charged only with “intentional violence.” Two of the four have been granted conditional release.

Amid mounting criticism from the public in the wake of these incidents, the French government appeared willing to change the controversial provision that would ban filming police, in theory to protect them from harm.

Prime Minister Jean Castex said Friday that the provision, still pending approval from the French Senate, would be revised.

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Lawmakers request new GAO studies on pandemic’s effect on the aviation industry (nationthailand.com)

Lawmakers request new GAO studies on pandemic’s effect on the aviation industry

InternationalDec 01. 2020

Left: Rick Larsen, Wash, Right: Peter A. DeFazio

By The Washington Post
Lori Aratani

Two top Democrats on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure have requested that the Government Accountability Office conduct studies examining the risk of air travel during a public health crisis.

Reps. Peter A. DeFazio, Ore., chairman of the committee, and Rick Larsen, Wash., chairman of the aviation subcommittee, said the work is needed to better understand how disease can spread through air travel and what strategies can be put in place to control that spread.

The aviation industry has been among the hardest-hit by the pandemic, which has grounded tens of thousands of flights and reduced passenger traffic to a trickle. The International Air Transport Association recently estimated that airlines will suffer a net loss of $118.5 billion in 2020, up from a previous estimate of $84.2 billion.

DeFazio and Larsen said that they are aware of the pandemic’s effect on the industry but that the risks of air travel at such a time cannot be ignored.

“Unfortunately, these losses do not negate the fact that air travel, more than any other mode of transportation, has the greatest potential to carry this disease from one part of the world to another,” they wrote in a letter this month to Gene Dorado, comptroller of the United States. The pair said that until a vaccine is widely available, “reducing the spread of COVID-19 through air travel and revitalizing the U.S. airline industry will depend in large part on a better understanding of how diseases, particularly those that are airborne, spread through air travel and identifying technologies and practices that can help mitigate disease transmission.”

The lawmakers requested that the GAO conduct three studies: one that examines research by government, academics and the airline industry on disease transmission via air travel; another that looks at the roles and responsibilities of local, state and federal authorities as well as those of airports, airlines and their contractors; and a third that assesses the measures the industry has put in place in response to the coronavirus.

“This report should provide lessons learned by aviation regulators and stakeholders that could assist with preparedness planning; identify successful disease mitigation strategies, including operational practices and technologies; and recommend any changes to current laws, regulation, and industry practices,” the lawmakers said.

DeFazio and Larsen have asked that the first study be completed within nine months.

The three reports will expand on previous GAO work assessing whether the aviation industry is prepared to deal with a global disease outbreak. In 2015, the GAO issued a report calling on the Transportation Department to take the lead in developing a national plan for dealing with an outbreak, but such a plan was never developed, in part because agencies could not agree on which one should take the lead.

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Australia heat wave breaks records in Sydney, escalates fire danger across wide area (nationthailand.com)

Australia heat wave breaks records in Sydney, escalates fire danger across wide area

InternationalDec 01. 2020

By The Washington Post
Andrew Freedman

In a development ominously similar to the events that led to 2019-2020′s devastating wildfires, millions of Australians are sweltering through a record-shattering heat wave that has set off hundreds of wildfires in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland.

The heat has been more notable than the bush fires at this point, with Sydney seeing back-to-back days with temperatures exceeding 104 degrees (40 Celsius) over the weekend, a feat that had not been accomplished before during November in 160 years of record-keeping.

Sydney also saw its hottest November night on record, with the temperature dropping to just 77.5 degrees (25.3 Celsius) on Sunday. In the afternoon, the temperature reached 108.7 degrees (42.6 Celsius) as fire danger reached extreme levels in southeastern New South Wales.

Typically, Australia’s hottest weather comes during January, which is the height of the summer in the Southern Hemisphere.

The ongoing heat wave is forecast to continue through at least midweek across New South Wales and Queensland, according to Dean Narramore, a meteorologist at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

Narramore said the heat is expected to peak in southeastern Queensland and northeastern New South Wales on Wednesday, with temperatures up to 32 degrees (18 Celsius) above average for this time of year. Temperatures in inland areas are expected to soar above 113 degrees (45 Celsius).

“While bursts of heat and heat waves are normal for this time of year, what’s making this burst of heat exceptional is temperatures up to 18 degrees above average and many locations breaking records,” Narramore said in a video posted on the bureau’s website.

Numerous additional temperature records are still expected to fall during this event.

A few locations set spring records over the weekend, including Andamooka in South Australia, which reached 118.4 degrees (48 Celsius), according to Ben Domensino of the private Australian weather company Weatherzone.

Heat waves like this one can rapidly dry out vegetation, elevating wildfire risk.

Australia saw massive bush fires last year, but that does not preclude big fires from occurring this season. Shane Fitzsimmons, New South Wales’s Commissioner of Resilience and the former Rural Fire Service commissioner, told the Sydney Morning Herald that most of the state is still prone to bush fires.

“We’ve still got more than 90% of the state that’s susceptible to fire,” he said. Of the heat wave and smattering of wildfires, Fitzsimmons added: “It was an ominous weekend, an ominous sign for the weeks and months ahead.”

Last season’s bush fires were so severe they lofted particles high into the stratosphere, with smoke circling the globe several times. Studies have likened the blazes to simulating the mushroom cloud effects of a nuclear blast.

Heat waves and more severe and longer-lasting wildfires are two of the expected consequences for Australia of human-caused climate change. A recent report from the BOM found that Australia’s climate has warmed an average of 2.6 degrees (1.44 Celsius) since 1910, “leading to an increase in the frequency of extreme heat events.”

That report also found that there has been an uptick in “extreme fire weather,” which refers to days when high winds, hot temperatures and dry conditions overlap, as well as a lengthening of the fire season. This is especially the case in southern Australia, the report found.