In Brief: April 22, 2020

Senate approves $483B virus aid deal, sends it to House

WASHINGTON — A $483 billion coronavirus aid package flew through the Senate on Tuesday after Congress and the White House reached a deal to replenish a small-business payroll fund and provided new money for hospitals and testing.

Passage was swift and unanimous, despite opposition from conservative Republicans. President Donald Trump tweeted his support, pledging to sign it into law. It now goes to the House, with votes set for Thursday.

“I urge the House to pass the bill,” Trump said at the White House.

After nearly two weeks of negotiations and deadlock, Congress and the White House reached agreement Tuesday on the nearly $500 billion package — the fourth as Washington strains to respond to the health and economic crisis.

“The Senate is continuing to stand by the American people,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to an almost empty chamber.

Publicly traded firms get $365M in small-business loans

Companies with thousands of employees, past penalties from government investigations and risks of financial failure even before the coronavirus walloped the economy were among those receiving millions of dollars from a relief fund that Congress created to help small businesses through the crisis, an Associated Press investigation found.

The Paycheck Protection Program was supposed to infuse small businesses, which typically have less access to quick cash and credit, with $349 billion in emergency loans that could help keep workers on the job and bills paid on time.

But at least 94 companies that disclosed receiving aid since the program opened April 3 were publicly traded, the AP found, some with market values well over $100 million. And about 25% of the companies had warned investors months ago — while the economy was humming along — that their ability to remain viable was in question.

By combing through thousands of regulatory filings submitted through Monday, the AP identified the 94 companies, or their subsidiaries, as recipients of a combined $365 million in low-interest, taxpayer-backed loans.

Nine of the loans were for the maximum $10 million possible, including one to a California software company that settled a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation late last year into accounting errors that overstated its revenue.

The firms getting maximum loans are likely just a tip of the iceberg: Statistics released last week by the U.S. Small Business Administration showed that 4,400 of the approved loans exceeded $5 million. Overall, the size of the typical loan nationally was $206,000, according to the statistics. The SBA will forgive the loans if companies meet certain benchmarks, such as keeping employees on payroll for eight weeks.

South Korea downplays concerns over Kim Jong Un’s health

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean officials reported no unusual activity in North Korea on Tuesday following unconfirmed media reports that leader Kim Jong Un was in fragile health after surgery.

But the possibly of high-level instability raised troubling questions about the future of a nuclear-armed state that has been steadily building an arsenal meant to threaten the U.S. mainland while diplomacy between Kim and President Donald Trump is stalled.

South Korea’s presidential office said Kim appeared to be handling state affairs as usual and that it had no information about rumors regarding his health. But many will be watching closely for any signs of trouble in North Korea, and whether it will address the reports — something it has not yet done.

From wire sources

Pandemic and chill: Netflix adds a cool 16M subscribers

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — Netflix picked up nearly 16 million global subscribers during the first three months of the year, helping cement its status as one of the world’s most essential services in times of isolation or crisis.

The quarter spanned the beginning of stay-at-home orders in the U.S. and around the world, a response to the coronavirus pandemic that apparently led millions to latch onto Netflix for entertainment and comfort when most had nowhere to be but home.

Netflix more than doubled the quarterly growth it predicted in January, well before the COVID-19 outbreak began to shut down many major economies. It was the biggest three-month gain in the 13-year history of Netflix’s streaming service.

The numbers — released Tuesday as part of Netflix’s first-quarter earnings report — support a growing belief that video streaming is likely to thrive even as the overall U.S. economy sinks into its first recession in more than a decade.

“Our small contribution to these difficult times is to make home confinement a little more bearable,” Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said while speaking to investors during a video call from a bedroom.

Trump bars new immigration green cards, not temporary visas

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump announced what he described as a “temporary suspension of immigration into the United States” on Tuesday. But the executive order would bar only those seeking permanent residency, not temporary workers.

Trump said he would be placing a 60-day pause on the issuance of green cards in an effort to limit competition for jobs in a U.S. economy wrecked by the coronavirus. The order would include “certain exemptions,” he said, but he declined to outlined them, noting the order was still being crafted.

“By pausing immigration we’ll help put unemployed Americans first in line for jobs as America reopens, so important,” Trump said at the White House. “It would be wrong and unjust for Americans laid off by the virus to be replaced with new immigrant labor flown in from abroad.”

An administration official familiar with the plans, however, said the order will apply to foreigners seeking employment-based green cards and relatives of green card holders who are not citizens. Americans wishing to bring immediate family will still be able to do so, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity before the plan was announced. About 1 million green cards were granted in the 2019 fiscal year, about half to spouses, children and parents of U.S. citizens.

By limiting his immigration measure to green cards, Trump was leaving untouched hundreds of thousands of foreign workers granted non-immigrant visas each year, including farm workers, health care workers and software programmers. The Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, estimated that some 110,000 green cards could be delayed during a two-month pause. Trump said he would consider extending the restrictions, depending on economic conditions at the time.

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Virus cancels events worldwide; opinions on reopening mixed

ATLANTA (AP) — Spain called off the Running of the Bulls in July, the U.S. scrapped the national spelling bee in June and Germany canceled Oktoberfest five months away, making it clear Tuesday that the effort to beat back the coronavirus and return to normal could be a long and dispiriting process.

Amid growing impatience over the shutdowns that have thrown tens of millions out of work, European countries continued to reopen in stages, while in the U.S., one state after another — mostly ones led by Republican governors — began taking steps to get back to business.

Business owners in the U.S. who got the go-ahead weighed whether to reopen, and some hesitated, in a sign that commerce won’t necessarily bounce back right away.

Mark Lebos, owner of Strong Gym in Savannah, Georgia, where Gov. Brian Kemp announced that gyms and salons can reopen this week, said it would be professional negligence to do so right now.

“We are not going to be a vector of death and suffering,” he said.

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Analysis: Pandemic fallout tracks nation’s political divide

WASHINGTON (AP) — America’s entrenched political divide is now playing out over matters of life and death.

Republican governors, urged on by President Donald Trump, are taking the first steps toward reopening parts of their states’ economies in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, and without adhering to the president’s own guidelines. Democratic governors are largely keeping strict stay-at-home orders and nonessential business closures in place, resisting small pockets of Trump-aligned protesters and public pressure from the president.

The fault lines are familiar, exposing many of the same regional and demographic divisions that have increasingly come to define U.S. politics, as well as the stark differences in the ways the parties view the role of government in American life. But the stakes go far beyond the normal risks and rewards of an election cycle, instead putting the health and well-being of millions of Americans in the balance.

“We do imagine that in times of crisis, that will alleviate some of the political divisions we see in normal times. But every time we go through a crisis, small ones and severe ones, the political divisions re-emerge right away,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor of political history at Princeton University.

It could be months before the ultimate consequences of the various shutdown and reopen orders are known. Public health officials concede no one-size-fits all approach exists, and the decisions being made by states are dependent on factors such as the density of major population areas, the capacity of medical resources and the availability of testing.

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Wuhan embraces Yangtze River as virus-hit city reopens

WUHAN, China (AP) — Bathed in golden late-afternoon light, Chen Enting snapped a photo of his ticket to commemorate his first ferry ride across the Yangtze River after a 76-day quarantine ended in the Chinese city where the coronavirus pandemic began.

The reopening of ferry services on the Yangtze, the heart of life in Wuhan for two millennia, was an important symbolic step to get business and daily life in this city of 11 million people back to normal.

Wearing goggles, gloves, a homemade mask and a black trench coat, Chen was checked by security guards in protective suits and bought a 1.5-yuan (20-cent) ferry ticket. He boarded with a dozen other passengers, some pushing electric scooters, and found a bench at the front beside a red flag with a yellow sickle. He sprayed the seat with disinfectant before sitting.

“The ferry on the Yangtze River is a symbol of Wuhan’s people,” said Chen, a 34-year-old cost engineer and Chinese Communist Party member.

“The choppy river symbolizes the force of life,” he said, as the sun set behind the Tortoise Mountain TV Tower. “Although Wuhan had such an ordeal, it will flow away just like the river and receive exuberant vitality.”

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Canadian police say 22 victims after rampage in Nova Scotia

TORONTO (AP) — Canadian police said Tuesday they believe there are at least 22 victims after a gunman wearing a police uniform shot people in their homes and set fires in a rampage across rural communities in Nova Scotia over the weekend.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said they have recovered remains from some of the destroyed homes. Earlier, authorities had said at least 18 people were killed in the 12-hour attack.

Officials said the suspect, identified as a 51-year-old man, was shot and later died on Sunday. Authorities did not provide further details or give a motive for the killings. West Hawaii Today does not publish names of mass shooters.

The dead include a 17-year-old as well as a police officer, a police news release said. All the other victims were adults and included both men and women. There were 16 crime scenes in five different communities in northern and central Nova Scotia, it said.

“Some of the victims were known to [the suspect] and were targeted while others were not known to him,” the police statement said.

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