Despite soaring coronavirus numbers, U.S. holiday travel is surging

Despite warnings, travelers flock to Chicago airport ahead of Thanksgiving Despite surging coronavirus cases and warnings from officials across the country, many travelers were seen at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on Nov. 20. (AP)

By Derek Hawkins and Hannah Knowles

Total coronavirus infections in the United States have topped 12 million, and cases are approaching 200,000 in a day, as health experts warn of an alarming new stage in the pandemic’s spread while Americans embark on holiday travel that could seed more outbreaks.

A fall wave of the virus ushered in by colder weather is only worsening, outpacing expansions in testing and making new nationwide records routine. The country passed 11 million cases just a week ago, and daily infections are on track to double since Nov. 4, when they exceeded 100,000 for the first time.

As Anthony S. Fauci, the country’s top infectious-disease expert, put it recently on MSNBC: “It’s almost exponential when you compare the curves in the spring and the curves in the summer with the inflection of the curve where we are right now.”

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GOP Senator Toomey Calls On Trump To Concede

Pat Toomey, a Republican from PA, has called upon Trump to "accept the outcome of the election" and facilitate the transition process.
Pat Toomey, a Republican from PA, has called upon Trump to “accept the outcome of the election” and facilitate the transition process. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Pat Toomey, a Republican from PA, has called upon Trump to “accept the outcome of the election” and facilitate the transition process.

By Kara Seymour, Patch Staff

PENNSYLVANIA — Republican Senator Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania has called upon President Trump to “accept the outcome of the election and facilitate the presidential transition process” following Saturday’s ruling in federal court.

Toomey’s statement came after U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Brann tossed the Trump campaign’s most significant lawsuit contesting the election results in Pennsylvania. Brann said the suit, which sought to stop Pennsylvania from certifying its election results, was both legally flawed and lacking in evidence.

In blistering ruling, judge throws out Trump suit in Pa.

Toomey said Brann is “a longtime conservative Republican whom I know to be a fair and unbiased jurist.”

In light of Brann’s ruling, “President Trump has exhausted all plausible legal options to challenge the result of the presidential race in Pennsylvania,” Toomey said.

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Beer brewer Yuengling begins big Florida redevelopment project

A rendering shows the Yuengling Tampa campus

By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer, Tampa Bay Business Journal

D.G. Yuengling & Son is moving forward with a redevelopment of its Tampa brewery — though plans to add a hotel to the property are on hold.

The Pottsville, Pennsylvania brewery held a “ceremonial” groundbreaking on Monday. Actual construction is slated to begin next month, said Jen Yuengling, the brewery’s vice president of operations.

The Yuengling family acquired the Tampa brewery in 1999. The redevelopment comes as business and civic leaders try to rouse private sector interest in the area around the University of South Florida. Yuengling said that the brewery has been a partner to USF for years, from the naming rights of the former Sundome to funding scholarships for the brewery arts program at the St. Petersburg campus.

“I think this is just the next step in that relationship,” she said.

Yuengling declined to disclose a total investment in the project or construction costs on the first phase.

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As Trump plans Arctic oil lease sale, opponents target insurers

Alastair Marsh and Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Bloomberg Green

A group of investment firms, conservationists and indigenous groups have called on some of the world’s biggest insurers to cease supporting oil and gas projects in the U.S. Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, even as the Trump administration advances plans to auction drilling rights in the Alaska wilderness.

The Gwich’in Steering Committee, a group representing indigenous tribes that live in Alaska and Canada and opposes efforts to drill in the refuge, coordinated the letter with investment firms, including Boston Common Asset Management LLC and Domini Impact Investments LLC, which collectively manage more than $47 billion of assets. Recipients of the letter, including American International Group Inc. and Allianz SE, are being asked to stop insuring or investing in oil and gas projects in the refuge. Officials from AIG and Allianz weren’t immediately available for comment.

The rugged and remote territory in northeast Alaska, which is home to polar bears, caribou herds, Arctic foxes and more than 200 species of birds, has become a focus of environmental activists and an embodiment of the vastly different climate policies of President Donald Trump and President-elect Joe Biden. While the Trump administration has set the stage for a possible sale of oil and gas leases in the refuge’s 1.56-million-acre (6,313 square kilometers) coastal plain before Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration, Biden has promised to permanently protect the land.

The Alaskan wilderness also serves as a reminder of how proactive investors and pressure groups can force financial giants to change the way they operate. Most major U.S. banks have said they won’t finance oil drilling projects in the Arctic, after a similar pressure campaign. And the one major holdout, Bank of America Corp., was the target of a shareholder resolution filed this week by Trillium Asset Management asking how it will deal with the business risks of backing Arctic oil ventures.

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Newark Mayor Ras Baraka orders 10-day lockdown as pandemic surges


By Daniel J. Munoz, NJBIZ

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka said Friday he will shut down the state’s largest city the day before Thanksgiving, as the region becomes ground zero for the weeks-long surge of COVID-19.

The 10-day shutdown will begin on Nov. 25, as the city leads New Jersey in new cases and the positivity rate among tests.

“We are, from Wednesday before Thanksgiving to Dec. 4, going to lock the city down,” Baraka said during a Thursday evening radio appearance on WBGO 88.3 FM’s Newark Today.

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“We want people to shelter in place. We only want folks to come out for essential purposes. Do not go outside if you don’t have to. Don’t mingle with other people if you don’t have to. Stay (with) your family in your immediate household.”

The shutdown orders could conflict with the much looser orders that Gov. Phil Murphy signed in a bid to reverse the recent statewide surges.

Although Murphy allowed local governments to shut down non-essential businesses at 8 p.m. – which Newark and other major cities have done – his orders prohibit local town, city and county governments from implementing their own stricter restrictions.

Casinos, malls, sit-down restaurants, non-essential retail, indoor amusement, indoor theaters, many forms of construction, gyms, nail and hair salons all had to shutter their doors in March. As the pandemic worsens, indoor dining and elective surgeries could be in the next round of reinstated restrictions.

The governor cautioned this week against a “patchwork” of potentially conflicting orders that vary from town to town.

But Murphy has been widely hands-off with how Baraka, a major ally of the governor, has handled the city’s response to the pandemic, both in the past month and during the first wave this spring. The mayors of Orange, Irvington and East Orange are considering similar measures.

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