Новини

A report by the U.N. refugee agency finds more than half of the world’s refugee children, about 3.7 million, do not go to school and will not gain the skills needed to build a productive future.

The statistics on education for refugee children worsen as the children grow older. The report finds 63% of refugee children go to primary school, compared to 91% globally. But that dwindles to only 24% of refugee adolescents getting a secondary education, compared to 84% globally.

Investing in the future

The U.N. refugee agency says lack of money is keeping refugee children out of school. The head of the Global Communications Service and UNHCR spokeswoman, Melissa Fleming, calls the failure to invest in refugee education shortsighted. She says this is not only sad, but also foolish.

“Not investing in refugees, people who have fled warzones, people who have fled countries where the world is interested in the future of peace is not investing—very simply—in the future of its people … who are interested in reconciliation and not revenge.”

The UNHCR is backing a new initiative aimed at kick-starting secondary education for refugees. The initiative will seek to construct and refurbish schools, train teachers and provide financial support to refugee families to cover the expenses of sending their children to school.

Secondary education

Mamadou Dian Balde is UNHCR deputy director of the Department of Resilience and Solutions. He tells VOA some pilot projects on secondary education for refugee adolescents will be conducted before the initiative gets fully underway.

“We are going to start in a very … in a very, I think, resolute manner in a given number of countries in the eastern Horn of Africa, in Asia and then move into a greater number of countries—also being aware of the scarcity of resources in such an initiative.”

The UNHCR says bringing this initiative to fruition will take vast sums of money. But an initial outlay of $250 million will get moving the process of improving refugee enrollment in secondary education.

…

In India’s northeastern Assam state, anxiety and panic is mounting among nearly four million people who fear they may no longer count as Indian citizens although many have lived in the country for decades.

As part of a campaign to root out illegal immigrants, authorities will publish on Saturday a final list of the state’s bonafide citizens.

The hundreds of thousands whose names were excluded from a preliminary list last July have scrambled through a bureaucratic maze for the past year, trying to dig out documents from government offices or engaging lawyers they often cannot afford to fight for their inclusion in the citizens’ register.

Waiting to hear their fate, they fear being packed to detention camps or becoming “stateless” and stripped of benefits such as voting rights.

“People are going around with bundles of hope, wrapped in plastic, waiting for hearings, lining up to get on to the register,” says Sanjoy Hazarika, international director of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative and an Assamese scholar.

The process to identify illegal immigrants has the strong backing of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government, although it was mandated before they came to power by a Supreme Court order to update the state’s citizens’ list. Assam had been wracked by an “anti-foreigner movement” in the 1980’s as indigenous communities complained of being swamped by hundreds of thousands of mostly Muslim, illegal migrants from neighboring Bangladesh.

Tracing roots to before 1971

The state’s 33 million residents, many poor and illiterate, were called on to show documentation that they or their ancestors had lived in Assam before Bangladesh’s independence in March 1971. It turned out to be a veritable nightmare for many, say human rights activists.

“Can you imagine working class people like rickshaw pullers keeping with documents dating back 50 years? It’s an incredibly unfair and slanted process where the poor find themselves at the wrong end of the process,” says Colin Gonsalves, a senior lawyer and founder of Human Rights Law Network, who visited Assam to hear about the travails of people running from pillar to post to prove they are of Indian heritage.

Poor people such as daily wage workers in India often have no bank accounts or do not own property.

Critics also point out that the campaign is not targeting recent immigrants but those that may have migrated decades ago.

“Fifty years you have been here, you never thought you would be questioned. You have children, some of them have grandchildren and suddenly you are asked to prove you are Indian,” says Gonsalves. “It’s a thoroughly arbitrary and a biased system.”

The arbitrariness was highlighted when a war veteran, Mohammed Sanaullah was identified as a “foreigner” in May and packed off to a detention camp – he was released days later by the state’s High Court on bail when the case made headlines.

Muslims especially worried

Worries run specially high among Muslims in a state where they make up one third of the population, far higher than in other parts of India. And as many Muslims complain of bias against them, critics have slammed the BJP for exposing communal fault lines and using them as a political target to build their support base in the state.

Among those who have scrambled to prove that they are Indians are 70 members of school principal Mansur Ahmed’s maternal family whose names never made it to the citizens’ list published last year. The problem: his grandfather’s name appeared with different spellings on land records that date back to the 1930’s — a common problem in India, where record keeping in the past was never accurate.

Ahmed says the family has appeared over 12 times before officials hearing appeals. “They are becoming tired, appearing in interviews again and again. Still they are in confusion whether their name will come or not,” he says.  “It is very distressing for all people, specially Muslims, they are in great fear,”

Selling assets to prove citizenship

The BJP has strongly countered charges of anti-Muslim prejudice and pointed out that the 4 million who were excluded from the citizens’ list includes hundreds of thousands of Hindus also.

Many of these poor people have pledged their land or sold their farm animals as they frantically try to raise funds to prove that they are of Indian heritage, according to Mubarak Ali, a retired army soldier who is now with the voluntary group Citizens for Peace and Justice.

“They have to bribe to get documents and sometimes travel as far away as 400 kilometers to appeal at the designated office. And they have to carry all members of the family with them,” he says. “Poor people don’t have so many funds.”

And as tens of thousands stare at uncertainty, Sanjoy Hazarika points out that authorities have not prepared a roadmap on how to deal with those whose names do not figure on the list.

“What happens afterwards? I don’t think governments have addressed that issue very clearly except speaking in rhetorical flourishes,” he says. “The whole thing is a mess.”

Widespread criticism

Deportations are not an option — Bangladesh has said the citizenship exercise is India’s internal matter. But many fear being sent off to detention camps — six in the state already have about 1000 inmates and 10 more are being set up. Or they could just be left in limbo, with no access to rights such as voting, healthcare and education.

The government has said that those excluded can appeal to foreigners tribunals, whose numbers are being expanded. It is also promising legal aid to the poor although it may be difficult for poor people to negotiate long legal battles.

Despite widespread criticism of the controversial exercise, the government is not backing off. In fact, Home Minister Amit Shah, a close aide of Prime Minister Modi, who during an election rally called illegal immigrants “termites,” has said the campaign to root them out will go nationwide. So far Assam is the only state in the country to have a citizens list.

The contentious issue of citizenship has been further muddied by a BJP-backed proposed law that would grant citizenship rights to non Muslims such as Hindus and Sikhs from neighboring countries, but exclude Muslims.

For the time being, all eyes will be on the numbers that do not make it to Assam’s citizen’s register on Saturday — human rights activists worry it could add up to the a massive stateless population.

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A four-legged hero who saved then-President Barack Obama from a White House intruder is now an award-winner in Britain.

Hurricane, a former Secret Service dog, has earned the Order of Merit from British veterinary charity PDSA. He’s the first foreigner to win the honor, to be bestowed at a London ceremony in October.

The Belgian Malinois intercepted an intruder who scaled the White House fence in October 2014. The intruder swung Hurricane around, punching and kicking him, but the dog dragged him to the ground, allowing Secret Service agents to intercept him. Obama, home at the time, was not harmed. 

Handler Marshall Mirarchi described Hurricane as a “legend” within the service after the attack. Mirarchi said injuries suffered in the incident contributed to Hurricane’s 2016 retirement from the Secret Service.

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When President Donald Trump levied tariffs on China that scrambled global markets, farmer Randy Miller was willing to absorb the financial hit. Even as the soybeans in his fields about an hour south of Des Moines became less valuable, Miller saw long-term promise in Trump’s efforts to rebalance America’s trade relationship with Beijing.

“The farmer plays the long game,” said Miller, who grows soybeans and corn and raises pigs in Lacona. “I look at my job through my son, my grandkids. So am I willing to suffer today to get this done to where I think it will be better for them? Yes.”

But the patience of Miller and many other Midwest farmers with a president they mostly supported in 2016 is being put sorely to the test.

The trigger wasn’t Trump’s China tariffs, but the waivers the administration granted this month to 31 oil refineries so they don’t have to blend ethanol into their gasoline. Since roughly 40% of the U.S. corn crop is turned into ethanol, it was a fresh blow to corn producers already struggling with five years of low commodity prices and the threat of mediocre harvests this fall after some of the worst weather in years.

“That flashpoint was reached and the frustration boiled over, and this was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” says Lynn Chrisp, who grows corn and soybeans near Hastings, Nebraska, and is president of the National Corn Growers Association.
“I’ve never seen farmers so tired, so frustrated, and they’re to the point of anger,” says Kelly Nieuwenhuis, a farmer from Primghar in northwest Iowa who said the waivers were a hot topic at a recent meeting of the Iowa Corn Growers Association. Nieuwenhuis said he voted for Trump in 2016, but now he’s not sure who he’ll support in 2020.

While Iowa farmer Miller saw Trump’s brinkmanship with China as a necessary gamble to help American workers, the ethanol waivers smacked to him of favoritism for a wealthy and powerful industry _ Big Oil.

“That’s our own country stabbing us in the back,” Miller said. “That’s the president going, the oil companies need to make more than the American farmer. … That was just, `I like the oil company better or I’m friends with the oil company more than I’m friends with the farmer.”

The Environmental Protection Agency last month kept its annual target for the level of corn ethanol that must be blended into the nation’s gasoline supply under the Renewable Fuel Standard at 15 billion gallons (56.78 billion liters) for 2020. That was a deep disappointment to an ethanol industry that wanted a higher target to offset exemptions granted to smaller refiners. Those waivers have cut demand by an estimated 2.6 billion gallons (9.84 billion liters) since Trump took office.

At least 15 ethanol plants already have been shut down or idled since the EPA increased waivers under Trump, and a 16th casualty came Wednesday at the Corn Plus ethanol plant in the south-central Minnesota town of Winnebago. The Renewable Fuels Association says the closures have affected more than 2,500 jobs.

The 31 new waivers issued this month came on top of 54 granted since early 2018, according to the association. While the waivers are intended to reduce hardships on small oil refiners, some beneficiaries include smaller refineries owned by big oil companies.

The administration knows it has a problem. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said at a farm policy summit in Decatur, Illinois, on Wednesday that Trump will take action to soften the effects. He would not say what the president might do or when, but said Trump believes the waivers by his EPA were “way overdone.”

Geoff Cooper, head of the Renewable Fuels Association, said the heads of the EPA and Agriculture Department and key White House officials have been discussing relief, and said his group has been talking with officials involved in those conversations. He said they’ve heard the plan may include reallocating the ethanol demand lost from the exempted smaller refiners to larger refiners that would pick up the slack, but many key details remain unclear, including whether the reallocation would apply in 2020 or be delayed until 2021.

“Anything short of that redistribution or reallocation is not going to be well received by farmers, I’ll tell you that,” Cooper said.

The White House referred questions to the EPA, where spokesman Michael Abboud said that the agency would “continue to consult” on the best path forward.

Meanwhile, the oil industry has spoken out against some of the steps Trump has taken to try to appease the farmers, including allowing year-round sales of gasoline with more ethanol mixed in.

“We hope the administration walks back from the brink of a disastrous political decision that punishes American drivers. Bad policy is bad politics,” Frank Macchiarola, a vice president for the American Petroleum Institute trade group, said in a statement.

Another example of the tensions came last week when the Agriculture Department pulled its staffers out of the ProFarmer Crop Tour, an annual assessment of Midwest crop yields, in response to an unspecified threat. The agency said it came from “someone not involved with the tour” and Federal Protective Services was investigating.

Despite farmers’ mounting frustrations, there’s little evidence so far that many farmers who backed Trump in 2016 will desert him in 2020. Many are still pleased with his rollbacks in other regulations. Cultural issues such as abortion or gun rights are important to many of them. And many are wary of a Democratic Party they see as growing more liberal.

Miller, too, says he’s still inclined to support Trump in the next election.

Though Trump has inserted new uncertainty into Miller’s own financial situation, he believes the president has been good for the economy as a whole. And as a staunch opponent of abortion, he sees no viable alternatives in the Democratic presidential field.

Chrisp, too, says he doesn’t see an acceptable Democratic alternative. Still, he cautioned Republicans against taking farmers for granted.

“We’re not a chip in the political game, though I’m certain there are folks who are political strategists who view us that way, but it’s not the case,” he said.

Brian Thalmann, who farms near Plato in south-central Minnesota and serves as president of the Minnesota Corn Growers Association, confronted Perdue at a trade show this month about Trump’s recent statements that farmers are starting to do well again.

“Things are going downhill and downhill very quickly,” Thalmann told Perdue.

Thalmann, who voted for Trump in 2016, said this week that he can’t support him at the moment. He said farmers have worked too hard to build up markets and the reputation of American farm products and “I can’t see agriculture getting dragged down the path it currently is.”

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Children born to U.S. citizens stationed abroad as government employees or members of the U.S. military will no longer qualify for automatic American citizenship under a policy change unveiled on Wednesday by the Trump administration.

Effective Oct. 29, parents serving overseas in the U.S. armed forces or other agencies of the federal government would need to go through a formal application process seeking U.S. citizenship on their children’s behalf, the policy states.

Currently, children born to U.S. citizens stationed by their government in a foreign country are legally considered to be “residing in the United States,” allowing their parents to simply obtain a certificate showing the children acquired citizenship automatically.

But an 11-page “policy alert” issued by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said the agency found the prevailing policy to be at odds with other parts of federal immigration law. Beyond that, the rationale for the policy change remained unclear.

“USCIS is updating its policy regarding children of U.S. government employees and U.S. armed forces members employed or stationed outside the United States to explain that they are not considered to be ‘residing in the United States’ for purposes of acquiring citizenship,” the memorandum said.

The number of government and military personnel affected by the change was not immediately known, but the revised policy sparked immediate consternation on the part of some organizations representing members of the armed forces.

“Military members already have enough to deal with, and the last thing that they should have to do when stationed overseas is go through hoops to ensure their children are U.S. citizens,” said Andy Blevins, executive director of the Modern Military Association of America.

He urged Congress to take action to address the situation to “ensure our military families don’t suffer the consequences of a reckless administration.”

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After celebrating her two-decade-plus career at the MTV Video Music Awards with a performance featuring a slew of her hits, Missy Elliott knew she did a great job when the first text she received after the performance was from another musical icon and longtime friend: Janet Jackson.

“She was like, ‘You shut that [expletive] down,'” Elliott said, laughing in a phone interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, a day after the VMAs. “And just to know that Janet even said that word was amazing. And I was like, ‘OK, I must have done good for her to use that [word].'”

Elliott, who has collaborated musically with Jackson in the past, received the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award on Monday night for the eccentric and vibrant music videos that helped establish her as a trailblazer on the music scene.

The 48-year-old Grammy winner said the road to creating iconic videos was not easy. She said in the “She’s a B—h” clip, which includes a scene where she and others are submerged, two of the dancers “had asthma attacks just from being underwater.”

For “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” — her 1997 debut single where she wore an inflated trash bag — she recalls walking “to the gas station to use the air pump … in Brooklyn to pump up the suit, and then realized I was too big to fit in the car, so we had to walk … on the main street in this outfit all the way to set, and it had deflated.”

She confirmed that the bees in the “Work It” video were in fact real. And in the “Pass that Dutch” clip when she was lifted up and rapping from a cornfield, “they dropped me on my knees; I thought my kneecaps had broken.”

“I was just doing these videos and … it wasn’t like I was doing them and trying to make a point for later down the line. I was just doing it,” she said. “A lot of people say, ‘Hey you should have gotten [this award] a long time ago and I realize that I’m a spiritual person and so I always say, ‘I’m on God’s time.’ And so whenever God says it was time for me to have it is the correct time.”

Elliott’s VMA performance also included the well-known hits “Lose Control” and “Get Ur Freak On,” as well as “Throw It Back,” the first single from her new EP “Iconology,” released last week. Her performance also featured dancer and actress Alyson Stoner, who first gained fame as the young child who danced with skill in the “Work It” video.

“It’s been 17 years since we shot that video,” Elliott said. “I couldn’t have done it without [Alyson]. I was like, ‘I’ve got to have Alyson in here because everywhere I went since then people have always been like, ‘What happened to that little girl that used to be in your ‘Work It’ video?'”

At the VMAs, Elliott also honored late R&B singer Aaliyah when she gave her acceptance speech. Elliott and Timbaland wrote and produced a number of hits for Aaliyah, from “One In a Million” to “4 Page Letter.” 
 
“I always pay tribute to her. And I’m always in contact with her brother, you know, checking on them. Even though each year makes it a year longer, it always still feels like it was yesterday,” Elliott said of Aaliyah, who was killed in a plane crash 18 years ago last Sunday. 
 
“I could still hear her laughter and I could see her smile and almost kind of could sense what she would be like today. She’s always been a risk taker and never a follower because when she chose to work with Timbaland and myself, we had style that was so different; she could have picked any other producer and writer that was already hot and popping,” she continued. “We hadn’t had anything out but she heard something in us and so I know that she would have just been setting the bar high.”

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Pinterest said it would try to combat misinformation about vaccines by showing only information from health organizations when people search. 
 
Social media sites have been trying to combat the spread of misinformation about vaccines. Pinterest previously tried blocking all searches for vaccines, with mixed results. 
 
Now searches for “measles,” “vaccine safety” and related terms will bring up results from such groups as the World Health Organization, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the WHO-established Vaccine Safety Net. 
 
Pinterest won’t show ads or other users’ posts, as they may contain misinformation.  
  
“We’re taking this approach because we believe that showing vaccine misinformation alongside resources from public health experts isn’t responsible,” Pinterest said Wednesday in a blog post. 
 
Though anti-vaccine sentiments have been around for as long as vaccines have existed, health experts worry that anti-vaccine propaganda can spread more quickly on social media. The misinformation includes soundly debunked notions that vaccines cause autism or that mercury preservatives and other substances in them can harm people. 
 
Experts say the spread of such information can push parents who are worried about vaccines toward refusing to inoculate their children, leading to a comeback of various diseases. 

Spike in measles cases
 
Measles outbreaks have spiked in the U.S. this year to their highest number in more than 25 years.  
  
In the U.K., Prime Minister Boris Johnson blamed people “listening to that superstitious mumbo jumbo on the internet” for a rising incidence of measles in that country. The government plans to call a summit of social media companies to discuss what more they can do to fight online misinformation, though details are still being worked out. 
 
Facebook said in March that it would no longer recommend groups and pages that spread hoaxes about vaccines and that it would reject ads that do this. But anti-vax information still slips through. 
 
The WHO praised Pinterest’s move and encouraged other social media companies to follow. 
 
“Misinformation about vaccination has spread far and fast on social media platforms in many different countries,” the statement said. “We see this as a critical issue and one that needs our collective effort to protect people’s health and lives.” 

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The Trump administration is shifting $271 million earmarked for disaster aid and cyber security to pay for immigration-related facilities, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and a leading congressional Democrat said on Tuesday.

The money, which was also set aside for the U.S. Coast Guard, will be used to pay for detention facilities and courts for migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. DHS officials say they have been overwhelmed by a surge of asylum-seeking migrants who are fleeing violence and poverty in Central America.

The Trump administration is seeking to circumvent Congress and move money originally designated for other programs. This will allow the administration to continue to house immigrants arriving at the border, part of President Donald Trump’s promise not to “catch and release” migrants and allow them to await hearings outside of custody.

The administration plans to take $115 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster-relief fund just as hurricane season is heating up in the Atlantic Ocean, according to a letter from U.S. Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard, who chairs the congressional panel that oversees Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spending.

Cybersecurity  upgrades will have to wait

The letter also details that money will be taken for planned upgrades to the National Cybersecurity Protection System and new equipment for the U.S. Coast Guard, Roybal-Allard said.

DHS said Congress did not provide enough money for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain single adults as they wait for their cases to be heard by an immigration judge.

Congress appropriated $2.8 billion to pay for 52,000 beds this year, but ICE is currently detaining more than 55,000 immigrants, a record high, according to agency statistics.

Roybal-Allard said DHS exceeded its authority to move money around to respond to emergencies.

“Once again, DHS has ignored the negotiated agreement with Congress by vastly exceeding the amount appropriated for immigration enforcement and removal operations,” she said in a statement.

Won’t impact readiness

FEMA spokeswoman Lizzie Litzow said the funding reduction will not impact readiness efforts or other functions for which the money was earmarked.

Trump has made cracking down on legal and illegal immigration a hallmark of his presidency after campaigning in 2016 on a promise, so far unfulfilled, that Mexico would pay for a border wall to keep migrants from entering the United States.

A record-setting 42,000 families were apprehended along the U.S. southern border in July, more than twice as many as in May.

Last week, DHS unveiled a new rule that would allow officials to detain migrant families indefinitely — abolishing a previous 20-day limit — while judges consider whether to grant them asylum in the United States.

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With just a few months left before America starts taking its biggest-ever self-portrait, the U.S. Census Bureau is grappling with a host of concerns about the head count, including how to ensure that it is secure and accurate and the challenge of getting most people to answer questions online.

All of that is on top of the main attention-grabber of the 2020 census so far — a citizenship question that was nixed by the Supreme Court, dropped by the Trump administration, resuscitated briefly and then abandoned again.

Beginning early next year, residents from Utqiagvik, Alaska, the town formerly known as Barrow, to Key West, Florida, will be quizzed on their sex, age, race, the type of home they have and how they are related to everyone living with them.

At stake is the balance of political power in a deeply divided country, billions of dollars a year in federal funding and population data that will shape business decisions nationwide for years to come.

Costing as much as $15.6 billion, the once-a-decade census not only captures the United States at a given moment — in this case April 1, 2020, officially — but it is perhaps the only thing every U.S. household is legally required to participate in regardless of who lives there.

Counting some 330 million heads is the largest peacetime operation the federal government undertakes. The Census Bureau hires a half million workers, opens around 250 offices and mails out a multitude of forms in English and 12 other languages to more than 130 million households.

“The kind of scale we’re talking about to count this nation is massive, massive, massive,” Democratic Rep. Darren Soto of Florida said recently.

Citizenship question 

A census has taken place in the U.S. every decade since 1790, and contentious legal fights about it are nothing new. But the Trump administration’s attempt to add the citizenship question triggered lawsuits that carried the issue all the way to the Supreme Court.

Opponents of the question said it would have discouraged participation by minorities, primarily Hispanics, who tend to support Democrats. The Republican administration argued that the question would have helped enforce the Voting Rights Act, a rationale that seemed “contrived” to Chief Justice John Roberts in his majority opinion.

President Donald Trump later said the question was needed to help draw congressional districts, even though the Constitution mandates districts based on total population, not the number of citizens.

After the administration abandoned the question, Trump directed federal agencies to compile the information in other ways. That ensured the controversy would continue and raised the possibility that it still might affect the count.

Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham, a Trump appointee, acknowledged the challenge but vowed to conduct “the best census ever, one that is complete and accurate.”

Adriana Ibarra, a 43-year-old doctoral student from Mexico living in Memphis, Tennessee, under a temporary visa, said the chilling effect lingers. She said immigrants who are in the country illegally and others may shy away because they do not feel included in decisions made in their communities anyway.

“There’s a feeling that their voice, their vote, their presence does not substantially affect the situation or the course the country is taking,” she said.

Political ramifications

The census determines which states gain congressional seats and which lose them. Election Data Services, a firm that consults on redistricting, estimates that Texas could gain as many as three seats and Florida two. Arizona, Colorado, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon could add one each.

New York is expected to lose two seats. Alabama, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and West Virginia are expected to lose one apiece. California and Minnesota could also lose seats, but if the citizenship question had been included, experts projected smaller gains in Florida, Texas and Arizona and a more likely loss in California.

The count is also used to map districts for state legislatures, city councils and school boards, and to determine the flow of federal money to state and local governments. George Washington University’s Andrew Reamer estimated that as much as $900 billion a year in federal funding is tied to the census in some way.

Reamer calculates that each person missed in the census would cost a state an average of nearly $1,100 a year under five Department of Health and Human Services programs, including Medicaid. The impact would be biggest in Vermont, at $2,300, and smallest in Utah, at roughly $500.

Digital responses

For the first time, the Census Bureau is relying in 2020 on most respondents answering questions via computer, tablet or smartphone. Respondents can also call a phone number to give their answers. Those who don’t respond will receive paper questionnaires in the mail.

If all those methods fail, the bureau will send out “enumerators” to knock on doors.

The agency intends to spread the word about its “internet first” approach. Census officials envision clergy asking churchgoers to take out their cellphones to answer questions before services and announcers nudging fans at baseball games.

Leaders of some minority groups worry that the reliance on the internet risks undercounting people less likely to be online: low-income households, immigrants, and elderly and rural residents. Other historically undercounted groups include Native Americans, renters and people whose primary language isn’t English. Owners of multiple homes are among the most likely to be double-counted.

Some experts say the online approach should have been tested more. The only end-to-end test was done in Providence, Rhode Island, last year after two other tests were scaled back to save money. The rate of people responding on their own was higher than expected at 52.3 percent, but the bureau is aiming for 60.5 percent in 2020.

Cybersecurity worries also persist. The Government Accountability Office added the census to its “high risk” list of federal programs two years ago. As recently as this past spring, the watchdog agency said a squeezed testing schedule increased the risk that systems would fail.

Dillingham promised to address those problems, and others have offered to help.

Facebook, which was used to spread misinformation during the 2016 election, is building a team to protect against census misinformation. Microsoft has agreed to audit security practices and provide the bureau with threat intelligence.

A lot is at stake for ordinary Americans — right down to the last house on the last block in every city and hamlet. Virtually every aspect of American life could be affected, a point Florida Rep. John Cortes made at a recent forum on the decennial census in Orlando.

“We have to focus on getting people to fill out the census so we can get the money,” said Cortes, a Democrat. “Without money, we get zero. Money is the honey.”

…

The two parties trying to form a new Italian government appeared close to a coalition deal Tuesday, cheering financial markets as well as U.S. President Donald Trump, who said he hoped Giuseppe Conte would be reinstated as prime minister.

The role of Conte has been a sticking point in the negotiations between the 5-Star Movement, a member of the outgoing coalition, and the opposition Democratic Party (PD), which has been resisting his reappointment.

“Starting to look good for the highly respected Prime Minister of the Italian Republic, Giuseppi (sic) Conte,” Trump said on Twitter. “A very talented man who will hopefully remain Prime Minister.”

After setbacks early Tuesday, the roller-coaster talks between the anti-establishment 5-Star and the center-left PD appeared to be back on track later in the day, with upbeat comments from both sides prompting a strong market rally.

Italian 10-year bond yields fell to three-year lows and the spread between German Bunds narrowed to below 182 basis points, the tightest since May 2018.

Investors betting Italy can avoid a snap election are concerned that it would be won by Matteo Salvini’s hard-right League party, which would put the country on a collision course with the European Union over expansionary government spending.

“Our work is continuing in a fruitful way,” the PD’s Senate leader Andrea Marcucci told reporters in brief comments after an evening meeting with 5-Star officials.

Deputy PD leader Paola De Micheli said the two sides had “analyzed points for the basis of a common program,” while 5-Star’s Senate chief Stefano Patuanelli reported a “good climate” and said contacts would continue Wednesday.

The parties are due to report back to President Sergio Mattarella on Wednesday from 1400 GMT. If no deal has been sealed, he will name a caretaker government and call elections.

Conte, who belongs to no party but is close to 5-Star, resigned last week after League chief Salvini declared his 14-month coalition with 5-Star was dead, seeking to trigger elections and capitalize on his surging popularity.

The move has not gone to plan, as 5-Star and the PD seek to form a coalition of their own, pushing the League into opposition.

Fight over jobs

Earlier Tuesday the PD/5-Star talks seemed to have run into trouble, with the two sides fighting over key jobs as well as being at loggerheads over Conte’s role.

The PD accused 5-Star of undermining the formation of a new cabinet by demanding the interior ministry for its leader, Luigi Di Maio. 5-Star denied this, and the parties canceled a scheduled meeting.

Despite the later upbeat comments, tensions persist and surprises are possible.

The PD says Di Maio is insisting on keeping the role of deputy prime minister that he held in the outgoing government, something it considers unacceptable if Conte is to stay on as premier.

It remains to be seen if the exchanges are merely tactics to secure the upper hand in negotiations over cabinet jobs, or whether they have the potential to scupper an accord between the two parties which have always been bitter adversaries.

The picture is complicated by deep internal divisions in both parties, each one split between leadership factions that want a deal and others that would prefer to risk an election.

Di Maio was absent at the start of an evening meeting of all the 5-Star lawmakers. The great majority favors an accord with the PD rather than a snap election which would probably see many lose their seats less than 18 months into this parliament.

Meanwhile, Salvini continues to demand elections, and is likely to be disappointed by Trump’s endorsement of Conte, especially as the populist League chief has always expressed his admiration for the U.S. president.

Opinion polls suggest the League has lost 3-7 percentage points since collapsing the government, though it remains easily the most popular party, followed by the PD and 5-Star.

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