CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. farm bankruptcy rates jumped 20% in 2019 - to an eight-year high - as financial woes in the U.S. agricultural economy continued in spite of massive federal bail-out funding, according to federal court data.

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The increase in cases had been somewhat expected, bankruptcy experts and agricultural economists said, as farmers face trade battles, ever-mounting farm debt, prolonged low commodity prices, volatile weather patterns and a fatal pig disease that has decimated China's herd.

Even billions of dollars spent over the past two years in government agricultural assistance has not stemmed the bleeding.

Nearly one-third of projected U.S. net farm income in 2019 came from government aid and taxpayer-subsidized commodity insurance payments, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

It’s tough to assess the lethality of a new virus. The worst cases are usually detected first, which can skew our understanding of how likely patients are to die. About a third of the first 41 patients reported in Wuhan had to be treated in an I.C.U., many with symptoms of fever, severe cough, shortness of breath and pneumonia. But people with mild cases may never visit a doctor. So there may be more cases than we know, and the death rate may be lower than we initially thought.

At the same time, deaths from the virus may be underreported. The Chinese cities at the center of the outbreak face a shortage of testing kits and hospital beds, and many sick people have not been able to see a doctor.

“There’s still a lot of uncertainty about what this virus is like and what it is doing,” said Dr. Allison McGeer, an infectious disease specialist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, who was at the frontlines of the Canadian response to SARS.

Early indications suggest the mortality rate for this virus is considerably less than another coronavirus, MERS, which kills about one in three people who become infected, and SARS, which kills about one in 10. All of the diseases appear to latch on to proteins on the surface of lung cells, but MERS and SARS seem to be more destructive to lung tissue. As of Jan. 31, fewer than one in 40 of the people with confirmed infections had died. Many of those who died were older men with underlying health problems.

Here’s how the new coronavirus compares with other infectious diseases:

Mike Rothschild
@rothschildmd

For the MAGA cult: you think you're winning. But you're not. The country wanted witnesses. The country wanted him impeached. The country wants him gone. You're never going to be a billionaire. You'll never get the wall. You'll never marry a model. You'll never have a gold toilet.

When the house of cheap shit plaster finally collapses, and it will, the debris won't hit Trump or his cronies. It'll hit his most devoted cultists - blindsided and robbed of the man they built their recent lives around. Trump will be long gone by the time you realize it.

So post your Pepe memes and your Q drops and buy your MAGA swag and tweet that he's the BEST PRESIDENT EVER!!

One day, and maybe very soon, you'll be dining on ashes - alone, robbed of your dignity, and desperate to figure out what happened.

So read this thread and know.

Wyndham Destinations became the third major company in three days to announce it will stop donating millions of dollars to Florida’s private school voucher program after a newspaper investigation found that some of the program's beneficiaries discriminate against LGBTQ students.

Wyndham said that it told the organization last year that it would "halt funding if concerns about the voucher program were not addressed."


"As we have not seen any further action to address our concerns, we are today discontinuing our support and funding for Step Up For Students and hope that the organization will quickly work with the Florida Legislature to immediately end any discriminatory practices existing within the voucher program," the company told NBC News and CNBC on Thursday afternoon.

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The Orlando-based hotel company’s announcement comes just two days after a similar announcement by Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bank and one day after an announcement from San Francisco-based Wells Fargo.

Question for WH counsel: Do you have any evidence that Donald Trump has ever cared about corruption? And by that we mean being AGAINST it? #ImpeachmentTrial

🚨BILL ALERT🚨: The House just passed my Restoring Unfairly Impaired Credit & Protecting Consumers Act! I sincerely hope my Senate colleagues do the same and grant people access to the economic opportunities they need and deserve to prosper. Here's just some of what it would do:

(CNN) Newly installed panels from the US border wall fell over in high winds Wednesday, landing on trees on the Mexican side of the border.

The area is part of an ongoing construction project to improve existing sections of the wall.

Agent Carlos Pitones of the Customs and Border Patrol sector in El Centro, California, told CNN that the sections that gave way had recently been set in a new concrete foundation in Calexico, California. The concrete had not yet cured, according to Pitones, and the wall panels were unable to withstand the windy conditions.


The National Weather Service reports that winds in the area gusted as high as 37 miles per hour Wednesday. Video from CNN affiliate KYMA shows the metal panels leaning against trees adjacent to a Mexicali, Mexico, street as the wind whips up dirt from the construction site on the other side of the border.