Archives for February 2021

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Class action lawsuits were filed in Nevada against 10 major auto insurance companies on Tuesday, contending that the companies charged excessive insurance premiums during the pandemic by failing to account for a drop in driving and crashes.

The lawsuits acknowledge that some insurers provided discounts over the emptier roads and drop in accidents and claims, but the discounts did not offer “any meaningful relief that actually reflects the reduction in cars on the road and reduced driving during the pandemic,” according to the court filings. The rates that were charged violate state law against excessive premiums, the lawsuits contend.

The lawsuits were filed on behalf of Nevada insurance customers against State Farm, USAA, Geico, Acuity, Liberty Mutual, Farmers, Progressive, Travelers, Nationwide and Allstate.

“The filing of a lawsuit does not substantiate the allegations within the complaint,” State Farm, the country’s largest auto insurer, said in a statement. “We’ve recently learned about the filing, and it is premature to comment at this time.”

USAA was reviewing the lawsuit, according to spokesman Matt Hartwig. “However, I do think it’s important to note that on three occasions in 2020, USAA returned dividends totaling $1.07 billion to all auto insurance policy holders due to fewer drivers on the road because of the ongoing pandemic,” he said.

Liberty Mutual declined to comment.

Phone and email messages seeking comment from the other insurers were not immediately returned Tuesday.

States across the country began reporting a decline in traffic and crashes when COVID-19-related closures and stay-at-home orders were imposed starting last spring. Companies that sell the majority of the policies across the U.S. announced refunds or credits to drivers.

The discounts provided by insurers to reflect pandemic driving conditions varied, from $50 to $100 one-time refund from Acuity, a 25% reduction in bills from March 20 to May 31 from State Farm, to a 15% credit from Geico only when renewing a policy between April 8 and October 7, according to the lawsuits.

“I believe that the rates should have been cut something in the order of 50-60%,” said Robert Eglet, lead counsel for the law firm Eglet Adams, which filed the lawsuits. “These discounts that were given, were just totally woefully inadequate.”

His comments are similar to those made by the Consumer Federation of America in September, which said that the relief provided by insurers was not enough and said state insurance commissioners who regulate the industry had failed “to prevent windfall auto insurer profits as auto claims dropped when driving and auto crashes declined.”

In Nevada, after the governor ordered the closure of nonessential businesses, the Nevada-California border, which sees traffic backups when tourists pour into Las Vegas for weekend trips and other getaways, had 66% less traffic in April 2020 than in the same month in 2019, according to the lawsuits, along with a 60% drop in automobile accidents in southern Nevada in March 2020 when compared to the previous year.

Eglet, whose firm represented several thousand victims of the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting in a lawsuit against MGM Resorts and the state of Nevada and a wide-ranging lawsuit against opioid manufacturers and sellers, said it was premature to estimate the total dollar amount of the claims across the lawsuit but said it was “well into the millions.”

Nevada Division of Insurance declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.

Eglet said he was not aware of other class action lawsuits filed in other states making similar arguments but predicted more may follow because of other drops in driving patterns and rates of premium relief across the states.

Lawsuits were filed last summer in Illinois contending six auto insurers failed to offer big enough relief on premiums, according to the Chicago Tribune.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s first bilateral meeting with Canada’s Justin Trudeau since taking office was high on policy, low on pomp and featured a very large swipe at Biden’s predecessor as the coronavirus forced the two leaders to convene virtually Tuesday rather than gathering with customary Oval Office fanfare.

The two leaders — Biden in the Roosevelt Room at the White House and Trudeau in the prime minister’s office in Ottawa — delivered friendly opening remarks in front of the media, with flags from both countries on display at both ends of the long-distance conversation.

“The United States has no closer friend, no closer friend, than Canada,” Biden said.

Trudeau, in turn, commended Biden for quickly rejoining the Paris climate accord, a worldwide pact to curb climate emissions that President Donald Trump walked away from early in his term. The prime minister, who had a frosty relationship with Trump at times, worked in a jab at Trump as he praised Biden.

“U.S. leadership has been sorely missed over the past years,” Trudeau said. “And I have to say as we were preparing the joint rollout of the communiqué on this, it’s nice when the Americans are not pulling out all the references to climate change and instead adding them in.”

In remarks at the end of the talks, Biden for the first time publicly spoke out against the detention of two Canadian citizens imprisoned in China in apparent retaliation for Canada’s arrest of a top Huawei executive.

“Human beings are not bartering chips,” Biden said of the two Canadians. “We are going to work together until their safe return.”

Trudeau, for his part, publicly thanked Biden for his support in seeking the men’s release.

Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig were detained in China following the arrest of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou in Canada after the U.S. requested her extradition to face charges that the Chinese telecom company executive committed wire and bank fraud and violated U.S. sanctions on Iran. She denies the allegations.

China lashed out at Canada last week for joining the U.S. and 56 other countries in endorsing a declaration denouncing state-sponsored arbitrary detention of foreign citizens for political purposes.

Trudeau’s broadside of Trump was a notable coda to a relationship marked by some notably undiplomatic moments.

The Republican president, in a fit of pique in 2018, took to Twitter to label the prime minister “dishonest and weak” after Trudeau voiced objections to Trump raising tariffs on steel and aluminum from Canada, Mexico and the European Union.

Trump blew up again at Trudeau in 2019, calling him “two-faced” after the Canadian leader was caught on video mocking the American president as he spoke to other world leaders on the sidelines of a NATO conference at Buckingham Palace.

In pre-pandemic times, the Biden-Trudeau meeting would have been held with far more fanfare: Biden welcoming the Canadian prime minister with great ceremony upon his arrival, an Oval Office talk between the two leaders, a joint news conference and perhaps a luncheon.

But with both leaders stressing caution to their citizens, Biden and Trudeau set aside the typical protocol in favor of talks by video conference. U.S. presidents traditionally invite the Canadian prime minister for their first meeting with a world leader.

While cable stations in the United States stuck with breaking news about pro golfer Tiger Woods’ serious car crash, Canada’s CTV and CBC carried the leaders’ opening remarks live.

The two leaders agreed to a “road map” outlining how the neighboring countries will work together to fight COVID-19, curb climate emissions and pursue other shared priorities.

Trudeau again raised with Biden the idea of allowing Canada, which is struggling to vaccinate its population, to buy vaccines produced in the U.S, according to a senior Canadian government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail the private talks. Canada currently is getting vaccines shipped from Pfizer and Moderna plants in Europe.

Trudeau brought up the issue when the two leaders spoke by phone last month, Biden’s first call to a foreign leader as president. But Biden’s “first priority” remains “ensuring every American is vaccinated,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said ahead of the meeting. Biden’s team offered the same message to Trudeau privately.

The prime minister’s office said in a statement that Biden and Trudeau discussed how the pandemic “will not end until everyone, everywhere has access to a vaccine” and “the importance of avoiding measures that may constrain the critical trade and supply-chain security between our countries.”

Neither leader in public remarks mentioned differences over Biden’s “Buy American” executive order or his decision to halt construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, a transcontinental project that was to bring oil from the tar sands of Alberta to the Texas Gulf Coast, passing through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma. The Keystone decision came up in the talks with Biden standing by his decision to stop the project as he promised to do during his campaign, according to the Canadian government official.

Trudeau, who supported the project, expressed his disappointment with Biden’s decision when the two spoke by phone last month.

The Canadian side also raised concerns about the “Buy American” executive order that Biden signed during his first week in office. It is designed to encourage the federal government to spend more of the roughly $600 billion earmarked for procurement to boost U.S. factories and hiring.

Biden previously said that as part of the push he was creating a “Made in America” office to evaluate contracts and make sure waivers are used only in “very limited circumstances.” The issue is crucial to Canada since the U.S. accounts for about 75% of its exports.

White House officials say no decisions have been made on waivers.

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Madhani reported from Chicago and Gillies from Toronto.

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NEW YORK (AP) — The foundation widely seen as a steward of the Black Lives Matter movement says it took in just over $90 million last year, according to a financial snapshot shared exclusively with The Associated Press.

The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation is now building infrastructure to catch up to the speed of its funding and plans to use its endowment to become known for more than protests after Black Americans die at the hands of police or vigilantes.

“We want to uplift Black joy and liberation, not just Black death. We want to see Black communities thriving, not just surviving,” reads an impact report the foundation shared with the AP before releasing it.

This marks the first time in the movement’s nearly eight-year history that BLM leaders have revealed a detailed look at their finances. The foundation’s coffers and influence grew immensely following the May 2020 death of George Floyd, a Black man whose last breaths under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer sparked protests across the U.S. and around the world.

That growth also caused longstanding tensions to boil over between some of the movement’s grassroots organizers and national leaders — the former went public last fall with grievances about financial transparency, decision-making and accountability.

The foundation said it committed $21.7 million in grant funding to official and unofficial BLM chapters, as well as 30 Black-led local organizations. It ended 2020 with a balance of more than $60 million, after spending nearly a quarter of its assets on the grant funds and other charitable giving.

In its report, the BLM foundation said individual donations via its main fundraising platform averaged $30.76. More than 10% of the donations were recurring. The report does not state who gave the money in 2020, and leaders declined to name prominent donors.

Last year, the foundation’s expenses were approximately $8.4 million — that includes staffing, operating and administrative costs, along with activities such as civic engagement, rapid response and crisis intervention.

One of its focuses for 2021 will be economic justice, particularly as it relates to the ongoing socioeconomic impact of COVID-19 on Black communities.

The racial justice movement had a broad impact on philanthropic giving last year. According to an upcoming report by Candid and the Center for Disaster Philanthropy, 35% of the $20.2 billion in U.S. funding dollars from corporations, foundations, public charities and high-net-worth individuals to address COVID-19 was explicitly designated for communities of color.

After the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida, BLM’s founders pledged to build a decentralized movement governed by consensus of a members’ collective. In 2015, a network of chapters was formed, as support and donations poured in. But critics say the BLM Global Network Foundation has increasingly moved away from being a Black radical organizing hub and become a mainstream philanthropic and political organization run without democratic input from its earliest grassroots supporters.

BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors told the AP that the foundation is focused on a “need to reinvest into Black communities.”

“One of our biggest goals this year is taking the dollars we were able to raise in 2020 and building out the institution we’ve been trying to build for the last seven and a half years,” she said in an interview.

Cullors, who was already active in her native Los Angeles, where she created her own social justice organization, Power and Dignity Now, became the global foundation’s full-time executive director last year.

Fellow co-founders Alicia Garza, who is the principal at Black Futures Lab, and Opal Tometi, who created a Black new media and advocacy hub called Diaspora Rising, are not involved with the foundation. Garza and Tometi do continue to make appearances as movement co-founders.

In 2020, the foundation spun off its network of chapters as a sister collective called BLM Grassroots. The chapters, along with other Black-led local organizations, became eligible in July for financial resources through a $12 million grant fund. Although there are many groups that use “Black Lives Matter” or “BLM” in their names, less than a dozen are currently considered affiliates of the chapter network.

According to foundation records shared with the AP, several chapters, including in the cities of Washington, Philadelphia and Chicago, were notified last year of their eligibility to receive $500,000 each in funding under a multiyear agreement. Only one BLM group in Denver has signed the agreement and received its funds in September.

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CHAPTERS CALL FOR MORE TRANSPARENCY

A group of 10 chapters, called the #BLM10, rejected the foundation’s funding offer last year and complained publicly about the lack of donor transparency. Foundation leaders say only a few of the 10 chapters are recognized as network affiliates.

In a letter released Nov. 30, the #BLM10 claimed most chapters have received little to no financial resources from the BLM movement since its launch in 2013. That has had adverse consequences for the scope of their organizing work, local chapter leaders told the AP.

The chapters are simply asking for an equal say in “this thing that our names are attached to, that they are doing in our names,” said April Goggans, organizer of Black Lives Matter DC, which is part of the #BLM10 along with groups in Indianapolis, Oklahoma City, San Diego, Hudson Valley, New York, and elsewhere.

“We are BLM. We built this, each one of us,” she said.

Records show some chapters have received multiple rounds of funding in amounts ranging between $800 and $69,000, going back as far as 2016. The #BLM10 said the amounts given have been far from equitable when compared to how much BLM has raised over the years. But Cullors disagreed.

“Because the BLM movement was larger than life — and it is larger than life — people made very huge assumptions about what our actual finances looked like,” Cullors said. “We were often scraping for money, and this year was the first year where we were resourced in the way we deserved to be.”

Still, the #BLM10 members said reality didn’t match the picture movement founders were projecting around the world. In its early years, BLM disclosed receiving donations from A-list celebrities such as Beyoncé, Jay-Z and Prince, prior to his death in 2016.

Leaders at the BLM foundation admit that they have not been clear about the movement’s finances and governance over the years. But now the foundation is more open about such matters. It says the fiscal sponsor currently managing its money requires spending be approved by a collective action fund, which is a board made up of representatives from official BLM chapters.

After Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis, the surge of donations saw the foundation go from small, scrappy movement to maturing institution. Last summer, leaders sought nonprofit status with the IRS, which was granted in December, allowing the organization to receive tax-deductible donations directly. In the near future, that also will require the foundation to file public 990 forms, revealing details of its organizational structure, employee compensation, programming and expenses.

Brad Smith, president of Candid, an organization that provides information about philanthropic groups, said there are other ways for nonprofits to be transparent with the public besides federal disclosure forms. He said a philanthropic organization’s website is its best tool to show how willing it is to be held accountable.

“In exchange for getting tax exempt status, you as an organization committed to providing a greater level of transparency to confirm you are fulfilling your mission,” he said.

It’s because of Cullors, Garza and Tometi’s vision, along with the work of so many Black organizers in the ecosystem, that the BLM movement finds itself at a new phase of its development, said Melina Abdullah, co-founder of BLM’s first ever chapter in Los Angeles.

“We’re turning a corner, recognizing that we have to build institutions that endure beyond us,” Abdullah told the AP.

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Morrison is a member of AP’s Race and Ethnicity team. Follow him on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/aaronlmorrison.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — The PGA Tour is approaching the one-year anniversary of when it shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Commissioner Jay Monahan is happy the tour has not had to stop at any point since it returned in June.

But only two domestic tournaments had limited fans — Houston in early November and Phoenix earlier this month. That was one aspect that surprised him.

“I thought by the time we came back here or The Players, we’d be much further along,” Monahan said last week at Riviera. “But I’m thankful we are making progress. The fact we’ve been able to play every week has been fantastic. It’s great for our players. They deserve all the credit. You can set the best plan, but if the players, caddies, everybody doesn’t follow it, you may not be able to sustain.”

There will be no fans at the Workday Championship in Florida, a one-time stop for the World Golf Championship that was supposed to be in Mexico. After that, fans are slowly starting to reappear.

Bay Hill is allowing 25% of capacity next week in Orlando, Florida. The Players Championship is the following week and has sold tickets — they were gone in an hour — for roughly 20% capacity. The Honda Classic in South Florida will have limited fans the week after that.

The first two majors of the year also will have limited fans. The Masters already announced a reduced gallery, without saying how many. The PGA Championship on Tuesday said it would cap attendance to 10,000 fans a day at Kiawah Island in South Carolina on May 20-23.

The PGA Championship already was a sellout and organizers are in the process of deciding who goes and who gets a refund.

“While crowds will be smaller than originally planned, we know the passion for golf in the Carolinas will create a memorable atmosphere on-course and excitement throughout the region,” PGA President Jim Richerson said.

IN JACK’S SHOES

The Concession Golf Club is the fill-in site for the World Golf Championship, a course designed by Jack Nicklaus with input from Tony Jacklin. It was named after one of the most famous concessions in golf at the 1969 Ryder Cup. Nicklaus conceded a short par putt to Jacklin on the final hole and the matches ended in a tie.

That led to a question Tuesday: What would you do?

“Depending on how a person’s playing, how the person’s putting, what the putt looks like, it’s hard to tell whether you would give a putt or not,” Patrick Reed said at the Workday Championship. “I’m pretty sure there’s a reason that Mr. Nicklaus felt like that putt should have been given and it’s one of those things that would be his decision, not anyone else’s.”

Justin Thomas also needed more context, just not as many words for his answer.

“No disrespect for you or to Jack, but I truly have no clue what the story is,” he said when asked about the concession.

Thomas was told if Jacklin had missed, it would have mean a European loss. With a tie, the Americans retained the cup as defending champions.

“No, I would not have conceded the putt,” he said.

BLUE WALL OF DINAH

The ANA Inspiration will be played again without spectators because of restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This time, it also will be played without the wall behind the 18th green.

The blue wall — a makeshift billboard covered with blue bunting — was erected in September at Mission Hills as a chance to display sponsor logos. Corporate hospitality behind the green also serves as a backstop on what otherwise is an island green, but with no need for it at the LPGA major long known as the “Dinah Shore,” it became a story.

Mirim Lee his 5-wood off the wall (she practiced the shot earlier in the week) to set up a chip-in for eagle that got her into a playoff she won. Brooke Henderson hit 5-wood from the rough knowing the wall was there to help. She made birdie to get into the playoff.

Tournament organizers said in a release they would take “this unique opportunity” on the 50-year anniversary of the tournament to play the 18th green as it was designed.

“As far as the records show, the world’s best golfers will be approaching the 18th green just as the competitors would have encountered it in its inaugural edition in 1972, clear of any hospitality units or branding,” the tournament said.

STAYING PUT

Jin Young Ko was in South Korea at this time a year ago, waiting to start her LPGA season during the Asia swing. The LPGA had to shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Ko stayed home until November.

It worked out well for her. She played four times and still won the money title based on her runner-up finish in the U.S. Women’s Open and winning the CME Group Tour Championship.

She is not used to starting this early in the year in America, but it’s worth it.

“You have to quarantine when you get back to U.S. … so I had to this season come back earlier,” Ko said. “I needed a little more offseason time, but I don’t want to do quarantine anymore, especially two weeks in U.S.”

DIVOTS

Xander Schauffele has 16 consecutive finishes inside the top 25 on the PGA Tour dating to June at the Travelers Championship. It’s a streak only Tiger Woods (four times) and Rory McIlroy have put together since 1990. One glaring difference is that Woods and McIlroy each won multiple times during their streaks. Schauffele’s last official victory was just over two years ago at Kapalua. … TimberTech is returning as title sponsor for the PGA Tour Champions event in Florida during its Charles Schwab Cup playoffs. … The Workday Championship is the first time Jordan Spieth has been ineligible for a World Golf Championship since he became a PGA Tour member in 2013. He skipped Firestone that year when his caddie, Michael Greller, got married. … Albane Valenzuela of Switzerland is the latest player to put her name to an American Junior Golf Association event. It will be played around Memorial Day in Phoenix.

STAT OF THE WEEK

Dustin Johnson shot a 72 in the final round at Riviera. He had gone one year and 14 tournaments — dating to Riviera a year ago — since he was over par in the fourth round.

FINAL WORD

“I never get tired of playing good golf, and that’s what I tell myself every week.” — Tony Finau after a playoff loss at Riviera. He has 13 finishes in the top 3 since his lone win in Puerto Rico five years ago.

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More AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

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