Health News

The Latest on the effects of the coronavirus outbreak on sports around the world:

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The Belmont Stakes will limit attendance to 11,000 spectators for the third leg of horse racing’s Triple Crown series.

Tickets will go on sale Thursday for the race on June 5.

The New York Racing Association says it will offer advance pre-sale options on Wednesday to people who bought tickets for last year’s Belmont Stakes, which was held without fans because of the global pandemic.

NYRA says that required mandatory seating and social distancing will limit tickets to reserved seats and hospitality areas. No general admission tickets are available at this time. If capacity limits increase before the race, more tickets would be made available.

All fans must submit proof of completed vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test to get in.

The Preakness Stakes on May 15 is limiting attendance to 10,000. The Kentucky Derby had attendance of 51,838 last weekend.

Another of horse racing’s major events will have spectators, too. Tickets for the Breeders’ Cup at Del Mar will go on sale July 16.

Organizers say fans will be welcomed back for the Nov. 5-6 event at the track north of San Diego, although they did not specify whether attendance would be limited. They said attendance would be dictated by state and local health and safety guidelines.

Last year’s event at Keeneland in Kentucky also was held without fans because of the global pandemic.

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Brendon Todd has withdrawn from the Wells Fargo Championship after testing positive for the coronavirus.

This is the third straight PGA Tour event that has yielded a positive result in pre-tournament testing.

Four players, including Tyrrell Hatton of England, tested positive last week at the Valspar Championship. Seamus Powers of Ireland tested positive a week earlier in New Orleans.

Todd was replaced in the field in Charlotte, North Carolina, by J.J. Spaun.

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RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — After a Black man with intellectual disabilities was enslaved, beaten and forced to work more than 100 hours a week without pay in a South Carolina restaurant, his manager was sentenced to prison and ordered to pay $273,000 in restitution. But a federal appeals court recently ruled the man is entitled to double that amount under federal labor laws.

A three-judge panel of the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that a U.S. District Court judge erred when he failed to include an additional $273,000 as “liquidated damages” in his order of restitution. Under the April 21 ruling, the court said John Christopher Smith is entitled to total restitution of $546,000. The appeals court sent the case back to the lower court to recalculate the restitution award.

The ruling came in a case that alleged that Bobby Edwards, Smith’s manager at J&J Cafeteria in Conway, South Carolina, had physically and mentally abused him, and forced him to work more than 100 hours of week with no pay for more than five years, from 2009 to 2014.

Smith, who had an intellectual disability and an IQ of about 70, had worked at the restaurant since he was about 12 years old. For the first 19 years of his employment, when the restaurant was owned and managed by different members of the Edwards family, Smith was always paid for his work.

That changed in 2009 after Bobby Edwards took over management of the restaurant. According to the narrative included in the 4th Circuit’s ruling, Edwards, who is white, “effectively enslaved” Smith, moving him to an apartment attached to the restaurant and forcing him to work up to 18 hours a day without pay.

“Edwards effected this forced labor by taking advantage of Jack’s intellectual disability and keeping Jack isolated from his family, threatening to have him arrested, and verbally abusing him,” the court said in its ruling.

The court said Edwards also physically abused Smith by whipping him with his belt, beating him with kitchen pans, punching him, and once, by dipping metal tongs into hot grease and burning Smith’s neck.

After a relative of a restaurant employee told authorities about the abuse in 2014, the South Carolina Department of Social Services removed Smith from the restaurant.

Edwards pleaded guilty to one count of forced labor and was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison. The judge ordered Edwards to pay Smith nearly $273,000 in restitution and declined to add liquidated damages.

In its ruling, the 4th Circuit cited a 1945 U.S. Supreme Court case that found the liquidated damages provision of the Fair Labor Standards Act is a recognition by Congress that failing to pay the statutory minimum on time may be so detrimental to maintaining the minimum standard of living that double payment must be made to ensure that the worker is restored to a minimum standard of well-being.

“For this reason, awarding liquidated damages for violations of the FLSA’s minimum-wage and overtime provisions is the ‘norm,’” Judge Paul Niemeyer wrote for the panel in the 3-0 decision.

Edwards’s lawyer, Assistant Federal Public Defender Emily Deck Harrill, could not immediately be reached for comment on the 4th Circuit’s ruling. A message was left at her office.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in South Carolina declined to comment on the ruling. The U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

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MARIETTA, Ga. (AP) — The top-ranking House Republican on Tuesday renewed his party’s attack on Major League Baseball for pulling the All-Star Game out of the Atlanta Braves stadium after Georgia Republicans enacted a restrictive new voting law, saying the sport’s leaders were misled by criticism from Democratic President Joe Biden.

“These are real-life effects of people making poor decisions that has hurt this community as a whole,” said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, speaking at a suburban Atlanta restaurant where people were lined up to dine.

Democrats, though, say Republicans have only themselves to blame for any fallout from Georgia’s voting law, since Republican votes pushed it through the Georgia General Assembly and Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed it into law.

“Republicans, and no one else, own all the repercussions,” said state Democratic Party spokesperson Rebecca Galanti.

The rewrite of Georgia’s election rules followed former President Donald Trump’s repeated unproven claims of fraud after his presidential loss to Biden.

McCarthy, a Californian, suggested Major League Baseball should make up lost revenue to small businesses, saying the game was going to boost recovery from the struggles of COVID-19 in suburban Cobb County. Once solidly Republican, the county voted strongly for Biden in 2020.

Biden declared the Georgia law “un-American” and “Jim Crow in the 21st century,” but was attacked for misstating some of its provisions. Republicans claim he and other Democratic opponents are responsible for the economic fallout of the game moving to Denver.

Local leaders claimed the game would have a $100 million economic impact. Critics have questioned those figures, but even that amount is a tiny fraction of metro Atlanta’s $422 billion annual economy.

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has said he decided to move the All-Star events after discussions with individual players and the Players Alliance, an organization of Black players formed after the death of George Floyd last year.

McCarthy was joined by two Georgia Republicans — Rep. Barry Loudermilk, whose district includes parts of Cobb County and Rep. Drew Ferguson, whose district is southwest of Atlanta.

Several business owners spoke after meeting with McCarthy. Brent Brown of Chesley Brown International Security said his employees were hurt.

“Hourly wage people, they can’t afford to not have a job,” Brown said.

Gus Tselios owns the Marietta Diner where McCarthy spoke and five other Cobb County restaurants. He told reporters, “it’s not the end of the world.”

“We were looking forward to hosting that beautiful event,” Tselios said. “Nevertheless, it didn’t happen. We need to move on. Hopefully the Braves keep winning and hopefully we have some playoff games.”

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MADRID (AP) — Madrid’s conservative leader, a champion of relaxed measures against the coronavirus and a scourge of the left-wing central government’s handling of the pandemic, scored a solid win in a regional election Tuesday.

Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who had campaigned under the slogan of “Freedom,” was backed by 44% of voters, up from 22% in the last election two years ago, with 95% of the ballot counted. Three rival left-wing parties together had 41%.

The incumbent said that results backed her policies of keeping bars, restaurants and other businesses opened even in the thick of the coronavirus pandemic to keep the economy up and running.

Speaking to hundreds of supporters waving Spanish flags outside of her Popular Party’s headquarters in central Madrid, Díaz Ayuso also said the result was also a rebuke of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s left-wing coalition.

“The way of governing, with opulence and hypocrisy from Moncloa, has its days counted,” the winner said referring by name to the palace that hosts the prime minister’s office.

The preliminary results gave the Popular Party 65 seats in the 136-seat regional assembly, more than double from 2019 but short of the 69-seat majority needed to form a government.

Vox, the far-right party that mixes Spanish patriotism and populism and is shaping up as Díaz Ayuso’s new choice for legislative support, won one more regional lawmaker, rising from 12 seats to 13.

Referring to the upcoming term, Vox’s regional leader Rocío Monasterio said that “our votes will be decisive for absolutely everything during the next two years.”

In a sign that Díaz Ayuso’s popularity traveled beyond Spanish borders, the leader of Italy’s right-wing League Matteo Salvini praised the Madrid regional chief.

“Congratulations and good work to President Isabel Díaz Ayuso, winner of the Madrid elections, a woman of common sense and courage, who has combined protection of health, right to work and freedom,” the tweet read.

Voters shunned the liberal center-right Citizens party that was Díaz Ayuso’s junior coalition partner before she called the early election seeking to broaden her power base. The centrist party, which is trying to keep afloat also at the national level, lost all of its 26 regional lawmakers because it failed to reach the 5% vote threshold.

The preliminary results were a blow for Sánchez’s regional Socialists, losing 13 assembly seats, from 37 to 24. Candidate Ángel Gabilondo conceded having failed in pushing for a “calm debate.”

“We will continue working to avoid confrontation and tension. Madrid does not need it, it needs to be united because we have a very great challenge in the midst of the pandemic,” Gabilondo said.

Sánchez’s government’s junior coalition partner, the anti-austerity United We Can, obtained 10 seats, up from seven in 2019, after leader Pablo Iglesias quit his Cabinet position to run in Madrid.

More Madrid, a new upstart regional party led by a staunch defender of public health and education against the conservatives’ austerity and privatization record, grew from 20 to 24 seats.

Despite a persistent high infection rate that has recently plateaued, Madrid residents voted in droves, shooting the turnout to more than 69% of the 5 million eligible voters by 7 p.m., an hour before voting ended and up from 59% in the 2019 regional election.

Long queues of socially distanced voters formed outside polling stations in schools, sports centers and even a bullring. Authorities imposed strict voting requirements to prevent the spread of infections: double masks, separate entrance and exit paths for voters and plastic screens for election workers.

Older adults were encouraged to cast their ballots during a 2-hour period mid-morning and the hour before polls close was reserved for people quarantining because of COVID-19.

The Madrid region is Spain’s main economic engine and the country’s busiest transportation hub. It’s home to 14% of Spain’s 47 million people but has recorded nearly one-fifth of the country’s 3.5 million confirmed virus cases and of the national pandemic death toll of over 78,000.

The only incident reported was a brief semi-naked protest by the activist group Femen who held signs reading “It’s not patriotism, it’s fascism” outside where Vox’s main candidate voted.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — When Angeleno Wine Co. reopened its tasting room, co-owner Amy Luftig Viste teared up seeing old friends reunited for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic had shuttered so many businesses that it left major cities looking like ghost towns.

Even with limited capacity, animated conversations flowed from the tables set among barrels of aging wine and echoed off the brick walls of the winery hidden in an industrial section on the outskirts of downtown Los Angeles.

“It felt like the winery had come alive again,” Luftig Viste said Sunday, the day after it reopened after being closed all but two weeks over the past 13 months.

The din in the small space is destined to get louder when capacity is allowed to double to 50% as Los Angeles and San Francisco lead the way toward a broader reopening of California businesses.

On Tuesday, they became the first major urban areas in California to meet infection thresholds to move into the least-restrictive tier for reopening, allowing indoor bars to welcome people again, larger crowds to cheer on Major League Baseball’s Dodgers and Giants, and expanded capacity at restaurants, movie theaters, amusement parks, gyms and other establishments.

A total of seven of the state’s 58 counties are now in the so-called yellow tier, which is the final stage of a phased reopening plan before a projected return to business as usual June 15. The five other counties are all remote areas of Northern California.

It’s a remarkable turnaround for LA considering it was ground zero for infections and deaths when California was the nation’s epicenter of the virus outbreak just a few months ago.

The two cities have weathered the pandemic differently but are emerging at the same time after a statewide shutdown in March 2020 emptied streets, shuttered shops and restaurants, and darkened office buildings.

While San Francisco largely beat the coronavirus by avoiding it, Los Angeles was nearly beaten by it during the winter surge. At its worst point, more than 500 people a day were dying in California and hospitals in the LA area could barely treat the overwhelming influx of patients.

San Francisco reached the least-restrictive tier for a brief period in October, the only urban area to do so, before an alarming surge in cases forced a retreat. LA never emerged from the most restrictive tier until March.

Now, California has the lowest infection rate in the country. Los Angeles County, which is home to a quarter of the state’s nearly 40 million people and has endured a disproportionate number of the state’s 60,000 deaths, didn’t record a single COVID-19 death Sunday or Monday.

As spring warms up, freeways are becoming congested, workers are returning to offices, and people are heading to restaurants and breweries.

On Sunday in downtown LA’s Arts District, drivers circled the block looking for parking spaces. Diners filled the sidewalk tables of Wurstküche, eating sausages and drinking Belgian and German beer. A line of people waiting for a table at Angel City Brewery extended down the street.

Chris Sammons said he felt a civic obligation to get out and support businesses.

“It feels like almost a duty to be engaged with the city,” Sammons said. “We have to bring LA back to life.”

It was the first time out for his friend, Stephen Tyler, who said he was excited after hunkering down for so long and getting vaccinated.

“It’s just good to be out in the city again, be around people,” Tyler said. “Even this, I don’t care about standing in line. It’s all kind of new again.”

In San Francisco, business has picked up at Mixt, a popular lunch spot for salad lovers in the Financial District. But it’s not at pre-pandemic levels when lines spilled outdoors, said Leslie Silverglide, co-founder and CEO of the the chain. She plans to open two more stores downtown in coming weeks.

“It seems as if people are coming back,” she said. “They’re excited to be having lunch with colleagues again.”

Fear of catching the virus prompted a huge drop in mass transit ridership. Jason Alderman said he felt like a kid on his first day of school when he took a commuter train into San Francisco. He works for online payment start-up Fast, which reopened its headquarters as soon as San Francisco allowed in late March.

“Instead of feeling like a hollowed-out ghost town that people had quickly abandoned, it felt like there were green shoots of life,” he said. “I felt a twinge of the energy that used to be there.”

When the lockdown order came in March 2020, an estimated 137,500 workers for San Francisco companies that include Google, Facebook and Uber, seemingly vanished overnight.

Moving vans carted off households for roomier suburban homes and younger people simply packed up their cars and left since they could work from anywhere. Residential rents plummeted, but now are climbing.

The office vacancy rate in San Francisco is 18% compared with 10% a year earlier, said John Chang, senior vice president at Marcus & Millichap, a commercial real estate financing and advisory company. In Los Angeles, vacancies are at 17.5%, up from 13.5% a year earlier.

More telling, perhaps, is that only 14% of key cards are being used to enter offices in San Francisco, compared with 24% in LA. At the other end of the spectrum is Dallas, where data showed 41% of cards being used, reflecting the different approaches to the virus in the two states.

Chang said workers suddenly abandoned San Francisco when the original shutdown order took effect. He expects the return will be more gradual.

Lisa Elder, a paralegal who has worked in her office since July, said that even with some restaurants and cafes recently reopening the area is a shadow of its former self.

“Before COVID, this place was packed, there would be tons of people here in the alleyway eating and now it’s like, quiet. It’s crazy,” she said.

At Angeleno Wine, Luftig Viste said most of her customers were vaccinated and all were excited to be out again.

“It’s just such an honor to be the place that people come to break the seal as we start to come out again,” she said.

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Har reported from San Francisco. Associated Press writer Olga R. Rodriguez contributed from San Francisco.

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