| Letter from Africa: Spare a thought for stranded migrants Posted: 16 May 2020 05:01 PM PDT  Ismail Einashe writes that migrants are facing a tougher time since the outbreak of coronavirus.
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| Hundreds demand justice for Arbery at Georgia rally Posted: 16 May 2020 02:39 PM PDT  Justice for Ahmaud Arbery, a black man killed during a pursuit by a white man and his son in Georgia, isn't just prison time for his killers — it's changes in a local justice system that never charged them with a crime, rallygoers said Saturday. Hundreds of people came to the Glynn County courthouse demanding accountability for a case in which charges weren't filed until state officials stepped in after a leaked video sparked national outrage. Gregory McMichael, 64, told police he and his son, Travis McMichael, 34, pursued Arbery because they believed he was responsible for recent break-ins in the neighborhood.
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| Obama criticizes virus response in online graduation speech Posted: 16 May 2020 01:49 PM PDT  Former President Barack Obama on Saturday criticized U.S. leaders overseeing the nation's response to the coronavirus, telling college graduates in an online commencement address that the pandemic shows many officials "aren't even pretending to be in charge." Obama spoke on "Show Me Your Walk, HBCU Edition," a two-hour event for students graduating from historically black colleges and universities broadcast on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. "More than anything, this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they're doing," Obama said.
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| Félicien Kabuga: Rwanda genocide suspect arrested in France Posted: 16 May 2020 01:33 PM PDT  Businessman Félicien Kabuga is alleged to have financed the groups that carried out the 1994 genocide.
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| Michigan Rep. Amash ends his Libertarian bid for White House Posted: 16 May 2020 12:32 PM PDT  Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, a high-profile critic of President Donald Trump who quit the GOP and became an independent, announced Saturday he would not seek the Libertarian nomination for the White House, weeks after saying he was running because voters wanted an "alternative" to the two major parties. "After much reflection, I've concluded that circumstances don't lend themselves to my success as a candidate for president this year, and therefore I will not be a candidate," he said in one in a series of tweets explaining his decision.
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| Puerto Rico to hold statehood referendum amid disillusion Posted: 16 May 2020 10:39 AM PDT  Gov. Wanda Vázquez announced on Saturday that she will hold a nonbinding referendum in November to decide whether Puerto Rico should become a U.S. state, a move that comes amid growing disillusion with the island's U.S. territorial status. For the first time in the island's history, the referendum will ask a single, simple question: Should Puerto Rico be immediately admitted as a U.S. state? It's an answer that requires approval from U.S. Congress and a question that outraged the island's small group of independence supporters and members of the main opposition Popular Democratic Party, which supports the status quo.
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| Alarm in Germany as 'corona demos' take off Posted: 16 May 2020 10:07 AM PDT  Angered by a slew of lockdown measures, purported vaccine plans or alleged state surveillance, thousands took to the streets on Saturday in Germany in a growing wave of demonstrations that has alarmed even Chancellor Angela Merkel. Initially starting as a handful of protesters decrying tough restrictions on public life to halt transmission of the coronavirus, the demonstrations have swelled in recent weeks to gatherings of thousands in major German cities.
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| Lawyer: Iran sentences dual national academic to 6 years Posted: 16 May 2020 08:13 AM PDT  An Iranian court has sentenced a prominent researcher with dual French-Iranian citizenship to six years in prison on security charges, her lawyer said Saturday. Fariba Adelkhah was sentenced to five years for "gathering and collusion" against the country's security and one year for "spreading propaganda" against the Islamic system, her lawyer, Saeed Dehghan, told The Associated Press. Dehghan said Adelkhah will appeal the ruling.
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| Iran sentences French-Iranian academic to 5 years in jail Posted: 16 May 2020 08:12 AM PDT  Iran sentenced French-Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah to five years in prison on national security charges Saturday, her lawyer said, adding that she plans to appeal. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian denounced a "political" verdict and demanded Adelkhah's immediate release. The case of Adelkhah and her French colleague and partner Roland Marchal, who were arrested together in June last year, has been a thorn in relations between Tehran and Paris for months.
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| Bosnians protest Mass in Sarajevo for Nazi-allied soldiers Posted: 16 May 2020 08:09 AM PDT  SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Thousands of Bosnians, many wearing masks, demonstrated Saturday against a Mass in Sarajevo for Croatia's Nazi-allied soldiers and civilians killed by partisan forces at the end of World War II. The Mass in Sarajevo was a replacement for a controversial annual gathering usually held in Bleiburg, Austria, which was canceled due to restrictions imposed by the coronavirus pandemic. Another small replacement event took place Saturday at a cemetery in Zagreb, Croatia.
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| High-profile Rwandan fugitive accused of funding genocide arrested in France Posted: 16 May 2020 07:57 AM PDT  A high-profile fugitive who is suspected of being a leading figure in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi ethnic group in Rwanda, was arrested near Paris by French police, the United Nations said Saturday. After more than 25-years on the run, Félicien Kabuga, 84, a businessman from the rival Hutu group was arrested in the Asnieres-Sur-Seine area, according to the French justice ministry. "The arrest of Félicien Kabuga today is a reminder that those responsible for genocide can be brought to account, even 26 years after their crimes," the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz, said in a statement.
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| AP FACT CHECK: Trump, GOP distortion on Flynn; virus fiction Posted: 16 May 2020 07:38 AM PDT  President Donald Trump and his GOP allies are misrepresenting the facts behind the legal case of former national security adviser Michael Flynn as they seek to allege improper behavior during the Obama administration in the presidential campaign season. Broadly dubbing his allegations "Obamagate," Trump points to unspecified conspiracies against himself in 2016 and suggests the disclosure of Flynn's name as part of legal U.S. surveillance of foreign targets was criminal and motivated by partisan politics. In fact, the so-called unmasking of Americans' names like Flynn's is legal, and such requests have been more frequently sought in the Trump administration than in the last stretch of Obama's tenure.
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| 'Everyone has a story': How will world remember pandemic? Posted: 16 May 2020 07:22 AM PDT  Artist Obi Uwakwe was driving through Chicago's empty streets, camera on his lap to document life during COVID-19, when he saw something that made him stop: a casket being carried out of a church while a few mourners stood by, their faces covered. Around the world, people like Uwakwe are creating photographs, paintings, emails, journals and social media posts that will shape how the world remembers the coronavirus pandemic for years and centuries to come. The result, historians say, will be a collective memory more personal than perhaps any other moment in history.
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| From 'Respect' to 'Sick and Twisted': How Coronavirus Hit U.S.-China Ties Posted: 16 May 2020 07:05 AM PDT  "Evil." "Lunacy." "Shameless." "Sick and twisted." China has hit back at U.S. criticism over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic with an outpouring of vitriol as acrid as anything seen in decades.The bitter recriminations have plunged relations between China and the United States to a nadir, with warnings in both countries that the bad blood threatens to draw them into a new kind of Cold War.A cycle of statements and actions is solidifying long-standing suspicions in Beijing that the United States and its allies are bent on stifling China's rise as an economic, diplomatic and military power.Hard-liners are calling on Beijing to be more defiant, emboldened by the Trump administration's efforts to blame China for the mounting death toll in the United States. Moderates are warning that Beijing's strident responses could backfire, isolating the country when it most needs export markets and diplomatic partners to revive its economy and regain international credibility.The clash with the United States over the pandemic is fanning broader tensions on trade, technology, espionage and other fronts -- disputes that could intensify as President Donald Trump makes his contest with Beijing a theme of his reelection campaign."We could cut off the whole relationship," Trump said in an interview on Fox Business on Thursday.While the hostility has so far been mostly confined to words, there are warning signs the relationship could worsen. The trade truce that Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, reached in January could fall apart, despite recent pledges to keep to its terms. Other tensions, including those over Taiwan and the South China Sea, are also flaring."After the pandemic, the international political landscape will totally change," Wu Shicun, president of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, said in a telephone interview. "The confrontation between China and the United States -- in terms of trade, technology, the Taiwan issue, the South China Sea issue -- will be a bigger problem."The tensions spilled over into the United Nations on Friday when China said that the urgency of the pandemic demanded that the United States pay its delinquent U.N. assessment, which by some calculations exceeds $2 billion. The American Mission to the U.N. responded by saying that the United States customarily pays its assessments at year's end and that China was "eager to distract attention from its cover-up and mismanagement" of the coronavirus crisis.In its first months, the outbreak delivered a political blow to Xi, after officials held back information and discouraged doctors from reporting cases. Trump appeared confident that the United States had little to fear, and he praised Xi's handling of the crisis.Only weeks ago, Xi and Trump spoke by telephone and proclaimed their unity in the face of the coronavirus. Trump declared his "respect" for Xi, and Xi told him that countries had to "respond in unison" against a global health emergency.Their brittle unity collapsed as coronavirus deaths exploded in the United States. The White House and the Republican Party tried to shift the focus of ire, blaming China for reacting slowly and covering up crucial information.The backlash, in turn, has reignited the battle over trade, technology, and other issues, with the United States on Friday issuing rules that would bar the Chinese telecom giant Huawei from using American machinery and software.Public sentiment in the United States and other countries has also hardened against China, according to recent polls."I have a very good relationship, but I just -- right now I don't want to speak to him," Trump said of Xi on Thursday. A spokesman for China's foreign ministry, Zhao Lijian, brushed aside Trump's threat to sever relations, saying Friday that the two countries should cooperate.Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other officials have raised the idea that the coronavirus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which many scientists have said was possible in theory but lacked evidence."In Chinese eyes, the Trump administration is trying to delegitimize Communist Party rule and also stigmatize not just China but also China's top leaders," Zhu Feng, a professor of international relations at Nanjing University in eastern China, said in a telephone interview.China's leaders have struck back through party-run media outlets that said the United States and other democracies had ignored warnings and disastrously mismanaged the crisis. China has repeatedly held up its response as a model that other countries should follow, not criticize."Such lunacy is a clear byproduct, first and foremost, of the proverbial anxiety that the U.S. has suffered from since China began its global ascension," Global Times, a nationalist Chinese newspaper, said Friday of Trump's comments. "It is also a combination of envy and panic on behalf of Washington elites."Communist Party-run news outlets have lashed out specifically at Pompeo for arguing that the outbreak might have leaked from a Chinese lab."If this evil politician Pompeo is allowed to continue his swaggering bluff, one fears that United States 'great again' can only be a joke," said a commentary broadcast on CCTV, China's main state television network.Chinese media have also singled out Matt Pottinger, a deputy national security adviser who delivered a direct appeal to the people of China -- in Mandarin -- to embrace democratic change."Everything Mr. Pottinger has done is like a weasel pretending to offer New Year's greetings to a chicken," said a response on CCTV to his speech.Policymakers in Beijing will to some extent discount the loud accusations from the Trump administration as a product of domestic political maneuvering. But the recent bitter exchanges were also a symptom of a worsening in the relationship that existed even before the coronavirus outbreak."There is a major reassessment of U.S.-China interdependence underway," said Julian Gerwirtz, a scholar at Harvard's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. "Even if Xi might like to temporarily de-escalate the trade and technology conflicts to reduce pressure on the Chinese economy, there is now powerful momentum behind what we might call a 'security-first' future."The editor of The Global Times, Hu Xijin, has called for China to expand its nuclear arsenal in response to U.S. actions. "We are facing an increasingly irrational U.S., which only believes in strength," he wrote last week.Other hawks have warned that China needs to be prepared to deal with clashes over Taiwan and the South China Sea, where U.S. warships have stepped up patrols this year. Some hard-liners have gone further, warning of war."We have to dig out those traitors who have been bought out by the United States and do its bidding," Wang Haiyun, a retired major general attached to a pro-party foundation in Beijing, wrote in a policy proposal circulated this month on Chinese nationalist websites.The bellicose voices in Beijing have been subtly challenged by proponents of a more moderate approach, and the Chinese foreign ministry distanced itself from Hu's comments on nuclear weapons. Despite the ill will, both governments have pushed ahead with the partial deal to ease trade tensions."China is also highly polarized," said Zhu, the Nanjing University scholar."Some people just believe that there's no way but to just fight back. But I don't think so," he said. China, he said, "needs to be very coolheaded."For Xi, jousting with the United States may help rally domestic support after China's missteps in the early stages of the outbreak. But he appears to have no appetite for all-out confrontation, especially as he tries to restore the Chinese economy.Since 2012, Xi has expanded China's military hold on the South China Sea, promoted industrial programs that irked American companies and authorized mass detentions of Muslim minorities in China's far west, all the while wagering that he could keep in check recriminations from Washington.After a trade war that dominated 2019, Xi had seemed confident that he had reined in tensions, and, according to a White House adviser, remarked late last year that he would rather deal with Trump than Democrats who dwelled on human rights.Xi has not spoken to Trump since their call in March."The rapport we speak of between the top leaders, so they can use good personal relations, has I think totally gone," Cheng Xiaohe, an associate professor at the School of International Studies at Renmin University in Beijing, said in an interview.How Xi plays his hand against the United States could reverberate for years -- for his political fortunes and for China's standing in the world.While Trump will take into account the presidential election, Xi too must consider his prospects for a third term from 2022. Xi has no clear heir apparent, and in 2018 he abolished a term limit on the presidency, opening the way to an indefinite time in power as both president and Communist Party leader.Xi does not want to seem weak in the face of foreign demands nor does he want to risk an extended economic downturn, said Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center."The Chinese philosophy is that when a leader is strong he can afford to be flexible and moderate," she said, "but when a leader is weakened, that's the time that you need to worry."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| Local health agencies struggle to ramp up virus tracking Posted: 16 May 2020 06:44 AM PDT  As state after state begins to reopen, local health departments charged with tracking down everyone who has been in close contact with those who test positive for the new coronavirus are still scrambling to hire the number of people they need to do the job. Public health experts have consistently said robust programs to test more people and trace their contacts are needed for states to safely reboot their economies and prevent a resurgence of the virus. Cook County, Illinois, has just 29 contact tracers serving 2.5 million people living in suburban communities around Chicago.
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| Adopt a grandparent: Young help the old in Bolivian pandemic Posted: 16 May 2020 06:09 AM PDT  Sergio Royela lived far from his parents in Bolivia and was concerned how they were faring in the quarantine imposed by interim President Jeanine Áñez to stop the spread of the coronavirus. "So, I looked for a neighbor to help me and I did the same in my condominium and adopted another grandfather," Royuela said. In Bolivia, more than half of the 76 people confirmed to have been killed by the virus as of May 3 were elderly, according to health ministry data.
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| Coronavirus masks a boon for crooks who hide their faces Posted: 16 May 2020 05:52 AM PDT  The way the FBI tells it, William Rosario Lopez put on a surgical mask and walked into the Connecticut convenience store looking to the world like a typical pandemic-era shopper as he picked up plastic wrap, fruit snacks and a few other items. The scene, the FBI contends in a court document, was repeated by Lopez in four other gas station stores over eight days before his April 9 arrest. It underscores a troubling new reality for law enforcement: Masks that have made criminals stand apart long before bandanna-wearing robbers knocked over stagecoaches in the Old West and ski-masked bandits held up banks now allow them to blend in like concerned accountants, nurses and store clerks trying to avoid a deadly virus.
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| Top fugitive in Rwanda's genocide arrested outside Paris Posted: 16 May 2020 05:41 AM PDT  One of the most wanted fugitives in Rwanda's 1994 genocide, a wealthy businessman accused of supplying machetes to killers and broadcasting propaganda urging mass slaughter, has been arrested outside Paris, authorities said Saturday. Felicien Kabuga, who had a $5 million bounty on his head, had been accused of equipping militias in the genocide that killed more than 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus who tried to protect them. The 84-year-old Kabuga was arrested as a result of a joint investigation with the U.N.'s International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals office of the prosecutor, French authorities said.
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| Iran sentences French academic to 5 years: lawyer Posted: 16 May 2020 12:53 AM PDT Iran sentenced a French-Iranian academic to five years in prison on national security charges on Saturday, her lawyer told AFP. Fariba Adelkhah was "sentenced to five years for gathering and conspiring against national security, and one year for propaganda against the Islamic republic," Said Dehghan said. Adelkhah, a specialist in Shiite Islam and a research director at Sciences Po university in Paris, was arrested in June last year.
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| Burundi defies COVID-19 for election ending a bloody rule Posted: 16 May 2020 12:34 AM PDT  Burundi is pushing ahead with an election on Wednesday that will end the president's divisive and bloody 15-year rule. When President Pierre Nkurunziza hands over power, it could be the first truly peaceful transfer of authority in the East African nation since independence in 1962. Burundi has kicked out World Health Organization workers after concerns were raised.
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| 'It eats him alive inside': Trump's latest attack shows endless obsession with Obama Posted: 16 May 2020 12:00 AM PDT  The president seems more interested in blaming his predecessor than tackling the coronavirus – so what's driving Trump's fixation?President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump once sat together in the Oval Office. "I was immediately struck by Trump's body language," wrote journalist Jon Karl in his memoir Front Row at The Trump Show. "I was seeing a side of him I had never seen. He seemed, believe it or not, humbled."It was November 2016 and, just for once, Trump was not in charge of the room, Karl recalls. Obama was still president, directing the action and setting the tone. His successor "seemed a little dazed" and "a little freaked out". What the two men discussed in their meeting that day, only they know.But what became clear in the next three and a half years is that Obama remains something of an obsession for Trump; the subject of a political and personal inferiority complex.Observers point to a mix of anti-intellectualism, racism, vengeance and primitive envy over everything from Obama's Nobel peace prize to the scale of his inauguration crowd and social media following.Ben Rhodes, a former Obama national security aide, tweeted this week: "Trump's fact-free fixation on Obama dating back to birtherism is so absurd and stupid that it would be comic if it wasn't so tragic.""Birtherism" was a conspiracy theory that Trump started pushing in 2011 ("He doesn't have a birth certificate. He may have one but there is something on that birth certificate – maybe religion, maybe it says he's a Muslim, I don't know.") . Nine years later, he has come full circle with "Obamagate", which accuses his predecessor of working in league with the "deep state" to frame Trump for colluding with Russia to win the 2016 election.There is zero evidence for this claim. Indeed, a case could be made that the supposed "deep state" did more to help Trump than hurt him when the FBI reopened an investigation into his opponent, Hillary Clinton, just before election day. When questioned by reporters, Trump himself has struggled to articulate what "Obamagate" means. Ned Price, a former CIA analyst, dubbed it "a hashtag in search of a scandal".But his allies in the Republican party and conservative media are stepping up to build a parallel universe where this is the big story and Obama is at the center of it. Sean Hannity, a host on Fox News, demanded: "What did Barack Obama know and when did he know it?" Over the past week, the channel's primetime shows have devoted more coverage to the bogus crimes of "Barack Hussein Obama" than to the coronavirus pandemic – and Trump's mishandling of it.> Trump has a problem where I think he's just jealous of the fact that Obama is still so admired> > Tara SetmayerTara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, said: "Donald Trump always needs a foil. This riles up his base because they cling to anything that diverges responsibility for anything from Donald Trump over to someone else. And in this case Barack Obama is the boogeyman of the month."Beyond political expediency, there is a more profound antipathy at work. From the Iran nuclear deal to the Trans Pacific Partnership, from environmental regulations to the Affordable Care Act, Trump has always seemed to be on a mission to erase his predecessor's legacy. With few deep convictions of his own, Trump found a negative reference point in Obama. Between 22 November 2010 and 14 May 2020, he tweeted about Obama 2,933 times, according to the Trump Twitter Archive.There are a few reasons, argues Setmayer, host of the Honestly Speaking podcast. "First off, Donald Trump has a problem where I think he's just jealous of the fact that President Obama is still so admired. Number two, I think he has a problem with people of color who are in authority that don't do the kind of song and dance that he wants them to do."Barack Obama is not a 'shuck and jive' person of color, and those are the kinds of people that Donald Trump seems to be attracted to if you look at who he surrounds himself with as far as minorities are concerned."Third, Setmayer points to the 2011 White House Correspondents' Association dinner, where Trump sat stony-faced and humiliated as Obama lampooned the Celebrity Apprentice host's nascent political ambitions. Obama even pointed to a photoshopped image of a Trump White House with hotel, casino, golf course and gold columns."A lot of people think that this is where this all started," Setmayer continued. "President Trump does not have a sense of humor, he's not self-deprecating, and the White House correspondents' dinner is a fun event where people make fun of each other, especially in politics."> "This obsession, of course, is absolutely rooted in racism.Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, a civil rights advocacy group, said: "This obsession, of course, is absolutely rooted in racism. Some of the accusations have been deeply racialized, from the questioning of Obama's intelligence to talking about how much basketball he plays to questioning his birthplace and citizenship."Trump has shredded many norms, including that of presidents maintaining a respectful contact with their predecessors. He has dismissed the idea of seeking Obama's input during the coronavirus pandemic. For his part, Obama has carefully chosen his moments to condemn certain decisions or policies without mentioning Trump by name.But tensions flared last week when a tape leaked of Obama on a private conference call with about 3,000 alumni of his administration, describing Trump's leadership in the pandemic as "an absolute chaotic disaster". He also warned a justice department move to drop charges against Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who admitted lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador during the presidential transition, indicates that "the rule of law is at risk".Trump has described Flynn as a wronged "hero" and argued that Obama and his vice-president, Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for November's election, should "pay a big price" for supposedly derailing the retired general's career. Critics suggest that the president is seeking to weaponise the justice department for electoral gain.Matthew Miller, a former director of the office of public affairs at the department, said: "In terms of any real action against Barack Obama, he obviously doesn't have anything to worry about. But when you look at what's happened at the justice department with the complete politicisation of that department, I think it's quite possible that they're going to be coming after people from the Obama administration, using the criminal justice process any way they can."> The 2016 rally chants of "Lock her up!" might be replaced by "Lock him up!"It would be one of the gravest consequences of Trump's Obama obsession. Miller added: "There's some racism there but, most of all, it's driven by the fact that Obama has the thing that Trump has always craved but never achieved, and that's respect. I've always thought that the respect that Barack Obama gets from people in this country and around the world is something that just eats Trump alive inside."Obama issued a tweet on Thursday that contained one word: "Vote." He is expected to campaign vigorously for Biden, wooing voters who crave a return to what they saw as the dignity and stability of his era. But his presence is also likely to be inverted by Trump to rally his base with dark warnings that, like Clinton before him, Biden would effectively represent a third term of Obama. The 2016 rally chants of "Lock her up!" might be replaced by "Lock him up!"The 2020 election could yet turn into a final showdown between Obama and Trump, even if only one of their names is on the ballot.It will be a clash of opposites: one a mixed-race cerebral lawyer who has been married to the same woman for nearly three decades and publishes annual lists of his favorite books; the other a white billionaire and reality TV star who wed three times and measures success in TV ratings. Where one is renowned for elegant turns of phrase and shedding tears after mass shootings, the other serves up jumbled word salads and schoolboy spelling errors and has struggled to show empathy for the coronavirus dead.Michael D'Antonio, a political commentator and author of The Truth About Trump, said: "There's so much that separates them, it's hard to imagine two presidents more different. It's very obvious Trump is continually comparing himself with Obama in his own mind. Obama's over his head, over his shoulder, always looming as the guy who could speak in paragraphs and juggle more than one thing at once and deal with them effectively."
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| Medics around the world face hostility over virus stigma Posted: 15 May 2020 11:59 PM PDT  Dr. Dina Abdel-Salam watched in terror last month as scores of strangers gathered under the balcony of her aunt's empty apartment in the Egyptian city of Ismailia, where she'd temporarily sheltered after leaving her elderly parents at home to protect them from exposure to the coronavirus. Abdel-Salam's ordeal is just one of many in a wave of assaults on doctors, illustrating how public fear and rage can turn against the very people risking their lives to save patients in the pandemic. While many cities across the world erupt at sundown with collective cheers to thank front-line workers treating COVID-19 patients, in Egypt, India, the Philippines, Mexico and elsewhere, some doctors and nurses have come under attack, intimidated and treated like pariahs because of their work.
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| Virus lockdown gives Venice a shot at reimagining tourism Posted: 15 May 2020 11:36 PM PDT  In Venice, a city famous for being visited by too many and home to too few, children's play now fills neighborhood squares, fishermen sell their catch to home cooks, and water buses convey masked and gloved commuters to businesses preparing to reopen. At the same time, the famed lacquered black gondolas remain moored to the quay; hotel rooms are empty, museum doors sealed; and St. Mark's Square — normally teeming in any season — is traversed at any given moment by just a handful of souls after tourists abandoned the city in late February. For years, Venice has faced an almost existential crisis, as the unbridled success of its tourism industry threatened to ruin the things that have drawn visitors for centuries.
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| Restaurants and racing can resume, but new rules abound Posted: 15 May 2020 11:09 PM PDT  Restaurants can reopen in New Orleans, a city famous for its cuisine, but they must take reservations and limit the number of diners. Auto and horse racing tracks in New York can resume competitions but without spectators. Officials cautiously eased more restrictions Saturday on eateries, shops and outdoor venues as they tried to restart economies without triggering a surge in new coronavirus infections.
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| Trump's emergency powers worry some senators, legal experts Posted: 15 May 2020 09:16 PM PDT  The day he declared the COVID-19 pandemic a national emergency, President Donald Trump made a cryptic offhand remark. "I have the right to do a lot of things that people don't even know about," he said at the White House. Dozens of statutory authorities become available to any president when national emergencies are declared.
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| It's a work from home Congress as House approves proxy vote Posted: 15 May 2020 09:15 PM PDT  As House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer saw it, if he could Face Time with the grandkids, why not have Congress legislate by video chat and avoid the health risks of convening at the Capitol during the coronavirus pandemic? "This is no revolutionary, radical change," Hoyer told The Associated Press in an interview. The House approved the new rules Friday, during what could likely be the chamber's last fully in-person votes for the foreseeable future.
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| Wisconsin again? Swing state a hotbed of virus politics Posted: 15 May 2020 09:13 PM PDT  Wisconsin has been the battleground for political proxy wars for nearly a decade, the backdrop for bruising feuds over labor unions, executive power, redistricting and President Donald Trump. Now, six months before a presidential election, the state is on fire again. With a divided state government and a polarized electorate, Wisconsin has emerged as a hotbed of partisan fighting over the coronavirus, including how to slow its spread, restart the economy, vote during a pandemic and judge Trump's leadership.
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| Democrats investigating Trump firing of State Dept. watchdog Posted: 15 May 2020 07:41 PM PDT  Democrats demanded on Saturday that the White House hand over all records related to President Donald Trump's latest firing of a federal watchdog, this time at the State Department, and they suggested Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was responsible, in what "may be an illegal act of retaliation." Trump announced late Friday that he was firing the inspector general, Steve Linick, an Obama administration appointee whose office was critical of what it saw as political bias in the State Department's management.
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| China goes after US over more than $1 billion owed to the UN Posted: 15 May 2020 06:53 PM PDT |
| Iran reports 35 new virus deaths, lowest since March 7 Posted: 15 May 2020 05:02 PM PDT  Iran on Saturday reported 35 new deaths from the coronavirus -- the lowest number since March 7 despite infections rising -- and announced a further relaxation of COVID-19-related closures. "Despite the unfortunate loss of 35 of our compatriots in the past 24 hours, this number is the lowest in the past 70 days," health ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said. Of those hospitalised since Iran announced its first cases in the Shiite holy city of Qom in February, 93,147 have recovered and been discharged, according to the health ministry.
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