| 'Cashpoint aid' and Africa: Who benefits? Posted: 20 Jun 2020 04:13 PM PDT  The UK's new hard-nosed approach to African aid is greeted with cynicism, writes the BBC's Andrew Harding.
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| Yemen separatists consolidate grip in area of UNESCO site Posted: 20 Jun 2020 01:31 PM PDT |
| 3 slain in stabbing at UK park; police say motive unclear Posted: 20 Jun 2020 01:29 PM PDT  British police say three people were killed in a summer-evening stabbing attack in a park in the town of Reading, and add that it is "not currently being treated as a terrorist incident." Thames Valley Police says three other people are seriously wounded. Several people were injured in a stabbing attack in a park in the English town of Reading on Saturday, and British media said police were treating it as "terrorism-related."
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| 6 staffers setting up for Trump rally positive for COVID-19 Posted: 20 Jun 2020 11:40 AM PDT  President Donald Trump's campaign says six staff members helping set up for his Saturday night rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, have tested positive for coronavirus. The campaign's communications director, Tim Murtaugh, said in a statement that "quarantine procedures" were immediately initiated and no staff member who tested positive would attend the event. Murtaugh said campaign staff members are tested for COVID-19 as part of the campaign's safety protocols.
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| Iran criticizes France over nuclear ballistic missile test Posted: 20 Jun 2020 10:56 AM PDT |
| Vital Kamerhe: DRC president's chief of staff found guilty of corruption Posted: 20 Jun 2020 10:34 AM PDT  Vital Kamerhe was sentenced to 20 years hard labour after a trial marked by the murder of a judge.
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| Statues toppled throughout US in protests against racism Posted: 20 Jun 2020 10:32 AM PDT  Protesters tore down more statues across the United States, expanding the razing in a San Francisco park to the writer of America's national anthem and the general who won the country's Civil War that ended widespread slavery. In Seattle, pre-dawn violence erupted Saturday in a protest zone largely abandoned by police, where one person was fatally shot and another critically injured. On the East Coast, more statues honoring Confederates who tried to break away from the United States more than 150 years ago were toppled.
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| Egypt is committed to a diplomatic solution to Ethiopia's dam crisis - Sisi Posted: 20 Jun 2020 10:11 AM PDT |
| Shooting in Seattle protest zone leaves 1 dead, 1 injured Posted: 20 Jun 2020 09:36 AM PDT  A pre-dawn shooting in a park in Seattle's protest zone killed a 19-year-old man and critically injured another person, authorities said Saturday. The shooting happened about 2:30 a.m. in the area near the city's downtown that is known as CHOP, which stands for "Capitol Hill Occupied Protest," police said. Video released later in the day by the Seattle Police appears to show officers arriving at the protest zone saying they want to get to the victim and entering as people yell at them that the victim is already gone.
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| Metal barriers, Trump gear: Crowd readies for Tulsa rally Posted: 20 Jun 2020 09:24 AM PDT  Supporters of President Donald Trump filled the streets Saturday around the Tulsa stadium where the president will hold his first rally in months, ready to welcome him back to the campaign trail despite warnings from health officials about the coronavirus and the possibility of conflicts with protesters. The crowd filtered into the 19,000-seat BOK Center for what is expected to be the biggest indoor event the country has seen since restrictions to prevent the COVID-19 virus began in March. Trump had been expected to speak at an outdoor event within a perimeter of tall metal barriers around the BOK Center, but that appearance was abruptly canceled.
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| Top US diplomat calls UN rights body 'a haven for dictators' Posted: 20 Jun 2020 08:54 AM PDT  U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the decision by the U.N.'s top human rights body to commission a report on policing and race amid international protests spurred by George Floyd's death "marks a new low" and confirmed the Trump administration's decision to withdraw from the Human Rights Council in 2018. The council agreed Friday in Geneva to commission a U.N. report on systemic racism and discrimination against Black people while stopping short of ordering a more intensive investigation singling out the United States.
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| Volunteer sleuths track down Hawaii's quarantine scofflaws Posted: 20 Jun 2020 08:44 AM PDT  Former longtime television reporter Angela Keen knows how to track people down. During the coronavirus pandemic, she's putting her skills to use finding tourists who defy Hawaii's mandatory two-week quarantine on arriving travelers. When members of her Facebook group spot tourists posting about their beach trips on social media, Keen zeroes in on photos for clues like license plate numbers she can run down and distinctive furnishings she can match up with vacation rental listings.
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| Egyptian president says Libyan city Sirte a 'red line' Posted: 20 Jun 2020 08:32 AM PDT  Egypt's president Saturday warned that an attempt by Turkey-backed forces in Libya to attack the strategic city of Sirte would cross a "red line" and trigger a direct Egyptian military intervention into the conflict. Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, in televised comments, said Egypt could intervene in neighboring Libya with the intention of protecting its western border with the oil-rich country, and to bring stability, including establishing conditions for a cease-fire, to Libya. El-Sissi warned that any attack on Sirte or the inland Jufra air base by forces loyal to the U.N.-supported but weak government in Tripoli would amount to crossing a "red line."
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| Coronavirus: Zimbabwe health minister in court on corruption charges Posted: 20 Jun 2020 07:57 AM PDT  The charges against health minister Obadiah Moyo relate to alleged procurement irregularities.
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| A Knock, Then Gone: Venezuela Secretly Detains Hundreds to Silence Critics Posted: 20 Jun 2020 07:42 AM PDT  A crush of Venezuelan government agents entered the home brandishing guns but not a warrant, and took Ariana Granadillo away. Over the next week, they confined, beat, interrogated and nearly suffocated her, then let her go as abruptly as they had taken her in.While her sister searched for her for days, unable to pry any word from officials, her captors told Granadillo, then 21, that they were counterintelligence agents. She had "never, ever, ever, ever been involved in politics," she said in an interview, but she soon learned that her ordeal was not unusual.Secret detentions, known under international law as "forced disappearances," are playing a critical role in the Venezuelan government's increasingly authoritarian efforts to control its population, discourage dissent and punish opponents, according to a new report by two human rights groups, provided exclusively to The New York Times.The report, made public on Friday, documents 200 such cases in 2018 and 524 last year, a jump it attributed to increased protests as Venezuela endured successive political and economic crises, and the government's repressive responses. It was produced by Foro Penal, a Venezuelan group that meticulously tracks the cases and Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C.Investigators documented many kidnappings in which authorities arrived in unmarked cars, presented neither identification nor warrants, confiscated cellphones and computers, and said little as they cuffed and hooded people. More than 20% of the victims reported being tortured while held captive.Using international law as a guide, the groups defined forced disappearance as a detention lasting two days or more that, unlike an ordinary arrest, included state denial of any information about a person's whereabouts.The report adds to an already large body of evidence of human rights violations committed by President Nicolas Maduro and his allies, including widespread reports of torture and an assessment by the United Nations that Venezuelan security forces have committed thousands of extrajudicial killings.The government did not respond to a letter seeking comment.Forced disappearances are considered by international law to be a crime against humanity if they are proven to be systematic. The authors of the Venezuela report call the practice "one of the most serious and cruel violations of human rights" because it places victims "in a state of absolute helplessness."The tactic is reminiscent of the right-wing Latin American dictatorships that Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, long opposed. Argentina and Chile were infamous for secretly detaining -- and often murdering -- people in the 1970s and 1980s.In Venezuela, the new analysis found, the average disappearance lasted just over five days, suggesting the government sought to instill fear while avoiding the scrutiny that might accompany large-scale, long-term detentions.The motives behind disappearances appeared to vary, according to interviews conducted by Foro Penal, including extraction of information, silencing dissidents or temporarily removing political opponents from the public sphere. Last year, 49 people disappeared following what the report called "protests due to failures in basic services," like water or electricity.The Maduro government may also be using women like Granadillo as bargaining chips, sometimes seizing female loved ones in an attempt to terrorize male targets.Her only apparent offense, Granadillo said, was that her father's second cousin was a colonel whom the government viewed as a political opponent.Granadillo, a medical student, was abducted for the first time in February 2018, when she was living at the colonel's home outside Caracas, near the hospital where she was about to begin an internship.The agents who burst in demanded that she and a cousin go with them for questioning, loaded her into a white car, handcuffed her and "let us know that from that point they were the owners of our lives," she said.They led her, blinded by a hood, into a building pulsing with loud music, pushed her into a bathroom and threatened her with a knife, questioning her about the colonel's location. She and her cousin spent the night there, forced to relieve themselves in front of a captor."At some points," she said, "we could hear the screams of other people who were evidently being tortured."The next day, agents forced her to sign a document "where we promised not to divulge all the abuse" and let her go. Two days later, she began her internship, determined to finish medical school.But three months later, the agents returned -- this time in the morning, while she lay in bed. They loaded Granadillo and her parents into a plate-less taxi with darkened windows, tied their hands, pulled the hoods over their faces and took them to another house.After being interrogated and struck, she said, she spent the night in a cell below the stairs. The next day, agents gave her water and a bit of food and "stressed that no one even knew that we had been kidnapped," she said.Then a female agent came close."She looked me in the eyes and without a word took a bag from her fist and placed it over my face, covering it completely," she said. "One of the men held my legs and my hands were tied behind my back."Unable to breathe under the plastic, she recalled, "I became desperate so fast that in seconds I felt asphyxiated."At times she could hear the agents beating and questioning her father.After a week, officials dropped Granadillo and her parents on a roadside in Caracas, the capital, she said. They eventually fled the country and now live in a small town in Colombia.Without her academic records, she has not been able to resume her medical training. Many of her friends in Venezuela have distanced themselves, fearful of government retaliation. She is 23 and forever changed, she said, scared of door knocks, constantly anxious, fighting a deep depression.She misses "the innocence I had before all this happened," she said. "Because I discovered an evil in human beings that I did not know existed."Maduro has come full circle from his student days as an activist denouncing human rights violations by Venezuela's pro-American governments during the Cold War.When his mentor, Chavez, swept to power in 1999, the new left-wing government promised to do away with the abuses of the previous system and create an equal and democratic society. Instead, Chavez jailed opponents selectively to neutralize rivals and consolidate power.This targeted persecution gave way to systematic use of repression and fear, human rights advocates say, after Chavez died in 2013 and Maduro took power.And, according to the new report, forced disappearances became tools to weaken rivals like Gilber Caro, a charismatic opposition lawmaker. Security forces have jailed him three times since early 2017, despite his parliamentary immunity.Caro has been held for a total of nearly two years in jail, often in locations unknown to his family or lawyers, without being convicted of any crime.In the brief periods of freedom between disappearances, Caro told friends about the torture and abuse at the hands of security forces, and carried on with his social work and parliamentary duties.But people close to him say the torture, jail deprivations and pain of living under the constant threat of abduction have traumatized Caro. By last year he had become a quiet, introspective man who struggled to maintain a conversation at public events.He was last detained by special operations police in December. His whereabouts was unknown until a month later, when he was charged with terrorism in a closed court without a legal counsel.He remains in jail pending trial.The United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances has asked the Venezuelan government to allow its members to visit and assess the country's use of the practice."We're waiting," said Bernard Duhaime, a member of the group, "for them to let us in."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| Police protests upend Democratic Senate contest in Kentucky Posted: 20 Jun 2020 07:38 AM PDT  For months, Charles Booker languished in the shadows, talking about racial and economic justice in a long shot bid to take on Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader of the U.S. Senate. Then came a national eruption over the deaths of Black Americans in encounters with police. Now, Booker's bid for the Democratic Senate nomination from the left wing of Kentucky politics is on the rise, creating an unexpectedly strong challenge in Tuesday's primary to the party-backed favorite, former Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath.
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| Egypt calls for U.N. intervention in talks on Ethiopia's Grand Renaissance Dam Posted: 20 Jun 2020 07:29 AM PDT  Egypt appealed to the United Nations Security Council on Friday to intervene in talks over a $4 billion hydroelectric dam being built by Ethiopia on the Blue Nile river. The request came as tensions continue run high after multiple rounds of talks over decades between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan have failed to produce a deal for the filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. "The Arab Republic of Egypt took this decision in light of the stalled negotiations that took place recently on the Renaissance Dam as a result of Ethiopian stances that are not positive," the foreign ministry said in a statement.
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| Lawmakers use protest momentum to push state racial reforms Posted: 20 Jun 2020 06:21 AM PDT  The racial reckoning sweeping the country after the killing of George Floyd in police custody has generated momentum at state capitols for widespread reforms addressing a range of inequities. Lawmakers have floated proposals to address affirmative action, racial disparities in school funding and health care, criminal justice reforms and even study reparations for slavery. The efforts go beyond policing reforms to focus on systemic racism that has stubbornly pervaded public life for decades.
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| UN draft resolution calling for probe into US police brutality only passes after mention of America and investigation is dropped Posted: 20 Jun 2020 06:14 AM PDT  A United Nations (UN) draft resolution calling for an investigation into police brutality against black people in the US and elsewhere only passed after both mention of America and an investigation was dropped.The resolution ultimately adopted by the UN's Human Rights Council on Friday instead condemned discriminatory and violent policing generally and ordered a report on "systemic racism" against people of African descent.
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| Trump outraised by Biden in May, but holds cash-on-hand edge Posted: 20 Jun 2020 06:10 AM PDT  President Donald Trump was outraised by Joe Biden in May, taking in $74 million for his reelection, but he maintains a sizable advantage in cash on hand over the presumptive Democratic nominee. The pro-Trump effort, which includes fundraising by the Republican National Committee, on Saturday reported its total days after Biden and Democrats said they had amassed nearly $81 million last month for his White House bid. Trump reported having $265 million in the bank at the end of May. Biden, for his part, reported having just over $82 million at the same point.
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| Did Vladimir Putin Support Anti-Western Terrorists as a Young KGB Officer? Posted: 20 Jun 2020 06:03 AM PDT  Putin has sworn his time as a KGB officer in Dresden was uneventful. There's a lot of reason to doubt that claim.
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| Major coronavirus outbreak in German slaughterhouse as R number rises Posted: 20 Jun 2020 05:42 AM PDT  A mass infection of workers at a slaughterhouse in the Rhine region accompanied by an uptick in the R number is leading to concerns that the corona virus is making new inroads in Germany. Armin Laschet, leader in Germany's largest state, North Rhine Westphalia, warned that he was contemplating a renewed lockdown after some 800 workers at one of the country's largest slaughterhouses were confirmed. "The chain of infections can still be identified," Mr Laschet said. "But if this changes a sweeping lockdown in the region will be necessary." He added that the recent outbreak was "the biggest yet" in the region. Such a move would mean a return to strict contact restrictions for the city of Gütersoh, where the Tönnies slaughterhouse is based, and its 100,000 inhabitants. Schools and kindergartens in the city have already been closed. Local outbreaks of the infection in Berlin and Hesse have also raised concerns about a return of the epidemic in a country that was widely praised for its early handling of the pandemic. In Berlin's Neukölln district - a poor and densely populated borough - several hundred households have been put under quarantine since Monday in response to a sharp rise in cases. The number of cases confirmed by German authorities on Saturday for the previous 24 hours stood at 601, following on from 770 the previous day. Earlier in June the number of new cases was as low as 300. The R number, which estimates how many people the average carrier infects, has also risen above 1, the value identified by Chancellor Angela Merkel as critical for controlling the outbreak. The seven-day average of the number, seen as the most reliable indicator of the progress of the virus, rose to 1.17 on Saturday. The Robert Koch Institute, Germany's government virus authority, has said that the infections are still localized and do not indicate a nationwide reemergence.
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| AP FACT CHECK: In time of trauma, Trumps congratulates self Posted: 20 Jun 2020 05:24 AM PDT  President Donald Trump prefaced the revival of his campaign rallies with days of self-congratulation, a familiar pattern that has not been disturbed by the traumas of this time. Perhaps most brazenly, he claimed credit for reducing suicides by veterans and offering them same-day emergency mental health counseling at Department of Veterans Affairs centers, achievements he inherited and did not build on. Trump has been preparing for his Tulsa, Oklahoma, rally on Saturday night, which shaped up to be the first indoor event of such a massive scale since the coronavirus pandemic took hold.
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| Shooting, protests test Atlanta's image of Black prosperity Posted: 20 Jun 2020 05:23 AM PDT  Police cars burned in the streets of Atlanta as protesters smashed windows and spray-painted graffiti outside CNN headquarters. Then her uncle, Rayshard Brooks, was shot in the back by a white Atlanta police officer after fighting a drunken driving arrest and trying to run away. "We stood with the Atlanta Police Department when they were just tearing up our city and said this doesn't happen here," Evans said of violent protesters.
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| North Korea threatens to pour 'leaflets of punishment' over South Korea Posted: 20 Jun 2020 04:35 AM PDT  As tensions ratchet up between the two nations, North Korea is preparing to flood the South with "mountain-high" piles of propaganda leaflets denouncing the South Korean president and North Korean defectors, state media in the country reported Saturday. Many of the leaflets will feature the face of South Korean President Moon Jae-in smeared with cigarette butts, an insult insinuating he is trash, the KCNA news agency reported, adding that they were being prepared by university students from the North. Although North Korea has distributed propaganda leaflets across the border in the past, the practice is more commonly undertaken by North Korean defector groups in the South who fly balloons or send bottles by river filled with flyers, rice and money.
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| US says its embassy in Kabul battling coronavirus outbreak Posted: 20 Jun 2020 02:47 AM PDT  The U.S. State Department says COVID-19 infections have been reported at its embassy in the Afghan capital and affected staff include diplomats, contractors and locals. The State Department did not say how many were affected. An official at the embassy in Kabul, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media, said up to 20 people were infected, the majority of them Nepalese Gurkhas, who provide embassy security.
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| Iran's currency hits lowest value ever against the dollar Posted: 20 Jun 2020 02:37 AM PDT |
| China to establish national security bureau in Hong Kong Posted: 20 Jun 2020 02:11 AM PDT  China plans to establish a special bureau in Hong Kong to investigate and prosecute crimes considered threatening to national security, the state-run news agency said Saturday, as it reported on details of a controversial new national security law Beijing is imposing on the semi-autonomous territory. In addition to establishing the national security bureau, bodies in all Hong Kong government departments, from finance to immigration, will be directly answerable to the central government in Beijing, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
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| Trump Defunding WHO Could Cost Us the Chance to Eradicate Polio Forever Posted: 20 Jun 2020 02:02 AM PDT  This article was published originally by PassBlue, a partner of The Daily Beast, which provides independent coverage of the United Nations. It was written by Fiona Shukri.United Nations health agencies already struggling with a surging COVID-19 pandemic must now face the possibility the United States will abdicate its leading role fighting polio—just as the world gets tantalizingly close to eradicating it for good.The U.S., polio-free since 1979, has historically made combating the infectious disease its top funding priority at the World Health Organization, investing more than $158 million in voluntary contributions over the last two years alone. The effort has broad public support dating to the 1950s, when Jonas Salk, with the help of the March of Dimes charity, created the first polio vaccine.Older Americans still have "horrific" memories of polio sufferers in iron lungs, notes Dr. Hamid Jafari, director of the WHO's polio eradication program in the eastern Mediterranean region, and the U.S. has an "emotional investment" in polio eradication.After Nigeria was declared free of wild poliovirus in 2016, Pakistan and Afghanistan became the globe's only countries with recorded wild polio cases, with 12 and 49 cases, respectively. (Wild polio is different from the rare, more easily controlled "circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus," of which there are 134 known cases worldwide. Communitywide vaccinations prevent the spread of both types of polio.)But despite the success of polio vaccination efforts, the WHO is warning that failure to eradicate it from these last remaining areas could produce a resurgence worldwide, with as many as 200,000 new cases annually over 10 years. A mutated strain of poliovirus has been reported in more than 30 countries, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic slowing or stopping vaccination campaigns has been particularly dire for polio eradication—around 85,000 Congolese children have not received that vaccine.President Trump's withdrawal from the WHO on May 29 now threatens these polio-control efforts already complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic."Polio vaccination campaigns have been put on hold," WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said at a media briefing during World Immunization Week in April. Poor countries are reporting shortages of vaccines due to border closures to contain the spread of COVID-19—and children, while at relatively low risk for severe illness and death from the novel coronavirus, remain at high risk for life-threatening infectious diseases like measles and polio, Ghebreyesus said.Efforts to control polio overlap with other public health campaigns, including the containment of COVID-19. As of June 15, Afghanistan had 25,527 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 476 deaths, though numbers are certainly much higher given the country's limited health services. (The country's population is approximately 35 million.)U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo recommended in April that funding for seven countries continue despite Trump's actions against the WHO: Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, Pakistan, Sudan, Syria and Turkey. Pompeo argued that the UN agency is critical in those countries to fight COVID-19 and polio.A March 27 State Department fact sheet, titled "The United States Is Leading the Humanitarian and Health Assistance Response to COVID-19," says the U.S. has redirected $10 million in resources to support the UN's emergency response to COVID-19 through the WHO. "This support will include surveillance, lab improvements, case management, infection prevention and control, community engagement, and technical assistance to Government of Afghanistan."The State Department, however, did not provide comment to PassBlue's requests on the status of Pompeo's recommendation or on the commitment of the U.S. to ending polio.Meanwhile, volunteers with the polio program in Afghanistan encourage hand-washing; staff members in the field check for and report potential cases of COVID-19; and program staffers strive to improve health workers' ability to respond to the coronavirus.UNICEF is using its Immunization Communication Network to disseminate information on personal hygiene, and the WHO's Afghanistan polio team is coordinating with the government to combat COVID-19.Speaking from Amman, Jordan, Dr. Jafari of the WHO told PassBlue that the agency remains committed to "polio observation" even as vaccination efforts are curtailed to protect both Afghan populations and international health care workers from the spread of COVID-19. Dr. Jafari noted that the pandemic has increased the agency's mandate, and this will increase its budget needs. "We can't go back just with polio vaccine in these communities that have been devastated by COVID-19."Dr. Jafari expressed concern for the populations that are "most vulnerable" to both COVID and polio, including refugees and displaced people from places like Somalia, Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen, where the UN is trying to maintain polio observation. He also said that UN staff are "running toward danger" as they do their jobs. "There is a human component to what we are discussing," he said. "We need to recognize the morale issues."Dr. Jafari declined to speculate about how the U.S. withdrawal of money would affect the agency's polio work. Calling the U.S. "an important partner for WHO and the overall health sector in Afghanistan," he said the agency is "fortunate to have many other international and national health sector partners in Afghanistan."(Earlier this month, numerous world leaders, led by Boris Johnson of Britain, pledged an additional $8.8 billion for Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to help immunize 300 million more children in the world's poorest countries against polio, measles and diphtheria by the end of 2025.)Work on wiping out polio is primarily funded through the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, a public-private partnership whose core partners include the WHO, Rotary International, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), UNICEF, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Gavi. "We've come too far to let this program fail," Dr. Jafari said.Jafari, a former principal deputy director at the CDC's Center for Global Health in Atlanta, said the Global Polio Eradication Initiative relies on the CDC primarily for lab virology and on the WHO for strategy, monitoring and evaluation.PassBlue spoke with Mohammed Mohammedi, a polio vaccine expert, during his recent trip to Lashkar Gar, in Afghanistan's Taliban-heavy Helmand Province. Based in Kabul, he is UNICEF's section chief for polio eradication and traveled to the unstable region to help prevent the spread of both COVID-19 and polio through education and distribution of basics like soap.It would be "a great shame," Mohammedi , if with billions of dollars invested and great success achieved, the fight against polio was lost because the job could not be finished in just two countries: Afghanistan and Pakistan."Polio is the easiest disease to get rid of," Mohammedi said in a WhatsApp chat. "Anybody can give a vaccine to any child. It's drops in the mouth. It doesn't require any qualifications. The vaccine is very stable and it's very cheap."Arguing that decreased funding could "force the programs at country level to really assess who is needed and who is not," Mohammedi said political commitment was more important than money."If we get serious, we can eradicate polio from Afghanistan in one year," he said. "There are only two people who can decide this. One is Gates and the other is Trump. And Trump will never do it."The Gates Foundation has made eradicating polio a top priority. But Bill Gates himself has said that polio is not likely to be eradicated without the WHO.The post The Collateral Damage in Trump's War on the WHO: Ending Polio for Good appeared first on PassBlue.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Brexit breakthrough ahead as negotiators edge toward deal on easier extradition Posted: 20 Jun 2020 12:49 AM PDT  UK and EU negotiators are edging closer to a Brexit breakthrough that will make it easier to extradite criminals and catch terrorists after the transition period, the Telegraph has learnt. Britain has rejected EU demands that it commits to remaining part of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which has blocked progress in reaching agreements on intelligence sharing and a new treaty to replace the European Arrest Warrant system. Brussels argues that the commitment is legally necessary before EU countries can surrender wanted criminals or share data from criminal databases. The ECHR is an international agreement drafted by the Council of Europe and enforced by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The Council of Europe, which includes countries such as Russia and Turkey, is not an EU institution and the UK did not leave it when Brexit happened on January 31. UK officials told their EU counterparts they would not accept any deal that controlled the implementation of the ECHR in British law, which would be unprecedented and one-sided. They insisted the Government had no plans to ditch the human rights law. The British team offered a termination clause on future police cooperation, which would allow either side to suspend or cancel any agreement if either party had fears over human rights protection, during the last round of Brexit talks. Negotiators also briefed the EU on British human rights law, during detailed technical talks on extradition, the Europol police agency and the Passenger Name Record directive, which is legislation to help trace travelling terrorists and criminals. They said it was in both sides' interest to strike a deal that protects UK and EU citizens. Boris Johnson's meeting with the three presidents of the major EU institutions on Monday brought more optimism. The Prime Minister reiterated his commitment to the ECHR in talks with the leaders of the European Council, Commission and Parliament.
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| LGBT refugees find a haven in Kenya despite persecution Posted: 20 Jun 2020 12:06 AM PDT  When he was attacked by a mob for being gay, Martin Okello said the kicks and blows from his assailants came so fast that he couldn't stop them or flee. Okello had fled to Kenya from his native Uganda to seek asylum and protection under the U.N. refugee agency, he said, "but for the time I have been here, I could say we have been facing so many insecurities." Before the attack, the 29-year-old former radio journalist had kept his sexual orientation a secret for months as he worked as an educator for the LGBT community at a clinic in Kawangware.
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| Thunberg has hope for climate, despite leaders' inaction Posted: 19 Jun 2020 11:45 PM PDT  Preparing for her appearance before the U.N. General Assembly last fall, Greta Thunberg found herself constantly interrupted by world leaders, including U.N. chief Antonio Guterres and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had formed a queue to speak to her and take selfies. "Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister of New Zealand, waits in line but doesn't quite make it before it's time for the event to start," Thunberg recalls. Such surreal memories for a teenager form the opening to a 75-minute monologue broadcast on Swedish public radio Saturday that soon shifts to the serious matter of climate change that's at the heart of Thunberg's work.
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| The Latest: Memorial to Black Wall Street covered with tarp Posted: 19 Jun 2020 11:03 PM PDT  — Memorial to Black Wall Street in Tulsa covered by tarp near Trump rally. — Trump campaign abruptly cancels outdoor campaign rally. TULSA, Okla. — A memorial to Black Wall Street in the Greenwood District of Tulsa has been covered with tarp by residents who say they don't want it used as a photo opportunity by the Trump administration as the president holds a campaign rally nearby.
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| China claims valley where Indian, Chinese soldiers brawled Posted: 19 Jun 2020 10:57 PM PDT  China said the Galwan Valley high up in the Himalayan border region where Chinese and Indian troops engaged in a deadly brawl this week falls entirely within China, boldly renewing claims on the disputed area as the Asian giants continued using military and diplomatic channels to try to reduce tensions on Saturday. The confrontation in the Galwan Valley, part of the disputed Ladakh region along the Himalayan frontier, was the deadliest between the two countries in 45 years. India blames China for instigating the fight by developing infrastructure in the valley, which it said was a breach of the agreement of what area remained in dispute.
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| Top Manhattan prosecutor leaves job after standoff with Barr Posted: 19 Jun 2020 10:51 PM PDT  An extraordinary standoff between Attorney General William Barr and Manhattan's top federal prosecutor ended Saturday when the prosecutor agreed to leave his job with an assurance that investigations by the prosecutor's office into the president's allies would not be disturbed. U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman announced he would leave his post, ending increasingly nasty exchanges between Barr and Berman. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, had distanced himself from the dispute, telling reporters the decision "was all up to the attorney general."
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| DC protesters pull down, burn statue of Confederate general Posted: 19 Jun 2020 10:34 PM PDT  Protesters toppled the only statue of a Confederate general in the nation's capital and set it on fire on Juneteenth, the day marking the end of slavery in the United States, amid continuing anti-racism demonstrations following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Cheering demonstrators jumped up and down as the 11-foot (3.4-meter) statue of Albert Pike — wrapped with chains — wobbled on its high granite pedestal before falling backward, landing in a pile of dust. Jubilant protesters read out Trump's tweet over a bullhorn and cheered.
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| Pandemic becomes a patchwork of small successes and setbacks Posted: 19 Jun 2020 10:12 PM PDT  Authorities in China appeared to be winning their battle against an outbreak of coronavirus in Beijing on Saturday, but in parts of the Americas the pandemic raged unabated. Brazil surpassed 1 million confirmed infections, second only to the United States. Europe, in contrast, continued to emerge warily from lockdown, with hard-hit Britain considering easing social distancing rules to make it easier for restaurants, pubs and schools to reopen.
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| Trump comeback rally features empty seats, staff infections Posted: 19 Jun 2020 10:00 PM PDT  President Donald Trump pressed ahead Saturday with a comeback rally amid an pandemic by declaring "the silent majority is stronger than ever before," but what was meant to be a show of political force was instead met with thousands of empty seats and new coronavirus cases on his campaign staff. Ignoring health warnings, Trump scheduled the rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was intended to be the largest indoor gathering in the world during the outbreak that has killed more than 120,000 Americans, put 40 million more out of work and upended Trump's reelection bid.
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| There's Nothing Exceptional About Any Country Posted: 19 Jun 2020 10:00 PM PDT  (Bloomberg Opinion) -- Pundits have recently proclaimed "the end" — or exposed "the myth" — of British exceptionalism. It's hard for Brits to keep seeing themselves as uniquely heroic while bungling their response to a pandemic, fumbling through Brexit and literally boxing up statues of national idols to save them from being defaced.Other observers have similarly announced the end of Swedish exceptionalism, because of an unorthodox epidemiological approach to Covid-19 that basically failed. But Sweden's belief in its own special status apparently became untenable even earlier, and for many other reasons.For every commentator declaring the end of a given national exceptionalism, others pop up reasserting it. This seems to be an iron law of history: Every nation at one point or another claims to be superior to others or endowed with a special mission. Exceptionalism, ironically, is universal.Notable examples include my own two countries (I'm a dual U.S.-German citizen). When John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony spoke of a "city on a hill" in 1630, he was thinking of a smallish group of Puritans. By the time President Ronald Reagan in 1980 turned that phrase into a "shining city upon a hill," Americans got the point. Their country was not only a superpower but also the most virtuous nation in the world, morally superior to others and endowed with a special historical role.This ideology transcended party politics. In 2016, Hillary Clinton also embraced American exceptionalism, in part as a way of attacking her opponent, Donald Trump, whom she considered strange for not believing in it. She was right to point out that he wasn't convinced: Told that Russian President Vladimir Putin is "a killer," Trump, by then president, merely shrugged: "Well, you think our country is so innocent?"My other country got into the game earlier. Two centuries ago, long before there even was a nation state called Germany, romantic philosophers such as Johann Gottfried Herder and Johann Gottlieb Fichte espied German exceptionalism in the unique spirit or soul of the "Volk" — the people or tribe. These ideas led to the rise of nationalism in Europe.During the 19th century, this exceptionalism turned into a conviction that German "culture," presumed to be very deep, was superior to Anglo-French "civilization," a term used by German writers to connote shallowness. The "land of poets and thinkers" was self-evidently different: equidistant between East and West and on a "Sonderweg" (special path) that would lead to something superior to monarchy, aristocracy or democracy. After World War I this mutated into racist exceptionalism — that is, Nazism — and World War II.Of the many exceptionalisms around today, one in particular resembles the 19th-century German variety. Russia has long seen itself as a "Third Rome," following the empires of the Caesars and the Orthodox Byzantines, whose role "Holy Rus" tried to take over. Like the Germans of yore, Russians are sure their culture and soul is deeper than the West's. As expressed in the thought of scholars such as Aleksandr Dugin, this exceptionalism implies a manifest destiny to rule over an anti-Western "Eurasia." Putin is said to subscribe to much of this worldview.Japan also felt exceptional once, until its defeat in World War II. It arguably still does, for instance in the intellectual tradition of Nihonjinron, which is based on Japanese uniqueness. Next door, China's "middle kingdom" has always felt special and currently calls this "the China Way." From India's Hindutva ("Hindu-ness") to South Africa's regional superiority complex and Poland's narrative of being victim and redeemer (a "Christ among nations"), everybody seems to be at it.The problem is that exceptionalism leads to bad things. The first is hypocrisy. How, for instance, could the U.S. or U.K. ever have claimed to be morally superior when the first English ship carrying African slaves to America arrived in 1619, a year before that other English ship, the Mayflower, brought the Pilgrims to their city upon a hill? And what would either country say if the anti-racism riots of recent weeks — late blowback for that earlier legacy — had taken place in, say, China or Iran? Exceptionalism requires editing a country's past, and indeed lying.It also leads to double standards. In the American case, it often becomes "exemptionalism," when the U.S. doesn't feel bound by international treaties or courts, even as it criticizes other countries for falling foul of them. Such arrogance provokes resentment and conflict.In the worst cases, such as Germany's or Japan's during the past century, exceptionalism mutates into a brutish ethnocentrism that leads to atrocities, tragedy and ruin. That's why the word "Sonderweg" has acquired an entirely negative connotation among historians in postwar Germany, as a delusion that culminated in the Holocaust."It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional," a world leader wrote in the New York Times in 2013, enraged about the sense of special purpose in the foreign policy of Barack Obama, America's then president. That leader was Putin, the Russian exceptionalist who soon after invaded Crimea and Ukraine. Here it is in a nutshell: If we all claim to be exceptional, there will be trouble. Nations are more like individuals. In some respects they're similar, in others different, but never exceptional, and they're certainly wiser not to pretend to be. Exceptionalism is an infantile and destructive idea. The sooner we drop it, the better.This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Andreas Kluth is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. He was previously editor in chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist. He's the author of "Hannibal and Me." For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Amid wave of cultural change, Trump tries to stir a backlash Posted: 19 Jun 2020 09:42 PM PDT  The White House was awash in rainbow light, a symbol of a liberal cultural takeover that seemed unstoppable. The following year, Donald Trump was elected president, propelled by a revolt of voters who weren't on board. As he barrels toward the November election, Trump is again positioning himself as the spokesperson for voters resisting a new wave of cultural change, ready to ride any backlash from the protests calling for racial equality and police reform and this week's Supreme Court rulings extending protections to gay workers and young immigrants.
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| Navy upholds firing of carrier captain in virus outbreak Posted: 19 Jun 2020 09:36 PM PDT  The two senior commanders on a coronavirus-stricken aircraft carrier didn't "do enough, soon enough," to stem the outbreak, the top U.S. Navy officer said Friday, a stunning reversal that upheld the firing of the ship's captain who had pleaded for faster action to protect the crew. Capt. Brett E. Crozier and Rear Adm. Stuart Baker, commander of the carrier strike group, made serious errors in judgment as they tried to work through an outbreak that sidelined the USS Theodore Roosevelt in Guam for 10 weeks, said Adm. Mike Gilday, the chief of naval operations. The Crozier decision was a surprise since Gilday had recommended that the captain be restored to his command less than two months ago after an initial inquiry.
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| Barr Tries To Sack U.S. Attorney Probing Trump’s Pals. But Geoffrey Berman Says He’s Not Leaving. Posted: 19 Jun 2020 07:11 PM PDT  Attorney General William Barr announced late Friday evening that he had nominated a Trump appointee to replace the Manhattan U.S. Attorney who had investigated and convicted some of President Donald Trump's closest associates. It was a shocking announcement even to the prosecutor he intended to replace, Geoffrey Berman."I learned in a press release from the Attorney General tonight that I was 'stepping down' as United States Attorney," Berman said in a statement. "I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning, my position, to which I was appointed by the Judges of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. I will step down when a presidentially appointed nominee is confirmed by the Senate."That came about an hour after Barr's surprise announcement at 10 p.m. on Friday that Jay Clayton, appointed by Trump as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2017, would be nominated as Berman's replacement as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.Trump Thought He'd Picked His Perfect U.S. Attorney in Geoffrey Berman. He Was Very Wrong.The move stunned officials and trial attorneys inside Main Justice, as the Department's Washington, D.C. headquarters is known. Two individuals in the Department's Civil Division confirmed to The Daily Beast that Berman had been offered and declined the chance to run the division, where assistant Attorney General Jody Hunt had abruptly announced his departure this week, but declined. Barr reportedly then asked for Berman's resignation and, when Berman didn't offer it, the attorney general simply announced it.One other official said the news of Berman's apparent ouster came as a shock, as did the decision to nominate Clayton, who has no prosecutorial experience.On Saturday afternoon, Barr attempted to end the drama—but appeared to add to the confusion. "Because you have declared that you have no intention of resigning," Barr wrote to Berman, "I have asked the President to remove you as of today, and he has done so." Trump, however, declined to confirm that. Speaking to reporters on Saturday afternoon, he said he was "not involved" in the decision to fire or retain Berman. The White House refused to answer any questions on the subject. For nearly half of his time in office, Trump has groused about SDNY personnel and the need for a house-cleaning, including sometimes by specifically calling out Berman by name. A source with direct knowledge of the matter told The Daily Beast that they were present at a dinner with the president last year when Trump briefly discussed Berman, calling him "corrupt."However, securities law professor J.W. Verret, who briefly advised the Trump pre-transition team in 2016, called Clayton a "stand up guy" who would probably decline to take the job after Berman's statement. "I suspect he was sandbagged by the administration," he tweeted. "He will take his hat right out of the ring after this."Hours before, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) called on Clayton to withdraw his name from consideration and, separately, Senate Judiciary Chair Lindsay Graham said that he would follow the blue slip tradition that would give New York's Senators, Schumer and fellow Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand, an effective veto over Clayton or any other nominee Trump might name to replace Berman. Berman was initially named interim SDNY U.S. Attorney by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2018. After the 120 days allowed for that appointment ran out, without Trump sending Berman's nomination to the Senate for their advice and consent, a panel of federal district court judges wrote a court order, still in effect, naming Berman to the role—in a term that expires only when the Senate has given its consent to the president's nominee. Berman's statement Friday night pointedly notes this, suggesting that Barr and Trump may not have the authority to remove him given the separation of powers issues doing so would raise.Just before midnight on Friday, House Judiciary Chair Jerrold Nadler, one of the architects of Trump's impeachment case, wrote that "America is right to expect the worst of Bill Barr, who has repeatedly interfered in criminal investigations on Trump's behalf. We have a hearing on this topic on Wednesday. We welcome Mr. Berman's testimony and will invite him to testify."A Democratic aide said late Saturday morning that there had been no further update from Nadler. Barr, the aide said, has not given any indication that he's willing to testify though he had previously said he would pre-pandemic. Two other aides said that Speaker Nancy Pelosi has told Nadler not to subpoena Barr to testify. Berman was appointed in 2018 after his predecessor, Preet Bharara, an Obama appointee, was fired by Trump after refusing to step down. Bharara's No. 2, Joon Kim, then served as the acting U.S. Attorney—the usual protocol to maintain continuity in ongoing cases. Trump to U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara: You're FiredNotably, Barr said Friday that he would be moving New Jersey's U.S. Attorney to New York to replace Berman in an acting role and run the office often nicknamed the "Sovereign District" for its independence and sweeping authority given how much of the nation's financial life flows through Manhattan. Barr then reversed himself on Saturday, saying the "Deputy United States Attorney" would fill the role in the interim. "This is highly irregular," former Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich noted on Twitter. "Why the rush to get Geoff Berman out the door and cause disarray in three different offices at once?" Former White House counsel and Watergate whistleblower John Dean said the move "reeks of putting the fix in" to protect Trump, Giuliani and the wider Trump orbit.Berman was appointed more than a year after Bharara had been fired. Under Berman, the SDNY carried out numerous investigations and prosecutions that impinged on Trumpworld—including the indictment of the president's personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, though Berman recused himself from that case.Bharara took umbrage on Friday to Barr's attempt to boot Berman, asking: "Why does a president get rid of his own hand-picked US Attorney in SDNY on a Friday night, less than 5 months before the election?"While Berman was initially viewed with some suspicion as a Trump donor and former partner of Rudy Giuliani's at the firm of Greenberg Traurig, he won over many skeptics inside and outside the office after he took the job and began pursuing presidential allies. "Geoff has exceeded everybody's expectations," Hadassa Waxman, a Democrat who worked under Bharara, told the Associated Press last year. "From Day One, he went in there and said, 'This is going to be the Southern District. There's not going to be any change. I'm going to lead the office with the same integrity, commitment to fairness.'"SDNY filed charges against financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein before his jailhouse death, and fired shots across the bow at the United Kingdom's Prince Andrew for his alleged involvement with the accused sex trafficker.In February 2019, Berman's prosecutors subpoenaed the Trump inaugural committee, seeking information on everything from vendors to donors—including a contributor named Imaad Zuberi, who was eventually charged with obstructing the SDNY probe.In its investigation of hush money paid by Trump's campaign to cover up the president's extramarital affairs with Stormy Daniels and other women, the SDNY secured a conviction of Cohen on charges of tax evasion, making false statements to a federally insured bank, and campaign finance violations. He was sentenced to three years in prison but later released as a result of preventative measures against the new coronavirus. The case against Cohen produced a non-prosecution agreement against American Media, Inc., parent company of the National Enquirer, which made the payments on behalf of Cohen to suppress the stories, a practice known as "catch and kill." Berman later looked into Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos' claim that AMI tried to blackmail Bezos about his extramarital affair. Other Trump World associates found themselves in the sights of Berman's office. SDNY brought charges against Natalya Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who shopped dirt on Hillary Clinton to the Trump campaign, in a tangentially related case. Berman also indicted Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, associates of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who were accused of pumping foreign money into efforts to support Trump—a probe that also led prosecutors to scrutinize Giuliani's finances.Former National Security Adviser John Bolton claims in his forthcoming book, The Room Where It Happened, that Trump told Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that the SDNY investigation into Turkish bank Halkbank would disappear once all the "Obama people" were "replaced by his people."In October, the SDNY charged Halkbank with six counts including fraud and money-laundering for an alleged multibillion-dollar scheme to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran. That case emerged out of the office's successful prosecution for sanctions-busting of Reza Zarrab, a dual citizen of Turkey and Iran with close ties to Erdoğan. Zarrab hired Giuliani, himself a former U.S. Attorney for the SDNY, and former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, both political allies of Trump, for his legal team. The pair didn't contribute to his legal defense, but instead met secretly in Istanbul with Erdoğan to try and work out what another of Zarrab's lawyers later described in court as an extra-judicial "diplomatic solution" involving a prisoner exchange between the two countries.That deal never came through, and Zarrab—who was charged on the watch of Bharara and convicted when Kim led the SDNY—eventually cooperated with the office in its successful case against Halkbank's Mehmet Hakan Atilla, which in turn led to the case against the bank the SDNY is pursuing now under Berman's watch."Berman's statement implies that there was a connection between the attempt to push him out and the 'delay or interruption' of SDNY investigations. Congress needs to subpoena Berman to testify and get to the bottom of this," former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti told The Daily Beast.—Tracy Connor contributed to this report.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| DOJ tries to oust US attorney investigating Trump allies Posted: 19 Jun 2020 06:39 PM PDT  The Justice Department moved abruptly Friday night to oust Geoffrey S. Berman, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan overseeing key prosecutions of President Donald Trump's allies and an investigation of his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. The standoff set off an extraordinary clash between the Justice Department and one of the nation's top districts, which has tried major mob and terror cases over the years. It is also likely to deepen tensions between the Justice Department and congressional Democrats who have pointedly accused Barr of politicizing the agency and acting more like Trump's personal lawyer than the nation's chief law enforcement officer.
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| Be Careful Kim: A Single Misstep In Korea Could Spark World War III Posted: 19 Jun 2020 06:33 PM PDT  North Korea would hope that the prospect of war against China (and perhaps Russia) would deter the United States from pursuing the liberation of South Korea.
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| North Korea prepares to send anti-South leaflets across the border Posted: 19 Jun 2020 06:32 PM PDT  North Korea is gearing up to send propaganda leaflets over its southern border, denouncing North Korean defectors and South Korea, its state media said on Saturday, the latest retaliation for leaflets from the South as bilateral tensions rise. Enraged North Korean people across the country "are actively pushing forward with the preparations for launching a large-scale distribution of leaflets", which are piled as high as a mountain, said state news agency KCNA. "Every action should be met with proper reaction and only when one experiences it oneself, one can feel how offending it is," KCNA said. North Korea has blamed North Korean defectors for launching leaflets across the border and threatened military action. On Tuesday, Pyongyang blew up an inter-Korean liaison office to show its displeasure against the defectors and South Korea for not stopping them launching leaflets. A North Korean defector-led group said on Friday it had scrapped a plan to send hundreds of plastic bottles stuffed with rice, medicine and face masks to North Korea by throwing them into the sea near the border on Sunday.
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| Iran coronavirus death toll tops 9,500 Posted: 19 Jun 2020 05:40 PM PDT  Iranian health authorities Saturday announced more than 100 new deaths from coronavirus and another 2,000 cases of the illness, as the country's fight against the pandemic entered its fifth month. Iran reported its first coronavirus cases on February 19, and it has since struggled to contain the outbreak, the worst in the Middle East. Health ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari said there were 115 fatalities in the past 24 hours, bringing the country's death toll to 9,507.
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