| UN makes largest single appeal amid warnings of unprecedented hunger due to pandemic Posted: 16 Jul 2020 04:07 PM PDT  The United Nations is warning that 265 million people could be pushed to the point of starvation by the end of 2020 with the first increase in global poverty since 1990 unless urgent action is taken. Humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock made the single largest appeal in U.N. history Thursday, seeking $10.3 billion to mitigate the coronavirus pandemic and its deadly second-order effects, especially the global recession and the diversion of health resources. The U.N. launched its Global Humanitarian Response Plan in March, but has fallen short of its funding goals since then, generating $1.7 billion so far.
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| Africa's week in pictures: 10 - 16 July 2020 Posted: 16 Jul 2020 04:06 PM PDT  A selection of the week's best photos from across the continent.
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| Asylum rules test Trump's legal skills to make new policy Posted: 16 Jul 2020 02:57 PM PDT  Critics of the Trump administration's most sweeping set of rules to restrict asylum in the United States sent in a deluge of comments opposing the effort, hoping an old law that serves as a check on presidential power will weaken or even doom it. Opponents submitted nearly 80,000 public comments before Wednesday's deadline, with about 20,000 in the final hours. The Trump administration must address each concern in the final rules, setting itself up for legal challenges if it rushes or is careless.
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| River Nile dam: Sudan blasts 'unilateral' move as Ethiopia dam fills Posted: 16 Jul 2020 01:38 PM PDT  As talks fail with Ethiopia, Sudan says water levels drop downstream and Egypt demands "clarification".
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| Analysis: Trump wants a 2016 repeat in a very different year Posted: 16 Jul 2020 01:30 PM PDT  In the summer of 2016, Donald Trump was trailing in the polls. With time running out, he changed up his campaign leadership team, though not his own mercurial behavior. Four years later, and in the midst of another summer slump, Trump is hoping a similar campaign shakeup will help put him on the path to another come-from-behind victory in November, this time against Democrat Joe Biden.
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| Top French diplomat in first Iraq visit since virus outbreak Posted: 16 Jul 2020 12:49 PM PDT  France's foreign minister warned of the persistent threat from the Islamic State group in a visit to Iraq on Thursday, his first official trip outside the European Union since the coronavirus pandemic erupted. Jean-Yves Le Drian met with his Iraqi counterpart, Fuad Hussein, in Baghdad; the two discussed a broad range of subjects, from IS prisoners of French origin held in Iraqi jails, to the continuing threat posed by IS militants and France's ongoing investment projects in the country. Le Drian said there were "disturbing" signs of an IS resurgence and that gains made to dislodge the group should not be reversed.
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| How Russia's Cozy Bear hunted for coronavirus vaccine secrets Posted: 16 Jul 2020 11:31 AM PDT  The Kremlin was cock-a-hoop. Vaccine trials for coronavirus, funded by Russia's sovereign wealth fund, had gone so well at two separate institutions that Vladimir Putin could look forward to announcing the world's first approved vaccine for the virus by the end of the year. Kirill Dmitriev, the chief executive of the powerful Russian Direct Investment Fund, a close ally of President Putin, announced at a press conference in Moscow on Thursday that advanced Phase III trials would begin next month, with a plan to produce 30 million doses of coronavirus vaccine by December. Lucrative manufacturing deals had been signed with five other countries to produce a further 170 million doses, said Mr Dmitriev. Almost 2,000 miles away in London, just as Russia was boasting of its breakthrough, intelligence agencies in the UK were painting a different picture, announcing that they had uncovered a plot by "Russian actors" that has targeted coronavirus vaccine development in the UK, the US and Canada. The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), a branch of GCHQ, said it had found evidence that a cyber hacking group – Advanced Persistent Threat 29 (APT29), better known in the cyber sphere as Cozy Bear – had attempted to steal vaccine secrets being developed in the UK at both the University of Oxford and Imperial College London.
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| Brazil tops 2 million coronavirus cases, with 76,000 dead Posted: 16 Jul 2020 11:27 AM PDT  Since late May, three months after Brazil's first reported case of the coronavirus, it has recorded more than 1,000 daily deaths on average in a gruesome plateau that has yet to tilt downward. On Thursday evening, the federal health ministry reported that the country had passed 2 million confirmed cases of virus infections and 76,000 deaths. Experts blame denial of the virus' deadly potential by President Jair Bolsonaro and lack of national coordination combined with scattershot responses by city and state governments, with some reopening earlier than health experts recommended.
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| Mosquitoes flying free as health departments focus on virus Posted: 16 Jul 2020 10:04 AM PDT  The coronavirus has pulled the staffers away, so they haven't set a single trap yet this year, according to Dustin Kent, the program manager of the residential services unit. In Washtenaw County, Michigan, mosquito samples aren't being collected because the health department didn't have the staff or ability to hire and train the summer interns who would typically perform the work. In COVID-19 hot spot Houston, Texas, a third of mosquito control staffers are working a COVID call center, stocking warehouses and preparing coronavirus testing materials.
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| Spain: U.S. man tells judge he was duped into carrying drugs Posted: 16 Jul 2020 09:27 AM PDT |
| Georgia gov sues to end cities' defiance on mask rules Posted: 16 Jul 2020 09:23 AM PDT  Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is suing Atlanta's mayor and city council to block the city from enforcing its mandate to wear a mask in public and other rules related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Kemp and Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, in a suit filed in state court late Thursday in Atlanta, argue that Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has overstepped her authority and must obey Kemp's executive orders under state law.
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| Israel keeps blowing up military targets in Iran, hoping to force a confrontation before Trump could be voted out in November, sources say Posted: 16 Jul 2020 08:44 AM PDT  Iran has suffered a series of bombings and fires at major military facilities in recent weeks. Israeli intelligence has been behind many of these.
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| Spacecraft snaps closest pictures of sun, 'campfires' abound Posted: 16 Jul 2020 07:11 AM PDT  A European and NASA spacecraft has snapped the closest pictures ever taken of the sun, revealing countless little "campfires" flaring everywhere. Scientists on Thursday released the first images taken by Solar Orbiter, launched from Cape Canaveral in February. NASA's Parker Solar Probe is flying much closer to the sun than Solar Orbiter — too close for cameras to safely photograph the sun.
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| Yemeni tanker spill would be four times worse than Exxon Valdez, U.N. warns Posted: 16 Jul 2020 06:17 AM PDT  Up to 1.1 million barrels of oil could spill into the Red Sea causing a disaster four times worse than the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, the United Nations Security Council heard on Wednesday. Time is running out to prevent a dilapidated oil tanker stranded near Yemen from causing a "looming environmental, economic and humanitarian catastrophe," United Nations Environment Programme chief, Inger Andersen, warned. The Yemeni-government owned tanker, FSO Safer, started taking on water in May. If its oil does spill it could cause irreversible damage to the Red Sea's rich biodiversity, including coral reefs and mangroves.
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| Yemeni tanker spill would be four times worse than Exxon Valdez, U.N. warns Posted: 16 Jul 2020 06:17 AM PDT  "Time is running out for us to act," the U.N.'s environmental chief Inger Andersen warned of the looming oil spill.
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| Vatican says bishops should report sex abuse to police Posted: 16 Jul 2020 06:11 AM PDT  The Vatican told bishops around the world on Thursday they should report cases of clergy sex crimes to police even when not legally bound to do so, in its latest effort to compel church leaders to protect minors from predator priests. The Vatican issued a long-awaited manual for bishops and religious superiors on conducting in-house investigations into allegations of priests who rape and molest minors and vulnerable adults. While the Vatican has had detailed canonical norms in place for two decades, the laws continue to be ignored by some bishops, particularly in the developing world and even Catholic strongholds like Poland.
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| Russians 'tried to interfere in election by promoting leaked trade documents touted by Jeremy Corbyn' Posted: 16 Jul 2020 06:04 AM PDT  Russian actors "almost certainly" attempted to interfere in last year's General Election by "amplifying" online leaked US-UK trade negotiation documents which Jeremy Corbyn promoted as evidence of the Conservatives attempting to sell off the NHS. In a written ministerial statement released on Thursday, Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, said the Government believes the classified papers were almost certainly promoted online by Russian actors. However, it remains unclear whether Russian actors had any involvement in the illicit acquisition of the documents, which first appeared on the Reddit website before the election campaign started. A criminal investigation into how the documents were first acquired is currently under way. There is no suggestion that Labour had any involvement in the illicit obtaining of the papers. It comes eight months after discussion site Reddit revealed that it had banned 61 accounts it believed could have been part of a disinformation campaign that was first uncovered last June. It added that in "late October" one of the accounts had posted the documents, which contained details of meetings between US and UK officials on a post-Brexit trade deal. In December, the documents were distributed by the then-Labour leader Mr Corbyn at a press conference in central London. He claimed they provided evidence that the Government was in advanced stages of negotiations with the US to open up the NHS to American pharmaceutical companies. When approached at the time, Labour refused to say whether it had obtained the documents from Reddit or via other means. In a statement issued a week after the press conference, Reddit said the accounts it had banned appeared to show a "pattern of co-ordination" that suggested they were part of a group known as "Secondary Infektion", which has been linked to Moscow.
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| Trump's grand GOP convention plans shrink as virus surges Posted: 16 Jul 2020 05:59 AM PDT  The Republican National Committee announced Thursday that it is sharply restricting attendance on three of the four nights of its convention in Jacksonville, Florida, next month. As the GOP looks for ways to move forward while coronavirus cases are spiking in the state, party leader Ronna McDaniel said in a letter to RNC members that only the roughly 2,500 regular delegates to the convention would be permitted to attend the first three nights. Delegates, their guests and alternate delegates would be allowed for the final night, Aug. 27, when Trump is set to deliver his acceptance speech.
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| Wild Planet: Plenty of Fish in the Sea--But Species Matters Posted: 16 Jul 2020 05:57 AM PDT  The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) recently reported: "More needs to be done to ensure fisheries around the world are sustainable." According to Wild Planet, the first large-scale sustainably focused seafood company in the country, consumers can support sustainable fisheries around the world simply by choosing fish lower on the food chain—which the oceans naturally provide in abundance. From the bottom up, increasing consumer demand for less popular species can affect positive change for our oceans and, in turn, our planet.
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| Germany urges WHO to hasten review of its handling of pandemic Posted: 16 Jul 2020 05:44 AM PDT |
| Ethiopia's River Nile dam: How it will be filled Posted: 16 Jul 2020 05:42 AM PDT  It is not like a bath with a tap that can be turned on and off at will.
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| Coronavirus: How fast is it spreading in Africa? Posted: 16 Jul 2020 05:18 AM PDT  There are fears that the number of cases is growing rapidly, so what are the key trends?
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| Ending the pandemic will take global access to COVID-19 treatment and vaccines – which means putting ethics before profits Posted: 16 Jul 2020 05:16 AM PDT  As COVID-19 surges in the United States and worldwide, even the richest and best insured Americans understand, possibly for the first time, what it's like not to have the medicines they need to survive if they get sick. There is no coronavirus vaccine, and the best known treatment, remdesivir, only reduces hospital recovery time by 30% and only for patients with certain forms of the disease.Poorer people have always had trouble accessing essential medicines, however – even when good drugs exist to prevent and treat their conditions.In the U.S., where there is no legal right to health, insurance is usually necessary for medical treatment. Remedesivir costs about US$3,200 for a typical treatment course of six vials, though critics argue its manufacturer, Gilead, could make a profit off much less. Internationally, high drug prices mean that critical medicines are often available only to the richest patients. Access to medicines, in other words, is usually an ethical problem – not a scientific one. And that's going to complicate the global coronavirus fight. Experts worry that any COVID-19 vaccine is likely to have a high price tag and, as a result, be unequally distributed according to countries' purchasing power, not need.With a little imagination, this challenge can be overcome. My new book "Global Health Impact: Extending Access to Essential Medicines" documents how in past epidemics, from polio and Ebola to HIV, the international community managed to get lifesaving drugs to patients – no matter where they lived or how much they earned. Past winsIt took years for scientists to identify an effective treatment for HIV. But by 1997, most people diagnosed with HIV in Europe and the U.S. were living long and productive lives thanks to antiretroviral drugs. Meanwhile, the disease was still killing 2.2 million people each year in sub-Saharan Africa because pharmaceutical companies claimed it was impossible to lower the US$10,000 to $15,000 annual cost per patient for antiretrovirals. In response, human rights activists galvanized a global AIDS campaign, educating African patients about antiretrovirals, giving them the tools they required to demand treatment and even suing drug companies. Eventually, mass protests erupted in South Africa and elsewhere, shifting public opinion on access to medicines. By 2000, competition from generic drug manufacturers brought the price of antiretrovirals down to around $350 per patient per year, allowing millions more worldwide to take them.Around the same time, a similar story was playing out with tuberculosis, which had greatly diminished in the U.S. and Europe but remained deadly in many other places. The rise of drug-resistant strains – especially in the former Soviet Union and parts of Africa and Asia – posed a particularly terrible challenge.Conventional wisdom held that people with drug-resistant TB couldn't be saved. The drugs were too expensive, treatment courses too long and disease management too complicated. The organization Partners in Health disproved that excuse by successfully treating 50 tuberculosis patients in Peru, then one of the world's poorest countries. That project helped convince the World Health Organization to endorse multi-drug-resistant TB treatment. Global funding for TB treatment increased greatly and generic medicines were produced. Today more than 70% of people diagnosed with drug-resistant TB receive treatment Ending COVID-19 ethicallyThese health campaigns both demonstrate the virtue I call creative resolve, which is a fundamental commitment to overcoming apparent tragedy. Other examples include the adoption of "ring vaccinations" in the 1960s – a contact tracing-based immunization strategy pioneered in the 1960s after mass vaccinations failed to stop smallpox – and a 2010 campaign to give children in Afghanistan their polio vaccinations at the circus.Ending the global coronavirus pandemic will require similar creative resolve. [The Conversation's science, health and technology editors pick their favorite stories. Weekly on Wednesdays.]Recently, the U.S. agreed to pay $1.2 billion for early access to a promising COVID-19 vaccine in the United Kingdom and secured first access to another by the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi, enraging citizens of those countries. Such arrangements also harm manufacturing countries like Brazil, Egypt and India, whose people have little access to the medicines their factories pump out.Unequal access to COVID-19 medicines isn't just a moral problem. In a global pandemic, an outbreak anywhere threatens people everywhere.There is some creative resolve on display in the COVID-19 fight, though. For example, the Medicines Patent Pool – a United Nations-backed organization that encourages companies to share their patents in order to speed up innovation – is pushing this method for advancing the research and development of COVID-19 drugs. Other health experts are proposing new medicine distribution mechanisms that would send drugs and vaccines where they're most needed based on the net health benefits a population would receive.That plan and others require smart data use. The Global Health Impact Project, a research collaboration that I direct, measures the effectiveness and availability of lifesaving medicines. The idea is that if we know which drugs are actually addressing pressing health needs and where, policymakers and health organizations can craft more targeted treatment access plans. Such information could be also used creatively to reward drug companies for their global health impact. Governments could create an international prize, say, that awards funds to companies based on the lives saved by their COVID-19 drugs and other essential medicines. That could offset profit as the primary motivation for drug research, development and sales.And if pharmaceutical companies don't voluntarily help people in poor countries, those governments can do what they've done in past health crises: let other companies produce generic versions of patented medicines, to protect the common good.Editor's note: This story has been corrected to reflect the disease that Afghan children were vaccinated against in 2010.This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.Read more: * A secret reason Rx drugs cost so much: A global web of patent laws protects Big Pharma * How can we get pharma companies to do more for global health? Try ranking themMany universities have contributed to the Global Health Impact Organization. Its supporters are listed at: http://globalhealth.pythonanywhere.com/index/thankyou
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| US prison populations down 8% amid coronavirus outbreak Posted: 16 Jul 2020 05:02 AM PDT  Stephanie Parris was finishing a two-year prison sentence for a probation violation when she heard she'd be going home three weeks early because of COVID-19. There has been a major drop in the number of people behind bars in the U.S. Between March and June, more than 100,000 people were released from state and federal prisons, a decrease of 8%, according to a nationwide analysis by The Marshall Project and The Associated Press.
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| U.S. Weighs Sweeping Travel Ban on Chinese Communist Party Members Posted: 16 Jul 2020 04:52 AM PDT  The Trump administration is considering a sweeping ban on travel to the United States by members of the Chinese Communist Party and their families, according to people familiar with the proposal, a move that would almost certainly prompt retaliation against Americans seeking to enter or remain in China and exacerbate tensions between the two nations.The presidential proclamation, still in draft form, could also authorize the U.S. government to revoke the visas of party members and their families who are already in the country, leading to their expulsion. Some proposed language is also aimed at limiting travel to the United States by members of the People's Liberation Army and executives at state-owned enterprises, although many of them are likely to also be party members.Details of the plan, described by four people with knowledge of the discussions, have not yet been finalized, and President Donald Trump might ultimately reject it. While the president and his campaign strategists have been intent on portraying him as tough on China for reelection purposes, Trump has vacillated wildly in both his language and actions on the Chinese government since taking office in 2017. He has criticized China on some issues, particularly trade. But he has also lavished praise on President Xi Jinping, pleaded with Xi to help him win reelection and remained silent or even explicitly approved of the repression in Hong Kong and Xinjiang.There are practical issues as well. The Chinese Communist Party has 92 million members. Almost 3 million Chinese citizens visited the United States in 2018, although the numbers have plummeted because of the coronavirus pandemic and the current ban on most travelers from China. The U.S. government has no knowledge of party status for a vast majority of them. So trying to immediately identify party members to either prevent their entry or expel those already in the United States would be difficult.The presidential order would cite the same statute in the Immigration and Nationality Act used in a 2017 travel ban on a number of predominantly Muslim countries that gives the president power to temporarily block travel to the U.S. by foreign nationals who are deemed "detrimental to the interests of the United States." The 2017 ban was fought in the courts and expanded this year.Such a broad ban would be the most provocative action against China by the United States since the start of the trade war between the two countries in 2018. It would further poison U.S.-China relations, even after several years of open clashes over economics, technology and global influence have led some diplomats and analysts to draw comparisons to a new Cold War.Officials at the White House, State Department and Department of Homeland Security have been involved in the discussion over the ban. Spokesmen for the White House National Security Council and the State Department declined to comment Wednesday, and one for the Department of Homeland Security did not return a request for comment.Officials at those agencies also continue to debate a variety of formulations for banning Chinese travel to the United States short of barring all party members, such as targeting only the 25 members of the ruling Politburo and their families.In recent months, top administration officials have tried to draw a distinction between party members and other Chinese, saying the party must be punished for its actions -- and its global ambitions must be thwarted. They have loudly denounced what they call the evils of the Chinese Communist Party, pointing to the role of its officials in the cover-up of the initial coronavirus outbreak, the detentions of 1 million or more Muslims in internment camps and the dismantling of civil liberties in Hong Kong.The Communist Party is both a powerful and mundane part of life in China. While its leaders maintain control of domestic and foreign policy, those on lower rungs do everything from supervising schools to managing neighborhood-level governance. In recent decades, many citizens joined to get a leg up in a wide range of sectors: business, academia and even the arts. Many party members do not conform to official ideology; some are Christians who attend underground churches, for example.Many Chinese outside the party praise the top leadership but complain about corruption among local officials.Counting party members as well as their families, the ban could technically bar travel to the United States for as many as 270 million people, according to one internal administration estimate."The overwhelming majority of CCP members have no involvement or input into Beijing's policymaking, so going after the entire party membership is like China sanctioning all Republicans because of frustrations with Trump," said Jude Blanchette, a China scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "Such a move would inflame public opinion in China, as this would target nearly 10% of the entire Chinese population and would do so based on blanket assertions of guilt."Besides the iterations of the 2017 travel ban, the Trump administration has put in place other entry restrictions. This year, during the pandemic, it has banned entry for most citizens of China as well as those from the European Union and some other nations. And last month, it blocked employment visas and extended restrictions on issuance of green cards, moves that would keep as many as 525,000 foreign workers out of the United States for the rest of the year.The State Department has also announced visa restrictions on various categories of Chinese citizens. These include officials responsible for the mass internment and surveillance of Muslim ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region and journalists working in the United States.In May, U.S. officials said the government was canceling the visas of graduate or higher-level students in the United States who had ties to certain Chinese military institutions -- the first ban on a category of Chinese students, who make up the largest group of international students in the country.After Trump signed the Hong Kong Autonomy Act on Tuesday, the State Department was expected to propose names of Chinese officials overseeing repression in Hong Kong for visa and economic sanctions.And on Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced a ban on some employees of Chinese technology companies, including Huawei, that "provide material support to regimes engaging in human rights abuses globally."He added, "Telecommunications companies around the world should consider themselves on notice: If they are doing business with Huawei, they are doing business with human rights abusers."Despite Trump's admiration for Xi, national security officials have tried to push tough policies on China that are designed to counter what they view as dangerous expansionist actions by Chinese leaders and agencies. The pandemic and Beijing's recent actions on Hong Kong have helped push relations between the two nations to the lowest point in decades.At the same time, some of Trump's top economic advisers have promoted a softer approach to China, warning of further damage to the world economy and falling stock markets. Those advisers and allies among American executives are likely to oppose a broad visa ban on Communist Party members, some of whom do business with American corporations.A broad ban would give the State Department new powers to block top Chinese political and business leaders and their families from entering the United States. (Xi's daughter, Xi Mingze, attended Harvard University under a pseudonym several years ago.) It would also allow the department to formalize a process by which U.S. officials could inquire about party status during visa application interviews and on forms. Under the draft proclamation, the Department of Homeland Security would share responsibility for carrying out the ban.Several Chinese citizens who have traveled to the United States in recent years said they did not recall any question on visa applications asking if they were party members.Language in the draft proclamation stresses recent egregious behavior by China, in particular theft of intellectual property by Chinese state actors and so-called exit bans used by security officials to prevent some U.S. citizens from leaving China. This month, the State Department renewed a travel warning saying the Chinese authorities engaged in "arbitrary enforcement of local laws for purposes other than maintaining law and order," which could include "detention and the use of exit bans."On Tuesday, the Trump administration reversed course on an order that would have subjected international students to deportation if they did not physically attend classes during the pandemic, after American universities filed a lawsuit.Still, the administration has stood by its visa actions focused more narrowly on China. The Chinese government has continued with its own harsh visa actions, and even widened them to the nonrenewal of work permits for Western journalists in Hong Kong.At a speech in Beijing this month, Wang Yi, the foreign minister of China, said the China-U.S. relationship was facing its "most severe challenge" since the normalization of diplomatic ties in 1979."Some say that China-U.S. relations will not be able to return to its past," he said. "But that should not mean ignoring the history altogether and starting all over again, let alone impractical decoupling. It should mean building on past achievements and keeping pace with the times."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| Space station power upgrades nearly finished after spacewalk Posted: 16 Jul 2020 04:27 AM PDT  Spacewalking astronauts completed their part of a three-year power upgrade to the International Space Station on Thursday, replacing six more outdated batteries with powerful new ones. It was the third spacewalk in as many weeks involving battery work by NASA's Bob Behnken and Chris Cassidy. Behnken and Cassidy swiftly removed six of the remaining old nickel-hydrogen batteries and plugged in three new lithium-ion units.
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| UN says 2 aid workers, 4 others shot dead in South Sudan Posted: 16 Jul 2020 04:01 AM PDT |
| It started like any other Kremlin crackdown. This time anti-Putin protests followed. Posted: 16 Jul 2020 03:45 AM PDT  Demonstrators have held banners saying "Free Sergei Furgal," while others have called on President Vladimir Putin to resign.
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| Julian Lewis hits back at Boris Johnson after he is stripped of Conservative whip Posted: 16 Jul 2020 03:30 AM PDT  Julian Lewis has hit out at Boris Johnson's "improper" attempt to impose his preferred candidate as chairman of Parliament's intelligence committee after he was ousted from the Conservatives for alleged "duplicity." The veteran MP was on Wednesday ousted from the Conservative benches after securing the chairmanship of the Intelligence and Security Committee with the support of Labour and SNP members. His surprise candidacy blindsided Downing Street and his colleague and former Cabinet minister Chris Grayling, who had been lined up for the role. The move provoked fury within Government, with senior Tory sources accusing Mr Lewis of deceiving the Chief Whip and working with the opposition to his own advantage. There are now fears that Number 10 could attempt to remove Lewis from the committee though a resolution in the House of Commons. However, such a move would likely provoke a significant Tory rebellion. Hitting back on Thursday, Mr Lewis said that the Prime Minister had no right to select the chairman of the committee and that gave no assurances that he would vote for Mr Grayling. In a statement, he added that a request for him to vote Mr Grayling was "improper" given the vote was independent of the Government and that Number 10 had publicly denied wanting to "parachute a preferred candidate into the chair". "It is therefore strange to have the whip removed for failing to vote for the Government's preferred candidate," he continued. It comes as Mr Johnson faces a mounting backlash from Conservative MPs over his treatment of Mr Lewis, who has served as an MP for 23 years. One former Cabinet minister told The Telegraph that Mr Lewis had significant expertise on defence and security matters and was a far more suitable candidate than Mr Grayling, who during his chequered ministerial career earned the nickname "Failing Grayling." "So Failing Grayling failed, kind of goes with the reputation," they added. The committee's first major act will be to publish the long-awaited Russia report, which has been repeatedly held up due to last year's election and delays in selecting the committee membership. On Thursday the committee confirmed that it would be releasing it next week, before MPs rise for the summer recess. Critics of the Government believe the report was deliberately delayed because it is likely to suggest Russian interference with the Brexit referendum.
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| IS bride to return to UK to fight for British citizenship Posted: 16 Jul 2020 03:10 AM PDT  A U.K. woman who as a teenager ran away to join the Islamic State group won the right Thursday to return to Britain to fight for the restoration of her citizenship, which was revoked on national security grounds. Shamima Begum was one of three east London schoolgirls who traveled to Syria in 2015.
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| As Israel virus cases surge, government weighs new lockdown Posted: 16 Jul 2020 02:50 AM PDT  Israel's prime minister said Thursday he is meeting with senior officials to discuss "interim steps" to try and contain a coronavirus surge without having the country return to a general lockdown as the number of new cases reaches record levels. Large demonstrations have erupted in recent days over Benjamin Netanyahu's handling of the pandemic. Adding to his troubles, a new economic bailout plan announced by the embattled premier came under tough criticism from some of the government's top economic experts.
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| US-China decoupling is already happening, says Donald Trump's former security chief John Bolton, also calling for open borders for Hongkongers Posted: 16 Jul 2020 02:30 AM PDT  Economic decoupling between the United States and China is "not only possible, but is happening", according to John Bolton, the former national security adviser-turned staunch critic of US President Donald Trump.Referring to decoupling, Bolton, a long-time China hawk who has criticised Trump for going too easy on Beijing, said that people will not "wake up tomorrow and find that it's occurred". Businesses are already looking at incrementally moving their supply chains out of China because they are fed up with the sort of "state espionage that would boggle the mind of a US or European" company, Bolton said.Bolton's claims are anecdotally true, with large companies such as Apple, Samsung and Nintendo shifting production out of the mainland to enjoy lower-cost manufacturing primarily in Vietnam, but also to avoid trade war tariffs applied by US customs authorities.A survey of 200 multinational companies released last week, meanwhile, found that 95 per cent of US buyers plan to shift their supplier base away from China. Experts, however, have subsequently warned that such a move is difficult to achieve in the short term.Financial decoupling, where the United States would cut China or Hong Kong's access to US dollar-settling markets, has also "been raised as a possibility", Bolton said.The US has also moved to force Chinese companies who do not meet more stringent documentation criteria to delist from US stock markets, while reports have claimed the Trump administration has discussed the "nuclear option" of restricting dollar access.In a video address to Hong Kong's Foreign Correspondent Club on Wednesday night, Bolton suggested that a Trump victory in November's general election would lead to a reopening of trade talks with China in pursuit of another trade deal, a move strongly discouraged by the former official, who served under every Republican president back to Ronald Reagan."If he wins re-election on November 4, it's entirely possibly he calls his buddy Xi Jinping and says: 'Hey, let's get a back room deal,'" Bolton said. Five years from now, he added, "if you talk about the phase one trade deal, 99 per cent of people will look at you with a blank face and say, 'What was that?'"Bolton has been an aggressive critic of Trump's policy on China since leaving his post as national security adviser in September last year, a role he held for 17 months.Bolton has been an aggressive critic of Trump's policy on China since leaving his post as national security adviser in September last year, a role he held for 17 months. Photo: AP alt=Bolton has been an aggressive critic of Trump's policy on China since leaving his post as national security adviser in September last year, a role he held for 17 months. Photo: APHis book, The Room Where It Happened, raced to the top of the bestsellers' chart when released in June, and was widely serialised in American press. Bolton's claims that Trump praised Chinese President Xi Jinping on the persecution of Uygurs in Xinjiang generated global headlines.Bolton was speaking less than 24 hours after Trump signed the Hong Kong Autonomy Act, opening the door to sanctions on officials from the city and China over the sweeping national security law, and an executive order stripping Hong Kong of its preferential trading status.The move leaves Hong Kong open to trade war tariffs, which were previously levied on mainland Chinese exports to the United States. It also comes weeks after Washington revoked Hong Kong's export controls exemption license privileges, barring the city from accessing sensitive American technological goods.Bolton said the United States should open its borders to Hongkongers fleeing the city after the imposition of the national security law, citing Britain's revision of its immigration policy to accommodate Hong Kong nationals. The British government has offered a route to citizenship for holders of British National Overseas passports in Hong Kong.Defending strict US immigration policy on migrants reaching its southern border from Latin American nations, Bolton said that "just by showing up at the border, doesn't mean you are going to get in".The Trump administration tried unsuccessfully to block publication of Bolton's book, claiming it contained classified national security information. Photo: AFP alt=The Trump administration tried unsuccessfully to block publication of Bolton's book, claiming it contained classified national security information. Photo: AFP"I favour greatly immigration and I think what Britain, Canada and others have done in terms of potential political asylum for Hong Kong is something the United States should do, too, so I favour more immigration," Bolton said."I think it's what makes America strong " it has historically. That's the big advantage we have over almost every other country in the world."Canada was the first country to break an extradition treaty with Hong Kong over the national security law last week. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau added that Ottawa is "also looking at additional measures, including around immigration" for Hongkongers.But Bolton was fiercely critical of what he portrayed as Trump's disinterest in human rights, or anything "that got in the way of the great white whale of the Trump administration, the big trade deal".In a anecdote alluded to in his book, Bolton confirmed that he had written a statement for the president to release on the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 2019, "but when I gave it to the president, he would not issue it".Bolton's claims that Trump praised Chinese President Xi Jinping on the persecution of Uygurs in Xinjiang generated global headlines. Photo: EPA-EFE alt=Bolton's claims that Trump praised Chinese President Xi Jinping on the persecution of Uygurs in Xinjiang generated global headlines. Photo: EPA-EFEAmid rising tensions over US action regarding human rights abuses in Xinjiang, territorial disputes and militarisation in the South China Sea, the Hong Kong situation and friction over the origins of the coronavirus, analysts and officials generally agree that US-China relations are at their lowest point since normalisation in 1979.But Bolton said that he thought the prospect of a military war between the superpowers was "remote"."I don't see it in anything like the near term. It'll hopefully give Beijing a chance to back away from some of it's provocative behaviour," said Bolton.This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2020 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 2020. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
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| Black UK protester statue removed from pedestal in Bristol Posted: 16 Jul 2020 01:43 AM PDT  Officials in the English city of Bristol on Thursday removed a statue of a Black Lives Matter activist that was installed barely 24 hours earlier on a pedestal once occupied by a monument to a 17th-century slave trader. Artist Marc Quinn created the resin and steel likeness of Jen Reid, a protester photographed standing with a raised fist on the pedestal after demonstrators pulled down the statue of merchant Edward Colston and dumped in Bristol's harbor on June 7. The statue of Reid was erected before dawn on Wednesday without the approval of city authorities and removed by those same authorities early Thursday, carted away in a waste-removal truck.
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| Can a pregnant woman spread the coronavirus to her fetus? Posted: 16 Jul 2020 01:22 AM PDT  Many viruses can cross the placenta and infect a fetus in the womb, and evidence has been growing that the coronavirus sometimes can too. Researchers in Italy studied 31 women with COVID-19 who delivered babies in March and April and found signs of the virus in several samples of umbilical cord blood, the placenta and, in one case, breast milk. In one case, there was strong evidence suggesting the newborn had the virus at birth because signs of it were found in umbilical cord blood and in the placenta.
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| EU throws out US data sharing deal over surveillance fears Posted: 16 Jul 2020 01:04 AM PDT  Europe's top court has thrown out a US data-sharing deal which underpinned transatlantic digital trade for more than 5,000 companies, The ruling, by the EU Court of Justice, saw the "EU-US privacy shield" invalidated due to concerns over the privacy of Europeans, with the court suggesting US surveillance laws were too far-reaching. "This was an unexpected result," said Bridget Treacy, data privacy partner at Hunton Andrews Kurth. "For businesses that transfer personal data from the EU to the US, this represents the worst of all possible outcomes." The landmark ruling, which cannot be appealed, effectively ends the privileged access companies in the US had to personal data from Europe and puts the country on a similar footing to other nations outside the 27-country bloc. The ruling will also complicate the transfer of a data outside the EU, and it could require regulators to vet any new transfers due to national security concerns. "It is likely to have implications for the UK's hopes for a post-Brexit data protection adequacy ruling from the European Commission," added Ms Treacy. "The UK can expect its surveillance laws to be subject to similar scrutiny to those of the US, to assess whether they respect the privacy rights of EU citizens." Wilbur Ross, US Secretary of Commerce said the department was "deeply disappointed" in the ruling. "We have been and will remain in close contact with the European Commission and European Data Protection Board on this matter and hope to be able to limit the negative consequences to the $7.1 trillion transatlantic economic relationship that is so vital to our respective citizens, companies, and governments." The case began after former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed in 2013 that the US government was snooping on people's online data and communications. The revelations included details on how Facebook gave US security agencies access to the personal data of Europeans. Austrian activist and law student Max Schrems filed a complaint against Facebook, which has its EU base in Ireland, arguing that personal data should not be sent to the US because the data protection is not as strong as in Europe.
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| China's economy bounces back from pandemic contraction Posted: 16 Jul 2020 12:40 AM PDT  China's economy returned to growth in the second quarter following a coronavirus contraction, with President Xi Jinping promising continued expansion ahead and urging foreign companies to be a part of it. Gross domestic product expanded 3.2 percent in April-June, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said, smashing expectations and a massive improvement on the 6.8 percent contraction in the first quarter. In a letter to members of the Global CEO Council, Xi said "the fundamentals of China's long-term economic growth have not changed and will not change", according to state media.
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| Analysis: Risks grow after blast hits Iran's nuclear program Posted: 15 Jul 2020 11:21 PM PDT  A mysterious explosion and fire at Iran's main nuclear facility may have stopped Tehran from building advanced centrifuges, but it likely has not slowed the Islamic Republic in growing its ever-increasing stockpile of low-enriched uranium. Limiting that stockpile represented one of the main tenets of the nuclear deal that world powers reached with Iran five years ago this week — an accord which now lies in tatters after President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from it two years ago. The larger that stockpile grows, the shorter the so-called "breakout time" becomes — time that Iran would need to build a nuclear weapon if it chooses to do so.
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| Minorities under attack as PM pushes 'tolerant' Pakistan Posted: 15 Jul 2020 11:06 PM PDT  It's been a tough month for religious minorities in Pakistan, and observers warn of even tougher times ahead as Prime Minister Imran Khan vacillates between trying to forge a pluralistic nation and his conservative Islamic beliefs. A Christian was gunned down because he rented in a Muslim neighborhood in northwest Peshawar, not far from the border with Afghanistan. Another Christian, pastor Haroon Sadiq Cheeda, his wife and 12-year-old son were beaten by their Muslim neighbors in eastern Punjab and told to leave their village.
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| After 4 days, 2 explosions, Navy warship fire extinguished Posted: 15 Jul 2020 10:02 PM PDT  A fire on the USS Bonhomme Richard at a San Diego naval base has been extinguished after a four-day battle against one of the worst infernos to rip through a U.S. warship outside of combat in recent years, the Navy said Thursday. Rear Adm. Philip E. Sobeck called the last 24 hours of the firefight aboard the amphibious assault ship "amazing," with the fire reaching up to 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of the vessel. On Thursday, it listed in the opposite direction, but Sobeck, commander of Expeditionary Strike Group 3, said the ship was stable and "survivable," though it will take time to assess the damage.
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| US executes 2nd man in a week; lawyers said he had dementia Posted: 15 Jul 2020 09:46 PM PDT  The United States on Thursday carried out its second federal execution in three days following a hiatus of nearly two decades, killing by lethal injection a Kansas man whose lawyers contended he had dementia and was unfit to be executed. Wesley Ira Purkey was put to death at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. After Purkey was strapped to a gurney inside the execution chamber, a prison official removed a mask from his face and asked if he wanted to make a final statement.
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| Four more years? Trump struggles to outline second term plan Posted: 15 Jul 2020 09:32 PM PDT  President Donald Trump is adamant that he wants another four years in office. The Republican president repeatedly assailed Democratic rival Joe Biden during a rambling, hourlong Rose Garden news conference Tuesday that doubled as a reelection rally. With the election less than four months away, Trump's focus is more on winning than on how he would govern.
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| In the open: White House advisers tussle over virus response Posted: 15 Jul 2020 09:27 PM PDT  Infighting over the White House's handling of the coronavirus pandemic is spilling further into public view, with trade adviser Peter Navarro panning Dr. Anthony Fauci as President Donald Trump stands watch. The president insisted he had a "very good relationship with Dr. Fauci" and said his staffers were working together.
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| Pompeo downplays possibility of summit with North Korea Posted: 15 Jul 2020 08:00 PM PDT  U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo downplayed the possibility of another summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un before the U.S. presidential election, saying Trump would only want to engage if there were real prospects of progress. During a parliamentary speech, Moon urged North Korea to return to inter-Korean dialogue, which has also stalled, and called for South Korean lawmakers to support government policies aimed at reviving cross-border cooperation.
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| China's long-term economic growth fundamentals will not change -President Xi Posted: 15 Jul 2020 07:09 PM PDT |
| In Egypt, sexual predator case reignites #MeToo debate Posted: 15 Jul 2020 06:31 PM PDT  Egypt has seen a strong resurgence of the #MeToo movement after dozens of women made shocking claims of sexual abuse and assault by a member of the country's wealthy elite. Police on July 4 arrested Zaki who, according to prosecutors, has confessed to assaulting at least six girls including one aged under 18 and to blackmailing the victims. While Zaki is awaiting trial, his case has kicked off a wave of other complaints in a society where, United Nations surveys say, most women have experienced catcalling, pinching, groping or worse.
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| Trump replaces campaign manager amid sinking poll numbers Posted: 15 Jul 2020 05:49 PM PDT  President Donald Trump shook up his campaign staff Wednesday amid sinking poll numbers less than four months before the election, replacing campaign manager Brad Parscale with veteran GOP operative Bill Stepien. "I am pleased to announce that Bill Stepien has been promoted to the role of Trump Campaign Manager," Trump said on Facebook. "Brad Parscale, who has been with me for a very long time and has led our tremendous digital and data strategies, will remain in that role, while being a Senior Advisor to the campaign."
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| UK says 'Russian actors' likely tried to disrupt 2019 election Posted: 15 Jul 2020 05:35 PM PDT  Britain on Thursday accused "Russian actors" of seeking to disrupt last year's general election by circulating leaked trade documents between London and Washington. The government launched an investigation into the source of the leak, after details of talks with the United States on a possible post-Brexit trade deal were published on social media site Reddit. The main opposition Labour party said the files proved the government would "sell-out" the state-run National Health Service (NHS) to US companies.
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| UK denies that internal market plan will lead to race to the bottom Posted: 15 Jul 2020 05:00 PM PDT |
| Westminster’s post-Brexit plan will put UK unity to the test Posted: 15 Jul 2020 05:00 PM PDT |
| Brexit vote hits leave areas the hardest Posted: 15 Jul 2020 05:00 PM PDT |
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